Citizen Klein

Change for the worse

2011-09-15T13:04:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

I find it difficult to recognize my country these days. I grew up in an America that honored the elderly and respected the law. Now there are those in power who want to cut benefits for seniors and legally manhandle people because they “look different.”

As a child I was taught that the US mainland has never been attacked by foreign forces since the British in 1812 and that we never had lost a war. In the 60 years since then we suffered crippling assaults in Hawaii, New York and Washington and were run out of Vietnam by local insurgents and are on the way to a stalemate in Afghanistan.

I lived through the exhilarating period when America showed the world how racial wrongs could be corrected and how cruel punishment of prisoners would not be abided, but now we have a substantial portion of the population that hates the president because he is not white and others who openly applaud the death penalty and shout “yes” when asked if the uninsured should be left to die instead of getting treatment when sick..

There was a time we built railroads into every nook and cranny of the country and cris-crossed the nation with highways the envy of the world. Today the railroads are a shadow of what they once were and our motor-ways are crumpling with age yet we have a Congress more concerned with austerity than with reality.

We are wracked with fear where we once gloried in our boldness and enterprise. We are becoming more like a banana republic every day as the rich are protected and get richer and the rest of us come closer to poverty. Already one in six America families are at the poverty level. But worse than poverty is the dearth of hope and the increase in fear.

The people have been so conditioned to fear that some passengers on a Denver to Detroit airline flight singled out a woman with Semitic features sitting in the same row with two men of Indian origin as surely up to no good. They reported their suspicions, and the flight crew radioed ahead and the plane was greeted by heavily armed police and the FBI. It was the day of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

The woman, who was half Arab and half Jewish, was an American mother of twins and lived in Ohio. She was dragged off the plane, handcuffed, held incommunicado for hours and strip searched, before the FBI accepted the fact there was no reason to arrest her. She had done nothing wrong other than appear to others as “suspicious/” Fear claimed another victim. She never conversed with the men seated next to her at any time during the flight.

The entire incident which took many hours to resolve and involved the deployment of dozens of police and FBI agents was all for naught because of fear among certain passengers. This is not my America where police are supposed to have reasonable cause to take someone into custody.

This are the ugly faces of Americans seen almost everywhere. Many were appalled at the open verbal support demonstrated at the first Republican Presidential debate when Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was asked about the more than 230 prisoners executed in his state during his governorship.

I still shudder at the small-minded behavior of a surly bunch of men berating a crippled man sitting on the ground demonstrating at a government rally. One particularly insensitive cretin took a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off a single bill and threw it at the invalid as he shouted some inane remarks. This is not the compassionate America I knew.

The country has been corrupted by a corrupt government. First we had eight years of governance by fear as the former president and his cohorts made one exorbitant mistake after another. Now we have a Congress that has been purchased like puppies in a pet store and trained to do everything that must be done to protect their masters – the very rich..

The ghosts of great presidents of the past are covering their eyes not to see what has happened to their prodigious dream of a great nation inhabited by a great people. To a large degree it is the people who bought the lurid Ronald Reagan line about government being the problem, not the solution, that started it all 31 years ago.

Now it has reached to point that some want to dismantle government altogether and allow the robber barons of the 21st century to take charge. The one percent at the economic top will get richer and the rest will face falling below the poverty line,

This is a complete reversal of all that government stood for when I was growing up. At present it is the Republican hardliners who hold the reins that are pulling the nation down and if they win the presidency next November it is hard to imagine what rollicking price the poor and middle class will pay to enhance the lives of the top one percent.

The way this nation is going at present makes it all the more a contrast with the way things used to be when people were willing to work together for the good of all. Back then the Republicans and Democrats competed with each other, today it is all out warfare with the public being damned.

Wanted: a third party?

2011-08-10T12:08:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

I was never an advocate of a third party in the United States. I remember the hopeless attempts of Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and Henry Wallace’s Progressive parties during the Harry Truman days. I also recall vividly the failed attempt of Ross Perot’s third party just two decades ago. None were very appealing, but all resulted in a Democrat winning the presidency.

I am beginning to wonder if it is time for another third party endeavor given the dysfunction we labor under in today’s Washington. If nutty Perot could corral about 20 percent of the vote in the last decade of the 20th Century would it be possible for a viable third party candidate to do much better today? I would guess maybe 30 percent of the vote or more – or is that just wishful thinking?

Today’s political affiliations are miserable. The country used to be divided between Republicans and Democrats and the two parties worked together for the benefit of the nation as a whole. Today neither combative party seems to hold more than 30 percent support of the body politic and the largest growing group of voters are in the independent category.

Independents seem to be multiplying like rabbits in heat as disenchanted members of both parties are finding no satisfaction among their political leaders. Grass roots Republicans do not like the fact that their traditional party has been hijacked by a bunch of ne’er do well dilettantes carrying the stubborn banner of the Tea Party.

The Democrats are not happy either. They elected Barack Obama to make changes in the disastrous policies born during two terms of the Bush presidency and discovered that he was mostly talk and not a very effective doer. He compromised away much of the good he managed to accomplish in health reform and new financial regulations and to the dismay of his adherents, extended too much of the bad from the previous administration.

The latest disheartening effect was his capitulation to the GOP on raising the debt ceiling almost entirely under their terms. “We got 98 percent of what we wanted,” said a victorious Speaker of the House John Boehner after the debacle. Obama’s strategy of harmony does not work in Washington and he seems to be the only Democrat who doesn’t recognize that brutal fact.

If a third party can draw at least 30 percent of the vote in 2012 it could possibly win the White House. If not, it would certainly scare the pants off the other two parties that the public is ready to take drastic steps if they don’t start considering the needs of ordinary people over the greed of the wealthy.

At present Washington is inhabited by G-men – and I don’t mean agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When I say G-Men I mean the “greedy” Republicans personified by Boehner and Eric Cantor and the “gutless” Democrats embodied by Obama and Harry Reid.

The result of this dichotomy of power is that the little guys and gals of the country are not being served. Or to put it succinctly, they are being screwed. The wealthy are being cared for, so are the poor, but the middle class is being hung out to dry by a callous Congress and a gun shy president. Many Americans have had it. Democrats no longer have any faith in Obama’s ability to lead and many others have given up on the GOP as well.

A third party could be the answer. The question arises though, who will lead this new crusade to take back the country from such absurd political wannabies as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry or the punchless Democrats. My personal favorites are Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. But neither of them would abandon the Democrats.

Perhaps an independent like New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg could be convinced to make the run. Historically he has been a Republican and a Democrat during different points in his career. He is a smart man and could prove to be a national asset.

He has a number of serious shortcomings, though. Besides being short in stature and having a squeaky voice (important elements in modern day television candidacies)
he is a New Yorker, which will not go well in parts of the heartland, and he is Jewish, which could be a negative factor in a country that has never nominated a non-Christian for president.

There must be others that are not well known and that, too, can be a problem. One thing is certain, however, if there is to be a third party challenge next year there is no time to loose. There must be action soon, very soon. Actually a third party is likely a dead issue for the next election, but the country cannot continue along current lines.

I’d hate to experience the troubles the Brits are having these days with a very unhappy constituency. I fear such a violent outbreak could occur here if the government doesn’t act for the people soon. We cannot continue to giveaway the country to the wealthy. We cannot continue as a corporatocracy.

We fought fascism and won. Later we fought communism and won. Now we have to fight corporate gluttony or the US goes down the drain. No one in Washington is willing to take on that battle today, so maybe a new force in the form of a third party will be the answer.

Are we our brother's keeper?

2011-07-27T02:02:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

I am not what some people would describe as a “Bible freak.” You know, those people who attribute all that happens to mankind being the result of God”s displeasure with the human race for not obeying every word in the scriptures.

I recall some religious kook proclaiming that the reason for the disaster of September 11, 2001 was God’s way of punishing us for tolerating homosexuality in this country. Similar absurdities were floated into the ether by fundamentalists after Katrina, the bombing in Oklahoma City, the Gulf oil spill and virtually every major natural or manmade disaster in recent years.

Just because these weirdoes use what they call the holy book as the grounds for their idiotic pronouncements it doesn’t negate everything we find in the bible. The most casual reader will find considerable wisdom in the book if he looks at it as a source of ancient sensibility.

Forbiding murder, theft and covetous behavior for example, are just a handful of biblical prohibitions that make civilized life a bit more civilized in enlightened societies around the world.

To me, probably the most universally ignored words among the thousands of biblical passages is the one Cain uttered after he slew his brother, Abel. According to the bible he asked God “Am I my brother's keeper?" That was a weighty question in ancient times and it still is today, maybe even more so than ever.

The evidence of self-centered irresponsible conduct, often purely criminal, is mountainous across every border of the globe. In Norway we have a young man driven by fear and hatred demonstrating his ire by blowing up government buildings in Oslo followed by mowing down youngsters at an island summer camp not too distant. Total dead: more than 70.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we read news reports of hundreds dying almost weekly by militants who blow up victims without so much of a second thought about the consequences or the impact this has on families and without apparent penalty to themselves if they manage to escape their suicidal designs.

In London we have Murdoch’s news minions digging into the private affairs of private citizens in search of juicy knick-knacks to be included in Sunday newspaper features. When exposed Rupert, the grand sultan of the gigantic media corporation, and his son, James, the grand vizier, rejected responsible for the breaches of morality and law and not only claimed innocence, but worse, claimed they are victims of their own manipulations.

Then don’t forget the Wall Street moguls who discovered a sleazy way to make tons of money by packaging and selling faulty real estate stock to gluttonous “get rich quick” buyers then purchasing insurance to cover their losses so when the stock crashed they make their money and others go down the toilet.

In Washington we have the living hell of a government that cannot govern in the United States because politicians are more interested in their temporary political survival than the good of millions of non-politicians who will suffer dearly if the country defaults on its debts.

The most ironic twist of all is that the Republicans refusal to permit closing of tax loopholes and elimination of tax cuts for the wealthy because they claim it is wrong to raise personal costs (taxes) in a recession could be causing everyone to incur higher expenses when interest rates balloon after the country fails to pay its creditors.

Are they saying keep taxes low, but disregard the higher cost of living that will accompany default? I have to say they are not thinking of anything but their own reelection and their wealthy backers.

As the unprincipled successors to the biblical Abel, they have every right to ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” with a straight face. So are the Wall Street moguls and Rupert and James Murdoch. The only thing they keep close to their hearts is their wallets.

Whether you attain power threw the use of a gun aimed at unarmed individuals as in Norway or a bomb surreptitiously placed in front of a government building, like in Oklahoma City or because you own a large media conglomerate or you are just a thoughtless, closed-minded politician, you are dangerous to mankind. Your goal is to destroy others for you own purposes and to hell with the consequences.

So the ancient men who wrote the bible might have had the right idea. They called out many of the bad guys of religion and myths for all to note through eternity or for as long as people read the bible. In a sense they were the journalists of their archaic eras, and it is interesting that the journalists of today are kept busy reporting stories of people who still believe they are not their brother’s keeper.

Despite all the scientiific and technical progress of mankind through the ages, some things never change.

Whose ox is being gored?

2011-07-22T01:17:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

Ever since the Tea Party has emerged as a potent force on the American political scene the focus of their attention has been to reduce governmental spending. This has led to a Republican willingness to cripple important programs to attain these goals.

Reducing government spending is an honorable goal. The United States is the world's largest debtor nation and it spends much more than it can afford. Its debt payments alone are close to half of the funds it needs to operate.

In reducing expenditures the problem arises in determining what should be cut from a budget that runs along a varied path from important humane safety net costs to immense national defense outlays.

In addition to budget cuts, the Tea Party argues against new expenditures that are not accompanied by equivalent other budget cuts. On the face of it that is not such a bad idea but when you include the demands by Republican partisans, of which most Tea Party adherents are apart, the country faces a serious dilemma.

The Republican-Tea Party position evolves into a crisis mode for the middle class taxpayer. The RTP coalition wants to cut what they call “entitlements” and refuses to consider increases in corporate or personal income taxes even when exclusively directed to the wealthy class.

They would rather load the financial burden of recovery on the backs of the lowest economic element in society by chipping away at Medicare and Social Security while shielding the most affluent in our society from any additional tax costs. It should be noted that most senators and a large number of House members are in the higher income category.

There are tons of money the government can save if they really wanted to. First of all, you might ask why we are still in Iraq. The war is over but the Iraqi government still wants our troops there as a stabilizing force.

The solution: Since they need a reliable force to ballast their shaky democracy shouldn’t the Iraq government pay the cost of US troops on their territory. Bodyguards don’t come cheaply.

Also, we are spending tons of money to defend the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The US had three goals in Afghanistan. 1, to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Done. He is dead, 2, to support the Afghans against the Taliban. The Afghan government is discussing an accord with the Taliban surreptitiously. Why should the US. stay?, and 3, to support the so-called next door ally, Pakistan. Since Pakistan is unreliable and untrustworthy as a ally, we have no need to support them any further.

The solution: Get out of Afghanistan.

The US maintains a force of 50,000 troops in Germany 66 years after the end of World War II, thousands more in Japan, Korea and many other locales around the globe. These countries have built up their own military and can take care of their own needs.

The solution: Close these garrisons and bring the troops home and then reduce the size of the military to a smaller but more efficient and deadly force, highly skilled in the task of defending the homeland.

There are scores of other vestigial projects left over from previous generations that cost billions despite no longer making sense or remaining viable. Let’s look at these residual federal fund guzzlers, identify them and ax them before we draw the curtains at the heart of current human needs like Medicare.

At the same time we should increase the salaries of members of Congress to at least a million dollars each to eliminate the chances they will be influenced by bribes and as a lure to get better people to run for office. It will also make the penalty for losing a seat in Congress of such financial magnitude that it could eliminate corruption in office.

The salary increase would cost the country about $450 million more than presently, but could save hundreds of billions in wasted funding of projects pushed by influential lobbyists.

Other cutbacks should be made in subsidies to profitable organizations, also ending individual tax shelters and eliminating earmarks as a device for congresspersons to enhance their districts as the costs to the rest of us.

Talking about earmarks, there is an interesting development among the Tea Party members. They have clearly stated publicly that they will not approve any government expenditures, that is, except those earmarks they want for their own districts.

They are willing to cut into Medicare funds which help millions of seniors at the same time they are trying to collect federal dollars for pet projects that favor their constituents. Another case of political hypocrisy.

The New York Times reports that Tea Partyers “have pushed for projects in their districts, including military projects opposed by the president,, replenishing beach sand lost to erosion, a $700 million bridge in Minnesota and a harbor dredging project in Charleston, S.C.”

The information was uncovered by an examination of spending bills, new releases and communications with federal agencies and from information gained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“...Nearly two dozen (Tea Party) freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects” for others. The Times reported.

As an old friend of mind used to say, the budget cutting process depends on whose ox is being gored. If it affects the other guy it is all right. He also said we are all hypocrites to a certain degree but politicians make a career of it as they seek quick (usually poor) solutions to solve complicated problems.

Caylee's legacy

2011-07-09T15:09:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

To most of us it is inconceivable that a parent would not report the missing child for 31 days. It is unimaginable that during those 31 days that the parent would go out dancing and revel with friends and never saying anything about the child.

It certainly is the behavior of a irresponsible, self-centered and immature mother to act that way. But that does not prove her guilty of murder as so many sidewalk busybodies have concluded.

The Casey Anthony case is a sad one no matter how you look at it. To begin with it is the lose of the life of the sweet-faced, playful little two year old Caylee who deserved a lot better than she got. Looking at that pixilated little victim on TV screens is enough to break your heart.

It is also sad that the Florida prosecutor, who leveled serious capital charges against this foolish 25-year-old mother, apparently saw an opportunity to make a name for himself by setting in motion a trial that had no real evidence. He clearly was not seeking justice for Caylee he was seeking headlines for himself, which he got.

And finally it is sad to observe on cable television a street full of gabby gossipers crying their eyes out as they shouted their disapproval of the jury’s verdict in this case. Not only did they demonstrate the worst understanding of the American judicial system, they helped create a lynch mob atmosphere by their rage.

The blabbermouths who screamed into the microphones held by cable TV minions decided with outlandish conviction that the defendant was guilty without ever hearing a word of testimony in the courtroom. They completely disregarded the basic rule of criminal justice in this county – the presumption of innocence.

Listen to any judge as he charges any jury saying that just because the prosecutor brings charges against a defendant that does not mean the defendant is guilty. The case has to be proven by the evidence presented in court and not whatever is seen or heard anyway else.

The founding fathers knew that when they included due process in the nation’s basic law, the Constitution.

In this country you are innocent until proven guilty, yet to those meddlers outside the courthouse, Casey Anthony was guilty no matter how wanting was the case against her. They wrongly compared the verdict to the infamous Los Angeles trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995.

Admittedly I did not follow the Anthony trial during its lengthy and sordid telling on television but of course I could not avoid learning of the verdict and all the hubbub that followed. The recapitulations I heard and read left me with the feeling that the case against the errant mother was never proved.

Inasmuch as there was no cogent evidence of her guilt the jury did the right thing in finding her not guilty. This is a mystery which will never be solved. It could have been a case of getting away with murder, or a foolish attempt to coverup an accident, or possibly some other explanation. The only important issue here is that the prosecutors failed to prove murder and the jury knew that better than anyone else.

This trial, and others, have sharpened my feeling that journalists have to be restrained in their handling of capital cases. Pretrial publicity often is horrendous and nourished by devious attorneys eager to make their case before the public.

Although I believe strongly that trials should be open to the public and fully reported in the press I do not favor televising trials. That often leads lawyers and judges to showboating and leaves commentators like Nancy Grace, of HLN channel, and others to prejudge the case before thousands of viewers.

Although it is far from perfect, I like the jury system and rarely dispute its decisions. As far as I am concerned the key to any case is what motivates the prosecutor, not what motivates the defendant. District attorneys who take their oaths to represent the interests of all the people, which includes those accused of crimes, are unique in America. Most seek justice often in “hot” cases to enhance their ambitions.

In that regard I take my hat off to Cyrus Vance, Jr., the New York D.A., who handled the ticklish rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn as well as he could. He looked at the evidence against the Frenchman and found it weak and possibly unsubstantiated. He is considering decreasing the charges.

The foreign accusations of some branding the US judicial system as “rushing to judgment” in the Strauss-Kahn case are ridiculous. The man was on a Paris-bound flight and had to be arrested before the victim’s claims could be fully verified and he fled the country’s jurisdiction. Once investigation proved the alleged victim was not credible, the charges were lowered.

In both cases, Anthony and Strauss-Kahn, I think Americans can be proud of the action in its courts. More importantly, the Anthony case has spurred more than a dozen states to propose laws which in the past I think were never necessary. These laws would make it a crime for a parent not to report a missing or dead child within a brief time period.

That, sadly for poor Caylee Anthony, would be her only legacy to the rest of us.

Let's talk about duopoly

2011-06-24T16:49:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, refers to the current political condition of the United States as a duopoly. He says he is in favor of a third party in the country.

I don’t know about the viability of a third party in America so I’ll put that subject aside for the moment, but he certainly is right on target with his duopoly label. The dictionary describes duopoly as “an oligopoly limited to two sides or the preponderant influence or control by two political powers.”

That aptly describes this country for the last several decades. It is a wonder anything gets done, and little has. As we look to the immediate future it appears less likely there will be much accomplished in the next 18 months unless the public acts up and demands a change.

It is a simple circumstance – or a deadly situation which could spell doom for the American era – on the one side we have a party dedicated to protecting the rich and powerful and the giant corporations that breast-feed them.

On the other side we have a political party that caters to the needs of the middle class, supports social relief programs, sees value in ordinary people, but like the proverbial Ferdinand the Bull is timid beyond belief about taking forceful action.

The Republicans are obstinate in their belief in small government with limited spending and the lowest possible taxes on people and businesses while the Democrats believe that only through energetic government programs can the masses be helped. They feel the well-to-do and corporations should pay more taxes to meet those needs because they have more to start with.

They are both stubborn in their beliefs and hypocritical in their actions. The Republicans like to label the Democrats as Socialists yet they support massive government giveaways to agricultural giants, oil companies and multi-billion dollar industrial combines. And, of course, they love tax loopholes and tax cuts for the rich. They’ll never admit it but that is their form of socialism.

The Democrats like to present themselves as the party of the people but lack any sense of urgency or stomach to fight to prove it. When they held a majority in both houses of Congress after the 2008 election they twiddled away the time until the death of a member deprived them of a cloture protection in the Senate and rendered the party helpless.

Whether they purposefully allowed the opportunity to escape them or really didn’t want to deliver on their promises to the little guy is not clear, but the Democratic Party cannot escape the charge of being incompetent and dysfunctional.

So here we have two parties which through the years allowed the government to tight walk at the edge of disaster inviting a financial catastrophe to finally turn the country into a debtor nation of extreme proportions three years ago without resolving even a portion of their differences.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to realize that the current state of affairs does not allow them to continue in partisan upmanship. The nation is crying for leadership, needs hard decisions and all it gets is drivel.

President Obama, the ostensible leader of the country, seems to spend most of his time sitting on the sidelines like a sagacious Guru seeking consensus which never comes while the Republicans shuffle the deck of the most illogical backwater assortment of has-beens and unknowns to lead the party into the 2012 presidential elections.

The people are left to wonder if this is the end of the American dream?

Maybe it’s too much to hope for an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to come to our rescue in these dire times, but most voters will settle for at least someone who acts appropriately in their behalf. But none seem to exist in today’s world.

As much as many hoped Obama to be our national savior, he is no FDR. He doesn’t have the fight in him, nor the willingness to act, and seems to squander every political advantage at hand. His courageous approval of the Navy Seals attack on Osama bin Laden his sole achievement worthy of great leadership. Elsewhere he continues too many Bush programs he once abhorred as a candidate and otherwise fails the people who supported him.

On the other side, the Republicans have offered the public a bland salad of leftover hacks and dim-witted hopefuls as a counterbalance to the president. The traditional centrist Rockefeller Republican no longer exists and all that remains is Right Wing ideologues and fat cats trying to outdo each other for the minuscule Tea Party support by holding the budget hostage to their simplistic views.

The nation is stuck in neutral. We are going nowhere while living in the worst hard times in memory of most of us. Duopoly is the right word all right. Both sides are thinking of themselves and neither side is thinking of the people – and the people remain silent. That makes no sense.

We cannot depend on the current flock of politicians. It is up to the people to find representatives in both houses of Congress and in the White House who have more than good ideas, but also have the courage of their convictions and the boldness needed to push through legislation that is needed for the common good.

It is time for Republicans voters to throw out of office those party members who embrace Tea Party ideals and look for true conservatives and its time for Democrats to turn their backs on the wishy-washy types who only want to be re-elected and seek real progressives who want to serve the people.

The best results in American history was when reasonable conservatives and true progressives fought it out in the political arena. We have to get back to that. Then maybe we will know where the country is going?

Circus ludicrous

2011-06-09T21:09:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

David Vitter is a United States senator and a habitue of brothels in Washington and Louisiana. The Republicans think so highly of him that they ran a special get-together in a lobbyist’s fancy D.C. home recently to raise funds for his political future. The well-attended affair raised a minimum of $2,500 per guest.

At the same time this was happening Republican House Leader Eric Cantor and Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus declared that Representative Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, was unfit for service in the Congress because of his propensity to send lewd pictures of himself to women via Twitter.

This is not just the height of hypocrisy, it is circus ludicrous. I compare this to a visit to the zoo where irate monkeys fling defecation at visitors after a session with keepers discussing how best to behave in mixed company. You just cannot talk to primates and expect them to understand English. The same is true of Republicans.

That is only one aspect of the tragedy involved in the Weiner case. Congressional hypocrisy is no more shocking than waking up in the morning and discovering yourself in a bed. The other, and more important calamity here is the loss of another intoxicating voice in support of liberal causes.

We have all the fools any unsophisticated society would want on the Republican side. We have Sarah Palin, whose latest retelling of American history sounds more like an Abbott and Costello routine. They were hilarious, she is incredulous. When she talks about history – or anything significant – it reminds me of the “Who’s on First” skit.

I was going to start a litany of all the Republican scoundrels who made it to Congress, starting with those brazen-faced adulterers Newt Gingrich, currently running for president, and John Ensign who resigned minutes before be was to be expelled from the Senate for circumstances related to his unabashed and unethical relationship with a married woman who worked for him.

But I’d rather stick with Weiner because his aberration seems to be more of a loss to the country. We can do without Palin, Gingrich, Vitter and Ensign. Their value to the country, other than as comic relief, is at the bottom of the laugh meter. Not so with Weiner, a politician who seemed to have much to offer the country.

He was an outspoken champion of the little guy. He supported medical health for everyone, battled hardheaded opponents who tried to drown out liberal thought in the country. He was a bright man with a bright future. Now, thanks to his sophomoric need to expose himself to unknown women, he will never again be taken seriously, even if he decides not to resign from Congress.

Here was what seemed to be a brilliant political force who turned out to be just one more of the guys who used celebrity for no good. The public Hall of Shame is long and will get longer as the years go by. The result is the country will suffer for it. Just look at a quick list of public figures who talk like ethereal messengers of good but behave like dogs in heat with total lack of respect for themselves, their families and the public.

You have to lead every list of this sort with former President Bill Clinton and former Senator John Edwards, If only it could end there. Then there is Rep. Mark Foley, Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, Gov. Mark Sanford, Gov. James McGreevey, Rep. Bob Livingston, Sen. Larry Craig, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and if we really want to dig deep into the past, there was JFK and FDR.

None of these men would ever be voted husband of the year, yet they were all elected by a gullible public that believed in great men, or in some cases, just men of stature. I have not listed here the public figures who went to jail for non-sexual crimes against the people. Power often leads to shame. Man is an eternal enigma.

Back to the current circumstances. For one we have a whoremonger being feted by his Republican colleagues while at the same time we have a Democrat unable to get anyone on either side of the Congressional aisle to speak up for him. And he, in most people’s minds, was the perpetrator of the lesser evil.

I don’t excuse Weiner for his outlandish behavior. He is a sick man and should get treatment, but I feel he fits in perfectly with the reprobates of Congress. In our democracy we leave it to the electorate to decide who they want to represent them and if they choose to reelect Weiner because of his faithfulness to liberal cause, that is their choice.

If the people of Louisiana can burden the nation for another six years with a man of Vitter’s low motivations by reelecting him despite his proclivities for prostitutes, so be it. But the damage is done. No one will take Vitter seriously in the future, as if there was much of a chance for that anyway, and no one in the future will take Weiner seriously either. His personal compulsion has muted his strident political voice.

That’s what you harvest once you have lost credibility and respect. It is a lesson for all of us, especially those who intend to seek public office in the future.

Cool-aid for Republicans

2011-05-28T13:32:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

Remember when the Rev. Jim Jones convinced his religious followers at Jonestown in the South American country of Guyana more than 30 years ago to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Cool-aid. In the end 909 people died senselessly. It was an inexplicable tragedy.

Today we have a close replica of that bizarre act of insanity and it is occurred right before our eyes first in the House of Representatives, and now in the United States Senate, by a large number of suicidal legislators.

Members of the Republican Party, 235 in the House, recently voted to end Medicare as we know it today and replace it with an unacceptable plan to subsidize a privatized health system in an effort to reduce future budget deficits.

In contrast, shortly afterward they voted to continue multi-billion dollar subsidies to extremely profitable oil companies. There was no concern about budget-cutting here.

They did not realize at the time that they were sipping their own brand of poison flavored-aid. They certainly know it now. In a special election they lost a seat to a Democrat in upstate New York, in a district which had been traditionally held by a Republican for over four decades.

As if this was not bad enough, 40 Republican senators voted the day after the New York debacle to enact the same anti-Medicare legislation. Fortunately, the Democrats hold a majority in that body and the measure failed with only five members of the GOP defecting to the other side.

The curious element in this GOP maneuver was that everyone knew the legislation had no chance of enactment from the start because it could never pass the Democratic Senate. In essence it was a gesture, not lawmaking.

And what is even more curious is that the measure, which was included in the Republican version of their budget proposal, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, was certain to enrage the 35 million or so seniors who depend on Medicare and want no changes.

Supporters of the bill kept telling everyone it did not effect those over 55 years of age, and in doing so they added even more opponents to the measure – the millions of 40 to 55 years olds who didn’t want to be shortchanged when their turn came to be seniors.

Here they were with a bill that made at least half the country angry with them and which they knew would never become law, yet in brazen arrogance, Speaker John Boehner went ahead with the proposal. It was suicidal from the getgo.

When many of these congressmen and women went home during the recent recess they got an earful from their constituents. That was the first indication the measure had hit a nerve. Then, all of a sudden, the special New York race for 26th House District took a turn for the worse.

This “safe” GOP seat suddenly showed the Democratic candidate within striking distance of the Republican candidate. Then it worsened as the two seemed to tie in the polls and then the Dem pulled ahead.

The campaign focused on the effort of the Republicans led by Boehner and Ryan, to attempt to balance some part of the budget on the backs of grandmas and her contemporaries while reducing taxes for the wealthy.

The Republican candidate started taking a defensive position saying that although she supported the idea of the Ryan Medicare approach it was not necessarily going to become law. What an argument? I would have supported this bill because I knew it would fail.

On election day the Democrat was swept into office by a four point margin with voters – Republican, Democratic and Independents – all rallying behind the save Medicare banner. Did the Republicans learn a lesson?

The day after the results of the election were announced the Senate Democrats forced a vote on the measure and 40 Republican senators stepped up to take their sip of the Ryan Cool-aid. Five other Republicans had the good sense to oppose the measure. Six of those senators who voted to kill Medicare are up for re-election next year.

So if you combine all the Republican votes in both houses of Congress, 275 of them voted in favor of cutting Medicare and only nine voted to save the law. It is almost the same ratio at Jonestown in 1978 where over 900 died and only some 30 survived.

It seems when you are arrogant with power – as members of an insane religious gathering or a modern day Republican -- you cannot tell the difference between the elixir of life and suicidal poison.

The Democrats now have an easy issue to exploit in the coming presidential election year. All they have to do is show the constituents in every district where an incumbent house Republican and senator is running, except those nine who jumped ship on Medicare, proof of their commitment not to serve the people’s interests.

We can hope for the best but the modern Democrats don’t seem to have the stomach for a real fight. They failed to show any smack in the 2010 election and took a beating. Will they fail again next year? The current Democrats have the distinct ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

I have a simple solution. The Democrats ought to let Bill Clinton and Howard Dean loose on the nationwide campaign trail if they hope to win back the House and improve their margin in the Senate. The rest can work their home districts.

Sex entitlements for the privileged

2011-05-20T08:23:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

The turbulent combination of power and sex has ruined more political careers than oafish behavior or incompetence can ever hope to, but men of rank and authority never seem to be able to avoid an illicit fling when it presents itself.

They feel that because they are privileged people they have exceptional sexual entitlements.

In the last few weeks the cynics of the world were entertained by the ethical and professional demise of a United States senator, the marriage split of the former governor of the country’s largest state and most stunning, the arrest in New York of the head of the International Monetary Fund.

The hoi poloi could say good riddance to the bums but that would not be fair to all. The case against IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not yet been resolved and he deserves the judicial benefit of the assumption of innocence.

Not so in the cases of Senator John Ensign, of Nevada nor former Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, of California.

Ensign had to resign in order to avoid expulsion from the Senate on sexual harassment charges. This is a man who refused to resign until the very last minute after facing the Ethics Committee for the sordid circumstances following an affair he had with a staff associate who was the wife of a long-standing friend, chief of staff and political sidekick.

That’s not even chutzpah, that’s beyond misconduct, it’s repulsive. What little respect or loyalty was there for his closest friend if he would schtup his wife behind his back. She said she feared losing her job, and her husband’s, if she didn’t give in.

Good riddance, indeed.

Then we have the Schwartzenegger case. The body builder who became the bad actor who married a Kennedy and who eventually ascended to became perhaps the worst governor of that large state, admitted misbehaving. His life has been marked by two words: infidelity and incompetence.

As governor he exploited with bravado and ignorance the idea that governing was easy. The voters bought the message thinking that a muscle-bound Kennedy-in-law could muscle away California’s fiscal problems. He did just the opposite.

When he took office the state’s debt was $22 billion and its deficit was $14 billion. When he left office just months ago those negative figures had increased to $34.7 billion and $26.6 billion respectively. He was a colossal flop and the people will have to pay for his blundering in the years to come.

One must wonder about the absurdity of the voters electing him after being forewarned about the great Arnold’s sexual propensities. They knew he considered any woman near him fair game for groping or worse. Now we learn that he sired a son by one of his household employees before he ran for governor and kept it secret all these years. His marriage now is in shambles and his renewed film career in question.

Another good riddance.

We can go back further on this sex-power connection to many others, the most notable recently being John Edwards’ fathering a child out of wedlock during his campaign for president in 2008 while his wife was suffering from cancer and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street immorality, being caught in a Washington hotel room with a hooker.

Shameful hypocrites both.

All of those mentioned were personal acts of indiscretion and downright bad taste, but not criminal in any way. It falls in the category of what the French like to feel is their national credo -- a person’s private life is his concern and no one else’s. Political transparency is the only sustainable contrary argument

Now we come to what is probably the biggest fish of all. The man who was expected to become the next president of France – head of IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He has been charged with seven counts of sexual assault.

Even the French are not calling this a private matter. They know the difference between privacy and felony. French society is split in two with the women seeming to want to hear the facts coming out of DSK’s trial and the men demanding that he receive special treatment and not be handled by police like any other criminal defendant.

The alleged attack of a housekeeper in a posh New York hotel is completely out of character for DSK, an acknowledged womanizer but a non-violent man. His previous sexual transgressions have been winked at by the French public since none of his female targets summoned the courage to file complaints.

The New York case is different. The housekeeper was quick to report the attack, police were called and DSK was eventually taken off a Paris-bound flight by detectives who traced him there. The second blow was when the judge refused to allow bail, considering him a wealthy man and the likelihood of him fleeing the country.

Perhaps the Roman Polanski incident played a role in this decision. Polanski was convicted of having illegal sex with a minor – a 13 year old girl -- and fled the country while on bail. He relocated to Paris and the French refused to extradite him to California as a fugitive. The N.Y..court would not want a repetition of that.

No matter, Strauss-Kahn’s political future is in the toilet. He will be replaced as managing director of IMF and he will never be president of France. Ensign’s political career is in ruins, Schwartenegger’s future is cloudy as is Edwards’ and only Spitzer seems on the rebound.

All because of the belief held by powerful men that they had special license that allows them to sexually exploit others.

Aging is not just for wine

2011-05-16T00:16:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

Who ever would have thought that we older members of society, like fine wine or aged cheese, would be of more commercial value than our juniors. It took the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s to do it.

It turns out that those grey-haired seniors you see on cruise ships, in downtown restaurants and driving flashy new cars are more solvent than the great majority of working stiffs in America. If you don’t believe it then why are those television marketers so high on the over 55 set.

During the soon to be announced “annual preview of the fall television season, network executives are planning to introduce shows created to have broad appeal, including to older viewers, and the ad dollars they represent,” The New York Times reported last week.

I used to feel sorry for seniors unlike myself who did not plan for their retirement well enough to enjoy the final years of their lifespan in comfort and freedom. Living in a resort town like Ocean City, Maryland, I never observed many financially troubled seniors. Maybe we were the lucky ones, I thought, but now just about any senior is better off than non-seniors.

Just look at the facts. Seniors, after decades of reasonable solid income and steady employment, have usually paid off their mortgage, own their automobile outright, are receiving Social Security checks monthly and are covered for health breakdowns by Medicare and continuing health coverage from former employers’ health insurance plans.

In addition, a good proportion of the older set have income from pensions, stock and other investments and annuities plus a fair accumulation of savings accounts. We all benefited from the good years of the American economy that followed World War II and lasted until the disastrous final year of the Bush Administration.

Besides we no longer have to support a growing family and all their growing expenses. We no longer have to underwrite the cost of college nor pay for expensive weddings that at one time was the bane of our existence.

In other words, our overhead costs have leveled off. If any seniors who retired ten or fifteen or twenty years ago are still around there is little change in their standard of living. I am not talking about the wealthy two percent of Americans. Until last year pensions and Social Security kept pace with inflation. Most investments, until the crash in 2008, held up and paid dividends.

Today, if they did not panic and sell off holdings during the drop, their stocks have mostly recovered with a few exceptions. Although rising costs in food and transportation have caused discomfort to many, virtually no seniors today are without food or shelter like in the days of our grandparents.

Besides the good fortune to have lived in America during the extended boom of the last half of the Twentieth Century, today’s seniors can credit two massive government programs for their years of relative comfort and ease.

Everyone knows they are Social Security and Medicare.

The acid test of financial status in the country is advertising. Clients research markets and advertise to potential customers based on demographics. The over 55 group was all but ignored in the past because of the assumption that those with money to spend were more youthful.

Stephanie Pappas, a senior planner for the advertising giant BBDO NY, said there was now good reason for ad clients to seek the mature audience. “In some ways, they are the ideal consumer. They have money, they consume loads of media, and they remain optimistic,” she told The Times.

The bimonthly magazine for American Association of Retired People has been pushing to attract new advertisers, according to Patricia Lippe Davis, the vice president for marketing for AARP media. Recently, products previously thought of as youthful — brands like Jeep and Shape-ups by Skechers — have advertised in AARP The Magazine.

“The grandkids say I’m ‘really cool now’ but what they don’t know is I always was,” reads the text of the Jeep ad.

The picture of a retired individual sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, smoking a pipe and sipping a cool drink is long gone. Today the retired crowd finds things to do. They play poker or bridge, they bowl, they go to the beach, they ride bikes, the women play Mah Jongg, they attend shows and concerts and dine out at fine restaurants several times a week.

Many have memberships at local gyms and find part time or seasonal work to keep themselves busy, but not too busy. They take up hobbies like carpentry and sculpting while others volunteer at hospitals, schools and libraries. They are an active, mobile group and live longer than previous generations.

And of course they attend every function open to them at their grandkids’ schools. These are the benefits of being solvent. It not just makes the oldster a happy, comparatively healthy, active person well beyond the years ever in the past. It also enriches the communities in which they live.

It would not be possible if not for Social Security and Medicare. We should all remember that. Any tampering with either of these programs by politicians in Washington will ultimately affect the quality of life not just for the retired but for the community as a whole.

A word of warning. Be happy about your personal status but don’t mention to others the reasons we seniors today are better off than most other age groups, because if you do, you might get stuck with the dinner check.

The Empire strikes back

2011-05-11T21:00:00.000-04:00

by Don Klein

The Empire strikes back. That’s the way I see the assassination of Osama bin Laden. What do I mean by Empire? And did I say assassination? Let me explain.

There is really only one empire that matters in today’s world and that is the United States. We have our tentacles in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas and Antarctica. The only continent beyond our direct influence is Australia, and even there, we have reliable allies.

Yet with all that power and influence, the US is still vulnerable to vicious assault. Loathsome unknowns, mostly Muslims, can cause great trauma and long-standing harm as the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 proved.

Historically America has been lucky. During times of great strife we have had the best to lead the country. We had Washington, Adams and Jefferson during Revolutionary Days, Abe Lincoln during the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt during the period of America’s entry into global power and Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II.

Unfortunately in 2001 our luck ran out. We had incompetents in charge. The Bush-Cheney administration had the dismantling of the America we all knew and loved on their agenda when we were struck by members of the team of terrorists organized and trained by Bin Laden to carry out his awful scheme against us.

Our response was lots of fearless talk and brainless decisions. We gave up early on getting Bin Laden because Bush wanted to fight Iraq to avenge the failed assassination of his father and because Cheney had visions of controlling the vast reserves of Iraqi oil. In other words we used the excuse of the terror attacks in the US to line the pockets of the oil industry so close to Bush and Cheney’s cold hearts.

For the remainder of the Bush-Cheney term of more than seven years we fought an unnecessary war and never got close to striking at the heart of the problem – Osama bin Laden. He escaped a near trap in Bora Bora in December 2001 because Rumsfeld would not release the number of troops needed to encircle him. The Bush gang-that-couldn’t-shot-straight never got close to him again and the country earned the soubriquet “Paper Tiger.”

Then came Barack Obama with a new perspective, It took time to get the ship of state back on course after eight disastrous years, and by his second year in the White House things began to happen. In less than ten months the team under his leadership was able to track down Bin Laden, compose a plan to take him, and find a befitting force to get the job done.

In the end Obama sent in a relatively tight unit of bruising commandoes to do the job that Bush could not do with an army of hundreds of thousands at the peak of the war. The Navy Seals knew their task and never wavered. Nevertheless it was a risky venture.

They went into Pakistan on low-flying helicopters under the cloak of darkness, repelled themselves down into his compound, cut down all opposition and with precision took out the villain of 9/11 with two rapid shots. The wicked beast of al Qaeda was dead. The Empire struck back with exactitude....finally.

Why did I say earlier Bin laden was assassinated? To begin with the Americans we not going to trust a mass murderer like Bin Laden. He could have had weapons hidden in his Muslim robes, or a detonator for a bobby trap, and he was moving towards weapons lying nearby.

It was noted only if he was naked and standing with his hands up would they take his captive. Another observer made the powerful claim that you do not send Navy Seals to make arrests. At any rate taking Bin Laden captive would have given the US too many unnecessary snags.

There would be endless threats against the country while he lingered in jail awaiting trial. The trial itself would cost millions.

Finally, and most convincingly, he was a confessed killer who admitted his guilt to all while gloating over the chaos of the fallen Twin Towers so what kind of defense could he muster? By killing him on the spot we not only eliminated from the world a depraved piece of human trash, but saved the US the demeaning cost of treating him as a human while in custody.

So the Empire struck back and assassinated the leader of deranged plotters against peace. No more “paper tiger” appellatives. It took a courageous American leader who accepted risks his predecessor never considered to end a decade of failures during which the US expended too many lives – both American and Muslim -- and a heavy dose of its wealth.

There are a number of lessons learned during the decade:

1. The US military is extended much to widely and should be withdrawn from all overseas posts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We are not effective as an empire and we cannot afford the costs anymore.

2. If military action in necessary somewhere distant, instead of sending armies we should use small well trained and well equipped units to do the work and get out.

3. Focus vigilance at home with intelligent, workable plans.

4. Don’t allow anyone to think of this country as a paper tiger again. Attacking the US is not the way to amplify your life span.

5. And finally, only elect dauntless and intelligent leaders to the White House so when the next crisis arises, and it will, we have the right person at the nation’s helm.

Going to the dogs

2011-04-28T15:48:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

I was driving along a country road in Delaware the other day when I noticed the van in front of me was in the business of “Mobil Dog Grooming.” Across the top of the back doors was inscribed it’s clever motto: “Going to the Dogs.”

How appropriate, I thought. This company was going to the dogs while the country in general was also going to the dogs but without the tongue in cheek. We just experienced the exasperation of the president of the United States being forced to bow so low as to publicly produce his birth certificate.

At first I was exhilarated when I learned that President Obama released his long form birth certificate to finally shut up the growing political rabble who were making an issue of his legitimacy as the elected leader of this nation by attacking his birthright.

Such criticism was patently absurd from the start and was clearly not anywhere near the level of the real problems facing the nation. Yet it had to be handled because it absorbed too much of the public debate, thanks to a Republican barrage of lies, at a time when the nation could not afford it.

But after a time, I thought about it some more and the idea sank in and I became deeply dismayed that this sort of mischief-making and slanderous insinuations became such an issue that Obama had to stoop to silence the morons across the nation who embraced such inconsequential nonsense.

Jackie Robinson had his painful trials as the first black ballplayer in the major leagues and today is hailed as having changed the nature of America. Now Obama has become the equivalent of Robinson, but in the much more significant environment of the presidency.

The challenge to his legitimacy can only be explained as racism, pure and simple, although clumsily disguised by people like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and silently indorsed by Republican leaders in Congress who stood to gain from any damage done to the Democratic leader.

Interestingly none of the previous 43 presidents of the United States have ever be asked to prove they were legitimate Americans. None have been accused as foreign interlopers trying to steal the American government from the people. John McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone was never challenged. But he is white and Republican.

The weight of this embarrassing conclusion to this totally unnecessary revelation of Obama’s, lies on the Republican Party. It is their members who have launched and sustained this illogical and insulting campaign and none of the so-called sensible leaders of the party put the matter to rest.

Oh yes there was one. Mitt Romney declared openly that Obama is American born and Romney said he would not discuss that issue but rather would devote his campaign to matters of importance facing the nation. All the rest toyed maliciously with the birther lies.

John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, said he takes the president at his word that he was born in the US but would not counsel his caucus to drop the birther issue. He claimed it was not up to him to tell his members what to think even if he knew what they were thinking was untrue. With that Boehner became the first among many scoundrels.

What really hurts is the fact that polls showed that the majority of Republicans believed Obama was not born on US territory or were not sure of his citizenship even after the State of Hawaii released a certificate of live birth in his name. The American voter, not known for sharp intelligence, often dwells in knownothingism.

As the great political pundit of the early Twentieth Century, H.L. Mencken, claimed in a lecture at Columbia University in January 1940, most political candidates reach public office usually by their power “to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged” in the country. In the 71 years since he mutters those words not much has changed.

I hold the masses of Americans who listen and believe the most outrageous claims by half-baked candidates for office as the real culprits in this insidious drama. Fortunately they are not a majority of the electorate but they are a large enough minority to often affect close elections.

Who can forget the classic Ed Murrow CBS Reports program about the great American voter which opened with the lead character entering a Mississippi polling place and signing the register with a broad “X” while millions of literate blacks were kept by unjust laws and cold fear from ever thinking of voting.

Republicans have made an industry of weaning fear into political victories. Remember the Michael Dukakis campaign derailed by the Willie Horton story, remember Ronald Reagan and his onerous charge that the government is the problem, and remember eight years of terror fear during the George W. Bush years which robbed thousands of GIs of their lives and millions more Americans of their Constitutional rights of privacy.

The sad fact is that instead of Obama being hailed as the great American example of the triumph of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks making it as a brilliant student, as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, as an author and a Constitutional scholar, and then the ultimate prize, as president, his detractors will now try to debunk him as a scholastic fraud and the beneficiary of affirmative action.

There were political observers in Lincoln’s day (another success story of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks) who described him as a baboon. No one remembers their names today, but the world honors the memory of Lincoln.

Donald Trump take note. History will record you as a detestable charlatan, if it records your name at all, while Obama surely will earn the plaudits of time.

Once in love with Amy

2011-04-20T10:38:00.000-04:00

By Don Klein

I arrived at the local medical laboratory to have a blood test, It’s nothing special, I’ve been doing this routinely for years. Nevertheless the occasion this time brought back ancient memories.

It’s funny how life is. You are doing one thing and it reminds you of something completely unrelated and soon you are wandering in that pleasant old neighborhood: Memory Land. That’s what happened the other day.

After a short wait a receptionist called my name and led me into the catacomb-like sanctum of the hospital lab. She took me to a small room with a desk and a computer and pointed to a young woman who was waiting for me, The escort said, ”This is Amy. She’ll take care of you.”

At the sound of the name Amy I broke into a silly rendition of that old favorite of mine, “Once in Love with Amy, Always in Love With Amy.” The clerk behind the desk who was preparing the papers for me to sign before having my blood drawn was much too young to have remembered Ray Bolger in “Where’s Charley,” but she started to laugh at my singing. That happens a lot. I asked her, “Have you ever heard that song before?”

“Many times,” she answered pleasantly, but with a hint of the forbearance of a person who was listening to a repetitious old joke. I decided I had to better my status with her by asking, “Do you know where it is from?” She had a puzzled look on her face, “What do you mean ?” I responded “What show the song came from?”

She was about 30 years old and of course didn’t know. It was a hit song in show that was last performed on Broadway some three decades before she was born.

“It was sung by and danced to by Ray Bolger. Do you remember him?” I said. Her answer was expected “I think so. Wasn’t he the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.”

Of course she was right, but my memory of Ray Bolger is a bit different and her name resurrected memories. It goes back to Christmas time 1950 when I was a recruit taking basic training at Camp Edwards army base at the foot of Cape Cod near Hyannisport.

Because it was holiday time rigorous basic training was suspended and half the recruits were on leave during Christmas for a few days and the other half got New Year’s off. Since many of my Christian buddies wanted to spend time with their families during Christmas I volunteered to wait for a New Year’s leave.

At the same time “Where’s Charley” starring Ray Bolger was in the midst of it’s pre-Broadway run in Boston and someone associated with the show thought it would be a good idea to invite a group of GIs as guests during the holiday season. I guess there were many empty seats at that time.

“Where’s Charley” was a spoof about college life at the turn of the century in which someone had to impersonate an absent rich aunt. This version included music by the famous Frank Loesser and was destined for Broadway fame. “Once in Love with Amy” was a show stopping sequence performed by Ray Bolger, who won a Tony for his efforts.

When word got out I joined about thirty soldiers for the free show. We had early chow and left before 5 pm for the 2-1/2-hour drive to Boston. Curtain was at 8.30 in those days.

As luck would have it we started off in cold clear weather but we weren’t on the road very long when it started to snow. Soon we were in the midst of a mini-blizzard which covered all road signs and left crossroads unidentified for our half-witted driver, a farm boy for central Pennsylvania.

I figured we would not only miss the show because of the driver’s ignorance of the terrain now blanketed in snow making his written directions useless, but surely we would end up stranded on the side of the road for most of the night until the state police found us nearly frozen in our seats.

Despite all obstacles about four hours after we left Camp Edwards, the driver miraculously pulled the vehicle up in front of the theater. We had no idea how he got there, nor did he. Anyway they rushed us into the theater to the seats reserved for us and Ray Bolger was on stage in front of the curtain. The show had not started and he was going through some impromptu routines to keep the audience entertained while everyone had waited for us.

He saw us enter and said something like, “A-hah, there they are. Now we can begin the show.” We learned later that Bolger had refused to get on with the show until we arrived. He said there were a bunch of young men, most of whom were away from home for the first time at Christmas and the least he could do was wait for us. He then went on stage telling jokes, sharing stories and even dancing to keep the audience from getting restless because of the delay.

I was grateful he delayed the start of “Where’s Charley” until we got there but never gave it much more thought at the time. But when I got out of the army years later I remembered Bolger’s thoughtfulness and couldn’t help admiring him for being a willful man who was considerate of people who, while away during the holidays serving their country, thirsted for an enjoyable night out.

It was not a momentous act, but from then on every time I hear the name Amy I think fondly of Ray Bolger and what a big heart he had. He was no strawman to me.

2011-04-20T10:34:00.001-04:00

Are we the chosen people?

2011-03-26T14:04:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

The headline in Saturday’s New York Times said, "Libyan Intervention Is Costing the U.S. Less Than Expected, Analysts Say." Yippee. I suppose we should all cheer. A fighter jet in action costs a mere $13,000 an hour and a Tomahawk missile is priced at a rock-bottom $1.4 million apiece.

What a bargain! At these rates we should consider engaging in two or three more wars. Of course we could be spending nothing if we kept our noses out of the Gaddafi upheaval. But no, we are super Americans and problems around the world become ours eventually.

The cost is minuscule in military terms. Imposing a no-fly zone should amount to anywhere between $400 and $800 million. In the first days of attacks on Libyan forces the US fired 178 Tomahawks, costing the American taxpayer some $250 million.

I remember Sen. Everett Dirksen’s remark many years ago. "A billion here, a billion there, and soon we are talking about real money." There are those who believe that such expenditures during a period of economic strife is absurd.

We are cutting down on teachers pay, taking cops and firefighters off the line, slimming medical costs and unemployment funds and our infrastructure is falling apart, all because we have no funds and suddenly out of nowhere we are concerned with the welfare of a bunch of strangers whose fate has no impact on our lives.

Shouldn’t we be spending money on the well-being of American citizens rather than worrying about the welfare of unapproachable, illiterate, undependable, disorganized outlanders who probably will turn against us at first opportunity.

The first question that must be answered affirmatively before going to war should be is there any national interest of the United States in the fate of Libya? The answer is an emphatic NO.

Think of this for a change. Suppose the US had withdrawn all it forces from Europe and Asia some time ago, would we be involved in all these so-called "humanitarian" issues? If we didn’t have bases in Europe would we bother with Libya? It is easy to contemplate intervention when you have aircraft carriers cruising nearby and air force bases a hop, skip and a jump away from the troubled areas.

US troops should not be based in Europe and Asia any longer. The big war ended 66 years ago, the Soviet threat is gone, foreign nations can handle their own defenses, why do we remain there at great cost to taxpayers? But that’s a subject for another time.

The American military should have one purpose only, One and just one. To defend Americans from attack at home. To stop an enemy from doing harm to us. Not to act as the world’s protector and conscience. We have no more business in Libya than we do in providing advanced dental care for the Eskimos in Antarctic.

For 42 years the Libyan people endured under Gaddafi and we stood aloof from their plight. Even when the dictator was behind the killing of Americans in Europe all we did was a single bombing sortie over Tripoli and that was all. Today Gaddafi has harmed no Americans, has made no threats against us, and we launch an all-out attack.

It is senseless, except to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are the moral leader of nations. That’s a tired old argument. Quoting the frustrated poverty-stricken Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" when speaking to God asked, "You say we are the chosen people. Why not choose someone else for a change?"

Alas, He did choose others to help. The British, the French, the Arab League. Hah. In the past only the British has shown any real support for US in the Middle East. Remember the French introduced the UN no-fly over Iraq resolution, then reneged after it was passed and implemented.

The Arabs? Having Arab allies reminds me of my cousin Herb. He lived in Arizona and dropped by Baltimore years ago when my daughters were kids and promised them both stylish cowboy boots once he returned home in a couple of weeks. My daughters now have children of the age they were when the promise was made and still have not received the boots. Herb was as reliable then as the Arabs are today.

Qatar promised to send four (yes, you read it right, FOUR) jets to the combat area weeks ago. We are still awaiting their arrival. Whatever we get from the Arab League will be too little and too late. Suicide bombing is their forte, not a stand-up fight.

The biggest surprise here is that President Obama agreed to this brutal incursion in the first place. He ignored his own words opposing such interventions when still a member of the Senate and Bush took us into Iraq. Another promise broken.

Whoever said that women are the peacemakers and men the warriors got it all wrong. The reluctant Obama was persuaded to enter the fight by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Advisor Samantha Rice despite calls for restraint by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen.

As Maureen Dowd writing in The Times said, "...everyone is fascinated
with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Gaddafi."

This war – or whatever the president wants to call it – is wrong and should never have been mounted. If one American is killed (none so far reported) it will be blood on the hands of Obama the same way that more than 4,400 American deaths in Iraq remain eternally on George W. Bush’s bloody hands.

Truth AND consequences

2011-03-14T12:33:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

Remember the popular radio program called "Truth or Consequences." It started in 1940 and ran for 17 years and was succeeded by a television version that continued for many more years.

It had a simple format: a contestant was asked a question and if answered incorrectly, as most were, they were require to perform a zany stunt for the benefit of the studio and at-home audience.

If that game existed in today’s combative political environment the show would be called "Truth and Consequences." The "or" would we replaced by "and" since telling the truth these days can get people fired.

I always thought that telling the truth was the best policy. That you could not get into trouble if you were honest in expressing your heartfelt thoughts. Recent events in public broadcasting have proven those sophomoric beliefs not to be valid anymore.

Thinking back to last October when Juan Williams was sacked by NPR for claiming that the sight of Muslims waiting to get on the same plane he was about to board made him queasy.

He was talking on Fox News to Bill O’Reilly when he said, "... I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Williams added he did not blame all Muslims for "extremists," saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Nevertheless NPR brass sent Williams packing claiming his remarks "were inconsistent with (its) editorial standards and practices." Many people disagreed with that decision because Williams was not a reporter but an analyst and further he was not talking on NPR but on another network. The difference is that reporters are not expected to express opinions, but analyst are.

In any case many people have the same feelings about Muslims in public transportation not because of bigotry but because the overwhelming majority of recent terror aimed at the US was by Muslim radicals. The fear may be unfair and disproportionate but it is a real and understandable component of current thought.

So Williams, exercising his analyst’s right to free speech, spoke the unvarnished truth about his feelings which I fear represented the majority thought in America and lost his job. He was immediately picked up by Fox receiving a more lucrative contract than he had at NPR.

Let us fast forward to a more recent occasion when another employee of NPR spoke the truth and ended up without a job. Ronald Schiller, a high ranking fund raiser for NPR was lured into a luncheon meeting with a group posing as representatives of the non-existent Muslim Education Action Center Trust. The bait was a phony donation of $5 million.

The set up was arranged by James O’Keefe, the Republican provocateur, who trapped Acorn last year in embarrassing comments aimed at disqualifying them from receiving federal funding. Schiller foolishly spoke openly to the people he thought were Muslim philanthropists.

He said the Republican Party had been "hijacked" by the Tea Party and that many of the Tea Party supporters were "white middle Americans...gun-toting racist people." Hidden cameras videotaped his remarks and when released it gave the GOP majority in the House of Representatives additional fire to justify cutting off federal funding to public radio and television on the grounds they are politically biased.

What the Republicans have overlooked in their zeal to paint NPR as hostile to them is that Schiller had absolutely no ability to influence editorial content of the networks. The GOP was arguing against NPR’s alleged editorial prejudice and using Schiller, a non-editorial functionary, as an example of that so-called bias.

It was as if you disputed a large corporation’s stance on truck traffic in residential neighborhoods and quoted negative remarks of the plant’s gate guards. The man at the gate had no authority or responsibility over truck routes.

In Schiller’s case he was wrong to express such personal opinions to a group of people he did not know and never met before. He was guilty of poor judgment, but he told the truth about the Republicans and the Tea Party. He has since left the employ of NPR.

The facts that enrage Republican critics is that NPR is scrupulously fair in its news coverage and that fair coverage reflects poorly on the GOP, a party that is doing everything to undermine established American policies that stand in the way of their obvious war against the middle class.

The money saved by eliminating NPR funding of $445 million for 2013 is minuscule in the face of the horrendous deficit the nation faces. The Republicans have not touched gigantic budget items like tax cuts for the rich, or subsidies for big oil and big agriculture or defense cuts, but have focused on smaller items that provide them with control over sources that work to the natural benefit of the Democrats.

In an effort to preserve its federal award which goes to 1,300 public radio and television stations throughout the country, NPR has forced those who openly speak the truth to the detriment of the Republicans and Muslims off their payroll.

It is a sad state of affairs when telling the truth has such negative consequences.

Enough is enough

2011-03-09T15:24:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

Let’s go hypothetical and make some extravagant presumptions. Let us assume you are being paid $1.4 million a week for about a half-year’s work and your employer expects you to adhere to a few simple work rules.

1. You have to show up for work at the appointed time.
2. You have to be prepared to do the work assigned to you.
3. You are expected to behave on and off the job in a manner that does not reflect badly on your employer or yourself.
4. You must be respectful to all who work with you at all times.

That’s not too severe, is it? I’ve know people who make a lot less who live and work under a lot worse work rules.

Assuming that you are talented enough to skillfully carry out the details of your work, wouldn’t you accept these rules? Or would you conclude, in view of the fact you are the most highly paid of anyone at this job, that the rules do not apply to you?.

There is no question what I would do even if I was paid a lot less than the approximately $33 million annually. I would follow the work rules as if my life depended on it. Wouldn’t you? It is good to have a steady-paying job, especially these days.

I would never have more than one alcoholic beverage with meals and would never over indulge. I would never touch illegal drugs. I would report for work on time – all the time. I would make sure I knew what I was suppose to do once on the job. I certainly would never abuse my fellow employees, and most studiously not those in responsible positions.

I would want to preserve my good fortune in having such a good job and wish to protect the advantages the work brought to my family.

Not so in Charlie Sheehan’s case These are all of the things he ignored and thereby jeopardized his cushy employment and fat salary.

Let us continue with this now not so hypothetical circumstance by saying that if I had ignored all the above and went my own way to the detriment of my employer and was reprimanded, would it make sense to blame everything that went wrong on others.

What would you conclude in this situation?

How would you describe someone who blamed all his misfortunes on others? How would you react to someone who described himself as a superior human, a superman with inexhaustible appeal and magnetic attractiveness?

You would probably say that person was in need of some serious therapy. Well that’s the status of the Charlie Sheehan story, an actor at the height of his career blowing it all because of a bloated self-importance distilled through pervasive infusions of alcohol and drugs.

Anyone who endangers a great career is the author of a very sad tome. I felt that way about Michael Vick and John Edwards, two men of great potential receiving self-inflicted wounds. Vick has managed to redeem himself, but Edwards seems forever doomed to dishonor. Then there are lesser lights like today’s Lindsay Lohan to Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle of silent movie fame.

I feel that way about Sheehan If I was fortunate enough to have a job like his I would certainly tow the line. Like most people, I like to be the recipient of loads of income and it wouldn’t be hard to obey the rules of his employment which did not appear to be very severe or onerous.

He does not have to creep through someone’s crawl space to make household repairs at slightly better than minimum wages nor be outside during all kinds of bad weather nor dig ditches nor climb telephone poles. No, all he had to do was show up at a film studio and act out a silly little weekly 30-minute situation comedy.

Now he has lost it all – job and fat income. It is a sad story of human frailty. The question that remains is will be have the strength and inclination to recover and rebuild his reputation as others like Robert Downey, Jr., did, or will he continue to be obstinate and abusive? Only time will tell.

The other disturbing element of the continuing Sheehan drama is the media coverage. I think it has gone a bit overboard and perhaps it even innocently prods Sheehan on to keep this nonsense going in front of the public almost daily As usual, in its pursuit of viewers and higher ratings, television news that has made the most hay over this sad, sad story.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to recognized that the poor man is ill. He needs professional help and to exploit his situation with television clips of his sorrowful behavior is in bad taste. I know the television assignment editors will say that Sheehan is a legitimate news story because of his celebrity and his open battle with the powerful networks. But isn’t enough, enough?

Give the guy a break and send him the phone number of a good therapist.

Eisenhower, the sage

2011-02-22T20:09:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

The United States is a debtor nation, yet it sustains the most portentous and feared military force in human history. Oddly this phenomenon exists when it is not challenged by any enemy of comparable awesome power – not by a long shot (pardon the pun). Further there is no nation anywhere threatening it or on bad terms with the US. Not the Russians, not the Chinese, none at all.

To add to the absurdity of the scenario, the US is broke and owes hundreds of billions of dollars to other nations. It also suffers the burden of a crushing deficit which must be reduced.

Is there something in this package of facts that makes sense?

How can such an economically bereft nation maintain such a military monster for virtually no reason at all? Strangely enough President Dwight D. Eisenhower spelled out the reason more than a half century ago. The United States is afflicted with what may be a fatal malady. Ike warned us about it in his farewell speech. He described it as "the military-industrial complex."

Eisenhower was not a great president, but he was an honest man who knew all about war. During World War II he was the commanding general of millions of Allied forces in the European Theater. He might not have known much about social issues or other civilian matters, but he was an incontrovertible expert on the military.

This dichotomy reminded me of the fact that my whole life has been spent under the cloud of war. I was barely 10 years old when wars broke out in Asia and Europe and I was happy after WWII that there was no one left to fight. I was wrong.

There was the Korean War soon afterward, in which I served, then the tense near war over the Cuba missile threat, then Vietnam and Cambodia campaigns, the aborted war with Iran over the hostage situation, and the Reagan invasion of Grenada, the Lebanese Marine barracks debacle, the air attack on Libya, the Iran-Contra affair and deploying defensive missiles to Europe, followed by the Bosnian war and now for more than a decade, the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Almost every post-WWII president during the last six decades sent US forces into harms way on questionable missions. They seemed to act on the premise that we are the superpower, and have to demonstrate it by flexing our might.

I don't believe there has been a similar period of history that has had more wars affecting a single nation. War is an awful waste of humanity, of resources, of industrial clout, of intellectual potential. It is interesting how history seems to write its story despite all else.

Suddenly, after all these decades, Eisenhower, a bourgeois military man, comes away appearing to be a farsighted political sage. This country's future has already been derailed by the false belief that overwhelming military superiority will keep us safe from attack. Remember, it didn’t stop 9/11?

There is no major military power threatening us, yet we spend more on arms and military operations than all other nations combined. And if anyone suggests we slowdown we get the usual fear-peddling nonsense about being soft on security. The nation's gullible voters buy it hook, line and sinker and we continue casting ourself as the most well-armed pauper in the world.

In all fairness the US was not the only nation afflicted by wars. There were dozens of hostilities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America during what became the bloodiest century of all time. And that’s not even counting the two most lethal European conflicts – World War I and World War II.

In too many of these wars the US has played a part – if only as a materiel supporter of one side or another and, in others, like Iraq, WWI and WWII, as the principal adversary.

But with the decline of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the 20th century there is no substantial military power facing the country, and none are on the horizon. So why do we maintain such an awesome, and expensive, military force?

Eisenhower warned about it. Big industry makes tons of profits selling arms and other military supplies. The arms makers influence Congress with donations and high ranking professional warriors parrot fearful consequences to keep up the spending for wars that are not at all likely. Members of Congress in turn sell their warlike programs employing large doses of frightful dire consequences to the public and tamp down all political opposition by branding them "soft on security."

So the carousel keeps twirling with the US screwing itself into the ground. The thought of reducing the immense military drain on the budget to ease the economic crisis now facing the country is hardly ever mentioned, and when it is it is, it is couched in modest terms.

At the current rate we will be nation no different than a larger version of many third world countries which have a well-financed military supported by an undernourished, unskilled populace controlled by a puppet government owned by the biggest of all industrial claques, whose top executives live in pure luxury.

What we need to do is break the cycle. The first fiscal cuts should come out of an over-bloated military budget, cutting it back to the size a little bit larger than the tradition peacetime force maintained for centuries by the US. Cuts in other programs affecting civilians can follow once we correct the military-industrial imbalance.

Sex and the old man

2011-02-15T10:39:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

They were back at KFC-Taco Bell, the winter haunt of retired men at seaside. Sam munching on the usual chicken breast, original recipe, and Mario enjoying his bean burritos with the enthusiasm of an epicurean dining at a Waldorf feast prepared for gourmands.

"What would you think of an 84-year-old, twice divorced, guy who is marrying a shapely 24-year-old blonde saying, 'This is it. This is a very, very special one. I expect to spend the rest of my life with her’?" Sam asked.

"I’d say the rest of his life is not going to be very long," Mario snapped back, adding after a pause, "Is this a hypothetical question or are you talking about someone you know?"

"This is not a fictional character. We all know him. You know him also." Sam started to chuckle as he considered the prospect. "Who do you know who would marry a gal 60 years his junior?"

"Most of the guys I know these days would consider marrying a woman 60 years of age as robbing the cradle." then challenging his friend, Mario asked, "You are almost as old as that guy you are talking about, would you marry someone that young?"

"I said you knew him, aren’t you interested in who he is?" Sam ignored the question about what he would do.

"Yeah, who is this nut who plans to end his life in the saddle earlier than otherwise?"

"Why none other than your good friend Hugh Hefner, the founder and recipient of the Playboy fortune."

"Hef’s no friend of mine."

"Sure he is. I guess you were a Playboy devotee in your wayward younger years, slobbering over those buxom young playmates month after month. We all were." Sam claimed.

"I’ll admit I read a few copies of the magazine, but I didn’t pay much attention to the Playmates in it. I spent my time in reality. I preferred real live women and will admit I was a bit of a ladies’ man in my day." Mario confessed.

"Yeah, you told me you were a bit on the wild side before you settled down with your wife for good. I suppose you didn’t have time for Playboy. Now it was different with me. I'm old fashion, I'm a one woman guy and have been married for over 50 years. But I was a regular Playboy reader for a couple of years."

"So Hef is getting married you say. And the bride to be is only 24 years old?" Mario noted.

"That’s correct. I thought Charlie Chaplin was stretching things when he hooked up with Oona O’Neill in 1943," Sam said, "He was 54 and she was only 18 when they were married. And despite the age duifference they had eight children."

"I don’t remember anything about that. I was just a child at the time, but I read somewhere that Oona’s father, Eugene O’Neill, the playwright, was not very happy about the union."

"He certainly was not -- in fact he disowned her and they never spoke to each other again."

"Well who is marrying Hef?" Mario asked.

"Her name is Crystal Harris," Sam said, "There was a picture of the two of them in The New York Times magazine a few weeks ago. He was seated on a throne-like chair in black silk pajamas and a red silk robe looking like an ancient potentate and she was standing next to him like a teen concubine dressed-up to look older, with long blond tresses and a too short skirt." Sam tried to be explicit.

"I thought it was laughable. I am younger than Hef by a few years and have a granddaughter almost as old as Crystal," Sam continued, "In fact Hef has a daughter who is 58 years old. She could be Crystal’s mother."

"Imagine a 58 year-old woman with a 24-year-old stepmother," Mario laughed,
"only in Hollywood."

"It sounds like you think Hef has never grown up and still thinks of himself as a young buck ready to sniff any female that comes by like a dog in heat," Mario suggested.

"Don’t get me wrong I give the guy all the credit. What other octogenarian do we know who can still command the interest of those young birds," Sam said, almost with admiration, "But I am not ready to concede that his appeal to the kitty crowd is sexual. He cannot be much of a partner there, but he pays well. He has to realize they wouldn’t be there if he didn’t. That must be his real allure."

"How do you know that?" Mario asked.

"Well the story said he pays the young things that agree to stay at his luxurious Hollywood mansion keeping him in a sensual Valhalla $1,000 a week and picks up virtually all their expense, like autos, clothes and so on. The mansion costs over $3 million a year to run."

"I sort of feel sorry for the old geezer," Mario became very thoughtful suddenly. "As they say there is a time in life for all things. Time to be born, to grow up, to get married, to raise a family – and a time to enjoy the autumn years relaxing and reviewing the vicissitudes of life."

Then he pondered, "Poor Hef he tries be appear debonair but never grew out of the teenage years. He still hangs out with chics. An old man, who will be 85 in two months, cannot find adult things to do with his life so he pays young women to parade around his bedroom without clothes on and occasionally join him in Viagra-buttressed sex."

"That’s an avocation reserved for young men." he declared wistfully.

"Dammit," they simultaneously agreed.

What’s in a name after all?

2011-02-05T01:45:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

“Flozell, Crezdon, Atari, Diyral." It was Mario speaking before he carefully bit down on a plump bean burrito at the KFC-Taco Belle outlet. It had become one of the winter destinations when the Boardwalk was no longer fit for human hanging out for the weekly meeting with his retiree buddy, Sam.

“What are you talking about?” Sam looked up from the fried split breast he was about to lift to his mouth and stared at his luncheon partner with a puzzled expression.

“My God, what strange, strange names.” Was all Mario said, appearing to be talking out loud to himself.

“Sounds like you know some of the rebels in the Cairo uprising? Or are you just overwhelmed by the aroma of those gaseous beans you’re eating?” Sam never missed an opportunity to slander his friend’s obsession for beans.

“Do you think I really give a damn about those Arabs rioting some 10,000 miles away? If it were not Egypt now, it would be Iran or Tunisia or Lebanon or some other God forsaken country in the Middle East in the past and probably in the future.” He growled, “After centuries of oppression they finally noticed they are living in the modern era.”

“If not the demonstrators in Egypt what did you mean by those strange words you just uttered?” Sam asked.

“It’s all about the Super Bowl. How those irritating Arabs managed to move the greatest sports event in America off the television screens and front pages of the country.” Virgil was fuming.

“You really think the Super Bowl is more important than the sudden overthrow of a dictator of a country of 80 million people?”

“Of course,” he answered, then added, “at least to us Americans.”

“I still don’t know what you were talking about when you blurted out those weirdo names,” a bewildered Sam said.

“See what the demonstrations did to you. You don’t even recognize the important names coming up in the news two days hence.”

Sam was now irritated, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“If the riots hadn’t distracted everyone you would know that Flozell Adams and Crezdon Butler play for the Steelers and Atari Bigby and Diyral Briggs play for the Packers.” Virgil explained.

“So what, I know there are lots of unusual names among professional football players. We all know about Haloti Ngata and Ladarius Webb of the Ravens, for example.” Sam added.

“Well that’s my point.” Virgil was near the end of his first bean burrito and was already eyeing the next one on the table lying passively on a wrapper in front of him.

“You know something? I can’t follow you.” Sam said, “What’s your point besides blaming the Egyptians for bumping the Super Bowl from the top news slot this week.”

“Well if they really wanted to change their government by massive demonstrations couldn’t they at least have waited until Monday afternoon so Americans would have time to relish the Super Bowl at least 24 hours before being brought back to the ugliness of international politics?,” Virgil moaned.

“Is that all you have to say about it?” his friend asked.

“Well I really wanted to talk about the weird names we gotten used to in football. Listen to these, for example. How about Maurkice Pouncey, the young center of the Steelers. He just started this year and will be around for a long time. What a crazy name!”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“To begin, the name seems to be a misspelling of M-a-u-r-i-c-e. Why is there a ‘k’ after the ‘r’?” Virgil emoted like an English teacher. “Then on the Packers there is Korey Hall. I’ve never seen that name spelled with a ‘K’ and Jarius Wynn. I heard of Darius, but never Jarius.

“Sadly the Packers have three players with no first or second names – they only have initials. Are you aware there is an A.J. Hawk, a linebacker; B. J. Raji a nose guard and C.J. Wilson a defensive end? Elsewhere there is a T.J. Houshmandzadeh on the Ravens. All I can conclude is ‘J’ is a very popular middle initial.”

“What’s in a name anyway,” Sam said, “How did Shakespeare put it? ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.”

“I doubt if any of these guys smell very sweet, certainly not at the end of a game. Getting back to my point. There is a Ziggy Hood on the Steelers. Sounds like he should be a jazz musician.”

“I know what you are talking about. During the regular season I noticed the Jets had a couple of strange sounding ones on their roster. LaDanian Tomlinson for one and the strangest of all was D’Brickashaw Ferguson,” Sam continued, “I couldn’t figure that one out. Not only is his last name Scotch and his first name has an apostrophe, but it sounds like his name is a phonetic description of a two-wheeled street cab pulled by a coolie in ancient China.”

"A couple of years ago there was Plexico Burris on the Giants. He is now serving time on gun charges," Sam interjected.

“Well when you get right down to it names shouldn’t matter that much. Do you have a favorite player?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah, I like Anquan Boldin of the Ravens, despite his name” Sam confessed, trying to be humorous. “Who do you like?” he asked.

“I don’t have a favorite football player, but I like Hosni Mubarak,” Virgil answered with a sardonic chuckle.

Sucking the last of the chicken off the breast bone Sam answered, “If we are now talking politics, I like Barack Obama.” He paused, “ Yeah, what’s in a name after all?”

“What happened to great athlete's names like Babe, Duke and Mickey?” said Virgil as he finished his final bean burrito and burped.

The forgotten giant

2011-01-17T20:39:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

Here we are again celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and again I have that deep down feeling that there is somehow an injustice being imposed on history and all of us. I get this feeling every January when everyone is being reminded of King and no one mentions the giant of the last century, FDR.

I have no reason to suggest that Reverend King does not deserve national recognition or that his deeds were not worthy of being commemorated by observing his birthday as a national holiday.

But I do feel that giving tribute to the civil rights leader while ignoring the greatest American president of our time is not fair and very close to an abomination, especially since both men were born in January and both were giants in their time.

Thinking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States, the man who served as head of the nation longer than any other in the past or ever will in the future, I get nostalgic. He was elected to a record four terms and held the reins of government for 4,422 days, longer by far than any other man.

He took office in 1933 and died four months into his fourth term in 1945, just as World War II was coming to an end. His funeral was attended by all the world leaders of the time, and if you were alive at the time, as I was, you will never forget it.

I give him no credit for length of service. I never think of him as the political iron man equivalent of Cal Ripken. I remember him for his leadership, the immensity of his interests and the variety of his work. He was as Beethoven was to music; Einstein to mathematics; and Shakespeare to literature.

He took us beyond the ordinary. He had uncommon vision. He established new norms. He broke boundaries.

He was creative in national policies, he charmed his political enemies, roused world leaders to great levels while being inspirational to the masses of struggling Americans in bad times and the savior of millions of subjugated Europeans during the worst period in world history.

FDR, as he was readily known by headline writers and the man and woman on the street, was the man who faced the worst economic travail in US history when he took office in 1933. He vowed to put the nation back on its feet with a range of programs which protected the ordinary citizen and brought reasonable controls to a reluctant American business community.

He was the first president I was aware of as a child and when he spoke to the country on his patented radio “fireside chats” (there was no television in those days) millions sat silent and listened intently. You could say he was the first superstar the country ever knew.

In the 1930s his voice, though cultured and sounding a bit uppity, was the soothing salve of confidence for a frightened nation, a father figure, during the Great Depression assuring everyone that all will soon be well. And once war broke out in the 1940s that same confident voice convinced Americans we would prevail against our enemies when at first that was no such certainty.

His days were the best of all times during the worst of all times.

He not only talked the good talk, as they say these days, but he walked the good walk. His programs – social security, Wall Street reform, and a myriad of alphabet agencies – brought the country back onto its feet. During the war his decisive leadership guaranteed an Allied victory against evil in Europe and Asia.

He holds a hallowed place in my mind. No president since faced as many dreadful challenges as FDR. I consider him among the five greatest presidents ever – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt are the other four. We will not see his likes again.

It is for that reason that I am uncomfortable with the fact that the nation celebrates King’s birthday and not FDR’s. No question that King was a great man and served this nation well. But his accomplishments were almost entirely in one important field. He helped destroy the ugly barriers to black equality in the country. That is good.

When compared to the worldwide accomplishments of FDR however, he stands some distance behind in achievements. Somehow FDR’s greatness was lost in the post WWII years as American politics was tangled with awkward partisanship, a series of petty wars and the civil rights movement.

MLK has roads and schools in practically every major city named for him. That is fine. But most of the edifices named Roosevelt were dedicated to the memory of Theodore, not Franklin, except for the East Side Highway in New York City and state parks in Georgia and New York.

Shouldn’t we honor the greatest president in the last century with something more – at least make his birthday, January 30, a national holiday?

I am reminded of the story often told about the man standing on the roadside as the FDR funeral cortege passed. The man was weeping profusely as though he had lost a member if his family. A passerby noticed the crying man and asked, “Did you know the president?” The tear-drenched man said, “No, but he knew me.”

There are not many presidents who could have elicited such a response.

House of charades

2011-01-08T11:57:00.002-05:00

By Don Klein

Congress is in session and it is time again for that famous and well-worn Washington game called, "Congressional charade." How better to spend your limited time as a member of Congress than seeming to be doing something when actually you are not.

The burlesque occupying the members of the House of Representatives through its second week of the new session is called repeal of the Health Act passed last year when Congress was controlled by Democrats.

It is a mockery because everyone knows, especially the Republican leaders of the House, that the bill will never be enacted even if it passes with flying colors in the Republican dominated lower chamber of the national legislature.

"It’s symbolic," John Boehner, the new speaker of the House admitted, "we promised our constituents." Known for saying his party is fulfilling the desires of the American people he ignored the fact that the majority of voters in the latest poll by CNN have an exact opposite view of the Health Care Act.

Over 60 percent said they like it and in fact many wish it went further than it does.

But that is not the only fact the Republicans en masse dismiss when they talk about the law. The Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan statistical arm of Congress, claimed that the Health Act will save taxpayers $230 billion over the next decade against the alternative of doing nothing and would cover an additional 32 million Americans.

Republican after Republican who were asked about this deficit increase that would result from the repeal deny this simple fact. "It’s got to cost more," Rep. Mike Ross, (R-Arkansas) said, when you add millions more to the insurance rolls. The GOP has been in the act of denying facts ever since George W. Bush became president.

Recall how after the Army searched for months over hill and dale in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and found none, then President Bush insisted there WMD’s still were threatening the nation. Remember Vice President Cheney saying deficits were good, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Speaker Boehner in his remarks to House members on the first day of the 112th Congress said there would be open sessions on all bills, then exempted the health repeal effort from debate and amendments. He also said that all new legislation offered must be accompanied by an explanation of what funds will be cut or trimmed to avoid adding to the deficit.

That too was violated by the leadership in exempting from the rule the health proposal and a handful of other favorite GOP pieces of legislation slated for action by the party. Of course who can forget the massive addition to the deficit buried in the bosom of a massive tax cut for the wealthy squeezed from Obama by the Republicans during the lame duck session last year.

To them it is a game: sounds like jobs through tax cuts for millionaires . Looks like acting for the people. Sounds like open House rules. Charade. Charade. Charade. It is all a game, but a dangerous one. Might as well play Russian roulette.

The reason the health repeal won’t work is because the Senate is still controlled by the Democrats and is unlikely even to take up the repeal. If they do it should be defeated, ending the effort there. If by chance it should pass the Senate, Obama will veto it and Congress will not be able to override the president’s rejection.

"Don’t you think it’s a waste of time?" a reporter asked Boehner.

"No, I do not," he said. "I believe it’s our responsibility to do what we said we were going to do. And I think it’s pretty clear to the American people that the best health care system in the world is going to go down the drain if we don’t act."

Even though health repeal will be dead on arrival, the GOP leaders of the House insist on pushing it through against the will of the people, and against their own commitment to lower the deficit, and against all reasonable hope of final enactment. The question we should ask is why they do things just to be symbolic during a period of severe unemployment and economic stress in the nation?

Why isn’t the House trying to do something about stimulating employment? They criticized the Democrats when they were in power for not doing enough to blunt joblessness.

In their way of thinking, all that matters if what is good for the insurance companies which after repeal would be able to reject covering the needy. Next target will be social security and medicare?

The deplorable fact is that nothing significant will happen during the next two years because the noxious bills the House may pass will never be approved by the Senate. And the Senate will never get anything done until they revise the filibuster rule, which is not a certainty at all.

So welcome to the 112th Congress which will be noted for spinning wheels, attending masquerade parties on the House and Senate floors, and playing endless charades. Even with the reduction by members in cutting House office costs by five percent they will still be the best Congress money can buy. But the money will come from corporations and the waste paid for by taxpayers.

An unexpected Obama surge

2010-12-26T21:51:00.002-05:00

By Don Klein

When you have the nerve to express your opinions publicly you have a tendency to occasionally to put your foot in your mouth. I experienced such a moment a mere three weeks ago when I scolded President Obama for what I concluded was a reckless abandonment of principles in giving in to the extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.

I described Obama as a " reluctant warrior" who demonstrated "failed leadership" because of his compromise with the obstinate Republican senators on extending the Bush tax cuts. I said Obama was a disappointment and was suffering from a "massive dose of languor" because he didn’t fight harder for his principles.

Then came the final week of the Lame Duck Congress just before Christmas. It proved I was wrong.

Obama turned the tables in a sudden unpredictable sweep of legislation that would have made any president proud. It was unprecedented. He managed, with the help of solid Democrat support and a handful of moderate Republicans, to demonstrate that he did indeed have the clout we all hoped he would have. He improved his image as a leader here and abroad. All of which accrues to the benefit of the nation as a whole.

Just in case you have forgotten, this is what the Obama Congress accomplished in his first two years. It is as formidable as any president could have done and surpasses the efforts of previously Republican leaders:

>Lilly Ledbetter Act, January 29, 2009. Makes it easier for workers to file
employment-discrimination lawsuits.

>SCHIP, February 4, 2009. Expands health care coverage for children.

>Stimulus, February 17, 2009. Provides $787 billion in tax cuts and additional spending to aid U.S. economic-recovery efforts

>Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, April 21, 2009. Creates incentives to foster volunteer opportunities through programs such as AmeriCorps.

>Credit Card Bill of Rights, May 22, 2009. Enhances safeguards to protect consumers from abusive practices.

>Tobacco, June 22, 2009. Provides the Food and Drug Administration with enhanced authority to regulate tobacco products

>Cash for Clunkers, August 7, 2009. Provides consumers with a cash incentive to buy automobiles with higher fuel-efficiency standards.

>Hate-Crimes Bill, October 28, 2009. Enhances law-enforcement resources to prosecute crimes based on gender and sexual orientation.

>Health Care, March 30, 2010. Overhauls the U.S. health care system to provide insurance coverage for more Americans.

>Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, March 30, 2010. Makes the federal government the provider of all student loans.

>Financial-Regulatory Reform, July 21, 2010. Expands federal government’s role in regulating financial markets.

>Tax Cuts, December 17, 2010. Extends for two years the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003.

>'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell', December 22, 2010. Lifts the ban on openly gay men and women from serving in the military

>Food Safety, December 21, 2010' Strengthens regulatory standards intended to protect the nation’s food supply.

>New START, December 22, 2010. Implements a new arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

>9/11 First-Responders Bill, December 22, 2010. Funds medical care for first responders sickened after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Add them up and there are 16 important bills in two years. Admittedly not all of them were perfect, but that is not unusual in legislation. Nothing is ever really the way many people prefer it to be. But is a sign of accomplishment.

What must be remembered is that all this was accomplished in the face of an obstructionist senate which at the whim of a single senator, bills could be delayed into oblivion. We should be particularly proud of the Democrats who stood by their guns to fight for the people down to the bloody end. We also must take our hats off to the dozen or so Republican moderates who joined the majority near the end of the session to salvage much of this legislation.

Even though may, including me, are still extremely unhappy with the extension of tax cuts for millionaires, many of whom said they would happily forgo the benefit, it seemed to be the plunger that dislodged the hopelessly stuffed legislative pipeline. I am only sorry that Obama didn’t rise to the can-do occasion before the election to possibly save the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

Make no mistake. The next two years will be no picnic on Capitol Hill. I doubt the president will be able to do as much, in fact I think most of his energy will be used to stave off the GOP, which allowed much of what was accomplished this session only because they planned to kill some of the laws by not funding much of this new legislation in the next Congress since they hold the purse strings in the House.

Nevertheless there is a new sense of reliance in Obama and his strategists. I would not sell him short given his successes during the first half of his term. The sadness is the failure of the Dream Act to pass. That should work to the disadvantage of the Republicans in the presidential election of 2012. Hispanics would be fools not to remember which party submarined the bill to aid the innocent children of illegal aliens.

The important fact is the Republicans now know they have a notable opponent in Obama and will not take him lightly as we move on to the next Congress. I look forward with lots more enthusiasm to the next two years.

Not doing the right thing

2010-12-18T10:35:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

When I think of bravery and self-sacrifice I can’t help but visualize the indelible and lasting image of those martyred firefighters and policemen racing into the scorching, choking New York skyscrapers in September 2001. That picture will never escape my mind.

As thousands of innocent occupants fled the inferno to safety several hundred first responders, laden down with heavy hoses and air packs, rushed into danger without regard to their safety. It was surreal. Why would they do that when good reason would insist that they exit, not enter, the death traps?

When the toll was counted after the collapse of the buildings, 343 firefighters and 60 policemen died in the tragedy.

By and large that is what firefighters and policemen do. They go where the trouble is and don’t slow down because it might be dangerous or because it is a holiday.

But that is not the end to the calamity. For months afterward scores of surviving firefighters, joined by other volunteers and off-duty cops, searched the rubble looking for survivors and when that hope dissipated, they worked to recover as many of the 2,742 of the dead they could from the entangled debris to provide them with honorable burials.

There was nothing anyone could do for the dead but the first responders who stayed at the scene for months have been rewarded by fate with dreadful health problems (severe lung ailments and untreatable cancers). Now the United States Senate rewarded them with callous indifference.

Legislation to provide relief for these heroes passed the House of Representatives but has been delayed, if not halted altogether, by Senate Republicans. Why? One reason is it involves a lot of money and in this age of monstrous deficits the Republicans only have room to remember the rich with a $900 billion unfunded boondoggle in tax cuts while real American heroes can wretch themselves into oblivion.

Senate Republicans will allow these 9/11 champions to suffer and die while they pander to the most covetous, wealthy of Americans. The Republicans don’t care because they will never get a dimes worth of campaign donations from firefighters while the upper crust will reward their political lap dogs handsomely before the next election.

Most Americans strongly disagree with these astigmatic Republicans. When I was an adolescent living in my family’s apartment in the Bronx I was awaken one night by a noisy commotion across the street in the early hours of a wintery morning. It turned out that a three alarm fire had engulfed a five story apartment house. It was so cold the water thrust from multiple fire hoses into the upper floors froze into long stalactites hanging from the fire escapes on the way down.

Mesmerized by the scene unfolding before my eyes I suddenly noticed housewives from other houses in the areas, my mother included, each bundled against the cold, carrying pots of hot coffee to the firefighters as the battle against the flames went on for hours.

It was a small gesture and they didn’t have to do it, but the sense of community was strong in those days. The firefighters were protecting their families and the least they could do was to offer them something hot on a frigid night.

Not so with our apathetic senators. Their hearts are so cold they see nothing wrong with spitting on ordinary people. They have been doing it for years. It is their second nature. What is difficult to understand is why we keep sending these contaminated minions of the rich and privileged back to Congress election after election?

Sen. Jon Llewellyn Kyl, (R-Arizona) gave another explanation why the bill to relieve the first responders should not be brought up during the lame duck period. They would have to work over the Christmas holiday week and that, according to him, "would disrespect" Christians observing Christmas.

I would like to see Kyl present one Christian, other than a rock-ribbed Republican, who would object to Congress working during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and one who would not favor giving assistance to 9/11 heroes.

The Republicans are the first to holler "class warfare" whenever anyone says that the rich should pay a larger share of income taxes than others. Yet it is senators like Kyl who are the people engaged in class warfare. Why? Because it is all right for you and me and every other ordinary citizen to work during the Christmas-New Year’s holidays but not members of Congress.

Check any fire house or police station anywhere in the country this holiday season and you will find men and women on duty as they have been during every holiday in the history of the United States. These are the working brothers and sisters of the injured first responders that Kyl disregards because he doesn’t think there is enough time to do the right thing.

We could hope the day never comes when Jon Llewellyn Kyl’s house is on fire and when the local fire house gets the alarm the crew on duty stops to take a vote requiring a super majority before the trucks roll. It would never happen because firefighters are committed to serving the public. Too bad Republican senators are not.

Bad execution vs. bad behavior

2010-12-11T11:21:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

For years we have been hearing the same plaintive cry from frustrated citizens: “There is not much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. It doesn’t matter which one is in power, the result is always the same.”

Recent behavior of President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress has given us all a clear-cut lesson in this dazzling distinction.

Of course, there are basic policy dissimilarities. The Democrats are primarily concerned with the nondescript workers and voters, unions and the moral high ground while the Republican are influenced by corporations, the military and the infinite greed of the wealthy.

Aside from this there is something that goes beyond basic policy. An important element that deserves consideration is called political style. The Democrats for all their desire to do good are poorly organized and are horrible political tacticians. The recent capitulation of Obama on Bush tax cuts is a painful example. In sports it’s called good planning, bad execution.

The Republicans on the other hand are organized and brutal in pursuit of their goals. They were despicable in their cold dismissal of such reasonable measures as medical aid to 9/11 first responders and the rejection of the patently unfair policy towards gays and lesbians called, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

They stand on these pillars of decadence to protect their “holy grail” tax cuts for the wealthy. The Republicans don’t care how much the tax breaks for the rich will damage the deficit while they are determined to fight to the death to end unemployment insurance payments to the jobless without corresponding spending cuts.

They don’t seem to care that they are borrowing money today to pay for tax cuts that our children and their children in the decades to come will have to redeem. More importantly they are damaging the worldwide stability of the nation to reward their rich patrons.

Further, this contemptible behavior by the Republican leadership manages to get virtually 100 percent support from their ranks in Congress while the Democrats skirmish with each other like alley cats over the issues agreed to by their leadership.

You could say when thinking of the difference between the two parties the Republicans are disciplined and obedient and the Democrats act like rowdy disputants at a condo association meeting. They prove Will Rogers correct. He once said, “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

Democrats can be disappointed with their leaders, as they are now with the Obama tax deal that has split the party, but Republicans are worse than just disappointing. They are calculating and carry the banner of hypocrisy with pride and callousness.

Take one of the leading and very confusing Republicans –- Senator John McCain. He is a politician who at one time seemed to be the bright light in the Republican firmament. I am ashamed to say that at one time I considered him a candidate worthy of my vote. That was ten years ago -- before he lost his way.

If you remember 2000 when he, a war hero, fought George W. Bush, a war eluded, for the GOP presidential nomination, he was the man of rationale battling the man of claptrap. The party chose the wrong man and the country will pay for that mistake for decades to come.

The McCain who ran for president in 2008 was not the same man. He moved to the right to garner the support of those extreme elements that voted for Bush in the previous two elections and added insult to injury by choosing a buffoon as his running mate.

Take “don’t ask, don’t tell” for example. When the issue came up some time ago a reasonable McCain said that he would vote in favor of abolishing the policy if military leaders indorsed the idea. Then earlier this year when the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs recommended an end to the policy he said he wanted to wait until the Pentagon report on the subject was released in December.

Now that that report was out showing that the vast majority of servicemen and woman supported the end of the policy, the inscrutable McCain said it was not the time for this act because of a bad economy and he asked for another survey. Soon he is liable to oppose ending DADT because the beer tax is too high.

McCain is an enigma and a hypocrite. That should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to today’s Congress. He is just one of hundreds there. McCain is not so much the “maverick” he claims to be but more of an obedient follower who stood by his party in its deplorable disregard for 9/11 heroes and lack of concern for the jobless.

In the end Democratic leaders like Senator Harry Reid may be slow to act and negligent and President Obama may be a lousy negotiator, but the Republicans have downright scoundrels like McCain in their ranks. It’s a bad choice no matter what.

It is as if Will Rogers could see into the 21st century with his appropriate quip made years ago: “Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what is going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House.”

The wizard that wasn't

2010-12-04T01:36:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

During the campaigns of 2008 many of us were lifted to great emotional heights by the words and political wizardry of Barack Obama. We saw in him the antithesis to the dark, unsettling years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

We anticipated, or wished, that from this brilliant light from the heartland would spring forth a bold new vision of progress. We saw a young, articulate leader of intelligence and hope who would make the country well again.

Elegant and eloquent was he. Just what we needed. We saw him as a reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy combined.

We were wrong. As president Obama was a disappointment , a pathetic 21st Century version of failed leadership. We were treated to a massive dose of languor from the Obama White House. He was a reluctant warrior.

To the dismay of the rest of us, it seems the Republican figured out Obama from the beginning. Obama is not a fighter. He is no Lyndon B. Johnson or Harry S. Truman. He is not in the mold of traditional great Democratic presidents. He will not grab an opponent by the lapels and push his ideas to fruition. Rather he is a re-embodiment of Ferdinand the Bull.

We must face the fact that he is wimpish. We need a leader for president not a easy-going guy who seems to put more energy into his basketball playing than governance. The latest betrayal by the GOP (no Senate action until tax cuts are extended) one day after "amicable" talks in the White House demonstrates how brazen his enemies have become.

The GOP has perfected the act of showing disrespect for him and the office he holds. Obama originally invited the Republican leadership to the White House for talks earlier only to be told no thanks. They said reschedule the meeting to their convenience or no soap. It is unheard of to snub an invitation to meet with a head of state on his schedule.

They seem to know they can get away with anything with Obama, especially when it is demeaning. It’s like rubbing a dog’s nose in his own grunge.

The signs were there from almost the start of his administration. His attempts at bipartisanship were a flop because he failed to recognize what everyone else knew –- the GOP was not going to cooperate on anything he proposed. He wasted a filibuster-proof Senate until Senator Ted Kennedy's death ended this advantage.

The result: the GOP emasculated the health care bill by dumping the public option into the trash can with Obama’s approval. They also weakened his financial regulation bill so that it is not much of an improvement over the past. They refused to pass legislation to care for the 9/11 first responders nor extend unemployment insurance for those longtime jobless Americans.

And what did the White House do? An infrequent mention of these events embodied deep within a speech somewhere in the hustings when a fighter would have been shouting these outrages from the rooftops.

Obama supporters are befuddled by his inaction. What happened to their knight in shining armor elected to right the wrongs of previous years?

Did he sacrifice a meaningful health care bill just to be able to brag that he was the first president ever to enact a health bill of any kind? Did his advisers suggest he should look good while not being particularly helpful.

Obama has to wake up. Get his dander up. Get rid of those who have been advising him to failure. He is half way through his initial term and he doesn’t have much time to improve if he expects a second term.

This pussycat has to turn into a tiger or the Republicans will make him look like a dupe.

1. He must hold fast to his commitment not to extend Bush tax cuts to the wealthy even if it means no tax cut for anyone else. If the GOP stands firm on its position to increase the deficit by extending tax cuts, end them all. The president can do it by a simple veto, which the GOP cannot override.
2. To cut the deficit he can do a number of things. First, end the Afghanistan war and cutoff aid to Pakistan. And while he is at it, close US bases in Europe and Asia and bring home troops based there. He must tell the Republicans they will not get their way with his prerogatives as president. Use the veto whenever.
3. He must loudly trumpet all the shifty Republican policies which do not serve the public – like denial of unemployment insurance and health care for first responders.
4. He should be at least as forceful with Congress as he was in the case of the Harvard professor and the Cambridge cop. In that instance he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. In Washington politics his nose belongs in the GOP’s face.

The truth is I don’t think he will do any of these things in the next two years. He looks upon confrontation as bad politics (even though it worked for the GOP in the midterm elections) and will continue fruitlessly to try to work with his political opponents.

In that case I believe, even though it is unlikely under normal circumstances, that there will be a strong attempt to oppose a sitting president in the 2012 party primaries and he could be replaced by a more aggressive potential leader. If Obama doesn’t change his tactics many will find that solution favorable.

Washington, where turkeys abound

2010-11-25T00:49:00.002-05:00

By Don Klein

In this uplifting celebratory season when we give thanks for the bountiful life we Americans have inherited there are millions who will be cutting back on festivities and gifts because the government has encouraged greedy industrialists to seek greater profits for their products by hiring foreigners to do the work once meant for Americans.

The practice is known as “outsourcing,” which is more accurately described as craven profiteering. It is unpatriotic to put your own people down in favor of outlanders.

Outsourcing is such an onerous practice that I decided some time ago I would embark on what once was considered a half-baked xenophobic practice called, “buy American.” Whatever I would buy from then on would have to be produced in this country or I would not buy it. Sounds reasonable? That would be my puny way of getting back at the cold-hearted business elite who are exporting American jobs.

Well I found it wouldn’t work too well. I would have little clothing to wear, great difficulty in watching television or calling someone on a cell phone, or even finding utensils for consuming my dinner. Buying American would leave me bereft of so much of what I need to live by, I would feel impoverished.

Everyone should be outraged about outsourcing, especially today with so many fellow citizens out of work or being underemployed elsewhere after being displaced from careers. It is another case of the moneyed guys making more money and the working people being left off to fend for themselves in a bleak economic environment.

A friend of mine, a doctor of philosophy in economics, once told me “it’s a good thing to let those who can produce at the lowest price be the suppliers of goods.” He said that made economic sense. My response was that that might be text book sense but not reality. I added that a major world power cannot exist without a manufacturing base. He shrugged his shoulders and said we have to learn to compete.

Compete? How do you do that when there are people willing to work at one-tenth the salaries that Americans have become accustomed to earning over decades.

It is difficult to get straight talk when looking into outsourcing. There is an unfortunate conflict off facts. Just the other day the president of MIT, Dr. Susan Hockfield, told television host Charlie Rose that 40 percent of the world’s manufacturing is US based. That is more than any other nation.

At the same time the immutable fact exists that more than 15 million Americans are out of work and millions more are employed at jobs that pay a fraction of what they once earned. The only explanation I have for this apparent conflict in “facts” is in the definition of terms.

Could it be that when Dr. Hockfield’s high numbers in manufacturing refer to tonnage (giant items like airliners and heavy ground moving equipment) or possibly she is speaking of costs of goods, while other nations are eating our lunch by exporting to us labor-generating cargoes like television sets, cell phones, autos and clothing?

It doesn’t matter because so much of Americana has been outsourced by short-sighted industrialists whose myopic vision is calibrated solely to the profit margin of the balance sheet. If they keep exporting jobs overseas who will be left in this country to buy the multitude of goods that are pouring into our shops from cheap-labor nations?

Certainly it is prideful to know your country makes the most desired airliners available as well as most of the large agricultural and construction equipment that is sold anywhere. Other large US foreign exchange products are films and television shows pumped out of Hollywood almost daily.

These selective victories do little to help the unemployment problem. The manufacturing loss is painful. The knowledge that the Rawlings baseballs we all grew up playing with on the local sandlot are now made in Costa Rica is one that makes me gag.

That is not all. Most of the power shoes from Converse, Rockport and others which have become as much a part of American life as bagels and cream cheese are not made in the US. Even the omnipresent Mattel toys and most other playthings that American kids love are made in China.

You think you are buying an American-made vehicle when you buy a car from General Motors, Ford or Chrysler but the chassis for many of these models are made elsewhere.

Americans built the most extensive and efficient railroad system in the world but today would have to import Manganese turnouts if they wish to expand or improve the rail lines in the country.

Traditional vending machines at every bowling alley and filling station are no longer made in this country as are Levi jeans, Dell computers and even canned sardines. The four-wheeled red wagon I dragged behind me when I was a child is no longer an American product.

Even the Internal Revenue Service reportedly has outsourced some of its tax work to India and the Defense Department uses foreign contractors to provide services to military forces throughout the world.

To rub salt in the unemployment wound the government offers tax breaks to American companies operating in other lands. Is there no spunk left in government?

When the Tea Party shouts they “want their country back” and then focuses on rescinding health care and reducing entitlements they are looking in the wrong direction. Yes, I want my country back from those in foreign lands making a living off the jobless Americans they displaced in the work force.

It is disgraceful that Washington continues to allow widespread outsourcing. It seems the biggest turkeys this Thanksgiving will not be found on the dinner tables, but in Congress.

Bad times for journalists

2010-11-10T12:16:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

My old journalism professor smugly reminded us bright eyed students that no one really enjoys freedom of the press except the publishers of newspapers. Today that holds true for owners of radio and television companies as well.

That might explain why the bosses at MSNBC came down so hard on Keith Olbermann for breaking a work rule that many believe was unjust to begin with. When it comes to political donations only the bosses are free to make commitments.

The Supreme Court saw to that when it ruled earlier this year that corporations have the right to secretly donate any amount to support political candidates. But when TV commentator Olbermann donated $7,200 to three Democratic candidates in the recent election he was summarily suspended “indefinitely” by MSNBC.

Although I don’t particularly care for the snarling, sneering, antagonistic journalism practiced by Olbermann, nevertheless I believe MSNBC was wrong in suspending him for exercising his sacred right as an American citizen.

Most of the time I agree with Olbermann’s stances and believe he is an excellent foil for the reactionary mouthpieces on conservative Fox Network but, as already mentioned, I am not fond of his style. He has my political head but loses my heart with his antics.

Obviously, the network realized that it did not do itself any favor by suspending him and lifted his “indefinite” ban after just two broadcast days. I suppose the 250,000 listeners who signed a petition demanding Olbermann’s return had its effects on management.

Also I would hope they realized that no employer has the right to establish work rules that deny anyone their legal right to support political candidates of his/her choice.

Having said that, allow me to add that I object to the way Sarah Palin was treated in a story heavily criticizing her by a number of unnamed GOP sources as carried online by Politico. I don’t like Palin and believe she is an awful example of the worst in the American political environment today, but I dislike hidden hatchet jobs using masked marauders as sources.

I know occasionally anonymous sources are important to gathering news especially in the secret environment that now exists in many organizations. Certainly confidentiality is a necessary evil when writing about criminal activities, corporate corruption or governmental malfeasance and whistle blowers deserve protection from retaliation as the price for their cooperation.

However, this protection should not be extended to people seeking political advantage by telling malicious stories to gain favor or to scuttle the opposition. Anyone who has information that should be put into the public domain ought to have the gumption to identify themselves so we can evaluate the source of their claims.

I think newspaper and broadcast news editors should apply strict rules for using unnamed sources in major stories because of the tendency for unfair political gain. Many editors are careful about such matters but it still happens too often.

Palin was maligned by unknown sources and had the right to be ticked off. There are plenty of good reasons to confront Palin as a harmful element in our national politics and we need brave people to step up and do so. Journalists should never become back fence gossipmongers.

There is a third media story that bothered me recently. That was the firing of Juan Williams by NPR for describing on air his negative reaction to boarding an airliner which included passengers in Muslim garb. Williams was expressing an opinion held by millions of Americans and felt justified by the many instances of terror attacks committed by Muslims here and abroad.

Many believe Williams was fired for other reasons and that NPR used the Muslim remark as a convenient cause of the moment. I lean to the belief that his superiors at NPR did not like his frequent appearances on Fox News as a contributor which they felt reflected badly on them.

If that was the case they should have told him to stop or resign and let him make the decision. NPR can be considered a competitor of Fox and demand that someone on their payroll not share his talents with a rival. To blame his dismissal on his Muslim comment is being devious.

Getting back to the point of journalists with personal political opinions, I don’t think there should be any restrictions on supporting anyone they please as does every other private citizen as long as their professional work is honest, fair, and does not favor anyone or thing other than the truth.

If you are a liberal and have an extremely conservative doctor treating you, the only thing that matters is how well he takes care of your medical needs. He has to maintain professional perfection. He has to have your good health in mind and you won’t care one twit about his political leanings.

We’ve all heard the saying that in combat, GIs don’t care if the soldier sharing his foxhole is a conservative or a liberal as long as they cover each other. The same is true in civilian life and a reporter who writes fair and accurate stories is not to be feared by readers or restrained by their employers when it comes to his personal choices.

Commentators like Olbermann are different. They are paid to have strong opinions and be crusty promoters of causes. In such cases it is even more outlandish to punish him for showing his preferences by donating to certain candidacies. The MSNBC practice to have rules restricting editorial personnel from supporting political candidates when it pleases them is iniquitous.

Have a good day!

2010-11-06T10:30:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

When I was a teenager I attended dances hoping to meet the "right" girl. I never did and got to the point that I lowered my expectations because I knew nothing special would evolve.

Today’s politics reminds me of those feverish adolescent times. No matter which party is in power it would be wise to lower expectations.

Even though the Democrats triumphed in spectator form just two years ago, today they are on the ropes. Although it was a shellacking, as President Obama put it, it could have been much worse if the Republicans had been diligent and selected more sober candidates instead of the ill-natured Tea Party prospects.

It was not necessarily an election the Republican won as it was an election the Democrats lost – through no fault other than their own. No matter who gets the credit or blame, the fact is the power in Washington has changed.

The mystery to me is why had the Democrats, who accomplished quite a bit in a short period of time, failed to act as if they were proud of their handiwork. Not one Democrat to my knowledge (who was running for office) ever mentioned the centerpiece of their success – the national health bill.

Neither did they talk openly about the new financial regulations they passed, nor any of the environment efforts, nor the tax cuts for working people that were made, nor such attractive matters as the children’s health bill.

Much of the good they did was ridiculed and mocked by the Republicans as viciously as the swift boat veterans attacked Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, with the same result. No competent response from the Democrats. They took blow on the chin after blow and expected the voters to figure out the whole complicated subject matter by themselves.

The Democrats were not nearly as aggressive as the GOP in standing up against wild claims of legislative excesses. Obama was as much to blame as the rest of the party essentially because he did not wake up to the facts of the failing campaign until much too late.

I cannot understand the outrage over national health care since the public was clearly misled. The law would reduce, not increase, medical costs, and would include millions more Americans than are now covered. Anyone would think it a win-win situation except those committed to partisan contention.

The worst factor in the law was the lack of a public option to force insurance companies to play straight with clients. Then the delay of full implementation until 2014 made its impact hardly noticeable today. These were factors the Democratic leadership in the Senate conceded in hopes of getting bipartisan support.

The Republicans outsmarted the timid leadership and after squeezing out these concessions refused to vote for the bill anyway. Mark that as an early GOP victory.

That may be considered water under the bridge but it is an indication of how superficial was the Democrats support for the issue. They gave health care much lip service, never in campaigns oddly, and applied little intestinal fortitude to the subject and sowed the seeds of their eventual defeat at the polls.

Many youthful Obama voters who stayed home would have voted were they not disgusted by the lack of fight put up by the administration and Senate Democrats during the heath care and other debates. Add to this to the scarce effort to solve joblessness, and there is a prescription for defeat.

They acted in similar wishy-washy ways in everything they did, claiming they were seeking bipartisanship, which never materialized. They rejected advice to shift into high gear and force the whole package and not try to compromise with people who vowed not to work with them.

The definition of stupidity is to continuously expect different results from the same failed policy. If you keep knocking your head against a wall you will soon suffer more than just a severe headache.

It would be just if only the Democrats were the ones with the headache but unfortunately the headache will spread to all of us with the possible except of the wealthy. Now we have a GOP controlled House of Representatives, a Senate still under Democratic rein although with less of a majority, and a Democrat in the White House.

Despite all the talk about working together, do not believe it. The 2012 presidential campaign has already started and little comity can be expected from the two parties.

The Republicans want to retake the White House and will do everything they can to upset the Obama applecart. The next two years will witness the House passing bills that the Senate will kill. If a House bill should somehow make itself past the Senate, the president will veto it and the GOP will not have enough votes to override it.

It will mean more gridlock. More ineffective government. More citizen dissatisfaction with Washington. And all those who voted the incumbents out this year because of lack of progress will be beside themselves trying to figure out how to get Congress to work for the people again.

Meanwhile the environment will worsen, China and India will be strengthened economically, the US will go into deeper debt, unemployment will eventually ease up but millions will be forever damaged by job loss, and attempts will be tried to restrict our personal freedoms. And everyone in Washington will blame the other guy.

Eventually we will all lower our expectations as I did many years ago and government will drone along like an aloof sleepwalker. Our children will grow up to leave the country to find work in Africa and Asia because most American businesses will be outsourced.

The American century of dominance will end with a whimper like the British Empire expired almost a century ago.

Have a good day.

Gridlock, thy name is Congress

2010-10-30T00:54:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

Tired of the Democrats controlling Washington? They’ve been running the government for the last 20 months and you are unhappy with the results? Like millions of others you are ready for a change? Ready to throw the bums out, are you?

After all, Barack Obama has been in office less than two years and has not lived up to all our tantalized expectations. He managed to unite the country as promised but not as he wanted. The pros and cons are in agreement. They are both negative. The pros (progressives) and cons (conservatives) are bitter.

Time for a change, again? Some want "to take their country back." If they win, this is what might be in store for all of us.

1. There will be efforts to privatized Social Security again so that Wall Street brokers can make even larger profits than now and the financial destiny of senior citizens will be left to the whim of the stock market.

2. In order to continue the fiction of an allegedly insolvent Medicare, Republicans will force seniors to pay higher premiums to the government and shell out steeper co-pays to doctors in order to lower federal health expenses.

3. The new Republican Congress will extend the unfair Bush tax cuts providing the wealthy with savings of millions in income taxes and the middle class with merely hundreds. They will call this beneficial for all when actually it is acceptable only to the richest among us.

4. Instead they may propose an equally onerous national sales tax of 23 percent in lieu of the income tax. This sounds good until you realize that a family with $30,000 income incurs the same amount of tax for a loaf of bread as the family with $50,000,000.

5. To level the playing field which now finds some giant corporations not paying any federal income, the Republican Congress will reform the tax code to add more loopholes to allow many more flush corporations to be free of the burden of taxes while the working class will be clobbered with more taxes to cover the difference.

6. To further enhance corporate profits the Congress will offer broader tax incentives for companies to out-source work to India, Latin America and other developing areas so American products can more easily compete in the worldwide marketplace while laid off American workers no longer can afford to buy these goods.

7. The Republicans will attempt to impose their lifelong ambition to rescind the minimum wage law. This will encourage individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps the same way the wealthy pulled themselves up before they inherited Daddy’s legacy.

8. Unemployment insurance will prove too big a burden so the Republicans will try to eliminate all jobless benefits.

9. To keep costs down among deficit-ridden hospitals around the nation, emergency care facilities will no longer be required to treat destitute patients.

10. In order to cut government outlays to needy citizens Congress will enact laws turning over many social welfare responsibilities to religious organizations, after bolstering them with federal funds.

11. It will be a great period for unqualified ultra-conservative lawyers because the only Supreme Court justices who will be confirmed by the Republican Senate will be those of the Clarence Thomas ilk.

12. Embryonic stem cell research will be halted in the United States and adult stem cell research will be severely restricted by Republicans catering to the Evangelical bloc.

13. Gay marriages will be prohibited by federal law and aid to education will be sharply reduced.

14. Illegal aliens will be rounded up and held in concentration camps run by greedy contractors, like Halliburton or Blackwater, as harsh warnings to future outsiders thinking about entering the country illegally.

15. Environmental protection laws will be weakened or abandoned. The federal government under the Republicans will issues licenses for off shore drilling all along the East Coast from Florida to Maine.

With all of the above the GOP will not improve one iota the job market, nor reduce the prospects of foreclosures, improve the economy, nor better day-to-day life of the middle class.

Of course you might say some of these predictions are exaggerations -- and maybe they are. But others could happen if and when the new Republican Party "takes back the country" if they win the White House, as well as Congress, in 2012.

Right now take a look at what might happen after next week’s election. It could be almost as bad.

There are three possibilities once the votes are counted on November 2. The first is the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress. The second is
that the Republicans will win the House but not the Senate, or vice versa. And lastly the Democrats will continue to maintain control of both Houses, but with a smaller majority than currently.

Neither of these potentialities will serve the public interest.

In the first option many of the bills mentioned above could be passed and sent to the president, where he will veto them. The GOP will not have enough votes to override the veto. Hence: Gridlock.

In the second instance the GOP House will not get any of their bills passed a Democratic Senate, nor the Democrats get theirs passed the House.
Hence: Gridlock.

In the final scenario the Republicans, now a larger minority than before, will block all Democratic bills from getting out of Congress. Hence: Gridlock again.

So with the pros and cons chomping at each other necks they end up overshooting the most important goal – the welfare of all. We find ourselves back were we started before the election with gridlock the name of the game and the people not being served.

Wingnuts, oddballs and conservatives

2010-10-21T00:49:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

There is trouble brewing in the country, real trouble.

We have a mess of candidates all asserting they emanate from the grassroots who are accompanied by a raucous mob wrapped in strict interpretation of the Constitution. Oddly they have demonstrated by their actions they have little understanding of the meaning of American democracy.

Not only do they display ignorance of the Constitution, they seem to have no respect for it and appear to relish in defying its tenets.

I am talking about Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Joe Miller in Alaska and Christie O’Donnell of Delaware. What a travesty it would be if all four of these oddballs were to actually serve in the US Senate.

Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist who is blind to reality. He wants to do away with all entitlements even though a good portion of his income is derived from patients who sustain his gravy train life with funds from Medicare, Social Security and soon from the newly passed Health Care Law. He calls it socialism but gladly deposits the government checks into his bank account.

Just imagine what would happen to today’s medical profession which greatly depends on government payouts to keep their private lives financially robust. If Paul succeeded in ending Medicare, doctors would soon feel the same economic pinch the rest of us feel today. Actually, most of them quietly campaign for increased payments, not an end of the program.

That is without taking into account the terrible hardship that would befall the elderly who without the safety net of Medicare would be in dire straits. That’s when the reality of Death Panels would come into effect, only the boards would be populated by doctors playing God and insurance companies playing misers, not bureaucrats as radicals contend.

Then there is Sharron Angle who is running against the pusillanimous Senate majority leader Harry Reid. If any Democrat deserved to loose this year it is Reid, yet his opponent is such a disgrace to earthly reason that even his worst critics are hoping he survives her.

Angle makes up her own facts as she rambles along the campaign trail, she spouts out racial insults and appears not to even realize it, she doesn’t want to reform the IRS she wants to vacate it, she wants to cut the federal budget but refuses to answer questions from the press on how. She will only appear on Fox News, as she nervily stated, to raise money for her campaign not to answer probing questions.

Joe Miller is the pet choice of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. He espouses strict compliance with the Constitution yet he hires thugs, some of whom are active duty military types, and harasses reporters who in the course of doing their jobs have the effrontery to ask him questions on matters of public interest.
Recently goons working for Miller handcuffed a reporter covering his campaign, thus violating the newsman’s personal rights (holding an individual against his will, kidnaping, etc) and also desecrating the First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press. The journalist was released when police arrived. This matter might end up as an embarrassing federal court case.

Finally we have Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware whiz who thought she was being clever in suggesting to her opponent that the dictum of separation of church and state cannot be found in the Constitution. When she was informed that the Constitution denies Congress from making any law establishing a religion she appeared suddenly enlightened as a child would when first learning that the Earth rotates around the Sun, not the opposite.

No one should bother to spend time talking about Buffalo’s ruffian candidate for governor, Carl Paladino. He is the most colossal joke the Republicans ever played on New Yorkers.

All these “scholars” recognized, as we all do, that things in America are in terrible shape but not one of them have a clue on how to solve them. All they have is sound bites designed to incite the public, not to sort out the problems. They all believe Obama is a culprit and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the wicked witch of the West, and they want to go back to the good ole days of Republican dominance in Washington.

Virtually all Americans would like answers to our mounting national problems. But is this the crew we should be looking to for answers? Reasonable people have to say no. There are trends afoot that indicates there might be sanity creeping back into the nation’s psyche.

Democrats are beginning to show improvements in the polls. Senator Reid has moved up to a tie with Angle in Nevada. Lisa Murkowski, Miller’s write-in GOP opponent in Alaska, surprisingly is sticking close to him in the polls. Joe Manchin is holding his own in West Virginia against carpet-bagger John Raese. Joe Sestak is pulling ahead of Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Christine O’Donnell supposedly has no chance against Chris Coons, the Democrat.

No question that the election two weeks hence will be a nail-biter but at the moment it doesn’t look all that bad for Democrats. It should serve as a wake-up call for them since they have not performed well enough during Obama’s first term to have earned anyone’s esteem. But as usual the GOP failed to capitalize on the circumstances. They shot themselves in the foot by allowing the wingnuts of the Tea Party to steal their thunder.

A handful of reasonable. solid conservatives could have guaranteed a Republican victory this year. That is no longer certain now that the Tea Party crowd is calling the shots for the GOP.

Stay home Christine

2010-10-16T00:47:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

I try to steer my print comments away from local elections but Christine O’Donnell is too juicy to ignore. She s like a quirky kid sister who disrupts the normal family routine with just enough craziness that you want to hug her back to sanity.

In a strange way I actually like her. She’s not nearly as revolting as the screwball Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle, running a moronic senate campaign in Nevada nor California’s gubernatorial hopeful, the offish Meg Whitman, who emits a snobbery that would dismay even Thurston Howell III, the pompous millionaire on Gilligan’s Island.

Christine, on the other hand, is a sweetheart, loopy maybe, but a sweetheart nonetheless. I feel sorry for her disastrous comments and her failing campaign. But somehow I think she would be a welcome guest at my dinner table any night I was in the mood for some eccentric conversation.

Who else would admit dabbling into being a witch these days? That would fire up any conversation. Further, she is the first person to say something funny about masturbation since I was a teen and rollicked over an adolescent claim having something to do with hairy palms.

With this (albeit muted) affection for her I watched with interest her televised debate with Democratic opponent, Chris Coons. Who else could get me to watch a debate between two candidates from Delaware? Even in the best days of Vice President Joe Biden, when he was their senator, no one could interest me in Delaware politics.

In today’s screwy environment here comes Christine, perky as she is kooky, with her chance to show the world the stuff she is made of. In the end we discovered that she is not the independent she likes to claim she is. She is a right wing Republican who endorses every harsh step back to the past. "That isn’t so," she protests saying she is beholden to neither major party.

As she continues to talk, however, she contradicts herself saying exactly the opposite. The only President Obama policy she backs is the inherited bad Bush war in Afghanistan that the president has tentatively embraced. She also likes the stepped up drone attacks.

Then there is the exchange over Coons’ bearded Communist statement and Christine’s witchcraft. She insists she has the right to call her opponent a "self-proclaimed Communist" as long as others refer to her being a witch. She said both occurred when the candidates were a lot younger and made strange public remarks.

Well, I am sorry to tell you dear Christine, but there is a difference. Coons explained that his comments were a college spoof that everyone at the time accepted as a goofy charade and that he has always been a "clean-shaven Capitalist." Further, his career actions have proven his political credentials.

As far as Christine being a witch? No one ever took that seriously. Even when she first made the straight forward admission, people laughed at the prospect. It is not on the same level as accusing an opponent of something that you know is untrue. No one called Christine a witch in this campaign. If she hadn’t gone on television with a commercial starting with "I am not a witch" no one would be thinking of it now.

There again we see the behavior of troubled kid sister lashing out without concern for facts or perspective. She speaks like a teenager without evaluating the impact of her words.

Christine also tells us that evolution is a myth. Most educated people throughout the world know that God did not create the galaxy in six days and rested on the seventh. That’s biblical myth and even the overwhelming majority of devout people know it. By rejecting creationism they are not diminishing their belief in deity. One does not rely on the other to be true.

The plain fact is only the intellectually blind believe in the Bible’s version of creation. Let me point out one fallacy in that belief. If God as so many believe is an omnificent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient a force that could create this complicated world in less than a week, does he really need a day off to rest?

What does being all powerful, all knowing, being everywhere at once with the ability to create whatever is needed mean anyway? Does such a force really need union hours? And what would this force do on it’s day off anyway? Frolic in the park with angels, watch a football game, visit a museum, rest in a hammock eating cherries?

Nevertheless Christine rejects evolution in favor of creationism. Is that the kind of person you want in the US Senate deciding on the serious issues of the day? Then when she was asked during the debate about her Evangelical beliefs, she gave the most vague response, "What I believe is irrelevant."

Hi De Hi, Hi De Ho! That’s when all viewers should have discovered being cute and perky does not mean you are ready for political prime time. What Christine believes is very relevant since she would be voting on matters that concern the future of the nation.

Fortunately the latest polls indicate that Christine has little chance of winning, being behind her opponent by double digits. For the record, Angle and Whitman are both doing better in close races in their states.

Christine O’Donnell I like you. Come to dinner at my house sometime. But stay out of Congress. There are enough kooks there already. We need people like you back here in the civilian sector to give us things to laugh about.

Defining real allies

2010-10-07T08:13:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

With allies like Pakistan who needs enemies? For a decade we have bolstered that country with billions of dollars in aid and what has it gotten us? Nothing worthwhile.

They were supposed to use some of the $10 billion we gave them to snuff out the
Taliban and al Qaeda irregulars running freely in their northern provinces where they openly run terrorist training camps for disgruntled Muslims from around the world. But the Pakistanis are too craven to take on an enemy within their borders.

Further they wouldn’t let US forces go into their territory to root them out because this would be too damaging to their self-esteem. In the end they would not do what needs to be done and they wouldn’t let us do it either.

Today we have a similar situation. Our alleged ally closed the border crossing used by American forces as a supply line to units in Afghanistan because of an accidental killing by Americans of two border guards. The blockade forced supply trucks to backup on the Pakistani side of the border becoming sitting ducks for insurgents.

In the past seven days they have been juicy targets for rebels. The halted convoys have been chewed up daily with severe losses of goods and materiel needed at the front. The Pakistan authorities sat on their hands all this time claiming it was not their job to protect the trucks.

And since they would not let US forces inside Pakistan to do their work for them, the vehicles have been as vulnerable as cattle in a pen, blasted time and again while the ingrate Pakistani government stood by. They wouldn’t protect them, and they wouldn’t let others protect them. That’s what we call a friendly nation?

I think not. It is time to break ties with these spineless, contradictory people. Discrepant Pakistan was, and still is, a thorn in the side of every western country by exporting terrorism. It claims to be our friend but never lifts a finger to help. It might be they don’t know how to help.

They failed miserably to assist their own people thrown into turmoil by earthquakes and floods. Many locals are still waiting for the government to come to their aid. All they know is to take handouts and hide in the corner when real action is required.

It is clear to many people the Pakistanis cannot govern themselves. They are incapable. They would have been better off to listen to the late Mahatma Gandhi and remain within the Republic of India, which in the 63 years since the two peoples split up has developed into a modern, forward-looking democracy.

By the way, American troops were allowed to cross the Pakistan border to bring helicopter supplies to the earthquake and flood victims. That was all right with the thankless government but fighting northern province insurgents with US forces when their military refused was taboo.

They are worthless collaborators in times of necessity. Apparently similar unworthiness is true of the Afghan government, if you can call it a government. President Karzai is reported to be holding secret negotiations with the Taliban while accepting aid from the US in cash, and more so, in the presence of 110,000 American troops which keep him in office.

Scheming is the common bond between these two sorrowful nations. They continuously fail to live up to their end of a bargain. Isn’t it about time we changed our policy towards these dubious "allies?" Here is my suggestion:

1. We withdraw our military forces from Afghanistan rapidly and let Karzai fend for himself. We also end foreign aid in this hopeless cause.
2. We should also halt funds to Pakistan. Another hopeless cause.
3. While we are withdrawing our forces in the Middle East, we should also bring all troops back from Europe. In case you hadn’t noticed the war there ended 65 years ago.
4. Ditto the US troops in East Asia for the same reasons.
5. With these troops inside the US again, use them to shore up border crossings to assist is stifling illegal immigration.

There are lots of benefits to this approach. To begin with we can reduce the size of the Army and thereby save billions in the budget. It will also make other well-heeled countries around the world more responsible for their own security and save our forces and our global initiatives for international hot spots like North Korea, Iran and Israel.

It is time for us to realize we are stretched too thinly across the world and our effectiveness is waning as we toss too many balls in the air at one time. This policy will be more economically beneficial and help restore domestic confidence in the government by cutting back worldwide obligations.

Since World War II ended we have been trying to be the country that is all things to all peoples and it just cannot be done. We are not interested in empire building like the British in the 19th Century so our international obligations are voluntary. Let us employ our best traits as technological innovators and economic dreamers towards peaceful goals and stop worrying about the welfare of every dismal corner of the globe.

The simple fact is that we are now a debtor nation and cannot continue to be the world’s sugar daddy for poor nations. It cannot continue. So when we have false friends like Pakistan and Afghanistan who are often worse than enemies, we must cut them loose and use our international clout to work with real
friends.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet

2010-09-30T02:14:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

The Democrats are behaving like lost sheep in the wilderness. They are starting to panic with ill advised comportment. Instead of trumpeting the good they have accomplished during the last year and a half and contrasting that with the bleak future we will face if the Republicans take over, they are publicly scolding their followers.

Instead of proudly itemizing that which is in their favor, they seem to cower at the prospect of certain defeat. The Democrats have lots to crow about, even if they did not match up to President Obama’s promises, even if they have had disappointments along the way.

They have two important elements in their favor. 1) the social and economic advances accomplished since they took over the White House in 2009, and 2) the gloomy prospects every working class person faces with a Republican victory. Those two should be enough to bring in enough votes for them to hold power in Washington.

But so far they are ineffectively saying little about these important matters. If they loose in November by sitting in the corner and contemplating defeat while allowing the opposition take the political initiative from them it will be their own fault.

With a mere five weeks left before election day, rather than rebuking their justly disappointed following, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden should spend their time exhorting the countryside with positives -- not negatives.

Since they seem unable to come up with a program of their own, I offer them the Klein Plan for Victory on November 2.

++ Remind the voters of the good aspects of the health plan despite the lack of the preferred public option. There are many good elements in what the GOP likes to call Obamacare yet they make it sound like the plan is an abomination. Let the people know all the facts and how it helps many who are now at last covered.

++ Tell the public which has been badly stung by the shenanigans of Wall Street that the Obama program to reactivate regulations on the financial industry, although not perfect, will restrict the behavior of the robber barons in the near future.

++ Let those with short memories be reminded that a children’s health bill was passed over Republican objections as was the bailout which saved millions of jobs, a regenerated infrastructure is in the works and Obama kept the recession from declining into a full blown depression.

++ Cue them in on the near collapse of the auto industry and how it was saved by Obama’s quick action and how the automakers are on the road to health and will repay all that the government invested in them with interest.

++ The most effective argument for retaining the Democrats in power, however, will be to expose what the Republicans plan to do if they win. They promise to reduce the federal budget, but will not touch military funds and social security. What is left? Medicare, unemployment benefits, education, environmental programs, and the like. This should immediately turn off the senior citizens, couples with young children, and the unemployed.

++ The Republicans would disband the Health Care Law to the disadvantage of millions and continue to hamper any effort to effectively restrict illegal immigration to the consternation of those living in states bordering on Mexico.

++ A victorious GOP would maintain the tax cuts for the wealthy at a tremendous cost to the rest of us further plunging the country into deeper debt and would encourage the continuation of outsourcing and other programs to benefit corporations at the cost of American jobs. They already have apologized to BP for being forced by Obama to underwrite oil spill losses to individual Americans.

++ The Republicans just offered a Pledge to America which was short on specifics but long on generalities. They offered not a single new idea and in effect have suggested that if they get their way they will close down the government to set themselves up for a 2012 presidential victory.

The latest polls have shown signs of improved standing for Democrats and with more than a month to go this upward trend should continue and make the election not the runaway some have predicted, but a close battle. That is providing the Democrats show a lot more gumption then they have so far.

Talk about what is still left to do, about the continued Democratic agenda for change. They should be parroting Al Jolson’s old line: "You ain’t seen nothin’ yet." All the GOP offers is back to the dormant Bush years.

As long as they act like losers they will probably end up proving the proposition. For decades I have watched the Democrats act like they were ashamed of doing the right thing. Recently they put off a vote on the allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire until after the election. What a bunch of craven back alley mice.

The more I talk to people about their preferences in national elections the more I hear them sound off with the same thoughts even though they might express it differently. It comes down to the saddest of all conclusions for a great people who invented the concept of free elections of government leaders. Too often the beautiful ideal is corrupted by the election of unresponsive and callous legislatures.

What is that thought they all have? "I vote for the lesser of two evils." Although neither party is worth a goat’s derriere, the difference this year is that one evil – the Republicans – is a lot worse than the other. And the Democrats should speak out about it or we all loose.

Rally for moderation and fear

2010-09-19T14:35:00.001-04:00

By Don Klein

Blame it on Martin Luther King. He started the prevailing concept of the epochal political march on Washington. We’ve gone the entire route, from taxpayers rights and abortion rights, to gay pride and black pride, to Tea Party bombast and the Glenn Beck orgasmic ritual of tearful claptrap last month.

Now we finally reached the apex with the planned Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert marches on October 30. Stewart named his movement the "Rally to Restore Sanity" or simply the "Million Moderate March." Colbert wants his gathering to be known as "March to Keep Fear Alive."

Now there are a couple of marches I think I would like to join.
In case you are not up-to-date on such matters, Stewart presides over "The Daily Show" on the Comedy Network where he cleverly spoofs the lunacy of public figures who claim to speak for the people. Colbert prances around mocking conservative blowhards like Bill O’Reilly and others on "The Colbert Report" on the same network.

All the previous marches tended to replicate the historic "I Have a Dream" assemblage back in the summer of 1963 in which Dr. King gave his famous speech. An estimated 400,000 people attended and ever since groups espousing a cause have organized similar marches.

Unlike King’s masterful accomplishment none of those that followed made a lasting impression. The Stewart and Colbert attempt to mix comedy with stark reality perhaps will succeed where others failed.

All "march" promoters choose the site in front of the famous Lincoln Memorial, attempting to slather some of the reverence of the sixteenth president of the United States on their particular issue. The famous David Chester French sculpture is an impressive backdrop for any rally.

Dr. King choose the location because of the relationship the Great Emancipator to the black race in particular. However, there are no such connection with those who have massed there since. As far as anyone can tell Lincoln had no strong positions on abortion rights or taxpayers’ complaints or the rights of gun owners.

We can assume without quibbling that Honest Abe would not have endorsed Glenn Beck’s unfounded political accusations and his chronic disregard for the truth.

There is a chance, however, Lincoln might have wanted to attend the Stewart "march" on Washington. Who wouldn’t be in favor of a rally to restore sanity to this country at a time when the nation is being torn apart by greed and self interest? Wasn’t that part of the conflict Old Abe faced during his lifetime?

The country seems to be divided in two camps these days – maybe even three. A current New York Times\CBS News poll revealed that most of the country still prefers the Democrats in power. Party favorability tips towards keeping the Democrats in control of Congress by 27 percent to 23. That same poll shows 40 percent of respondents feel the Democrats have a better handle on problems than the Republicans, who have 33 percent.

As far as helping the middle class, 55 percent of the electorate favor the Democrats and only 33 percent like the Republicans, and in helping small business the lead the Democrats have over Republicans is 49 percent to 41.

None of these are breathtaking figures and some are so close that they just emphasize the wide split in the nation. America has had similar divides in the past and has survived. The trouble today is that there is a death wish towards opponents by too many politicians. The comity that once existed on Capitol Hill is no more.

What we have instead is virulent opposition of the minority party towards anything the majority attempts to do. In essence gridlock. The goal seems to be, either we are in control or –- governmental chaos. There are even threats by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, a leading Republican, of shutting down the government if the GOP does not win in November.

There are other insinuations to take over the country by force of arms if not at the polling booths by GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann

It is attitudes like this that makes the Stewart "Million Moderates March" less of a comic reaction than a realistic and necessary destination. It is especially important at this time with the emergence of the Tea Party as a cannibalistic element within the Republican Party, eating its own in a drive to exorcize all moderates from the party. It seems just right of center is no longer acceptable among the angered Palin partisans.

It is easy to despair and moan there is nothing we can do about it as we grit our teeth waiting for the destruction of our country. This will not necessarily become our fate. Up to now there has been no wide scale, multi-party opposition at the voting booths to Tea Party extremists. They can be beaten down by a solid rejection in November.

In the meantime we need people to cool down and not let the incendiary rhetoric overwhelm us. That’s why we should be thankful there are opportunistic comedians who have taken on the challenge of rallying the moderates to Washington. They no doubt recall the famous Lincoln line which could be directed at today’s empty talking Right Wing:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

Bring Aleve into the voting booth

2010-09-12T00:50:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

Barack Obama is coming under a great deal of criticism lately and to a large extent he deserves it. His popularity is way down. Even on the campaign trail this critical year, Democrats are opting for former President Bill Clinton to campaign for them rather than the current president. To many it seems his usefulness is waning.

Obama’s major flaw seems to be his inability to make any noticeable progress with the weak economy which appears to be getting even weaker with every statistical report. His victories in health care and stricter Wall Street regulations are pyrrhic – no Democrat in a tough race this year mentions either if they can be avoided.

He also has run into and unexpected flaw. You would think someone with Obama’s oratorical skills would be able to reach out and transmit his thoughts effectively to ordinary people. Many have the feeling he is too cerebral in determining and explaining policy as well as being too oblivious to outlandish criticism. He is not effective with rank and file voters.

At times he seems to be a replica of Adlai Stevenson with the inclination to speak over the heads of grass roots types and at other times he behaves like another Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, during his disastrous 2004 campaign in not explaining with clarity where he stands on issues. There isn’t that fire in his personality that so many admired during the last election campaign.

Let it be clear that I reject all the off-the-wall criticisms hurled at Obama by what I call the lunatic fringe. Glenn Beck can call Obama phony names and weirdos can question where he was born and whether or not he is a Muslim. These facts do not enter into my political equation. I am looking at the real Obama, not the false one painted by mean-spirited political morons.

Evaluating his real problems, there are the times when Obama stubs his toes making totally unnecessary statements about circumstances that have no bearing on his office nor reflect on his moral responsibility. Many of Obama's off-the-cuff remarks make people cringe. The minute he entered the Cambridge brouhaha without fully understanding what went on between the professor and the police officer, nor having any definable presidential purpose, everyone but he knew it was a serious error.

Experts in public relations and those who toil for years in government service know that there are times you don't have to express an opinion, especially if it has nothing to do with your job.

There are a number of other incidents like that where we find Obama plunging into issues he doesn’t have to. At present I think of the New York mosque dispute. He propelled it into a national scene when in essence the matter was solved by the people of New York city. Now it is being used by a looney Florida pastor as a bargaining chip in his Qur’an-burning threat.

Personally I do not like the advice he is getting on many levels. To push so hard for health care reform all of last year and to settle for a washed down version when the major problem in the country was jobs is another misdirected effort. He seems to be more concerned about how history will treat him as the first president to succeed on health care than solving urgent current problems.

The only thing that keeps Obama in good stead is the outrageous GOP policy of obstructionism, and its love affair with the kooks of the Tea Party. This disastrous Republican strategy will save Obama from defeat in 2012 and might even mitigate the likely, or potential, losses of Congressional Democrats in this November's off year elections.

The trouble with American politics is that on one side we have an inexperienced and spontaneously miss-speaking president and on the other side a callous, leaderless and abusive opposition. One could conclude the nation is on the brink of chaos as a result.

During the primary campaign I supported Hillary Clinton on the grounds she had the experience and the balls to do what a president sometimes has to do. I supported Obama when Hillary was eliminated in the primaries. There was no choice in the general election since McCain-Palin was a joke ticket that would appeal only to rock-ribbed Republicans and simpletons.

I also supported Obama because I had the hope that he would deliver the country from the madness of the Bush-Cheney years. The added attraction was that I liked Obama. He was the kind of man I could vote for. But he has degenerated the upbeat support I once had for him to what has become the norm for me in past general elections – the choice of the lesser of two evils.

Now the question is what do we do about it? Given that the GOP appears ready to oppose Obama in 2012 with Gingrich or Palin, the choice is clear. I will swallow a handful of Aleve and vote for Obama.

To me, the Republicans are the most demoniacal of political parties. First they gave us the village idiot, George W. Bush. No need to go into specifics about him. Then by offering the senseless choice of McCain-Palin in 2008 and very likely Gingrich or Palin in 2012, they have almost guaranteed a second term of an inexperienced and often misdirected Obama.

Talk about history. It looks like we are standing on the precipice of the fateful end of the American reign of world power. The chill up my spine is caused by not knowing which budding foreign power will pick up the reins of leadership when America drops it. I see no qualified candidate for the job.

Obstinance and demagoguery

2010-08-21T00:12:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

The strange outburst of invective over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque not far from ground zero in lower Manhattan is unlike anything we should expect to hear in an American city, especially one so liberal as New York.

Religious institutions are usually given wide berths in the United States, the land where freedom of expression – and in this case, religious expression, is considered a sacred birthright. It is such an important aspect of American law that the first line in the Bill of Rights states:

"Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." What could be clearer. The government must keep hands off religion.

But instead of clarifying this knotty problem, the religious admonishment which is so dear to the hearts of most Americans, has created a dilemma that has engrossed too many people for too long. It has invited headstrong obstinance on one side of the issue as well as ugly political demagoguery on the other.

It is not the fact that the proposal has to do with a religious structure. No not at all. If it were a proposed synagogue or church or even a Shinto temple there would be little, if any, objection. The problem is that it is a Muslim center.

It is too soon for people to forget the violent destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers almost nine years ago in which more than 2,700 New York workers, firemen and policemen were incinerated by the act of hate-driven Muslims who carried out their deadly act in the name of Allah, the Muslim deity.

It is irrational for people to believe that all the world’s 1.5 billion plus Muslims were of the same ilk as the radicals behind the slaughter. And certainly the overwhelming majority of American-Muslims are not of that violent persuasion. Granted there are pockets of anti-Western thought among some Muslims even in this country but few have manifested into attacks.

The world has heard time and again that Muslims are peace lovers and are not fairly represented by terrorists groups as al Qaeda or the Taliban or Hamas or Hezbollah. What disturbs most Westerners is the silence of so-called moderates in the Muslim world. They have been mysterious mute as one Muslim organized terror attack after another is reported.

There is a large number of Westerners who wait in futility to hear these moderates speak out against the violence generated by Muslims around the world. There seldom is anyone with the courage to do so. This becomes a true silent majority and often that is equated with approval of the ugly acts.

That is why so many otherwise reasonable thinkers in this country have raised objections when the thought of building a Islamic center close to the site of the worst foreign attack on the United States since the War of 1812.

The silence of the American Muslim community for whatever reason is often cited as the grounds so many non-Muslims object to the location. Sensibilities of many Americans, especially New Yorkers, are being frayed by the idea.

Westerners recall the wild overreaction to the publication by a Danish newspaper of a carton featuring the prophet Mohammad. It was explained to have offended the sensibilities of Muslims everywhere. Other western publications refused to run the pictures in order, they claimed, not to further pique Muslims.

Now we come to the mosque situation in New York. Many Americans are offended by the thought that this shrine would be built so close to the now hallowed ground of the 9/11 tragedy. Many feel that it would be wise for Muslim-backers of the plan to show the same kind of respect to the feelings of injured Westerners. Back off as many Western institutions did in the Mohammad cartoon matter. Move to less sensitive locale, they urge. The Muslims will not.

That’s the obstinate part. Now let’s look at the demagoguery taking place. We don’t have to look far. Newt Gingrich, in an attempt to appeal to the lowest elements in society, has hocked his title as a Republican intellectual, and started sounding like the village idiot.

On Fox News he suggested that building a mosque near the WTC site was like putting a Nazi emblem adjacent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington or a Japanese memorial at Pearl Harbor. Gingrich no doubt is hoping to gain the title of baron of inflammatory remarks.

Statements like that just diminish the justifiable feelings of those opposed to the mosque-cultural center. I can see both sides of the argument and nothing has anything to do with the Nazis or Tojo's Japanese of World War II vintage.

Personally, I would bow to the sensitivities of those who lost loved ones in the WTC attack and hope that the mosque-cultural center would move somewhere else. But in the end it doesn’t really matter that much where the center goes. It is up to the people of New York to decide and wherever it is acceptable to them is all that matters.

Actually the only thing that interests me right now, and I suspect many other people around the country, is for the story to go away. I feel it is a tempest that is getting more attention than it deserves. We have too many really important issues to be concerned with relating to the poor national economy and wide scale unemployment to be tangled up in this controversial nonsense.

Eating their own, GOP style

2010-08-09T01:32:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

Are the Democrats really headed for a fall at this November’s midterm elections? At lot of pundits seem to think so, which makes anyone who thinks differently subject to heaps of ridicule.

I may be putting my crystal ball in mortal danger but I am going to tell you why I think Obama’s party will not only retain control of both houses of Congress, but could actually improve their numbers in one or both of them.

There are four reasons skeptics contend the Dems will falter this election:

1. The party in power traditionally loses seats in off-year elections.
2. The economy is bad, joblessness is rife and the public thinks a change in the Washington power grid will work wonders.
3. The Republicans have played a callous anti-Democratic routine from the first day of this administration thwarting many positive programs with their negative stance, especially in the Senate.
4. There is a not too subtle campaign on the part of his bottom feeding detractors to appeal to the lowest possible denominator to smear Obama with ugly racial innuendoes.

I have a slightly different take on these assumed undeniable political consequences. I think at least three of these four maxims are refutable.

To begin with, the economy is bad and lots of people are out of work but I doubt if the public is so simple-minded they hold Obama to blame for the fiasco. Everyone who votes this November was around during the 2001-2009 period when the country was handed over to the big money people.

It was during the Bush administration that Wall Street was given an unregulated hand in doing whatever it pleased to make a profit no matter what it cost the rest of us. They took the regulatory policeman off the beat during that time and, in doing so, induced the horrendous financial meltdown with which we are still suffering.

By the same token I doubt if the majority if Americans are satisfied with the disreputable behavior of the GOP in the Senate by threatening endless filibusters on every piece of corrective legislation offered. The Democratic majority was ineffective in overcoming the maneuver requiring 60 to pass anything in the Senate as long as every Republican stood shoulder-by-shoulder shaking their heads "No."

It is clear the Republicans, also known now as the "Party of No," wished to sabotage every measure designed to improve circumstances for ordinary people during this period of strife. Despite that the majority party passed a health care bill and put badly behaving Wall Street under stricter financial regulations.

With a few exceptions the Party of No put a crimp in numerous bills designed to help ordinary Americans while at the same time announced they are determined to keep alive the preposterous Bush tax cuts for the two percent of the wealthiest in the nation.

They blocked the extension of unemployment checks to those who have been out of work so long their payments had expired. They supported the Arizona immigration laws and even proposed rescinding that the 14th Amendment to the Constitutional guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born within American borders.

In those two acts alone they have antagonized two large blocs of American voters – the 25 million who either are out of work or are employed at reduced hours and the 40 million Latino population. They also ticked off that large number of first responders to the World Trade Center attacks by denying them necessary extended health coverage.

But the worst damage the Republicans have done, was to cannibalize its own. It used to be that the Democrats were such a rebellious assemblage of independent minded people that they ate their own. Now it is the GOP that seems determined to devour all Republicans who stand this side of Ivan the Terrible.

The vicious internal battle to purge all moderate Republicans (non Tea Party types) and at the same time to paint Obama as some kind of Black tyrant in charge of a "gangster" socialist government is bound to backfire. The best polls give the Tea Party bunch only 25 percent of the Republican mass. Obama’s national popularity will take care of the ugly smears. You cannot win elections with only a smidgen of your base behind you.

Also you cannot win elections by always being against something. You need a positive plan and most of all you need an acceptable leader. The GOP has neither, unless you consider Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as standard bearers. We have yet to hear a single notable Republican reject any of the grotesque off-the-wall comments made by these two Right Wing gargoyles.

Finally the Dems can point with pride to the passage of the first Health Care bill in history, the avoidance of a serious depression by massive bailouts, the salvaging of the automobile industry and the enactment of legislation to control Wall Street from onerous behavior. All with little help from Republicans.

The Republicans by their deliberate action (or inaction) have made the first two years of the Obama Administration a one party show. They can claim no victories. They did nothing for the public. Anything positive that occurred was accomplished by Democrats.

With all this, the acclaimed political factor that the party in power always takes a hit during the first mid-term election is the only thing that stands in the way of a solid Democratic victory this year. But thanks to Republican intransigence on so many important issues, even that principle may go by the boards. We will see soon enough.

2010-08-03T02:44:00.000-04:00

Too big to manage?

2010-08-03T02:10:00.002-04:00

　
By Don Klein
　
In recent discourse we have heard lots about businesses that are too big to
fail. That was why the government charged in with billions of bailout funds
to help foundering enterprises on Wall Street and in Detroit. I am beginning
to wonder if the emphasis is in the wrong direction.

I get the impression there is a much worse problem. Could it be that this
country is too big to manage. It seems that America is too overblown in every
way and too diverse, for any administration to be supervised skillfully.

Take an objective look at the country. It stretches from the Atlantic to the
Pacific over a multitude of miles of mostly fertile land and is the home of 310 million people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity. Russia has twice the land mass with half the population and a population density of 8.2 per square
kilometer. Canada has slightly more land than the US with merely ten percent
of the population .

The US stands third among land masses on Earth with 9,629,091 square
kilometers and a population density of 31.6 per square kilometer. The
average population density for the entire world is 13.1. And it will worsen as
the US gets bigger, and we will because we have the largest expanding
population among the world’s industrialized countries.

In a mere 40 years the United States Census Bureau projects the country’s
population will be 440 million, or a 46 percent increase over today. It appears
to be impossible to run the country today, how are we going to handle 130
million more residents?

A growing population in a finite land area puts all kinds of strains on
government. People need water, food and space to live comfortably. We
already use a larger space footprint per person than any country in 2010, what
can we expect in another few decades?

Another problem, if you can call it that, is the tradition of freedom that exists
in America. The population may be derived from different backgrounds but
the ultimate goal of most people is doing what they want, where they want to do it and when they want to do it. How is that going to be possible when we will be falling all over each other in the not too distant future?

Twenty-five years ago I was in China departing a Hangchow to Shanghai
passenger train and stepped onto the platform of the busy station. All I could
see was an endless mass of Orientals streaming to the exits. I was with a
small group of Americans heading for our chartered bus and had to walk
against the flow of human traffic to get to our awaiting vehicle.

It is impossible to describe the feeling of smallness in that situation. The
crowd was hardly belligerent, just curious at the sight of us, as they
maneuvered by. The impact of the shear multitude in such a small area made
me feel intimidated. It was a dreamlike vision, even frightening to share such
a small space with so many others.

The thought of that as the future of the United States, even on a smaller scale,
is enough to provoke nightmares. But that seems to be where the country is heading.

We don’t have enough roads, nor enough bridges and tunnels to traverse our waterways, there are times we don’t have enough water for all our needs, and who knows how long our food supplies will keep us all fat and happy.

There are forest fires that burn down homes, floods that wash away our
towns, hurricanes that damage our cities, tornadoes that level our villages. All
have a human element. The forest fires are often caused by careless campers,
floods are caused by the lack of trees cut down to make room for expanding
home sites and hurricanes and tornadoes wreak much of their damage
because population density results in the inability of people to escape their paths.

But the failure to manage the country lies in the inability to get things done in
Washington. It has become not a question of governance, but the challenge to govern at all. Gridlock in Washington is monstrous as the minority party
votes as one against anything the majority party sponsors.

Recent examples: The unemployed lose of extended benefits, the ailments of
first responders to 9/11 attacks go untreated. But there are worse signs of
mismanagement. Reportedly about 6,000 graves at Arlington National
Cemetery are misplaced, the Department of Defense routinely cannot find
billions of dollars of its budgeted funds, and there are times the government
cannot even deliver a letter in reasonable time and without great expense.

We heard about wounded veterans not getting proper treatment at Walter
Reed Hospital, the icon of American military medical facilities, and we learn
that suicides among fighting forces are higher than ever and specialists in the
field blame the military for not recognizing the problem early enough and
treating the people in need.

Then there is the two worst aspects of US government. One is the outlandish
corruption of officials. Every year there is another series of scandals
involving present and former congressmen and senators. Then we also have
the endless problem of protecting the country from illegal aliens entering
across our borders. We don’t seem to have the gumption to do anything about
it.

They say they can save billions of dollars if they rid Medicare of its
inefficiency. The same is true of every government function. The military
wastes more money than any other agency because it gets more. There is
Social Security fraud and mismanagement, and other entitlements that could
be trimmed without reducing benefits, and education funds go astray, but
government thrives on waste and incompetence.
　
Is there another country with all these problems ? I don’t know , but I doubt
it. The problem is size and wealth. America is simply too big and getting
bigger every year, and too wealthy, even though it is a debtor nation.

They used to say New York city was too big the manage. That’s peanuts
compared to the nation. Places with the largest population are the hardest to run. Think of California’s money problems. Maybe we should not worry about that and just amble along in our incompetence.

I was fortunate to live through the Golden Years of America – from World
War II through the end of the 20th century. I am glad I will not be around to
see what’s in store for the people the next half century.

When the White House acts badly

2010-07-26T16:12:00.003-04:00

by Don Klein

The Shirley Sherrod case is a perfect example of what happens when society becomes politically truculent. Somebody ends up tripping over his own feet. Nobody escaped this incident with clean skirts. But there were two kinds of disgrace citations to be awarded to those involved.

On one side we had the predictable underhanded troublemakers and on the other side we had the botched up stupidity of the do-gooders. I am not sure which is more harmful to the country in the long run.

I cannot image a single mentally sound person being surprised to learn that Fox News broadcast a phony, abridged video designed to discredit the NAACP and the Obama Administration. That’s their bread and butter. Their mother's milk. Lying and distorting news which defames their most favorite designated scapegoat is as natural to Fox as bananas are to monkeys.

Does anyone expect honest reporting and fair handling of news from a corporation whose owner is Rupert Murdoch, the Australian news mogul who makes his money selling trash wherever possible? His London tabloid, The Sun, for example, carries a daily page of naked young women to boost circulation and sadly tons of Brits plunk down their hard-earned moolah for this version of the "news."

He ruined the once liberal New York Post and now is on the way to infusing the erstwhile Wall Street Journal with his kind of questionable "journalism." When Murdoch is finished with it, the WSJ will be less than a shadow of its former self, much to the sorrow of all journalists and readers.

So there is no great surprise to learn that his television news network would sink to its lowest and portray in edited tape a decent government employee as a racist, especially since the record showed she was just the opposite. That’s the way Fox plays the news – hit someone below the belt, watch the confusion it creates and run for cover when the facts finally come out.

Then we have the other side of the controversy. It was more damaging, and to me very disheartening, the way Sherrod was treated by her superiors in the Obama Administration. Without a question, without a review of the phony tape, without even a second thought, she was asked to resign. They couldn’t even wait for her to get to her office. She was forced to fall on her sword on the side of the road while enroute to her destination.

Now let’s be clear. If a federal employee was found stealing paper clips and reams of stationery they would be hauled up before superiors and asked to explain their actions. Sherrod, a mid-level specialist in the Department of Agriculture, was denied that routine procedure expected by all employees. She was booted onto the sidewalk like an unruly drunk thrown out of a saloon.

Why? Allegedly because they expected Glenn Beck to feature her story on that evening’s broadcast on Fox. Her bosses wanted to get ahead of the story. So there was no time for her side to be told, nor was there time to review the entire video which exonerated her from any wrongdoing.

Slam dunk. She was out on her ear with not so much as a howdy do. That was worse than anything Fox did or Beck could have done (Beck did not mention the story that night). The Secretary of Agriculture violated this woman’s employment rights by dismissing her without a hearing on grounds that proved to be erroneous.

Shame. Is that what we should expect from our government? It is said she was asked to resign on the insistence of the White House. If that is true we need some house cleaning there. We have a bunch a nervous Nellies more concerned about what Beck might say than being fair with a longtime employee.

I never cared much for the people who surround Obama and provide him with advice. I often wonder if they were the ones who managed from behind the scenes the attempt to get bipartisan support for the Health Care bill by watering down its provisions. I wonder how much influence these people had in convincing Obama to accept a nearly toothless Financial Reform bill.

I will never forgive these opportunists on the Obama team for unjustly branding Bill Clinton a racist during the 2008 primary campaign. I know politics is rough and hard, but I viewed Obama as principled leader, a man who sought the higher plain of political participation.

But someone in his office gave the agriculture people reason to believe that Sherrod had to be jettisoned to avoid further conflict with Fox commentators. What crap. What cowardice. Loyalty requires that you stand up for you people and get the whole story before acting like jittery mice approaching a cheese-laden mousetrap.

I would hope that Obama, a decent man with honorable goals, will find out who pushed for Sherrod’s resignation and take that aide to the woodshed for a sound spanking. This incident did more harm to the Obama gang than anything they’ve done previously. This is not the act of an upfront, straight forward administration we thought we elected almost two years ago.

Obama should get rid of his overprotected adjutants (or at least reject their advice) and start being a pacesetter. As a Constitutional scholar he knows when a person’s rights have been violated. To have his administration guilty of such antics is a letdown to all his supporters.

The trouble with bigness

2010-07-14T13:39:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

It’s a big world. At this moment there are some 6,855,726,713 people living on Earth, give a few million more every week or two. Soon there will be 7 billion people. By time my eight-year-old granddaughter is eligible to vote the world population will be well on its way to 8 billion souls.

That’s a lot of people. The world is mired in population growth and will only get worse as the years pass. The question is will we be able to survive as a species? The earth has it’s limits, but human growth apparently has none. How much population growth can we expect on a finite globe?

I consign answers to these and other questions to people a lot younger than me who will have to endure the future. This is a subject for those who think in scores of years, who do not measure the future in single years or at most in a decade, like me.

There is one thing I can talk about, however. A big world requires everything about it to be big. Selling a million records is no longer the phenomena it once was. A high school dropout can "write a song" after lunch, record it the next day and a few weeks later be a millionaire because it has caught on with just small segment of the population while millions of others are not even familiar with the performer’s name.

When you have a country like the United States with 310 million population and sell a million of anything you have appealed to one-third of one percent of the available market. In other words if you have a product that only a tiny fraction of the public buys–- a record, a Tee shirt, a picture frame, a widget –- you could be a millionaire these days.

Extend that throughout the world with its 6.8 billion people and you realize what bigness is. This means in order to compete worldwide you must be a heavy hitter. In sports it means the National Football League has to show its mettle in Europe and Asia looking for new markets. Major League baseball recruits from Latin America, Asia and even Australia for players to appeal to foreign audiences. It explains why all of a sudden the World Cup became so popular in a country like ours that once confined soccer to a minor slot in high school and college sports.

In business, bigness is even more important. Although there are still a healthy smattering of small businesses, the super market has wiped out the Ma and Pa corner grocery. There are giant restaurant chains supporting both table cloth sit-down restaurants and fast food emporia.

Huge agricultural combines control the food industry in the US and elsewhere. Household retailers have gotten so big that even onetime monster enterprises like Montgomery Ward cannot compete anymore and the American auto industry is down to a mere three manufacturers-going-on-two as Chrysler struggles in its death throes.

Insurance companies are larger and stronger than ever, oil companies make billions by the minute and medical and pharmaceutical services are so wealthy that most doctors can turn away new patients and drug companies have profits equal to the gross national product of many nations.

With all this the world is out of balance because as bigness continues, there is the sad plight of the ordinary guy. He still struggles at a pathetic level to keep all these mammoth institutions healthy.

In order to deal with unabated bigness man created big government and that perhaps is the worst disappointment of all. Big government usually means plodding government. Services are slow to begin and sadly, once having begun, it is virtually impossible to stop even when no longer needed. Village and town councils are much more efficient, if less flush.

Presidents and Cabinet secretaries "make" policy but lower level government workers decide "how" those policies are implemented. And few ever like what they are doing. The bigness of government easily allows for irresponsibility. So many people have their hands in the pot while policy is cooking no one can be blamed when things go wrong. This is the government workers paradise, their insurance policy.

You can always find a retired doctor who loves to talk about his work, or a retired butcher or bus driver, or accountant, or even journalists. But I have never met a retired government worker who had anything good to say about his/her years of service. They all have horror stories to talk about.

There is little incentive when you have a job which provides you with incremental salary boosts, offers you promotions whether you deserve it or not, and where you are protected by concrete civil service rules even when you fail to live up to the lowest of standards.

That explains I suppose the failures of the Minerals Management Services of the Department of Interior, on whose shoulders rests a large part of the blame for the BP spill. It also explains the failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission in not monitoring Wall Street manipulators prior to the financial meltdown in 2008 and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack for the mortgage scandal.

Government regulators just didn’t do their jobs despite the importance we attach to their work and despite being well paid. In the end, no one was punished for failing to do what they were supposed to do, unlike private industry.

There is no responsibility in government. There are just benefits hidden behind the myriad of employee rules and thousands of ambiguous regulations.
That’s the evil of big government. But unlike Ronald Reagan’s maxim to the contrary, enforced regulations are necessary. As we get bigger, government laxity could become even worse until we start dismissing people for failing to do what they are paid to do.

It will not solve all our problems but it certainly will help.

Finally, a butt-kicking leader

2010-06-26T13:49:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out, fired by the president. Finally Obama acted with alacrity, and was never more presidential. That’s the way most Americans want their presidents to behave. There was no extended deliberative period. No drawn-out consideration of the facts.

McChrystal showed a terrible lack of judgment in allowing his aides to demean and mock one of the most crucial American credos – civilian control of the military – and paid the awful price. And they ridiculed not in the confines of the locker room but in the presence of a magazine reporter. What kind of judgment is that?

The stupidity of the situation brought into question the experienced general’s judgment and he had to go. That was the easy choice for Obama. Military men learn in early training that the civilians are in charge. That’s why in the centuries since 1776 there never was a junta taking over Washington.

What is admirable about this unfortunate situation is that Obama acted like a leader. He didn’t hesitate. He took charge immediately and made the change. And what is more outstanding was the brilliance of his choice of a successor in a circumstance that otherwise set Obama up for another round of political sniping from the Right.

The president chose Gen. David Petraeus, the most celebrated military man in current times to head up the Afghanistan conflict. By doing that he accomplished two important goals. 1. He put a man in charge who was a totally familiar with the war and is as well versed in the Middle East as anyone in government, and 2. he silenced the ready-to-pounce Republican jabberwockies who love all CEOs, whether corporate or military, and hate Democratic presidential authority.

This is what Obama supporters have been seeking from the president for almost a year and a half now. Action. Presidential action. Not just another extensive cerebral approach to a national crisis. More about Afghanistan later.

One has to think that the president has suddenly discovered the clout of the White House. Without any legal authority to do so, Obama twisted the arms of BP brass recently and got them to put $20 billion into an escrow account to pay for the losses to Gulf citizens as a result of the oil spill.

This was so effective that the Republicans in Congress were so flabbergasted that all they could do was cry foul. A Texas Republican apologized to the BP boss who was testifying before the House energy committee claiming the company was victim of a “shakedown.” He never mentioned any concern for the real victims of the oil spill along the coast, Americans who previously were labeled by the BP chairman as “small people.”

And, finally, it appears that Obama has won an uncharacteristically classic battle in Congress to establish a long list of regulations to bring the financial community under control. After it is enacted the question will be how enthusiastically will it be enforced? Given the history of federal bureaucracy my guess it not very vigorously.

Nevertheless, Obama deserves much credit. Things are beginning to look better for him and he seems to beginning to feel his oats by finally using the power that comes with the Oval Office. But none of these accomplishments will do much good for the Democrats this fall unless there is a sharp upturn in the economy and jobs.

Personally I’d like to see action designed to discourage out-sourcing. Whatever benefits are accrued to American businesses that go foreign there should by an equal monetary penalty to wipe out corporate profits at the expense of US workers’ jobs. I don’t think we will see anything in this department this year despite Obama’s campaign promises on this subject.

Back to Afghanistan. One of the factors that became very evident in the exchange of command from McChrystal to Petraeus was the president’s recommitment to the Afghan War. I think we need a further refinement of our role in that part of the world. What we are doing now is not succeeding and what we plan to do later is even more precarious.

Just how far are we willing to go in that God-forsaken patch of bleak terrain? It might be cruel to say this but I don’t care a hoot whether Afghan girls get an elementary education when our commitment to that nation constrains the rights of American girls to benefit from their birthright.

I am tired of reading the casualty lists as too many American youths sacrifice their lives for an ungrateful nation which embraces our enemy and refuses to fight for themselves. I don’t like spending billions on a country whose president is dealing with our enemy behind our backs. The same goes for Pakistan.

I don’t know why we are fighting the Taliban in the first place. That is an Afghan problem, not ours. We should get back to battling al Qaeda, our real enemy. Worst of all, Obama’s apparent commitment to the current policy in that part of the world reminds me a lot of the George W. Bush fiasco.

I wish Obama would reverse direction. We have more problems of our own than in most of my lifetime and let’s work on those solutions not the on Afghanistan’s. I like Vice President Biden’s views on the war. Go after al Qaeda with all the power we have and if Pakistan and Afghanistan fail to support us fully, withdraw our support of their governments. We should stop being their patsy, their unrequited sugar daddy.

Now that Obama finally found his muscle and started kicking butt these last few weeks, he still has plenty of other butts to kick. You found the formula, Mr. President, now get to work down the line.

Poetry yes, prose no

2010-06-17T02:18:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

It is beginning to have the feel of 1979 when Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran. The incident was so badly handled by then President Jimmy Carter that he was swept out of office more than a year later.

Is Barack Obama unconsciously replicating those days of Carter ennui? Is he reminding us of how incapable he is in finding a solution, or at least a plan of action, to a situation grass roots Americans refuse to live with? Is he toying with the possibility of becoming known as a leader paralyzed and overwhelmed by events?

Will the offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico be his hostage crisis? Will Obama’s "Waterloo" not be the failure of his political programs as predicted by some Republican senators, but rather an unexpected and uncontrollable oil spill? These are legitimate questions that will be answered relatively soon.

In case you forgotten 52 American embassy workers were held hostage for 444 days by Iranian extremists after they stormed the US compound in Tehran in 1979. The reason for their behavior is unimportant since their action was clearly a violation of the most sacred doctrine of international law – an embassy in a foreign land is the property of the nation it represents and is protected from intrusion by the local government.

The Iran government spit on this reverent international agreement and Carter fumbled like a schoolboy trying to explain to a strict teacher why he played hooky for most of time until everyone was freed after he left office more than a year later. He even aborted a desert helicopter rescue after a accident which left eight American servicemen dead and shied away from any other action.

Today with the oil spill still dominating the headlines and with the public impatient for presidential action which does not seem to be coming, insiders have to be worrying about Obama’s leadership image. Here we have 11 American dead when the oil rig went up and we are well into nine weeks of failure in stemming the flow of oil into the gulf.

And like Carter more than three decades ago, Obama doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what to do next to relieve the pain of those injured by the spill. There are those defenders of the president who ask, "what else can he do?" as if he has done anything significant so far.

There are lots for him to consider if he was bold and proactive. He could ask all the major oil suppliers who make billions selling gasoline to Americans to assemble emptied tankers at the sight and a start sucking up the accumulated spill. His apologists say this is expensive and will not work. But it did work in previous spills elsewhere and the expense will not be greater than the damage caused by the oil reaching into shorelines.

Besides the expense will be BP’s not the taxpayer’s.

I am sure there are other strategies that could be used. Anything is better than nothing, which is pretty much what is being done now. But Obama is proving the old Mario Cuomo adage that campaigns are poetry while governing is prose.

Some years ago Cuomo, the former governor of New York and a brilliant wordsmith in his own right, said in a speech, "In fact, if our candidates campaign in poetry instead of good hard specifics, and win, they may wind up governing… in vain." Could he have been predicting the fate of Obama?

Most people who listened to the president speaking from the Oval Office Tuesday were not very impressed. He spoke like an oncologist describing how he plans to remove a cancerous growth from a patient’s nose. I heard more passion from an auto mechanic explaining how he will adjust my car’s faulty alternator.

Obama came into prominence as the twenty-first century’s version of Franklin D. Roosevelt or a reincarnation of Jack Kennedy. He had the style, the language and the swath of greatness, but the challenges of the time seem to be too much for him. At least so far. Maybe he will surprise us soon and give us all the confidence that was generated by the great presidents of the past.

When FDR was at his height I was a teenager. I was 15 years old when he died and I cried when I watched the newsreels (there was no consumer television then). They say it was a different time then, and maybe it was, but a great leader brings out the emotions in people.

What made Roosevelt the beloved man he was? His eloquence did not match Obama, but he had something today’s president seems to lack. He was inspirational with his upbeat attitude and expressed confidence in the future. So was Kennedy, even though he achieved less.

But Obama is an enigma. No matter how much I root for him to succeed and to inspire a downcast nation he appears to have lost the knack. His words promised us a great deal during the presidential campaigns and to many he appeared to be that proverbial knight on the white charger.

The problem is that his style has not matched his pre-election words. He is riding a pony not a stallion. The weight of the high office he holds seems to have worn him down. The energy is sapped. Hopefully he is not turning into a latter day Carter.

The question remains, however, has he made Cuomo’s bywords his axiom?

Ecology versus investments

2010-06-12T00:09:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

Some Brits are annoyed with the American reaction to the despoiling of our coastal lands by BP. They don’t like the oil giant being branded by most Americans as the self-centered, lying entity that it is. Some of them say we are xenophobic and petulant.

The Brits are worried about their freaking investments – about their dividends and the viability of their pension funds. That is more important to them than the destruction of a large portion of the US ecological system. All they see is evaporating profits.

Their loss of dividends affects them more than the loss of income of thousands of innocent American workers in the area. It is a higher priority than the decimation of American wildlife and the potential for the oil spill to travel up the East coast spreading its devastation to half the population of the country.

Many Britons are upset, according to a report in The New York Times, at what they see not just as the economic costs of American anger, but also at language they say demonizes Britain, America’s partner in the so-called special relationship — "loose talk that taps into the British suspicion that Americans are insular and overly nationalistic."

A Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, in an astonishing statement of ridiculous snobbery quoted by The Times called the American reaction "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company."

That is similar to accusing a rape victim who has just identified her attacker as a person driven by "peevish revenge."

To begin with, let us get a few things straight. No one in the United States to my knowledge, has blamed the Brits for the spill. BP, once known as British Petroleum, is the culprit not the British people. If the outlandish defenders of BP were interested in continuing good relations with the US wouldn’t it be in their best interests to stay out of the fray. The oil spill that is corrupting our natural resources has nothing to do with the British people, and no one on this side of the Atlantic thinks it does.

If this ruinous oil spill had happened off shore in Britain and was despoiling its natural resources, putting its citizens out of work and threatening to spread over a wide range of the British Isles, would these same defenders of BP be calling outraged locals xenophobic and petulant?

It is understandable that British pensioners who depend on BP dividends to sustain their level of comfortable retirement are concerned, but any loss of income on this score is not because of anything Americans have done. It was all brought on by BP’s negligence and people in this country are irate, as should be the Brits.

Lord Tebbit and others can scold us all they want, but the more they talk this way the worse they sound. Tebbit and his greedy friends are concerned with dividends for their long range financial security but don’t give a seagull’s muck for the thousands of Americans who are victims of this debacle.

If they want a target to lambast, look to BP. Their bloody executives agreed to cut corners on safety and to increase the flow of oil all for a single purpose – to make more profits.

That may have been okay for shareholders and pensioners as long as it paid-off, but it did not in this case and they may now turn into the unintended fiscal victims of the problem having to face uncertainty– as will many Americans who have lost their livelihoods. No Brits died on the failed rig, 11 Americans did.

My advice to the Brits who find fault with the vigorous American response to being ravaged by an oil company based in England: Get used to the harsh language, it ain’t going away.

The new British Prime minister, David Cameron, took a more temperate route. "I fully understand the US government’s frustration because it is catastrophic to the environment," he told reporters, "BP needs to do everything it can clear up the situation. The most important thing is to mitigate the effects and get to the root of the problem."

You can bet that Cameron will wait for a later date when passions have cooled and no one is paying attention before he will make his appeal to the US to soften its claims against BP.

There is speculation that BP, third largest oil company in the world after Exxon and Shell, will either get away with murder by buying off enough congressmen to escape full responsibility or it will suffer the opposite – extinction.

Either way the liabilities are too great for even BP and in the end the taxpayers will again foot a portion of the bill to protect an industrial giant. A reprise of the unpopular Wall Street bailout. They screw up and we get screwed. A familiar story, but for the British to take the attitude that their money is more important than our livelihoods and our environment really should freak out lots of Americans.

The Brits have offered no assistance in the cleanup. Offered no technology worth a damn to help mitigate the situation. They have done nothing but take pop shots while ingesting their afternoon tea. That won’t do and we will remember that the next time the Brits are in need of crucial help from us.

Nowhere elso to go

2010-06-07T20:29:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

Let me admit as an American Jew who is not very religious – nor a Zionist – I more often than not interrelate with other Jews on international issues not only because they are co-religionists but because they are among the worst of the oppressed in history. Actually I feel that way towards all persecuted people.

I think of the mass murder of Jews in Europe regularly and my gut wrenches at the incalculable loss of humanity in those days.

Despite those facts I do not automatically side with the action of the Israeli government. I have been critical of Israel’s positions on many occasions but as a reasonable and proud American, steeped in American ideals, I find there are many occasions when Palestinians and other Arab groups act detestably. They often behave brutally with unabashed cowardice.

Having put that on the table I must say that I fully agree with the Israelis in their blockade on Hamas-Gaza. That is enemy territory from which many attacks against unarmed civilians in Israel have been launched. What choice did Israel have?

Remember back to October 18-29, 1962 when President Kennedy ordered the US Navy to intercept Cuban-bound ships. None other than Communists, disputed the American blockade of a country which never attacked the US mainland like Hamas attacks the Jews daily nor did any harm to the US. Kennedy had less provocation to blockade Cuba than Israel has today but the world cheered when America did it.

Why? They feared a nuclear conflagration between the Soviets and US and the end of modern society as we know it. The same consequences are at stake for Israel today. The Hamas-Gaza government has sworn to wipe out Israel and drive its people into the sea.

That brings us to the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, the Free Gaza Movement ship which tried to run the Israeli blockade. Nine Arab supporters died in the incident which easily could have been avoided – by the Arabs – if their claim they carried no contraband was true.

The death toll is regrettable but as in almost every case whenever Arabs or their supporters are killed when engaged in militant anti-Israel action there is a hue and cry about the intensity of Israel in defending itself. The cries of concern are diluted by the fact there never is a similar outcry when the Jews are unprovoked victims of Arab gunmen, bombings and missile attacks.
　
But getting back to the recent blockade incident. The whole thing was designed by Arab extremists to draw attention to the three-year-old blockade because as we all know they could have gotten all the humanitarian supplies they wanted into Gaza if they had dropped the cargo off at an Israeli port for inspection. The rebels wanted an incident so they refused to do that, then when the Israeli forces boarded one ship they were attacked by Hamas-Gaza sympathizers.

Radio transmissions released by the Israelis and reported in the New York Daily News revealed how ‘humanitarian" those Hamas-Gaza sympathizers were on board the ship involved in the incident.

"Shut up, go back to Auschwitz," one voice declares belligerently in accented English during the six minutes of radio transmissions released by the Israel Defense Force. A short time later, another voice chimes in, "We're helping Arabs going against the U.S. Don't forget 9/11, guys."

The Israelis claim the audio is a complete, unedited version of the conversation between its navy and the half-dozen aid-carrying ships headed for Hamas-Gaza.

Now ask yourself this question: why would peaceful civilians armed with only knives and sling shots attack fully armed troops if they had nothing to hide? If they were on a peaceful mission, as they claimed?

There is only one answer: Because they wanted an incident to be splashed on headlines throughout the world. They want naive outsiders to believe they are victims of brutality. Imagine back during the Cuban missile crisis when the US Navy blockaded Russian transports headed for Cuba. If they had boarded a Russian freighter and were attacked what do you think the Americans would have done? Lick their wounds and retreated or open fire to quell the attack?
　
I am not surprised to hear condemnation from Turkey and other Muslim countries and if fact I am not surprised to note anti-Israel rallies in Europe. Most of the rallies in Europe were orchestrated by Muslims living in those countries, as was the Washington rally.

Besides, the Europeans in my view are the most lily-livered of all peoples. I don't know how they ever managed to dominate the world for so many centuries prior to World War I, but lately they are the worst of wimps. They never intervened in Bosnia (in their backyard) until the US took the lead.

They mostly would not support the US in the Middle East and when they did, it was just token. They are craven and leave all the hard tasks up to others -- the US and Israel.

Instead of condemning Israel on this occasion why don't the western nations do something to stop Hamas missile attacks on Israel? That would end the blockade over night. I guess they think Jews are expendable, but Muslims have oil.
　
So given the circumstances I applaud the Israelis for taking their fate in their own hands and stopping these ships from entering Hamas-Gaza.

What the Arabs and the rest of the world does not know is that Israel has a secret weapon. As Golda Mier told the visiting then-Sen. Joseph Biden after Israel broke the Arab siege in the 1973, it is "We have nowhere else to go."

Once the Arabs get used to the idea that Israel is here to stay, the sooner there will be peace in the Middle East.

Our own worst enemy

2010-05-29T15:29:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

I was hoping with the January 20, 2009 turnover of the government to the Democrats I would never again have to mention the name of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. No such luck.

For eight years while these two erstwhile war leaders had all Americans concentrating on the acts and threats of a bunch arrogant, suicidal extremists from the center of the Muslim world, Bush and Cheney sold us out to a more effective and deadly enemy. The oil industry.

No bearded, turbaned, wild eyed, Islamic radical bunch, no matter how numerous, will every defeat the United States. But Bush-Cheney’s oil friends, in $900 suits with trophy wives on their arms, are already destroying America. They are the real enemies of this country and need to be treated as the twenty-first century’s version of John Dillinger.

As we watch the wetlands of Louisiana and other Gulf coast states being rapidly swallowed up by unremitting tides of oily goo that is poured into the Gulf of Mexico from a British Petroleum downed offshore oil rig, there is a true sense of doom in the air. BP is unable to cap the break in their mile-deep pipe which blew apart because of alleged mismanagement on the oil company’s part. Now they don’t seem to know a way to stop the eruption it started before the entire coastline is polluted and dead.

The plume from this break could spread over to Florida, around the tip of the state and up the east coast soon. And the sad thing is it could have been prevented if Bush-Cheney did their jobs, if the Mineral Management Services did their job and if the Congress had acted like they cared about the health of the nation over the health of their wallets.

On top of that, the guy who succeeded Bush in the White House a year and a half ago, doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what he should do. Barack Obama’s apparent inaction is a great disappointment. What we need now is a Roosevelt, Theodore or Franklin, or a Harry Truman with guts and stamina to get things done.

Obama’s dismal lackadaisical approach to this disaster brings to mind the Democratic presidential primary campaign of two years back when Hillary Clinton claimed she would be a better president in making urgent 3 am decisions when necessary. It looks like she was right after all.

The gulf waters may lap alongside just a handful of states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- but the waters are America’s. The spoiled wetlands are in the five states but they belong to America, the fiscal disaster will be most felt in these states, but a good bit of America dies with it. As the attack on the World Trade Center hurt New York directly, it still affected every American. Same is true of the BP oil spill.

The men who were in charge when the drill platform crews were ordered to cut back on safety rules to enhance the profits for BP are responsible. They are criminals and should be locked up. The street thug may harm a person or two before being caught and tried. Tony Hayward, the BP top man, in contrast had injured millions. He should be brought to court in handcuffs and shackles like the master criminal he is.

What should be the charges? Destroying the livelihood of thousands of local workers, putting endless numbers of small businesses out of business, damaging the seafood industry of the entire nation, bribing government inspectors, not to mention the murder of 11 workers who lost their lives on the rig when it blew up because of his firm’s policy. That adds up to criminal negligence in most people’s books.

Hayward and his greedy accomplices in crime are worse than Osama bin Laden and have done greater damage to this country that one hundred al Qaeda agents, can or ever will, do. The sad fact is they will never be brought to justice. That won’t happen because BP money will buy-off anyone in government who tries to exact justice in this case.

In the meantime we will still be distracted into concentrating on watching for the elusive jihadist entering this country and setting off a bomb in a crowded venue when we should be watching our so-called money-hungry "friends" from Britain who run BP and other oil magnates. The irony is that we will be paying more for gasoline eventually to help BP defray the costs of this disaster.

Government inspectors at the MMS were bribed to look the other way while BP violated the law thanks to a cozy relationship established during Bush’s years. The oil company staff wrote safety reports which the inspectors just accepted as fact. They conspired – BP and MMS – to defraud the government and the American people with tragic circumstances.

Most people are nauseous just watching greedy bankers steal money from the people one year, then avaricious oil executives acting dangerously with impunity the next, while the rest of us suffer economically and lose jobs because of their errors. And worst of all, with a deprave former administration relaxing safety rules, and now a stumbling White House and corrupt Congress running the show, none of the wrongdoers will ever get to pay for their crimes.

I have said it many time before and I say it again. Pogo was right. "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Pants on fire

2010-05-20T15:49:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

"Liar, liar, pants on fire." That is what a knowing secretary would whisper to me whenever the bosses at the Maryland Department of Transportation would promise us lowly workers something we all knew they couldn’t deliver. We would chuckle and then go about our daily routines.

It was funny to us, but what is happening these days with our prominent
politicians in no joke. We are witnessing an imposing list of prevaricating notables. The number swells with congressmen, governors, mayors and even presidents – and to my chagrin, journalists – on the list. Ah for the good old days when you could depend on a man’s word.

Even idolized sports figures like Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palermo, O.J. Simpson and, God forgive us, the man-child of a drooling golf crowd, his worshipful Tiger Woods, can no longer be trusted.

Now comes Richard Blumenthal, the golden boy of New England politics. He tops them all. Forget Eliot Spitzer for attacking corruption in public while toying with a prostitute in private. No need to remember Hillary Clinton’s fairy tale about dogging bullets that never where fired upon her arrival in Bosnia years ago. We can even forget about John Edward for denying out-of-wedlock intimacies and an illegitimate paternity.

Ex-Governor Rod Blagoyevich’s exploits in denying he tried to sell a senatorial nomination while chief executive of Illinois, pales in comparison. Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, an odds on favorite as the successor to retiring Sen. Christopher Dodd, had the effrontery not only to lie about his military service in Vietnam, but almost as bad, he said he was once captain of the Harvard swim team, a team of which he never was even a member.

A phoney war hero and fake Harvard letter man. A man of double duplicity. How could anyone in public office who is about to ascend to an even higher level of public service expect to get away with that?

"I misspoke," he explained when caught in this fraud by The New York Times. That excuse would not be believed even if he hadn’t sought draft deferments five times during the war. Misspoke? That’s almost as bad as blaming the dog for eating your homework.

When he eventually decided to do "his duty" he took the cowardly George W. Bush route. He joined the reserves and worked on the dangerous domestic mission known as "toys for tots."

Nevertheless endless newspaper references to his background mentioned his combat duty in Vietnam and how badly he was treated as a war veteran. People even spat on him upon his return to the States, he told tearing gullible followers from time to time. He never picked up a phone to correct stories about his falsely-reported combat duty which actually amounted to pristine service as a Marine Corps Reservist.

Can you imagine what he would have done if some news stories had referred to him as a bronco-busting Texas rodeo star in his younger days. Or worse, as having served 18 months in prison for beating his grandmother. In either case the phone would instantly be in his hand demanding an immediate correction. Not so when he was being described as a war hero.

Blumenthal was considered a certainty in the upcoming general election. I doubt if that is any longer the case. As Don Meredith, the former Monday night sportscaster and football wit used to say, "Stick a fork in him, he’s done."

There is nothing more disgusting that a liar and nothing more unpardonable than being lied to. Blumenthal can make all the speeches he wants about his misspoken remarks and he can publicly embrace as many veterans he chooses to make amends, but he will never be believed again. He should never hold public office.

He has joined the ever-expanding pantheon of the mendacious along with such well know public figures – past and present -- as Mark Sanford, Kwame Kilpatrick, Newt Gingrich, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Donald Rumsfeld, Jesse Jackson, Oliver North, Carl Rowan, Richard Packwood, Henry Cisneros, Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.

All are members of the national Hall of Shame.

To some there might be a comparison between the lying Blumenthal and former president, Bill Clinton. But there is really no similarity. Clinton’s misstatement was the natural act of a man caught in an embarrassing extra-marital situation and telling what amounted to a big fib to cover-up his philandering. It is not unusual for a man to lie about his sex exploits, especially if he is notable and wedded.

Clinton’s lies were an effort to hide his very personal misbehavior and had no effect on government operations nor the public good. Also it was a subject that many believed was none of the business of an outrageously partisan Congress.

Blumenthal’s is very different . His lies were to magnify his image to the voters and to make him more attractive as a political entity. Clinton lied to coverup his own private sexual foibles with a White House intern. Bad as it was, it was excusable and the Senate exonerated him. Blumenthal’s lies were a deliberate attempt to broaden his appeal among the body politic for his personal ill-deserved gain.

In the end both held the belief that they were important enough to ignore normal rules and scorn the accepted morality of the nation. Both were wrong, but there is a difference. Clinton harmed no one but himself by acting like a tomcat in doing what he did with his doxy.

On the other hand, Blumenthal affronted everyone who was impressed by his dishonest resume and voted for him in the past and was thinking of voting for him again. He also insulted the millions of veterans who did serve.

Pants on fire, indeed.

No fodder for the GOP

2010-05-09T21:53:00.005-04:00

By Don Klein

George W. Bush liked to be portrayed as a warrior president yet during the last four years of his dominance in Washington the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan and its cousins, the Taliban in northern Pakistan, solidified their hold on Waziristan territory.

In contrast, Barack Obama, who the GOP painted as being soft on national security, stepped up the battle with the Taliban by sending more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Waziristan where American troops were barred by Pakistan. Both appear to be impeding the hostiles. Obama changed the tide of warfare in just one year.

During the early days of the Bush era, Dick Cheney sat down behind closed doors and put together a super secret energy policy with heads of energy corporations. The meetings were sub-rosa and no one outside this group ever learned what deals were made, if any. Now we discover that safety regulations were modified in favor of business.

If I were a Republican leader I wouldn’t be criticizing President Obama for such preventable happenings as the oil spill off the Gulf states or, for that matter, the Times Square car bomb attempt. Both arguments could backfire on them.

Sniveling about the lack of speed in reaction to the British Petroleum spill is tantamount to a skunk complaining about the odor of an alley cat. Everyone still remembers when their man was in the White House during Katrina he refused to interrupt his Texas vacation for four days while New Orleans citizens died in the streets.

Grass roots Republicans are ill-served by most of current leaders who seem to think the only way they can make points with voters is by twisting every incident during the Obama years into harsh criticism. Remember the story about the boy who cried wolf?

The more the GOP gang cries out, the less people believe them. Especially when they employ weak arguments.

There is a credibility limit. Most importantly both the oil spill and the scotched New York bombing have a history that relates badly for Republicans who genuflected at the foot of the Bush Administration, that did just about every thing wrong. We are paying the price for those failures these days.

Let’s take the oil spill first. Think back to the early days of the Bush Administration and the behavior of his vice president. Cheney, the former head of the Halliburton oil empire, loosened many regulations demanded by big oil. He had always been a shill for the oil companies offering them sweetheart contracts starting when he was secretary of defense.

To make a point, if offshore drilling is to be safe there should have been the equivalent of a deadman switch, which would have automatically stopped the flow of crude if workers in the tower were unable to shut it down.

It is hard to understand why the oil companies would not have installed such a device which is required at their European deep sea rigs. It would be a lot cheaper than paying damages in the wake of a massive oil spill. But businessmen are always quick to spot ways of cutting costs to increase profits.

If these automatic cutoffs were installed at BP’s gulf equipage, there would be no threat today to wild life, the economy and the seashore of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

The cockeyed notion expressed by Michael Brown, discredited Bush FEMA head, that Obama is deviously thrilled about the spill because it now gives him reason to halt drilling after he had approved it just months ago, sounds a bit like Alice’s favorite Mad Hatter on the loose.

"This president has never supported Big Oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling and now he’s got an excuse to shut it back down." Brown said, "This is exactly what they want because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, I’m going to shut it down because it’s too dangerous."

If you want to hear adults acting like conspiratorial children just tune in on House Minority Leader John Boehner, his No. 2, Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Mike Pence, all chirping away as if Obama is behind the spill which in reality happened because Cheney allowed Big Oil to avoid installing automatic cutoffs.

Now let’s talk about Faisal Shahzad, the disgruntled Pakistan-born naturalized American citizen who was so incompetent or nervous he failed to set off a bomb in Times Square. He was arrested two days and five hours after the bomb was discovered and faces numerous criminal charges.

Shahzad reportedly became a militant because he objected to US drone attacks on Pakistan insurgent hideouts, killing many. During a visit to Pakistan he was indoctrinated in terrorism and sent back to the US to wreak havoc.

It turns out the impetus for this attack was the effectiveness of increased US drone activity approved by Obama in contrast to the inept undertakings by Bush to contain Taliban belligerents.

How come sad sack Shahzad got the Times Square assignment that failed so miserably? The consensus is the Taliban is so decimated by the drones, they have few skilled operatives left to carry out their terror, thanks to Obama’s policies.

The Republicans say that we were lucky in the Times Square case, but others could conclude that it was success in destroying terror hideouts overseas that resulted in an incompetent getting the bombing mission here. It’s an axiom that winners make their own luck. That seems to be the case.

It would be prudent for the GOP to stop criticizing the president -- at least on these two matters – if only to avoid being tarred with their own brush. But there is something unique about the current breed of Republicans. They are slow learners and no doubt will entrap themselves in continued foolishness.

Hats off to NYPD

2010-05-05T09:46:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

If a terrorist attack is inevitable in the United States, as so many experts predict, we should hope that it comes off in New York City. I know that doesn’t sound right, but the hope is it takes place where there is a first class police department.

Just imagine if the Times Square car bomber had decided to decimate Toledo, Ohio, or Biloxi, Mississippi instead? No one would have noticed the flames from the car and it would have exploded possibly killing a curious cat, two stray dogs and homeless man who curled up against the car’s fender.

The local cops would have eventually converged on the scene and scratched their heads for 15 minutes before calling for expert help which would have arrived hours later. The culprit by this time would be well on his way out of town heading for the next major airport and eventually getting on a Dubai flight unnoticed.

But not in New York. With all its problems, or maybe because of them, the NYPD is the most professional, most efficient and smartest collection of crime fighters in the country. They deserve a standing ovation. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said it took 53 hours and 20 minutes to make an arrest in the case. It takes longer than that for a small business to fill out an application for a bank loan.

The task was monumental as detectives fanned out after the discovery of the plot to interview thousands of guests at nearby hotels. They talked to tourists and vendors on the streets for evidence. They explored every nook and cranny along the route believed taken by the car owner. This could only be done by a large and experienced assortment of smart cops.

In many ways this may not be an indorsement of the city where the variety and complexity of crimes makes its gendarmes the most knowledgeable in handling wrongdoers. They prove time and again to be better than any other departments in the country because they have to in order to keep up with the multifariousness of lawbreaking in a large metropolis.

Who would have thought that the suspect in the West 45th Street bombing attempt would be in custody in 53 plus hours. I know some will say it was not all NYPD. There was the FBI and Homeland Security agents involved, but none could have been done their jobs if the grunt work was not performed first by the officers in blue on the streets.

The FBI blew the tailing of the suspect and lost him for three hours while he was awaiting his escape flight at JFK International and the jacks at Transportation Safety let him through the security check point, often a barrier for innocent travelers carrying "weapons" as large as miniature nail clippers.

The New York cops on the other hand, just did their jobs. They uncovered the suspect’s auto VIN number, a key to eventually tracking him down. They were the people who recognized the seriousness of the situation immediately and did the initial forensics.

Most importantly, they made sure the innocent bystanders –- tourists and residents alike -– on the nation’s busiest streets were kept safe.

They were the law enforcement representatives who where most in danger before anyone learned the bomb was faulty and would not fire. They were the ones poking around the vehicle looking for clues when it was still "hot." The FBI and others arrived when the scene was considered neutralized and out of danger.

A real tribute to the reputation of the New York police was the first words out of the suspect’s mouth once nabbed by the Border Patrol at the airport. He looked at the officers and asked,"Are you NYPD or FBI?" In the old days it would have been the NYPD, but now international airports are in the jurisdiction of the Customs and Border Protection agency.

Too often cops are badgered for the bad things they do, but when there is an emergency you can always count on the quick action of New York’s Finest. They rush towards danger while all others run in the opposite direction. Remember the indelible scene of cops and firemen racing into the mortally crippled World Trade Center while frightened occupants ran for their lives.

When they make mistakes it is usually a whooper, but when they do the right thing it is a classic.

And in these days when we are constantly the target of fanatical Muslims who believe the US is anti-Islamic, we can thank God for the NYPD. Be happy they are on our team. Too bad there aren’t more police departments like them.

As good as they are, though, the prediction is that there will be a successful attack on New York. If there is, the only solace the rest of us have is the police won't let the perps won’t get away with it.

So let’s take our hats off to the cops for doing their jobs in quick order and hope that their diligence never diminishes. They are our first line of defense. They may not be able to stop every fanatic determined to hurt innocent people, but they will make them all pay dearly if ever they try.

While cops in Arizona are learning that now they can harass innocent people on the streets and demand their papers like they used to do in Nazi Germany, the police in New York just do their job of protecting us all from the bad guys. The latter is nobler.

Congressional twiddle-deeing

2010-04-26T14:41:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

One of the first jobs I was assigned as a member of a New York congressman’s staff was to write a speech for the annual observance of "Captive Nations Week." I had never heard of the subject and decided research was necessary before putting hand to typewriter.

This was back in 1962. John F. Kennedy was president. I had just finished a five year stint at The Baltimore Sun and was now a proud staff member of the national legislature in the seat of the most powerful government in the world. I walked with a lilt in my step. I was among the privilege few who worked on Capitol Hill.

I now realize I also was young and foolish to think such things meant anything.

My experience of writing remarks about this "all-important" Captive Nations Week, which was to devour hours of my time and ended up with my boss putting it into the Congressional Record under his name, is a story of how Washington spins its wheels on useless work just to provide for preposterous constituent pandering. In the end the copy that went into the record was not even mine.

I learned that captive nations was the phraseology established in 1959 to describe nations under Soviet domination during the Cold War. For those just emerging from caves I remind them that the Soviet Union dissolved about two decades ago and countries it once controlled, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and so on, are now free and no longer are under foreign domination.
Yet today we still observe Captive Nations Week in Congress. Allegedly it continues to describe nations under undemocratic regimes.

But what does the observation actually do to help these countries, wherever they may be? Nothing significant. It is all political eyewash.

Still every year hundreds of congressional staff members compose glowing comments about the needs and aspirations of dominated countries who, despite congressional concern to the contrary, are no longer dominated. Does that make sense when there are so many pressing issues for Congress to be concerned with?

Don’t let that bother you though. If they scrapped captive nations week today, there would be plenty of other meaningless, time consuming commemorative weeks, days and months to keep them busy doing essentially nothing. There still remains the Save Your Vision, National Hurricane Preparedness, National Safe Boating, National School Lunch, National Character Counts and National Family weeks.

Also a sprinkling of national months consecrated by Congress every year and signed into existence by the president: National Donate Life in April, Older Americans in May, Mental Health Awareness in May, Great Outdoors in June and National Family Care-givers in November, to name just a handful.

Most of these were established at varying times over the past century and continue almost automatically every year. It reminds me of US troops stationed in Europe and Asia after World War II. Originally there was good reason for them to be there. The post-war world was in shambles, life was out-of-control and there was a need for the stabilizing force of the American army.

But that was sixty-five years ago. Since then Europe has been rebuilt, the war-torn nations are on their feet again, they have no real need for our troops, but they remain on guard (against who, for what?) more than six decades later. Once government starts something it is hard to stop.

There is a humbling end to the story about the nonsensical captive nations speech I prepared for my boss, a Republican named Seymour Halpern, a liberal back in those ancient times when there were still moderates in that party. Although cut in the political mold of famous New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Halpern often sounded more like Senator Claghorn. As I already stated I knew diddle about captive nations so I did the routine maneuver of calling the Library of Congress reference department for help. Shortly I had a ton of material delivered to my desk.

It didn’t take long to realize that declaring support for these unfortunate people was all talk and no action. It made the ethnic minorities inside America representing these foreign groups feel better, but it produced no tangible effect. Everyone knew it and still they wasted time on it.

The script that I finally came up with was, to my opinion, far superior to any of the prattle that had gone before on this subject that I found in the files of the Library of Congress. Apparently I took the matter seriously while none of my predecessors did.

Halpern was not even going to read the statement from the floor of the House. He would follow the procedure designed by Congress to disguise the work of its members by dropping it in the hopper and having it printed into the record as if he actually made the speech on the floor.

The worst part of it was when I got my copy of the Congressional Record the next day, I looked up Halpern’s official comments and was shocked to find he did not use a word of what I prepared for him. He placed instead his previous year’s bland statement into the record. Then I checked our files and discovered that it was the same remarks he made since 1959, three years earlier.

I was dismayed and thought I failed to produce adequate work for the man, when his long time secretary offered solace. "Once he finds an acceptable formula he doesn’t change it," she explained. I learned that his first insipid remarks on captive nations received plaudits from the ethnic voters in his district and that was that.

Then why did he ask me to write a new message? I figure that’s the Congressional version of twiddle-dee, twiddle-dum.

Is that Saddam's ghost we hear?

2010-04-21T14:41:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

Could it be the ghost of Saddam Hussein we are hearing in the current American affliction for the overstated and exaggerated political statement? An attempt to say what is not true in such ominous words that any casual listener might possibly believe it.

Remember before President George H.W. Bush launched “Desert Storm” in 1991, the Iraqi dictator warned the world that he would unleash “the mother of all wars” if attacked by the West. It was an Arab bluff, just another occasion of bully bluster, because when American troops eventually rolled into Iraqi territory, Saddam’s army collapsed within days.

The army which was to provide Hussein’s mother of all wars turned into nothing more than an outlandish third cousin, twice removed, who no one in the family ever believed. That army was so shattered one element surrendered to a passing group of war correspondents riding in a military vehicle.

The Saddam prediction was his brainless effort to make Iraq seem more powerful than it was.

Fast forward to today’s demonstrators – Tea Party and others – who scream at the top of their lungs about “taking back their country,” swearing they will not let “big government” come and take their precious Second Amendment rights from them. What are these people talking about? Where are they getting this stuff?

The government has made no attempt to remove the protesters of their cherished weaponry. In fact, one fully armed group demonstrated in a federal park in Virginia where carrying guns is allowed because President Obama signed into law their right to do so months ago. What are they complaining about?

Could it be the Saddam Hussein affect? They are exaggerating and overstating their complaint with the current administration because it makes them appear to be a victim when they are not. One demonstrator interviewed by Chris Matthews on the MSNBC show “Hardball” was irate because he was not allowed to carry a pistol to defend himself while standing on the grounds of the Washington Monument where guns are banned. No one has been attacked on those park lands in memory. Why the fear?

These are clearly bizarre actors – Saddam Hussein and park demonstrators. But now these exaggerators are infiltrating the ranks of what we normally think of as responsible political sources. The GOP talks about the country turning to socialism with a health bill that opened a market of 33 million new clients for the private insurance industry. Does that sound like socialism?

Or is it the ghost of Saddam speaking again, this time on the new subject of health care. The Republicans say they will repeal it because it is unconstitutional, but if it is unconstitutional they will not have to repeal it. The Supreme Court will erase it from the books. What they really mean is they will repeal it because they don’t like it.

Now comes Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, taking up the Israeli side in the current dispute with Washington. As I see it the clash is between Obama’s view of the Middle East and Benjamin Netanyahu’s. It largely revolves around the continued building of Jewish settlements in disputed territory which leads to one result – a failure to advance a glimmer of hope for peace for the area.

It is more than a difference of opinion between two friendly nations. It is a case of the client nation, Israel, trying to wag the tail of the US, its steady sponsor for more than sixty years. Obama wishes a halt in the settlements and Netanyahu wants the settlements to continue and seems to delight in sticking it to the US on every occasion.

The latest fissure started when Vice President Joe Biden landed in Israel for peace talks only to be greeted by an announcement of expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu knew exactly what he was doing. He was poking his thumb in Uncle Sam’s eye. Obama’s response was to give the Israeli head the cold shoulder when he arrived in Washington weeks later.

So what does Koch do. In an article published in the Jewish World Review he never refers to the diplomatic affront by Israel but only talks in highly emotional terms about the survival of the tiny Middle East democracy. He recalls the courageous story of Masada Jews who held off Roman Legions almost two millennia ago. Then he talks about the atrocities inflicted on Jews through the ages. None of this is in dispute or relevant to the issue of settlements.

To Koch’s disfavor he did not try to explain how Netanyahu’s recklessness in insulting the United States upon an official visit by the vice president. Even in the worst days of the Cold War, the USSR never acted that discourteously during visits of officials from this country.

Natanhayu is arrogant and deserves the silent treatment he is getting. US foreign policy should be operated in the best interests of the US, not any other country. Too long Israeli supporters like Koch have reveled in the belief that US Middle East policy should be formulated by the Israeli foreign office. Obama is right to be irritated.

But what does he get from Koch? -- Claims that Obama made outrageous verbal attacks on Israel, which he never did.

“I weep today because my president, Barack Obama, in a few weeks has changed the relationship between the US and Israel from that of closest of allies to one in which there is an absence of trust on both sides,” Koch moaned.

I’m surprised Koch didn’t elevate the rift to “the mother of all disputes.” Oh no, Saddam Hussein already used that approach and it didn’t work.

The tea and sympathetic party

2010-04-17T02:06:00.003-04:00

By Don Klein

Tea Party rhetoric rings in my ears daily and for long time I have resisted writing about them because I felt they were inconsequential. I thought of them as a bunch of wacks who were roused by harum-scarum fears and madcap folly from their nesting deep in the underbrush to blow off steam. They were not worthy of comment.

Then I recalled that people also thought the National Socialist Party of Germany was made up of a bunch of crackpots and if no one gave them much attention they would dissolve into thin air and things would go back to normal. We all know that led to the most horrible of all consequences in the last century.

I am not equating the Tea Party with the Nazi Party -- yet, primarily because the former has not yet tasted real power. But there are many similarities. The Tea Party is so out of line with the rest of America it is shameful that they get so much national attention. They are mostly stingy older people who are very comfortable in life and want to protect their cushy existence at the cost of others.

Their motto should be "Me, me, me." I call them the party of shrill and no sympathy. Their ostensible leader and national icon, the ex-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who has proved herself to be a shade less well-informed than a simpleton, speaks in a shrieking voice as an authority on whatever subject she thinks will rally her phobic, racially bigoted and gun-toting followers.

They fear a self-concocted creeping socialism, they hate the thought of a black president and will do whatever is necessary to derail his programs, they love their second amendment rights and their bibles.

Naturally, Palin’s biggest target is President Barack Obama and her major objective is to save America from what she calls encroaching "big government." In Palin’s view, by pushing through the health care legislation Obama was robbing the citizenry of their freedom.

Not sure what freedom is being denied us poor souls, as Palin contends. She never explains anything. It doesn’t fit into her sound-bite delivery from the various podiums. In-depth interviews are out of question for her. She is still licking wounds from her disastrous interview with Katie Couric on national television a year and a half back.

Palin doesn’t like what she terms "gotcha" journalism and claims that asking a candidate which newspapers she reads was a gotcha moment, especially when the candidate didn’t know how to respond to such an evil query. She prefers fiery short to-the-point statements in battling health care – "don’t retreat, just reload."

The TP goes way beyond the inanities of Palin. They carry signs depicting Obama as a fascist, a socialist and a communist all wrapped up in one, thinking that will discredit him when it has the exact opposite effect. They forget he was elected by an overwhelming majority of voters to do just what he is doing. It shows how out of step they are, not him.

They also lie by the hour. They say the economy is worsening when in fact the recession has leveled off and the stock market is back over 11,000 for the first time in years. Also joblessness is slowly diminishing.

They were the ones that propounded the death panel talk and questioned whether Obama indeed was an American citizen. They continued that nonsense in the face of factual evidence to the contrary. They feel overtaxed and demand relief while being so ill-informed they don’t realize that taxes for most people last year was less than its been in years.

To the TP, the answer to all questions is to cut taxes and cut spending, except for the military.

The TP is made up of mostly older, white males who seem to fear that their privileges and status will be harmed by new social and economic programs. They are full of contradictions. They all speak of smaller government but none want to give up their Social Security or Medicare.

Their biggest fear is wrapped around what they call the tendency towards socialism in this country. I doubt if many of them can define socialism, but it is the bugaboo they dread will eventually take away their rights. Although almost all of them have adequate health care for themselves and their families they resent the program to provide health care for the uninsured.

Their political nemesis is Obama and the Democrats, even though most say they don’t like either major party and do not seek a third party. The overwhelming majority of TP members are extremely conservative and are unhappy Republicans.

They like to describe themselves as a grass roots movement but I see the TP as the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, on par with the evangelicals. That’s why you never hear a GOP hotshot challenging anything the TPs say. Fortunately, the TP is a small percentage of the country and has no current leader.

This is where Sarah Palin, and such outlandish purveyors of screwball ideas, Rep. Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, pose a danger. If either of these oddballs manage to latch on as a TP leader, watch out.

The sad truth about Palin and Bachmann is that they are unfit to hold any public office, but despite their ignorance and lack of curiosity about the world around them, they are potent figures by virtue of their charisma, their political cheerleading and their good looks. They are attractive candidates to a certain misinformed and disenchanted element of the electorate.

It would be a tragedy if either of them became national decision-makers. I can’t image either one in a seat of power here or anywhere, but it has happened before. Remember George W. Bush? One Bush in one lifetime is more than enough.

Uncaring adults, deadly result

2010-04-09T23:15:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

When a teenage girl was found hanging in the stairwell of her New England home not too long ago it was not just the tragedy that all adolescent suicides are. It was a failure of the adults in her life to face up to their responsibilities, not to mention the fault of her malevolent adolescent counterparts.

Phoebe Prince, 15, may have been a victim of abusive peers in her high school but she died because the grownups in her life never stepped up to protect the child, as all children should be protected, from the hurtful behavior of ruthless school mates.

The abusive teenagers who drove the poor child to her end are shameful products of adolescent quirks driven by hormones raging through bodies placing them somewhere between child and grownup. But the question I ask is when will adults start acting as adults and accept their roles as guardians of youth?

Why didn’t teachers and school authorities act when they learned of, or witnessed, the harmful taunting and threats hurled at this student. Phoebe’s friends knew about it, her young provocateurs knew, the girl fled in tears to the school nurse, she knew, and her family knew. Teachers witnessed attacks on more than one occasion and Phoebe pleaded to administrators for help.

Yet no one did anything. No adult stood by her. Shame on them all.

When we send children to school they become temporary wards of educators, they become the responsibility of the teachers and school administrators. School officials are surrogate parents while the children are in their care whether they like the role or not. They are obligated to see no harm comes to them, they must care for their safety and good health. Most educators do.

If not, no parent would allow their child to go to school if they are on their own with no oversight by tending adults. Yet that seems to have been the failure in Phoebe’s case. No one took custody for her well being. No one nipped the abuse before it reached the fatal level.

Three 16-year-old girls are being held in this case for taunting and bullying young Phoebe, an immigrant girl from Ireland. The intimidation was gross and intense and drove the victim to despair. Why? Apparently it was that curious explosive energy that drives most teenagers – boy-girl relationships.

Prosecutors in Northwestern Massachusetts have charged the girls as youthful offenders with felonies including violation of civil rights and stalking, and have also accused them with similar crimes under juvenile laws. Three other students have been charged as adults, two of whom being accused of statutory rape.

Gus Sayer, the superintendent of schools including South Hadley High School, where the abuse took place, said he could not discuss some of the pertinent matters in the case because of "privacy rules." How many times have we heard that lame excuse to cover-up their own failings.

Privacy my foot. A young girl’s life is ended in suicide. Those feeble rules no longer exist.

Teenage bullying is a lot more dangerous than any adult would suspect. What if Phoebe had turned the tables on everyone and somehow got her hands on a gun. That is not very difficult in a country whose gun laws and virtually written by adherents of the National Rifle Association. What if she took that gun to school to even the score with her tormentors and in the process shot many uninvolved innocent kids and teachers.

That would get national attention and we would be asking why?

Don’t say that is far fetched because it already happened. Remember the Columbine High School mass murder in Colorado brought about by teenagers who felt abused and ostracized by their peers. It also happened elsewhere where kids attacked schoolmates and teachers with deadly weapons after feeling they were picked on incessantly.

Oddly enough there is only one group of adults who usually can spot these antisocial trends brewing in youngsters. They are teachers. They spend more time with the kids than their parents do. In many cases parents don’t have a clue about their children because most teenagers don’t confide in them.

The teachers at Columbine and other schools where youngsters resorted to shooting up the place and causing grievous human damage were, in essence, negligent in their duties by spotting disturbing trends among their students and not doing anything about it. That is the case at South Hadley High School.

There is no one who respects teachers more than I do because they are the ones who mold the future for us all. Their work is the most honorable you can imagine, but they have become aloof when it comes to dealing with the behavioral problems of students. The parents ignore them when they point out problems and the administration usually backs down and hides behind rules and regulations.

Without the support they deserve teachers often develop the attitude whereby they do just what the lessons require and leave issues like pupil interaction and deportment for others to solve. In the end it is really the parents who must change. They should support teachers and maybe then they will find dividends in the outreach of teachers towards troubled students.

The Associated Press reported that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in a radio interview said that "adults did not seem to have acted like adults" in the case. He did not distinguish between school administrators or the parents of the teens charged.

How right he is. We cannot afford to ignore children as they continue to victimize each other.

An unholy comparison

2010-04-04T01:52:00.004-04:00

By Don Klein

"The use of stereotypes, the passing of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," read a high ranking Vatican priest quoting from a letter written by a Jewish friend.

Wait a minute. Was he equating the public scorn aroused by the Vatican's protection of Catholic clergyman who abused children with the ageless Christian theme of unremitting bigotry against Jews? Does this cleric have his head on straight? Why would he read out loud such a ridiculous conclusion?

Father Cantalmessa, the priest making the remarks, holds the title of preacher of the papal household. Is there any wonder that respect for the Catholic priesthood has dropped so precipitously. They are now almost as low in public standing as members of Congress.

Let’s look at this comparison factually. Just the truth please. Jews have been victims of discrimination throughout history by Christian clergy, specifically the Catholics, for no other reason than being Jewish and not followers of Jesus. Their conversion is high among Catholic targets.

It wasn’t until Pope John XXIII that official anti-Semitism ended.

If it wasn’t for this dishonorable and ageless hatred of Jews, chances are the Holocaust never would have happened. Hitler probably would not have had the support of most Germans for the slaughter that killed over six million innocent non-Christians.

That was anti-Semitism at its peak. There were hundreds of other less horrible examples. Christians imposed laws that denied Jews the right to own land, to work in certain employment, to travel freely, and Jews were expressly and regularly branded from the Sunday pulpit as heretics and worse.

Even in the US where all men supposedly where created equal, Jews in my lifetime could not live in any neighborhood they chose, could not work in any industry they preferred, could not even be elected to public office until they overcame this built-in prejudice through education, by moving gingerly through life and by hard work.

Now compare that with the priests who for generations sexually abused children in their charge with the knowledge that if they were caught they would be transferred to another diocese where a whole new array of virginal youngsters became available prey for their lust. They understood that the church’s predominant concern was protecting its image, not its flock.

After decades of ugly revelations of what it meant to be a Catholic youngster in numerous American cities and being victimized on a regular basis, the focus now turned to Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and even the pope’s home territory in Germany. It was no longer "an American problem" as the church liked to claim in kissing off the previous abuse allegations.

It seems that Irish kids, German youth, and children from other areas of Europe were also being victimized by beguiling clergymen, who after being caught, were not punished, nor defrocked, nor arrested, but hidden away by church elders at a new location to protect the "reputation" of the church.

When this was revealed to have happened in the diocese under Cardinal Joseph A. Ratzinger’s authority, wasn’t it natural for the public to demand the truth especially since the erstwhile cardinal is now the pope? But as it has been many times before with this pope, the issue has been stonewalled.

In the case of the horrors of the Irish priesthood’s authority over the infamous work houses for the destitute young people and other sexual abuses there, the pope apologized and said he is sorry for the pain they caused. But not a single clergyman responsible for the frightful conditions was disciplined.

As for the abuses in his German home grounds, the pope had a different answer. He said he didn’t know about it even though many have claimed they reported the circumstances directly to his office. Pope Benedict is beginning to sound like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifying before Congress not too long ago.

How these different scenarios equate to religious prejudice is beyond most thoughtful people. To describe criticism of the pope as similar to centuries of anti-Semitism is a crock.

"Father Cantalamessa chose to equate calumny against the Jewish people as the same as criticism of Pope Benedict," said Kristine Ward, a spokeswoman for the National Survivor Advocates Coalition told The New York Times. "It is incomprehensible that Father Cantalamessa did this and that Pope Benedict, the ultimate authority in this church who presided at the service, did not stand during the service to disavow this connection to anti-Semitism."

The church quickly disassociated itself from Cantalamessa’s remarks, The Times reported. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own thoughts and was not an official Vatican statement. Lombardi said the remarks should not be construed as equating recent criticism of the Catholic Church with anti-Semitism.

"I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison," he added.

And, of course, then there was what I consider justifiable reaction from Jewish sources. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, attributed the remarks to ignorance, not malice. "You would think that a senior priest in the church would have a better understanding of anti-Semitism than to make this hideous comparison," he said.

It really doesn’t matter whether it was ignorance or malice on the priest’s part. In either case it was an incomprehensible statement and the fact that the pope was sitting in the room listening to this idiocy without reaction is a telling message to me as to where his thoughts are at this time of church strife.

It is a classic case of making the offender into the victim.
　
　

Doing the right thing

2010-03-27T00:10:00.002-04:00

By Don Klein

Armageddon? Hardly. Death of freedom? Not likely. All it was is health insurance for 32 million Americans who could not afford it before.

President Obama finally followed my advice and reaped great results. All right, I wasn’t the only one suggesting he take off the gloves and get fully involved in the health reform controversy. There were scads more people promoting that idea.

It really doesn’t matter who pushed the Democrats to forget about bipartisanship with a recalcitrant Republican in-group committed to fighting any reform on health. We all said it was painful for the majority Democrats to totter away their time when they didn’t really need help from the backswept opposition to bring monumental change to the country.

What does matter is in the end Obama and the Democrats did the right thing. No one is claiming the bill signed into law warmly resembles the legislation that Obama promised during the campaign, but at least there is relief for the millions being shunned by insurance behemoths.

I won’t go into the details of the new law (anyone interested will know the facts by now) I prefer to concern myself with what I see as the consequences of this crucial battle. The aftermath is both good and bad.

1. On the good side. The law is only a great first step. It will have to be amended often and broadened by future Congresses. That makes November’s election of great significance. If the Republicans take over either house of Congress or greatly diminish the Democratic majority, chances for improvements will not be forthcoming soon.

2. Also on the good side, the vote demonstrated to the Republican opposition that refusing to participate in the process does not enhance the party’s political image. Quite the contrary. I don’t know of any candidate who has won a major election on the grounds of being in favor of political obstructionism. Voters prefer candidates who seek something positive – usually changes, always improvements.

3. The lamentable fallout of the vote has been the uncharacteristically bitter attitude by some who support the GOP stance of protecting the status quo. The US use to pride itself in fully debating a subject, putting it to a vote, and everyone falling behind the winning side and working to make the final decision as successful as possible. This apparently no longer is the national credo.

4. Egged on by ugly language from congressional Republicans, many irate onlookers, largely Right Wingers and Tea Party supporters, have behaved in the most loathsome manner. Shouting expletives at Congressmen on their way to the Capitol to vote, spitting on them and finally, the most despicable of all, threatening the wives and children of supporters of the bill. Why they are so incensed is beyond reasoned understanding.

5. Finally, the most brainless strategy of all, the Republicans are threatening to repeal the health care law. They cannot be that dense, but when appealing to their followers on the intellectual level of Neanderthals they think it will work. I refuse to believe there are that many slow-witted people in this country to win an election on that basis.

Already Obama’s approval ratings are climbing after months of slippage during the dragged-out Congressional debate. He used the power of his office and the persuasiveness of his arguments to get the bill enacted. He came out of his eruditious cocoon, put on the gloves and acted like a hard-nosed, tradition-breaking president should.

He may not yet go down in history as a Lincoln or FDR, or even a Teddy Roosevelt, but at least he is heading in the right direction. Basking is his newly exercised power, Obama now has to get three subjects under control and he will be well on his way to becoming one of the great leaders in US history.

First, he has to get a workable and effective economic recovery bill passed which puts millions of people back to work. That is most essential of all current legislation and is the one which will make or break the Democrats in November, not GOP negativity.

Then he must see to it that effective measures to control the miscreants of Wall Street and America’s posh board rooms from causing any more economic damage in the years ahead. He must rein in financial mischief with aggressive policing, formative laws and demanding prosecution.

Finally, this year’s menu of important legislation should include a step or two towards protecting the environment. We don’t have much time left to reverse the global warming trend. The government should ignore the naysayers and provide for curbs or we leave our progeny with dismal futures.

Woefully the Democrats will face continuing rear action sniping from an uncooperative opposition. The Republican Party is a headless monster with no uplifting leader, no creative themes, no positive ideas, so it is easy to fall into demagoguery. We already see the early signs of this with weirdo ramblings from the likes of unelected spokesmen Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.

Obama still has a majority in both houses of Congress and should use it. He squandered away the first year of his presidency and lessons were learned. Go for it now on these three issues – jobs, financial controls and the environment – and we will see who wins in November. Does anyone in his right mind think that the GOP motif of turning health care back to where it was can float in an era flooded with new ideas and hope?

All right, you may not believe that I was instrumental in getting the health care law enacted. I doubt Obama ever got any of my messages. Now I am giving him a second chance. I’m giving him a chance to do the right thing for the remainder of 2010.

Stepping towards the abyss

2010-03-11T00:15:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

President Obama sent to Congress the outline of a bill to keep banks from dealing in the destructive practices that plunged the country into an economic abyss in 2008, but the idea seems to be dead before anyone on Capitol Hill had a chance to unwrap the envelope it came in.

According to The New York Times, "The legislation would ban banks that take federally insured deposits from investing in hedge funds or private equity funds and from making trades that are for the benefit of the banks, not their customers, a practice known as proprietary trading."

The proposal, called the Volcker Rule, was designed to keep banks which profit from the federal safety net to take unnecessary financial risks. Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve said it had "tough" rules.

It is no wonder that tough language would be a good reason for the stalwart protectors of America’s avaricious bankers, otherwise known as the US Congress, to view such restrictions as overbearing and harsh. The fact that millions of hardworking ordinary citizens were thrown out of work because of the chaos caused by Wall Street moguls never seemed to matter.

Congress knows whose milk they suckle for nourishment and where the honey for their munchy toast comes from. When was the last time our resolute lawmakers in Washington ever did anything for the people?

The rule in Washington is not to ruffle the sensibilities of industry.
++Hold up health care until its dies a slow death in order to keep the insurance and pharmaceutical professions happy.
++Even the Supreme Court got into the act by opening the door for corporate barons to dominate elections with their heavy spending and freewheeling campaigns in support of political scoundrels.
++And Congress won’t make banks act responsibly.

Oh no, don’t do any of those things that really matter to the people. Lincoln’s spirit is tossing in its tomb. The government of the people and by the people is clearly not for the people. Today’s members of Congress probably know every one of the 13,740 lobbyists in Washington, but hardly a handful of voters. This is a moneyed crowd. If they had their way they would repeal the laws of gravity if by doing so it benefitted big business.

None of this is new. It has been growing for decades because the corrupt system imploded and right now appears to be unfixable. Senators and Congressmen have to run for office on a regular basis and that requires gifts to run campaigns. The fat cats know this and ply them with funds at every opportunity. The best politicians fall prey to this profaning process.

There is nothing more accurate than the saying, "we have the best government money can buy."

As to the Volcker Rule, members of the Senate said it "would not have prevented the financial crisis or saved companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the American International Group," The Times reported. " They said the idea, as outlined by President Obama, was vague and difficult to enforce."

In addition, those trustworthy servants of the country club crowd, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, told Congress that limits on risk-taking could be achieved by other means. The obvious question remains, if there were "other means" to avoid economic disaster how come they didn’t employ them before the crash. They failed to mention that fiscal gluttony is the only motivation they understand.

The sooner we face the reality that American politics to a very large extent is controlled by big money, the better. Money always talks the loudest. In the past the public only gains when there are horrible consequences that force changes.
That was the case with the civil rights legislation in the 1960s designed to end the onerous conditions of second class black citizenry. It also happened in the 1930s with the New Deal when Americans were in dire suffering during the Great Depression.

But it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. Today’s Congress has no respect for the people who elected them. They take them for granted and seem to think that they can explain away any distasteful behavior by raising the ugly ogre of high debt or national security or any other threat to our democracy their fertile dishonest minds can concoct.

In essence Congress works for us. They are employees of the people and are the only workers I know who can spend an entire year spinning their wheels and being well paid to do nothing. They complain about the lack of regulations to control errant banking policies, then when the opportunity arises for them to do something about it, they twiddle away the effort.

They talk about the need for health care reform then spend more than a year nit-picking anything that looks to be an improvement to a bad system. They said the current health care program will bankrupt the country, but fear taking any steps to ease the nation's financial pain.

They are the most dreadful actors on the public stage. A small town alderman is more responsive to constituents than members of Congress.

Congress is in such disfavor with the American people that the independents are growing in greater numbers than the Democrats and Republicans. With good reason. Some believe the solution is a third party, but that has never worked in this country.

So this is where we stand: We live in a fading democracy, the world’s greatest debtor nation, and our government leaders are battling each other to a standoff for political advantage instead of working to improve the national condition.

If things don’t change, we may be doomed as a global force and the great American experiment will have failed. If they don’t act responsibly in the eight months left until the November elections, the self-centered loafers and should be thrown out like the bums they are.

Is failure our watchword?

2010-02-21T08:59:00.002-05:00

By Don Klein

When is a war crime not a war crime? When government lawyers exonerate other government lawyers for violating established international law.

Everyone knows that torture is against everything this country stands for. Except, perhaps, the Justice Department lawyers in judgment of the Bush lawyers who inspired the travesty of creating new language to give US agents the green light during the years of authorized water boarding.

We have backed off from the Nuremberg trials which established the rule that "I was ordered to do so" is no excuse for committing war crimes. Dozens of Nazis were charged and at least 12 were sentenced to death for war crimes. The United States led the world in condemning acts of official brutality and installed the rule of decent treatment of all captives, military and civilian, and banning torture.

The Bush Administration, pumped by the warped ideals of Vice President Dick Cheney, reneged on this honorable commitment. Now the Obama Administration has let off the hook the men who justified Bush torture policy. Current Justice Department lawyers probing former Justice Department lawyers ended up slapping the culprits on the wrist for legalizing harsh treatment of captives held by this country.

It’s enough to make one think there is no hope that the US government can ever do anything right anymore. Not only are they not to be tried as war criminals, the lawyers who authored the pernicious rule that led to water boarding, Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo, are now "honorable" members of society. Bybee is a federal judge and Yoo a university professor.

According to the decision by the Justice Department the two used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of official misconduct. Are these the kind of men we want on the federal bench and teaching in an American law school? They should be serving a term in the penitentiary, or at least suffer disbarment.

This is just one more case of President Obama’s impotence. He is so afraid of offending Republicans he is distorting his entire approach to the right things to do. He bends over backwards to get Republican bipartisanship in the Senate and gets slapped in the face time and again. He has brought turning the other cheek to new level of disillusionment.

His party has already taken war crimes trials off the table for Bush and Cheney, now the government won’t even find anything seriously wrong with the lawyers that were used to give torture the air of legality. It makes it extremely difficult for one-time Obama supporters to maintain their enthusiasm for the man. He just does not seem to have what is needed to do all things he said he would do during the campaign.

Where do disenchanted Obama backers go? There is nothing for them in the two party system. The GOP is bold and drives the country into the arms of the profiteers and Neanderthals, and the Democrats make wonderful promises to reform this, that and everything else and despite having a clear majority in both houses of Congress are scared off from doing anything once resistance raises its ugly head.

Unlike fairytales, our white knights are colossal cowards. Cheney openly brags of his role in propelling torture into the American national image and he trots freely on our streets and on our television screens. Bush rests in comfortable Texas banishment trying on his flight suit whenever he gets bored with reading the comics and ignores the national turmoil he helped create.

Meanwhile, the people are close to rebellion. The Tea Party adherents, embracing their political ignorance – and Sarah Palin, want to secede from the Union. On the other side, the Liberals are disenchanted and won’t come out to vote in important elections which allowed the usually Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts last month to go Republican for the first time in a half century.

I won’t say this frustration is all Obama fault, but much of it is. He showed little gumption to fight for his programs during his first year in office. People view him as a pussycat being frightened into the corner at the mere mention of a filibuster. He is not the tiger they thought they elected in November 2008.

There is a serious possibility that now, after more than a year of going nowhere on health reform, bank regulations and environmental issues that the Democrats will surely take a beating when the midterm elections come in November. No one wants to be a Democrat running for office this year – with good reason. They are one gigantic national flop.

Now they add insult to their political impotence by allowing war criminals to get away with their malevolent behavior. The inability of the government to perform on any level has paralyzed the nation and America will soon be a wonderful dream that, we in this generation, failed to nurture and pass on in decent shape to our progeny.

Just think of it. During the last decade we had a tragic war, a disastrous economy which has bankrupted the country and a stymied government resulting in massive unemployment plus thousands of dead and horribly injured American servicemen and the loss of global prestige and no government policy maker will be held accountable for it.

If the Republicans take control of the Senate and maybe even the House of Representatives this fall that will mean the end of all progress – as if that would be any worse than it already is.

After Bush many swore never vote for a national Republican again. Now the problem is compounded. They must ask, after Obama, "what do I do?"

Waiting for the next blizzard

2010-02-09T09:52:00.002-05:00

By Don Klein

Being stuck at home because of a snow storm is great for kids. There is sledding and snowball fights and for those with skill, ice skating. There is also a healthy resurgence of family comity in at-home activities. Most of all it means no school for them. I never realized until recently that being snowbound is good for grandparents as well.

In my younger days I always liked the concept of snow. It was God’s way of purifying the land with a pristine coat of cool, soothing, white fluff, much as intensive rain sweeps away all the muck of everyday life. Snow just covers it. But just below the line of consciousness in those days I secretly dreaded snow when it pounced onto my life in substantial quantities.

To me it meant shoveling what seems to be tons of the white stuff from the driveway and front walk. It meant power failures and the breakdown in normal public services and cancellations of many civic activities plus horrendous trips to and from my job. Snow storms are eclectic, a balance of fun, frenzy and frustration.

Not anymore. In retirement without little ones under foot, being snowbound is a cherished period of relief. I noticed that for the first time last weekend.
In the days when we had young children at home my wife, Joyce, would bake loads of chocolate chip cookies and make what always appeared to be gallons of hot cocoa. Once the walk was shoveled many of the neighborhood kids would come tapping on the front door for handouts. They knew where the freshly baked cookies were concentrated.

To this day, our daughters now mothers themselves, bake chocolate chip cookies when they are shut-in by winter storms. The acorn never falls far from the oak.

With this most recent storm, her culinary juices aroused by the sight of snow pelting at the sides of the house, Joyce asked me "Would you like me to bake brownies?" My lack of responsive enthusiasm was driven by the fact that before the storm I had wisely purchased a fudge cake and a box of chocolate covered doughnuts (don’t mention it to my doctor) for nutritional fortification during the upcoming weather-driven confinement.

Not being deterred by my negative reaction, she said the magical words, "How about I make a pot full of knadels." Ah, knadels. An image from my past. The Passover delicacy my wife learned to make from my mother. Mom made great knadels but Joyce has outdone her, ameliorating her cooking with each passing year.

There are few foods I can think of that I can resist – French onion soup, beef Wellington, grilled Alaskan salmon, Rainbow trout, chicken l’orange, beef tartare – but none more than knadels. It makes me salivate.

For those who are unfamiliar with knadels accept ths definition. It is a fluffy dumpling made of matzoh meal and other magical ingredients folded into the size of a meatball, cooked for 20 minutes in unsalted boiling water which is disposed of before the little darlings are served with steaming homemade chicken soup.

The soup, as we all know, is a cure all for ailments. Homemade chicken soup is miraculous. Legend has it that it makes stutterers speak like Laurence Olivier, transforms klutzes into Fred Astaires, and would do wonders in making chatty Sarah Palin as erudite as Adlai Stevenson if ever she deigned to taste it.

Despite all the positives that exist in chicken soup, it is the knadels, or matzoh balls as some people call it, that deserve all the praise. Just imagine. A cold night, the wind whistling outside, the snow pelting at your front door, and you are presented with a bowl full of steaming homemade chicken soup with a half dozen knadels floating in it. You brain turns celestial. You hear bells.

But that is not the only reason for me to glory in being snowbound. All during the day as Mother Nature unleashed her fury on us, I had the pleasure of finishing a great book, "My Paper Chase" by Harold Evans, all about newspaper work in Britain and the US. Then I picked up once again a novel I had interrupted to read the Evans book, called, "The Russian Concubine" by Kate Furnivall.

This is a beautifully written piece of fiction about western expatriates in China prior to World War II. Then there were the moments spent with eyes closed listening to recordings on my CD player of Mozart, Strauss, Copland and Beethoven. What else does man need? Thankfully there was no place to go, nothing to do since all meetings and scheduled dinners were cancelled.

Fortunately a bunch of young guys with a sister, showed up and shoveled out our driveway so if we had to go somewhere we could, but didn’t because there was no place to park the car once we got there. That meant another day of involuntary detention.

It was great to stay home and do nothing, except read great new books, listen to fabulous old music and to close out the day with a dinner which included the eternal knadels and homemade chicken soup. Ah, Nirvana right here on earth.

I’ll try to slip in days like this again when the weather is less contrary, but I know it won’t work. The pull of life’s routines are irrevocable. I’ll just wait for the next blizzard and hope for the best.

Time to call their bluff

2010-02-02T17:10:00.002-05:00

by Don Klein

Years ago when I was new to reporting a sagacious elder told me that politics is the art of compromise. Over the years I remembered that rule and watched how it worked on every level of government. That is the true meaning of bipartisanship.

You give a little. I give a little. And before long we have an agreement and legislation is enacted.

Last week when President Obama went before the Republican meeting in Baltimore in a face-to-face showdown on public policy it gave the appearance of the start of bipartisanship in action, but really it was just an extension of what has been going on for the entire first year of his presidency.

It appeared that Obama was making a serious attempt to bridge some of the issues that separate the executive and Republicans. I am sorry to conclude that I did not see the same serious act of honest conciliation on the part of the Republicans who spoke out.

The most glaring different between the Democratic president and his GOP opponents was contrition. He had it, they didn’t. He acknowledged that he did not do everything he said he would do during the 2008 campaign and promised to do better in the future. They, on the other hand, stood fast and never admitted standing in the way of legislative progress during last year.

Obama shocked them when he said he had read their counter proposals on several issues and incorporated the best ideas into bills at issue and rejected others for reasons of good government. While the Republicans hardly ever budged from their unwillingness to cooperate with the administration on any issue.

In the end, Obama walked away from the meeting a much more admirable figure than any of his sniveling opponents who only seemed to be interested in stymying any program which put a new face on solutions to problems. The GOP clearly wants to follow the same old, dysfunctional policies of the Bush administration which brought on the terrible state of the nation today.

Examples: They want to solve the severe national financial shortfall by more tax cuts when what the government needs is more income, not less. They still want to implore the old, harmful plans to cut entitlements and privatize social security instead of seeking new solutions. They don’t want to be labeled the "party of no" by Democrats while never voting in favor of anything the Obama party proposes.

The Republicans are wracked by their well-deserved negative image and want the president to make them look good again. They almost unanimously praised the idea of the meeting and thanked Obama for taking up their invitation, but most of them behind the scenes thought they should not repeat the meeting.

They realize they took a beating on view for all to see on television.

Frankly, I hope I am wrong but my gut feeling tells me there will be no change in relationship in Washington the coming year. The GOP sees their current obstructive policies paying off by causing a new round of gridlock, which the public despises and takes out on incumbents. So far the victims have all been Democrats. The New Jersey and Virginia governorships went their way and more recently the half-century-old Democratic seat in the Senate from Massachusetts went Republican.

They feel obstructionism works to their favor and although Obama seems destined to make points whenever he faced them in open debate, they seem to win at the voting booth. And since this is an election year for all the seats of the House of Representatives and one-third the Senate, why should they start cooperating for the good of the rest of us now?

I don’t see any improvement in relations on the horizon between the two sides in Washington. More gridlock. More ridiculous, meaningless opposition up and down the line. And more problems for the grass roots where unemployment demands a unified government approach to problems.

The Obama visit to the Republican retreat last week was good public relations for Obama, not the Republicans. They will not repeat it soon, or ever, because it did not serve their purpose. I feel they invited the president in the first place because they expected him to decline the invitation and thereby give the Republicans a political victory without an actual face-off. It didn’t work

Being obstructive only goes so far. It pleases the distant right wing because these lovers of Bush extremism see Obama as an abomination for many incoherent reasons. But the majority of Americans think highly of the president and not so well of the Republicans, according to all polls taken recently. If the Republicans continue to cater to the extremists by blocking legislative action in the Senate they will be surprised in November.

If the Democrats were smart, now that they have dithered away their 60 vote majority -- and I wonder about the Senate leadership -- they should push legislation to one filibuster after another and allow the public to measure which is truly the Party of No. I think the Republicans are bluffing and cannot sustain many filibusters without causing damage to themselves.

Let them kill economic recovery. Let them stop health reform. Let them fight excessive federal spending which they themselves perfected during the Bush years. Let them bring government down to inaction. Then let them go to the polls in November and ask the public to put them into power. It would be ironic and the best thing to happen for the Democrats.

But it takes bold-faced courage, and I don’t know if the Democrats have any.

Greed hurts all but the greedy

2010-01-22T16:48:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

Imagine yourself a school bus driver with a second job as a newspaper route delivery driver. Your wife works as a kitchen helper at a local hospital. You have three kids and you want the best for them. You see a $650,000 house you would like to move into but cannot afford.

Surprise, the sales agent puts you in touch with a banker who says he will lend you the money and you only have to pay the interest for a number of years while you improve your earnings to eventually handle the principal. You ignore the obvious pitfalls because you are either brainless or terribly hungry for a better life style.

In your foolishness you fall for such a gambit, but the real estate seller and the banker know what the score is. They are shrewd. They are downright crooks who know how to make money even though they are convinced you’re destined to default. They have a plan.

The salesman gets his commission for selling the house, the banker meanwhile takes your feeble mortgage and packages it on Wall Street with thousands others just likes yours. They then sell a whole package of loans at an appealing price to investors – many of which represent pension funds and important charities. That becomes the recipe for a financial crisis.

The real estate sales person and the banker know there is trouble ahead, but they will make their profits passing off the package and sticking it to investors. When the day of reckoning comes and a bubble payment is due, you, the homeowner, will rely on your our little plan. You will sell the house you never could afford but lived in for years and make a solid profit considering the normal ascent in home prices.

Alas, the day comes and the real estate market collapses. You can’t sell your house and the mortgage is in default. At the same time neither can the thousands of others whose mortgages were sold when you took out the loan. The result: An international financial crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The guilty: The home buyers and sellers, and worst of all the bankers who put up the money for the loans that should never have been made.

You did it because you wanted a better life style for your family and yourself.
The seller was willing to complete the sale because the banker was willing to put up the money and Wall Street was taking the financial risk. The toxic package was passed off to the oblivious investor. None of this would have happened if anyone along the way had a modicum of integrity.

In the end it was the banker who made it all possible. It was the banker who tried to outsmart all others for his gain, and his enhanced year-end bonus. The more mortgages he sold, the more the payoff and to hell with the home owner who defaulted and the pension funds now holding worthless stock.

The banker is the culprit in the financial crisis smothering the global economy for nearly a year and a half. This scenario demonstrates the power of greed. Greed is as normal to a banker as counter clockwise motion is to flushed toilet water. It’s incontrovertible. It cannot be altered.

The 1987 film "Wall Street" spelled it out clearly when the fictional Gordon Gekko expressed the well recalled stock manipulator’s philosophy, "Greed is good."

Greed has become the epithet for Wall Street bankers. It is their synonym like Homosapien is the synonym for the species of man. After the recent testimony of four top bankers before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington we can now add "ingrate" to define Wall Street money changers. It’s no wonder their predecessors were chased from ancient temples.

At one point in the testimony the head of Goldman Sachs had the nerve to liken the hellish recession to a Hurricane and other manifestations of rampaging Nature. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, couldn’t let that go unanswered. "Acts of God we’ll exempt. These were acts of men and women."

The commission is investigating to determine if the Wall Street insiders intentionally put the bad assets together and passed them off as healthy investments even when they knew better. All the bankers managed to say was they "regret" people lost money in these transactions. No apologies offered.

The banks under scrutiny at the hearing besides Goldman Sachs were Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. They all received bailout money from TARP and have already repaid some of the loans. But worst of all is their bonus programs. Billions are disbursed to employees of the banks who benefitted from federal funding assistance to make their year a profitable one.

The bankers never admitted that they had any responsibility for the garbage assets they peddled on the market. They were just interested in moving the rotten goods out of their store and making a profit like an avaricious grocer selling baskets of rotten tomatoes. When the banks recovered thanks to taxpayer funds, they moved to "reward’ their top executives with millions of dollars in bonuses.

John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, made one of the most pointed comments at the end of the hearing. "If the leaders of Wall Street did not consider the possibility of housing prices dropping" through their own experience, nor all the red flags raised about mortgage fraud for years and did not realize that high cost, interest-only loans were being made "then their spirited defense of their employees falls flat."

"Based on what we heard today," Taylor concluded, "they should be firing people not giving them bonuses." Amen.

The Eleventh Commandment

2010-01-19T16:22:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein
　
I never thought much of devout people who lecture others on the qualities of his or her faith. To me, when it comes to religion, what you believe in – or don’t believe in – is no one’s business but your own. It is like someone clumsily presupposing they know the path to goodness and morality while the other person does not.

It also presupposes there is only one pathway to virtue. Such propositions are flawed and ignorant. And unseemly.

Many years ago when I was an executive with the Maryland Port Authority on a trade mission in Japan I experienced a haunting example of misplaced religious ardor. Four of us were in a taxi on the way to the airport near Osaka when the head of the delegation somehow turned the usually light travel talk to religion. The others were Christians, I wasn’t.

"Klein, you’ll never have a satisfying life because you do not accept Jesus as your savior," he said. I thought he was jesting and laughed, but he wasn’t.

I wondered what this arrogant muttonhead considered a satisfying life. His wife was an alcoholic who died earlier than she should of sclerosis of the liver. His only daughter left an exclusive college without graduating after three years of costly tuition. He was forced out of his top job before retirement because of his professional ineffectiveness and ended up a lonely widower with few friends.

If that was what the "good life" his religion brought, no thank you. Actually, it wasn’t his religion that made his life good or bad, it was his tactless demeanor, his poor business judgment and his arrogance that provided the downturn of his career and private life.

Brit Hume’s demeaning remarks about Tiger Woods’s need for religious forgiveness brought that memory back to me. "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world," he lectured on television the Buddhist Woods for his womanizing antics.

Having religious beliefs are fine and often serve good purposes. But to have the nerve to openly suggest what others should do is loathsome, but not unusual. Take the thousands of missionaries who are scattered around the world proselytizing their faith over the beliefs of natives with bribes of food and medicine.

The endearing quality of life in America is the Constitutional protection of religious belief. The government will never indorse a specific religion and will never restrict its citizens in choosing the religion they prefer. In most cases people follow the religion of their parents and family. But if they wish to convert, it is their free choice.

I would hope no one construes what I am saying as opposition to conversion. If people freely decide to change their faith, so be it. Congratulations and good luck. But for an outsider, layman or clergyman, to gratuitously preach conversion is definitely a no-no in my mind. Hands off, friend, this is the land of free choice.

Now to the subject of Brit Hume’s proposal to Tiger Woods – "forgiveness." That’s a beauty in itself. What does that mean? What sins are forgivable and who decides which? Would we forgive a cold-blooded slayer of children? A traitor to his country? A murderous head of state like Hitler or Stalin?

All right, cool off. Tiger has only admitted to having extra-marital affairs. That’s got nothing to do with religion and all to do with his relationship with his wife. They must resolve the problem. There is no need to change his religion. Did not Brit Hume’s mother ever warn him to stay out of other people’s personal lives?

There should be an Eleventh Commandment – Thou shalt not stick thy nose in other people’s private affairs.

When I was growing up in polyglot New York City we would often hear a bigot claim that many of his best friends are Jewish. We laughed at the obvious hypocrisy. But I can claim the reverse with unembarrassed preciseness. Many of my best friends are Christian. If fact most of my friends are Christian and I have no complaints.

The ordinary people I have met in life, which includes a career in journalism and public relations and my wife’s career in public education and later as an accountant, has been sprinkled richly with great people of all religious denominations. Except for a minimal of aberrations, like the one mentioned above, I found people keep their spiritual preferences to themselves, no doubt because they felt their faith is a personal matter.

It is truly a shame that a few unthinking immoderates like Brit Hume besmirch the good intentions of so many others who respect the honest differences in faiths found in a thoroughly mixed and educated society such as ours. The thought that one religion is superior to another is not what this country is about, and should not be in the minds of fair minded person.

Tiger Woods will find his own way out of his current troubles or – he will not. And his religion with have nothing to do with it.

The enemy is us

2010-01-11T11:07:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

When Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and prominent Republican, was being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC TV’s "Good Morning America" recently he made an astonishing statement which gives us a look into the contorted mind of modern day conservatives.

"What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did," Giuliani pontificated, "one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama..."

Now I distinctly remember Giuliani, covered in the muck from the World Trade Center debris on 9/11, telling the world with great passion via television what an indescribable tragedy and loss of life had been suffered in New York. I also recall that the president at the time was George W. Bush.

So what was he saying? He was following the Republican policy of the Big Lie. He dismisses the worst attack on US territory since Pearl Harbor when the GOP was in power but highlights a lesser incident on the airliner headed for Detroit Christmas Day that miraculously never came off as a symbol of political failure in Democratic times.

Unfortunately the Republican Party has adopted a non-cooperative stance with President Obama. Never in this country’s history has there been such outlandish attacks on a wartime president. Our strength in the past has been to join together in wartime – members of all parties support the president. The Republicans have thrown away this common sense, common-survival criterion.

They are rooting for Obama to fail. To use a term the GOP loves to fling at others: such behavior on their part is un-American. During the worst days of George W. Bush’s presidency never did the Dems want him to fail. On the contrary, they hoped he would succeed by doing the right things. Is it any wonder that less than one in five Americans polled approve of the Republicans today?

That should be enough of an admonishment for them to start being responsible, but it has not done so as we are continually treated to insidious lies like the one stated by Giuliani on TV.

The revolting Right Wing invective is so intense it is nonsensical. Obama is depicted as a communist in one breathe and portrayed in caricatures as Hitler, the supreme fascist, in the next. The poor simpletons behind such labeling are unable to construe that communism and fascism are mortal enemies so you can’t be both at the same time. Of course, we are not dealing with Einsteins in this herd.

The argument most heard is that the Republicans have lost their way. The days of moderate conservatism seems to be over. No more Nelson Rockefellers or Howard Bakers or Robert Tafts, people who dearly loved this country and closed ranks when the US was in danger. No. Now we have detractors at every turn.

We have Congressional buffoons like Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim deMint, and House GOP leader Reps. John Boehner and Michele Bachman. You could get the feeling that every one of them is just hoping for an repeat of 9/11 so they can gloat with political joy no matter how dear the human price. The elected Republicans are is such disrepute that the most vivid voices on their side of the ledger are from non-office holders.

Rush Limbaugh is quoted every day making one pernicious remark after another in support of failure for Obama. Glenn Beck is as nutty as pecan pie, but hardly as tasty, is his outrageous accusations and the strongest voice of all seems to come from the weakest mind – former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

What the Republican’s are against is more evident than what they favor. The Republicans oppose health care legislation, they do not want the economy to recover, they do not want unemployment to diminish, they do not want the wars in Southeast Asia to end, they reject anything that the majority of Americans want.

Why? Simple, because the worse things get, the better they think their chances in the mid-term elections coming up this year. They would rather obstruct action in time of serious stress than to help with the resolution. They are part of the problem, not the solution. And they think this will assure them victory at the polls.

When the history of the first decade of the 21st century is eventually written historians will find it hard to paint the Republican Party with anything other than a morose brush. They were bold and reckless when they held the White House and sour and contentious when the Democrats held it. They contributed to the worst foreign relations blunder in the history of the nation and balked at all subsequent efforts to turn it around.

Their soft handling of government regulations added fuel to the damaged economy and their allowance of widespread outsourcing of industry for the sake of corporate profits contributed unmistakably to the heavy unemployment that followed.

But even worse. After providing all the ingredients for economic failure, they refused to support any efforts by the central government to help industry back on its feet. And what is unconscionable is they now stand on the sidelines with hands drooped at their sides and hoot as all efforts to produce remedies to the problems they caused, palpitate and sputter in uncertainty.

A long time ago I concluded in a moment of deepest pessimism that America is too technologically advanced ever to be defeated by a foreign enemy. If the country goes down it will be because of our enemies within. That’s when I endorsed the famous Pogo prophecy.

"We have met the enemy... and he is us."

Wishes for 2010

2010-01-07T21:15:00.004-05:00

By Don Klein

Some of my friends think I am a curmudgeon. Not just because I am old, but because they think of me as a crank, a grouch, an old grump who is mostly dissatisfied with just about everything. That is untrue. I am really a nice guy, and to prove it I will list in this space my fondest wishes for the New Year.

As 2010 begins, I wish:

– Everyone in this country without medical insurance at present will be covered before the year ends.
– That all overweight people, especially children, trim down to reasonable size. That obesity we wiped out.
– Not a teacher, firefighter or policeman is put out of work this year because we cannot afford to pay them.
– Not one child, no matter where they live, no matter what their ethnicity, goes hungry for a single day this year.
– That the American automobile industry bounces back and becomes profitable again, employing thousands of currently unemployed people.
– That Wall Street profiteers lose their money in illegal schemes or at the roulette table.
– That Wall Street hotshots be taxed heavily for their bonuses.
– If we continued to ban foreign pharmaceuticals to be sold here shouldn’t we also ban foreign toys, food, clothing and automobiles in the US market?
– That racial and religious bigotry disappears this year and people be judged as individuals.
– That al Qaeda collapses from its own excesses and from pressure within and without, the way all belligerent regimes have in the past.
– That former Vice President Dick Cheney, unbalanced by the horns he has grown in his head, trips over his tail and pitch-forks himself like a pole vaulter out the top floor window.
– That massive oil deposits be discovered from beneath Nebraska to Idaho so we can end oil imports from Saudi Arabia and watch King Abdallah and his swarmy royalty squirm.
– That more films are made focusing on interesting tales about people and things and not on electronic digital gimmickery.
– That everyone who so desires gets a chance to visit the Metropolitan Opera in New York at least once in their lives.
– That the Ravens win the Super Bowl, if not this year, then in 2011.
– That the Orioles go to the World Series this year just to prove to eternal pessimists that miracles can happen.
– That we have a mild winter with just enough snow to please the kids, a cool spring with enough rain to water crops sufficiently, a warm summer to bring out the bikinis and a glorious autumn of brilliant colors in the woods.
– Viewers turn away from television cable news and turn back to the more reliable habit of reading newspapers.
– There be more television shows like Monk and The Closer and less adolescent comedies like Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother.
– That our courageous troops overseas all return home safely this year.
– That Rush Limbaugh becomes inflicted with an ailment that leaves him with a permanent case of laryngitis.
– That Glenn Beck has a tooth pulled and the truth fairy leaves him with her very special gift which results in him having nothing more to say.
– That Sarah Palin impresses so many Right Wingers that she is assured the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
– The next major barrier to break will be a woman as president – and it won’t be someone with the initials S.P.
– That President Obama becomes more incendiary and re-ignites the universal enthusiasm he generated during the 2008 campaign.
– That members of Congress give priority to serving the electorate first, not their political contributors.
– That truth prevails in politics, in business, in human relations, in journalism
and in advertising.
– That lawyers become seekers of real justice, not exploiters of technicalities.
– That sports broadcasters, especially those on Monday night football, turn off the endless nonsense chatter.
– That NFL football "experts" stop predicting game strategies on television. They are usually wrong.
– That Washington pundits give us all a rest and stop their know-it-all predictions and concentrate on explaining the confusing elements in conflicting news reports.
– That people who feel the need to keep firearms in their homes realize that they are more liable to become victims of misuse of deadly weapons than those who don’t have guns in their homes.
– That Jon Stewart should host a daily one hour network prime time program instead of Jay Leno.
– That true democracy will arrive when politicians stop underestimating the intelligence of ordinary people.
– No one should think it wrong to have a black president because as comedian Chris Rock put it after Obama took office, "why not, we just had a retarded one."
– That those who feel the need for religious proselytization would realize that such behavior draws the opposite result and demeans the proselytizer.
– That cancer would be wiped out, as well as diabetes and heart ailments.
– That stem cell research will begin to reap dividends in health cures this year.
– Excesses in all realms be gone forever and instead moderation will reign.
– That all children be born and raised without disease.
– That children be given opportunities through education to succeed.
– That Tiger Woods and David Letterman find satisfaction in one woman’s bed.
– That intellectualism should no longer be a put down for some people.
And finally,
– I hope good looking women take short steps and wink once in awile when they pass me on the boardwalk or anywhere else. It's good for my psyche.

A new Third World country

2010-01-01T15:54:00.002-05:00

by Don Klein

Isn’t this a great country? We have one of the highest standards of living anywhere in the world. We have more great universities than any country. We have world class symphony orchestras all over the land, more than anywhere else. We have great theater, a robust film industry, inventive dance companies and the world’s pre-eminent opera company. More books are sold and read here than anywhere else.

Our women are attractive and well groomed, our men are handsome and rugged, our kids are lovable and smart, we have plenty to eat, almost all of us have autos, we are an inventive, energetic and industrious collection of humans, we welcome foreigners into our society with open arms, our country is beautiful and bountiful, self-confidence abounds, our lives are predominantly pleasant.

We are prestigious in many ways, yet we are becoming a Third World country.

We hardly manufacture anything anymore. The television I watch was made in Japan, the American-made car I drive was manufactured in Canada and yours may have been built in Mexico, my sports jacket comes from Ukraine, my slacks from Vietnam, my shirt from Bangladesh, my underwear from Indonesia, and even my ballpoint pens come from China. If I wore a tie it probably would be Dominican made.

We don’t even supply all the food in our supermarkets. I eat cherries from Chile, shrimp from Thailand, our ground beef has South American meat mixed in it. There used to be just German and Czech beer and French and Italian wines available as liquor store imports but now there is Mexican beer (God protect us) and Australian wines to compete with Milwaukee beer and California wines.

American roads were once cluttered with Studebakers, DeSotos and Packards, all of which have been replaced by Korean, Japanese, Swedish, German and soon by Chinese cars. If you watch carefully there seems to be more foreign cars on suburban roads than American cars.

The Asians have taken over the camera business while German and American photography enterprises are hanging on by their fingertips. Even pineapples have gone foreign. They once came in boatloads from Hawaii, now they are less juicy, less desirable and come from Costa Rica.

But wait it gets worse. Try calling a major company today to discuss your service or a problem with your bill. For the first ten minutes you are interrogated by an intransigent recording. Press No. 1 if you are a new customer, No. 2 if you are an existing customer, No 3, if you need equipment repair, No. 4 if you wish to check the status of a shipment, No. 5 to check your balance, No. 6 for additional options, an so on.

I don’t like being subjugated to a fifteen minute third degree with a robot, even with a soft and sexy voice, and then when I finally get a human being on the other end of the line she is speaking from India with a perplexing accent.

Try to get a medical or dental appointment in less than four months, that is if you are not doubled over in pain or on the brink of death. Try to talk to the your home delivery agent when your newspaper is not delivered and you get an apologetic recording, as if they know they should be answering the telephone when they are not.

You have a 9.30 appointment with the doctor? You will be lucky to see him before lunch. Some doctors don’t understand that an appointment is a joint agreement between the patient and the doctor to meet at a given time. Try calling your stockbroker these days and be prepared to wait.

The following happened to me. I needed to speak to a particular person at an auto dealership where I recently purchased a new car. First I got her voice mail and I asked her to call me. Two hours later, after not hearing from her, I called again. Got the voice mail again. I asked for someone else in her department to talk to. A girl came on, took my message and after I waited eight minutes
disconnected me.

Then I called again and asked to speak to the sales manager. Voice mail again. Left message again. No call back. Called again. Same thing again. Finally got his assistant who gladly took down all my information then said, "I give you a live person." Shocked, I said, "I was under the impression you were live?" He said, "Yes, but it’s not my department, I’ll switch you" and promptly sent me back to the original voice mail I had called twice before – unsuccessfully. Frustration set in.

Finally got to the office manager after an umpteenth call who took charge and called me back with the following explanation: "The work you need has been completed a week ago but the women in charge had to leave for a personal emergency." she said. No one picked up her lapsed work. It just sat on her desk as time fizzled like air out of a flattening tire.

This reminded me of when I was on a business trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico 30 years ago and tried for three hours to telephone the local newspaper office to invite them to a reception we were sponsoring for local businesses. When I finally got someone to answer the phone he said, "Sorry, but Jose is next door fixing a toilet." Imagine an editor of a daily newspaper not available for three hours because he was repairing someone's plumbing.

A colleague explained, "What do you expect. Puerto Rico is the equivalent of the Third World nation."

Today I must ask, is the US becoming a Third World nation, a banana republic whose only crops are indifference, delay and manana.

The good, the bad, the ugly

2009-12-30T01:08:00.003-05:00

by Don Klein

In a few days the new year will be upon us making it appropriate to look back on the noteworthy year of 2009. It was historic for a number of major reasons, but I also see a healthy (or rather, unhealthy) quantity of the good, bad and ugly when I recall the happenings of the past 12 months.

Let’s take the ugly first in order to end on an upbeat. We had more than the usual share of ugliness in the country this past year. Sadly I feel the prize for the ugliest goes to former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. He was at the controls of his own woeful political train wreck.

I place him on the top of bad boys because he was the one who promised us the best for the future in public service and responsibility. He was a man who as a lawyer fought for the little guy all his life. He was a man of great ideals, was presidential in his bearing and spoke convincingly and intelligently about a new vision of national caring. In short he was beguiling.

But he had feet of clay and proved in the end to be much more than just a disappointment. He was deceitful in concealing an affair of passion with a film contractor who worked for him during the primary campaign and had apparent little regard for the public he would have served if elected by hiding the illicit relationship. All this while his ailing wife, Elizabeth, battled Stage IV breast cancer.

When it came to people with zipper problems, Edwards was not alone. There was Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who let everyone believe he was hiking in Appalachia when actually he had ran off sniffing after his Argentine paramour.

Even worse, there was Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who cuckolded his own assistant while pillow cuddling with the subordinate’s wife, who also worked for the senator. How low can you get having sex with the wife of a staff member, then try to buy them both off when the scandal broke. Ensign has to be the sleaziest of the sleazy.

Then there was the since-impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly attempting to sell the senatorial seat vacated when Barack Obama was elected president.

There also was what is becoming run-of-the-mill congressional criminal conspiracy and bribery cases as former Congressmen William J. Jefferson of Louisiana and "Duke" Cunningham of California were convicted and imprisoned for selling their legislative influence.

Perhaps the wickedest of all frauds were perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street insider who bilked scores of gullible people and organizations, including some giant well-known charities, out of billions of dollars in an elaborate Ponzi scheme. He is now where he belongs – in jail.

So much for the ugly, how about the bad. I can think of lots of bad. The recession was, of course, the worst. Then there was the wide scale unemployment that threw millions out of jobs. There was the inexcusable obstructionist behavior of Congressional Republicans who earned the title "Party of No."

How any self-respecting political party can hold its head up and be proud of being against everything, especially in these terrible times of stress and conflict, is beyond me. I must agree with the argument that not only did eight years of Republicans in power put this country in the ditch, but now the GOP won’t even lend a hand in digging us out of the hole they placed us.

And who is calling whom un-American?

On the good side of the ledger we can all be happy that George W. Bush was only president for 20 days during 2009. That was a positive for the rest of us. President Obama stepped into one of the worst times to be chief executive in the history of the US, probably only surpassed by Abraham Lincoln facing a civil war and Franklin D. Roosevelt starting off in the midst of an expanding depression.

Right after being sworn in Obama struck down torture as US policy, promised to close Guantanamo, signed into law a bill giving women equal pay and launched into hopeful solutions to the economic crisis with a monumental stimulus program. In the summer he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The most gruelling accomplishment was the passage of different health care bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The legislation raises a serious problem since there are some glowing differences – public option in the House and not in the Senate and a variance on abortion restrictions. The major battle on this measure is yet to come in 2010.

In the end, 2009 was not that great a year. Paul Krugman, of The New York Times, dubbed the entire first decade of the century "The Big Zero," but that’s not entirely true. Good things did happen, perhaps not enough to outweigh the bad. The decade ended with the historic election of the first non-white president of the United States and with the country on a moral rebound from eight years of deceit and international disfavor.

Unfortunately 2009 was the year of the emergence of absurd off-the-wall TV commentaries by Glenn Beck, the year they buried Ted Kennedy, the year of the phony emergencies like the balloon boy and Tiger Woods stonewalling himself into disfavor. It was the year that Kate and Jon Gosselin and their brood of eight gratefully disappeared from the TV screens, hopefully forever.

My vote for man of the year is Barack Obama. For woman of the year, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. My vote for scoundrel of the year, Sen. Joe Lieberman. Recurring Pest of the year, Sarah Palin. Dolt of the year, Rush Limbaugh.

It was a year (with apologies to Clint Eastwood) of the good, the bad and the ugly. Whether you agree or not with these assessments, standby. The new year is almost certain to bring another version of the same. It’s the human condition.

When did we lose democracy?

2009-12-12T02:01:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

The British Parliament enacted legislation that will tax bonuses to employees of financial institution to the tune of 50 percent. The French are planning to do the same. They refuse to allow banking leeches who were largely responsible for the financial crisis under which millions suffer to continue to draw blood from a suffering society.

Don’t expect any restrictive action vaguely resembling our overseas friends ever happening in the US. We have a Congress that doesn’t represent the people. The national legislature is bought and owned by the bankers and large corporations. It is not the land of the free and home of the brave we learned about in grade school.

Land of the free? Home of the brave? Really? If you think that describes today’s America, humbug. To Congress there’s a new definition. The term "land of the free" means that big concerns have the free use of the American economy sans penalty or restrictions. And "home of the brave" refers to the rest of us who have the painful right to suffer silently while the greedy bask in unearned rewards.

The parasites that inhabit Wall Street take their immense payoffs whether they make profits or not. They earn money with the thanks of the American taxpayer who bailed them out of tragic circumstances and then the ingrates raise interest rates on credit, boosts prices for services and pay their own flunkeys unconscionable bonuses.

They thumb their collective noses at the rest of us by using every bit of pressure (spelled: money) they can muster to impair corrective Congressional action. They payoff key members of Congress with campaign donations to insure they remain in office. That is their interpretation of the Constitutional right to petition the government -- also known as bribes. But they never use that word.

It’s a crime. It’s an injustice. But don’t expect anyone to go to jail for it. Why? Because Congress is in cahoots with the bankers, the insurance giants, the business barons who have as much public concern, community goodwill and personal honesty as a pile of rocks.

Not only do these bloodsuckers, who were on the edge of disaster when the taxpayers saved their skins, show no gratitude or restraint in overpaying themselves for not doing the right thing in the first place but they underwrite every campaign to destroy any hope for the country to improve life for the average citizen.

They oppose health care and fund the Republican political machine which opposes any reform in Congress and they fund the Blue Dog Democrats who see no reason to support their own party’s high minded resolve to help millions of the country’s uninsured. They underwrite the cost of fighting any effort to thwart global warming. All they care about is making as much money as they can no matter how many innocent people go without adequate medical care or how dangerous the world will be without pollution controls.

They are the most shortsighted people that ever existed. They don’t care about the future. They only live for the profits of the moment. They pay off Congress and fatten the wallets of government leaders in order to protect their bloated incomes. My desire is they live long enough to see how much damage they have done to their children’s and grandchildren’s worlds.

The Republican Party, with its antipathy towards any change in the way health care, is standing boldly shoulder-to-shoulder with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in opposition to anything offered in the realm of health care reform. They are joined by enough reactionary Democrats to stop meaningful progress.

When it comes to the area of stimulating jobs in our weakened economy all the Republicans can think of is their precious taxes. They keep singing that discredited song that tax cuts for business stimulates employment when we all know that the tax cuts given during the Bush Administration resulted in a near depression.

And the Democrats are not blameless. They cannot get together to write stiff new rules that would restrict banks and investment firms from hoodwinking the public in the future even after the financial chaos following the Bush Administration. It is difficult to believe there are realistic objections in the shadow of such a financial disaster. Even the watered-down bill passed by the House this week failed to gain a single Republican vote.

But neither party has serious objections to restricting entitlements to the poor and middle classes. It’s no harm if the lower income echelon of society cannot buy as much with food stamps as before, or afford a doctor’s regular care, or pay their mortgages.

It is all right for the lower income families to send their youths to fight and die in a questionable war as long as the investors in Haliburton (like Dick Cheney) and Blackwater make billions selling their inflated, non-bid services to the military.

The ugliness of the American political scene is heartless. We have a Congress hobbled into inaction by one party which can only say "no" to all proposals and by Senate rules that demolish the democratic concept of majority rule. We no longer have democracy in America, we have borderline anarchy fed by contentious politicians rejoicing in logjams and gridlock. The only time bipartisanship rears its head is when funding warfare.

And there is no relief for the electorate.

It is Christmas time and if you are looking for the traditional goodwill and peace of the season, you’d better look somewhere else. You won’t find it in the US Congress.

Depressed? Who me?

2009-12-01T01:22:00.003-05:00

By Don Klein

A good friend of mind said he is worried about me. He thinks I am depressed. My wife disagrees. She thinks I am overwhelmed with stress. I don’t know who is correct.

I do know I am confounded, perplexed and bewildered. I feel some strange power has singled me out for a heavy dose of negativity over a very short period of time.

It all started a month ago when my dentist told me my teeth were in bad shape. Four of them had to be extracted. He yanked them out of the back of my mouth then informed me it would be some time before he could build partial bridges because he had to wait for the gums to heal. That immediately destroyed my eating routine. No steaks, no chops, no bagels – just soft food for a long time.

About that time my wife was diagnosed with an ailment that required surgeries in Baltimore by two specialists. We had to make arrangements for the trip and order referrals from our primary physician’s office. That’s the insurance imperative these days. The clerks promised to mail the sacred documents to the distant surgeons.

Meanwhile I got a call from my bowling team captain reporting that she had been hurt in a auto accident and wouldn’t be bowling that week and could I take over for her. I did. In the confusion of first finding a substitute bowler, then entering the names on the scorecard and the monitor screen, I noticed time was eluding me so I grabbed my ball for at least one practice shot. I landed flat on my face.

Why? In the rush to do everything in the briefest time allotted I forgot to put my bowling shoes on and threw the ball wearing my street shoes. Advice to bowlers: Don’t ever do that. No traction. Splat.

The next day we learn that the referrals that were supposed to be sent to Baltimore, were not. At that time it was too late to mail them and besides we didn’t trust the clerks and did not want to travel 135 miles only to be turned away because of no referrals. So I drove in exasperation to our Salisbury doctor’s office to pick up the referrals personally after first revisiting my dentist for a checkup on my gums.

On the way back somehow I drove my car off the road and smashed into my neighbor’s house. The car was totaled. Miraculously there was no injury to me or severe damage to the house. That initiated a whole series of gut-wrenching routines that follow all accidents. First, arranging for towing the damaged car, then renting a car and dealing with the insurance people and finally negotiating for a new car. All in three days time.

A day later my wife’s car stopped running. Again a towing – to the dealer this time. Diagnosed as an engine computer failure, it took several days to repair. At the same time my prize possession, the Bose radio and CD player, whose music always cured my tension, also stopped playing for no discernable reason.

Now we were ready for the Baltimore excursion. Great friends in rural Clarksville put us up for the three-day stay there. We had never been to their house -- or that area of Maryland – so we traveled on unfamiliar routes reading directions as we roamed darkened roads. It rained all three days to add to the strain of driving.

We had to be at the two different doctors on two succeeding days before dawn. There were no good night’s sleep as a result.

Getting to Baltimore was weird, inside the city the travel was familiar enough though stressful. Trying to find our way among the myriad of structures on the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus is like trying to escape the clutches of the Blob that ate California. Hopkins has wrapped its unwieldy embrace over a sizable chunk of east Baltimore and turned what once was one of the dumpiest neighborhoods of the city into a widespread, confusing technological health complex even an employee would have trouble negotiating.

When my wife’s treatment was over we were free to travel back to Ocean City. It was Thanksgiving Eve, the worst travel day of the year. I stopped for a snack on the approach to the Bay Bridge, my wife was not hungry, and found out that bridge traffic had been greatly retarded because of heavy fog.

A half-hour later, safely on the Eastern Shore side of the Chesapeake Bay, I had to stop and close my eyes for a nap while parked in a county lot off the main highway determined not to repeat losing control of my driving again.

When we got home it was still raining. No food for dinner. Went out for pizza and stained the back seat of my new car with its drippings. Then I learned our oldest granddaughter, an 18 year old who was in tears a few weeks ago when she left her boyfriend in Virginia because of his bad treatment of her, had recanted. They left together to return to Virginia after Thanksgiving despite parental and grand-parental advice to the contrary.

Then to top off everything else, our newspaper whose delivery had be discontinued while we were in Baltimore, was not delivered for five days after the reinstatement date. The responsible circulation people at the paper couldn’t figure out why.

The American Psychological Association reports that 75 percent of Americans are experiencing moderate to high levels of stress, demonstrated by symptoms of irritability and anger. Why should I be different?

Am I depressed? No. Am I stressed out? Maybe. I just want to climb into bed, pull the covers over my head and stay there until they start redelivering my newspaper. I joyfully will open the tardy news sheet and look at the front page – then I’ll really be depressed.