2009.01.20

President Bush reacts to a reporter's question during a news conference
at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008.
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

US Presidents' terms originally did not conclude until the 4th of March following the November election. The 20th Amendment moved this forward to the 20th of January.

FDR was the first President inaugurated on this new date, in 1937.

The next Inauguration Day will occur on January 20, 2009.

Trumpets will sound!

Whose presidential platform is this?

• Adopt single payer national health insurance
• Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget
• No to nuclear power, solar energy first
• Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime
• and corporate welfare
• Open up the Presidential debates
• Adopt a carbon pollution tax
• Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East
• Impeach Bush/Cheney
• Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law
• Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax
• Put an end to ballot access obstructionism
• Work to end corporate personhood

McCain? Of course not!

Clinton? No.

Obama? Not close.

It's Ralph Nader's.

Hillary's snowfight tonight

To frankly remain viable in the Democratic presidential delegate race, Hillary Clinton—like a challenger in a prizefight—must score a knockout or—at the least—win on all scorecards in tonight's Cleveland Ohio debate, in a snowstorm. A draw would go to the leader—and isn't that a remarkable thing in this Democratic primary season!—Barack Obama.

Dancing with McCain

We're about to spend a trillion in our occupation of Iraq. Osama bin Laden is at large. The country is in a recession. We're dependent on other nations for our cash reserves and oil.

But what's important this week?

John McCain had lunch ... with a woman ... nine years ago.

Frank Sinatra once saw a man dance with his wife in Chicago.

Egads! Enough already.

Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle

This is hilarious:
http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

One could daydream for a second or two, hoping that that link might be the snarkiest political attack of this election cycle. Of course, it has already not been so; Pandora opened her box long ago.

Do I care if Hillary Clinton served on the board of WalMart? Do I care that past POW John McCain talked to lobbyists? Yes.

But do those, and other things, comprise the greater portion of my calculus on who should lead this nation? No, and it's not even close.

We elect humans, not saints. Religion is the venue for absolutes; politics is the venue for actually getting things done.

With McCain, whatever the truth may be, it is his very legislative actions against the pernicious influence of big money and power that are protecting our electoral process.

With Clinton, we have a tough as nails leader, whose health care plan is vital for the health (pun intended) and the economic welfare of our nation.

Although this unreconstructed liberal (me) is for Clinton, Obama could indeed be an amazing option for president, both for the symbolism -- as with Hillary -- and for what he might be able to accomplish.

And anyone who thinks that Obama is all speechifying and no thinkifying: read his single-spaced position papers.

I am concerned, however, that an emotional fatigue may develop toward him, as it did with Bill Clinton. It's like the emotional high of a love affair, until that first day you realize that, hey, she/he has morning breath.

Those who have become so recently politically engaged, do not, just as precipitously, become disenchanted again.

For leadership, yes, moral fiber counts. As does strength under adversity, and crisis management, and intelligence, and experience, and "the vision thing".

So, be inspired, but care more for the plan than the (wo)man.

Facebook: privacy

Facebook was in the news for privacy issues last year and again just recently.

In November [2007], Facebook introduced an advertising program called Beacon that tracked its users’ activities on other Web sites and sent reports to their friends. Users complained that it was intrusive, leading Facebook to scale back the program.

And, last week's imbroglio:

Magnus Wallin, the founder of a Facebook group called “How to permanently delete your Facebook account,” posted a warning on Friday.

“Users who have requested to be deleted via the recently introduced form are only partly deleted, even though the deletion is confirmed by Facebook staff,” Mr. Wallin wrote.

On Saturday, after the partially deleted profiles disappeared, Mr. Wallin said in an e-mail message, “Now there seems to be a way to completely remove yourself from Facebook, without having to delete items individually.” But he does not plan to retire from his group.

“It’s pretty obvious that Facebook are scared of losing loads of members if they made the delete option easily available,” Mr. Wallin said.

Approaching my half-full/half-empty life year, I'm not in a demographic that extensively participates in Web 2.0. And, as a much-younger 20-something friend said to me—surprising me: "Why should I let everyone, everywhere, know my personal business, forever?"

In other words, you don't have to sign up. But, that being said, Facebook and others of its ilk can serve as useful networking tools.

On Feb. 8, a British newspaper, The Sun, reported that Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, had deleted his Facebook account ­ not out of privacy concerns, but because he got “more than 8,000 friend requests a day and spotted weird fan sites about him.”

Bill never listed me as a friend.

More from The New York Times, 18 February:
After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser.

Are you now, or have you ever been, a vegan?

Being a vegetarian, I was quite amused by this post on Mike Walter's blog. He's the morning co-anchor on WUSA-TV, the DC area CBS affiliate:

I don't know about you, but I slept a lot better last night. I went to bed knowing deep down that the government is in good hands. Maybe it's just me, but last time I checked our country was at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many people in this country are suffering and losing their homes to foreclosure. Oh and did I mention it appears our country is thundering towards a recession. Maybe I forgot to mention that we are leaving an enormous debt for our children and grandchildren to pay off. New Orleans is still suffering and in need of help. If you are in Congress you might need to think about these issues. Nah what am I thinking!

Forget about Waterboarding and whether our country should be spying on us, no America and Congress needs to know, in fact we must know, is Roger Clemens a Vegan! I was listening on C-Span radio yesterday to the Congressional hearing. I know one thing Clemens is smart and crafty. One Congressman moved in and tried to pin him down on the Vegan issue.

Congressman: 'Are you a Vegan?"

Clemens is trapped! Even though I'm listening to it on the radio, I can tell he's squirming, and uncomfortable. How is he going to get out of this jam? He certainly can't throw a fastball or a curveball this time can he? In a stroke of genius he decides not to answer the question. Does he plead the fifth? No he's too tricky for that.

Clemens: "Um, uh, um, uh, um I uh, I don't know what that is!"

It's incredible, but this exchange between Congressman Bruce Braley and steroid-use-denying baseball pitcher Roger Clemens actually did occur.

The Constitution obviously doesn't include intelligence as a prerequisite for Congressional service.

More

Digital television update

In February of 2009, TV rabbit ears will be going the way of the dodo bird. Standard television sets will no longer be able to receive a signal. If you subscribe to cable or satellite services, you should be ok and won't need to do anything

Otherwise, here's what to do.

Absence of Grace

People often speak of an absence of civility in Washington, but that's not quite the problem. Faking civility is a primary operating style: "My esteemed colleague."

What is needed is grace — sensitivity, mercy, generosity of spirit, a courtesy so deep it amounts to beauty. We will have to summon it. And the dreadful thing is you can't really fake it.

A very small theory, but my latest, is that many politicians and journalists lack a certain public grace because they spent their formative years in the American institution most likely to encourage base assumptions and coldness toward the foe. Yes, boarding school, and tony private schools in general. The last people with grace in America are poor Christians and religiously educated people of the middle class. The rich gave it up as an affectation long ago. Too bad, since they stayed in power.

The latest example of a lack of grace in Washington is the exchange between Jim Webb and President Bush at a White House Christmas party. Mr. Webb did not want to pose with the president and so didn't join the picture line. Fair enough, everyone feels silly on a picture line. Mr. Bush approached him later and asked after his son, a Marine. Mr. Webb said he'd like his son back from Iraq. Mr. Bush then, according to the Washington Post, said: "That's not what I asked you. How's your son?" Mr. Webb replied that's between him and his son.

For this Mr. Webb has been roundly criticized. And on reading the exchange I thought it had the sound of the rattling little aggressions of our day, but not on Mr. Webb's side. Imagine Lincoln saying, in such circumstances, "That's not what I asked you." Or JFK. Or Gerald Ford!

"That's not what I asked you" is a sentence straight from cable TV, from which many Americans are acquiring an attitude toward public and even private presentation.

Our interviewers and anchors have been taught, or learned, that they must show who's in charge, who's demanding answers, who's uncompromising in his search for truth. But of course they're not in search of truth; they're on a search for dominance.

Interviewers now always, as you have noticed, interrupt the person they're interviewing. Yes, they are trying to show who's in control of this conversation, and yes, they're trying to catch the interviewee off guard in hope of making news. They are attempting to keep trained and practiced politicians from launching unfruitful filibusters and boring everyone.

But interviewers also interrupt their subjects because they don't want the camera on the subject. They want the camera on themselves. <...>

The Dominance of the Face leads to the inevitability of the interruption:

"Why did you vote 'no'?"

"I felt--"

"But why'd you do it?"

"Well, the implications of the question, and the merits of the arguments seemed--"

"That's not what I asked you!"

Because of this style, no one in America has been allowed to finish a sentence in the past 10 years. And it is not confined to cable but has spread to the networks, to government, and is starting to affect regular people, encouraging in them a conversational style that is not friendly or graceful, but depositional.

This has not contributed to the presence of grace in our public life.

Peggy Noonan — past speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — wrote this in 2006. (Its political content is timely: Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has recently been mentioned as a potential Vice-Presidential Democratic nominee.)

But risking castigation as lacking grace myself, I might differ with Ms. Noonan as to the holders of grace in today's society. No religion — or non-religion — has a lock on that sacramental civility.

As often as one may encounter incivility, one can occasionally encounter anonymous politeness, pleasantry, collegiality, gentle discourse, and — okay, I'll say it — random acts of kindness.

Whether these are religiously spurred, I cannot — and should not be able to — tell. The very implication of grace is that it demands no recognition. It is not even its own reward. It is, simply put, the right thing to do.

And that is why I believe grace rare to find ... and personally difficult to practice.

Lithuania 1, Tsar 0

As late as the 1300s, Lithuania was the largest nation in Europe. It also had been the final European nation to accept Christianity.

But politics, geography, and cruel chance conspired to reduce Lithuania to a mere sliver — an annex of Tsarist Russia and Imperial Germany.

Today marks the 90th anniversary of its return to sovereignty — the 1918 Act of Independence of Lithuania. (The title to this post does actually miss the mark by a year. Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated in 1917. Snappy sound to it though!)

Of course, then came Stalin, then came Hitler, and then again Communist Russia. So we'll fly the flag again on 11 March — which in 1990 marked the reestablishment of the independence of Lithuania.

My forebears emigrated from Lithuania in the early 20th century. My mother's father — Josef Ambraziejus, born in 1877 — remembered burying Lithuanian-language books in the dirt floors of houses to save them from the Tsarist Cossacks who would raid villages, looking to eradicate any resurgence of of Lithuanian culture or resistance.

So, today, I proudly display the flag.

Prior related posts from my beer blog(!) on Lithuania.