September 15, 2009

          On this day in 1963, the New York Times reminds us, a bomb went off in a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed four young black girls, one of the most violent events of the civil rights era.      It's an era that's behind us, kind of.  Overt racism, segregated schools, denial of the vote to blacks--those evils are behind us.  So we've ended racism in America? Of course not.  Columnists are speculating this week about whether racism was part of the explanation for Congressman Joe Wilson's (R.-S.C.) yelling, "You lie!" at President Obama when he spoke to Congress last week.  I don't know;  I've never met the Congressman.  South Carolina is no stranger to racism, of course.  Its long-serving senator, Strom Thurmond, ran for president on a segregationist ticket back in 1948.  The state has changed much since then, of course, but it's surely still true that no state in our union is free of racism.  It's a struggle that generations after us will continue to wage.      So we're better than we were, but not there yet.  As for Mr. Wilson's yell--well, Congressman, it was rude.  Presidents do lie of course, like the rest of us from time to time.  We're just not supposed to interrupt them by yelling about it while they're talking.               
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

September 14, 2009

      I am not an expert on Afghanistan;  the only time I was ever there was so long ago they still had a king.  It's obvious, though, that things aren't going very well. They never have for occupying powers, not even the British, who were good at occupying.  "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains," Rudyard Kipling wrote, "And the  women come put to clean up the remains/ Just roll on your rifle and blow out your brains/ And go to your God like a soldier."       The Russians had no success there either, of course.  We seem to have joined the club.  Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's national security advisor, said in a speech this past weekend that only about 300 American troops were involved in the original overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.  Now we have about 100,000 there, but Brzezinski says they are increasingly seen as foreign invaders, not liberators.  Well, of course they are.      It is  not an easy country to rule.  It's one of the poorest countries in the world with a traditionally weak central government and illiteracy rates around 70%--the list of problems is long.  Brzezinski said in that speech, "We are running the risk of replicating...the fate of the Soviets."  It's hard to argue with that.      Is there a solution?  Certainly not force of arms, in spite of all the talk about increasing U.S. forces there.  Hasn't worked so far.      Washington Post columnist Fareed  Zakaria suggests making deals--shrink the number of enemy forces, he says, by making them switch sides or lay down their arms.  I don't know if that will work, but it's the best idea for cutting our losses there I've heard in good while. 
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

September 11, 2009

 

     Comes now the curious case of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) who, in a moment of passion, pique or politics yelled at the President during his speech to Congress this week, "You lie!"  I guess that needs the exclamation point.

 

     Presidents do lie, of course.  You can argue where Richard Nixon's "This president is not a crook" line falls in the true-false spectrum, but Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that women" (Monica Lewinsky) was clearly in the flat-out lie category.  So they do lie sometimes, but we don't interrupt their speeches to tell them so.  That's rude--oafish, loutish behavior.  If Congress or some other group awards Mr. Wilson the "Oaf of the Year Award," I'd probably cheer.

 

     Or Mr. Wilson could resign from Congress, move to Britain and run for Parliament.  They yell insults at each other all the time.  Question Time, a Parliamentary institution, is where the abuse is often thickest.  An opposition MP asks the Prime Minister, or whoever's turn it is that day, a question. The answer will be immediately interrupted as opposition MPs yell things like "Sit down!"  One of the legendary putdowns--generations ago, but the story is still told--came when an MP named Palings (a paling, but the way is a fencepost) called Winston Churchill a "dirty dog."  Churchill:  "The honorable gentleman has called me a dirty dog.  I would remind him of what dogs do to palings," which of course is to pee on them.

 

     I enjoyed the British system when I lived there.  They were good at hurling insults without ever actually hating each other.  I'm not sure we have that knack, but I expect we'll find out as we follow Rep. Wilson's career, assuming he still has one.  At any rate, he has a last name which does not immediately invite attack. 

---

Get back to school stuff for them and cashback for you. Try Bing now.

September 7, 2009

      Barack Obama may want to think, in these waning days of summer, about an old saying:  "Of all sad words of tongue nor pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'"      We know, heading into the last few months of this president's first term that he is thoughtful and smart.  We don't know yet how good he is at getting things done. We're going to find out pretty soon, though.  The issue, of course, is health care.      The president said early it was a big deal for him, a priority, but he left it up to Congress to draft the bill.  This worked about as well as you might expect.  Several bills emerged from several committees and Congress fizzled and foozled over what to do with them.  Nothing, so far, is what it's chosen to do.      Now, I read the president is going to propose his own bill.  We'll see how good he is at twisting arms and compromising to get it passed.  Bob Dole, the former Republican leader in the Senate, has said Mr. Obama will have to do some horse-trading.  He's right of course, and that's a skill Mr. Obama may or may not have;  we just don't know yet.          The risk is that if he doesn't have it, failure on health care will infect the whole rest of his term with Congress paying little attention to a president it sees as ineffective, a talker who can't get things done.   

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

August 26, 2009

        Years ago, he was the family lightweight.  When he ran for president in 1980, I remember, CBS's Roger Mudd asked him why he wanted the job.  Edward Kennedy's long, rambling answer was fairly incoherent--something about natural resources.  None of us in the newsroom had any idea what he meant.      But he grew wiser--in more than forty years in the Senate, you learn things.  He had triumphs--his name is on a lot of bills--and tragedies.  His two older brothers, John and Robert--one a president, the other a candidate for the job--both murdered.       He had family, many friends and came to be one of the most powerful senators of his time--the Lion of the Senate was a phrase people used about him.  He did have the persona, and he certainly did have the hair.      He was here so long he was almost part of the landscape, and we'll miss him.  The cause of his life, he always said, was health care.  His Senate is wrestling with that issue now.  Maybe they'll finally pass a bill, and name it after him.      Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Column on hiatus

Mr. Morton's editor is escaping for a time. His column will resume when the wandering editor returns.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

August 25, 2009

          Are we going back to the moon?  Not soon.      The New York Times reports today--just forty years and a month after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface--that no one else will follow them anytime soon.  "Little chance" of repeating their walk on its 50th anniversary, the paper says, and "maybe not even by the 60th."       NASA plans to retire the space shuttles by September 2010 and use Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station until a new rocket, the Ares I, is ready in 2015.  It would retire the space station in 2016 and develop a bigger rocket, the Ares V, to get to the moon.  That's based on a plan President George W. Bush proposed in 2004.  Trouble is, Mr. Bush never asked Congress for as much money as the plan called for, and Congress never added it either.      And President Obama's budget outlined further cuts in 2011 and the years beyond.  A panel Obama appointed found that the moon plan was not "executable."      Does it matter?  The Times report quotes one pro-space advocate as saying  a lot of people care a little about space, but it's only a key issue for a few.  I suspect that's about right.  I mean, if you look at poverty and hunger around the world, if you look at the money our schools need here at home, where should space be on our list?  It's not first on mine, that's for sure, though as a reporter who covered those first flights from NASA's Manned Space Center outside Houston, it was exciting.      Oh, well.  Time to reread Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" maybe, and imagine what it might have been like. 
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

August 22, 2009

        Is President Obama in trouble with the voters?  The answer seems to be yes,  especially on one of his key themes--changes in the health care system.      A Washington Post-ABC News poll out today shows 49% of Americans now think Obama will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60% one hundred days into his presidency.  55% of those polled now think the country is on the wrong track.   Disapproval of his handling of the health care issue is 50%, the highest so far.   42% say they "strongly" disapprove.  His numbers are eroding from both ends of the spectrum.  He is losing those fearing "death panels" (thank you, Sarah Palin) as well as health care activists who see him caving to public opinion.      Why?  It may be that people feel they've elected a philosopher, not a man of action, that Obama's approach lacks passion.  Post columnist Eugene Robinson cites poet William Butler Yeats:  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."  Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, "He still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula;  his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were write by a committee."      One odd element--polls show seniors especially opposed to changes in health care.  But we codgers already have government health care.  It's called Medicare and this codger, at least thinks it works pretty well.       Wherever you stand, the basic facts are pretty clear.  We have more that 47 million people who have no coverage.  No other developed country comes even close to that proportion.  We need to fix that;  Mr. Obama knows that; and  Congress should.  Pass something, guys, we can improve it later on.  
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile