Fwd: DECEMBER 12, 2013

     We're heading toward a new year and, of course, off-year elections. The Democrats will try to win back the House, now held by the Republicans, who in turn will try to win back the Senate, now Democratic.

      But the Republican primaries around the country may be as interesting as the general election. A coalition of Republicans and Democrats have agreed on a budget this week and, assuming it does become law, we'll be spared the inconveniences of another sequester next year.

     But it was moderate Republicans who agreed to the compromise. And in a number of primaries in 2014, moderates will be challenged by conservatives--the Tea Party wing of the party. They favor big cuts in spending and think shutting down the government is good fun. In fact, they'd like to shut parts of it permanently.

     So watch those Republican primaries next year. If the conservatives do well, big changes could follow.  

 

 

Fwd: DECEMBER 9, 2013

     Some cities are calm about sports:  Chicago's baseball Cubs haven't won the World Series in over a century, but fans still throng to Wrigley Field on sunny summer days and enjoy themselves.  Washington mostly takes things as they come; fans were pleased when the baseball Nationals made the playoffs last year but not wildly upset when they didn't this year.  The exception has always been the football team, the Redskins.  This year they are having a truly awful year--they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday, 45--10--and that means the Monday morning sports pages are something quite special.

     Red numbers on page 1 show some of the highlights.--151 for the number of rushing yards the Chiefs made--7.9 yards per carry, 6 for the number of times the 'Skins quarterback was sacked.  But it's the headlines on the stories that really tell the tale.

     One column's headline is, "We don't deserve this but they (the team and its owner, I think) deserve each other."  Another, about the coach: "No longer whether he should go but when."  Another: "A winter blunderland"  Or "Special teams turn in a horrendous effort," or, "In all phases Redskins have a frightful game...."

     And in bars today fans (ex-fans?) are no doubt reviving an old nickname for the team: the Deadskins.     

 

Fwd: DECEMBER 5, 2013

           Well, she knows how to do it, that's for sure.  She gave Barack Obama a tough race in the 2008 primaries, probably tougher than either of his Republican opponents did in the fall.  Is she too old?  No, she'll be sixty-nine on election day, 2016.  And she's certainly got the resume:  eight years in the U.S. Senate;  four as Secretary of State; and eight years in that big house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Do you suppose she misses it, sometimes?

     She—Hillary Clinton, of course--gave a speech in New York this weekend and didn't talk about running.  She reminisced about opposing the Vietnam War in college, about going to Yale Law School because some fool at Harvard said, "We don't need any more women."  She talked about all sorts of things except running for her husband's old job.

     Will she run?  I'd bet yes.  Last time Democrats in the primaries knew they were going to nominate either the first black major party presidential candidate ever or the first woman. The black, as we all know, won the nomination and then the presidency.

     This time, I think I'd bet on the girl.

 

Fwd: DECEMBER 4, 2013

    My kids like books.  No wonder, their parents did.  And my friends do too.  At Christmas I'm always reminded of one of the sadder trends of our time, the disappearance of the local book store.

     That doesn't mean I'm giving worse or fewer books than I once did.  Washington, where I live, has a large, excellent book called "Politics and Prose"  with big stock, knowledgeable clerks, everything you could want.  They know how to ship their stock too, wherever you want it sent.

     No, what I miss about the old neighborhood stores--there were two near me--is that whenever I felt like it, I could walk over and browse.  I might see a cover on a display book that got me interested, might see a new book by a favorite author I didn't know had written one--that kind of thing.  I miss browsing, finding something unexpected.  There's no way to do it nowadays.

      Don't worry, friends.  Gift books from me will be as carefully selected as always and I hope you like them.  It's just that choosing them used to be a little more fun a decade or two ago.

 

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

      A lot of presences lurk in my apartment building, some human, some not.

     The latest to declare itself is the Trash Room, previously known as a modest place, where a resident could leave, yes, trash--old food, read newspapers, whatever.  All would rest there quietly until the removal people came to take it away.

     Maybe this was too calm for the Room.  Maybe it wanted action, adventure, a touch of danger. The other day, it took a hostage.

      The taking wasn't secret;  the hostage's pleas for help could be heard through the door, but would-be rescuers in the building couldn't open that door no matter how hard they tugged and kicked and hammered.

     What to do?  Call the cops? No, nobody robbed or assaulted, that wasn't it. An ambulance?  No was was sick or hurt, yet. The Fire Dept.?  Yes, what a good idea!

     The firefighters arrived quickly and opened the door about as easily as you'd expect of men used to battling twelve foot flames. Hostage freed, crisis over.

     We residents are feeling pretty good. The freed hostage is truly happy.  The Trash Room?  We hope it''s learned a lesson but only time, as they say, will tell.

 

Fwd: NOVEMBER 21, 2013

 

      One of the nice things presidents get to do is present deserving Americans with the Medal of Freedom.  The awards remind the rest of us of what a fine, diverse place this country is.

     Some--not all--of this year's winners:    

 

     Ernie Banks, the great Chicago Cubs infielder. It's not his fault they haven't won a World Series in more than a century;

     Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post. Remember Watergate?  President Richard Nixon resigning?

 

     Gloria Steinem, a leader of the women's movement;

     Bill Clinton--well, you know who he is;

 

     Oprah Winfrey—you know who she is too

     Richard Lugar, former Republican senator from Indiana, who was way smarter than most;

     Sally Ride, the first American woman in space;

     Dean Smith, former basketball coach at the University of North Carolina.  Well, there was the occasional loss to Duke, sure, but still....;

     Loretta Lynn.  Hard to end the list on a better note.  Still love that voice, those songs.
    .

 

Fwd: NOVEMBER 18, 2013

     I wrote recently that America seems to be changing its mind on gay marriage.  There's another straw in that wind today.

     It involves two sisters, daughters of Richard Cheney, a conservative Republican who was George W. Bush's Vice President--so you can see we're not talking wild-eyed liberals here.

     Mary Cheney, one of the sisters, is lesbian and has a wife.  Liz, the other sister, is straight and disagrees with her sister.  "I love Mary very much. I love her family very much," Liz said.  "This is just an issue on which we disagree."  Mary and her wife reacted promptly. "Liz has been a guest in our house...shared holidays with our children...to have her now say she doesn't support our right to marry is offensive to say the least."

     Former VP Cheney, the father, issued a statement supporting gay marriage in 2009, after his term had ended.  Well, it's a trend. There's nothing to say whole families have to adopt it all at once.

         
    

Fwd: NOVEMBER 17, 2013

     The newspapers remind me that it was fifty years ago this week that President John Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

     The first question for readers old enough is, "Where were you?"  Easy for me.  I was a reporter then, working out of London.  The news hit Britons, I think, almost as hard as it hit Americans.  Big Ben normally tolls the hours, halves, and quarters like any clock with a bell tower.  When a sovereign--a king or queen--dies, it tolls in mourning once every minute.  It tolled once a minute for Kennedy too--the only time it's ever done that for a non-royal.  On a more prosaic note, cab drivers, once they'd heard your American accent, wouldn't take your money.

     The more serious question is, what is JFK's legacy?  It's not so much what he did, I think, as what he started.  He said men should walk on the moon and men--Americans--did.  I remember that because CBS News, for which I then worked, stayed on the air the whole time astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stayed on the moon--twenty-some hours.

     The most important domestic legislation of the 60s was probably the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Kennedy's Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, was president by then, but there's no doubt JFK helped set the stage for them.

     Maybe the atmosphere of his years in power mattered most.  His widow Jacqueline called it Camelot, King Arthur's realm. Many Americans came to believe she was right.