Which is more important?

I just Googled "Scott McClelland's book" and got 621,000 references. Then I Googled "candidates unified on Darfur," which produced just 94,300. Even then, a quick look at the Darfur sightings shows that most do not actually refer to the recent agreement among Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama to unite in support of the people of Darfur.

Let's compare these two stories:

The former has no real news value at all. It’s a small story about a minor, slightly dim, political functionary coming out publically against his bosses. If it weren’t for the fact that 70% of the country hates his bosses it would be no story at all.

On the other hand, the candidate’s Darfur agreement relates to a daily struggle of life and death by some of the most pathetically abused people on God’s earth, who are being hunted down and murdered like dogs by Arab mercenaries on horseback. That alone should make it a better story.
But on top of that, we have the three remaining candidates for the White House publically agreeing on something, (can anyone remember anything similar happening -- ever?), and their agreement takes the form of a moral commitment. How often do politicians do that?

And yet the Darfur story came and went in a day, while Matt Lauer and Keith Olbermann and the rest of them will be bloviating about the McClelland book and interviewing C-list politicos for their “analysis” for weeks to come.

Sometimes I think television intentionally focuses on the least important issues available to them at any given time.

Here’s a short video about the joint agreement from a very effective organization. They make it very easy to get your voice heard in case you want to participate.

3 things on TV I'm sick of

1. Sex in the City. Enough. Please. I didn't watch the TV show and I'm not going to the movie no matter how many promotional tie-ins and SJP interviews I'm subjected to.
2. Gas prices. They went up yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. They're probably going to go up again tomorrow. When they go down -- then it will be a story. Until then there is nothing more to say so shut up.
3. Scott McClelland's book. It's only been out 24 hours but every person in America who ever voted has already been interviewed for their opinion on it. Apparently there is nothing in it we didn't already know about Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al so let's just move on.

Memorial Day

It’s Fleet Week in New York and there are thousands of young sailors and Marines walking the streets, taking it the sights and generally enjoying themselves. I wish I could stop each one and thank them for their service but I don’t; I tell myself they don’t want to be bothered while they’re out having fun with their pals and I hope it isn’t just a rationalization.

I read this morning that the amount of time the
networks now devote to the war in Iraq is 4 minutes per week. Unbelievable.

I’d like to use this space today to acknowledge my family members who have served their country. Air Force Maj. Josh Olsen, a cousin, is the only person I know personally on active duty at the moment. He’s in the country now, but has flown numerous air refueling missions in the Middle East as a KC-135 pilot.

My brother Doug (Navy) is a Viet Nam era vet, and brother Jack (Air Force) served in peacetime Japan.

My wife’s uncle Harry Bosyk died flying a B-17 in Europe in WWII, and her father Bill, trained pilots in that war.

My mother’s brother, Ellsworth McGuire, couldn’t wait to get into that fight. He went to Canada in 1940 and joined the RCAF. As a pilot flying missions over the China-Burma “hump” his plane went down and was never found.

My dad, Jack Blank, was 19 when he joined the navy in 1943. He became a medic and was assigned to the Marines where he was a battlefield corpsman attending the wounded. He participated in the landings at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the latter probably the most horrific battle of the war. He saw the flag raising on Mt. Surabachi, spent two years in the Pacific, endured numerous kamikaze attacks, and was on board his ship in Tokyo Bay to witness the Japanese surrender aboard the Missouri. He never said much about the war. A famous family story has a couple of my brothers watching John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima in front of the family television many years ago. Dad walked through the room, watched a couple minutes of the movie, and walked out mumbling, “John Wayne doesn’t know shit about Iwo Jima.”

Thank you all.

Killery

Both Bob Schieffer and Tim Russert hosted Obama love fests this morning (I’m beginning to think the SNL parody was underplayed) and spent a lot of time bashing Hillary for her comment this week mentioning that Bobby Kennedy was murdered in June. If you saw the whole clip (CBS showed it – NBC did not) she was making the point that lots of primaries have dragged on longer than this one, but this was too juicy for the chattering class to leave without assigning to it a subliminal meaning.

However, the subliminal meaning they hope we will glean is so venal they can’t actually say it without contributing to its efficacy, but it’s there. They want people to believe that Senator Clinton was trying to plant the idea in someone’s head that it isn’t too late to kill Senator Obama – such is the depravity and all-consuming nature of her personal ambition. When I started this blog the very last thing I thought I’d spend time doing was defending Hillary Clinton, but I am just amazed at the unified and unrelentingly hostile nature of the media and political establishments aligned against her. She’s won the majority of the popular vote, she has a reasonable (if non-PC) rationale for why she’ll be the stronger candidate in the fall, and she’s played a key role in bringing out more registered Democrats than have ever been seen before. I don’t even like her but I just don’t understand the forces at work here.

Great movie: On a happier note, do yourself a favor and rent Across the Universe. I wish I’d seen it on a big screen with a great sound system (The Zeigfield Theater comes to mind) but it was great on DVD too. It’s a musical set to Beatles music, set mostly in New York with side trips to Liverpool, Princeton, Washington, Viet Nam and Ohio (really). The time is 1967-68 and the story is the story of the times – sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, politics, assassinations, war, protests and love. T-Bone Burnett adapted the music and even if you were on the other side of the Stones v. Beatles argument, as I was, nothing evokes the times like the boys from Liverpool. The movie uses innovative cinematography mixed with animation to create a mixture of the real and surreal. The choreography was fantastic and there are some great performances in small parts by the likes of Bono, Joe Cocker, and my favorite, Eddie Izzard. Don’t miss this one.

Amazing minutia

This map labels each state with a country name, to which its GDP is approximately equal.

Miscellaneous

• I caught Senator Obama's stump speech today in Montana, and I think he’s been very effective at countering President Bush’s remarks in Israel suggesting that anyone who wants to sit down and talk to people like the Iranians are appeasers. He is punching back with good arguments and doesn’t sound at all defensive. Kerry and Gore always sounded defensive, and therefore weak, whenever they tried to fight back.
• All media may be lame but TV is the worst. NBC makes me crazy. First Tim Russert, blowhard extraordinaire, interviews Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) on Meet the Press Sunday, and practically nominates him for Vice President. What a wet kiss, softball exchange. This morning “NBC-medical-correspondent-Dr.-Nancy-Schneiderman” diagnoses Ted Kennedy from the video of him being loaded into the ambulance (by several strong men). What is the point? Finally, Richard Engle had an “exclusive” interview with President Bush. What does that mean, exactly? That no other network was interviewing W. at that exact moment?
• Senator Obama is warning the Republicans to “lay off my wife” after the Tennessee Republican party ran this ad: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YmWEaqxkGtU
  What do you think? Is the ad fair or not?

Oh, he's so bad

The liberals and the media (is that redundant?) all have their panties in a twist over GWB's comments about appeasement and analogies to Hitler at the Israeli birthday party yesterday. I guess he violated some unwritten rule (I'm not sure why this surprises anyone since he has no problem violating written rules), but apparently this is a really bad, bad thing to do.

Before we get so weak from the nervous vapors to think, perhaps we should take just a moment to ponder a recent quote from one of the political leaders some people don't think we should appease:

Israel is a “stinking corpse” on its way to “annihilation,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last Thursday as Israel celebrated Independence Day. “Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken,” proclaimed the president of Iran, a nation that is a member in good standing of the United Nations and an active trading partner of countries like Germany and Russia. “Today the reason for the Zionist regime’s existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.”

(William Kristol, New York Times, May 12, 2008)

This is a great example of why the Democrats have no chance of winning the votes of people who put either the literal or metaphorical defense of America high on their list of important qualities for any Presidential candidate. They will wring their hands endlessly over a statement by the least popular politician of our lifetimes (would you rather have GWB working for you or against you?) but where are their voices of outrage over Ahmadinejad? You know who he is -- right? The leader of a country with 65 million people -- all heterosexuals. He'll be much easier to deal with once he has the bomb.

Things Younger than McCain...and other fun stuff

We can probably get the jist of what the Dem's messaging will be in a McCain v. Obama campaign by visiting a new web site, Things Younger than McCain. In case you don't have time to go look, these things include: Israel, FM radio, nylon stockings, Social Security, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Cobb salad.

Also, Barry Obama does def comedy.

And for you Hitlery fans, this is a must: in the bunker.

Moroc n' roll

Check out Steve Dougherty's column in the New York Times Travel section today, Rockin' the Casbah, on a great Moroccan music festival. The column is a lot of fun, and it still amazes me that they pay Doc to go do these things!

Why should she quit?

I am powerfully sick of hearing people say Hillary should quit the race. Their reasoning make no sense, and there are plentiful reasons she should stick it out.

Some say she should quit for the “unity of the party.” Since when are the Democrats united on anything? “I belong to no organized political party,” Will Rogers famously said seventy years ago, “I’m a Democrat.” This is the party of George Wallace and George McGovern, and you’re telling me it can’t take a little debate between two people who stand about a quarter-inch apart on most issues?

Some say Hillary’s candidacy is hurting Senator Obama’s standing with middle and working class white people. These are the same people who want to lower the graduation requirements for inner city youth rather than push them to meet higher standards. This logic assumes the kids (and Barack) don’t have it in them to compete and win. It’s the worst kind of racism.

• (If you want a reason for her to drop out, how about this one? She and her husband are now financing her campaign with money he got for giving speeches to foreign and domestic robber barons who will probably want special access to the next President Clinton.)
  But that last point is just my biased opinion. Here are a few reasons why Senator Clinton should fight on as long as she wants:
  This is America. If she wants to run, who the hell is anyone to tell her she can’t? And why shouldn’t the citizens of upcoming primaries have the right to cast their votes in the matter?
• The Democrats are drawing huge numbers of new voters into their primaries. Some go to him and some go to her, but I see no reason not to take her at her word that if Obama gets the nomination, she will fight at his side in the general election; and no matter what the polls say now, most of those people are going to stick with the Dems in the general.
• Finally, you have spring training to get into shape for the regular season. Does anyone think that the Republicans are going to go easy on Barack if he is the nominee? He’s lucky to have someone throwing fastballs to him in the preseason because he’s going to see a lot of high heat come Labor Day. As Gail Collins said in the New York Times yesterday, “Barack looks so tired that he seems ready to topple, but if you want to be the most powerful elected official on the planet, you ought to be able to outlast a 60-year-old woman."

While not personally afflicted, I realize that Hillary Hatred is a powerful and pervasive disease. Those afflicted should focus on electing their man cause she ain’t quittin’.

Become an international entrepreneur

Have you always wanted to oversee a personal portfolio of investments you’ve made in exotic businesses in faraway places? Well, now you can, and it is both simple and very affordable. For example, I recently invested in an international construction company headquartered in Senegal (see photo above). The whole process took about 3 minutes and I only had to put up $25.

The secret is Kiva, a non-profit organization that aggregates investments like mine and makes micro-loans to mostly third-world entrepreneurs who have limited access to capital.

Sometime last year I made four of these $25 loans to a mechanic in Azerbaijan, two restaurants (one in Mexico another in Honduras) and a beauty salon in Tanzania. On average, each of these budding tycoons borrowed under $1000. My $25 came back to me as cash as they repaid their loans (which each of them did), and I have reinvested the money in four other businesses. I get periodic updates as payments are made.

I’m now lending to the contractor in Senegal, a taxi owner in Azerbaijan, a grocery store in Peru and a tailor in Tanzania. Click any of the proceeding in case you’d like to participate with me in this particular portfolio.

Oil prices

Not that anyone needs a reminder that oil prices are going up, but it was enlightening to see the escalation in chart form, so I thought I'd share it.

We obviously need an energy policy, but it is not just the politicians who are to blame for the situation we're in. It has become virtually impossible in this country to build a power plant of any kind -- regardless of the fuel involved, be it coal, oil or nuclear.

We also don't want the oil companies to drill anyplace there are bunnies or birdies. Nor do we want our armies fighting in other parts of the world to guarantee our access to their oil. But we do want to be able to be nice and cozy in our Montana ski houses in January, or cool in our Florida winter retreats. And even Priuses require some gas to get from A to B.

A lot of people are going to have to grow up and recognize that compromises need to be made in order to reconcile all the competing agenda for the common good.

The idea of Obama

I like the idea of Barack Obama. The country really needs new leadership and energy. It needs someone who can transcend race and the BS of baby boomer politics. It needs someone who can articulate the new American dream, who can appeal to diverse cultures, who can restore American stature abroad.

I’m just not sure that this Barack Obama is that guy. It never meant much to me that his pastor was a loose cannon with some wacky political views, but I’m very concerned by the fact that, even though he has a 20-year relationship with the man, he has been unable to bring him under some measure of control. If he can’t bring his own pastor into the big, new, political tent he envisions for America, then how will he bring in the people in small towns who cling to their guns and religion, or blue collar union guys, or white men in general?

And if he can’t do that, he is left with nothing much more than college students and the wine and cheese set under his tent. Come November he’ll be George McGovern with a better jump shot.

I’m also bothered by his passivity relative to Senator Clinton. I think a President has to be a little tougher, but even if you disagree on that point, surely you’ll agree that the Republicans are going to come after him much harder than the Clintons come Labor Day, and if he can’t counter-punch (or better yet – throw a few straight rights of his own), they are going to crush him.