Trav Trivia

Volume 8, Number 7

May 28, 2012 -- The battle is enjoined. The combatants have girded their loins, donned their armor, mounted their steeds, and begun to gallop toward each other lance in hand (have I missed any trite euphonium to incite that the presidential campaign is now in full swing even before the party conventions or the presumed Republican stalwart that is no longer presumptive?). The ugly campaign television ads are airing, the rhetoric is heating up, the drums are beating louder.

Before we march farther it might be interesting, although not relevant, to do a background check, sort of a personal heritage review of the two standard bearers. For openers neither one of their fathers was born in the United States, something of a coincidence, one in Mexico, one in Kenya. Should they have Green Cards?

Both are products of cultures that allowed a man to have many wives and not in the Newt Gingrich sense of one at a time but all at one time like pearls on a string. The father of each was the first in the family to attend college. Mitt’s dad attended college several times but did not earn a degree. Obama’s father got his start by winning scholarships as a brilliant student, earned two degrees from U.S. universities, including an advanced degree in economics from Harvard, was Phi Beta Kappa while Barack’s mother, also a student at several colleges, earned a Ph.D. Like the way “trickle down” economics is supposed to work, trickle down education seems to have happened in Obama’s case.

Both fathers served in important positions in the governments of their respective nations—George Romney, who made a brief stab at seeking the Republican nomination as a presidential candidate despite not being “native born,” as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Obama Sr. held senior economic positions in the government of Kenya.

Both fathers were immigrants but one was an ardent fan of such American pop culture activities as progressive jazz, like Dave Brubeck, and the game of basketball. George Romney? No, Obama Sr.

The religious histories of both men do not fit the pattern to which we are accustomed. Romney Sr. of course did his two-year stint as a Mormon missionary, held official church positions, and was a life-long leader in a faith that many Americans see as more cult than religion. Obama Sr. began life in Islam, was baptized a Catholic at an early age, was taken under the wing of the British Angleton Church as a young adult, later in life took a Jewish wife (our President has two half-brothers who are Jewish) and eventually became an Atheist. What is the difference between Rev. Jeremiah Wright (drug back in the news to be used in scurrilous campaign ads) and a Mormon Elder? Mandated official underwear.

One father was an advocate of trade unions, had their strong support, worked hard to increase government funding for low-cost housing. Obama Sr.? No George Romney, both as the governor of Michigan where he imposed taxes on wealthy to balance a budget, and as a member of the Nixon Administration. He certainly would not be welcome in an administration headed by his son. Obama Sr. published papers on how to improve agriculture in African countries. Of the two George Romney seems to have been more blue collar (a color that did not rub off on his son) who rose through the ranks to achieve positions of importance. The father of Obama Sr., our president’s grandfather served in the British Colonial Forces and traveled widely.

So what is to be made of all of this? Not a cotton-picking thing if I am allowed to use an old Southern expression without the baggage of racial or immigrant overtones. And that is the point. This should not be a likeability contest. We are not voting on which has the most winning personality, or should not be at any rate, we are voting on an administration, on who the president will surround himself with (think George Bush), on the next Supreme Court appointment (think Roberts and Alito), and economic initiatives (think austerity). While our two candidates are products of their parents, if they had stayed the course Mitt would be, if not a progressive, at least a “moderate” Republican and Obama would have probably stayed in academia.

How the “L Word” morphed into the “M Word”

 Remember? In 1988 candidate Ronald Reagan had a lot of fun (and success) pinning the “L” word for Liberal on Democrats. Were he alive today he would be branded by members of his own party with the dreaded “M” word, for moderate. Not a chance the Tea Party would support a man who expanded Social Security, raised taxes on the wealthy, and said of trade unions, “There are few finer examples of participatory democracy.” By today’s standards those, like George Romney’s, take moderate stances and there is no room in the G.O.P. for moderation. All moderate Republicans, willing to work with the other side to compromise and cut deals where each side gives a little are gone or going. In my market there is a heavy schedule of a television ads devoted entirely to demonstrating how the Republican candidate’s Republican opponent is widely seen as moderate. Horrors. As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne writes the ultimate epithet? “Moderate.”

But even so, Reagan remains the patron saint. In what seemed to be a little creepy to me, not being into the current fad of vampire movies, a sample of Reagan’s blood went up for auction on the internet and reached the level of $30,000 before the owner had a change of heart and donated it to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Will it go on display? That sounds like something the Vatican would do. Republicans take the “Saint” in Patron Saint to heart. Like the Catholic church they could save relics from their anointed, a sweaty T-shirt George Bush used while cutting brush in Texas, say, or a leftover part from Dick Cheney’s old mechanical heart now that he has a new one of flesh and blood.

“Vulture Capitalism”?

 Now what depraved Democrat would stoop so low as to pin that phrase on the activities of Mitt Romney’s old hedge fund, Bain Capital? Oh, it wasn’t a Democrat. It was Rick Perry in one of the Republican primary debates.

What else did Perry say? “There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business. I happen to think that that is indefensible.”

Well, that’s just Perry shooting his mouth off again, right? Ah, but fellow Republican Rick Santorum was not that thrilled either: “Do you think that’s the kind of experience we need? Someone who’s going to take and look after, as he did, his friends on Wall Street and bail them out at the expense of Main Street America?”

How about the deep thinker, Newt Gingrich? He said “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.”

That was then and this is now. As the Obama campaign runs ads along the lines of what Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich said, the Romney camp is screaming that they are attacks on capitalism and such criticism is dirty pool. Except since the Romney campaign is claiming Romney’s experience and success at Bain make him better suited for the presidency. That makes such criticism as evaluation fair game.

In actuality, equity capital, which has not long been with us, is something of a mixed blessing. The Gingrich view is pretty much on target. Bain sought out small companies they thought might grow and weak ones they might rescue. When they were right—as they were with Staples as an example—good things happened and they, as well as everybody else made a lot of money. But when they were wrong, they took the huge management fees, cut the operation to the bone eliminating jobs and pension plans, and driving the company out of business in order to retrieve as much of their original investment as possible. The experience gained here is business experience, looking out for investor interests only which is the unfettered free market system. But in the White House the president is charged with looking out for all citizens, not just a few so questioning the value of the Bain experience is fair game. You might say if applied to governing it could be a hindrance.

Mitt Romney said of the multi-billions in losses at J.P. Morgan that is just the free market at work with winners and losers, ignoring the fact that the betters were making unregulated bets using funds guaranteed by the federal government, namely us. As Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post put it, “Shouldn’t free markets serve the American people, rather than the other way around?”

“Big enough to crash the financial system”

 And a bank whose deposits are federally insured. That’s why Paul Krugman asks if it should “be standing at a craps table in the middle of the night yelling, ‘Baby needs a new pair of shoes.’ ”

Of course Morgan fights any kind of regulation tooth and nail spending millions to lobby. In his NYT column economist Krugman points out, “productivity in America grew faster in the postwar generation, an era in which banks were tightly regulated and private equity barely existed, than it has since our political system decided that greed was good.”

Do regulations impact trade deficits? “Big trade deficits only started in the Reagan years, that is, during the era of runaway finance.” The trickle down factor? “Trickle down gains: only a small part of those gains got passed on to American workers.” This is the “fifth year of a slump brought on by irresponsible bankers”, says Krugman who is like a playground supervisor watching a free for all pickup ball game. 

“A whole cohort of young Americans graduating into an abysmal job market.”

 Krugman again with another reality check as Romney made his first major speech on education and was about as jolly as Krugman. Gail Collins covered it for the New York Times saying, “it had a quality of mushiness seldom seen outside of a six-week-old pumpkin.” Romney says we have an “education crises.” He is big on crises adding this one to his ‘job crises” and “sending crises” list. Bit he said something usual, that Obama inherited them complaining that the President just hasn’t done anything about them.

A Republican saying things are all the fault of Bush? Collins says it’s no wonder all Bush would say when badgered by reporters was he was going to vote for Romney, the ringing endorsement of the year. Actually, the day the Bush Administration handled education is, in general, considered to be a bright spot. But Collins says, “Tea Party folk hate, hate, hate No Child Left Behind as a federal intrusion on states’ rights to screw up their schools in whatever way they see fit.” The student body of Texas A&M used to call the student body of the University of Texas “Tea Sippers,” a useful term these days to describe any Republican running for office.

Mitt Romney – American by birth!

 That was the signoff line on an e-mail trashing Obama, touting Romney, the likes of which we will be assaulted with from now until November, not a very subtle way of keeping the canard that Obama is not a natural born citizen, that somehow his mother managed to deliver him in Kenya without ever leaving the United States. The latest chapter of this story closed after the Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett who couldn’t say Obama’s name would be on the November ballot until he saw an actual copy of his birth certificate, sent two deputies to Hawaii to look at the original on file. I saw no report that he made Romney show his. But Romney, American by birth (unlike his dad from Mexico), lingers on. You would think that loopy Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County who swears the Obama birth certificate is a fake, would go after a man whose father immigrated from Mexico, apparently the birth place of all whom Arpaio seems to find evil, namely Romney.

We’ll be gorging a lot of rancid rhetoric in the weeks ahead and some of the imagery won’ be pretty. You have Mitt Romney’s “prairie fire of debt” to Obama’s “cowpie of distortion,” saying Romney’s plan would lead to $5 trillion in tax cuts, crippling the debt.

We should be in for much more of this stuff than ever before since Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court turned loose billionaires like Joe Ricketts, the fellow who was about to support the film bringing up Rev. Jeremiah Wright again to spend their billions at will, like Johnny Appleseed, however it turns them on.

“Natural born citizen” sounds like something from Macbeth”

This requirement that the president must be a natural born citizen keeps coming up, sometimes as a big issue, sometimes just blown off. John McCain had to face it both times he ran for president since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936. Barry Goldwater was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, before it became a state (did anyone tell Joe Arpaio?) and he was nominated anyway. Chester A. Arthur was rumored to have been born in Canada, George Romney of course in Mexico and Lowell P Wekcker Jr. from Connecticut once tried for the office even though he was born in Paris (Paris? These days that would give the European Socialist denounces a field day). Perhaps it is time, as has been suggested, we implant a little chip beneath the skin with family history, at birth.

Prurient Report of the Week’ Activities

 The Senate held a hearing (when in doubt hold a hearing), chaired by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, into the culture of the Secret Service triggered by the recent scandal in Colombia. Looks like the activities are pretty normal for what is popularly called the “Secret Circus” as a bunch of macho guys travel around the world on duty, some 200 of them in Cartagena. 200? You would expect more than 12 to be involved, but maybe there just weren‘t enough hookers to go around. Supply and demand.

As widely reported, Bill Clinton was photographed at a gala at a Monte Carlo casino with two young women who turned out to be porn stars. At least they were still photos; no Paris Hilton type performance video to turn up on You Tube.

The oddest report came from the John Edwards trial; alternate members of the jury seem to be flirting with Edwards, who appears to be blushingly responding. And four young women are appearing in court in color coordinated apparel and it looks like Edwards is changing his tie in response. One attractive young woman smiles at him, flips her hair at him, and came in Friday wearing a sort of sexy off the shoulder dress. The jury is still hung, and so is Edwards.

Other Odds and Ends

 An organization who studies such things reports that Congress now speaks at grade level lower than it did seven years ago, now 10.6 grade. The Constitution, they say, was written at a 17.6 grade level. Looks like if Mitt Romney wants to fix the “education crises” he should start with Congress.

Looks like Elizabeth Warren, running for the Senate in Massachusetts, may be in a little trouble for once claiming that she is 1/32nd Cherokee and is having a hard time proving it. She will have to pull a Will Rogers, an old Cherokee: do rope tricks and tell a few jokes about Congress.

Germany and France are at it again. Angela Merkel and the new president of France, Francois Hollande are at odds over issuing Euro bonds or not, to fight the debt problem. Merkel and her German bankers do not want to pool he debt with 16 other members of the euro currency union. It looks like Germany is saying it’s payback time for the way WWII turned out.

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, once a proud (an arrogant) daily newspaper is only going to publish three days a week and lay off a bunch of people. Signs of the times. Soon we will all be reduced to texting. God forbid that we should lose a thumb. We would go mute.

Data shows the British recession is deeper than originally thought, with the gross domestic product shrinking 0.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with 0.2 percent estimated earlier. Yet, they still are hanging on to their austerity programs which are stifling growth. We could be very well heading that way, sort of like watching a friend step in a hole and sink under water and saying I can do that.

H.P. said it would cut 27,000 employees, or 7.7 percent of a global work force. Their red ink cartridge seems to be overflowing.

More Words out of Washington

 But these in search of comic relief

 The Washington Post has for years been publishing Style Invitational, a series of word games in various forms, the current one, Week 972 being Trends and Neighbors. The object is to select any two names or words from a random list they provide and make a funny connection. The example they use takes John Edwards and jellyfish from the list with this result:

• A jellyfish is like John Edwards: Even when it’s washed up and dead in the water, people don’t want to get anywhere near it.

 Here is another example from a list of entries I submitted, using jellyfish and JP Morgan:

• When would a JP Morgan trader invest in Jellyfish? When he could turn them into derivatives.

 But since we are all politics here, let’s hitch-hike on their game but combine words of our own choosing.

• What does Paul Ryan think the difference is between an egg and needy people? Only the egg should be coddled.

 

• Republicans in the House want to repeal the Violence Against Women Act so with impunity they can bludgeon Nancy Pelosi.

 

• What name should John Boehner, Speaker of the House, give to legislation meant to prevent raising the debt limit to borrow money? How about this line from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: “take the cash and let the credit go.

 

• How does California make JP Morgan look like a piker? They went $14 billion further in the hole.

 

• What is the difference between a resident Nixon healthcare plan and a Mitt Romney healthcare plan? Nixon actually had one.

 

• What kind of link is Rick Santorum to modern Homo sapiens? The missing one.

 

• What do Republican “job creators” and unicorns have in common? They are both mythological creatures.

 

• What is written on Senate Minority Leader and practicing Catholic Mitch McConnell’s prayer card? Please God make Obama a one-term president.

 

• What’s the difference between Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand? Two consonants.

What is the difference between Travtrivia and the Washington Post? About 600,000 copies.

 

 

Volume 8, Number 6

May 21, 2012 -- I will come right out and admit it: I cheated on a Spanish test in high school, or tried to. The teacher caught me. No matter how hard I tried I could not remember vocabulary so in desperation I worked up a little cheat sheet to tuck under my shirt sleeve but it didn’t work. Does this disqualify me from being president of the United States? I am anxious to know.

Perhaps I should take the Mitt Romney route and just say “I don’t recall the incident but if I offended anyone I am truly sorry.” As for as my romantic experiences in college I started out in higher education at a tough cavalry military school and I did not feel compelled to say “thank you” to about the only creature there was to share affection with if desired, a horse.

We’ve been subjected to so much information this week about the youthful activities of Romney and President Obama you feel like you ought to take a pen and write something in their year books. How do these things define them as human beings? Do they reveal any personality traits that affect the way they will or do function as our chief executive?

The Romney sense of humor in his prep school days as reported seemed rooted in causing embarrassment, discomfort, humiliation, or downright pain to other people. Steer a vision impaired professor so he runs into a glass wall and then laugh hysterically? Pin a helpless shy fellow student down and whack off strands of his hair that the kid had obviously taken pains to arrange for his self esteem? Just high-jinks, he says. Has he grown out of them? On the campaign trail his favorite high-jink is when standing next to some unsuspecting female to pretend she goosed him. Ho. Ho. Ho.

In and of itself would this peculiar personality trait be a hindrance to doing a proper job as president? Probably not unless he tried to give Vladimir Putin a wedgie or pretend German Chancellor Angela Merkel goosed him. Come to think of it, either one of those action might be worth seeing even at the expense of international consequences.

But the debate, of course, is whether it is indicative of the presence of other undesirable personality traits: a cruel streak, lack of comity, inability to relate to the welfare of others weaker or in need.

In Obama’s case it is sort of, what? He had girlfriends before he met Michelle? A male student in college seeking romance? Women he dated while attending Columbia University have been interviewed and one has shared entries from the diary she kept at the time. The entry gaining the most attention is one in which the young lady told him she loved him and his cool, careful reply was “Thank you.”

There is supposed to be some deep meaning in that reply. He could have gone on along the lines of “you are a lovely person and I am very fond of you but I am not ready to make a commitment” I suppose, which we all can probably harken back to on both the giving and receiving end, but didn’t. No indication of the silver tongued orator there. Well, it was the days before teleprompters. This is seen by some to be cool and calculating, lacking in warmth. If anything I see it as cool alright, but measured and careful. Not a problem to me.

“Parts of government should be done in private for the same reason middle-aged people should wear clothes”

 Columnist David Brooks came up with that line, attributed to Bill Galston, as he was writing about Mitt Romney, the private individual. A great line although I’m not sure how it ties in to the topic. Brooks writes: “When you speak to people who have worked with Romney, Democrats, and Republicans, you get to hear story after story of overwhelming kindness. I regard Romney as a somewhat flawed candidate, but as an exceptionally good private man.”

Therein lies the mystery of all mysteries to me, a characteristic commonly found in so many hard-line conservatives. In their private life, at the micro level, kind, caring, generous to a fault with friends and people they know. But at the macro level, convinced that the masses are just laggards and leeches, unworthy of being given help, unlike people they know personally. I am certainly willing to accept the private Romney as good to his family and friends, but why doesn‘t that spirit translate  into public life, this “fun-loving practical joker” as columnist Gail Collins calls him who likes to fire people, who agrees with Paul Ryan that we should not coddle the poor, who is willing to make draconian cuts to services that benefit millions of Americans in order to lavish tax cuts worth trillions of dollars on the few Americans that have already reached his level of wealth. How nice he may be to friends and associates privately might as well stay covered like the middle aged should stay clothed if it has no bearing on how he functions as President of all of the people.

To that upcoming controversial cover of TIME magazine I have a different reaction (that’s surprising?); the older kid who is breast feeding is I suppose meant to represent us as a nanny state, but I say the kid is feasting on the milk of human kindness. Conservatives ought to try providing a little of it.

Let the games begin

 The first official Romney as presidential candidate ad is out of the box and it is intended to show us what we are in for under his aegis.

“Day One, President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline, creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked” while possibly destroying the water table of one of the nation’s biggest bread baskets.

“President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators, not punish them.” As I have said before, the word is job ‘providers” not creators since the market is the provider, and the punishment goes to the millions of ordinary Americans who will lose life enhancing, life sustaining programs in order to pay for those inert tax cuts for the wealthy.

“President Romney issues order to begin replacing Obamacare with commonsense health care reform” which is what? If it’s the one House Republicans have come up with, the Congressional Budget Office says 32 million Americans would lose coverage, the deficit would increase by $230 billion over 10 years, average healthcare benefits would be worse, individuals would pay more for insurance and premiums for employer-sponsored insurance plans would increase in cost.

I think we owe the Romney campaign a vote of thanks for telling us in this ad running in four states straight off what we are in for on Day One of a Romney presidency.

“Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln”

 That seems kind of an odd way to describe President Obama even if you are out to destroy his character as is the aim of the pro-Romney SuperPAC that prepared a television ad with that in it. Obama looks almost rumpled next to the slicked down, carefully dressed and coifed Romney (I thought the word “metrosexual” had died a merciful death by now) and as far as the Abe Lincoln part is concerned I suppose he was tall enough to shoot hoops.

The worst part of this effort, however is the revival (and I don’t mean religious) of the Jeremiah Wright Jr. saga. Must we go through that again? The ad also uses “hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician” in its down and dirty message which turned out to be too much it would appear even for the conservative Chicago billionaire Joe Ricketts, sponsoring the SuperPAC who backed out of it, but rest assured we’ll be hearing a lot more about Rev. Wright again. A memo prepared for Ricketts expressed frustration that voters “still aren’t ready to hate this preside.” So a little more of the Rev. Wright ought to take are of that. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

The Progress Report complained that, “Once again, when presented with the opportunity to stand up to intolerance in his own party, Mitt Romney once again hesitated and was exposed to have used the attack himself.” This was a 5-minute “film” meant to “inflame opinion” about Obama’s character to be launched at a press conference and at other activities in Charlotte, NC to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.

The PAC has more than $8 million to spend on television and online ads, plus a national tour of a spokesperson along the lines of an “extremely literate” back male. I don’t know why they bothered. They should just let Romney make some campaign appearances in black face. He looks like he would make a great Minstrel Man.

One of the really annoying things about Romney is the way he keeps throwing out data as facts with no regard to the truth of them. It is like he just makes up things that sound good. You expect him to differ with the President, to hold opposite views and express them, but just to pull something out of his magic underwear (he doesn’t wear a hat)? A mild but typical example as noted by the Associated Press—Romney: President Obama has added “almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.” AP: “Public debt has gone up about 50 percent since the president took office while “under Ronald Reagan it tripled.” If sainted Reagan did it, it doesn’t count.

We’ve got 25 more weeks of this stuff before we vote.

Does Boehner want the economy to tank?

 Dana Milbank asks that question in the Washington Post about Speaker of the House John Boehner who came out this week that he is going to start debate against raising the debt ceiling again as was done in the crises it created last year. Since it does not have to be taken up until after the election the only reason to do so now one would suspect is to influence the election. Threats to default and shut the government down creates havoc in the economy. A lousy economy at voting time would be a big boost to Republican chances to defeat Democrats.

Boehner is on record as saying, as he did this week, “allowing America to default,” while not such a hot idea, would be better than raising the debt ceiling without “dramatic steps to reduce spending.” It would cause a lot of pain and suffering for many Americans, but again I imagine that Boehner is a fine family man, generous to his friends but above the herd.

A little of this, a little of that

 Taxes, spending, and the deficit are all lower today than when Obama took office. Under Romney, Massachusetts had higher per capita debt than any state. (Progress Report). The only thing he has said along that line was when he bragged by running against Ted Kennedy he made him mortgage his house. But remember Romney is kind to his friends.

Speaking of fiends, the Facebook phenomenon came and went, $16 billion offering was the biggest I.P.O. that Nasdaq had ever listed. It turned out to be something of a disappointment, closing on the market about where it started. Looks like Facebook did not have as many friends as was thought.

I believe it could be said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan has a lot of friends on his board of directors who voted to give him a pay package of $23 million despite a loss of over $2 billion which may reach $4 billion before all is said and done. Ina Drew, the head of the investment office which had the loss resigned on Monday about which Dimon said he had mixed emotions; while she lost $2 billion on that deal she was making $9 billion on others. If Wall Street betters like Drew used chips Las Vegas style they would have to be as big as manhole covers.

Mitt Romney said the JP Morgan fiasco is “Just the way America works.” And yes it works rather well for Romney whose worth is $230 million, including $52 million in Bain Capital investments, $16 million in cash, $18 million in real estate, and $425,000 in cars and horses. He is worth 40 times more than Obama. That $16 million must be burning a hole in his pocket.

Friends were not in evidence as the defense rested in the John Edwards trial without calling on Edwards, his daughter Cate, or his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, for testimony. Darn. We have been spared more of the juicy stuff.

Judgment on Ron Paul as a potential president came to an end this week as he suspended is campaign. Like the old movie travelogues, “As the sun slowly sets we bid a fond farewell to …”

A poplar American priest, who was the face of the scandal-torn Legionaries of Christ, renowned for his TV commentary from Rome on popes and personal morality is in for a little judgment himself for fathering a child. It is indicative of how things have been going for the church is that at first blush there is a sense of relief that at least his affair was with a grown woman and not a young boy.

At least we can assume the woman had a loving, caring lover and did not need the protection of the Violence Against Women Act which went though the Senate passed it with strong bipartisan support then the House actually refused to do so and came up with a version that turned back the clock while also removing improvements the Senate had made too the law, giving some protection to lesbians. What is the idea? Lesbians are too butch to need protection?

Oh government, government. Actions like this bring to mind some comments made by English writer Bernard Mandeville as reported by William Deresifwicz. Not in the same context, but appropriate in the sense that it deals wit human nature in a free market society.

“Capitalism is predicated on bad behavior... commercial society creates prosperity by harnessing our natural impulses: fraud, luxury and pride.” Deresifwicz wrote “morality in the market is to commit a category error.” Perhaps then, in Mitt Romney we have the right free market man.

The N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage, which means the country’s most prominent civil rights organization behind it. The move highlights the fact that it is a civil rights issue. Being both black and gay used to be a double whammy not included in Dr. King’s Dream, being more of a nightmare.

“Psychiatry giant sorry for backing gay ‘cure’ ”was the headline. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry used to favor reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change. “I believe I owe the gay community an apology” he now says after The World Health Organization called the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.” “Take two aspirin and call me tomorrow” it appears des not work. Has anyone told Michelle Bachmann?

A “Wait, Wit Don’t Ask” Game

 If you are not familiar with it, “Wait, Wait Don’t Ask” is a very funny hour-long radio show on NPR that comes on in my market on Saturday mornings, something of a throwback to radio in its heyday. One little bit they do is take items in the news, compose limericks of them but leave the last word blank to be filled in by a contestant. Taking our cue from them let’s go for a sot at it. Answers at the end.

 

• The Morgan-Chase boss never stoops

To admit that his people were dupes

Lost a $2 billion bet?

All he said in regret

Was the heart-felt apology:___1___.

 

• A Catholic priest jeopardized his soul

With the forbidden pleasures he stole

Though fathering a child

Is a sin it’s quite mild

To his sin had he used___2___.

 

• Conservatives for whom you voted

Claim government has become bloated

It needs burping and will

Have to swallow a pill

And that pill will not be___3___.

 

• Both Ryan and Romney state

Food stamps and such they’ll “negate”

They say in words dour

“Don’t coddle the poor”

Lost dignity’s worse than lost___4___.

 

1. “Oops.”

2. Birth control

3. Sugar coated

4. Weight

 

 

 

 

Volume 8, Number 5

May 14, 2012 -- This week it seems appropriate to follow the lyrics of a song in “The Producers,” the Mel Brooks musical: “Keep it gay, keep it gay, keep it gay.” So here goes.

I remember some comedian once explaining why he did not come out of the closet while he lived at home. He had so many brothers and sisters and the house was so small there wasn’t a closet big enough for him to come out of. The last few days it’s been as though the subject has come bursting out of a closet that wasn’t big enough to hold it. It’s been on top of the news chart.

There’s a danger in engaging in discourse on this topic of being seen as homophobic. It’s like telling Polish jokes or Jewish joke; if you do so and you are not Polish or Jewish it can be seen as a put down. Can you come off neutral as you express yourself? Or would you come off as “Bi?” Wasn’t it O.K. for Woody Allen to point out being bi-sexual doubled your chances for a date on Saturday night? When it comes to humor I don’t believe anything is sacrosanct. Yet the lives of millions of citizens are at stake, fairness, and civil liberties. The serious side of hose being gay is no dressing in costume like the Village People and singing Y.M.C.A.

The man who left the Romney campaign last week under fire from social Republicans for being openly gay was not wearing an Indian headdress, being the distinguished, celebrated foreign affairs expert as he is. The House votes to strengthen the Defense of Marriage Act and to prevent the Administration from using taxpayers dollars to fight it in the courts.

It was V.P. Joe Biden, however, who set off the biggest storm of debate by announcing his thinking had evolved (giving credit to the TV show “Will and Grace”) so that now he believed in the right for two people of he same sex to get married and was a firm believe in civil unions. Shortly thereafter President Obama announced his position, too, was the same as that of Biden, and now the issue has become part of the Democratic campaign.

Although Biden was responding to a question by expressing his personal beliefs, NYT columnist Maureen Dowd reports that members of the Obama campaign brain trust, or as she called them, the “petty Obama sewing circle” were miffed, feeling jovial Joe jumped the gun. Regardless, it is now the stance the reelection campaign has officially taken.

Next North Carolina passed legislation not only banning same sex marriage, but civil unions as well, even for straight male-female couples. There seems to be something mean spirited, even cruel afoot in the Carolinas, and you wonder why. How does this happen? They are people not all that different than other people around the country. Is it something about the culture? Is it just tradition? The herd instinct? There was a movement some years back among East Texas evangelicals to move to the Carolinas, form their own government and succeed from the Union. Now that’s an exodus story for you.

The Three-Minute Hug

 That my be my favorite bit of information to take away from news accounts of Liberty University, the legacy of the late Jerry Falwell, the Vatican so to speak of homophobia, back in the news in this gay-themed week because Mitt Romney made its commencement address.

At this point let’s recall the late Reverend Falwell’s most famous quote, which pretty much defines his way of thinking probably was what he had to say, about the attack of 9/11:

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’ ”

He backed off from some of that at a later date after being subject to so much outrage, but it is hard to take it back.

But about that three second hug. It is in the Students Code of Ethics. A hug longer than three seconds if strictly forbidden. You wonder who figured out that timing. Four seconds and a heterosexual couple should get engaged? Four seconds between two of the same gender might turn them gay? The university has a history of vigorous support for each and every anti-gay organization.

That code among other things prohibits students from engaging in “un-marital sexual relations,” drinking, smoking, watching R-rated movies, sunbathing, dancing, and cursing. Free speech is limited to cultural issues.

Students are prohibited from engaging in any kind of protest on or off campus which meant this week many students, it was reported, were very unhappy that Romney was chosen as their commencement speaker considering that his Mormonism is branded a cult rather than a religion, but the code kept them from doing anything about it. Romney then made his obligatory speech pandering to evangelicals for support, reportedly avoiding mentioning Mormonism by name, honing in on common religious values. No report of whether he gave any females present a hug as he has in other campaign stops, or if so how they timed out. The thing he could have done was have a campaign aide stand by to announce “your there seconds are up.”

Picking On Gays in the Military Again

 The House Armed Services Committee came up with a couple of new ways to harass gays in the military by passing two measures that deny them equal rights. One prevents the use of government property for a same-sex marriage or “marriage-like ceremony,” seem by others as a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion. It is still O.K., however, if the couple is straight.

The second accommodates “the conscience and sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs of the members of the Armed Forces concerning the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality.” Chaplains are not required to perform such ceremonies at any location; officers are not to interfere with whatever chaplains want to do. Two things about that: chaplains are supposed to serve all members of the military no matter what are their religious belies, and it breaks the military chain of command.

The vote was on strict partisan lines. If the G.O.P. had thought of that earlier it could of been one way to get rid of that pesky Barney Frank: pass a law denying use of public property to any avowed gay. Barney would have to stand outside the chambers and shout epithets.

The Homophobic Elephant?

 The top GOP pollster, heavily relied upon by party leaders, has issued a strongly worded warning telling them that if the Party keeps up its current rhetoric and positions on gays and lesbians, it is in danger of “marginalizing itself to irrelevance” or worse. As he reports, the general public, read general voting public, acceptance of same sex unions has grown mightily, especially as more and more families learn a beloved child is gay; Dick Cheney being a prime example.

Why is it that Ron Paul is the only other person I am aware of who shares my view, that it is a question of semantics? The right to have a civil union being the only consideration? Remove the word “marriage” from the governmental lexicon; reserve it for religious ceremonies, if desired, in houses of worship. I have a friend and associate whose business is bridal wedding photography. He should get with the program and change the name to civil union photography. Civil union gift registry, civil union formal announcements, and so forth, enough name changes perhaps to stimulate the economy.

A Gay Congressman Speaks

 The fact that Barney Frank has long been openly gay for years has nothing to do with his service to the country and maybe that is the point. Gay or not, his command of financial matters, though controversial in a bipartisan way, is undeniable. Here is what Frank had to say this week:

“The argument that financial institutions do not need the new rules to help them avoid the irresponsible actions that led to the crisis of 2008 is at least $2 billion harder to make today.”

Frank made that statement as it was revealed that J. P. Morgan lost $2 billion in the kind of shaky trades that led to the financial crises. They might as well put their money on last week’s Kentucky Derby. Of course the revelation sent the market into free fall again, big drop in the Dow and for that matter everywhere. This did interrupt their continuing fight for loopholes, but only for a moment or two we can be sure, the kind of loopholes Frank has tried to close. But he is gay so we can just blow it off, right? All J.P. Morgan can do is sweat it out until fall and hope for a Mitt Romney Administration who by all accounts has a rapacious view of financial endeavors.

When is a “Bully” Homophobic?

 There is an undercurrent of that characterization in all of the dialogue about the Mitt Romney of prep school years. Classmates of his at the time depict him as picking on, abusing the weak, the shy, the “unmanly” we’ll say, the kind of kids the class bully sees effeminate, particularly in that era, right to pick on.

In general, people do not like to hold high school shenanigans against adults in their later years, even NYT columnist Gail Collins, who has been heavily on his case sees it that way; however, her fellow NYT columnist Charles Blow, while agreeing in principal, does not believe the darker aspects of this can be ignored. He takes issue with Romney’s apology, made after claiming to have no recollection of the most egregious act, reported:

“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far. And, for that, I apologize.”

Rather than pass it off as “hijinks,” Blow believes he should have used this as an opportunity to condemn bullying which might have done society some good and not caused him any problem from a forgiving public. Blow asks if “Americans want a president who doesn’t target the weak, but valiantly seeks to protect them.”

Will America Elect a Jerk?

 Michael Tomasky asks that question in The Daily Beast and writes it has “been a long time since the country elected a man as personally unappealing as Mitt Romney.” Others see him as a serial abuser of power, then and now. Certainly when it comes to foreign policy he is ready to brandish Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick. Or should that be “Shtick?”

“In the long run we are all dead”

 Part of a quote of John Maynard Keynes of 80 years ago from a column in the New York Times by Paul Krugman. The rest of it: this “long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.” So wait it out. We will bleed a bit but eventually the economy will heal itself.

A case point is the $310 billion in cuts passed by the House hitting mostly programs for the poor, rather than making any effort to provide more jobs or grow the economy. It won’t pass the Senate, but after November? Who knows. Krugman calls this approach “prosperity through pain.” But we’ll all be dead in the long run.

Student loan rates will go from 3.4 percent to 6.9 percent if Congress doesn’t get its act together by July. That will cost needy students about $1,000 a year in added interest. Can you believe student debt greater than credit card debt and auto loan debt? Well now it wouldn’t be if students just followed the Mitt Romney advice and borrowed the money from their parents. That’s our thought for the day, this Mother’s’ Day. “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, can I borrow seventy or eighty thousand or so. After I get my degree and go to work for a while I’ll start paying it off and you should have it all back to celebrate your hundredth birthday.”

“Bipartisanship means “Democrats coming to the Republican point of view”

 That’s what Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party candidate, told MSNBC after besting six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary. Lugar is a stanch Republican, but a man who could negotiate compromises with his Democratic opponents, about the last one left as so-called moderate Republicans are either retiring or being defeated. If the angry, belligerent Mr. Mourdock beats the Democratic candidate it will just make getting any legislation done that much worse, symptomatic of how our governing process is breaking down. Just a bunch of people sitting around, aging with each other. I’ve got enough conservative friends to do that thing right here at home without the expense of sending somebody to Washington.

Playing the Washington Post Game

 A crossword puzzles is not the only word game in town. The Washington Post comes up with a variety of them for readers to play. The theme of the current one is poetry and goes like this: take the first line of any well-known poem and add your own second line with humorous intent. For example take this poem by Dorothy Parker.

 

“Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow.

 So long as I have yesterday, go take your damn tomorrow.”

 

So let’s take her first line:

 

Oh, seek my love your newer way; I’ll not be left in sorrow.

 And add our line:

 

Why since it turns out you are gay; My wardrobe you may borrow.

 

But isn’t this supposed to be about politics? Well, the way tings have gone this week I would say it qualifies. But let us see if we can find others in the political genre.

 

Dr. Thomas Muffet (?)

 Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,

 Eating her curds and whey

 

Travtrivia

 Along came Paul Ryan

 Whose plan made her cry and

 “Oh My” as he took curds away

 

Vachel Lindsay

 Let not young souls be smothered out

 Before they do quaint deeds and fully

 Flaunt their pride

 

Travtrivia

 As Romney says just borrow sums from

 Mom and Dad before to college

 You’ve applied

 

Bob Quigley

 The cannons roar, hatred inflame

Destruction, chaos, without shame

 

Travtrivia

It’s war on marriage so some claim

As same sex unions catch the blame

 

Edgar Allen Poe

Hear the loud alarm bells

Brazen bells!

 

Travtrivia

As Romney speaks at Liberty U

Where homophobia dwells

 

Alfred Tennyson

Come into the garden, Maude, for the

Black bat, night, has flown

 

Travtrivia

Michelle Obama says we must

Grow vegetables of our own

 

Edward Fitzgerald and Omar Kahyam

Come fill the cup and in the fire of spring

Your winter garment of repentance fling

 

Travtrivia

Drink up whilst free from stressful

Sturm und Drang for who knows what

The fall elections bring

 

Ah yes, the fall elections. As Fats Waller used to say, “One Never Knows, Do One.”

 

 

 

 

Volume 8, Number 4

May 7, 2012 -- It was more amphitheater than classroom, a semicircle of steep rows of seats around a long table and lectern which easily held the 350 or so enrolled students and others who just came to hear the lecture. Seated in a top row, looking down reminded me of sitting in the balcony of the Roxy Theatre in New York City waiting for the stage show to begin. As to what this was I had no clue until a jaunty figure, wearing a snapped brim hat, a multicolored jacket that could pass for a model for the costumes in the decade later production of the musical Guys and Dolls, carrying a briefcase and a cane he used for a pointer which he laid down on the table before turning to the crowd and pronouncing “This is a course in stocks and bonds.” It was that and much more, from a man who looked for all the world like one of the cons selling hot oil leases so prevalent in Texas hotel lobbies at the time, or a tout at a race track.

His lectures were peppered with stories and anecdotes; how he scolded Franklin Roosevelt, what he told Peron to do; his testimony before a Congressional committee where he told them if they wanted to create jobs outlaw belts and suspenders so workers would have to use one hand to hold their pants up thereby getting only half the job done requiring more employees. Years later, accused of being a communist in the usual manner of right wing politicians (just a few weeks ago Republican Allen West of Congress claimed as many as 80 of his Democratic colleagues in the House were communists) Montgomery famously testified when asked if he belonged to any radical organizations answered, yes, that he belonged to the two most radical organizations in existence, “the Methodist Church and the Democratic Party.”

I am grateful that I had the experience of listening to Montgomery but I did not get the hang of economics, worse so than any other course I have ever taken. The only thing I took away from that course was “Dewey’s Law of Balanced Profitableness” (the more hand labor required, the smaller the production unit) which has been as useful to me as other random data I garnered from over 230 diverse hours in four universities, such as the formula for horsepower in steam engines (PLAN over 33,000), and how to refrigerate lettuce (wash it, dry it, store it cold).

I have come to regret my ignorance. As we dance the political dance our destiny is more and more in the hands of which leader who follow which economic theory, Keynesian, Milton Friedman, or Ayn Rand (don’t tell me she hasn’t had as much influence as any economist (remember a young Alan Greenspan was an acolyte, sitting at her feet and writing essays on her behalf). We’re not talking ephemera here; we’re talking the blood and guts of everyday life.

(I don't find much humor in economics these days. Where is Bob Montgomery when you need him? You can't say Paul Krugman is a barrel of laughs and if Ayn Rand ever cracked a joke I would think her fangs would have fallen out. If the following passage is too grim I suggest you skip down past Q and A where it is a little more light hearted.)

Question and Answer Time

 Q. What’s the difference?

 A. The Milton Freidman people believe the unfettered Free Market is the answer to everything and we should not let taxes and regulations stand in the way of free market forces because when wealth begins at the top of the economic ladder it trickles down to all below. As Alan Greenspan once put it big companies do not need regulation because it is in their special interests to behave. That was just before Wall Street blew up in his face due to bad behavior. Debt is anathema (although they are the ones who got us into the present shape we are in) and must be wiped out immediately by austere budget cuts. Kill government programs that help average Americans. Lower taxes on top earners and big corporations.

Q. Keynesian people?

 A. The Free Market system needs some checks and balances as protection against cruel excesses. An economic crises is not the time to drastically reduce spending which stifles growth and raises unemployment; instead, it is time to take the long view to grow our way out of the deficit, making judicious cuts but at the same time making investments in the future that stimulate growth.

Q. What does history tell us?

 A. When Herbert Hoover faced his debt crises he took the MF approach and the economy plunged to the depths of the great depression. FDR followed with programs investing in growth and the nation began its climb out of the cellar.

The infamous Bush tax cuts of 2002 and 2003 were supposed to stimulate growth but in eight years the loss of revenue too us from a budget surplus to a deficit in the trillions.

More important is what has happened in the Euro zone throughout Europe. Instead of taking the Keynesian approach the leadership went for severe austerity, drastic cuts and where are they now? England is said to be in worse shape than it ever was in the great depression of the twenties-thirties, economic growth has run into a brick wall, and a whole generation of young educated people can’t get jobs and are considered lost; Ireland, held up as a model when it announced its austerity plans, has an unemployment rate in the thirties for young people and a stagnant economy; the Dutch government jus had to dissolve because of mass protests when it attempted to increase austerity; in Spain, the unemployment among people under the age of 25 is over fifty percent; and so it goes. The path they took went downhill not up. And they do not seem yet to be ready to change directions.

Q. Europe is in trouble. So what?

 A. Their economic woes affect our economy of course, the world being so “global” but the scary thing is that what we call the Ryan budget, passed by the House, endorsed by every Republican including Mitt Romney is just such a European style austere program, cutting everything but the military—which it increases over the objections of the military itself—and at the same time reducing revenue by reducing taxes on the big corporations and the wealthiest among us. A Keynesian sees this as a spiral downward to another big depression.

Q. Don’t we need the Ryan budget to reduce debt?

 A. The Ryan budget cuts $5 trillion from government programs over a ten year period, and reduces revenue by $4 trillion over the same period of time. Ryan himself says it comes out even; other analysts, including bipartisan ones, believe it will increase the deficit. President Obama voiced what many of its opponents are saying, that it is a fraud, under the guise of deficit reduction a move to downsize the government and Republicans expressed outrage at such a thought.

Q. Is Mitt Romney wrong when he says the stimulus program didn’t work?

 A. The stimulus program started by the Bush Administration and continued by the Obama’s Administration was not in the eyes of Keynesians large enough to give a proper boost to the economy but it was big enough to stop the decline in its tracks, it did halt the rise in unemployment (see Ireland above) and by not allowing the big automobile companies to go into bankruptcy, as Mitt Romney still says they should have done, thousands of jobs were saved, hundreds of small business in the supply chain were saved, and all three companies have returned to profitability. There is a role for government to play when the situation calls for it.

Q. But shouldn’t money in the form of tax breaks go to “job creators?”

 A. I say the use of the word “job creator” is in itself fraudulent. These people are not job “creators,” but job “providers.” People don’t create jobs. The market creates jobs. When the market has a demand for goods or services somebody jumps up and provides it employing the necessary labor. If you just give money to a business thinking it will use it to buy more hardware and employ more people when there is no one to sell the output to, you are being stupid. No sensible company is going to expand without promise of return on its investment.

Now entrepreneurs who come up with new goods or services that people didn’t even know they wanted, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, they create jobs but they do so because they had an idea, not that giving them any money would have prompted them to come up with their ideas, although investing in research and development is quite another thing unrelated to blanket tax cuts.

Q. Don’t Friedman’s think Keynesians will kill jobs?

 A. First off let’s note that the private sector is creating more jobs as we speak. The private sector is back to square one, with all of the private sector jobs lost since President Obama took office now recovered. But in the public sector currently there are 607,000 fewer people working than there were when President Obama took office. Jobs are being slashed at the state and local level so overall the jobs picture in the United States remains weak and of course more jobs are needed.

Some states on ideological principal don’t want assistance from Washington (thank you Mr. Perry for not deigning to accept help preferring to cut hundreds if not thousands of jobs for teachers and educational programs meaning lager classes in Texas, a state that already rests near the bottom in education).

Last fall Congress rejected a plan to give more aid to the states, and also has rejected the president’s jobs plan that would keep hundreds of thousands of teachers, cops, firefighters, and others on the job. What’s more, the deep spending cuts being proposed under the Romney-Ryan GOP budget plan will only throw more people out of work. Cut a program (and there are programs that help ordinary Americans in general, particularly the elderly, the needy, students, and food supplements to small school children) and you cut the jobs of people who are employed to provide the services. A giant step backwards towards providing more jobs. Not the way Keynesians would have it.

Q. What about those communists in Congress?

 A. The people Rep. West was referring to are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and apparently what makes them “communists.” Well, one of their aims is “economic fairness” and one of the reasons it was created in 1991 was concern for growing inequality plus “the principles of social and economic justice, a non-discriminatory society, and national priorities which represent the interests of all people, not just the wealthy and powerful.”

Rep. West, like so many conservatives, equate that with “redistribution of wealth.” Somebody is going to take his money away from him and give it to someone else. I’ve got news for the congressman. Tax policies have a lot to do with wealth distribution. His Party was party to the biggest redistribution of wealth in the United States in memory, the Bush tax cuts of ‘02 and ’03 which shoveled a great amount of the nation’s wealth right up the economic ladder to the very top. And the rapidly growing inequality is of concern to everyone, but Republicans just go tsk tsk. May Day, commonly associated with working people is shortly followed by Cinco de Mayo, and while the two absolutely have no connection I still had to wince when I got to a word pronounced “Sink.”

How unequal? The concentration of income at the top is now back at the levels of 1929. Economist Paul Krugman in his NYT column claims: “inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high.” America has always been proud of its upward mobility, but the last data I saw indicated we had dropped to seventh or so; someone born in counties like Finland or Sweden have a greater chance to rise above their level at birth. Even speaking those difficult Nordic languages?

The same New York Times that printed the Paul Krugman column on inequality carried in their Sunday Magazine section an article written by a very wealthy ex-partner of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital, Edward Conard, making the claim that more income inequality is good for the economy. But I ask you Mr. Conrad, what good is a “good” economy if only a few people enjoy it?

Rep. West also uses guilt by association. The United States Communist Party of about four thousand or so members had nice things to say about the goals of the CPC. If you won’t call me a communist because I favor economic fairness which they say is nice I won’t call you a fascist if you think it was a good thing that Mussolini make the trains run on time.

If it is to be guilt by association I have another problem; in 1971 Richard Nixon said “I am now a Keynesian in economic policy.” Make me feel like Spiro Agnew.

Q. What about Ayn Rand?

 A. Mitt Romney in a way, according to some analysts, is kind of Ayn Rand in drag economically speaking. His vision seems to be America as it was in the late nineteenth century with “Katy Bar The Door” free trade running unchecked, unregulated until Teddy Roosevelt went on his Trust-Busting spree. John Galt would have done great in the Hedge Fund business. Between 1895, when the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and 1913 when the 16^th Amendment resuscitated it there was no income tax. A policy like that would save Romney not the quarter f a million a year the budge he favors will, but perhaps millions. That sounds like Romney’s period alright. But are we ready to follow him up San Juan Hill, waving a no-tax pledge in hand?

“… and then there was one.”

 That last man standing in the contest for the Republican nominee in the presidential election is Mitt Romney. Finally, Newt Gingrich “suspended” his campaign on Wednesday as Dana Milbank put it in the Washington Post: “much the manner in which he ran his campaign: discursive, chaotic and utterly devoid of self-control.” That’s Gingrich for you.

Milbank: “For 23 desultory minutes in an overheating conference room, Gingrich took the 150 campaign workers and reporters present on a stream-of-consciousness tour of the Newtonian Mind. He spoke, in no particular order, of Capt. John Smith in 1607, mining asteroids, his novels about George Washington, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Ellis the Elephant, the Strait of Hormuz, Alzheimer’s disease, Chinese bondholders, Todd Palin, electromagnetic pulses, radical Islamists, C-SPAN, his high school years, Nixon, Carter, Reagan (both Ronald and Michael), the civil service, the Civil War, autism, holograms, the Soviet Union, nanoscale science, the Federalist Papers and Herman Cain.”

“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”

 A gratuitous shot at the ex-president who volunteered his service in World War II from the guy who ducked the War in Vietnam by skipping off to France to shed the light of Mormonism with the decadent French. On the anniversary of the raid the Obama re-election campaign (the campaign officially kicked off on Saturday) ran an ad of the Obama accomplishments including his gutsy call for the bin Laden raid and questioning whether Romney would have made it. As columnist Joe Conason pointed out that’s one right out of the Republican playbook (think aircraft carrier, Bush who ducked war service, in flight sit, mission accomplished) but “the right exploded with outrage and protests.” Well it was a tough call overriding the opinions of a number of his knowledgeable advisors, and calling attention to it belies the claim that he is soft on adversaries (foreign and domestic). But we won’t soon hear the last of this.

Odds and Ends from Here and There

 “Big ideas don’t often come from a small tent,” Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the L.A. Times complaining that the “extreme right wing of the party is targeting anyone who doesn't meet its strict criteria.”

Because of the “potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women” a federal judge put a hold on implementation of a bill passed by the Texas legislature that blocks Planned Parenthood or similar organizations from involvement in a women’s health program funded by the state. Governor Perry had earlier announced despite protests he stood by he bill. Oh, go shoot another coyote, Perry, and leave the women alone.

Social conservatives have “scored a huge win” boasts Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association after the Romney campaign foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell, a well respected expert who is openly gay, resigned under pressure from the Association. Romney made his usual wishy-washy comment claiming he does not believe gender choices should be a factor in hiring although he did nothing to appear against the Fischer group. Previously he had done his usual cop-out quoted as saying let states decide if it’s O.K. to fire someone just for being gay and 29 states have done so.

How do you say “mordida” in Chinese? Wal-Mart found out how to use that Spanish word in Mexico in a scandal with some repercussions (Sam Walton who early on ran his burgeoning company like a religious retreat house would be horrified) could give lessons to Hollywood and I.B.M. who are under fire from the Feds for such shenanigans in China. Looks like we give the Chinese our own version of fortune cookies.

I am “absolutely comfortable with men marrying men, women marring women and the heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all of the civil rights, all of the civil liberties,” a surprising statement by Vice President Joe Biden on “Meet The Press” today. He emphasized it was not official policy but his own view, which represents a change of heart. Maybe he picked it up from occupying the old office of his predecessor former V.P. Dick Chaney who has a daughter who is gay and is comfortable with that, too. If so let us hope this positive message is the only thing he picks up from Chaney.

A Tragic Tale of Classic Proportions

 We watch as the saga of John Edwards, one-time top tier political figure unfolds, with all of the elements of classic tragedies through the ages. It has lust for power, lust for lust, deception, betrayal, diverting of wealth, secret schemes, personal anguish of innocents, supporters turned adversaries, in fact, just about everything.

In one long non-stop account it goes this way: One-time presidential hopeful, ex Vice Presidential candidate, and ex U.S. Senator John Edwards is on trial accused of the misuse of campaign funds, a criminal offense worth thirty years in prison, to cover up the fact he had impregnated his mistress, Rielle Hunter, then persuading his devoted aide Andrew Young to pretend to be the infant’s father. Young, with wife Cherie, take the Hunter duo from city to city in hiding—the expense of which to be paid for by surreptitious contributions from billionaires oil tycoon Fred Baron and elderly Rachel “Bunny” Mellon but it was not to be kept from Edward’s terminally ill wife Elizabeth who was furious then when things went bad and all was revealed. The Young’s felt betrayed and the saga has been unfolding in the trial. Young published a book of the affair for a meaningful sum of money testifying against his former employer in court as did his feisty wife— the “Steel Magnolia” Cherie— and a parade of one-time campaign workers describing such events as a meltdown by Elizabeth Edwards where she stripped to the waist to get her husband’s attention and screamed at him for abandoning her, then Thursday, on the eighth day of the hearing an interior decorator, Bryan Huffman, described how Bunny, now 102, used him to funnel $725,000 worth of checks to Young labeled “furnishings” to obfuscate their purpose. And on day 9, Friday, it was revealed the National Inquirer offered to back off the story if Edwards signed a sworn affidavit that he was not the father of the child and he refused. Whew.

Yes, it has all of the elements to make an eighteenth century Grand Opera, or classic tragedy for the Globe. While I don’t recall an interior decorator in Hamlet, someone must have hung the curtain behind which Polonius was hiding when stabbed.

The recounting of this tale requires special treatment. It is common to revive old theatricals in modern dress; a modern dress version of A Midsummer’s Night Dream has just opened on Broadway. Let us then reverse the trend and tell it as it should be told, in Iambic Pentameter.

 

Our tale is rife with sorrow, shame, and woe

 In search of justice how to blame bestow.

 

A man of might and power gone awry

 Convention, love, and honor did defy.

 

To hide from view an issue of its loins

 He doth purloin some ill begotten coins.

 

Bade he a trusted aide go place to palace

To keep his consort hidden from disgrace.

 

Thus spending treasures meant for other use

A crime for which there is no real excuse.

 

And once his secret damsel shared his bed

From ill and dying wife he shamefully fled.

 

To judge, in solemn conclave sit his peers

Empowered to levy jail for thirty years.

 

The aide once loyal now has hostile turned

Revealed the secrets for much money earned.

 

But testimony that’s more damning yet

Did stalwart wife of bitter aide beget.

 

Called Steel Magnolia she decried her shame

And heaped on he on trial all of the blame.

 

More followers once serving at his side

Came forth against his case that testified.

 

A tradesman of décor explained he tried

A patron’s gifts of heaps of cash to hide.

 

But he, whose codpiece did not stay in place

Would not swear falsely just to save his face.

 

It looks not good for scorned man at this hour

The odds are he’ll be locked up in the tower.

 

The moral of this tale of man turned cad

Is power’s not a shield when you go bad.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream turned nightmare.