Own Your Feelings, Mr. President

February 21, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

In China and throughout Asia on the 37th anniversary of 37’s historic visit to Beijing, the Secretary of State is getting rave reviews. In the end, that could be bad for her. Early this morning somewhere in the White House or Old Executive Office Building, someone read this in the New York Times and muttered, “Well isn’t that special! We’re stuck back here saving Joe the Plumber’s mortgage, and she’s turning the world on with her smile”:

Mrs. Clinton is exploiting both her megawatt celebrity and her training during the presidential campaign. On Friday, nearly 3,000 female students packed an auditorium at Ewha Womans University in Seoul to hear Mrs. Clinton deliver a speech that ranged from North Korea’s nuclear threat to the challenge women face in balancing work and family.

A standing-room-only crowd at the University of Tokyo listened to Mrs. Clinton discuss how the United States should rebuild its ties to the Muslim world. Toward the end, a nervous young woman, who said she played on a baseball team, asked Mrs. Clinton how to become as strong as she was.

“Well, I played a lot of baseball, and I played with a lot of boys,” she replied, to peals of laughter.

Mrs. Clinton said she was skeptical that these appearances alone would lead to changes in the policies of foreign governments. But by connecting with people on a personal level, she said, she believes she can help mold public opinion, which, in turn, can influence governments.

“President Obama has an extraordinary capacity to do that because of the really positive feelings that he personally engenders,” she said. “To a lesser degree, I have some of the same capacity.”

The Times also notes, “Henry Kissinger, this isn’t,” perhaps failing to grasp the irony. It wasn’t lost on RN when the media fawned over HAK while reviling his superior. I wonder how Obama will react to having unleashed a superstar of his own. Clinton’s purported political perfect pitch evaded her when she said that she shared the President’s charismatic gifts, albeit “to a lesser degree.” Good thing she said that last bit. To extend her own sports metaphor, while she “played with a lot of boys,” she definitely doesn’t want to call out Obama for a game of one on one.

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

February 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | 1 Comment 

This weekend’s Reward is “Sabali,” track from Amadou & Mariam’s recent CD Welcome to Mali, produced by British writer-performer-producer Damon Albarn.

“Sabali” was chosen by Pitchfork magazine as one of the best album tracks of 2008, and Joe Tangari’s citation says it all (and says it very well):

At once futuristic and crushingly nostalgic, this blind couple from Mali’s first collaboration with Blur’s Damon Albarn is a haunting electro-pop experiment that drips with soul. It begins with Mariam Doumbia in a conversation with gentle violins that sound beamed down from the International Space Station, then gives itself over to a synthetic rhythm and an arpeggiating keyboard. It has a lonely tinge that equally evokes Alan Shepard all alone on a suborbital flight and a lone traveler crossing the desert on a cold, starry night. It’s honestly hard to pin down a song that has as many emotional currents running through it as this one, but it’s truly a song for any state of mind, no matter where you are.

Have I ever misled you?  Of course not.  So trust me on this: If you listen to “Sabali” a couple of times, it will insinuate itself into your cortex and linger there —in its hypnotic happy/sad way— at least until it is replaced by some subsequent Reward with similar qualities.

“Sabali” means “because” in Mali’s native language Bambara.  The conceit is simple: Amadou calls from a city but only reaches Mariam’s phone machine. The lyrics (mostly in French, Mali’s official language) are intimate endearments (“My dear, I’m talking to you….with you life is sweet….I give you a big kiss and hold you tight….”).   The images, drenched in a kind of golden glow that the singers must only remember from their sighted youth, convey conflicting senses of open space and urban isolation.

I know — the video (created by the French VJ Tekyes) cuts off abruptly 20 seconds short of the end; unfortunately it’s the only one currently available on YouTube.   The complete video, along with several others, can be found on A&M’s comprehensive website (choose Videos and select “Sabali”.)  Better yet, access their MySpace page here and enjoy a superb stereo remix of the whole song by Paul Epworth (again, trust me on this now and you can thank me later).

Mariam Doumbia grew up in the Malian capital Bamako, singing along to the radio’s blend of traditional folk music with the dramatic French and international pop of stars like Dalida and Nana Mouskouri.

Amadou Bagayoko, four years older (he was born in 1954) also grew up in Bamako, mastering many instruments and absorbing the guitar styles of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, John Lee Hooker, and Eric Clapton.

They met at Bamako’s Institute for the Young Blind. She had lost her sight at the age of five; he as a teenager as a result of a congenital cataract.

They were married in 1980 and began building a repertoire combining traditional and popular music with increasingly assertive rock beats. By 1985 they had exhausted the basic production facilities available in Bamako, and moved to the Cote d’Ivoire capital Abidjan. Before long their music had found a following in France. Inevitably they became known as “the blind couple of Mali.”

Much of their early repertoire of cassette recordings has been reassembled and remastered on Amadou & Mariam 1990-1995: The Best of the African Years.

Their first CD —Sou Ni Tile (Night and Day)—was made in France in 1997 and put them on the international world music map. They started appearing in the US and throughout Europe.

(Above: Cover art from Amadou & Mariam’s second album, 2000’s Tje Ni Mousso (Circular Moves).)

In 2004 they worked with Spanish-born Paris-based writer-performer-producer Manu Chao —who contacted them after hearing one of their songs on his car radio— on the breakthrough album Dimanche a Bamako (Sunday in Bamako).

All three collaborated on the writing and participated in the inventive and poignant video for the song “Senegal Fast Food.”   It tells the story of a young newlywed who follows the Dakar-Bamako-Mopti-Gao-Algeria-Tunisia-Italy route (“the elevator to the ghetto”) to Paris.  Her forsakes his sunny and vibrant home for a rough unwelcome in a cold climate, as the lyrics wonder: If it’s midnight in Tokyo and five o’clock in Mali, what time is it in Paradise?

Amadou described the song:

We said we are all in the same boat, but nobody knows where we are going. It was like, we’re all in this together, but nobody knows what’s going to happen. So the best solution is for those who have gone on this adventure to a strange land to think about those they left behind in their country. If they’re in the big city, they must think about their parents and friends who have stayed behind in small villages. That’s what we sang about in ‘Senegal Fast Food,’ because the song about exodus, about people who are going here and there. People who want to live this way have problems, with visas, with the police, all that. The best thing is to pay attention. You are there, but you don’t know what’s going to happen.

In 2006 Amadou & Miriam reached a vast new audience. The FIFA World Cup finals were held in Germany, and Herbert Gronemeyer and producer Alex Silva collaborated with them on the official song, “Zeit, dass sich was dreht” (Celebrate the Day).  (Don’t bail out during Herr Gronemeyer’s lugubrious introduction; the fun finally begins about a minute in, as soon as A&M turn up.)

The Amadou & Mariam catalog is easily available (as on Amazon). This summer, along with Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, they will be joining Coldplay’s American tour. (Coldplay appears to be partial to opening acts with ampersands.)

(Above: Cover art for Amadou & Mariam’s December 2008 album Welcome To Mali.)

Featured Articles — February 21, 2009

February 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | 1 Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama’s Durban Gambit By Caroline Glick
While most Americans were busy celebrating Valentine’s Day, last Saturday the Obama administration announced that it would send a delegation to Geneva to participate in planning the UN’s so-called Durban II conference, scheduled to take place in late April. Although largely overlooked in the US, the announcement sent shock waves through Jerusalem.

Will Gingrich lead the GOP out of the wilderness? By David Corn
Who’s the big Republican winner emerging from the GOP’s decisive defeat in November? It’s not Sarah Palin (future as a presidential contender highly doubtful), Mitt Romney (now a political nonentity), or the party’s point men in Congress (smaller, weaker caucuses). Amid the wreckage, the guy standing tallest in GOP-land is a fallen powerbroker whom some had written off as a has-been: Newt Gingrich. Yes, the silver-haired conservative whom liberals loved to hate—the bomb-throwing backbencher whose Contract With America helped him gain a Republican majority and the House speakership in 1994—is back as a (if not the) Grand Old Man of the party.

How California Became France By Matthew Kaminski
These days, the Golden State leads the nation on economic and fiscal dysfunction, from the empty homes spread across the Central Valley to the highest state budget shortfall in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, its political class pioneers denial in the face of catastrophe.

India needs a lot more love from Obama By Dan Twining
In 1998, President Clinton flew over Japan without stopping to spend nine days in China. This led to acute concern in Tokyo over “Japan passing” — the belief that Washington was neglecting a key Asian ally in favor of the region’s rising star, China. Is the same thing happening today — not with Japan, destination of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first overseas trip, but with India?

What is nationalization? By Colin Barr
What does it mean to nationalize a bank, anyway? That question has weighed on the minds of investors in the two weeks since the Obama administration’s comprehensive financial industry stability plan fell flat.

Obama was unconvinced by Bibi’s desire for peace By Robert Fisk
Mr Obama, who figured out the Middle East pretty quickly, apparently found Bibi arrogant and unconvincing in his professed desire for peace with the Palestinians. What Mr Netanyahu thought of Mr Obama is not known, but he could scarcely have tried to hide his election line: security for Israel, but no Palestinian state.

The Invisible War By Bob Herbert
For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marauding bands of soldiers and militias have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women.

Come Home, America?

February 20, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Center, The National Interest | Leave a Comment 

Predicting that President Obama will oversee a massive retreat from the overcommitment of U.S. forces under President Bush, isolationist Nixonian Pat Buchanan admiringly quotes an article published by the realist Nixonians at the Nixon Center’s foreign policy quarterly:

As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago writes in The National Interest: “America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell of American hegemony.”

Perlstein: Conservatives Are Annoying

February 20, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixonland Nitpicks, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

Refreshingly, no insincere lip service about bipartisanship from Nixonland author Rick Perlstein:

[C]onservatives will always be with us. I admit it. They’ll always be annoying, and always will be standing in the way of genuine reforms that can make the world a more stable, predictable, prudent, and moral place… The point is just to keep them as far from the levers of power as possible.

Getting Richard Right

February 20, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Frost/Nixon, Richard Nixon | 11 Comments 

Ann Hornady gets it wrong in the Washington Post:

In “Frost/Nixon,” Frank Langella didn’t really look or sound like Richard Nixon. If he had, his performance as the disgraced former president would have had little more artistic heft than an old Rich Little bit on “The Tonight Show.” Instead, he developed an outsize, almost Shakespearean physical and vocal persona, giving Nixon a brooding, bearlike physicality and a growling baritone completely at odds with Nixon’s actual cadences. The reason it succeeds is that it’s a full characterization, grounded in Langella’s own preparation for the role and defined by every single choice he makes, from where he focuses his eyes to the way he walks across a room.

Perhaps Hornady knew President Nixon and had the opportunity to watch him interact with family members, friends, and aides. I doubt it, because if she had, I believe she would have been unnerved by how effectively, and recognizably, Langella (shown studying RN’s own Frost interview notes in my old Nixon Foundation office) portrayed him. My guess is that Hornady only knows the public Nixon, from his speeches and press conferences.

Those who experienced the public and private man, as I and many others did, couldn’t help but discern the difference between the two which I’ve always attributed to his introverted temperament. The public Nixon was studied and sometimes unsure, the private Nixon avuncular, attentive, inquisitive, dryly funny, lightly self-deprecating, almost exactly like Langella’s performance. As Langella himself has made clear, he recognized something of his own nature and personal history in the President, hence the synergy. Mr. Nixon’s voice deepened in his seventies, so Langella even gets the baritone growl right. As for the actor’s greater size, it helped him communicate the gravitas Nixon projected at five-foot-ten. When he entered a room, people noticed, because of who he was, and because he had wielded great power.

Those Crazy Nixonian German Socialists

February 20, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

At AEI, Steven F. Hayward wishes he had seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Nixon-like sellout of conservative orthodoxy coming five years ago:

In his prime-time speech to the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, he went where no Republican has dared to go for the last generation: He offered enthusiastic praise for Richard Nixon. Newly arrived in the U.S. in 1968 as an aspiring bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger said, he found Nixon’s views more compelling than Hubert Humphrey’s “socialism” because Nixon “was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes, and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.” It was Nixon, never mistaken for a girly-man, who made him a Republican.

At the time I admired Arnold’s moxie in embracing Nixon, whom most other Republicans have shoved down the same memory hole as Herbert Hoover. But perhaps we should have seen this as a portent of trouble ahead. After all, it was Nixon who proclaimed, “I am a Keynesian in economics” before slapping on wage and price controls and letting domestic social spending shoot up faster than it had under Lyndon Johnson. Like Nixon (and George W. Bush), in fiscal matters Arnold has governed more like a Keynesian than a Friedmanite; in regulatory affairs, he governs more like a German socialist than an Austrian-school liberal.

Holes In The Draft

February 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Bush Administration, Iraq War | Leave a Comment 

Thomas Ricks, the WaPo’s military correspondent, was the author of the 2006 bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

He is now making the rounds promoting his new book The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. And, giving credit where it’s due, he is a very appealing and (no pun intended) disarming guest. Not surprisingly, given his credentials, he has been widely welcomed and little challenged.

That balance is redressed today by Mario Loyola on National Review Online.

Mr. Loyola, an attorney and former Senate and Pentagon aide and speechwriter, praises Mr. Ricks’ felicitous prose style and (unlike another WaPo best-selling author) his restraint in not making up  mindsets for people he quotes.  But he has major methodological reservations:

…in the absence of archival research, this mountain of quotations fails to communicate so many critical aspects of what happened — and of how decisions were made — that it would risk incoherence if it had to stand on its own as history. Ricks solves that problem by weaving his reportage around the most familiar propositions of the conventional media narrative: 1) Rumsfeld and his senior generals stubbornly refused to implement a proper counterinsurgency strategy and nearly caused a disaster; 2) the surge has succeeded militarily but failed politically; 3) democracy is a pipe dream in Iraq, where “lots of little Saddams” have replaced the one we toppled; 4) the Iraq war has been most of all a victory for Iran; and 5) Obama will be fighting the Iraq war long into the future, with an uncertain outcome. Each of these propositions is seriously flawed if not completely wrong.

He examines each of these propositions at considerable length and succeeds in raising many interesting questions.

Are Better Angels All Socialists?

February 20, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Economic issues, Ethics, Faith, Lifestyle, Money, Religion, economy | Leave a Comment 

G. K. Chesterton used to say that the idea of “original sin” was “a fact as practical as potatoes” and “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”

As the nation-at-large wrestles with monumental problems, there are many who advocate strategies that rely on what is often referred to liberally as “the essential goodness of people.” The idea being that given a fair choice and level playing field people will generally do the right thing.

As Dr. Phil might ask: “How’s that working for you?”

I certainly believe people can rise up and do good things following what President Barack Obama, quoting Abraham Lincoln, is fond of calling our “better angels.” But the truth is that the default position of human behavior actually falls short of the ideal. Various forms of theology explain this propensity in terms of “original sin” or “total depravity” – that we are wired with a spiritual-genetic flaw.

In other words, the very suggestion of the existence of “better angels” in our nature implies other “less-than-better angels” – putting it mildly; or maybe “fallen angels.” The mention of better begs the question: “Better than what?”

Some people will dismiss this kind of thinking as puritanical. But it’s sort of like a paraphrase of that old Marxist line (Groucho, not Karl): Are you going to believe them or your own two eyes? Empirical evidence abounds that people tend to follow paths of least resistance and worse.

We are in this mess now because many people either made unwise choices (rejecting personal responsibility or deferred gratification), or they were manipulated and deceived by predators. Others on a certain street in lower Manhattan exploited everything. All of this while Barney Frank kept an eye on things. Clearly, any angels in attendance weren’t of the “better” variety.

People harm and take advantage of others because it is part of human nature. People pollute the planet because it is part of human nature. People lie, cheat, steal, and commit adultery, because humans (all of us) are sinners. And sometimes a toxic storm is at work in a life and monsters emerge to do despicable things. We are tempted to call them insane, and maybe they are by some psychological standard, but they are also very depraved.

All sins great and small flow from the same polluted human nature stream, whether they are grave and life destroying in our eyes or relatively excusable in today’s “I-did-it-because-I-am-a-victim” world. The lack of integrity that leads some to break a vital covenant and others to commit abhorrent crimes are connected to the same ugly ancestral disorder.

For example, we are witnessing a surge in bank foreclosures and people are losing homes. What is being little noticed though, is that while it is true some have lost jobs and can’t pay, there are cases where some who really could pay have stopped making payments and are deciding to walk away unless the government makes it easier for them. The home is now “less attractive” than it once was as an investment. Some are walking away only because they are upside down – not because they really can’t pay.

Stay tuned taxpayers. Keep your eyes on the funds and mechanisms as they become available to help people catch up on, or renegotiate, mortgages. I predict that some people will still simply choose to walk away, in spite of help available, because their homes just won’t be worth it in their eyes. In many cases, it may be more about the value of a home than the ability to pay.

Won’t it be interesting if money to help some people “stay in their homes” winds up going unused because, when it comes right down to it, they don’t really want to stay after all? Is being behind on payments the big problem (certainly it is for some), or is being upside down the big deal? There is a difference between catching up and getting out from under.

Upside down may be becoming an excuse to move from inside out.

In many places there is a scenario called “buy and bail.” This is where someone buys a new – cheaper – home, while still in the original dwelling. Then once the deal is done – they walk away from the first, more expensive home. Admittedly, this practice is not widespread now, largely because some states have cracked down on it.

What we do know is this, when homes go empty for whatever reason it hurts everyone who is trying to really play by the rules and keep their word. Upside down/walk away homes on an already depressed market contribute to the downward spiral of home values and prices – damaging those who believe that when they signed the mortgage they made not only a financial commitment, but a moral one as well.

If liberal-bail-out-advocates really believe in the “greater good” and “spreading the wealth,” they might want to consider that the wealth they want to redistribute is actually disappearing because of the “help” they are providing. People who made bad choices in the first place are being encouraged to continue doing things that hurt everyone. How is this about the greater good?

While we are trying to figure all this out, we meet a lady named Nadya Suleman. She recently gave birth to eight children. She’s been all over the news and now we hear she is looking at a new million-dollar-plus-pad for her growing family. I haven’t figured out whether she is a caricature or a metaphor. Maybe she’s both.

Of course, the Suleman story is objectionable and infuriating to us on so many levels because she clearly seems to be deranged. Or maybe she is just depraved. Maybe she is a manipulative, scheming, deceiver, who is thinking only of self. I am not trying to bash the lady – that line is really too long.

After all, if OctoMom, as she has been dubbed, is indeed trying to “work the system” with the mother of all scams (literally), is she really all that different from many others right now? I’m talking about those who are already slowing down on the personal responsibility side of things because we have a cool new government in place ready to stimulate all of us. Nadya Suleman may be more like the not-too-distant future of America than we might care or dare to admit.

Here’s where “original sin” comes in. Like it or not, we all bear a moral-DNA similarity to OctoMom, in the sense that we have this natural propensity to be selfish and deceitful. It is only as this part of us is restrained (by law, fear, inspiration, or love) or transformed (by grace – or, if you prefer, “a higher power”), that we can function in any effective social-contract sense.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “If there is no God, everything is permissible.”

There is a lot of talk these days about America becoming socialist and more like Europe. What needs to be noticed is that these trends not only have to do with the size and role of government, but also speak about a culture moving toward dominant secularism and sterile religion.

I ate at a restaurant the other day in Manhattan. It was in a beautiful building that had once been a thriving church. It was a church; now it is an eatery. Then I thought about how so many of the churches in Europe function basically as museums, if at all. Is this where we are headed?

One of the basic differences between socialism and capitalism as they manifest themselves in social, cultural, political, and even religious senses, is that the former believes in the essential goodness of humanity. On the other hand, capitalism tends to be more realistic about basic human nature and works to channel that “self-interest” in ways that can lead to something better for everyone.

Of course, human nature is at fault in runaway capitalism and the excesses of a few can be detrimental to many. This is why very few conservatives these days advocate a radical form of laissez-faire capitalism. Human nature will take advantage and there have to be times of balance, judgment, adjustment, and reckoning.

Somebody does have to watch the store. But the store should be privately owned.

The thing Americans need to be thinking through these days is, however, what system has a better overall record? Is it really better in France, Sweden, or Denmark than America today? Do we really want to admire nations where people surrender significantly more than half of what they earn to a government in exchange for state-run services that are chronically insufficient, incompetent, and impersonal?

If so, then we need to be fair and concede that, as Pogo might have put it, we have met Nadya Suleman and she is our future.

DSPQ

February 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Even for those of us whose Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, after all these years, has been raised far above the threshold of pain, the slack being cut for Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd is hard to take.

Although the latest development is, technically, tangential to the Senator’s hinky dealings and his on-going refusal to release the presumably compromising documents he promised to make public more than a year ago, sometimes it’s the icing on the cake that highlights the decay inside.

Senator Dodd’s mistake was not fessing up at the get go and admitting that (like his Senate colleague Kent Conrad and many others, including Richard Holbrooke) he got a sweetheart deal on  loans from the VIP program set up for precisely that purpose by his friend at the top of Countrywide Financial.  Senator Conrad appears to have decided that discretion is the better part of survival and has been keeping his head down hoping the whole thing will eventually blow over.

But Senator Dodd has gone on the offensive, denying everything, promising transparency, and shamelessly positioning himself as the paladin of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has been one of very few voices speaking inconvenient truth to entrenched power, and today’s editorial expresses an accumulated indignation and frustration.  Read it and weep:

If you think Senator Chris Dodd was friendly with former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, check out the bond the Connecticut lawmaker enjoys with Richard Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general. While Mr. Dodd refuses to make public the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide, the state’s chief lawyer not only won’t investigate; he has taken to the airwaves to proclaim Mr. Dodd’s innocence and even predict his re-election in 2010.

Inappropriate doesn’t begin to describe Mr. Blumenthal’s appearance this week on Hartford’s WFSB-TV. The AG compared Mr. Dodd, who was due to receive an estimated savings of $75,000 over the life of his two VIP mortgage loans, to borrowers allegedly duped by unscrupulous lenders. Mr. Blumenthal claimed that “there’s no evidence of wrongdoing on [Mr. Dodd's] part any more than victims who were misled or deceived by Countrywide.”

Portraying Mr. Dodd as a victim for receiving two below-market loans appeared to be too much for WFSB anchor Dennis House. He asked Mr. Blumenthal if he would accept Countrywide telling him that he could see some documents for a short time but not make any copies, as Mr. Dodd recently did with selected reporters. Mr. Blumenthal replied that he subpoenas documents from companies like Countrywide, instead of accepting their representations.

It’s interesting that the state’s top lawyer can pronounce that there’s no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Dodd, especially since Mr. Blumenthal told us this week that he has never investigated Dodd’s Countrywide deals. According to Mr. Blumenthal, the case is out of his jurisdiction because Mr. Dodd holds a federal office and any possible offenses would be federal. Mr. Blumenthal prosecutes civil matters while Connecticut’s Chief State’s Attorney, Kevin Kane, oversees criminal prosecutions. Mr. Kane’s office also tells us that Connecticut’s senior Senator is out of its jurisdiction.

Mr. Blumenthal’s decision to stay out of the way of federal law enforcers contrasts with his approach when Republican Governor John Rowland and others were successfully prosecuted on federal corruption charges. In that case, Mr. Blumenthal was so zealous that in 2004 a state court judge temporarily blocked his civil suit after federal prosecutors claimed he was making it more difficult to prosecute the federal case.

Federal prosecutors aren’t commenting on any probe, if there is one. We can confirm that the Senate’s Ethics Committee investigation continues at whatever pace can be described as less than plodding.

Featured Articles — February 20, 2009

February 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Mr. President, Keep the Airwaves Free By Rush Limbaugh
Dear President Obama: I have a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer in a straightforward way: Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as “local content,” “diversity of ownership,” and “public interest” rules — all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

Obama bets on the ‘House’ card By Mark Penn
If the $800 billion stimulus bill works, Barack Obama will go down as a great president who took bold and decisive action at a time of growing national crisis — and the midterm elections, and even his reelection, will be a breeze.

Obama’s Supine Diplomacy By Charles Krauthammer
The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, predicted in October that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.” Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban missile crisis. Instead, Obama’s challenges have come in smaller bites. Some are deliberate threats to U.S. interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.

Obama Shouldn’t Stick to 16-Month Iraq Pullout Plan By Mort Kondracke
President Barack Obama faces a moment of truth soon about Iraq: Does he keep his campaign promise to pull out all combat troops by next April or his other promise to “end the war responsibly”

Netanyahu: ‘Let’s join hands in wide unity government’ By Elie Leshem
After the failure of his last-ditch effort to muster Kadima leader Tzipi Livni’s support for a unity government on Friday, President Shimon Peres formally entrusted Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu with the task of building a coalition. Netanyahu arrived as Beit Hanassi on Friday afternoon and received the president’s official letter of appointment.

The End of Swiss Banking as We Knew it? By Stanley Reed
Swiss bank UBS has ageed to provide the US government with the identities of and account information for certain American customers of UBS’s cross-border business “who appear to have committed tax fraud or the like.” As much as $14.8 billion in assets may be involved.

A Third Lebanon War? By Michael Totten
The Lebanese-Israeli border has been calmer during the last two and a half years than it has been in decades. Hezbollah replenished its arsenal of rockets after the 2006 war, but has chosen to lay low in the meantime. Not one Israeli soldier has been kidnapped since the war’s end, and not a single Hezbollah rocket has landed in Israel. Nothing stays the same in the Middle East for long, though, and Israel and Lebanon may be headed for confrontation again.

“Frost/Nixon’s” Unsung Hero?

February 19, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate | 3 Comments 

John W. Dean’s latest column at findlaw.com concerns Frost/Nixon. That’s not especially surprising in itself. But what is downright strange is that Dean has not seen Ron Howard’s film or Peter Morgan’s play because, he says, “scheduling” conflicts haven’t permitted him to do so.

So why is Dean writing about Frost/Nixon? It would appear that his big concern is that the film and play overglorify the role of James Reston Jr. in the development of David Frost’s line of questioning that led to the catharsis depicted so effectively in the play and film by Frank Langella as RN.

(Indeed, whenever Dean does bother to see the film, his fears might be assuaged.  Sam Rockwell amusingly delineates Reston as a self-important, somewhat obtuse Nixon-hater whose contribution to the Frost team’s “strategy” isn’t as vast as he thinks it is.)

The onetime White House counsel spends a paragraph discussing Reston’s father, the longtime New York Times columnist Scotty Reston, who, according to Dean, was a foe of “muckraking” and who therefore was somehow to blame for the Times’s being slow to pick up on the Watergate story. Or that’s what Dean implies, anyway – he doesn’t spell out the details.

Dean also maintains that it is “very possible” that James Reston Jr.’s book about the interviews The Conviction Of Richard Nixon (which provided a good part of the structural backbone of Frost/Nixon as a play, though less so as a film) failed to find a publisher at the time he wrote it because it said little that was not also in Frost’s book “I Gave Them A Sword” and that this was why Reston put it in a drawer for 30 years. That seems a far-fetched notion. All through the 1970s, almost any “anti” book about Nixon would have had little trouble finding its way into print.

A leading example of such a book, in fact, is President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile by Eli S. Chesen, published by the short-lived firm of Peter H. Wyden (father of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden) in 1973.  Dr. Chesen’s volume, a rather vacuous venture into long-distance psychoanalysis, has received little serious attention from scholars or historians.

But Dean evidently thinks well of the book and its author, who is now a psychiatrist practicing in Lincoln, Nebraska. And he wants to let us know that it was Dr. Chesen who came up with the approach Frost used for the questions about Watergate, using Reston as an intermediary, and that he has failed to get due credit. To this end, Dean presents q-and-a exchange with Dr. Chesen, who says:

Nixon thought and functioned with endless algorithms. Changing the order of questions and abruptly shifting the mood in a dour direction, out of order, would, I told Reston, catch Nixon off guard, perhaps throwing him into the uttering of non sequiturs.

Moreover, I advised Reston that, given the propensities for compulsives to wallow in guilt, when possible, Frost should frame questions with the pre-suggestion of guilt. Nixon, to the very end, saw himself as the under-appreciated underdog; the martyr. It would have been “Checkers” II and Pat’s “Republican cloth coat” all over again had Nixon been given the chance. I believe Nixon could have taken the psychological ball and run with it, covering himself in sackcloth with the notion that, ‘I do and I do and I do and this is the thanks I get.’”

The tortured prose is quite representative of Dr. Chesen’s end of the exchange. A short article from a Nebraska newspaper renders the doctor’s claims in somewhat more readable form. But neither the article nor Dean’s column present evidence to confirm what Dr. Chesen says – no correspondence between the doctor and Reston, or other corroborating documents.  One is curious about whether Reston will see fit to reply.

As Others See Us, And As We See Ourselves

February 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Civil rights, Obama administration, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In today’s Telegraph (London) the tease is:

Obama attorney general attacks Americans

and the headline is:

Obama’s attorney general claims US is ‘voluntarily segregated”

General Holder’s speech —made to mark Black History Month at DOJ— has already received considerable coverage.  The headlines and soundbites haven’t misrepresented what he said, but it’s a long speech and it’s worth reading in toto; context makes it no less blunt but somewhat more nuanced.

One reason this speech was so surprising was because it doesn’t seem quite to jibe with the General’s remarks at his swearing in just a couple of weeks ago.  Perhaps then he was wearing his optimist’s hat and viewing the glass as half full; maybe yesterday’s speech described the rest of the glass as viewed from under a different hat.

The more interesting question is: Why?  From whose playbook —and at what page— is General Holder working?

The operative document on this subject should be —now and for some time to come— Barack Obama’s seminal speech in Philadelphia last March, that managed to be critical and objective without being divisive or a downer.

The Obama campaign was notable and admirable for its positivity and discipline.  In its less than a month in office, the Obama administration has been beset by diffusions of focus and breakdowns of discipline —and if they keep up much longer it will be plagued by them.

Despite some serious battering the Era of Feeling Good that lasted from the election through the inauguration still persists, and that is a good thing for all of us.   But General Holder’s speech isn’t likely to help prolong it, and that is not a good thing for any of us.

Mitchell Pushing Israel?

February 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Israel and Palestinians | Leave a Comment 

Ben Smith reports that special Mid-East envoy George Mitchell is denying reports that he pushing Israel into a moderate coalition.

The Indonesian Awakening And The Democracy Agenda

February 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Islam | Leave a Comment 

In January, non-clerical parties won an electoral landslide against Islamist parties in what was generally a bloodless day at the polls in Iraq. Ostensibly, what can now be seen as a stable Iraq was the culmination of the surge and an anti-extremist political awakening by local sheikhs throughout the country.

Could Iraq’s example promulgate an anti-extremist effect throughout the Islamic world? Indonesian polls might just be a strong indication to resemble an alternative world exemplified by their Mid-East counterpart.

On the heels of upcoming elections, polls in the most populous Muslim nation illustrate a strong showing for centrist parties, with local sharia administration on the decline:

That comes as a surprise to some. Five years ago, when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became Indonesia’s first democratically elected leader, the nation was viewed by Western governments and analysts as similar to Pakistan—a place where extremist Islamists were gaining a stronghold.

At that time, homegrown terrorists in Indonesia were mounting attacks on hotels, embassies and nightclubs. Some local governments had begun passing Islamic Shariah laws that included banning alcohol and requiring women to wear headscarves.

Since then, proponents of Islamic law have lost ground. Mr. Yudhoyono’s centrist administration, backed by the U.S. and other Western governments, has presided over a war on terrorism that is widely seen as successful. Scores of Islamic militants have been arrested by a police anti-terrorist unit and convicted by Indonesian courts. While some protested these prosecutions, most Indonesians supported the actions.The few militants believed to remain at large haven’t carried out any major attacks in Indonesia in the past four years.

A Step Closer For Bibi

February 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Israel and Palestinians | Leave a Comment 

Netanyahu’s coronation is all but complete with the help of kingmaker Avigdor Lieberman:

The divisive Mr. Lieberman has emerged as the kingmaker of Israeli politics after the Feb. 10 election produced a deadlock between its two largest parties, and his backing of Mr. Netanyahu could be basis for a hard-line government.

Mr. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party finished third, essentially allowing him to determine whether Mr. Netanyahu or his chief rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, would be able to form a parliamentary majority.

Mr. Lieberman has raised eyebrows around the world with his calls to make Israel’s Arab minority swear loyalty to the state or lose their citizenship.

He announced his decision in a meeting with President Shimon Peres, who is holding consultations with political parties this week before choosing a candidate to form a government. Mr. Lieberman told Mr. Peres that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party should head the new government, but that he supports a broad coalition that includes Ms. Livni’s centrist Kadima Party as well.

“We need a wide government with the three big parties, Likud, Kadima and Yisrael Beiteinu,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Netanyahu will lead the government but it will be a government of Netanyahu and Livni together.”

Kadima edged out Likud in the election, capturing 28 seats compared to 27 for Likud. But in the 120-seat parliament, Likud is in a better position to put together a coalition because of gains by Mr. Lieberman and other hard-line parties. It could be several weeks before a coalition is finally formed.

Mr. Netanyahu, a critic of peace talks with the Palestinians, has said he would turn to his “natural” allies among the religious and nationalist parties in parliament. But he has said he also hopes to bring in more centrist parties to create a wide coalition with broad national consensus.

Sadder But Wiser

February 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics | Leave a Comment 

Wonkette paid a visit to Harold Ickes — the man who already owned the f bomb when Rahm Emanuel was still in short pants.

The son of FDR’s distinguished (and famously cantankerous) Interior Secretary, Mr. Ickes was a successful labor lawyer before becoming Deputy Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House, where his playing of the bad cop was considered by many to be type casting.

More recently he was one of the principals —and perhaps the most diehard among them— of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Now he runs Catalist, a company that creates and analyzes voter databases.

In a notably subdued interview, he reflected on the fleeting transit of the gloria mundi:

“As you get older and older, and your circle of friends gets smaller, it’s amazing how easily you can be forgotten, in life, and especially in politics.”

Ed Nixon Discusses The Nixon Family

February 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under TNN TV | 13 Comments 

RN’s youngest brother Ed Nixon, has just written a new book entitled The Nixons: A Family Portrait, chronicling the life and times of the individuals who helped shape the character and principles of America’s 37th President.

He was at the Nixon Library on President’s Day to discuss it before an audience of several hundred, and gave TNN TV a moment of his time for a one-on-one interview:

RN’s Crimes Include Use Of Third Person

February 19, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Frost/Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The owners of a home in a Dana Point neighborhood reveal why it was chosen as the set for the real-life (as opposed to the Ron Howard-staged) interviews between President Nixon and David Frost: Quiet toilet. Orange County Register reporter Vik Jolly also takes the time to disparage the tone and syntax of the inscription 37 left in the owners’ guest book when the interviews were done:

In it, on April 20, 1977, using a distanced, third-person reference, Nixon wrote: “To Martha and Harold Smith with appreciation for their hospitality during the week I stayed in their beautiful home.”

For the life of me I can’t figure out what Jolly thinks the former President should’ve written to avoid using the third person: “Hey, you — thanks for the hang. Dick”?

Passing Strange

February 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

It turns out that when the going gets weird, the weird go to Julien’s Auctions.  

This, alas, is far too sad to be amusing much less funny.

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