The Nader bite
Democratic apologists are in a lather again over the prospect of another Ralph Nader presidential candidacy. What does Nader think he's going to accomplish, they ask? Is he trying to permanently damage his legacy? Is he going to wind up costing the Democrats the election again?
The huffy harangues and pathetic potshots heard this week over Nader's renewed candidacy would have more teeth if they hadn't already been there dating back to his first bid. I guess for Ralph Nader it's an "ego trip" to put his entire career's reputation back on the block in service of his core principles, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, running for president with one complete senate term between them, are paragons of modesty.
Said Clinton about Nader Sunday (on the day she hit the campaign stump railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement that's synonymous with her husband's presidency, and which she supported publicly up until the point she lost the convention delegate lead to Obama): "Wow, that's really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It's not good for anybody, especially our country... Obviously it's not helpful to whoever the Democratic nominee is. But it's a free country and I don't know what party he'll run on. What did he run on last time, does anyone remember?"
Said Obama of Nader, "He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work."
Now Obama's comment may be just a product of professional jealousy-- Obama got his start as a community organizer in a Nader-established citizen group. It makes some sense that Obama would try to establish his
own bona fides separate from Nader's-- supporting nuclear power, for example, or pandering to Israeli lobbyists on the Palestinian issue, or promising to expand our nation's already bloated military budget beyond the scope of even that of the Bush regime. As an attorney supposedly specialized in Constitutional law, though, you would think that Obama would realize that attacking al Qaeda targets in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government, as he's threatened to do as president, would be a violation of international law, and would, like Bush in Iraq, make him a war criminal. I'd be curious then to find out the neophyte Obama's supplemental plan for restoring America's reputation abroad after launching such an attack.
The party hacks still scapegoat Nader for their own failings in 2000, despite the fact that 10 million more Democrats voted for George W. Bush in that election than for Nader. Their representatives in Washington spent the next eight years proving Nader a modern-day Nostradamus. It's typical of the corporatists to blame the reformer rather than the corrupt system they're responsible for putting in place-- a system they're intent on keeping exclusively to themselves and to the Republicans who routinely bludgeon them on election day. The Democratic party is the graveyard of progressive movements, but they want to make sure that principled progressive voters continue to have no place else to turn.
The 80th Annual Academy Awards
We're getting closer to live blogging with our coverage of the event this year. I'm typing away as the show progresses, but the posting won't come until the very end. Who would interrupt such a pleasurable television viewing experience to surf on-line anyway. To quote Ken Levine, the Oscars are the Super Bowl of entertainment except that when your favorite football team wins there's a big parade in your city, and when your favorite movie wins there's a big party that you're not invited to.
7:00 The pre-show opens. Wow-- my TV reception really sucks. I wish I could watch online actually. Regis Philbin's crow's feet would be undetectable to me even without the Botox.
7:21 I love the Oscar ceremony itself. It could stretch for six hours for all I care, but the red carpet stuff is interminable. Maybe the writers are still polishing off the opening monologue.
7:41 Jon Stewart wraps up said monologue. One joke made me chuckle out loud. Paraphrasing: "Juno" writer Diablo Cody used to be an exotic dancer. She's had no trouble adjusting to a Hollywood screenwriter except for the paycut. Stewart's open was not edgy or threatening, like Chris Rock's from two years previous, and it was entirely forgettable. I'm sure he'll be invited back.
7:56 Ingenue Katherine Heigl introduces the award for makeup and she's so visibly nervous that she can hardly speak. That's one of the fun things about the Oscars, but I'll bet if she ever wins, she'll become insufferable.
8:05 The entire first hour of the telecast is really dulls-ville. Art direction, visual effects, makeup, etc. It dawns on me that the director of the awards show should find a way to tell the story in inverted order and give the best picture award first. That's what all the clever movies are doing nowadays.
8:08 The first hour is to the Academy Awards telecast what the last hour is to a porno.
8:15 Jennifer Hudson presents the best supporting actor award to Javier Bardem (but Hal Holbrooke gets to go home with Dixie Carter.) Bardem was scary as hell, but how is his role in "No Country For Old Men" a supporting role? That's silly.
8:31 The bee from "B-Movie" (Jerry Seinfeld) presents the award for animated short. Has a movie ever been more shamelessly-promoted than "B-Movie"?
8:35 Tilda Swinton wins best supporting actress for "Michael Clayton." She did wonders with what could have been a nothing part, and gives a fine acceptance speech also You're on your own to find it on Youtube.
8:48 Best adapted screenplay goes to the adaptation of Faulkner's "Rush Hour 3." No, that's wrong. It's the Coen Brothers for Cormac McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men," and brother Joel gets to go home with Frances McDormand.
9:09 In the best actress history montage, we see Helen Mirren from last year, without context, hoisting her trophy on stage and proclaiming, "I give you The Queen." This statement would make more sense if Oscar was actually a girl. Is she implying that the statue is gay? A really beautiful woman, Marion Cotillard, wins this year's prize. She's unrecognizable in reality from her performance as Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose," a decent flick and a spectacular performance I saw courtesy of my Netflix subscription. That makes a French woman, a Brit, and a Spaniard so far in the four acting categories. With all the other problems facing the Oscars telecast this year, it's a good thing none of these winners faced the same passport problems Amy Winehouse had two weeks ago.
9:22 Jack Nicholson, star of many a classic film and Oscar's front row, introduces the historical montage of best picture winners. There sure are a lot of duds in the group.
9:35 Robert Boyle, the production designer for "North By Northwest," "In Cold Blood," and other memorable Hollywood films gets an honorary Oscar at the age of 98. He looks and sounds as young and vigorous as the man who gave him his first job in the business, Regis Philbin.
9:44 Austria wins for best foreign language film, and I'm pleased that the winning director references my favorite director of all-time-- from his homeland, Billy Wilder. When they called the country as winner, Wilder was the first person I thought of, and then the man acknowledged it immediately. That makes me feel smart.
9:45-10:23 I play computer solitaire. I think there's a rain delay or something.
10:24 Harrison Ford presents the best original screenplay Oscar to
Diablo Cody, a student for four years at our own University of Iowa (from 1996 to 2000), who gives an emotional, heartfelt, and genuine speech.
10:36 And then Daniel Day-Lewis does the same. The latter two are moments that make an entire Oscars telecast worth watching, despite the duration, the ridiculous amount of commercials one has to endure, and the inane dance of the annual red carpet. Daniel Day-Lewis is a force of discipline, strength, and courage in his acting, and performances like his in "There Will Be Blood" make the whole endeavor of his profession worthwhile. He blows me away.
10:43 It's the Coen Brothers for
shared best director, and then their "No Country For Old Men" tops off a spectacular night for the pair by being named best picture as well. Between the Coens' six combined trophies and Diablo Cody, what a night for our neighbors to the north in Minnesota and the Twin Cities.
10:47 Jon Stewart says goodnight. See you all at the customer service counter of our local Netflix distribution center.
Moeller TV Listings 2/23/08
Citizen activist Ralph Nader will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" tomorrow morning, and all signs point to an announcement there of a 2008 independent run for president. Nader sent an email to supporters on Friday asking the question of what's been already "pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous year?"
His answer to that question, "Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget, adopting a single-payer Canadian-style national health insurance system, impeaching Bush/Cheney, opposing nuclear power-- among many others."
I would single out "free" trade and America's imperial presence in the Middle East as two of those many other issues that have not been raised or were immediately dismissed in what has been a primary season more concerned with the politics of rhetorical style than policy substance.
Outside of their typical attempted backroom double-dealing and illegal ballot shenanigans state to state, there is only one way for Democrats to make Nader a non-factor in November, and that is to co-opt his political message. But since this hasn't been done by either of the two remaining Democratic candidates during the run of the party nomination process, it's unlikely that it would happen during the race against the Republican nominee when Democrats traditionally tack to the center-right of the political spectrum where they wrongly assume the majority of Americans to be.
Ralph Nader is providing campaign information and taking financial contributions at
http://www.naderexplore08.org/.
He sure dates some pretty girls though
This is downright hilarious.
...What makes this baseball study interesting to me is that it concludes not that Derek Jeter is the worst shortstop in baseball at his present age of 33, which I guess we can also reasonably conclude, but that he was the worst during the typical peak age range for a ballplayer of 27 to 31. It's priceless. He was the worst then, he's likely the worst now, and he'll probably still be the worst at that point in the near future when Alex Rodriguez's daughter marries Andy Pettitte. (
See last paragraph.)
Here's
a second opinion on Jeter.
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Say what you want about John McCain, but the man has
a type.
Harry Carabina
It was 10 years ago yesterday that Harry Caray died. The long-time baseball broadcaster, principally for the Cubs and the Cardinals, was raised in an orphanage on the Hill in St. Louis, grew to become one of the most celebrated
pitchmen of all-time and a favorite voice of the game for thousands upon thousands of fans, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989, and
kept his phonre number published his entire life. Baseball's a duller game without him.
Here's
a Youtube montage of Harry's work, and Harry
at his best during the 7th inning stretch. It's been so long since they had a good performance of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley, you forget how thrilling it used to be.
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They're talking about
Drake University basketball in
The New York Times today.
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I'll bet that Castro disappears entirely. Like Carson.
The Moeller Family Album
My father has posted some of our historic family pictures online. They're on a website in which you can order prints, forcing me to have to purchase the ones that I want. It's a pretty slick little scam he's got going. You won't see me or my siblings in any of the pictures. Most of them date back 50 years and more. They're all posted
here, 118 of them so far, but I want to draw your attention to twelve of the best. It's as much American history as it is Moeller family history. Embellished text appears in italics.
This is
a fantastic picture of my grandfather, Elmer Moeller, taken sometime during the late teens. We see him seated atop a horse in front of the country house that I would grow up in six and seven decades later. The house is still located on a gravel road between Newhall and Atkins, Iowa.
The horse was Sir Barton, which Johnny Loftus rode to victory in the Derby in 1919.This is
the 1895 wedding photo of my great-grandparents, Peter and Anna Moeller, both first-generation German-Americans.
While serving time in federal prison in 1921, Peter was, for a brief time, a jailhouse confidante to imprisoned anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Peter had been convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 after repeatedly shouting in a public square his contention that then-First Lady Florence Harding possessed "a wide carriage."Here's Grandpa Elmer again, this time
in full military regalia around the time of the Great War.
The children of the predominantly-German American communities of Benton County, Iowa were routinely paraded before cameras and newspapermen to help provide a cover of patriotism for the illicit shipments of grain and pork that were being transported back to the kaiser.These are
my grandparents, Elmer and Alice, on their wedding day in Cedar Rapids in 1940. The homes that appear to the right in the photo are no longer there,
but in their place today stands a monument to the world's largest human pyramid, constructed for the benefit of the Guinness people by a drunken couples-league softball team in 1981.In
this one, we see my great-aunt Marie (Moeller) Skersick (on the far-right) in a snapshot taken with friends along a beach in California. Second from right in the photo is Hollywood starlet of the era,
Dorothy Lamour, best-remembered as the female lead in the series of Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road to..." films of the 1940s.
Lamour was "loaned out" by Paramount Studios to RKO to appear in this photo.Here are my grandparents once again, along with Grandpa's brother and his wife,
at the Continental Hotel in Chicago.
The place has been emptied out behind them due to a bawdy stage performance by a very middle-aged and drunken Mae West and her "imperial guard" of muscular young male actors.Here we have
Elmer on the Moeller farm sometime during the '50s with some of his livestock.
His controversial plan to breed cows with pigs drew a highly-publicized visit from the Dutch agricultural emissary in 1952, but caused him nothing but ridicule over the years from rural neighbors. Locals stuck him with the unwelcome nickname "Farmer Moonbeam."This is
an aerial view of the Moeller estate before the farm buildings were torn down during those tumultuous 1960s when it seemed everything was being burned. The snapshot was taken in '63
by a Cuban U-2 spy plane investigating American techniques for rural "grove-clearing."Here's young Thomas, or Tom-- my Dad-- dressed as
Peter Pan. One can only presume that this is a Halloween picture, but how often is one able to wear short sleeves outdoors in Iowa on October 31st?
Here's Elmer,
"bull"fighting in Mexico the year I was born.
Facing the impending birth of twin grandsons, Grandpa had a rather pronounced mid-life crisis. No pictures survive of his attempt in '74 to replicate Steve McQueen's motorcycle jump in "The Great Escape."This is
my great-aunt Rose with her surviving siblings on the occasion of her 100th birthday celebration in 1998.
The shot was taken just before Willard Scott passed out in the three-bean salad.And finally, here's
a candid and marvelous image of my great-grandfather Peter while on a family trip out west in the early '30s. He's dreaming of a futuristic world of blogs, television festivals, and the moment long after his death in which they steal his life story and make a movie about it called "There Will Be Blood."
Or perhaps he's recalling something that Vanzetti confessed to him behind bars.
A completely unsubstantiated rumor that I'm promoting
A Cardinals fan friend-of-mine at work told me that he had it from a buddy that Anheuser-Busch was thinking of re-purchasing the St. Louis baseball team. The nation's largest brewer sold the club in 1995 after 42 years of ownership. The partnership produced six National League pennants and 3 World Championships for the Cardinals, but was an even better business arrangement for A-B, a company that has come to symbolize the marriage of sports and advertising in America. When sportsman Gussie Busch bought the Cardinals in 1953, the brewer was being outsold in St. Louis by a brewer named Griesedieck Brothers. Now they sell nearly one of every two beers sold in the United States. I don't want to tell you what I have to pay the tax man this year in capital gains after selling off a huge chunk of my BUD shares after 20 years of market growth to cover the downpayment on my new home.
Searching online for confirmation of this rumored re-partnership, I have come up with absolutely nothing. And yet I love it. It makes perfect sense. On the one hand, you have an ownership group led by Bill DeWitt. In the early '90s, DeWitt partnered with a flop-of-a-businessman from Texas named George W. Bush on the purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball club. Together they helped to revolutionize a baseball ownership model that has been replicated in communities all across the country-- First, you buy a baseball team. Then you threaten to relocate it to a different city/state/suburb in an effort to hold the home city/state/county up for ransom on a taxpayer-funded ballpark that will exponentially increase the resale value of the franchise. The first enterprise in Arlington catapulted Bush to the governorship of the Lone Star State, and DeWitt to the chairmanship of his favorite baseball team while growing up in St. Louis, the Cardinals.
Now, the time would be perfect to resell the Cardinals. DeWitt and Partners have already shown over the last couple years that the days of spending money on baseball talent have come to an end. The new ballpark has finished construction, but the ownership group is flailing away in vain-- like Tino Martinez in a Redbird uniform-- in their effort to get financing for the long-promised "Ballpark Village" in downtown St. Louis. The Village was the original blueprint for a 12 acre, $650 million development of retail shops, restaurants, entertainment venues, and residential units to be built beyond the leftfield bleachers of the new park, atop the pile of Missouri topsoil and debris left behind after the cannonball destruction of the old beloved stadium following the 2005 baseball season.
In Anheuser Busch, or perhaps in just the Busch Family itself, you would have a buyer who knows a little something about selling a baseball product, or any product, and of having built world-class entertainment destinations. (See: Busch Gardens and/or Sea World) The "Michelob Ultra Ballpark Community" would be a bonanza. An A-B merchandise shop and a micro-brewery (from the ultimate macro-brewery) could be housed next to a revamped Cardinals Hall of Fame and a relocated International Bowling Hall of Fame. They could move the Clydesdales and some of the animals from Grant's Farm into a contructed zoo area just beyond the stadium's outfield wall.
"Look Sarah, that elephant has Albert Pujols' home run ball in his mouth. That's adorable."The only reason the A-B board and Gussie's son, August III, sold out to begin with was that labor unrest was plaguing the game in '95, but baseball is in the middle of an extended period of labor peace and financial prosperity. (Though, to the latter, when has it not?) The business journals are ripe with news that the brewer may soon merge with InBev, the largest brewer in Europe, and who knows? That may mean a change in priorities for the company or members of the Busch Family. Forty-three-year-old August Busch IV now runs the company, and though August III had not an ounce of interest in baseball or the Cardinals--
his father's favorite toy, the Busch barons tend to rebel from their own fathers, and from a personality standpoint, take after their grandfathers instead. The playboy Gussie (August II), with his bevy at beauties and cardplaying cronies always at his side, was the pride of his grandfather's eye, the grandiose and princely Adolphus, while August III had only a mind for the business, like the solemn August the First. "The Fourth," as he's known, has already shown that he'll stand in contrast to his father by supporting left-leaning political causes and candidates, like his grandfather. And this may indicate as well a willingness to pursue a venture in an industry that has such a strong union.
I think, it would be win-win-win for everyone involved-- for the current owners, the brewery, and the team. The ballpark wouldn't even have to be renamed.
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Here's the recently-released
trailer of the movie they just made about Indiana Jones' grandfather.
Grab bag
I know you were all flabbergasted yesterday when you saw that the Democratic Senate
voted legal immunity for the telecoms who cooperated with intelligence agencies spying on Americans.
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The tortured
becomes the torturer.
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More voices and choices-- that's what American elections need. And by gum, we're gonna get 'em. I left work tonight to discover a voice message on my cell phone from Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, advising of a conference call regarding her bid on Friday afternoon, and then at home, there's an email from Ralph Nader, advising that he's nearing a decision on an '08 run.
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Quote of the week: Fox News boss Roger Ailes, on the boycott of his network waged by a few of the 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls,
"The candidates that can't face Fox, can't face Al Qaeda."This is faulty logic. More accurately, I think, many people believe that both organizations are simply too well-funded.
---
You can always count on the editorialists at
The Onion to risk asking
the delicate questions.
---
Here's a
fansite dedicated to the late Suzanne Pleshette.
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Salon has a new weekly feature entitled "Re-viewed." They're calling it a "fresh look at great TV shows available on DVD." This could be some nice promotion for some old favorites that are having a difficult time getting full commercial release on the format. First review up is
"St. Elsewhere". I've added season one to the Netflix queue. You should do the same, unless you live in my distribution area.
Jazz is king again
Who knew the Grammys could be so fun? I had not enjoyed the annual music awards telecast that much since Michael Jackson was moonwalking across the stage and Lionel Richie was partying
All Night Long. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. I actually did slip back into the '80s for a moment when Jason Bateman walked onto the stage to the squeals of teenage girls seated in the balcony.
The Record of the Year win last night for former Miles Davis sideman Herbie Hancock, and his release, "River: The Joni Letters," was the first by a jazz artist in that category since Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto each took a statue home in 1965 for their collaboration "Getz/Gilberto" (and "The Girl from Ipanema") in 1965. That makes it the first such win since Louis Armstrong's death.
I thought Hancock and fellow pianist Lang Lang brought the house down as well when they teamed up on George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" near the close of the evening. We had
(Multiple sound warnings) Tina Turner
"shimmying" with Beyonce onstage,
a chic duet between Keeley Smith and Kid Rock, with Rock filling in for the late Louis Prima (an idea that must have looked as good on paper as it did on stage), and
Amy Winehouse lived up to all of the hype.
Uh yeah, and did you catch that open? I'm a little surprised that they didn't just stop the show right there-- only 15 minutes after Andy Rooney wrapped up his bit on "60 Minutes." The incomparable songstress Alicia Keys performed with the ghost of FS on
"Learnin' the Blues". A terrific song choice.
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That last performance won't hurt the still-booming financial earnings of the Chairman's estate,
reported last week in the
New York Times.---
The Times today printed this handy item--
a complete guide to how each scripted network television program has been effected by the writers' strike.
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Fans of comedy, rejoice! The HBO documentary "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project" will be released on the popular DVD format Tuesday the 19th; and "Newhart: Season 1" drops a week later.
Feds hit Brooklyn again
The big news in New York today was the indictments unsealed against the Gambino crime family.
This story has everything you'd want in a "Sopranos" storyline, or a season's worth of storylines: schemes involving gambling, racketeering, construction, racetracks, loan-sharking, drugs-- even securities fraud, telephone billing scams, and the killing of truckdrivers. Just who's getting their ideas from whom these days? All that was missing from the story was a Boss running through the snow and Van Morrison warbling in the background.
Clinton vs. McCain
So much for my marathon work schedule. The office closed today due to inclement weather, and I'm left with all the time in the world to blog-- that is, between DVD episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "The Wire," and "The Bob Newhart Show." Lucky for you I'm home-- it allows for some top-of-the-line post-Super Tuesday political analysis...
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Despite a concerted media effort to convince us otherwise, Hillary Clinton has had the Democratic nomination for President sewn up since the very beginning, and Super Tuesday's superior delegate count does nothing to dissuade her all-but-official party coronation. If Barack Obama had wanted a fighting chance at the Democratic nomination, he should have run back in 1972 or 1976 during
the short period of time in which the party opened itself up structurally to leaders from outside of the machine hierarchy before clamping the lid down tight again in 1980.
A candidate of Clinton's insider position-- as financially prosperous as she was from the beginning, and as low as she and her husband/running mate were willing to stoop during the campaign-- was never going to be seriously challenged for the nomination, especially not by a superficial, posturing opponent who praised when he should have attacked, and who had a murky Iraqi exit strategy and overlapping talking points on "free trade" and employer-based health care.
No, the big news story yesterday was really John McCain running off with the Republican nomination; and now the GOP winds up with the one matchup in the general election that they actually have a chance of winning following the cancerous Bush presidency.
Clinton's preposterous claims of "35 years experience" will be put to shame against McCain, a man who was ending his five years at the Hanoi Hilton in 1973 while Clinton was still in law school. With a former president riding shotgun, Hillary will be unable to paint herself as the candidate of "change" against a "maverick" Republican who isn't part of any recognized "vast right-wing conspiracy." Her talking point about being ready to lead "on day one" will look mighty foolish up against an actual former military commander and war hero, and she stands to be the only person in the hemisphere, aside from her husband, that can rally angry right wing voters and pundits to the cause of a McCain candidacy.
Democrats have sacrificed the entire issue of the war for the '08 campaign (such as they did in '04) by nominating a candidate who voted in favor of the war on Iraq, the war on Iran, and for all of the funding measures that have followed. Senator Clinton will be completely-- and quite fairly-- standing in for a cowardly and do-nothing Democratic Congress that is even more unpopular than the president, and that has not only continued to lavishly finance Bush's illegal war, but has done so with legislation containing neither timetables nor required benchmarks for political or military progress in the region.
November's election will pit the co-author of one of the only significant pieces of campaign-finance legislation this decade against the biggest corporate fundraiser in the race in either party, a woman who voted to keep most-favored-nation trading status with the totalitarian Chinese government, and who was bogged down a decade ago, with her husband, in a scandal involving campaign contributions from the same. It will match a candidate whose "straight-talk" reputation with the media and the public still carries considerable weight against a woman whose veil of secrecy and private calculation is darker than perhaps even that of the Cheney White House.
It is absolutely beyond my intellect, I confess, to figure out what electoral advantage Democrats think Hillary Clinton brings to the table other than her familiarity. As Maureen Dowd pointed out in her
New York Times column today, the entire subtext of her campaign thus far has been "You owe me," or more precisely "Bill owes me and you owe him." And I'll add-- lest anyone forget this little piece of accepted pundit wisdom about the Bill Clinton presidential legacy, here's a staged crying fit for the cameras just when the party faithful may feel themselves being swayed by a fresh upstart.
Even if she were to win, what could Americans reasonably expect from a Hillary Clinton presidency? And this is a question that every espoused progressive and Democratic party loyalist should be pondering during the next nine months.
Answer:
-- A still-sizeable military presence in Iraq and the Gulf region, inflaming the Muslim world, as Hillary has already promised repeatedly during her campaign.
-- More saber-rattling with Iran. (Clinton criticized Obama for saying that he would even
meet with Iranian leaders, a policy position that puts her to the right of Condoleeza Rice.)
-- No change whatsoever in our so-called global "free trade" policies that have hemorrhaged American jobs, jeopardized consumer safety, and created a trade deficit of more than 763 billion dollars.
-- No meaningful change in regards to our national health care crisis. Expect the same big-money players to make the national health care decisions in a Clinton presidency as Hillary is the 2008 candidate with the largest bank of campaign donations from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
-- More secrecy-- everything from the renewal of the Patriot Act, which Hillary has supported, to the suppression of Oval Office records under claims of marital confidentiality. (Bill has insisted that the records of all communications with his wife during his presidency be withheld from the public until 2012. According to
Newsweek's Michael Isikoff
, this includes more than 3 million documents involving Hillary's 1993 health care debacle.)
-- Further inaction on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians inflamed by Israel's policy of severe and continual collective punishment on the Palestinian people. (Even with violence flaring in Gaza this week, is this issue even on the collective radar of the U.S. media and our presidential candidates?)
-- No reductions whatsoever in bloated military spending. Corporate criminals, war profiteers, and Congresspersons on the take control this spending, and like every other major presidential candidate, Hillary will do jack-shit to stop or limit them.
-- No crackdown on corporate crime and the fleecing of investors and taxpayers. Clinton already represents Wall Street in the United States Senate, both literally and figuratively, and she has done nothing thus far to make this a legislative priority, nor has she put forth an iota of effort to end corporate giveaways and bailouts. Bill's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, later went to work for Citigroup and got a $40 million consultant's payout. Expect similar anecdotes about officials in Hillary's cabinet. They're already her
top campaign consultants.
-- No meaningful change in environmental policy. Campaign pledges aside, how can a president do anything to limit carbon emissions and stop pollution when corporations are given untethered power in the market? This is unwarranted voter confidence in Clinton along the lines of accepting her campaign promises on health care without looking to see who signed the checks.
-- Expect the Democrats to lose their precarious grip on the Congress. It happened with the first Clinton presidency, and I defy anyone to name a single down-the-ticket Congressional or Senate race that a Hillary nomination promises to strengthen in November. A Democratically-controlled Congress still looks invincible for 2008, thanks to George Bush, but another Gingrich-style revolution awaits if we get two more years of Clinton-style triangulation.
18 tons, plus overtime
Blogging will be continued light this week. In a dash for cash, I'm making myself available for voluntary overtime at the Student Loan Hacienda. Supervisor approval still awaits, but my plan is to make myself available for the whole thing-- open until close, 8 to 8 Monday through Thursday, 8-5 on Friday, 52 hours on the punchcard. A colleague suggested comparison this afternoon to Jerry Lewis and his Labor Day telethon. Like Jerry, I won't be dozing, but beginning late tomorrow, you might see me collapsing in theatrical splendor after each musical number.
