New Year's Fortune Cookie

This New Year's Eve, my fortune cookie says: "Your courage will guide your future."

May courage, and light guide us all.

Happy New Year!

Prune Juice and Nostalgia

Funny how mention of the smallest things can bring back memories, especially at this time of year when one often waxes nostalgic.

A friend just made a joke about prune juice and I was reminded of my short-lived career as a go go dancer. During a summer break from high school, I ran away to the Catskills, and ended up in a resort for seniors where I worked as a busboy during the day, and a go-go girl at night. Being quite petite, and energetic, I took to the dance floor like a fish to water.

My first evening on stage, there was an older gentleman in the front row, my guess is he was about 80, but then I was 16, so anybody over 40 looked ancient to me. Guess I must have gotten a bit carried away, in my mini skirt, with the music, and when I looked down at him, he heaved, collapsed in his chair, and died. I panicked, and ran off the stage. I thought I was responsible for what looked like his heart attack, but management assured me it wasn't his heart, it was an overdose of prune juice. My career as a go go dancer ended right there

I've never been able to look at prune juice the same way again.

Santa: No Social Security Number, No Toy

Some children in Nashville this Christmas awoke to a barren Christmas tree because their parents weren't able to provide Santa with social security numbers.

What does it say about a country when two of its largest holiday gift givers, the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program, and the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots, will decline applicants who are unable to demonstrate proof of citizenship, and income, according to an article in The Tennessian.

The Angel Tree program, based in Nashville, will have distributed Christmas presents to nearly 15,000 children and seniors throughout Tennessee in response to nearly 5,000 applications, and this program that matches gifts to families in need, is not shy about its requirement to produce a social security card.

Maj. Rob Vincent, a spokesperson for the Salvation Army, insists that "it's not a matter of whether they're legal or illegal," but whether parents requesting help with their Christmas gifts can prove their members of the community. The Salvation Army, he argues, wants to be sure to address "local need." But what kind of community would deny an indigent parent's request for just enough to cover the cost of a baby doll for her three year old daughter solely because the child's grandmother can't produce a social security card?

And, the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots also has the same policy of requiring official evidence of citizenship, and proof of income eligibility before granting parents request.

There are some in high powered Washington think tanks who are cynical enough to suggest that parents may be "gaming" the system by applying to several charities for toys. They are the same folks who called for welfare reform while simultaneously lining the pockets of AIG. Well, here'a hearty Bah Humbug to those who can justify corporate fraud, yet who get out of shape because maybe, just maybe the child of an undocumented worker might be rewarded with a $10 teddy bear at Christmas. These are the same folks who often hire undocumented workers to mow their lawn, or fix their toilets, yet yell the loudest because a miniscule percentage of the millions in grants to government agencies might inadvertently wind up under somebody's Christmas tree of last resort.

To any but the most obdurate, intransigent Scrooge, the actions of the Salvation Army and the U.S. Marine Corps in depriving needy children in Nashville, and anywhere else in this nation, of Christmas are egregious especially when considering that other charities, like The United Way of Metropolitan Nashville, award millions in grants every year with no proof of citizenship requirement.

Any charity that would reject the children of immigrants at Christmas isn't worthy of the name.

Decriminalize Political Speech

In February, the Supreme Court will hear on appeal what many consider to be among the most important cases to address the constitutionality of political speech in recent times, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.

And, in light of the failed attempt to blow up a Northwest jetliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day, it will be a test of the strength of the Bill of Rights, and more importantly, to see if the First Amendment will prevail.

The plaintiff in the case, Humanitarian Law Project, is a human rights group that often consults with the United Nations, and that has in the past assisted the Kurdistan Workers' Party, as well as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eela. They, along with administrative law judges and others, have had their right to free association challenged under legislation that dates back to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, and the mid-1990's, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing; legislation that was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton.

The "Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" was unmistakeably every inch a bipartisan effort, and is easily recognizable as the precursor to the USA Patriot Act. The objective of AEDPA was to cut off all sources of material assistance to any groups the State Department deems to be sources of international terror.

According to Free Expression Policy Project, the measure empowers the State Department to construct a list of "foreign terrorist organizations," and criminalize any "material support" to these groups. While parts of the law were struck down several times by federal courts, plaintiffs in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project are taking legislation that has had the chilling effect of derailing the First Amendment all the way to the Supreme Court.

So, on February 23rd, the highest court in the land will get to decide whether any of the four provisions of AEDPA constitute criminal activity. The penalty for being convicted of providing material support to a State Department blacklisted group can be as much as fifteen years behind bars. The definition of terrorism is said to be simply "any actual or threatened use of a weapon against people or property."

Two years ago, an appeals court found much of the law o be "unconstitutionally vague," and it will soon be the Supreme's turn up at bat to hear a challenge to a measure that, in the words of attorney for the plaintiffs, is "so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists...and makes advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted."

Apart from the Carter Center, Human Rights Watch, and coalitions of sociologists and anthropologists, Humanitarian Law Project has another interesting friend.. A group calling itself "Victims of the McCarthy Era," with 32 members many of whom were either themselves blacklisted and/or incarcerated during the 1950's, or had family members blacklisted, for their guilt by association with the Communist Party, has signed onto an amicus brief, and urges that the Supreme Court follow an earlier ruling, Scales v. United States, that suggests "material support" bans must apply only to those who specifically support a group's illegal activities.

When President Obama speaks of threats posed by al Qaeda and what he calls "its affiliates," he invites not only fear and rancor, like his predecessor George W. Bush, but he's essentially comparing political organizations with corporate franchises. Surely, al Qaeda is not the terrorist equivalent of MacDonald's.

The dangers of seeing any one group as if it were an apocalyptic octapus with wide, and unambiguous tentacles, far outweigh any benefits. Any effort that has as its mission the prevention of human rights abuse, and discrimination must not be silenced in the name of making the world safe from terrorism. Indeed, to silence free speech is a form of terrorism, an act of violence against independent thought.

We urge the Supreme Court to uphold the ruling of a federal court and, in effect, nullify any legislation that is "unconstitutionally vague," that confers upon human rights activists guilt by association, and that criminalizes political speech.

Breaking News

Vatican to review security after Jesus makes a surprise visit.

Jane Q. Public and the Proposed Health Insurance Mandate

In an article I posted last night, "The Mandate and Massachusetts," there was the implication that requiring people in that state to carry health insurance drove them into foreclosure, or at least some have inferred that from what I wrote. So, let me be perfectly clear. What happened in Massachusetts after health reform legislation passed in April, 2006 was part of a national trend in foreclosures.

But, if you read the article closely, you'll also see that adding the cost of health care to the already overwhelming expenses of people who were marginally getting by in the first place was posited to be among the factors driving people into foreclosure, and not the only factor...not by a long shot.

When Jane Q. Public sits at her kitchen table at the end of the month confronted by a stack of bills, she will defer to what she considers most essential: rent, auto insurance, electric bill, utilities, car payment, credit card debt, and she will find herself prioritizing payments. In Massachusetts, as in other states, all too often people will try to do what they were taught was right: pay that dental bill, pay that creditor, etc., and they may find themselves choosing between paying the monthly mortgage and feeding their families.

In a state where housing costs are notoriously high, and outpace earning capacity, it's not surprising that one might find themselves with not enough money left to make the mortgage, or the rent, which is where the foreclosure, or eviction process begins. All my article suggests is that when Massachusetts mandated insurance, it became a little more challenging for Jane Q. Public to make her mortgage, and this may be a contributing factor, not the cause, of an egregious spike in homelessness in that state in the years after this legislation passed.

The plan Congress is fine tuning now, like the one in Massachusetts, will require working Americans to be responsible for buying insurance. This is called a government mandate. Some will say it's an idea whose time has come. I agree with Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees Union, that if the salary requirements are raised, or adjusted sufficiently to account for the cost of living, it's not a bad idea.

After all, a person making $50,000 a year whose only expenses are rent, food, and auto insurance should be able to spend 9% of his income on health insurance.

But, if you're going to ask a single female who earns $9 an hour, and puts in overtime so that she can have that something extra every once in awhile, who thus clocks in at $25,000--if you're going to take $240 a month away from her in monthly health insurance premiums, that's okay, too, as long as you realize that, out of her $25,000 annual salary, which works out to slightly more than $2000 a month, she has to pay federal, state, and local taxes, contribute to her unemployment and disability insurance, pay $1400 a month in rent, cover her car insurance, buy groceries, pay off the loan on her car, buy clothes, pay for gas, pay off credit card debt, etc., etc., etc. How may people ended up going into foreclosure, or being evicted because, in good conscience, they tried to pay off their credit card debt.

Let's not be stupid about this. If you're going to make something a government requirement, don't do it at a time when people are having a hard time meeting their rents and mortgages.

The Mandate and Massachusetts

Now that the Senate has managed to get the 60 votes needed to pass the so-called health care reform bill, it's the perfect time to consider how a government mandate to buy insurance, or face penalties, has impacted the state on which this insurance "overhaul" has been modeled.

The Massachusetts legislature, more than three years ago, passed what then governor Mitt Romney called "universal health care," a bill requiring state residents to carry health insurance if they can afford it and, if not, pay more in state income tax.

Companies with more than ten employees were henceforth required to provide a "fair and reasonable contribution" to the premium of health insurance for employees, or face penalties, with the employer getting to decide what the words "fair" and "reasonable" mean.

It would seem that, in Massachusetts, the state has passed along the responsibility for providing health care to the employer to the employee, thus essentially "privatizing" health care.

Utilizing a market connector concept in which people price shop from a buffet of private insurance companies, the Massachusetts measure is similar to one currently under consideration in the nation's capital.

As Massachusetts may be seen as the paradigm for the health care overhaul Congress is now contemplating, it might be useful to take a quick look at some of the changes that have occurred in that state since the measure was passed in 2006.

While the foreclosure rate in 2007, nationwide, was nearly 80% higher than it was in 2006, foreclosures just outside of Boston "nearly tripled from January through September compared with the same period" in 2006, according to Boston.com. Hundreds of tenants in foreclosed buildings were evicted, or faced eviction by mortgage companies with the greatest concentration of foreclosures in lower income neighborhood. In a state with an historically expensive housing market, area home auctions hit the roof.

When forced, by state law, to buy auto insurance, faced with unwieldy rent, and the escalating cost of food, the mandate to acquire health insurance may be seen as a strong contributing factor to the sharp rise in homelessness in that state.

Granted, Massachusetts is not among the top five states when it comes to foreclosure and mortgage default, but what was an evolutionary trend nationally produced a dramatic, sudden spike in the New England state.

And, importantly, two years after its legislature approved what a former Republican governor likes to call universal health care, the Boston Globe reported the number of homeless people in Massachusetts had reached an all-time high. The demand on the mortgage payer to make their auto insurance premium, pay off their credit cards, feed and clothe their family was only exacerbated by the additional demand of having to allocate a portion of their paycheck to meet their state's mandate for health coverage.

What's more, ironically, a plan that was intended to reduce the number of people turning to hospital emergency rooms instead drove them into homeless shelters, and hotels. When considering that the official unemployment rate in Massachusetts is at 8.9%, below the national average, one can only imagine the havoc a national mandate to carry health insurance will wreak on the rest of the nation.

Reportedly, too, the Romney health care overhaul, in Massachusetts, has increased rather than decreased the overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms.

So, while Massachusetts may now brag that 99% of its residents have some kind of health insurance, it would be prudent for members of Congress, and the president, to take a long, hard look at the state's housing market, and ask -- at what expense?

With an unemployment rate that is expected to grow in the foreseeable future, this is not the time to demand that Americans help shoulder some of the government's burden in covering the uninsured by requiring they carry health insurance, or be fined. It's essential to be perfectly clear that, now more than ever, there is a difference between universal health care, and a government mandate.

Any reform that includes a mandate is reform in name only, and may ultimately prove to accomplish little more than to drive people from hospital emergency rooms into homeless shelters.

The front door...

Too often one forgets the obvious:

You have to get in the front door before you can rearrange the furniture

From Michael Winship

Where Are the Snows - and Shovels - of Christmas Past?

Michael Winship

We had our first snowstorm of the winter in Manhattan this past weekend and it served to remind me that I have not actually shoveled snow in decades - the result of living in a city where other people are hired to do it for you. It once was said that the definition of a city was a place where one could keep a mistress and buy a violin; to me it's a place where someone else does the sidewalks.

This is after all, a cosmopolitan island off the coast of the eastern United States, where patrols of garbage trucks with plows attached to the front - sometimes half a dozen of them at once - scraped our streets several times during the night and following day. We even have those trucks that melt 60 tons of snow an hour and flush it into the sewers, where presumably the alligators who live down there are
going, "What the...?"

It wasn't always like this - four decades ago, in February 1969, 15 inches of snow fell on New York one Sunday and the city was totally paralyzed. Nearly 40 percent of our snow removal gear wasn't working properly because of poor maintenance. The borough of Queens was especially hard hit, with neighborhoods unplowed for days and no bus service or garbage pick-up. Mayor John Lindsay was booed as he tried to tour the streets.

That winter, I was just finishing high school and shoveling snow was still an important, if not just about the only part of my physical regimen. As the season began, there were a couple of tiny rituals in my family that were observed at the beginning of each December: phoning Mr. Witherspoon to ask permission to use his hill for sledding (a formality - it was always granted) and negotiating a contract for shoveling the snow from the sidewalk and driveway of our neighbors across the street.

This was slightly more difficult, as the neighbors, an older woman and her daughter, were perceived by we kids as somewhat crabby, although the daughter, who was a nurse, impressed me mightily one summer afternoon when she deftly flushed with a large syringe of water a bug that had flown into my little sister's ear.

A deal was made - five dollars for the entire winter - shoveling, scraping, salting. A paltry sum by today's standards; hell, a paltry sum by 1969 standards, but we were neighbors and this was what you were supposed to do. And of course, this was in addition to shoveling out our own home, which was performed gratis because we knew what was good for us.

It does seem as if there was more snow back then. Of course, in upstate New York, we had snow like southern California has almost constant sunshine. One winter when I was small, I remember seeing helicopters - a rarity then - dropping feed to snowbound cattle. And there were times the snow was so deep that someone from the sheriff's office would arrive at our house on a snowmobile to ferry my pharmacist father to his drugstore to fill emergency prescriptions.

Christmas seems different now, too, especially in this city. Two weekends ago, my sister was in town and she, my girlfriend and I went down to the Wall Street area where multiple Santa Clauses in various states of ho-ho-hilarity and inebriation slowly surrounded us. This, we learned, was SantaCon, an annual event of recent years described on its official Web site as "a not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious & non-logical Santa Claus convention, attended for absolutely no reason."

Although the organizers deny it, what it seems to have become is a glorified pub crawl, amusing at first, but a little intimidating as the red suits and white beards numbers grew in legion and sobriety steadily diminished, reminiscent of that old saying, "It's all fun and games until someone starts resisting arrest."

We retreated to the South Street Seaport where carolers from the Big Apple Chorus were serenading shoppers and sightseers. As they swung into "Jingle Bell Rock," this, too, triggered teenage memories.

Late each Christmas Eve, a bunch of us would gather, some with our band instruments from high school - a trumpet or two, a clarinet, a saxophone and trombone. We'd pile into a couple of automobiles and make the rounds of our small town, singing and playing carols: "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," "Deck the Halls," "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Silent Night."

We'd get out of the cars and crunch through the snowdrifts to our destinations; the homes of friends, mostly, and a couple of nursing homes.

The final stop was the county jail, where men would spend Christmas in cells for drunk driving or domestic disputes or non-payment of child support. As we performed, I always hoped we'd hear some voice from within, responding to our tinny renditions, like the old man in Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales, who answers the carolers' "Good King Wenceslas" in "a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole."

But we never did.


Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.
Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers

From Michael Winship: "Happy Holidays from America's Banks"

Happy Holidays from America's Banks

By Michael Winship

Never mind Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. It's the audacity of the banks that takes your breath away. Mean old Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life seems like Father Christmas by comparison.

A recent report that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs may have received preferential treatment getting doses of the swine flu vaccine was enough to give Ebenezer Scrooge the yips. Then came news that in order for us to get back the taxpayer bailout money we loaned them, Citigroup is receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks from the IRS.

And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEO's of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.

In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks' monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans, and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from The New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatment.

The Times wrote that, "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work... causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities." Yet according to the non-profit Americans for Financial Reform the reported $150 million that Wall Street is paying itself in compensation and bonuses this year would be enough to solve the budget crisis of every one of the fifty states or create millions of jobs or prevent all foreclosures for four years.

All of this wretched excess is occurring as more and more people can't afford a roof over their heads. Foreclosures were up another five percent in the third quarter - 23percent more than a year ago. Fewer Americans are willing to buy foreclosed properties, and the Obama administration's foreclosure prevention plan has been a bust so far - way too timid, critics say, and many of the banks won't play ball,
refusing to negotiate in good faith with homeowners desperate to hold on.

We got a first hand look at the crisis this week, when thousands lined up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center just a few blocks from our Manhattan offices to attend a mortgage assistance event sponsored by the non-profit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). So many showed up for this leg of the "Save the Dream Tour" that on many days, staff and volunteers stayed to help until one in the morning.

NACA has had success getting homeowners and banks together to work out a deal to prevent foreclosure. But the big banks' return to the government of the TARP bailout money with which we underwrote them over the last 14 months is a mixed blessing - great to have the cash returned so quickly, terrible because any leverage Washington held over the banks because of the loans virtually vanishes with the payback. They're back in the saddle and not inclined to be of much assistance helping anyone else out, especially those in mortgage trouble.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times wrote in the wake of President Obama's Monday meeting with Wall Street's top guns (three of whom failed to show up because of airport delays), "Executive compensation e_pay/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> , leverage limits and lending standards were all issues that Washington said it planned to change - and when the taxpayers were the shareholders of these firms, it probably could have done so. But now the White House has been left in the position of extending invitations, rather than exercising its clout. And in the figurative and literal sense, it is getting stood up."

Afterwards, Obama said, "The problem is there's a big gap between what I'm hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they're a member up on Capitol Hill."

That's putting it mildly. This week, the American Bankers Association sent out an update and "call to action" memorandum crowing over its success watering down the bank reform bill that was approved by the House and urging its members to beat back similar legislation in the Senate. Self-righteously, it concludes, "As one of your New Year's resolutions, please vow to do everything in your power to show, and to
have your colleagues in your bank show, your Senators the right path to true reform."

It helps when the right path is paved with silver and gold. As "Crossing Wall Street," a November report from the Center for Responsive Politics notes, "The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector...
"The financial sector has also been a voracious lobbying force, spending an unprecedented $3.8 billion since 1998, while sending an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to make its case. That's more money than any other sector has spent on influence peddling. Not even the health care sector, which spun up a lobbying frenzy this year over health reform, has spent more."

The banks are making a list and checking it twice. And lest we forget, during his run for the White House, the finance sector filled Barack mObama's stocking with $39.5 million dollars worth of campaign contributions, more than any other presidential candidate.

God bless us, every one!


Courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal, and Public Affairs Television
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.
Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at
www.pbs.org/moyers.Research support provided by producer William Brangham
and associate producer Katia Maguire.

Il faut dormir

Il faut dormir comme un ange avec l'habitude d'eternite.

et en anglais:

One must sleep like an angel that is used to eternity.

How About A War Rebate?

When I went into the local cellular phone store the other day to check out the newest line of cell phones, I noticed that every phone came with a mail-in cash back rebate. I got to thinking about the whole notion of rebates, and whether the average tax paying consumer is also entitled to a rebate whenever a commander-in-chief, and the Pentagon, decide to commit troops to armed conflict overseas.

Forget about the worthiness of combat, forget about the stunning, but not surprising, announcement last week from Defense Secretary Gates Robert Gates that, after eight years of a combat operation whose mission was to capture Osama bin Laden, there is no "reliable information" about bin Laden's whereabouts, and hasn't been in years. Let's factor out who trained and armed the Taliban in Pakistan, and sent them off to fight in Afghanistan, let's not even talk about who really finances this war, China, and their commitment to "democracy," and instead focus solely on dollars spent.

So, for the sake of argument, let's say that the American taxpayer were to request his small slice of the billions made in profits, and demand a rebate on:

more than $1 trillion government analysts are willing to admit has been spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, though a Nobel laureate in Economics puts that figure closer to three times that amount

the nearly $700 billion allocated for the Department of Defense in 2010 federal budget, as of February, 2009, or roughly half the total budget of which $130 billion is targeted for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with an additional $50 billion held in reserve for DOD discretionary spending

And, let's just say that, as a precondition for giving even another penny to the masters of war, taxpayers asked for rebates of 2% in the form of a tax refund by the end of 2011, what would that come to? Any math majors out there? How much would that be when divided by 300 million Americans?

Yes, that's right, let's forget about the $5,000 tax credit to cover the cost of private health care, and instead provide a rebate to each and every American for each and every dollar spent on war. We can even think of it as another kind of deterrence. And, in the interest of fairness, why start with the 2010 federal budget through the date the president projects U.S. troops will begin withdrawal from Afghanistan--July, 2011, with the rebate made payable at year end in December 2011?

Of course, there can be no rebate to mothers, fathers, wives, brothers, husbands, and children of service men and women killed, maimed, or wounded in battle nor are we any closer to a time when high school graduates must no longer risk their lives because that is their only opportunity for higher education.

When one considers the egregious inequity when nearly three times as much money is being budgeted for the Department of Defense as for the Department of Education, and four times as much recovery money, what a statement about national priorities.

While it is true that U.S. budget deficits have reached new highs approaching $1.5 trillion for 2010, is it a coincidence that this is a conservative estimate of what has been spent on war since 2002?

Some,like Lawrence Wilkerson, contend that the bill for repairing military equipment, tanks, carriers, bombers and the like could be as much as $100 billion.

Not that anyone wants to see young people sent to battle inadequately protected, or prepared, but given the alacrity with which the banks are returning some of their bailout money, it's not unreasonable to ask the government to let people know when we. too, may expect to be bailed out, as well as when that rebate check will be in the mail.

From Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

The Land Mines Obama Won't Touch

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Many people are troubled that Barack Obama flew to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize so soon after escalating the war in Afghanistan. He is now more than doubling the number of troops there when George W. Bush left office.

The irony was not lost on the President, and he tried to address it in his Nobel acceptance speech. "I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land," he said. "Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict - filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other."

Granted, there's a gap here between the rhetoric and the reality. But there's always been something askew about Nobel Peace Prize, in no small part because it's given in the name of the man who invented dynamite, one of the most powerful and destructive weapons in the human arsenal.

It was rumored that after Alfred Nobel brought his version of Frankenstein into the world, he was torn by guilt over his creation, his shame said to have intensified when a French newspaper prematurely ran his obituary with the headline, "The Merchant of Death is Dead." The article vilified him as a man "who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before."

What's more, until the end of his life he corresponded with a woman named Bertha von Suttner, who had briefly worked as his secretary. Many believe that Nobel was moved by a powerful antiwar book she had written titled "Lay Down Your Arms." Whatever his reasons, when his will created the Nobel Prizes he specifically included among them a prize for peace. Von Suttner became one of its first recipients.

After Nobel's death, events turned grim, as if to mock him further. The arms race exploded beyond anything he could have imagined. From the coupling of science and the military came ever more ingenious weapons of destruction that would take even more lives in ever more horrible ways.

One of the most insidious was the land mine, that small, explosive device filled with shrapnel that burns or blinds, maims or kills.

Triggered by the touch of a foot or movement or even sound, more often than not it's the innocent who are its victims - 75 to 80 percent of the time, in fact.

As a weapon, variations of land mines have been around since perhaps as early as the 13th century, but it was not until World War I that the technology was more or less perfected, if that can be said of weapons that mangle and mutilate the human body, and their use became common.

The United States has not actively used land mines since the first Gulf War in 1991, but we still possess some 10-15 million of them, making us the third largest stockpiler in the world, behind China and Russia.

Like those two countries, we have refused to sign an international agreement banning the manufacture, stockpiling and use of land mines. Since 1987, 156 other nations have signed it, including every country in NATO. Amongst that 156, more than 40 million mines have been destroyed.

Just days before Obama flew to Oslo to make his Nobel Peace Prize speech, an international summit conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, to review the progress of the treaty. The United States sent representatives and the State Department says our government has begun a comprehensive review of its current policy.

Last year 5,000 people were killed or wounded by land mines, often placed in the ground years before, during wars long since over. They kill or blow away the limbs of a farmer or child as indiscriminately as they do a soldier. But still we refuse to sign, citing security commitments to our friends and allies, such as South Korea, where a million mines fill the demilitarized zone between it and North Korea.

Twelve years ago, at the time the treaty was first put into place, the Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams, an activist from Vermont who believes that by organizing into a movement, ordinary people can matter. She proved it, despite the stubborn refusal of her own country's government to do the right thing.

Last week, Jody Williams condemned America's continuing refusal to sign the treaty as "a slap in the face to land mine survivors, their families, and affected communities everywhere."

The Nobel Committee said that part of the reason it was giving the Peace Prize to President Obama was for his respect of international law and his efforts at disarmament. And twice in his Nobel lecture, the President spoke of how often more civilians than soldiers die in a war.

Then he said this: "I believe that all nations, strong and weak alike, must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I, like any head of state, reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates - and weakens - those who don't."

And still the land mine treaty goes unsigned by the government he leads.

Go figure.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of
the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday
night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at
www.pbs.org/moyers.

Selective Subpoenas

Lawmakers have now decided to subpoena the Salahis, the Virginia couple who arrived uninvited to the White House's first state dinner last month. The couple will appear before the Committee for Homeland Security to answer questions as to what they were doing at the dinner, and why they went there in the first place.

For a country that has become consumed with concerns about national security, over the past eight years, why is it that Congress appears not only to selectively subpoena, but selectively enforce subpoenas? Why, for instance, is it possible for Karl Rove to evade a subpoena, and for a former vice-president, Dick Cheney, to tell George Stephanopoulos, back in 2006, that if he were to be subpoenaed, he would "probably not testify." Can a former public servant claim executive privilege when he's a private citizen, too? Does it advance national security to have two public officers operate below the radar of the law, and the U.S. Constitution, and not be answerable to Congress?

What is even more intriguing--how is it that when the new commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, testified before Congress about his planned mission in Afghanistan, not one member of Congress asked him about the secret assassination squad he headed that was kept classified by order of Dick Cheney for eight years? Why didn't anyone ask McChrystal to confirm or deny under oath his role in that clandestine operation?

The Central Intelligence Agency concealed information about what was euphemistically called a "counterterrorism program" for nearly a decade, and to this day, the exact nature of that program has never been publicly identified. While Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, said that he ended the program, he refused to describe what it entailed, and as the New York Times reported, back in July, "efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful." Is it too late to subpoena Mr. Cheney to find out if the program Mr. Panetta disabled was the one first divulged by Seymour Hersh?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of transparency, but priorities seem to be as important as transparency. If the only crime the Salahis committed was making a fraudulent statement to get into a White House function, then it falls way lower on the Richter scale than what Karl Rove did, and Mr. Rove has successfully managed to evade a subpoena about his role in outing Valerie Plame. The former president of the U.S. Senate, Dick Cheney, publicly acknowledged that he would defy a congressional subpoena and most likely refuse to testify before Congress. And, when the former head of Cheney's assassination squad appears before Congress, not one peep out of any of our esteemed members of Congress about McChrystal's former job description. Why on earth not?

Yes, it's alarming that anybody could get within a hundred feet of the president of the United States at a private White House function especially given that the demands on the secret service are 400% greater today than they were under George W. Bush, so why doesn't Congress subpoena the secret service agents who allowed that to happen in the first place, and who have been placed on administrative leave?

When former attorney general Alberto Gonzales appeared before a congressional panel to discuss who signed off on enhanced alternative interrogation techniques, and when, Gonzales alluded to other "programs" that had not yet been divulged. The then-attorney general referenced other programs not once, but a few times, and no one asked him to spell out what he means.

By not demanding equal time for all wrongdoers, and those who threaten national security, to come forward and tell the whole truth, Congress itself becomes a co-conspirator in those misdeeds.

Missing in Action

I've been missing in action lately as I was infected at work with a terrible head cold which is now in my chest. As I have a history of pneumonia, I'm hoping that it goes away fast.

I will be back soon, but please accept my best wishes for Happy Holidays!

"The Afghan Ambush" by Michael Winship

Courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal, and Public Affairs Television:

The Afghan Ambush

By Michael Winship

The decision has been made. The months of meetings and briefings are over. Tuesday night, the President made it official: 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan.

Along with Friday's announcement of an additional 7,000 from our NATO allies, after all those weeks of debate and consultation, the result's pretty much exactly what our commander over there, General Stanley McChrystal, asked for in the first place.

As they used to say in the old war movies, we're in it now, up to our necks. More than ever, this is Obama's War. The mess he inherited from the previous administration is now his mess. And while many Republicans may don their helmets, rattle their empty rusty scabbards and shout that escalation is the only way to go, their temporary declarations of support are just that - temporary. Pats on the back are simply their way of finding the proper place to stick the knife.

Last week's Gallup Poll showed that while 65 percent of Republicans support sending all the troops McChrystal wants, only 17 percent of Obama's own Democrats do; 57 percent want a troop reduction. In other words, ignoring the entreaties of a majority in his own party Obama is going to war cheered on by the opposition that will do everything in its power next fall to bring him and his fellow Democrats down.

Friday's New York Times reported, "President Obama 's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan over the objections of fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill is straining a relationship already struggling under the weight of an administration agenda that some Democratic lawmakers fear is placing them in a politically vulnerable position."

Next year's midterm elections could be a disaster for the Democrats. That's what happened to Lyndon Johnson. After winning by the largest plurality ever in 1964, bringing with him huge majorities in the House and Senate, in 1965 he escalated the Vietnam War. The next year, Democrats lost 50 seats in Congress.

That's just one of the possible effects of this fateful decision, one that could scuttle Obama's campaign promises of social and other reforms just as surely as the Vietnam War did President Johnson's. Guns and butter, LBJ said; for a time he thought we could pay for both. We could not.

Money that could be spent generating jobs, improving education, fighting global warming and world hunger is poured into this bottomless chasm of war. Some estimates put the ultimate cost of occupying Afghanistan at a trillion dollars. Add that figure to the mind-numbing numbers we've already spent on the occupation of Iraq. It keeps mounting even as our cities and states are running out of cash, unemployment benefits are drying up, and we're trying to figure out how to pay for health care reform - which some politicians are suggesting we back burner so that we can "focus" on the war in Afghanistan.

Yet nothing is certain about our objectives there. The original goal of capturing Osama bin Laden was lost long ago, and so scattered now are our motives and so shaky our rationale that, prior to President Obama's speech, the Pentagon was asking the public to Twitter what "points and/or issues" they thought the President should highlight.

Nor is there any real evidence that the administration is serious about the 18-month timetable for withdrawal that the President announced in his West Point address. As The New Republic's Michael Crowley wrote, "The pledge is a largely empty one: In a conference call, White House officials made it amply clear that the extent and pace of any drawdown would be based on conditions on the ground. Theoretically, Obama's promise tonight could entail withdrawing 100 troops in July 2011 and pulling out the rest ten years later. Much as the White House wants to deny it, what we've got here is an open-ended commitment."

Our own military says Osama bin Laden's true believers have been reduced to a relative few, chased across the border into Pakistan or scattered as far as Yemen and Somalia. As for the Taliban, there seems to be a growing belief among many generals that at least certain factions can be bought off, much as the support of certain Sunni insurgents was paid for in Iraq, fueling the so-called "surge" that's increasingly mythologized as victory. But what part of "take the money and run" does the Pentagon not understand?

And when it comes to training the Afghan police and army, and continuing to support the corrupt and dysfunctional government of Hamid Karzai - such a wager has all the makings of the sucker bet to end all sucker bets. Toss into that pot disputatious warlords fueled by self-interest, the opium trade and hostility toward any outside occupier, and the already slim odds fade to mathematical improbability.

You've made your decision, Mr. President, and good luck with it. But turn back as fast as you can. It's an ambush.



Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.
Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

"I"

When I say "I" is figurative, I mean it quite literally.

Afghanistan---the Sisyphus War

As Albert Camus once said, "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." After tonight's speech, there can be little doubt that Afghanistan will be, for Obama, the Sisyphus war.

At best, war is a difficult enterprise, but by his decision to fan the fires of a conflict that is languishing, and extinguishing itself, this president will share the distinction, with Sisyphus, of endlessly trying to defy gravity.

This was a speech of contradictions--an increase of troops in order to facilitate withdrawal, a desire to stabilize, and support an unstable, and corrupt government, and a refrain that has become at once familiar, and tired, one that harps on 9/11 as justification for prolonging a struggle from which even Sisyphus would have been spared.

Who can forget image of Gates and Clinton, Defense and State, sitting side by side, collaborators in seeing to it that this newest inhabitant of the Oval Office is fed his minimum daily requirement of Kool-Aid. Only one who forgets that U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan longer than Iraq could accept the rationale behind not merely extending their stay, but increasing their numbers by 50%.

Have those who govern this country become so cynical that they think the American public will believe, even for an instant, that we're sending a fresh crop of young men and women into harm's way to inflict "freedom" on yet another part of the world?

Do the heads of State and Defense, and the commander-in-chief, expect any literate adult to believe that it's possible to eradicate bin Laden, and Al Qaeda, without involving Pakistan?

Is it any secret who trained bin Laden when he was a Freedom Fighter in Afghanistan? Is there any doubt about where U.S. funds went that were funneled into Pakistan for the ten plus year period during which General Musharraf ruled?

Why would anyone expect to find a fugitive from the CIA, one who was allowed to escape months after 9/11, to be hiding out in the same cave in Tora Bora for the past eight plus years?

The target date for withdrawal is eighteen months away. In light of the eight years already invested in the region, there can be little doubt that in July, 2011, this administration, like that of its predecessor, may find itself condemned to watching a rock fall back on itself.

Caught in the Cross Fire

The President spoke to thousands of cadets at West Point on Tuesday and, as anticipated, announced the deployment of another 30,000 troops starting after the first of the year.

Cameras scanned the crowded auditorium where the speech was delivered. One could see the fresh, if sombre faces of those who have chosen the military as their career, and will soon be called upon to join the front lines an ever-expanding battlefield thousands of miles away.

Forgetting, for a moment, whether or not the World Trade Center was attacked by Afghanistan in 2001, and forgetting whether or not it was Al Qaeda or the Taliban who attacked us; forgetting, too, whether Al Qaeda is even in Afghanistan, and overlooking the quintessential question -- how can any serious effort at counterinsurgency not at least partially include Pakistan, one's focus was inextricably drawn not to those were present to hear this latest war speech, but those who were absent.

Looking around the auditorium at West Point, what one didn't see are the faces of those service men and women who, in a moment of anguish, ended their lives while on duty in Iraq, and Afghanistan. What is not factored into military service is what the Defense Department has tried to sweep under the rug, over the past eight plus years, the fact that the suicide rate over the past decade among combat forces has reached record levels. And, while efforts at containment appear to be working, combat suicides in 2008 will be the highest yet.

When called upon to send condolence letters to families of those who have served their country honorably, and given their lives in military service, the President will not be writing a personal letter to loved ones of those who committed suicide. So far this year, there have been more than 60 confirmed suicides in the Army alone. In a culture of machismo, despair is seen as a sign of weakness. By not acknowledging the service of those who have succumbed to despair, the subliminal message is "stay tough out there," but toughness is not synonymous with insensitivity. Indeed, insensitivity, and feelings of invulnerability often lead to the kinds of abuses by interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

Being in touch with the reality of armed conflict can only lead to despair. Being called upon for protracted, and repeat tours of duty often does result, understandably, in depression.

When President Obama addressed those spanking clean uniforms at West Point, he was not addressing a group of pawns on a global chessboard. This speech was not intended to be a pep rally for a Special Ops videogame. These are not toy soldiers. They are young men and women prepared to die for their country and, more precisely, for the illusion that they're dying for their country. The commmander-in-chief owes it to them to acknowledge their efforts, great or small, even those whose disillusionment has led them to turn their weapons on themselves.

The White House has said that not sending letters to families of soldiers who have committed suicide is longstanding policy, and one that is not of their making, but it is an egregious policy that needs to be overturned. All this policy does is transfer feelings of hopelessness, worthless, and disenfranchisement from the fallen service member to loved ones back home.

And, factoring out the whys and wherefores, whether this administration is telling the truth or not about the reasons for U.S. involvement in the region, as long as there are any troops going to war at all, it is just and reasonable for the commander-in-chief to formally acknowledge, and honor, all those who have served this country, even those trapped in a cross fire not of their making.

We Give Thanks

We Give Thanks

We give thanks for those who came before
We give thanks for those yet to come
for those who have served in war and
those who have served to make peace.
We give thanks to the farmers
the teachers
the iron workers
the skydivers
those in prison who have not abandoned hope
those who bring us our daily news
those who bring us into this world naked and bloody and
those who follow us out.
We give thanks to those who have led
this great nation in times of plenty and
in times of less
and to those who have yet to be called upon to lead
thanks for the future and the past
for that sparkling hybrid moment we call now
for all that has been,
and all that is yet to be.



(c) Jayne Lyn Stahl



Thanksgiving day, 2009

IF...

If this country took the war on poverty half as seriously as it takes the war on terror, no child would go to bed hungry in America tonight.

Hungry and Poor in America: Let's Finish the Job Here

The local news was replete with images of First Lady Michelle Obama in the elegant, strapless designer gown she wore for this White House's first state dinner.

Don't get me wrong, I like to look at gowns by Naeem Khan as much as anyone, but as we edge closer to that holiday most often associated with abundance, and overindulgence, one can't help but be distracted by the equally stunning number of people who find themselves hungry and poor this Thanksgiving.

More than 12% of all Americans know what it means to be poor in America. While they're conspicuously absent from reality T.V. shows, from box office movies, and political party platforms, they are increasingly visible at food banks, and shelters.

Nearly 50% of children in the U.S. will be on food stamps at some point before they reach adulthood as reported in study published by the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The research extends over a three decade period, and also shows that one in three white children, and 90% of African-American youngsters through age 20 will make use of federally subsidized food programs.

A staggering 50% of all Americans between 20 and 65 (4 out of every 10 adults in America) will use food stamps in their lifetimes. 85% of African-Americans will, at some point in their lives, need to use food stamps. African-Americans and Hispanics make up the leading groups of those experiencing the most egregious food deprivation.

In 2008 alone, according to Feeding America, the number of poor Americans grew to:

40 million, or 13% of all Americans
8 million families, or 10%,
22 million, or nearly 12%, of people between 18-64
14 million, or nearly 20%, of children under 18

Last year, too, 49 million people didn't have enough to eat (32 million adults and 17 million children). A disproportionate number of those are men, women, and children of color.

The number of households with inadequate food resources has increased by 3.5% from 2007-2008 alone.

Nearly 10% of households with seniors were food insecure.
3.6 million seniors, 65 and older, nearly one in ten, live in poverty

In 2002, 35 million people went hungry, a number that has increased by 50% in the past seven years.

Last year, 4% of all U.S. households, nearly 5 million Americans, accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.

In 2008, too, more than 50% of all households experiencing hunger participated in one of the major federal food assistance programs, but that's not enough. Instead of the trillions of dollars this administration has committed to buying drones, building embassies in Iraq, and sending thousands of more servicemen and women into combat, we need to fight the war on poverty here at home.

An astonishing 40% of households headed by single women have food shortages.

Too often, politicians of both parties speak of the need to save the middle class, but nobody talks about the working poor. There is little mention of those who return from the battlefield only to struggle to keep their homes, their dignity, and find a way to feed their families.

Some might argue that Congress is making a good start by working to pass legislation that will enable more Americans to get affordable health insurance, but that's only a start. There is something desperately wrong with a country that provides bailouts for its banks, and its fortune 500 carpetbaggers, but cannot provide for its children and seniors.

If even half the resources the government has allocated for the war on terror were to be spent instead on a war on poverty, no child in America would go to bed hungry tonight.

And, when the president announced this week that he intends to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, clearly the job he needs to finish is here, and not in the Middle East.

"A Jane Goodall Thanksgiving" by Michael Winship

Courtesy of "Bill Moyers Journal," and Public Affairs Television:

A Jane Goodall Thanksgiving

By Michael Winship

Give thanks. Because this isn't one of those Thanksgiving lists of things for which we should be grateful -- although health, family, friends, laughter, etc., would certainly all be on mine.

And Jane Goodall.

Yes, that Jane Goodall, the woman we all grew up with watching those National Geographic specials on TV as she communed with the chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe National Park in East Africa. Everyone I know seems especially to remember those scenes of chimps ingeniously utilizing straw and blades of grass to poke around in mounds hunting for termites, proof that they know how to make and use tools. I still have trouble opening a can of tuna.

Goodall was interviewed by my colleague Bill Moyers for this week's edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS. She began her work in Africa in 1960 at the age of 26, spurred by the encouragement of her English mother and the great anthropologist Louis Leakey, as well as the African adventure books she read as a child. "I was in love with Tarzan," she told Moyers. "I was so jealous of that wimpy Jane. I knew I
would have been a better mate for Tarzan."

I'm especially thankful to Jane Goodall after reading the passage in Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" in which the erstwhile vice presidential candidate and Governor of Alaska writes that she doesn't "believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into
monkeys who eventually swung down from trees."

She could learn a thing or two from the chimps. Goodall sees our affinity with them as like "the bond between mother and child, which really for us and chimps and other primates is the root of all the expressions of social behavior you can sort of see mirrored in the mother/child relationship."

But chimpanzees can be violent, too, and Goodall says, "Some people have reached the conclusion that war and violence is inevitable in ourselves. I reach the conclusion that I do believe we have brought aggressive tendencies with us through our long human evolutionary past. I mean, you can't look around the world and not realize that we can be, and often are, extremely brutal and aggressive."

But, she adds, "Equally, we have inherited tendencies of love, compassion, and altruism, because they're there in the chimp. So, we've brought those with us. So, it's like each one of us has this dark side. And a more noble side. And I guess it's up to each one of us to push one down and develop the other."

Jane Goodall has never seen a conflict between religion and evolution. "I don't think that faith, whatever you're being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained," she said. "And I don't want to explain this whole life business. Truth, science. There's so much mystery. There's so much awe.

"I mean, what is it that makes the chimpanzees do these spectacular displays, rain dances -- I call them waterfall dances. At the foot of this waterfall, [they] sit in the spray and watch the water that's always coming and always going and always there. It's wonder. It's awe. And if they had the same kind of language that we have, I suspect that [they would turn it] into-- some kind of animistic religion."

In 1986, after two and a half decades of quiet research in the African forest, Goodall's career took a dramatic turn at a conference of scientists studying chimpanzees. During a session on conservation, she said that it was "shocking" to learn that across Africa, because of deforestation, the explosion of human population and commercial hunting of animals for food, the chimpanzee population had "plummeted from somewhere between one and two million at the turn of the last century to, at that time, about 400,000. So I came out - I couldn't go back to
that old, beautiful, wonderful life."

She now spends more than 300 days out of the year traveling, speaking out, rallying people to see ourselves as caretakers of the natural world, and inspiring us with word that all is not yet lost. Her Jane Goodall Institute works ceaselessly for the worldwide protection of habitat, and her program "Roots and Shoots" now has chapters in 114 countries, working to make young people more environmentally aware. "I could kill myself trying to save chimps and forests," she said to Bill Moyers. "But if we're not raising new generations to be better stewards than we've been, then we might as well give up."

The worldwide chimp population is down to fewer than 300,000 now, spread across isolated fragments of forest, Goodall says, in 21 African nations. Moyers asked, what do we lose if the last chimp goes? "We lose one window into learning about our long course of evolution," she replied.

"I've spent so long looking into these minds that are fascinating, because they're so like us. And yet they're in another world. And I think the magic is, I will never know what they're thinking... And so, it's like elephants and gorillas, and all the different animals that we are pushing toward extinction...

"There's a saying, 'We haven't inherited this planet from our parents,
we've borrowed it from our children.' When you borrow, you plan to pay
back. We've been stealing and stealing and stealing. And it's about time
we got together and started paying back."

That's as good a Thanksgiving wish as I can imagine.


Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local
airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Additional
research provided by producer Candace White and associate producer Diane
Chang.

"New York Is Tough Enough For Terrorist Trials," Michael Winship

Courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal, and Public Affairs Television:


New York's Tough Enough for Terrorist Trials

By Michael Winship

If you want to royally tick off New Yorkers, try telling us what to do.

That's probably why the police stopped trying to enforce the jaywalking laws here years ago (as opposed to Washington, DC, where I once got one too many tickets and was sent to pedestrian school).

And that's why in the weeks after 9/11, my favorite sign was the one that appeared in the windows of Italian-American neighborhoods near where I live downtown. In bright red, white and blue, it read: "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You got a problem with that?"

So imagine how pleased many of us were when told by conservatives - most of them from out-of-town -- that we should be very afraid that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of his Al Qaeda henchmen will be put on trial here in New York City, just blocks from the scene of their horrific crime, the World Trade Center.

My own unscientific survey indicates that most of us who live not far from Ground Zero and who were here on 9/11 see it as an appropriate and just venue and aren't afraid that the trial will result in terrorist retribution. And if for some reason it should, we will stand up in righteous, rational indignation, the way we New Yorkers do on an almost daily basis, whether the source of vexation is slight or extreme.

I immediately thought of the moment in Casablanca, when the supercilious Nazi, Major Strasser, asks Humphrey Bogart if he's one of those who can't imagine Germans occupying New York. Bogart replies, "There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

The response of Arizona Republican Congressman John Shadegg was especially offensive. After noting that Mayor Mike Bloomberg had said that New Yorkers are tough and could handle the trial and its attendant commotion, Rep. Shadegg declared on the floor of the House, "Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter that's kidnapped at school by a terrorist? How are you going to feel when it's some clerk -- some innocent clerk of the court -- whose daughter or son is kidnapped? Or the judge's wife? Or the jailer's little brother or little sister?"

Rep. Shadegg wound up apologizing, although he insisted the point survived his insensitivity - "I think it is important to note that this decision involves potential risk to innocent people," he said. But even Rupert Murdoch's right wing New York Post took offense, describing Shadegg's remarks as "the outrageously shameless use of Bloomberg's children as debating points."

Two local politicians who should know better did speak out in opposition to a federal trial here in Manhattan, but to a large degree their motives can be perceived as mercenary. Both men are or may be running for statewide office, and polling outside the city indicates that when it comes to a civilian trial, a sizable majority has bought into the fearmongering.

Former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who became such a hero in New York as he walked the rubble-strewn streets on 9/11, and who has been bandied about the media as a potential candidate for governor or the US Senate, fell into conservative lockstep and told CBS News, "There is no reason to try them in a civilian court. Others are going to be tried in the military tribunal. And the reality is we've never done this before. And this is something that was pushed very, very hard by the left wing for President Obama to do."

Which is odd, because back in 2006, when a civilian jury sentenced 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to life without parole, Giuliani told Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball" that while he would have preferred the death penalty, the verdict "does show that we have a legal system, that we follow it, that we respect it. And it is exactly what is missing in the parts of the world or a lot of the parts of the world that are breeding terrorism... it does say something pretty remarkable about us, doesn't it?"

What's more, when blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahmanm, the architect of the first Trade Center bombing in 1993, was convicted in New York federal court, Giuliani said, "It does demonstrate that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law... I think he's going to be a symbol of American justice."

More baffling was New York's Democratic Governor David Paterson, who told The New York Times, "This is not a decision I would have made... We still have been unable to rebuild that site, and having those terrorists tried so close to the attack is going to be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers." But the governor's popularity is so low and election chances next year so slim he is desperate for the slightest grit of traction. A Siena College poll this week had 69% saying they would vote for someone else. At this point, he probably would allow himself to be pulled between two farm tractors if he thought it might help him carry upstate.

Paterson's position also seemed to puzzle US Attorney General Eric Holder - a New Yorker, by the way - who last week announced the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow conspirator here in the city. When told of Paterson's comments, he said to the New York Daily News, "It's a little inconsistent with what he told me last week."

Attorney General Holder, in this instance at least, has been the consistent one, unwavering over the rightness of his decision while admitting that it was a "tough call, and reasonable people can disagree with my conclusion."

On Wednesday he handled four hours of often harshly critical questioning from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and then met with families of 9/11 victims. He countered the opposition's main objections. "We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing it for years," Holder said, and the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) "establishes strict rules for the use of classified information at trial."
As for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - often identified simply as KSM -- and his track record of rabid histrionics, Holder said that the terrorist "will have no more of a platform to spew his hateful ideology in federal court than he would have in military commissions... "Judges in federal court have firm control over the conduct of defendants and other participants in their courtrooms, and when the 9/11 conspirators are brought to trial, I have every confidence that the presiding judge will ensure appropriate decorum. And if KSM makes the same statements he made in his military commission proceedings, I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is. I'm not scared of what KSM will have to say at trial -- and no one else needs to be either."

Which seems right to me and my friends who stood on our neighborhood streets and watched those towers burn and fall. You got a problem with that?

Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

An "Elegant President" in Cracker Country

Don't know if you happened to catch Frank Schaeffer on Rachel Maddow, but it was a riveting show. Given his own background as the son of a right-wing evangelist who recently converted, it would be wise to listen to Schaeffer pushing the panic button.

I confess, too, that I can't help thinking about what Sean Penn said when he learned that Barack Obama was elected. We have "an elegant president;" that was as good as it gets, as well as an interview Dick Cavett did, thirty years ago, with another elegant man---Jimi Hendrix.

On the show, Cavett spoke about "red necks," "white trash," and how difficult it was to be a gifted black musician in a devoutly racist country. Having had the good fortune to have met Jimi, I suspect that, apart from being an Obama supporter, he'd empathize with him, too.

Not as much has changed over the past few decades as we might like to think. Now there are those who say this president is taking us the wrong way down a one way street, that his vision is one that leads to bigger government, and less free enterprise.

And, there are others who think that Obama isn't heading in the direction of peace, disarmament, and transparency. They are disillusioned about this president's openness to hawkish generals when they thought that endgame was to get out of Iraq.

The best way not to get disillusioned is not to entertain illusions in the first place. Any president with a concrete plan for either disarmament, or imminent troop withdrawal would never have been elected.

George W. Bush is blamed for nearly thousands of American and Iraqi deaths in an eight year war, but it was George H.W. Bush who brought troops into Iraq in the first place. That Papa Bush rightly decided to shrug his shoulders, fold up his tent, declare victory in the Gulf, and go home doesn't mean that he wasn't responsible for the error that became a huge mistake.

Likewise, Lyndon B. Johnson is the president most often associated with the Vietnam War when it was his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, who arranged for the first troops to be deployed there. Johnson took an initial commitment of 15,000 troops and raised nearly ten times. In his last speech to the American people, Kennedy acknowledged that he was "rethinking" his commitment of troops to Vietnam, and had plans for phased withdrawal, a plan, not coincidentally, sabotaged by his assassination.

That "war is a racket" we know, and have known for as long as Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler wrote back in 1932. Still, Americans feign surprise, and disillusionment, when a president is elected who continues the status quo. Where war is concerned, the status quo is our best cash crop.

Others, like myself, see a presidency that is barely one quarter of the way along and remain optimistic that Mr. Obama, like Mr. Kennedy before him, will rethink his military objectives, and will share JFK's vision of "complete and total disarmament."

Some may say we've drunk the Kool-Aid, and that may be fair. But, there is no denying the precariousness of the more than 100 new paramilitary groups which, as the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, have sprung up since Obama took office. The threats from these fringe groups, these leftover Birchers are real. Demands on the secret service, the president's bodyguards, have increased by 400%.

While no one is suggesting blind obedience, Frank Schaeffer is right that we need to support this president, and pray for his safety. Those, on the left, who have been going after him with a viscera matching their radical right counterparts would be well advised to lighten up, and recognize that discourse has been racheted up such that it now poses a clear and present danger. The Tea Party of today is just as scary as the John Birch Society in Jimi Hendrix's day.

This is a presidency under siege, and those who confuse verbal dysentery with dissent do a disservice to the framer's notion of free speech.

To maintain a healthy political climate, disagreement must be accompanied by deference, and deference isn't coming from the right, or the left frankly.

One may disagree with a president's policies, yet still support the president. One may abjure the influence of special interests, the banksters, and Wall Street, and still press for extended unemployment benefits, a higher living wage, and greater access to affordable housing. One doesn't have to throw out the baby with the bath water.

While Afghanistan is clearly a quagmire, and a McChrystal surge would be a huge mistake, to articulate foreign policy differences with anything less than respect is a disservice to the civil rights efforts of Malcolm X, and the Rev. Martin Luther King.

Someday, what we now witness will be seen as nothing less than civil war, but it's about more than race, or party affiliation, it's a war between rich and poor. With our support of this president comes the implicit understanding that he was elected to represent the poor, and hungry. Anything short of that is unacceptable.

The only mandate that can work is one that mandates equal opportunity, and equal justice under the law. So far, I have heard no mention of that kind of mandate. If nothing else, this is one president who can be prevailed upon to listen.

Something is radically wrong when the rhetoric of the left can no longer be distinguished from that of the right. Anti-war posturing must not disintegrate into anti-Obama posturing.

And, more importantly, there is a racial component to the anti-Obama rhetoric that is especially troubling, one that must not be discounted, but addressed, or there will be a moral tsunami that will reverberate for generations.

The election of Barack Obama was not about seeing the world in black or white, but gray. The dream hasn't died. The dreamers have just woken up.

A frightening Incident

On my way home from work today, I stopped in to the local 7-11 to pick up a few things. It was late in the day and, as usual, there was only one cashier at the register.

In line in front of me was a young lady who I observed rushing into the store before I got there. She looked to be in her early 20's, a brunette.

Anyway, she bought a half dozen items or so, and stood at the counter with her purse open, her wallet, her keys, a cup of coffee slowly proceeding to put things away. She was oblivious to the fact that someone was behind her waiting patiently for what must have been about three minutes.

I proceeded to pull a few bills out of my wallet, and hand them to the cashier who gratefully accepted them. My change, if any, would have been a few pennies, so I was prepared to leave the store. The young "lady," in a manner of speaking, then confronts me: "You're in a hurry, are you?" she says. "Yes," I said, "I'd like to pay for these items, and get on with my day."

She exits the store. I exit, too, whereupon I notice that she gets in her car, and proceeds to block the entrance to the 7-11. She had a young man next to her who appeared to find the whole encounter amusing. "You better be careful, lady, or somebody might hurt you," she says and looks at me menacingly.

I get in my car quickly, and lock the door. My car window is down a bit, and she yells out, "You heard me, lady, somebody might hurt you." Her boyfriend started laughing. Obviously, I had no intention of getting out of my car to walk over to her car, and confront her. I recognized her accent which sounded a lot like my students in Los Angeles.

There is no way I would have gotten out of my car to approach her. The first thought that entered my mind when I saw her car parked there was---get in the car, lock the door, and don't respond. She might be packing.

No one had ever followed me from a store, and threatened me like that before.

A woman in her early 40's walked over to her car to find out what was going on, and the girl just started gesturing, and next thing I knew she drove up.

Funny thing is right down the street there was a sheriff parked in a car marked "Sheriff's Department." On my way to the store, I noticed him sitting there with his head neatly bowed into his lap evidently text messaging. On my way back, he was still sitting there, only now he appeared to be doing paperwork.

Given the incidence, albeit rare, of women being held up at gunpoint only blocks away from where this encounter occurred, I found it rather odd that there wouldn't be more surveillance. It's not as if there was no police car, and it's not as if there isn't any crime.

As I drove him, it occurred to me that I'm old enough to be this young woman's mother, and then some. It also occurred to me that if I had called local law enforcement, I would have been told "a threat is not a crime," and nothing would have been done.

What scared me most of all was how little it mattered to this person that the person she was threatening could have been her mother, her teacher, or her next door neighbor. The brutality, and enjoyment of brutality---brutality for brutality's sake sent shivers down my spine.

The only thing that distinguishes human beings from animals is conscience. This creature clearly doesn't have one. What can be more frightening than living in fear of one's children.

From Michael Winship

In a Chilly London November, War and Remembrance

By Michael Winship

In Great Britain, Remembrance Sunday falls on the second Sunday of November, the one closest to November 11th, the anniversary of the end of the First World War in 1918. Once, the world called November 11th Armistice Day. Now, here in the States at least, it is Veterans Day.

As coincidence and travel itineraries would have it, twice over the last four years I've been in London on Remembrance Sunday. This time, my girlfriend Pat and I were on our way home from Greece, stopping off for a couple of days to see old friends.

As we unpacked at the hotel, a recap of the Remembrance Sunday ceremonies was playing on TV - Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife laying a wreath at the Cenotaph (the UK equivalent of our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), a stirring parade of veterans along Whitehall, the military bands playing "Rule, Britannia," "God Save the Queen" and "O Valiant Hearts."

Remembrance Sunday fell just a couple of days after the horrendous shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 soldiers dead and 30 wounded, many of whom were preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. From Greece, we had been watching the news reports on CNN with special interest. I'd been at Fort Hood several times - the huge military base is where my parents met during World War II; my father a medical supply mofficer, my mother a secretary from a nearby town. It was Camp Hood then.

Remembrance Sunday also fell less than a week after an Afghan policeman named Gulbadin, armed with a machine gun, shot five British soldiers dead at a police compound in Helmand province. The men had just returned from patrol and had put their rifles aside, preparing for a rest. The policeman opened fire from a rooftop.

The wantonness of the killings only further deteriorated the already plummeting British support for the country's involvement in the Afghan war, and anger worsened in the next few days after Prime Minister Brown accidentally botched a handwritten letter of condolence to the mother of Jamie Janes, a British soldier killed last month by an IED. He, too, was in Helmand province.

It seems Brown misspelled Janes' name in the letter. The mother, urged on, some say, by Rupert Murdoch's tabloid, The Sun (which recently switched its political allegiance from Brown's Labor Party to the Conservatives), bitterly attacked the prime minister for insensitivity.

In a subsequent phone call with Brown, which she recorded - perhaps with the assistance of The Sun - she chastised him for failing to adequately equip and protect British troops in Afghanistan. After several days of media-manufactured controversy, she accepted his apology.

Brown blamed the incident on his notoriously poor penmanship and inability to see - he is blind in one eye.

Metaphor, remembrance and coincidence were in abundance during our brief London stay. As it happened, the next night, we went to see a play called The War Horse. Written by Nick Stafford, and based on a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo, the drama uses remarkable, life-size puppets of horses, beautifully crafted and each masterfully manipulated by teams of performers so skilled you sometimes forget that
what you're seeing isn't real.

The War Horse is the story of Joey, a horse that's half-thoroughbred and should be raised for riding in foxhunts by the landed gentry. But through fate and the cruel reality of rural life in southwest England's Devonshire, Joey is brought up as a farm horse, trained and loved by a teenager named Albert. When World War I begins, Albert's father sells the horse to the British cavalry. Albert runs away and joins the army to find him.

In the beginning, almost everyone is convinced that the war will be brief - "God help the Kaiser, because... we're gonna run him right out of Belgium, right back into Germany." But as a veteran British major tells a junior officer, "Every generation has to discover things for themselves, don't they? There's some things that can be understood through telling, but other things have to be experienced before they can be fully apprehended. War is one such thing."

Joey is ridden into senseless, deadly charges against German machine guns. Eventually, he and another horse end up on the other side of the enemy lines, and are forced to drag German hospital wagons and artillery as both armies fall into the trench warfare of mud and misery that will go on for more than four bloody years, killing between 15 and 16 million.

Our current reality, our deadly dilemma in Afghanistan as Barack Obama reportedly agonizes over the next steps there, were never far from mind, even as we lost ourselves in the story and stagecraft of the play. At one point, a young British recruit is given his grandfather's knife to carry, a souvenir of the Second Afghan War, he's told. At another, a German sergeant named Rudi talks with a group of fellow soldiers: "They're saying that because we attacked, we're paying for it. They're saying that we must get rid of the Kaiser and make a democracy. It would
be impossible for a democracy to start a war, continue a war against the will of its people. What do you think?"

In the penultimate scene, an injured Joey has been pulled from the barbed wire of no-man's-land by a British soldier and is about to be out of his misery by a doctor's bullet when Albert, temporarily made sightless by gas, hears him and they are reunited.

A happy ending of sorts, but what I was reminded of was another powerful metaphor, a painting by American artist John Singer Sargent that I saw a few years ago in London's Imperial War Museum.

During World War I, Sargent, master of the exquisite, artful society portrait, was commissioned by the British government to go the front and create a work that would celebrate the cooperative spirit of British and American soldiers pulling together in "The War to End All Wars."

Finding little to none of that alleged battlefield camaraderie, instead, he painted a massive canvas - 20 feet wide and more than seven feet high - depicting a group of soldiers felled by a mustard gas attack. In hues of yellow and brown, they stumble in a setting sun toward the hospital tents, eyes bandaged, each man in the line struggling to find his way, guided by a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him.

The blind leading the blind.


Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.
Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at
www.pbs.org/moyers.

Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Astonishingly, more than 30,000 foreign born detainees currently face deportation at some 350 facilities nationwide. Nearly half are legal residents who committed crimes that range from homicide to misdemeanor drug possession, and were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after serving their prison terms.

Reportedly, about 10% of those foreign born detainees, or 3,000, have served in the U.S. military. A large percentage have legal resident status. Some suffer from PTSD, but all who get in trouble with the law will be rounded up by ICE detained, and then deported.

More troubling is the incidence of those who come here as small children with their parents who are encouraged by recruiters to join the Army, lured by the illusion that their military service will serve as their application for citizenship. Imagine their horror when they find a deportation letter in their mailbox upon their return.

Given the need for warm bodies in combat zones, the military "falsely promises automatic U.S. citizenship," according to Associated Content , in return for service which consists of deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. All too often, however, the service member is double crossed and, upon his return to the states, is scooped up, and carted back to the country of his birth.

Others, like Iraq vet Marine Corporal Phillipe Louis Jean, have also been threatened with deportation after they complete their tour of duty. The Marine was court-martialed for an infraction, adultery, not regarded as serious enough to disqualify him for military service, but one egregious enough to prevent him from ever obtaining American citizenship. What is more egregious here the obscene, and wanton exploitation of men in uniform, or their alleged infractions?

There are many who argue that it makes sense to deport anyone who commits a crime, regardless of their immigration status, but doing so renders the argument that prison is intended for rehabilitation obsolete.

Some even think that if someone is here illegally, they should be deported for jay walking. Too often, immigrants are used as human shields, and scapegoats for pre-existing larger social, and economic issues. Too often, nuance is lost as are important legal, and constitutional distinctions between undocumented immigrants and legal residents. Increasingly, those who serve our country, and are prepared to pay the ultimate price to defend us face harassment by ICE, detention, and deportation, not just veterans of Iraq either.

Many who have served this country honorably are now being held in immigration facilities thoughout the U.S. They are legal residents of a country that wants to cart them off in a crate with a "return to sender" label. Consider the irony, for a moment, in light of the organized crime families of the 1920's and 1930's. How many vets of World Wars I and II faced being deported back to Sicily because they were convicted of drug smuggling?

Keep in mind, too, that most of the 3,000 or so service members currently being held were convicted of drug possession, and will have served as much time in immigration detention centers as they did in prison.

A bill introduced by the House in July may soon be a paradigm for how to remedy this gross inequity. HR 2988 provides for the relief of Fernando Javier Cervantes and, if passed, would preclude his deportation. Mr. Cervantes emigrated legally from Mexico to the U.S., more than thirty years ago, at the age of seven, with his mother. He enlisted in the Army toward the end of the Vietnam War, and was honorably discharged.

Now, more than three decades later, Cervantes is a detainee at El Centro Processing Center where he is being held after serving three years for possession of methamphetamine. Most likely, he will spend an equal amount of time in detention as in prison and, barring intervention should the House bill pass, he will be deported back to Mexico, a country he has not seen since 1970.

Justice is clearly a precious commodity, one that is in short supply, and less demand, when American servicemen who participated in the heinous slaughter of two dozen men, women, and children civilians in Haditha, Iraq, back in November, 2005, have escaped prosecution while noncitizen servicemen, many of whom have legal immigration status, are being deported for misdemeanor drug possession.

Clearly, this isn't about illegal drugs, but a backlash against illegal immigration with the inescapable irony that military recruiters don't seem to care about the citizenship application status of their recruits when they need to fill their front lines.

Headline of the Year

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, but thanks to their recent headline, the Associated Press may be the first news organization to take first prize for headline of the year. About an hour ago, while munching some leftover chicken, a stunning headline streaked across my laptop: "Official: Obama wants his war options changed." At first, I thought --hmmmmm..... at least he isn't asking to have his diapers changed.

But, the breaking news is that the president has asked his national security team to change his war options. Maybe it's time for Mr. Obama to change his own war options.

After all, the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue also happens to be commander-in-chief. Making decisions about troop incease, reduction, withdrawals, deployments, and timelines are part of the job description. Mr. Obama forgot more than I'll ever know about leadership, so why is he allowing himself to be led around by the nose by the Pentagon, and the Defense Department?

Since when is a president pulled between generals? Who cares what Stanley McChrystal wants? In the end, McChrystal will be a stale footnote in a high school history book, so whether Obama heeds the general's advice to increase troops in Afghanistan by another 40,000, or 100,000, or whether U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan,and former general Eikenberry wants a time out for Karzai, who cares?

For all of his clout, we didn't have a president McNamara, but Kennedy. McNamara was a guiding force, it's true, but JFK was prepared to pull the plug, McNamara or no McNamara, that's what presidents do.

Now, Mr. Obama is reportedly asking General McChrystal for another rewrite of the surge script for which McChrystal may even need to bring in a script doctor as Houdini would be hard pressed to tweak such a huge investment of American military in any way that doesn't lead to another disastrous misadventure.

And, while it's good that the president has moved away from a focus on benchmarks which, so far, have produced only hemorrhoids in Iraq to timelines instead, the term exit strategy isn't code for fleet enema. Had JFK lived long enough to see his timeline for withdrawal of troops from Vietnam enforced, hundreds of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives would have been saved. There's a president who may have asked his team what his options were, but decided to change them himself

Often during these strange and difficult times, I think of the great JFK line: "A mistake doesn't have to become an error unless you refuse to correct it." And, it's not too late to correct this one.

Instead of looking to his national security team, and generals for tips on how to proceed in Afghanistan, President Obama will be better off looking to himself, and the American people.

His judgment was his calling card during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was his good judgment that led Mr. Obama, as a young senator back in 2002, to speak eloquently in opposition to the war in Iraq. It didn't fail him then, and he must not allow it to fail him now either.

Quote of the Day

"There are no eyes harder to catch than a barman's," Samuel Beckett

From Michael Winship

Courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal, and Public Affairs Television:

Don't Believe Everything the Oracle Tells You

By Michael Winship

ATHENS, GREECE - Last Sunday, we visited the ruins of ancient Delphi, two hours or so from here in the Greek capital, an extraordinary site at the base of Mount Parnassus overlooking the Pleistos Valley, almost half a mile below. You could see the acres of olive trees there. The Ionian Sea shimmered on the horizon. Legend has it that Zeus released two eagles from the opposite ends of the earth. They met at Delphi, determining that it was the center, the so-called navel of the world.

Delphi and its temples were where the famous Oracle lived, uttering its often ambiguous and mysterious predictions through a priestess who spoke on its behalf - but, our guide claimed, only after inhaling sulfuric vapors from a hole in the earth and chewing laurel leaves to get into the proper psychotropic mood.

During the Persian Wars, the guide said, Athenians asked the Oracle how to protect themselves from being attacked by the enemy. The Oracle replied, "A wall of wood alone shall be uncaptured." Many of the Athenians figured that meant they should seek protection behind a formidable wooden barricade. Makes sense, but the Persians seized the city anyway. Such is the price of being logical - in my experience, it's
always a mistake to take a priestess imbibing laurel leaves and sulfur too literally.

Others, the guide continued, interpreted the oracular message in a different way; believing that "a wall of wood" was a reference to the mighty Athenian fleet of wooden ships. This time, they got it right - their navy went to sea and defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.

All of which is a scenic route around to my reaction when reading last Tuesday night's election results back home. People were interpreting the Oracle of the Ballot Box in what seemed like very odd and exaggerated ways.

The Associated Press reported, "Independents who swept Barack Obama to a historic 2008 victory broke big for Republicans on Tuesday as the GOP wrested political control from Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a troubling sign for the president and his party heading into an important midterm election year."

And the lead sentence of the Los Angeles Times read, "By seizing gubernatorial seats in Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans on Tuesday dispelled any notion of President Obama's electoral invincibility, giving the GOP a lift and offering warning signs to Democrats ahead of the 2010 midterm elections."

Without resorting to chomping on leaves and sniffing fumes, we should look at that a little more closely and not let the tide of the mainstream media and the 24-hour news cycle sweep us away. Were those GOP gains in Virginia and New Jersey really an indication that the entire nation's shifting away from the President? True, President Obama campaigned for both Democrats, but exit polls showed voters in both
states were more interested in local issues than him. What's more, in Virginia, Democrat Creigh Deeds was a terrible candidate, and in New Jersey, although for a while it seemed incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine might rally, his dismal popularity numbers and a whopping state deficit and unemployment rate could not be surmounted.

And look at those two special races for House seats in the California 10th and northern New York State's 23rd - the Democrats picked up both, for a net gain in Congress of one. Upstate Democrat Bill Owens beat back an onslaught from right wingers and tea partiers - including Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Dick Armey - who spoke out on behalf of Conservative Party candidate Douglas Hoffman and bullied Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava out of the race.

Owens is the first Democrat elected from that district in well over a century. In fact, as the Web site Politico.com reported, with his victory, "The GOP lost its fifth consecutive competitive special election in Republican-friendly territory."

As for that independent vote that went for Barack Obama last year and seems to be shifting back to the right (in New Jersey and Virginia they went for the GOP candidate by a large margin), it may not be as monolithic a bloc as the media would have you believe.

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal noted a 2007study conducted by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University:

"Strategists and the media variously describe independents as 'swing voters,' 'moderates' or 'centrists' who populate a sometimes-undefined middle of the political spectrum. That is true for some independents, but the survey revealed a significant range in the attitudes and the behavior of Americans who adopt the label...

"The survey data established five categories of independents: closet partisans on the left and right; ticket-splitters in the middle; those disillusioned with the system but still active politically; ideological straddlers whose positions on issues draw from both left and right; and a final group whose members are mostly disengaged from politics."

Bottom line: instant analysis of election results from a handful of races in an off year election is not very significant one way or the other. We'd be wise not to buy into the tub-thumping or doomsaying of pundits posing as priestesses claiming to speak for the Oracle. Or to be the Oracle.

From a distance here in Athens, perhaps the more balanced headline was the one that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on Thursday: "Election Results Give Both Sides Optimism." The paper could just as easily have written, "Election Results Give Both Sides Pessimism." Ask any Athenian with knowledge of history - you have to take your Oracles with a grain of salt.

Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.
Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at
www.pbs.org/moyers.