Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

Life imitates comedy, and what was originally treated as a sardonic punchline by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor —“It’s easy for [Democrats] to sit here and advocate higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them”— may turn out to have been an understatement of the facts of the matter.

Geither, Daschle and Solis, and others whose nominations were deep-sixed in order to dodge the tax cheat bullet, are now joined by Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the disgraced Daschle’s much-touted replacement.

As just reported by Mark Silva on The Swamp blog:

In a coda to the collection of back-taxes from Cabinet nominees, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, said today that she has paid more than $7,000 in back taxes owed.

In a letter to senators released by the administration, Sebelius said the “unintentional” underpayments in income taxes had involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.

Sebelius, who faced her first confirmation hearing by a Senate committee today, said she filed amended tax returns as soon as the errors were found by an accountant hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings.

The Kansas governor and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-07.

And to save time and space, allow me to add a coda that would undoubtedly have turned into a DSPQ post in the next couple of days:

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) quickly moved to quell any controversy: “Congress is going to need a strong partner at the Department of Health and Human Services to achieve comprehensive health reform this year, and we have that partner in Gov. Sebelius,” Baucus said. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gov. Sebelius has the political experience, determination, and bipartisan work ethic to get the job done with Congress this year. She’s the right person for the job.”

The well-regarded Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius posed in her Topeka office for Vogue magazine early last year.  Her hasty payment of more than $7,000 in back taxes presents the Obama administration with the latest in a line of embarrassing revelations regarding its Cabinet nominees.  The accompanying article noted that:  ”In person, the governor is elegant, circumspect (a trait Kansans approve) and strikingly fit. She loves to golf, scuba dive, play tennis, sail and jog (the last while listening to the  Dixie Chicks).”

A New Chapter In Revisionist History

March 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Election 2008, Europe, History, International Affairs, News media, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History, UN, White House | Leave a Comment 

As President Obama travels to Europe to confer with leaders there about how to come to grips with the worldwide recession, Kate Pickert, at Time.com, compares the trip to earlier Presidential travels overseas.

Ms. Pickert is a native of Watertown, New York, and started her career at the Watertown Daily Times, a very highly regarded newspaper; for decades it has been one of the smallest dailies in the country to have a full-time reporter in Washington. The late Alan Emory, who ran its DC bureau from the 1950s to the 1990s, was one of the most respected figures in the Beltway press corps.

Unfortunately, Ms. Pickert seems to have some way to go to fill his shoes.

The reporter starts with a pretty good point – that Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs, at a briefing the day before the President’s departure, was not asked a single question about the trip, since the members of the Fourth Estate present were more concerned about the forced resignation of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ms. Pickert notes that days of old “a President could dominate the news by simply leaving the country and posing for some photo ops. Maybe he’d even sneak in some history-making diplomatic feats. Exhibit A: Richard Nixon.”

Yes, she’s talking about the China trip. The round-the-clock TV coverage that event received – the first time all but a handful of Americans had been able to see China up close and personal – was apparently, in the reporter’s mind, equivalent to a series of “photo ops.”

After giving an account of the visit which reads like a condensation of its Wikipedia entry, Ms. Pickert continues:

Nixon’s China trip was successful, but it’s not as if he ended a war. Woodrow Wilson’s trips in 1919 to the Paris Peace Conference, however, led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first World War.

Let’s leave aside the perennial debate about the degree to which the terms which Germany had to accept at Versailles, mainly at the insistence of the French government, set the stage for the rise of Hitler and another world war.  The useful point to make here is that, while RN’s visit to the PRC may not have ended a fighting war, it brought one major part of the Cold War – the isolation of China from the United States for nearly a quarter-century – to an end, and thus helped to diminish the possibility of a third world war.

Ms. Pickert goes on to discuss the 1945 Yalta Conference, which she says produced as its “end result [...] the partition of Germany and the creation of the United Nations.” It was the Dunbarton Oaks meeting in 1944 which laid the plans for the founding session of the UN, which took place a few days after Yalta; what FDR accomplished at the Black Sea resort was to get a commitment from Stalin to have the USSR join the UN.

But the really startling paragraph in the article is this one:

Of course, not all presidential trips abroad are known for altering the course of world politics. John F. Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Berlin was notable for the speech expressing support for a free West Germany, but infamous because of the four words he used to drive the point home: “Ich bin ein Berliner,” which can be interpreted to literally mean “I am a jelly-filled doughnut.” Some reports say the statement wasn’t mocked in Berlin at the time, but this hardly matters. In popular memory, Kennedy committed an embarrassing gaffe, something presidents try hard not to do while abroad, where they operate under more scrutiny than usual.

Really. JFK’s speech was “infamous?” Then why does Ms. Pickert think Obama, when a candidate last year, chose Berlin to make his one major appearance outside the US during his campaign – an appearance which drew hundreds of thousands? Why is JFK’s speech so prominently featured in his library in Boston? Why was it one of the highlights of former Nixon White House staffer Bruce Herschensohn’s acclaimed documentary Years Of Lightning, Day Of Drums? Why does the “Berliner” line inspire fond memories in older Europeans to this day, many of whom, I daresay, would regard it as a very significant event of the Cold War?

The Watertown Daily Times article about Ms. Pickert’s hiring by Time states that she has a master’s degree from Columbia. The major is not identified, but I’ve got my doubts that it was American history.

Afternoon World Review

March 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Afternoon World Review | Leave a Comment 

Photo courtesy of the Jerusalem Post, Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel’s Prime Minister today.

On this Tuesday, March 31, 2009 the DOW was up 86.90, the NASDAQ up 26.79, and S&P up 10.34.

THE STATES:

Though General Motor’s new CEO Frederick Henderson is bent on restructuring the struggling company out of court, he believes that bankruptcy is more probable. The Obama administration rejected a business plan  including $17.4 billion loan that would have helped the company avert bankruptcy. Frederickson now has 60 days to come with a new plan.

The Obama administration is reversing the Bush adminstration’s policy of refusing a seat on the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. The former administration’s policy was based on their objection of undue influence of repressive states, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy.”

MIDDLE EAST:

In Jerusalem, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Israeli’s new Prime Minister. In a speech before the Knesset, Netanyahu introduced his cabinet and warned against the looming Iranian nuclear threat. He signaled that peace was achievable with the Palestinians, if their leadership is willing to cooperate.

In Iraq, though violence has precipitously subsided, jihadists and Ba’athist militants seek to re-ignite an insurgency in course of a series well placed road-side bombs killing dozens of Iraqis. It’s likely that an insurgency won’t match previous levels as security and the government’s legitimacy have improved.

AFPAK:

After yesterday’s massacre at a police training academy Western Pakistan, the leader of the country’s Taliban Baitullah Mehsud claimed credit for the incident and said that they were in retaliation to U.S. preadator drone strikes. He also said that an attack against Washington was imminent, one that would “amaze the world.”

In other Afpak developments, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh told a Hague conference that Teheran will help fight Afghanistan’s opium trade and assist in reconstruction efforts.

ASIA:

Kaing Khek Lev, who ran the Khmer Rouge’s most famous torture center more than 30 years ago in Cambodia, has accepted responsibility for crimes that lead to 16, 000 deaths of men, women, and childten or one-fifth of the country’s population.

AFRICA:

300 Africa migrants are feared drowned off the coast of Lybia today after a boat on course to Europe capsized. There has been a surge of illegal migrants westward because the continent has been struggling with poverty, disease, and famine.

EUROPE:

In London, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening to walk away from the G-20 Summit if no progress is made on global financial regulations. This comes on the heels of a NATO summit Friday, where France is expected to announce it re-integration into the military structure of the Western security pact.

Obama is also likely to use the timing of his Europe trip to pursue an arms control treaty with Russia.

LATIN AMERICA:

Also in London, Mexican President Felipe Calderon is willing to break his country’s 10 year long precedent of taking IMF loans and take advantage of the lender’s new $100 billion loan program, as he appears to be ready to take $30 to $40 billion to deal with the country’s economic woes. In 2000, Mexico wiped all IMF debt off its books ahead of schedule with a one-lump $3 billion payment.

The Gamble Deconstructed

March 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Book Review, George W. Bush, International Affairs, Iraq War | 1 Comment 

TNN’s Joshua Trevino wrote this review for Thomas Rick’s new book about the the final chapter of the Iraq War, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. What I found particular noteworthy was Trevino’s acknowledgment that though President Bush initially went full brace on a strategy that plunged us to failure, he showed un-reluctant and unflinching commitment to a strategy change that is now bearing success:

The most surprising — and least discussed — transitional figure in The Gamble is President George W. Bush. It’s no secret that the President was tightly bound to the persons and policies he chose to trust: a sometime virtue that became, in war, too often a flaw. In this light, his decision to support the surge over the record of his own leadership, the advice of his entire uniformed military leadership (excepting Petraeus himself), and his outgoing Secretary of Defense was a profound departure from expectations. Yet once he did shift course, he adhered to it with the same tenacity with which he pursued his previous strategy. As Ricks notes, it is certainly easy and even right to fault Bush for taking three years to get things right — but he was ahead of the actual leadership of the U.S. armed forces when he did. Ricks (who is, it should be noted, no Republican) also allows the reader a glimpse into the private conduct of the former President, who comes across as more than the incurious mouthpiece of popular media portrayals. “In these meetings [on Iraq strategy,]” Ricks reports one Army officer saying, “he is masterful — good political insights, good handle on the subject.” Among The Gamble’s many contributions to the history of this era must be a credit to George W. Bush, who got so many things wrong, but got this one big thing right.

Noon Open

March 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Noon Open | Leave a Comment 

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another. — Richard Nixon

Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration | Leave a Comment 

Lois Romano reports in today’s WaPo:

Who turns down a free $100,000 home makeover? Barack and Michelle Obama, who are writing a personal check for the redecoration of the private quarters at the White House.

Yesterday, Camille Johnston, the first lady’s director of communications, confirmed the Obamas will forgo the $100K government allowance provided every four years for sprucing up the White House residence, as first reported in New York magazine. “In light of the difficult economic conditions, the Obamas have determined now is not the time to use taxpayer funds for this and they will not be accepting any donations, monetary or goods,” said Johnston.

How much are they shelling out? We’ll never know. “The budget will not be made public since all expenses are private,” Johnston told our colleague Jura Koncius.

And, for the first time in modern history, the first family will not accept any donations through the White House Historical Association for the upstairs residence, something many of their predecessors have done. Which means when they leave, they’re free to take all the stuff they’ve paid for.

“This is so in touch with what is going on now,” said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, historian of the National First Ladies’ Library. “It is politically astute in terms of symbolism. It is also really thoughtful when people are losing their actual houses.”

Featured Articles — March 31, 2009

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

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama, the nation’s CEO By Mike Allen & Jim Vandehei, Politico
President Obama, with seven days of unprecedented market intervention capped by Monday’s ultimatum to U.S. automakers, has made one thing emphatically clear: He is the most powerful player in American business today.

Obama effectively becomes CEO-in-chief By Daniel Howes, Detroit News
President Obama says he wants to save America’s auto industry. He says General Motors Corp., under a new CEO, has 60 days to sharpen its restructuring or submit to bankruptcy. He’s giving Chrysler LLC 30 days to complete an alliance with Fiat SpA of Italy lest Detroit’s No. 3 carmaker find itself in a federal court.

Bibi and Barack Can Unite on Iran By Yossi Klein Halevi, The Wall Street Journal
Enemies of the American-Israeli alliance could not have conjured a scenario more fraught with potential for misunderstanding. In Washington, a new president is reaching out to the Muslim world, including Iran.

A New Era of Govt-Controlled Business? By Lawrence Kudlow, RealClearPolitics
Team Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday afternoon, just a short time after Treasury man Tim Geithner told the television talk shows that some banks will need large amounts of new TARP-money government assistance — even though the bankers don’t want it. Does this smack of big-time government planning and industrial policy? Another lurch to the left for economic policy?

Riding the anti-Wall Street wave to Congress? By James Oliphant, Los Angeles Times
Today’s special election in New York has become an early referendum on Obama’s handling of the financial crisis. The Republican is counting on voter outrage. Will it work?

Obama’s path to greatness By Bob Shrum, This Week
In his 1962 commencement address at Yale — where he observed that he now had “the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree” — John Kennedy became the first president to openly defend the deficit spending his predecessors had pursued to counter economic downturns.

What’s Loud, Unnecessary, and Costs $75 Million? A Group of 20 summit, of course. By Anne Applebaum, Slate
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (L). Click image to expand.British Prime Minister Gordon Brown And now for a riddle: What is big, loud, unnecessary, and costs $75 million? No, not a retired elephant in a diamond-studded dress: The answer is, of course, a Group of 20 summit.

The Obama Bloc By Steve Kornacki, New York Observer
Something funny happened last Friday, when Barack Obama detailed his plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which include an increase of 4,000 troops to train Afghan security forces: the most outspokenly anti-war Democrats in Congress kept their mouths shut – or even, as in the case of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, embraced his vision.

We Have Chapter 11 for a Reason By William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal
First the people’s representatives took their tar and torches to American International Group’s bonus payments. Now the president has dropped the guillotine on the chairman and CEO of General Motors. The irony, of course, is that far from signaling an end to federal dollars for a failing industry, the high-profile firing of Rick Wagoner paves the way for more aid down the road.

The Stages of Anti-Semitism By Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal
Here’s a sketch for a racist play about “moral decline” in black America since the civil rights era. Act I: Heroic protestors gather at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965 to march in defiance of a segregationist state. Act II: The scene moves to San Francisco in the early 1970s, where the radical politics of the Black Panthers quickly give way to robbery and murder. Act III: A New York City crack house, circa 1985. Act IV: the trial of O.J. Simpson. Act V: The present, in which a black man on a prison furlough goes on a murder spree.

NATO Can Do Better in Afghanistan By Abdullah Gul, The Wall Street Journal
International efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and improve the lives of the Afghan people have fallen short of their targets. There is daily violence in the country and expectations continue to outpace achieved results. It is time for a policy shift. It is time for increased involvement.

Building Russian-U.S. Bonds By Dmitry Medvedev, The Washington Post
It is hard to dispute the pessimistic assessments of the Russian-American relationship that prevailed at the end of last year. Unfortunately, relations soured because of the previous U.S. administration’s plans — specifically, deployment of the U.S. global missile defense system in Eastern Europe, efforts to push NATO’s borders eastward and refusal to ratify the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Going to Bat for Cuba By Henry Gomez, Pajamas Media
Writing and blogging about Cuba for five years has been a generally positive experience and has resulted in several close friendships. One such friend is Val Prieto, the founding editor of Babalu Blog. Val periodically has an existential crisis, during which he doubts whether what we are trying to do — raise awareness of the Cuban reality — is having any effect. It’s usually up to me to talk Val down from the ledge. The other night I found myself up there standing next to him.

Making History On A Full Stomach

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

RN greeted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on his arrival at Washington’s National Airport in June 1954.  The PM might have been thinking “This is a very impressive young man.”  Or, as we now know, he might have been thinking: “Grapefruit doesn’t mix that well with whisky soda.”  The photograph was taken by George Skadding for LIFE magazine.

Today’s Telegraph reports that, when the 80 year old British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for an official visit in June 1954, he was well and fully breakfasted.  Richard Westwood-Brookes, a steward aboard the BOAC flight, kept the printed breakfast menu on which the PM had written his choices and (where his choice wasn’t offered) his requirements.  The menu, along with other memorabilia from and about the trip, will be auctioned next month by Mullock’s of Shropshire.

The breakfast menu from the BOAC flight to Washington, with Winston Churchill’s handwritten annotations.  It will be auctioned in England on 23 April and is expected to realize  £1500 — about $2,138. Churchill famously told George VI that “When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.”

A man who knew his mind and his tastes and was used to getting what he wanted, he commanded that the repast arrive on two trays.

1st Tray. Poached egg, Toast, Jam, Butter, Coffee and milk, Jug of cold milk, Cold Chicken or Meat.

2nd Tray. Grapefruit, Sugar Bowl, Glass orange squash (ice), Whisky soda.

At the bottom he added: “Wash hands, cigar.

The auctioneers describe the menu as one of the most remarkable pieces of Churchill memorabilia they have seen.  And Mr. Westwood-Brookes said: ”It shows what a hearty breakfast he ate and it was all washed down with a whisky, after which he smoked a cigar.  It is the type of indulgence we’ve come to associate with Churchill and it’s reassuring to know he ate so well in his 80th year.  There are some smudges and ink stains but it is a wonderful piece of history.”

RN led the welcoming party that greeted the great man.  He kept a diary of this visit —and of his meetings with one of his real heroes— that is reprinted in full in RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (pp.155-159).  Here are some excerpts:

I met Churchill and [Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony] Eden at the airport this morning. As he came down the steps of the airplane, he took each step alone by himself although he was very hesitant in his steps when he arrived at the bottom…..

I was supposed to make a speech of introduction which I had spent an hour or so last night preparing even though it was only to be a minute and a half long. However, when Churchill saw the microphones he walked immediately over to them and took out a sheet of paper from which he read his own speech to the people who were at the airport.

We then got into the open car and rode into town.

Nixonphiles will savor the irony of RN using the Churchillian style of extensive preparation for an “extemporaneous” speech — and then being upstaged by its creator.  Could this incident perhaps explain the dream RN reported eighteen years later in a another diary (and which has become the basis of a virtual cottage industry among his psychobiographers)?  In the fall of 1972, RN noted:  “I had a rather curious dream of speaking in some sort of a rally and going on a bit too long and Rockefeller standing up in the middle and taking over the microphone on an applause line…..It is a subconscious reaction.  It is interesting.”

That night, the Eisenhowers gave a formal dinner for about thirty people.

Pat sat at Churchill’s right during the dinner and she said it was a very enjoyable evening from all standpoints. Mrs. Eisenhower watched over him as his food was being served and when he tried to cut a piece of the meat in half before putting it on his plate she told him the knives weren’t sharp and that they had all been received as part of the White House set — this was part of the gold set that had been bought in Paris. Pat remarked how Mamie took things over just as if she were handling any youngster who happened to be visiting or any close friend.

Foster Dulles had his usual highball rather than the wines during dinner. Pat asked Churchill whether or not he would prefer that. He said no, that he usually had his first drink of whiskey at 8.30 in the morning and that in the evening he enjoyed a glass of champagne. I noted that Churchill was much sharper in the morning and he seemed to thrive on the fact that he was participating in these conferences. As a matter of fact, at the dinner he was just as quick as any person and he had —I learned later— not taken a nap in the afternoon but had played cards after the conference had been completed.

After dinner the President invited a small group to stay.

After we had finished dinner, we went in for cigars and after the President sat with Churchill for a little while he asked me to come over and sit by him and said, “This is one of the young men I have been telling you about and I want you to get acquainted with him.” I asked Churchill about his writing his memoirs. He pointed out that he had started them in 1946 and that he did it all by dictation. I asked him if he used a machine and he said no; that the Americans had given him one of the best machines but he preferred a pretty girl to talk to rather than a machine…..

On the last evening of the visit, the PM gave a stag dinner at the British Embassy.  RN sat next to him and recorded their conversation in some detail.  Here is another excerpt in which the deft  diarist captures two memorable quotes:

I asked him how the three-day conference had affected him.  He said that except for a few blackouts –and I assume he meant by that periods when he took a nap— that he had felt better during this conference than he had for some time.  He said, “I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.”

During the course of the evening the conversation turned to General Lee and I asked his appraisal of Lee.  He said that he thought he was one of the greatest men in American history and one of the greatest generals at any time.  He said that somebody ought to “catch up in a tapestry or a painting the memorable scene of Lee riding back across the Potomac after he had turned down the command of the Union Armies in order to stay with the Southern side.”  He also said that one of the other great moments in the Civil War was at Appomattox when Lee pointed out to Grant that the officers owned their horses as personal property and asked that they be allowed to retain them.  Grand said to have them take all of their horses — the enlisted men and the officers as well.  ”They will need them to plow their fields.”  Churchill said, “In the squalor of life and war, what a magnificent act.”

Winston Churchill was also the subject of a chapter in RN’s 1982 book Leaders.

Sir Winston Churchill is among Ivan Schwartz’s life-size statues in the World Leaders Gallery at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda.  He is grouped with General De Gaulle, another leader RN particularly admired (and who he also profiled in Leaders).  In the background is Golda Meir who is grouped with an out-of-sight Anwar Sadat.

MAURICE JARRE   1924 – 2009

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

Composer Maurice Jarre conducted a suite from his Oscar-winning score for Doctor Zhivago at a 1992 tribute to the film’s director David Lean.

Composer and conductor Maurice Jarre died of cancer in Los Angeles on Sunday.  He was 84.  Born in Lyon, he abandoned his engineering studies at the Sorbonne to pursue a career in music.  He lived in the U.S. since the 1960s.

His passing was noted around the world; he was remembered in the Los Angeles Times and on NPR.

He worked for some five decades and wrote the scores for many of the most memorable and beloved films of the ’60s and ’70s, including David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago (for both of which he won Academy Awards for Best Score) and Ryan’s Daughter. He won a third Oscar for his score of A Passage to India.

Among his other film scores are Sundays and Cybele, Isadora, Topaz, The Life and times of Judge Roy Bean, The Last Tycoon, Mohammad Messenger of God, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Mosquito Coast, No Way out, Dead Poets Society, Jacob’s Ladder, Ghost, A Walk in the Clouds, and I Dreamed of Africa.  His TV scores included Franco Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth and Shogun.

At the David Lean tribute —which is available on DVD— Maurice Jarre conducted a suite from his score for Lawrence of Arabia.

Many of Maurice Jarre’s film scores are available on CD (as on Amazon).

Cool Lincoln

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

This lingering look at President Nixon’s Lincoln Continental limousine, on display each day at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, was assembled and set to a Brian Eno soundtrack by car and history buff Steve Piotrowski. Here’s his YouTube page.

More Sleepless Nights For Elizabeth Drew

March 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Last night Stacy Keach completed his run as RN in Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, triumphantly fighting back, in the best Nixonian tradition, to retake the stage after being hospitalized for a week by a mild stroke. Tomorrow through Sunday, he appears with the production at Arizona State University in Tempe. (As was the case with the final weekend at the Ahmanson, understudy Bob Ari will take over as RN for the Saturday and Sunday matinees.)

Yesterday Kerry Lengel of the Arizona Republic interviewed Keach. As he has done in nearly every press interview on this tour, the veteran actor emphasized his belief that Richard Nixon, in the decades since he left the White House, has emerged as a figure as compelling as any in Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and just as worthy of portrayal by an actor seeking to reach the heights of his profession. (Or maybe I should add “her” – could it be that one day we might see, say, Meryl Streep or Glenn Close in a Frost/Nixon revival, much as Dame Judith Anderson or Sarah Bernhardt once played Hamlet?)

“Nixon has become an iconic figure, a tragic American figure,” Keach says. “Just as there are many great Hamlets and many great Lears, there are many great Nixons. Anthony Hopkins was a great Nixon. Rip Torn was a great Nixon. So I am adding a notch in my belt in the Nixonian tradition.”

And what does he add to the Nixonian tradition [asks Lengel]?

“I think my contribution is the humor,” [Keach] says. “He’s very engaging, and humor is one of the means of humanizing the character, which is one of Peter Morgan’s objectives.

“This play has done more to rehabilitate Nixon’s image in the world than the original interviews ever could have.”

Indeed, Keach’s temporary departure from the production and his replacement by Ari for a week emphasized, perhaps better than anything else, that playing Nixon is starting to become one of the litmus tests for an actor’s range and capability. The understudy’s performance in the role was examined by Mike Boehm at the Los Angeles Times’s site (“Ari, who was also Frank Langella’s understudy on Broadway, revealed a markedly different take on Nixon than Keach’s: gruffer, deeper-voiced, more raw and less able to disguise the insecurities and disappointments that nag at him”) and at considerable length by Evan Henerson at Examiner.com. That is to say, Ari’s handling of the part received almost the kind of attention at those sites that New York newspapers would have given to the performance of Richard Burton’s understudy in Hamlet in the 1960s had that eminent thespian been laid up for a week.

And, at Canada’s National Post, in the course of a review of Susan Jacoby’s new book on the Alger Hiss case, Philip Marchand suggests a new area of RN’s career for any playwright with the skill and ambition to take it on:

It is strange that Hollywood, which has aimed to make high drama out of such relatively insignificant political events as CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s televised attack on Senator Joe McCarthy (Good Night, and Good Luck) and David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon (Frost/Nixon), has neglected the story of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. The 1948 confrontation between the two men — Hiss, the cool, handsome, high-ranking government official, versus Chambers, the talented, scruffy, emotionally erratic, repressed homosexual writer and editor — truly was dramatic.

There was a PBS miniseries back in the 1980s in which Edward Herrmann played Alger Hiss, but it was a rather undistinguished affair. And the story is rather too complex for a 100-minute movie. A carefully constructed 3 1/2 hour play, however, might well be as spellbinding from beginning to end as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial or Inherit The Wind. Any takers?

DSPQ

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

In today’s New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that the Obama administration will once again —after eight years of Bush banishment— give the American Bar Association advanced notice of its nominees to the federal bench.

The group says it is serious and diligent about evaluating candidates without regard to ideology. But there is reason to wonder whether Alberto R. Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, might have had a point when he told the group eight years ago that its help would not be needed.

The A.B.A. is, after all, a private trade association, not an arm of the government. It takes public and generally liberal positions on all sorts of divisive issues. And a series of studies suggest that candidates nominated by Democratic presidents fare better in the group’s ratings than those nominated by Republicans.

Kim J. Askew, the chairwoman of the association’s 15-member Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which performs the evaluations, said her group is independent, hardworking and completely divorced from politics.

“We are an impartial group of lawyers that bring a peer review to the process,” Ms. Askew said. “We are all lawyers. We are officers of the court. We speak the language of the law. We do not consider politics.”

But a series of studies have found indications that liberal nominees do better in the process than conservative ones. The latest, to be presented next month at the Midwest Political Science Association, found evidence consistent with ideological bias.

“Holding all other factors constant,” the study found, “those nominations submitted by a Democratic president were significantly more likely to receive higher A.B.A. ratings than nominations submitted by a Republican president.”

The differences matter, said Amy Steigerwalt, a political scientist at Georgia State and an author of the study, along with Richard L. Vining Jr, of the University of Georgia and Susan Navarro Smelcer of Emory.

“A nominee who has a higher A.B.A. rating is more likely to move through the process,” Professor Steigerwalt said. “When problems arise, a higher A.B.A. rating provides one piece of ammunition for the president and supporting senators about why a person should be confirmed to the federal bench.”

Afternoon World Review

March 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Afternoon World Review | Leave a Comment 

Photo courtesy of The New York Times, Sudanese Presdient and ICC fugitive Omar al-Bashir pictured at the Arab Summit in Doha, Qatar.

On this Monday March 30, 2009 the DOW was down 254.16, the NADSAQ down 43.40, and the S&P down 28.41.

THE STATES:

The Obama administration has sacked Richard Wagoner, CEO of the ailing automaker GM.  The administration plans to re-organize the company along with Chrysler by first purging their respective balances through bankruptcy filings. The plan aims to re-work labor contracts and re-structure debts to creditors.

MIDDLE EAST:

Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has named Yuval Steinitz as his finance minister. Israel watchers expexted Netanyahu to take the post himself after a successful tenure from 2003-2005, but has instead chose a newcomer and loyalist in Steinitz who will likely implement Netanyahu’s free market initiatives.

AFPAK:

In Lahore, Pakistan, Taliban fighters seized a police academy. Pakistani forces were able to retake the complex, but not before the fighters killed 12 and wounded dozens more by gunfire and a series of suicide bombings.

Meanwhile in Kandahar, Afghanistan a suicide bomber exploded himself in front of a government building killing 5 Afghan Police Officers and wounding 8 others.

ASIA:

The U.S., South Korea, and Japan are taking cohesive measures ahead of North Korea’s expected missile test. Pyongyang claims the test will just be a satelite launch.

In Sino-Occidental relations in cyberspace, Chinese officials are denying that they are apart of an elaborate scheme to infilitrate government offices around the globe.

And.. after a 6 week ban, China will re-open Tibet for tourism.

EUROPE:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains unwavering for her opposition to an Obama style stimulus package, but wants to work with President Obama on points of “commonality.” President Obama is scheduled to visit Europe for the G20 summit this week.

In what appears to be a politically motivated assassination, Chechen general and foe of Kremlin backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadryov was shot to death in a Dubai apartment.

AFRICA:

At the Arab League Summit in Doha, Qatar, despite some divisive,  flambuoyant and downright bizarre behavior by Lybian dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the Arab leaders united behind Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. President Bashir is accused of orchestrating mass genocide and rape in Darfur, and is a fugitive of a an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

LATIN AMERICA:

And finally, the New York Times has this interesting piece on the complexities of Mexico’s fight against drug cartels.

Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Culture, Faith, History, International Affairs, Latin America, Obama administration, Religion, Secretary Clinton | Leave a Comment 

SOS Clinton’s reset button gaffe was explained as having been the result of moving her political apparat to Foggy Bottom. 

But news arrives from her Mexican trip that fits into the “you couldn’t make something like this up” category of world class diplomatic blunders.  

On Friday she visited the most sacred of Mexican sites: the Basilica of the nation’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Mrs. Clinton can be excused for not being personally aware of the history of the shrine and the miraculous painting.  That’s why there are legions of staff at State to prepare briefing books and pithy remarks.  (And I know there’s no reason why she, or anyone at State, should be as intrigued as I am by the story of the Virgin’s eyes, which is something like the western hemisphere’s Shroud of Turin.)

But nothing can prepare you for the sheer tin ear incompetence of what actually went down.  Here’s the Catholic News Agency’s account.   Read it and cringe.  

During her recent visit to Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people,” after asking who painted the famous image.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary’s eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image’s lack of decay.

Mrs. Clinton was received on Thursday at 8:15 a.m. by the rector of the Basilica, Msgr. Diego Monroy.

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

It’s bad enough already — but it gets worse.  It turns out that she had been there before and still didn’t know what she was seeing.

Clinton then told Msgr. Monroy that she had previously visited the old Basilica in 1979, when the new one was still under construction.

Banality is the mother’s milk of diplomatic diplospeak, but, surely, a worldly Wellesley grad supported by scores of assistant under secretaries and stables of speech writers should be able to come up with something better than this:

After placing a bouquet of white flowers by the image, Mrs. Clinton went to the quemador –the open air area at the Basilica where the faithful light candles- and lit a green candle.

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

Secretary Clinton wrapped up her good will visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe by flying to Houston to receive an award from Planned Parenthood.

This evening [Friday 27 March] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

Next Time You Think You’ve Had A Bad Day

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Next Time You Think You've Had A Bad Day | Leave a Comment 

Neil Young, Motorhead Messiah

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Energy, Environmental issues, Music | Leave a Comment 

What with Detroit suddenly all over the news, Neil Young’s new album  Fork in the Road —awaiting release on 7 April— couldn’t be more timely.  

Word has it that the CD has a real ripped-from-today’s-headline vibe that reflects its hasty recording just before Christmas.

Having dealt with foreign policy in Living with War, this time the subject matter focuses on economic catastrophe — particularly as viewed from an automotive perspective.  The fork in this road will be open to many interpretations.  

The first single is “Johnny Magic,” a song dedicated to Young’s Wichita auto mechanic buddy Jonathan Goodwin.

The single was debuted in two stages on the internet.  The first, and by far the coolest, was a shot entirely in Young’s LincVolt while he sang to a track played on his laptop while driving around the streets of Wichita.

Johnny Magic had a way with metal
Had a way with machines
One day in a garage far away he met his destiny
In the form of a heavy metal Continental

She as born to run on a proud highway
Then the whole world starting running out of money
People losing their jobs
Right here in Wichita

Wichita the home of the heavy metal Continental
Where the Motorhead Messiah was tuning the system in
Johnny Magic, Johnny Magic

She burst from the garage in a blaze of silence
Disappearing down Douglas at lightning speed
Befre the big metal door cam e crashing down in Wichita

She was born to run on a proud highway
Now she goes long range on domestic green fuel
100 miles per gallon is the Continental Rule
Out on the Kansas two-lane flats near Wichita

The Motorhead Messiah went to Washington
To show them what he’d done
The senators and congressman came down in Washington
And they rode in the heavy metal Continental

She was born to run on a proud highway
Johnny Magic the Motorhead Messiah was tuning the system in

The other video, released a few days later, carried on the same DWS —driving while singing— motif, this time with a passenger and some more lively visuals.  You can see it here.

Neil Young has a longstanding interest in cars.   He is competing for the $10 million Automotive X Prize for developing a vehicle that gets 100 miles or more to the gallon.  Along with uber-mechanic Goodwin, he has been transforming his 1959 Lincoln Continental into a 2009 green fantasy of sustainable technology.

Several months ago he weighed in with an op-ed for HufPo: “How To Save A Major Auto Company.”

Find a new ownership group. The culture must change. It is time to turn the page. In the high technology sector there are several candidates for ownership of a major car and truck manufacturer. We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions. We can no longer afford to continue down Detroit’s old road. The people have spoken. They do not want gas guzzlers (although they still like big cars and trucks). It is possible to build large long-range vehicles that are very efficient. People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with.

The government must take advantage of the powerful position that exists today. The Big 3 are looking for a bailout. They should only get it if they agree to stop building autos that contribute to global warming now. The stress on the auto manufacturers today is gigantic. In order to keep people working in their jobs and keep factories open, this plan is suggested:

The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.

Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.

If reading the above gets your engine racing, you can find the next-described kits —and a great deal more— here.

Colin Powell At Intermission

March 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Orange County | Leave a Comment 

What’s the next act for the 65th secretary of state, who visited Orange County last Saturday?

Noon Open

March 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Noon Open | 1 Comment 

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker. -Richard Nixon

Shameful, Shameless, and Still In Charge

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress | Leave a Comment 

Back in the day it was a truism that you knew an issue or a subject had reached critical mass (and that you were really in trouble) when it started turning up in Johnny Carson’s monolog.  This was certainly the case with Watergate.

Jay Leno, in his wildest dreams, can’t imagine that he inherited that mantle with the gig (that would have to have been won the old fashioned way — by earning it).  But it isn’t without significance that he got a big laugh with this monolog joke the other night:

Hey, you hear about this? Very strange incident at JFK Airport in New York City today. An AIG executive going through security had to empty out all his pockets. You know what fell out? Senator Chris Dodd.

The case against Senator Dodd is formidable.  Does this mean his electoral days are numbered?  He’s a Democrat in Connecticut, one of the most powerful and well-connected Committee Chairmen, and some of the papers in the state still are now only reluctantly beginning to cover this story, so who knows what’s in his electoral future.

By the way, I regret the emerging tendency to tie Senator Dodd’s ethical problems with those of his father Senator Dodd.  The sins of the fathers shouldn’t be visited on the sons — who are perfectly capable of committing their own — and this line of analysis (or attack) is neither productive nor fair.  He has been a loyal son, and there is merit in that, even if the loyalty is misplaced.

What makes him worthy of special attention and scorn is the way he has assumed that his shameful conduct would be overlooked as he shamelessly tried to weasel out of responsibility by positioning himself as an innocent bystander at the country’s current economic debacle.

Well Begun But Only Half Done

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Obama administration, economy | Leave a Comment 

As the old saying goes: Well begun is half done.

GM, per Drudge, now stands for Government Motors.

Prexy Robin Wagner (he who had his wings clipped when he used the company jet to come abegging) has agreed to step down at the request of the White House.  There will also be changes in the company’s Board of Directors.

But it has taken two not to do the Detroit tango that could have led to the production of efficient and competitive automobiles.

So maybe Mr. Obama is really about to make some news —and real a difference— by also addressing the labor side of the labor-management equation.

There’s another shoe that needs to drop.

But don’t hold your breath waiting to hear that another President —the UAW’s ever intransigent Ron Gettelfinger— is suddenly going to have a lot of time to work on his golf game.  Ninety-two percent of the $74 million raised by unions in 2008 when to Democrats, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do that math.

One can agree or disagree with Mr. Obama’s decision.  But unless and until he puts some teeth into it, it isn’t really a decision at all — it’s just a way to distract the angry torch-bearing populist mob with another villain now that we’re once again making nice with AIG.

Well begun is only half done.  But any way you look at it, half done is half assed.

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