Random Rants 

Blog www.straightrecord.wordpress.com

A Vice President To Push Back

          Shortly before Barack Obama announced his choice for a running mate, he made a profound statement, which, if he would hold to it, could make him a great president. A great president, that is, if the electorate bothers to pay attention to real issues.
          In a brief response to a reporter asking about whom he had selected, Obama said, “I want somebody who’s independent, somebody who can push against my preconceived notions and challenge me so we have a robust debate in the White House.”
          With his lack of experience, Obama needs that kind of vice president more than any other candidate. He needs someone with Washington experience who will tell him plainly that what he wants cannot be done, won’t be done, shouldn’t be done, or massage what he wants into something realistic. That holds true particularly in the area of foreign affairs.
          But especially in this day of rampant sycophancy, the next president needs someone who will challenge him and his ideas. A public ombudsman sitting in the corner of every policy-making office in government would be best, but that is a subject for another day.
          The current administration presents the best example of what happens when an uninformed president, or those pulling his strings, is surrounded by yes men.
          Nowhere is that danger more obvious than in the case of the toady that served as his White House legal council and groveled so well he was appointed attorney general.
          Alberto Gonzalez was so eager to please, he aided and abetted a president who committed more crimes against the Constitution than Richard Nixon, the only president to resign in the face of certain impeachment.
          The president and/or his White House merely had to say, this is what I want, and Gonzalez would eagerly do the bidding, twisting and mangling the law to justify broadly illegal and unconstitutional acts.  
          Say “good on you, Barack,” say “hurrah” if he actually means it, and say "thank you" from an appreciative America if he gets elected and actually carries through on the promise. 

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What's Putin Up To? Cold War II?

         Back in July, almost as a throw-away line in an Outside the Box item on Afghanistan, we noted the United States is the world’s sole super power, “until Vladimir Putin gets Russia back up to the old Soviet strength….”
         Later in the item, we noted we defeated the U.S.S.R. not with warfare, but with money, with the U.S.  ability to spend more money than the Soviets in the Cold War arms build-up. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev, thankfully with a modicum of training as an agriculture economist before he became the Soviet Union’s last president, could see the end game, quit the Cold War and folded the Soviet Union in 1991.
         Since then, the Soviet Union has contracted back into its pre-Stalin boundaries, largely areas that never spoke Russian before the expansion of the Russian Em- pire in the 1800s. That contraction allowed restoration of the sovereign nation of Georgia, which sits astride the stretch of land between the Black and Caspian Seas, just
above the oil-rich Middle East. It also established its own democratic government.
         Today a pipeline vital to Russia is stretching from the Caspian Sea into Georgia, past its capital of T’bilisi and across Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea. That is a valuable outlet for Russian oil, which, along with natural gas, is the base of the new nation’s economy. Russia has become the world’s second largest exporter of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas.
         Putin was a two-term president of Russia, and before he had to step down from that job as required by the Russian Constitution, he arranged to hand-pick his successor to serve as his presidential puppet and in return name him the next prime minister earlier this year. There is little doubt he will use that office to remain Russia’s leader.
         So what is Putin up to in Georgia? The attraction of controlling the former Soviet portion of the pipeline seems obvious. That would take Russian troops next into Azerbaijan, across which the pipeline begins its journey from the Caspian.
         Does he see Russia’s energy-based economy growing to the level the country without the burden of its Communist-era satellites, could once again compete with the United States in Cold War II? The United States is not looking any too strong itself, right now.
         So weak is the United States thanks to the Iraq-invasion lunacy and its own oil-price economic woes, it is likely to have almost no diplomatic influence on the outcome of what already has been termed a war between Russia and Georgia. Watch your back, Ukraine.

Pettiness and Presidential Campaigns
          Few activities outweigh the selection of the U.S. president in importance to the world, yet we engage in the process at such a juvenile level, one won- ders how we retain an iota of respect.
          One can understand how the general public, which does not bother to try to understand the government process that determines our well-being, can be swayed by polls, tabloid-cable, fascination with peccadilloes, sycophancy and many other aspects of campaign silly-season born of persistent ignorance.
          But what explains the decisions by those operating at the highest levels of a campaign, including the candi- date, based on pettiness, personal feelings and, amazingly, their own ignorance?
          As could have been expected, the Democratic convention will include major speeches by both Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Clinton camp has forced some major elements of the party platform and Hillary has been tapped to make campaign appearances on behalf of Barack Obama.
          How could those things not have occurred? Hillary Clinton won nearly half the delegates to the convention, so common sense dictates she could not be ignored. Yet, there are reports by the respected press that the Obama camp resisted all of those decisions. And they still have others they should be making, if they could get past their own pettiness.
          That general public who ends up making the decision on who will be “leader of the free world” is still going to base its decision on those irrelevant factors listed above. One of the secret weapons each party has is a president, or a past president.
          Anyone who has covered a presidential visit has seen the draw he always attracts, regardless of his popu- larity level or the petty scandal of the day dogging him. Just the presence of Air Force One on the tarmac of Podunk International draws oohs and aahs.
          Any candidate who ignores that factor and fails to take advantage is doomed to suffer the same defeat Al Gore suffered. He ignored the draw of President Clinton and Air Force One to his peril.
          John McCain’s people have shown some acumen in this regard by giving President Bush a speaking role at the convention, even if it is stuck at the beginning on a national holiday. This is a tightrope decision for McCain—he needs the presidential draw at the same time he tries to distance himself from an unpopular president.
          But a tightrope though it is, McCain would be Gore-foolish if he does not have Bush and Air Force One make appearances on his behalf. And although he can no longer fly on Air Force One, Bill Clinton should be a major presence on the campaign trail with Obama.
          In Clinton’s case, he still enjoys enormous popularity among the general public and happens to be a cap- tivating and enthusiastic speaker. Although he may have been too enthusiastic on behalf of his wife during the primaries, there is little Obama could lose with that enthusiasm on his behalf against McCain.
          Yet the press reports indicate there is still some hangover petulance among Obama’s advisers stemming from the primaries. They need to grow up and run a presidential campaign. Democrats, indeed the world, do not need another inept Gore loss. 

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          'Splain to me this: 

          --It is said that peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth. But isn't that the CEILING of your mouth?

          --When was the last time you saw a baby pigeon?
          --When a street is level, do we speak of neighbors "just up the street" or "just down the street?"
          --Why do authorities close down a highway, but close up a business?                                                                                                                       
          --What is the need for so many euphemisms for "died" and "dead?" A friend "passed" or "passed away." Soldiers were "taken" or                      Squab anyone?         they are among the "fallen." A crime victim was "gunned down." Our beloved auntie is "deceased." Some form of "to die" would take care of all these.

          --Why do some people, I guess mainly southerners, speak of a week from Saturday as "next" Saturday? To them, the very next Saturday that will occur is "this Saturday." Go figure.

Iraq: Time For a Vision of The Horizon                                                Sunset, Ending, Finis, Adios

          With the Iraq War, when is a timetable for U.S. withdrawal a schedule? When is it a "time horizon?" When a "vision?"
          All these acrobatics with the English language come because it is an election year in the United States and possibly a watershed year in Iraq. The Bush White House does not want to show any inkling of agreement with Democrat Barack Obama's plan for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. But Bush is under pressure to see an end to the war and put a renewed emphasis on the war in Afghanistan. So, the White House settled on "time horizon" as the only acceptable way to describe changing troop numbers in Iraq.
          Some wag pointed out that the trouble with a horizon is, as you try to get closer, it stays the same distance away, unattainable.
          Under pressure from the administration, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had his spokesman explain that, in seeming to support Obama's idea, Maliki was not subscribing to a specific timetable a la Obama, but working on a "vision" of withdrawal by the end of the year 2010.
          That would not coincide exactly with Obama's plan, but it is in the ballpark. And it sounds like a timetable to me.
          Republican John McCain's vision is that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is long-term and indefinite. McCain says any talk of withdrawal should be based on conditions "on the ground," which can mean anything from quelling the insurgency to restoring critical infrastructure to forming a stable coalition government.
          Considering that the United States is going to have its largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, American antiwar activists suspect the Bush administration is trying to make conditions "on the ground" support a very long-term American presence in Iraq.
          McCain is saying that the troop surge in Iraq, which McCain supported, has succeeded enough to give Obama the debating room to suggest a specific pullout. McCain's commitment to a long-term U.S. force struggles against the polls that show more Americans than not consider the Iraq War a morass that they want to pull out of.

---Veritas

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          Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, has broken ranks with investors, economists and the Bush administration and stopped sweet-talking the state of the U.S. economy. Now say, "We have stagflation."
         As we’ve said here before, the average American was aware long ago that economic troubles were afoot. The administration and others took the position, and still do post-Bernanke, that simply talking about a recession would lead to responses by investors and corporations that would just deepen the recession, so everybody kept their mouths shut.
         Now that someone in a high place is acknowledging reality, perhaps somebody in the government will take off the Herbert Hoover hair shirt and try to do something about it before we need another FDR.

         When this site was first put up last year, it laid out far ahead of the primaries the qualifications voters should seek in a president. We began with intellect, followed by, in order, experience, ability to get the job done, willing- ness to compromise, leadership, concern for the common weal and adherence to the Edmund Burke philosophy: “elect me for my judgment, not for pandering to your opinions.”
         As stupid as Wesley Clark’s recent remark was, he was correct in saying that getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification to become president, a shot at John McCain. But neither is being a general in the field as Clark once was, and the only thing he has ever achieved.
         McCain does have, however, some real qualifications that Clark does not possess, including most of the seven points enumerated above, outshining all of his Republican primary opponents. McCain also has more quali- fications on our list than Barack Obama, but as we said in that same posting, choosing the best qualified to run is just the first criterion, you then need to pay attention to policy in choosing between the two.
         That is why the American voters need to blow up their TVs, stop listening to trash talk by surrogates and screaming tabloid cable and start learning how to absorb the real news of presidential campaigns.

         We also ranted about the fact that after nearly 5,000 lives lost and tens of thousands more maimed, billions of wasted dollars and a country in shambles, we still do not know why the Bush administration invaded Iraq.
         Most people speculate, with a great deal of evidence to support the contention, that we invaded for oil. The same people point with fear to the saber-rattling with Iran, noting it also sits on a lot of oil.
          If that is so, it would appear time for Congress to try to pass a law barring any member of the government, once he or she has left that service, from benefiting directly or indirectly from decisions he or she made during those terms in office.
          In the case of Bush and Cheney, that would cover just about everything and force them into retirement. Most importantly, they would not be able to return to the oil business from whence they slithered and which they are seeking to enrich further by taking the shackles off domestic exploration years into the future.

Kennedy’s Trip Unnecessary? No!

We won't change this post beyond the headlines, so you can see how we blew it. Normally, congressional members of the party in the White House, usually support the president on a veto even if they voted for the original bill. The override votes in both houses were greater than the original votes, signaling that Bush should go home now to Crawford and leave us alone for the rest of his term.

          It seemed like a good idea at the time, when Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., interrupted his recovery and treatment for a probably fatal brain tumor to fly to Washington, D.C., to cast a deciding Medicare vote.
          In the long run, Kennedy and the Democrats are destined to lose on the issue, even though the vote result, 69-30 and quickly labeled “veto-proof,” makes it look like a winner for the opposing party. It looks like a winner, that is, if you don’t pay attention to how Congress works.
          The issue at stake was payment for physicians who treat Medicare patients, with the parties split on where to cut reimbursements. It is a classic Republican vs. Democrat policy disagreement, whether federal money should be filtered through private industry.
          As they have been doing for decades when they are in the minority, and especially as the current one-vote minority, Republicans threatened a filibuster against the bill. Filibusters are never actually held these days, but the mere threat of one is enough to block a bill from being brought up for a yes-or-not vote.
          To allow that up-or-down vote to take place, at least 60 senators must vote “aye.” Kennedy could not make it to Washington a few weeks ago, three weeks after his surgery, and the “cloture” vote taken then fell one short. To avoid a repeat of that situation, he made the trip and sure enough, Kennedy gave Democrats the 60th vote they needed, nine of the votes coming from Republican senators who oppose the Bush administration on the issue.
          Knowing the vote was enough to allow an up-or-down vote, nine Republicans switched their votes to aye, four of them facing re-election this year, thus the overwhelming 69-30 vote (John McCain was the lone absentee).
          That lopsided total led most news outlets to label the vote “veto-proof” because a move to override a veto requires two-thirds of those present and voting in each house, 67 in the Senate if all senators vote. But was the vote veto-proof?
         Veteran congressional watchers know members often vote differently when an issue is at stake than when a vote to side with the incumbent president of their party is at stake.
         Bush has vowed to veto the bill despite the vote. The nine who switched their vote presumably did so because it would look like a good vote to their constituents, even though they actually oppose the measure. Many of the nine Republicans who originally voted with the majority also may have felt themselves in the same position.
         The question now is whether Democrats can keep at least 16 of the 18 Republicans on their side during an override vote. Just three need to switch to support their president, and among the nine switchers, there mostly likely are more than three who will note vote against their own president on principle. And that does not include those whose arms about to be twisted by administration operatives.

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Shed No Tears For Senator No                          The Onion satirical newspaper's take on his retirement

          We shed no tears here at the news Jesse Helms has died. We had no choice but to cover the antics of this born, raised and died racist throughout his 30 years in the Senate.

            For his personal legacy, you have to go abroad to The Guardian for the best obituary.
         But Helms also used and twisted the parliamentary system of the Senate not for the good of the country, but to win with his own narrow, mean, minority view of how the country should be run, to suit the view of him and his fellow racists.
         The Helms legacy lives on in the Senate today as the minority uses the system he helped bring about to block the current one-vote majority from getting anything done, then putting out press releases and talking on TV about how the Democrats don’t do anything.
         Helms didn’t invent use of the filibuster as an effective tool to block legislation you don’t like but don’t have enough support to defeat by voting. But his twisted use of it led to the situation we have today.
         You’ve heard about that three-fifths vote (60) the Senate needs to take up any piece of controversial legislation.
         That replaced the filibuster in which a senator is recognized to speak and refuses to yield the floor, as is his right. But to keep the floor, as you’ve no doubt seen in many old films, the senator must keep talking and not sit down, or he can yield to a supporter for comment without yielding control of the floor.
         The filibuster was used to great effect by Helms’s predecessors, the racists senators who fought against the Civil Rights Act and similar groundbreaking and long-overdue legislation in the 1960s.
         The only way the Senate can shut off the filibuster is, after a set number of days, to file a cloture petition and after a certain amount of time, take a vote, with three-fifths of the full Senate needed to stop the filibuster.
         Helms used the filibuster so much to obstruct Senate proceedings, the mere mention he would stage one would lead the Senate majority leader to suspend the issue on the floor and turn to some other matter so the body could carry on with its business of governing.
         Thus, we no longer have filibusters, but the Senate must still have that three-fifths vote to override obstructionists and get on with the business at hand. And that is why a closely divided Senate such as the one we have now is unable to do much. Thanks a lot, Jesse. 

Time for Trickle Up Economics

         The Great Depression began during the administration of Herbert Hoover, a Republican president who threw up his hands and declared there was noth- ing the federal government could do to stop it, that it had to just run its course. As we know, his successor proved otherwise.
         It is no accident that Hoover was just one of a long string of GOP presi- dents (up to and including the current one) who believed in the “trickle-down” theory of economics. Essentially, it means that if you give big tax breaks to the rich and big business, those benefits will trickle down the economic ladder, eventually reaching and benefiting the little people.
         We suggest that in the current economic situation, the government begin paying attention to what we call the “trickle up” theory. We intend that term to mean the economists, government officials, stock market analysts, etc., need to begin listening to those “little people.”
          More than a month ago, we said inflation and recession, the twin evils of “stagflation” had already arrived. Today, stock analysts, government and business economists and others are still arguing about whether there is inflation and whether the formal definition of the term means a recession has arrived yet.
          We could say a month ago that stagflation had begun because we live among the “little people.” The “little people” know their fuel costs are rising at the same time their food costs are rising. Those two expenses may represent discretionary spending to the rich, but they are not discretionary to the LP.
          The LP know that jobs are less secure during the current economic situation and they most certainly that even if they are able to keep their jobs, they are not going to receive a raise or added benefits. They see unem- ployed friends and relatives unable to acquire a decently paying job, much less one providing the health and other benefits they also need.
          The government, Wall Street and others need to stop trying to decide whether two consecutive quarters of no growth and other convoluted definitions are met and begin listening to the “little people.” They know what Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew.

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Anti-Obama Clinton Voters. Are You Crazy?

          In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s announcement she would sus- pend her campaign and support Barack Obama all the way came a spate of bitter pronouncements by alleged Clinton supporters they would vote for John McCain and not Obama.

          The voters who gave Clinton just short of half the delegates to the late-August Democratic Convention in Denver typically did not have a $2 million estate. They were not sexist, they did not benefit greatly from the Bush tax cut, they are beginning to suffer greatly from                       Newsday              eight years of lax federal regulation, their health care is getting more expensive and harder to come by, it is getting harder to send their kids to college, their homes are not worth what they used to be, and their sons and daughters are more likely to be serving, and dying, in vain in Iraq while neighbors in the ritzier suburb next door send their kids to binge-drink at a fraternity or sorority somewhere.

          Every American’s future rides on decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, the freedoms being taken away in the guise of fighting terrorism, a woman’s right to choose what happens inside her own body, the ability of the poor to get some help from the government when they need it, and the nation’s over- whelming problem of dealing with all of the ramifications of allowing widespread poverty to continue.
          All of those examples happen to be major differences between the leadership provided by Democrats and Republicans. Voters need to understand that Republicans vote for members of their party primarily to protect their money.
          In other words, any person who can identify with one of the above examples, and thus cast a vote for Clinton, would be voting against his or her own self-interest by voting for a Republican. Republicans have been doing this for four decades now, but why would a Democrat, much less a Clinton supporter?

          Racists who cannot bring themselves to vote for Obama because of his race never belonged in the Democratic Party in the first place.

          So what about the Clinton supporters who are not racist? What is their excuse?

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Some Random Musings from Veritas
        Some news report mentioned recently that we have 150,000 troops in Iraq. Think of that for a moment. The only things we see on television are small patrols kicking down doors and such. What are 150,000 troops doing? Think of the cities in your state of that size, just to get an idea of the immensity of our military presence in devastated Iraq.
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        Every drummer in America seems to have a job. I am talking about the fact nearly every television advertisement, and some of the shows, feature insistent drumming. Consider the "theme" music for CNN's newscasts: a rhytmic drumbeat with orchestral background in an increasingly frantic theme. Some rock bands may be missing their drummers.
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        The Democratic Party is sure to have a debate over its proportional granting of delegates from primaries. Hillary Clinton said that if there were not the proportion system, she would have won the nomination long ago. Winner-takes-all seems a good idea for some things, like tennis matches, but across the nation for choosing pledged delegates to a convention, the proportional system seems fair. Or does it?
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        Speaking of tennis, what about the shriek? Some of the best players in modern tennis--Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters come immediately to mind--have adopted a shriek. For a while, opponents objected, but to no avail. The shrieks are of a wondrous variety: Sharapova's a high-pitched scream of seeming agony; the Williamses' full-throated roars punctuating every shot; the yell of Dementieva coming close to "Yuh-HOO." This all started, I theorize, with the little squeak of Chrissie Evert. It grew from there. But Bill Tilden did not need to shriek; Althea Gibson never roared; Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver played without yelling. What changed?
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        Some cliches we can do without: Somebody said that at one point in the campaign, Clinton led "in all the important metrics." "Metrics"? My dictionary does not list "metric" as a noun. But it is a usage popular on Capitol Hill with speakers who forget there is "measure" or "measurement" or "criterion" or "element" or any number of correct words in place of "metric."
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        And while we are being once again a schoolmarm, why does everything have to be "great"? A restaurant tells us on television that it has "great food at great prices." That may mean just affordable hamburgers. The amusement park promises "a great time with great bargains," which may mean just affordable fun. By me, "great" should be reserved for really historic items or events. Otherwise we have to look for the next superlative.

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Obama Should Reject McCain’s Town-Hall Offer

          Barack Obama should reject John McCain’s invitation to participate in a series of town hall meetings before the conventions. This is a smart ploy on McCain’s part, intended to share the attention being showered on Obama at a time McCain is strug- gling to get some attention of his own.
          Obama should say, “No thanks, John, but I’d certainly like to consider it after each of us chosen as his party’s official candidate.” That would be the smart decision for Obama to make.
          Instead, Obama should understand an equally smart move on Hillary Clinton’s part that would keep the attention on the Democrats and lead to unprecedented con- vention coverage in modern times.
          Democrats have never been nearly as public relations savvy as Republicans, so they might want to give a thought to a scenario that goes something like this:
                Clinton acknowledges Obama has enough delegates to win the nomination at the convention. But she says she cannot concede yet—she is only suspending her campaign—because she has nearly half the delegate count herself and must be loyal to her own supporters at the convention. She uses that power to massage a party platform and to iron out other issues she believes would make the Democrats stronger going into November. At the inevitable end, she releases her delegates to make Obama’s selection unanimous.
               Obama concedes this is a good course to follow and he plays out the vice presidential selection process right up to the convention, playing the news media for all the attention he can get on the issue.
               Instead of giving McCain a free ride on his publicity coat-tails, Obama instead travels the country and perhaps even holds those town meetings McCain suggested, but with Clinton, not McCain. What better show of party unity would that be. It might even serve the purpose of bringing Clinton’s disappointed supporters into the Obama fold.
               Just as McCain is smart enough to know that the American people are wildly sycophantic when it comes to seeing a president in person and Air Force One on the tarmac at Podunk Airport, Obama should be aware of the draw of Bill Clinton as a former president and use his presence has much as possible.

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Blow Up Your TV

          OK, the time has come. For the sake of the future of American politics, the people of this country need to blow up their TVs and get some source of legitimate and relevant news.

          Tabloid-cable has taken over so much of the public discourse with its in-your-face shouting back and forth that even the legitimate print media seems to believe it has to respond and report the same things.

          This foolishness about Hillary Clinton mentioning a couple of politics-shaking events in June as an explanation for not quitting a presidential race this soon is just the latest in a string of gotcha moments that have cluttered tabloid-cable (is there any other kind of cable news anymore?).

          This character assassination by lifting statements out of context and misinterpreting intentions is not new. Look at Mitt Romney’s father who, as one wire service reported, misspoke by saying he was “brainwashed” by military leaders on a fact-finding trip to Vietnam when he meant he had received a “whitewash” presentation. That wire service led its George Romney story something more newsworthy. The competing wire service led with the “brainwash” statement without explanation and Romney was done for.

          But that incident was memorable because it was unique for the time. Now we are getting this type of trash reporting shoved in our faces every day. Is it harmful? You bet.

          Bubbas and sycophants have dominated this exceedingly long political season since day one. In addition to Bubbaism on tabloid cable, we had Barack Obama first gaining legitimacy because a bunch of Iowa sycophants saw him linked with TV star Oprah Winfrey. We have no complaints about his winning the race for the nomination, just the way he got over the first hurdle.

          Candidates superior to the two eventual contestants for the Democratic nomination had to drop out before a single vote was cast in any state that came even close to reflecting the nation.

          Is any of this any way to elect a president? No wonder we got the Gingrich-Bush era and its trashing of America.

          If you want to see just how idiotic tabloid-cable is in its handling of the political contests, tune into the Jon Stewart show on Comedy Central. It's daily montage of the screaming meemies of tabloid-cable exposes these fools for the fools they be.

          But they are allowed to keep their spot on the boob tube because fellow boobs are tuning in. Tune out and the advertisers will want someone else. Better yet, after you watch Jon Stewart, blow up your TV (with apologies to John Prine and his "Spanish Pipedream").

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          The speculation about who will be John McCain's vice presidential candidate has begun. The New York Times reports that three possible candidates have been in- vited to McCain's Phoenix place Memorial Day weekend.
          On the Times' list were Mitt Romney, presumably there to assuage the right wing of the Republican Party, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a political nobody on the national scene who presumably would be a generic sidekick unlikely to ruffle GOP fea- thers. It was the third name that interested us. As a reporter we spent many hours cov- ering Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal over the course of just over a year when he was di- rector of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.                           Jindal's highest political achievement before that had been head his native Louisiana's health department at the age of 24. That is less surprising considering he finished high school at 16 and became a Rhodes scholar.
          His genius and abilities became clear over the course of the commission's work, which was to assess the status of the Medicare system and recommend solutions to its financial problems lurking in the future. It took a genius to handle the super-egos of the commission members, a third of them members of Congress. He did so with aplomb and was able to massage a final report in 1999 that managed to balance all of the partisan tugs and pulls he faced.
          Through it all, he was a personable, helpful and available leader who astounded with his grasp of the issues and encyclopedic mind, a reminder of the high intelligence of fellow Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton. It is not Jindal's fault the report, still considered the bible of Medicare, did not move to any great action by Congress and the admin- istrations that followed. Nothing will be done long-term about either Medicare or Social Security because our sys- tem of government does not encourage long-term solutions.

          The selection of Jindal would be a political coup McCain badly needs. Jindal is a conservative Republican, but the stereotype ends there. He is a dark-skinned individual who surmounted politics in Louisiana, probably because he was born in 1971 in Baton Rouge of immigrants from India, which makes him less black but dark enough to make McCain's candidacy less white against a Barack Obama challenger and one likely to help carry a state that helped give Obama the Demo- cratic nomination. Jindal was not even old enough to serve as vice president two years ago, giving McCain some balance on the age issue that already dogs him and a counter to Obama's youth.
          Jindal also brings an expertise to a GOP presidential candidate weak in the area of health care, which undoubtedly will emerge as one of the major issues of the fall campaign. Regardless of whether he makes McCain's cut, keep an eye on this fellow.

          I no longer cover any event at the White House, but if I did and were at a news conference, I would ask these questions:
          "President Bush, early in your term you were asked if you had made any mistakes, and your reply was that you could not think of any.
          "Are you proud, sir, of taking on a budget surplus and turning it into record deficits and record debt?
          "Are you pleased that you worked out tax breaks for the rich- est among us, widening the earnings gap between poor and rich?
          "Do you sleep better at night, knowing you led the nation into a war that has killed more than 4,000 Americans and countless foreigners?
          "Are you content that this war has no end in sight?
          "Does it please you that, in contrast to the day you took office, a large part of the world now hates America?
          "Do you reflect with pride on the fact that your approval rat- ings are lower than the average serial murderer's?
          "Do you smile at the fact that, under your leadership, your own political party is in tatters?
          "And so, now, do you think you have made any mistakes?"

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Big Newspapers Beginning to See the Light

          The Washington Post in an editorial and the New York Times in an analysis are now beginning to realize what this site, straightrecord, saw two months ago. The Post should have read this item and the Times should have read this one.
          In the ensuing months since those analyses of the campaign situation, nothing has happened to change the premise behind each of them. We were able to write when we did because we realized from the outset of this cam- paign that it was going to be unique--our first long, hard slog in a nearly year-long primary battle with a large gap built in before the conventions and their complex delegate-selection systems.
          On the subject of Democrats allegedly tearing themselves apart, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just keep an eye on John McCain in the weeks and months until his convention. Keep an eye on him, that is, if you can find him in print or on television anywhere. News is just what it says--something that is new or unusual. McCain's candidacy is neither, while the Democratic drama and the situation that fathered it remain news. Obviously, the lat- ter is going to get the ink.
          Getting this constant attention is good for the Democrats. It is almost like the old saying, allegedly by a bimbo actress: "I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right." Any publicity is good publicity, and in this situation, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been thoroughly vetted and already have taken far more heat than McCain can dish out, regardless of whether the Republican Party comes up with another Kevin Phillips, Lee Atwater or Karl Rove.
          Yes, supporters of either Clinton or Obama are going to be upset and angry if their choice does not get the nomination. But these two candidates respect each other, agree with each other 99 percent of the time and even like each other. There is little done either would campaign vigorously for the other in the fall.
          As to the argument Obama supporters and Democrats who voted in the primaries would feel cheated if the superdelegates reject the fact he won the majority of the primary votes and the pledged delegates and choose Clinton, what about if the great majority of fall election voters, i.e, women, would feel cheated if their candidate is not chosen. Democrats would not like to lose either vote in November, and the women's vote is much greater by far.
          As for Obama's chances of winning in the fall? Take a look at the Boston Globe's map of the primaries be- low. That blue line of six states stretching from Louisiana to North Carolina, plus the southern half of Virginia,  com- prise a big chunk of Obama's much touted number of states won. He won those six states because only Demo- crats were casting the votes in a Democratic primary.

          It is sad to say this in 2008, but racism still exists in this country and ra- cism still prevails in those six states, as it has since before and after the old-line Democrats switched parties in the after- math of the civil rights victories of the 1960s. Obama's chances of winning any of those states in a general election where a Republican majority will be casting votes are very slim. That is par- ticularly true if McCain gets a boost from a new Phillips, Atwater or Rove. Perhaps 2012 or 2016 will be better years for Obama to run.
          Who wants to wager the superdelegates will not be considering the impact of an Obama fall campaign on that huge group of Electoral College votes?

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Just When Is Water Wasted? Almost Never

          National Geographic's cable channel airs an entertaining and informa- tive show, "The Human Footprint." Its intention is to illustrate the impact hu- man consumption has on the Earth.
          Unfortunately, it often is more entertaining than informative and suffers from a lack of detailed editing that has been the hallmark of the magazine. The on-camera commentator is too "gee whiz," cliche-ridden and ungrammatical. But the point the show delivers is stunning.
          The show, however, states at least twice a myth that clouds, at best, and interferes with, at worst, the credibility of the extremely valuable environ- mental movement.
          The myth is that we waste water by using it. The fact is, we do not.
          We contaminate it and the impact of that contamination should be avoided or at least reduced, but we do not waste it globally. The waste that people cite during water shortages is purely local. If an area is suffering a drought, that does not change the fact there is ample water on Earth and always will be unless we find a way to move it into outer space.
          Regardless of how it is used and abused, and whether it travels through a sewer pipe or drainage system, all water ends up eventually back in the ocean or aquifers of the Earth.
          Water has followed a set cycle ever since it has existed on Earth. Mother Nature does a good job of cleans- ing the water and getting it ready for its endless cycle of evaporating without its salt content and rising in the air to be supplied back to Earth as potable rain.
          Basically the same water is used over and over and over. Just be careful what you put in it. Mother Nature's abilities are not finite.

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          Repeated myths such as those that often appear in blogs and in widely circulated e-mails by people with an axe to grind do harm to the causes they espouse and provide fodder to their opponents. Misstatements embedded in arguments also do harm to the intended message. And in our efforts to dumb down the language to try to communicate with the most ignorant among us, we also harm the record.

          As an example of the first, many assertions we’ve already seen in the political campaign are so ridiculous, one gets the idea the person behind it must be an absolute fool, and thus his opinion is the opinion of a fool even though it might well be legitimate.

          An example of misstatements that harm an argument is outlined elsewhere on this site—that globally, water can be wasted. As for dumbing down the language, for decades have required trucks to carry signs warning that what they are carrying is “flammable” because we fear the ignorant would misunderstand the correct term, “inflammable.”
          Probably the most egregious error of these types comes from those who accept Darwinism. They have long hurt their cause and given sustenance to “creationists” by misstating the process of evolution.
          Science books, science shows and other media that attempt to explain evolution almost universally explain evolution as a selective process, i.e., we adopt features so we can be more suitable for survival under changing conditions. Supposedly, presenting evolution as a selective process makes it easier to understand.
          Those misrepresentations are illustrated by claims such as over generations an animal developed features to help it adjust to changes. But evolution is a deselective process, not a selective one, a reality that is much clearer today as we learn more about the genetics of life.
          Simply put, our genes mutate as they are passed from one generation to another. If conditions change, the living thing such as a person whose genes have changed to the extent that the living thing is more suitable to its changed environment just happens to be the one who is more suited to the new conditions, survives longer, is healthier and more likely to pass on the more suitable genes to the next generation.
          The living thing that has not mutated in the more suitable direction is less suited to the changes, is not as healthy and what offspring it does produce is likely to be less suitable to the new conditions. Thus, its line of generations is likely to die off or move to more suitable conditions when it is able, leaving its home to those best suited to survive in it.
          It is the deselective process that constitutes evolution.
          Similarly, the evolution theory is constantly harmed by believers who misstate “survival of the fittest” as the person in the best condition or shape being the one who survives. As stated above, survival in evolutionary terms depends on who is best adapted to the new conditions that confront us.
          None of us will be around to prove or disprove whether global warming (and global cooling, which is occurring at the same time) is real. But if the globe becomes too hot, those closest to the polar ice caps will survive to evolve better than those in the torrid zones. The survivors will be the fittest because the deselection of evolution has omitted the others.

Cheney's New Bogey-Man On The Block

          Vice President Strangelove is at it again. His apocalyptic bogey-man turned out not to be Saddam Hussein after all, so now he is turning his fear-mongering towards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran.
          The three major religions of the world --Judaism, Christianity and Islam-- derive from the same source, in that order, and not so surprisingly, with the same basic set of beliefs.
          --The oldest of the three, Judaism, believes there is only one god (a fairly novel thought at the time) who will come to Earth before an ill-defined "Judgment Day."
          --Then Christians came along and said the son of the god already came to Earth, about 2,000 years ago now, and his name was Jesus. But he's supposed to come again before that same wispy "Judgment Day."
          --Then along came Islam, which says the son of its version of the god also will return to Earth. The Shiite branch of Islam believes that son will be the 12th son and that his pre-"Judgment Day" plans include a well-defined reign of terror.
          That's it. Three divergent beliefs that draw on the same account in the same book, the Bible. Another clash of myth- ology, perhaps a later version of the clashes of Greek or Roman gods, or name your region of the world and local myth.
           Ahmadinejad is as whacky a representative of Iran as our the current leadership in the United States, with Dick Cheney trying to pull the increasingly entangled strings.
          Cheney fails to point out in his apocalyptic message that Ahmadinejad is mostly a loopy figurehead president of Iran and that the power there still lies in the hands of Imams we hope are more rational, but whose thoughts we cannot dis- cern because we are focused on the new bogey-man on the block. Let us hope they see their puppet as their court jester.

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Unhappy? Blame Regulatory Rollbacks

     Flights on costly U.S.-based airlines canceled. Housing market around the country in a mess, and thus so is the economy. Concentration of broadcast media outlets into the hands of a few. Take high gas prices or go back through all of the FEMA screw-ups. Name your own complaint. None, and other federal government failures, was accidental or coincidental.
          Take this as a given, because it is as much a truism as it ever was--Democrats risk erring on the side of the average citizen, Republicans risk erring on the side of business.
          Look at every administration in the White House, particularly if the president's party also controls Congress, and you will see that pattern repeated, again and again. Take a look at the past 56 years, 36 with Republicans in the White House.
          Republican administrations always, without fail, reduce the emphasis on enforcing regulations and laws, sometimes to the point of simply ignoring those already in place and fighting against imposing new ones. When Re- publicans controlled Congress during those 36 years, that meant a weak tendency to oversee the departments and agencies of the federal government, to hold their feet to the fire in following regulations and even the law. Even in years when Democrats held the reins in Congress during a GOP administration, oversight carried out rarely could be enforced.
          Every government agency has a pair of subcommittees and comittees with oversight authority over them and the power of the purse resides in the whole of Congress.
          In those 20 years when a Democrat sat in the Oval Office, little more than half were years in which Demo- crats also controlled Congress. With or without congressional backing, Democrats end up spending much of their time and effort trying to right the ship Republicans before them tilted to the right. And that is why you rarely see Democratic administrations accomplishing as much as they did before 1968.
          If you do not believe that is the reality, watch the next administration closely if it Congress and the White House are under control of Democrats.

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The Irony of Olympic Protest                                           

          A lot of competing arguments are being tossed around regarding the protests against this summer's Olympics scheduled in China.
          Here is some perspective.
          The spark behind the anti-Olympics protest is China's treatment of Tibet, whose people would like to regain the country's independence from China. The pro-Olympics side correctly argues the games are supposed to be about athletic competition, not poli- tics. They are mostly correct on that point.
          The first Olympic games were held in stadium, now restored ruins in a valley near Olympia, the mythologi- cal home of the Greek Gods, in the remote western mountains of the Peloponessus in Greece. At the time, Athens in the main part of Greece across the isthmus, and Sparta, in the south-central portion of the Peloponessus, were constantly at war. A truce was called so the Olympic games could be held.
          In that sense, the games were apolitical in that the politics of war were suspended and not in force.
          Today, however, the games have less to do with athletic competition and more to do with the game of mon- ey. In the past century, games were used as propaganda fodder, with major countries trying to win the most med- als as indications of their superiority. Cities around the world want to host the games for the prestige, attention and tourism they offer, and often foolishly for the profits they may bring.
          But the Olympics games are mostly about big business. The International Olympics Committee sells the television rights for millions, garners millions licensing its logos and on and on. The licensed logos is used in bil- lions of dollars of business advertising and promotions. This is huge business.
          Jimmy Carter canceled U.S. participation in the games because they were set for Moscow in 1980, in the middle of the classic cold war between the U.S. and the now-defunct U.S.S.R, in response to the Soviet invasion of...where? Afghanistan.

          That invasion led the United States to back the Taliban and funnel arms, under the leadership of former Rep. Charlie Wilson, into the country to help the eventually successful resistance fight the Soviets. The same Taliban later became the host of Osama bin Laden.
          This time the U.S. president is the one who ordered Afghanistan in- vaded because of its ties and support to the 9/11 terrorist is George W. Bush, who is said to intend to be at the opening ceremony for the Olympics in Beijing despite the Tibet protest.

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U.S. House Takes One Small Tobacco Step For Mankind

          Forty-four years after the U.S. surgeon general concluded smoking leads to lung cancer, the U.S. House finally has taken a small step to curb a product that everyone, particularly its makers, knows is addictive and cruelly lethal. The bill is weak, but at least it is something.
          A year after the surgeon general's report, Congress passed a law re- quiring warnings on packages of cigarettes.
          And 30 years after that executives of major cigarette companies sat in witness chairs in front of congressional committees and swore under oath that nicotine was not addictive. Later, of course, it turned out the industry's own re- search had determined smoking was addictive and could be manipulated, something the executives had known for years.
          Still, an addictive drug known to lead to lung cancer and to exacerbate a raft of health problems driving up health costs for everyone was allowed not only to be produced in a popular form, but marketed, advertised and ex- ported. All that without any of the regulations controlling other addictive drugs and medicines in general.
          Cigarettes, cigars and tobacco-based snuff should be banned outright by the U.S. government, but short of that, the next best thing is to place it under the same restrictions as faced by legitimate pharmaceutical firms.
          But the House-approved bill does not do any of that. It merely allows the FDA to control labeling, some  ad- vertising and a few other relatively minor things, but restricts the agency form banning nicotine outright, as it should. Let's move it through the Senate and dare the White House to veto it.
          Ignore what Reynolds, one of the few tobacco companies to keep its traditional name and not hide under some nice-sounding corporate name such as Altria, says in its ads claiming the Food and Drug Administration too weak to regulate.
          Give the FDA the authority and the muscle to back it up and move on to more-meaningful regulation in the near future.

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Kudos To Obama

          As many prominent Democrats and pundits called openly for Hillary Clinton to give up for the sake of the party, Barack Obama stepped forward and urged her to stay in the race.
          Obama may have been cleverly taking the high road while his surrogates jumped the gun, but even if he did, he unwittingly took the better stance for his party.
          As we pointed out months ago on other pages on this site, the early primaries and the wide gap between them and the convention spell trouble for this year's unique presidential race.
          Watch John McCain struggle in the coming months to get favorable attention as the media struggle to come up something, anything, to justify their coverage as they try to balance coverage with the newsy Democratic candi- dates still providing them with easier horserace fodder. We suspect his age is about to get more attention than McCain would prefer in the vacuum he is in.
          And remember: stuff happens.

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Watch Out For McCain -- He Seems To Be Getting It

           The Republican Party's not-yet titular nominee for the presidency, John McCain, recently delivered a foreign-policy speech. So far, It is only words, without details, but the speech sounds much like one that would be delivered by a Democrat.
          As such, McCain is distancing himself not only from the Bush adminis- tration, but also from the party's right-wing arm that has hampered it for the past 13 years. If not McCain, at least his advisers appear to have schooled themselves in political history.
          In 1968, Hubert Humphrey, then Lyndon Johnson's vice president, ran against Richard Nixon for his own presidency after Johnson bowed to the realities of Vietnam antiwar sentiment and chose not to run for re-election. As a loyal party member and vice president, Humphrey refused to separate himself from Johnson's Vietnam policy and lost the general election. He learned that lesson next time around in trying again for the Democratic nomina- tion, and separated himself from the war, but too late to counter the clearly antiwar stance of George McGovern. Humphrey ended up going back to the Senate and retiring there.
          Up to the point he delivered his foreign-policy speech, McCain had allowed himself to be tied closely to the Bush administration's foreign policy, whatever that was and remains.
          Also based on history, McCain now faces a conundrum--whether to allow Bush, from whose policies he would love to distance himself, to campaign for his election in November. Al Gore made a classic mistake by not having President Clinton campaign for him in 2000. In a race as close as Gore's against Bush, who ultimately was crowned by the U.S. Supreme Court, anything can be pointed to as the cause of the loss, or win. But Gore distanc- ing himself from Clinton was a huge mistake no candiidate ever should repeat.
          It does not matter what one thinks of the position of the person holding the office, the American public from Podunk to Pittsburgh wants to see a president in person, if for no other reason than to be able to tell their offspring they saw a president in person. It is of enormous benefit to a candidate. Will McCain repeat the Gore gaffe?

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From the Sarcasm Corner:

What Did She Say? ABC Court Reporter Misses Lead 
          A reporter for the ABC network said "on air" recently the U.S. Supreme Court still writes on slates, a practice that went out of usage more than a cen- tury ago. Even though other reporters and visitors to the court have witnessed court personnel writing on computers and have in their hands computer print- outs of computer-generated court writings, the reporter, formerly with the Chi- cago Tribune, said they write on slates.
          Before computers came into widespread use, personnel at the high court were known to write on typewriters, even electric ones. But the ABC reporter said they write on slates today.
          No longer hampered by Tribune copy editors who generally edit cliches as well as grammar, the ABC re- porter felt free to reveal: The court will be "literally writing on a blank slate." View the clip...

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When Shut Up Is Better Than Speak Up

        Remember the story about the kid who called out, "The emperor has no clothes on"? He spoke with the direct truth and clarity of kids' words. Well, now in the presidential campaign, we have need of that kid.
        He could have told Geraldine Ferraro, "Don't even say out loud in public your belief that Barack Obama would not be a viable candidate for president if he were white."
        He could have warned Bill Clinton, "Barack Obama is no Jesse Jackson, so don't com- pare them publicly."
        He could have advised Obama, "It may sometimes seem silly, but you gotta wear the little flag lapel pin."
        He could have said to John McCain, "Don't ever mumble publicly that the U.S. will be in Iraq for decades."
        And he could have told all of them, "When you have people warm up the crowd for your appearance, or speak in your behalf from the pulpit or the lectern, just let the candidate or the top political advisor take a glance at your words before you utter them."
        The little kid could have saved all the candidates a world of grief.                                                 ---Veritas