BRILLIANT!!

Here is a wonderful Globe story about an ad campaign targeted at the 15,000 media people who will visit our fair city to watch The Presumptive Nominee lose his middle name. Nice pro-bono work by Arnold Worldwide and Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos. I can't wait to see the ads, and I bet that they run for YEARS afterward. Some slogans:

"Mapping the human genome was easy. Mapping downtown? That's another story."

"If they had a super bowl for science and technology, we'd win that, too."

"Of course, we're a forward-looking city...
We've been saying 'Wait 'till next year' every year since 1918."

And here is an even better Boston story that can't be compressed into a subway poster ad. Why were Bostonians 200 years ago so happy to join the US Navy and fight? One excellent though entirely bogus answer is here.

Joan Goes to Confession Again

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 3 weeks since my last confession. Father, I accuse myself of writing nasty things about The Presumptive Nominee in the pages of the Boston Globe.

Are you writing the truth, my child?

Well, yes, but in doing so I am not serving the higher cause that brought so many to serve in the Liberal Media.

Give me some examples of this sin, my child.

"JOHN KERRY refuses to waver when it comes to one key issue -- what is best for John Kerry."

Are you perhaps confusing him with the Clintons, dear?

Not a chance.

What else did you write?

"The world is torn over America's foreign policy. The political stage is global, the stakes for America's next president are higher than ever. In the midst of this, the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be worries about offending the Boston patrolmen's union? If Kerry truly offers the clear alternative to George W. Bush he contends he does, does he really need to bow down before labor in order to win foot soldiers for election day get-out-the-vote efforts? If the choice is that simple, voters will flood the polls to vote for the Democrat and will not require Teamsters to drag them there...

Kerry's "Sister Souljah" moment of walking away from a traditional Democratic constituency came at the expense of an interest group much less powerful than labor. He had one such moment with gays, when he supported a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. If he deems it necessary to make another show of independence before November, which constituency is disposable?

It will not be labor,...In essence, Kerry sold out the rest of city, so he can walk in glory into the FleetCenter. More personally, he sold out the mayor by embarrassing him before colleagues such as Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a Democrat, who said of Kerry's speech cancellation, "I'm extremely disappointed and I'm leaning towards being angry. It's not a leadership move."

It was never intended as a leadership move. It is a political move, Kerry thinking about what is best for Kerry. Is it the correct political move? We shall see."

Well, my child, I would not worry too much about this. There are many Globe columnists who are never troubled by thoughtless allegiance to the dogma of the Left. Maybe this struggle is a sign of your development. Or maybe your concern is about another Dukakis debacle, and having all those out-of-towners laughing at Boston again, and calling it a second rate city at best.

Oh! That reminds me that the Sox are starting their series with the Yankees tonight. For your penance, watch all 3 Sox-Yankees games, and then write a column exploring why so few Democrats personally like John Kerry. Go in peace. Te absolvo.

A TALE OF TWO MOVIES

I can't vouch for the rest of his blog, but here is a superb Internet public service. Jeff juxtaposes comments by the same critics reviewing Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ. Rich reading here.

Mark Mecca Yousmile

Mark Steyn has a field day with Slick Willie's memoir. The whole thing is worth a read, but here are some highlights:

Is there anything interesting in "My Life" by Bill Clinton? Oh, yes. Page 870.

The Clintons are in New Zealand and finally get to meet "Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest and, most important, was the man Chelsea's mother had been named for."

Hmm. Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in 1953. Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and an unlikely inspiration for two young parents in the Chicago suburbs. I mentioned this in Britain's Sunday Telegraph eight years ago this very week, after this little story was trotted out the first time, but like so many curious anomalies in the Clinton record, it somehow cruises on indestructibly. By the time Sir Edmund shuffles off this mortal coil, the New York Times headline will read: "Man for Whom President Rodham Named Dies; Climbed Everest in 1947."

...

Mr. Clinton is certainly thinking of his legacy. The index lists more pages for "bin Laden, Osama" than "Jones, Paula," which isn't how it seemed at the time. You can't blame the poor fellow. As things stand, you'd be hard put to devise a more apt personal embodiment of the long holiday from history the U.S. took between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center. If geopolitics is the Super Bowl, Mr. Clinton is Janet Jackson, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.

...

The president…winds up with a book that reads like the world's biggest Rolodex punctuated by self-doubt.

...

Tina Brown was on to something when she cooed that Bill exists "vividly in the present tense and dares you to join him there." In this book, he slides drably into the past, and the stories come up all mildewed: It now depends what the meaning of "was" was. That's a tougher sell.

Would You Buy A Used Focus Group From This Paper?

Today's Boston Globe squanders a story of wonderful potential about the phenomenon of wife acceptance factor (WAF). This is a topic continuously discussed by married men who all find that their purchase of gadgets is now constrained by the aesthetic sensibilities of their spouses. Perhaps the first blunder in the creation of this story was the assignment of female reporter. How can men be expected to share such intimate secrets with an unknown female not employed in the adult entertainment field? This is the equivalent of sending a male sports reporter to cover an event at the local rape crisis center.

Where the story really falls down is in its selection of 2 "typical" couples to represent this universal gender dilemma. The first couple consists of a money manager from a happily unnamed firm who got into trouble with his spouse by purchasing (by mistake) an expensive motorcycle on eBay. He got out of this trouble by trading the motorcycle in on a new Nissan 350Z sports car for himself plus a new Honda Element for his spouse. Clearly, this couple has far more money than sense, and that would still be true even if their income was substantially lower. The article is complete with a picture of this blissful couple and his shiny new sports car – he in a T-shirt and baseball cap, while his beaming bride smiles at him from inside a tent-sized tie-dye T-shirt.

Somebody please bang the gong! Can you spell D.I.N.K?

The second focus group couple is a forty-ish pair of high powered tech executives (now both retired, although she seems to have commenced a second career as a power shopper). These two are currently gutting and renovating a newly purchased home in Brookline. For those of you not acquainted with our locale, a few facts concerning the real estate market in Brookline will be helpful. At this moment according to Realtor.com there are a 88 single-family homes for sale in the town of Brookline, the median price of which is approximately $1.6 million, while the 5th and 95th percentile prices are $500,000 and $5 million, respectively. Couple #2 of our little Globe focus group (some Googling reveals) were fortunate enough to cash out their founder stock of a networking company that was acquired during the Internet boom years. Get the picture? More power to them, say I, but they are hardly focus group material for any study venturing outside of Louisberg Square. Do these folks remind you of your neighbors? Not you, TeRAYsa! I’m talking about the other Globe readers.

Our second focus group couple, as part of this renovation to their new multi-million dollar home is buying 4 high-definition flat-panel TVs with remote controls located throughout. In common sense terms (which do not appear in this article) the TV budget for their home renovation would finance a fine new kitchen for most ordinary folks.

Thus is squandered another opportunity (and they are so rare today!) to tell a story which enlightens readers on the common yet precarious balance between concord and conflict so characteristic of that subset of today’s Massachusetts marriages that feature gender diverse couples.

Kerry Lets Menino Face the Unions Alone

Don’t call it flip-flopping, lest you play into the hands of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but the campaign of The Presumptive Nominee confused the heck out of the Globe this weekend with the on-off-on-off signals it sent concerning a speech that The Presumptive Nominee was scheduled to give in Boston to the Conference of US Mayors. The issue is caused by the presence of pickets from Boston’s Patrolman’s Association, who are without a contract and promise to picket the Democratic Convention as well if they can’t reach one before then.

Saturday’s Globe carried a story which quoted unnamed Kerry aides whining about the situation and wishing that it would just go away.

'This is larger than this particular event -- we're looking toward the whole convention week and we would like this whole thing to be defused. There are meetings and talks going on this weekend between the city and the union, and we are being hopeful at this point.'

That’s a nice approach. Sounds like a team ready to take on Bin Laden, does it not? On Saturday an aide was quoted as saying the speech was off, but this story was changed within an hour or so.

At one point yesterday afternoon, Kerry spokesman David Wade said: "The Boston event is off. He won't cross a picket line. "But shortly afterward, in an e-mail to reporters, Wade said, "We have not made any official or final decisions."

The Sunday Globe headlines said “Kerry Refuses to Cross Picket”, but this was not the content of the story, which did not quote Kerry, reported only on Saturday’s events and said that The Presumptive Nominee had “moved closer” to a cancellation:

Declaring his refusal to cross a union picket line, Senator John F. Kerry yesterday moved closer to canceling a speech before the US Conference of Mayors as union demonstrators marched on an evening event hosted by Mayor Thomas M. Menino."

By late Sunday afternoon Reuters had the final word from Kerry himself who was quoted:

'I don't cross picket lines. I never have,' Kerry said at Our Lady of Good Voyage church in South Boston, where he attended Mass on Sunday evening.

Tomorrow’s headline should read “Kerry Lets Menino Take the Heat Alone”. The poor mayor has another month to settle the public employee labor disputes before they disrupt the convention. Maybe he can find a billionaire who is willing to float him a loan for a new contract, because it sure doesn’t look like he’s going to get any other help from his party. Their message seems to be that he should just capitulate now.

After all that political party machination and maneuvering it was refreshing to read about a small group of college students who are walking through New England in a quiet, peaceful protest against Catholic politicians who, while claiming they are not pro-abortion, have never once voted for any legislation placing any limits on the practice of abortion. Massachusetts sends many such to Washington, including both of our US Senators.

"It's about integrity," Elizabeth Mazzia said. "These politicians that say that they are Catholic aren't following Catholic doctrine. It's completely incompatible. If you can't trust them to be true to what they are, then how can you trust them to be true to their country?"

Those kids have a way of cutting to the heart of the matter. Would that more Catholic priests and Bishops had this much insight and courage.

New Gifts Outright

Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty 

My work today was in part the pleasant task of escorting two Australian visitors around the city of Boston. Last fall, when I had visited Australia on business, one of these two had spent his whole Sunday taking me around to see the sights of Melbourne, and making it a beautiful city for me instead of just a hotel room. Now was my chance to return the favor.

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

They were perfect tourists – happy to walk long distances and simply enjoy every part of a marvelous June day in Boston. We walked for miles and then rode the subway into Cambridge for lunch, then walked more miles. Government Center, Old State House, Boston Common, Public Garden, Beacon Hill, John Kerry’s townhouse complete with Secret Service, Acorn Street, Charles Street, Copley Square, Trinity Church, Newbury Street, Cambridge, Harvard Yard, Sanders Theatre, North End, Old North Church, Copps Hill, USS Constitution, Long Wharf.

On the way back to their hotel, we made a stop at the Cradle of Liberty, Faneuil Hall. I wanted them to see the inside of the hall for historical reasons, but it was closed because the Immigration and Naturalization Service was holding a ceremony for new US citizens taking their oath.

But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we were still unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

When we got to Faneuil Hall, the ceremony had ended and the new citizens were coming down the stairs in waves. In groups of 5, 10 and 20 they came down from the hall above where flashbulbs recorded the occasion. Ghanans, Indians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Turks, Russians, Chileans, Irish, Pakistanis, Taiwanese, Brazilians. We were seeing the rainbow of the human race flow by us as a stream. They walked from the hall clutching their new certificates of citizenship into the bright sun of a June Boston afternoon. In the very hall where our founders had debated their plans for independence, they had just taken an oath and were now also a part of the same noble experiment. It choked me up. As they walked past and our eyes met, I just smiled at them and said “Congratulations!”, and the new citizens smiled back at me.

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

I asked the guards who were holding open the doors if we could go up to the hall, but they refused. Really it didn’t matter, for here we were watching American history being made from where we stood outside the hall. “This is America.", I told my Australian guests, "We have seen nothing today more truly American than this moment.”

Welcome to your new home, citizens. Thank you for giving yourselves to us.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright...
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Batting Above Their Average

The Globe offers a better-than-average OpEd page today. Renee Loth leads off with a speculative piece positing that the Democrat move to force a special election for US Senator (after a Kerry vicotry in November, it must be remembered) will not help them as much as one might think, due to the unseemly spectacle of a bunch of desperate Massachusetts Democrat Old-Boy pols straining to grasp a rare opportunity. She sure has a point there, but I disagree. I think somebody like Barney Frank could stand out from the crowd she mentions (being Jewish, gay, articulate, and a bit of an iconoclast will help with that!). But she's right that the thought of this spectacle is unappealing:

Democrats muscle though[sic] the bill to set the special election early in 2005. Pent-up demand - it has been 20 years since the last open US Senate race in Massachusetts - plus the powerful incentive that no sitting officeholder will have to jeopardize a seat to run in an off-year election, creates a rugby scrum of Democrats in the primary.

Just for starters, congressmen Edward Markey, Marty Meehan, Barney Frank, Stephen Lynch, and William Delahunt say they are interested in a run. Add other ambitious pols, like Attorney General Tom Riley, at least one woman, a person of color, someone from the business community, and some semi-perennials, and you have a bruising primary in which the liberal vote splits like a wooden bat.

The other problem here is that this whole question reminds me of the way George HW Bush's Cabinet started jockeying after the Gulf War for higher posts in his second term. They didn't need to worry about it.

Oliphant has a pretentious piece that casts the Dem's VP choice as between tactical, National Security, value-added type candidates. Olli's only value-added here is that he shows how horrendously weak the Democratic party is on national defense issues by being unable to even think up a National Security type candidate for Veep who is actually a Democrat.

The national security move, which would be a surprise given Kerry's credentials in this area, is based on current events. It would require a dark horse on the order of nominal Republican Bill Cohen of Maine, Clinton's second-term defense secretary.

Too bad Scoop Jackson is dead. How about some guy who served in Vietnam? If it wasn't for his shameful conduct in 1971, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts would be an inspired choice. I know am not alone in that opinion.

Finally Joan Vennochi notes the Republican's move to put US Senators on the record regarding the divisive issue of gay marriage.

The Hatch hearing will showcase a proposed constitutional amendment to give states the authority to decide what form of marriage they will honor within their borders and allow them to refuse to recognize marriage contracts deemed legal in other states. The hearing, twice delayed, is part of a larger Republican strategy to help focus attention on social issues in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention. Senate Republican leaders said last week that they plan to put a federal ban on gay marriage to a vote by mid-July, forcing Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and other Democrats to cast a controversial ballot.

Bush is trying to reinspire conservatives, especially the Christian Coalition. "The whole gay marriage issue has caused a rebirth of the social conservative movement," Republican strategist Scott Reed told The Wall Street Journal.

It is smart, totally cynical politics. However, after four years of the Bush administration, the voters may be smarter and even more cynical.

First note the assumption that the move to get both parties on the record regarding a this question is cynical. You won't find anyone who argues with that thesis in the Globe newsroom, but I disagree. It is a move consistent with Bush's core beliefs, and it works for him politically (or so he calculates). If that is cynical, what can be said of Bush's predecessor -- who at his core had no beliefs, but only ambitions, needs, and appetites.

Speaking of old 42, I believe this is a play from Bill Clinton's playbook, Joanie. He called it triangulation. You are whistling past the graveyard if you think it might not be effective.

No more blogging until Saturday. Day/night meetings.

"pacified communists "

Monday's Globe is a crashing bore. A good day for filling the OpEd page with a long-winded
editorial, one of many that will inevitably be trotted out before the Globe can claim that its upcoming endorsement of The Presumptive Nominee is both thought out and strictly on the merits. We have seen this liturgy many times before. That may be why Shannon O'Brien is Governor today. A telling excerpt:

"If there is a troubling contradiction in Kerry's foreign policy platform, it lies in the contrast between his get-tough remarks about Saudi Arabia and his desire to "explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam." The clerical despots in Tehran -- who have lately been chastized[sic] for lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency about their nuclear program -- have nothing in common with the pacified communists who rule Vietnam."

If you live here in Boston (and didn’t flee here from Vietnam in the 1970s) I suppose you could view Vietnam's government as pacified. A more accurate description would be "sponsorless" since the demise of the USSR left no Socialist Sugar Daddy to help prop up their economy. Somehow I doubt that people who have remained all these years in Ho Chi Minh City regard them as "pacified" to the same degree.

The most interesting story I found is well buried in the middle of the Local section. It concerns a diverse group that sponsored the display of the shattered hulk of a Jerusalem bus which had been destroyed by a suicide bomber, killing 11. The remains of the bus were displayed yesterday at City Hall Plaza. The mute eloquence of this was somehow provocative and brought out some pro-Palestinian demonstrators (whom the Globe is careful not to call anti-you-know-what).

Many of the protesters were from the New England Committee to Defend Palestine, based in Jamaica Plain.

''I'm here today because this march is a march celebrating racism and apartheid in Palestine, where I'm from," said Lana Habash, a member of the committee.

Asked about her reaction to the bombed bus, she said Palestinians had tried work strikes, protests on the streets, and other methods to decry the taking of their land and acts of violence against them.

''I think when you've tried everything else, there is an international human right to resist," said Habash.

Perhaps next time, since the bus didn’t seem enough to make the point, they might display some photos of the shattered bodies of those 11 people who were slain (and how many were badly wounded?) on a normal morning commute in what is this woman's idea of an expression of the “international human right to resist”.

Sadly, the online edition of the Globe adds further insult by flubbing the caption of the picture of the bus, giving it instead a caption from another story in today’s paper about Boston Public School bus drivers. It says:

Georgeana Felton, operations supervisor at the First Student Charlestown Terminal, posted bus driver schedules earlier this month. Drivers are watching closely as school officials work to overhaul the system’s student assignment policy (Globe Staff Photo / Pat Greenhouse)

Political Correctness Scalps Itself

It could only be done this well in Massachusetts.

The year 2004 is the 300th anniversary of what less sensitive times commonly referred to as the “Deerfield Massacre”. This was a raid during Queen Anne's War in which over 50 colonists were killed, and about 150 captured and taken on a forced march to Canada.

This story in the Sunday Globe (which carefully avoids using the judgemental term in the paragraph above) tells how the local historical society has covered some stone tablets from the 19th century which contain text deemed too coarse for our highly sensitive 21st century ears. References to “savages” and “Negro servants” are two examples. The offensive text is now safely behind hanging flaps of cloth which have been designed to match the stone tablets, but contain revised descriptions that use current terms for Native American tribes and are more nuanced. Only those museum visitors who risk their sensitive souls and lift the cloth will be exposed to the offensive 19th century language on the stone tablets underneath. The example given in the article is of an original text describing a young woman captured by the tribe formerly known as Mohawks:

'Mary, adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one.'

And the revised text:

‘She married a Kanien'kehaka and adopted the culture, customs and language of her new community in Kahnawake.'

The latter reading is not offensive to Native Americans. But what about feminist sensibilities? Are we to believe that such girls and young women of 1704 were not victims of trafficking, but instead simply flexible enough to adopt the culture customs and language of those who had kidnapped...er, adopted them? I hope no feminists read this article too carefully, lest the museum be forced to hang yet another flap to avoid yet another flap, and stay out in front of the culture, language, and customs of the Pioneer Valley in the 21st century.

Clinton Memoir Correlation - A New Cottage Industry?

Mark Steyn has a blast reviewing Clinton at the Thomason movie premiere, plugging his book with Rather, etc. I have some of the funniest bits here. He also points to what will be a new cottage industry starting this week. Now BOTH Clintons have long and boring written memoirs. While I personally have not read either, it is hard not to believe that both books are full of "honesty-challenged" material, knowing the First Couple's common knack for creating their own realities. Now that they both have written records of their years in power, I imagine that quite a few people will simply see where in these 2 memoirs the stories don't match. I doubt the publisher had them correlated before publishing. Betcha this exposes a whopper or two. In Clinton still has 'heat' - but it's the Democrats who are getting burnt Steyn writes:

"Mr Clinton also expands on the details of his belated confession to Hillary. In Mrs Clinton's version (from last year's unreadable doorstopper autobiography), she says she could 'hardly breathe' and was 'gulping for air', which sounds more like Monica's problem. Now Bill tells us that she made him sleep on the couch. I assumed he was speaking metaphorically, but apparently not: he claims he was banished to an actual couch in a living room next to their bedroom, for two months.

This would be bad news for Kerry, except that he's such a terrible candidate people like him more the less they see of him. He took a week off as a mark of respect for the late President Reagan and his numbers inched up. If he had taken another week off as a mark of respect for the late Ray Charles, he could have opened up a clear lead. If he took the summer off as a mark of respect for the late Sir Peter Ustinov and the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, he would be heading for a landslide. So Clinton sucking up Kerry's oxygen is the best news there is for the Senator.

...Clinton is what you wind up with when you have Reagan's communication skills but nothing to communicate...

The Clintons' Democratic Party was great for the Clintons but disastrous for the Democratic Party: during the 1990s, they lost the House and the Senate and a ton of governorships and state legislatures, and eventually, with nothing else left to lose, they lost the presidency. Clinton's heat left the party so parched for talent they had no successful governors to run for president and were forced to turn to a stiff hack weathervane senator in the hope they could so damage Bush they could drag their boy across the finishing line.

If you think a great political party should be a star vehicle for a guy who won't get off the stage, fine. But, if you don't, then it is time, as Bill Clinton used to say, to move on. Monica's no longer on her knees. There's no reason why anyone else should be."

More Muddled Thinking from Academia

Saturday's Globe has some amusing coverage of the upcoming Democratic Convention and Boston’s panicky preparations for it. But one article that catches the eye was and interview with Diana L. Eck, who is director of Harvard's “Pluralism Project” (it is a project for them?!) on the subject of religion in politics. This excerpt is a fine example of how the academic left (sorry for the redundancy) cannot grasp and fumbles on this type of question:

Martin Luther King led the movement for civil rights and was clear he was doing this out of religious conviction. Could a bishop or evangelical say they are doing exactly what King did?
The difference is that King was basing his views not only on his Christian faith, but also on the Constitution and the promise of equality. That was something on which people could get on board, whether or not they were involved with his particular church.

What we have been seeing is the deliberate use of the institutional church for party politics. Communion [for] Kerry would be a perfect example. This drags up the issues that stimulated anti-Catholicism in the 19th century, the sense that a good Catholic couldn't be a good American because they didn't have freedom of conscience. A public leader is elected to represent not just the people of a single church, but the people of many churches and the people who voted for that person who don't consider themselves religious. The idea that a church should say a public figure doesn't represent all of our doctrines is not what America is about.

Freedom of conscience is exactly NOT the point the Bishops made. Their argument was quite simple. Governments and their laws are instituted to establish justice (a slippery concept, yes, but check out the Preamble to the US Constitution as a reference). Legislators who enact laws are free to do so as they are guided by their own consciences, their constituents, or whatever. They cannot make choices that are diametrically opposed to fundamental points of Church doctrine (such as the right to life) while at the same time maintaining that they are in full communion with the Catholic Church. There are many points of view, but only a subset of them can be labeled as Catholic. Freedom of conscience does not permit any idea to be defined as Catholic. Who is allowed to determine what constitutes one’s standing within the Catholic church, the individual or the Church? That is a question that we have wrestled with since Martin Luther posed it.

Since the Democratic party platform explicity endorses abortion as a right, Democratic legislators have straddled this point for the 30+ years since the Roe vs. Wade decision. The sidestep always begins by reciting the worn cliche “While I am personally opposed to abortion…[I will now vote in a way that nobody whose personal conscience was deeply opposed to abortion would vote]”. Note that this question does not concern the rule of law, because legislators are creating new law, not enforcing existing law. Thus officials of the executive branch get a pass here, because they are not legislating.

Choosing the Bishops over the Times

It is difficult to empathize with the assembled Bishops of the US Catholic Church, who are meeting now in Colorado. This is a group that 20 years ago was told in writing at just such a meeting that the US Church had a major problem with clerical sexual abuse that was not being dealt with effectively, would blow up in the Church's face, hurt the Church's mission, and leave the Church vulnerable to the highest of American high priesthoods -- plaintiff lawyers. They spend 9 years dealing with the issue in private, about 9 years where a few major offenders were publicly exposed, and the last 2 years trying to deal with it in very uncomfortable public settings after more of the relevant documents were subpoenaed and eventually leaked to an eager and willing news media. So the US Conference of Bishops is not a group that one would charge with dynamic leadership.

But I digress.

Yesterday the Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a letter entitled "Catholics in Political Life", which is reported in today’s NY Times. It says something even more damning about the credibility of the Times that rather than read their account, which was headlined "Politicians Face Censure From Bishops on Abortion Rights", I decided to Google my way to the actual Bishops' letter, which is probably shorter than the Times article and is (more importantly) free from media intermediation.

Besides the usual rigmaroles mandatory for pastoral letters (even short ones like this), I was impressed by 2 points that the Bishops made, and I quote:

"The separation of church and state does not require division between belief and public action, between moral principles and political choices, but protects the right of believers and religious groups to practice their faith and act on their values in public life."

This common-sense statement expresses an idea that has become lost in the militant secularist climate in our country, exemplified by the mainstream media. For a great example of this unfamiliarly, see this thread on a Boston Globe editorial published earlier this week. The editorial addressed the exact same topic as the Bishops' letter.

The second pearl of wisdom in the Bishops' letter was this:

The polarizing tendencies of election-year politics can lead to circumstances in which Catholic teaching and sacramental practice can be misused for political ends. Respect for the Holy Eucharist, in particular, demands that it be received worthily and that it be seen as the source for our common mission in the world.

That is a point that you will not find in explored by any part of the media -- left or right -- and a point that should be remembered by all. Both major US political parties are fighting for the "Catholic vote", and like every part of this interminable election campaign, the fight is ugly.

Which is bigger news? Page 1 or page 21?

Page 1 of today's Globe highlights the unsurprising story that the US air defenses were not prepared to deal with the events of 9/11.

"F-16 fighter pilots sent to circle the nation's capital on the morning of the 2001 terrorist attacks never learned that Vice President Dick Cheney had authorized them to shoot down hijacked planes -- an order given after all four planes had crashed -- the Sept. 11 commission disclosed yesterday in a report that portrayed a chaotic response by federal officials who were caught off guard."

Bush's fault, I guess, that nobody planned a defense against for 4 simultaneous suicide airliner hijackings by people armed with box-cutters. Thanks go to the 9/11 commission for that bit of hindsight, and to the editors for giving it play on page 1.

But another story that is relegated to page A21 of the Globe reports the most recent Pew poll and says:

Bush's job approval rating in the poll was 48 percent, up slightly from 44 percent in May, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The poll of 1,806 adults was taken from June 3 to 13 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, slightly higher for the sample of registered voters.

Bush had a slight lead over Kerry in a three-way matchup; the president was at 46 percent, Kerry at 42 percent, and independent Ralph Nader at 6 percent. Bush and Kerry were tied in a two-way race.

Almost six in 10, 57 percent, said the situation in Iraq is going well, up from 46 percent a month earlier. Almost that many, 55 percent, said military action in Iraq was the right decision, up slightly from 51 percent a month earlier.

So which story is bigger news? I infer the Globe's opinion from the way they play them, but it is difficult not to imagine that cheerleading is at work here.

Truth Remains Stranger than Fiction

Could Orwell have topped this statement? No way. In the New York Times :

"Former President Bill Clinton said last night that while he does not 'wake up in the morning hating Ken Starr,'' he nevertheless accused the former independent prosecutor of an 'abuse of power'' that 'crushed innocents.''

Kristof: Dare We Call It Genocide?

Nick Kristof on Darfur/Sudan says:

"...if she and her people aren't victims of genocide, then the word has no meaning."

Unlike Saddam, these people are too poor to grease any palms within Kofi's Secretariat, which explains the low priority given to their destruction by the world opinion leaders at the UN.

Kristof is speaking the truth plainly.

Secular Behavior

From the high horse of The Sole Progressive World View (SPWV) today's Globey editorial page opines:

"WITH SOME bishops talking about denying Communion to Senator John Kerry, with the Massachusetts Catholic Conference alerting all 710 parishes to 'share their profound disappointment' with lawmakers who oppose the church position on gay marriage, and with President Bush, according to a church newspaper, trying to enlist Pope John Paul II to support his social positions during the presidential campaign, it is clear that the Catholic Church will be in the political spotlight for the next five months.

The church and its leaders have every right to join in political debate as long as they don't effectively endorse specific candidates, jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

However, we hope that the church will recognize that elected officials, even those who belong to a particular church, represent all citizens in a pluralistic society. Church leaders cannot expect religious doctrine to govern secular behavior." [emphasis mine]

Apparently according to the SPWV human behavior is divided between the secular and the religious. Possessed by such enlightenment, we need only determine in which sphere particular behaviors belong and thus whether or not our religious Faith should hold influence. Don’t you see? It’s so simple.

I recall an ancient Jewish Prophet who answered this question with an enigma saying “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but unto God what is God’s”. He answered enigmatically because the question was posed as a trick which had no good answer. Answering yes or no to the question “Is it proper to pay taxes to Caesar?” would get you in trouble either with the Temple Priests or the Roman Empire.

This is still so today. Those among us not gifted with the ability to easily compartmentalize the secular from the sacred must make our own choices.

Nature within her inmost self divides
To trouble men with having to take sides. -Frost

She is #1 in my list of favorite pundits

Claudia states the obvious:

"What's missing at the U.N. is not another survey by another consulting firm, or another 90-page report, or another investigation which serves chiefly to pre-empt criticism while fixing not much. The basic flaws are simple: Anytime you create a large institution, accord it great privileges of secrecy, give it a big budget, and have it run by someone immune from any sane standard of accountability, you are likely to get a corrupt organization. And unless the ground rules change, Mr. Annan's tactic of exhorting senior staff to be more accountable has about as much chance of success as Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts in the 1980s to fix the U.S.S.R. by telling Soviet citizens to stop drinking.

The problem with the Secretariat isn't 'tone' at the top. It's accountability at the top, and secrecy throughout. Perhaps a leader with the character of a Churchill or a Reagan would be willing to address that failing directly--and put his job on the line to push for change. Mr. Annan prefers to issue reports."

Robert Conquest on The Terrors

He has good points about the defenders of Stalin in the West. Funny that it is shameful to admit to being a Nazi, but not so to claim to be a Marxist. Why? "Well, authentic Marxism has never really been tried..." Tell that to the 60 million victims Solzhenitsyn estimates. Conquest writes:

"This is now decisively documented, in papers signed by Stalin and specifying quotas for death and imprisonment by category and locale; these decrees resulted in nearly 770,000 executions in 1937-1938. In addition, over the whole of his career Stalin signed 44,000 individual death sentences. The 'anti-Soviet elements' targeted included former kulaks, former officials of the czarist state and army, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, religious activists, and 'speculators'�a wide swath of society. Those carrying out the orders were required to send 'albums' of the victims to Moscow, to confirm that the quotas had been met.

There is no longer much serious dispute about what the terrors unleashed, or about the extravagant falsification practiced by the regime. If anything is still missing in Western understanding, it is a full recognition of the mental degradation inflicted by the regime. The entire population was forced to accept a supposedly all-explaining dogma, along with the notion that it was living in a social and political utopia�when what it actually experienced, of course, was the opposite. A Russian academic told me recently that many Westerners he meets still don't realize how horrible and psychologically exhausting a life it was. Much of the new evidence speaks directly to this point. "

The Western misreading of the Soviet system was largely the product of a simple reflex. The Soviet order—indeed, the practice of communism everywhere —was seen as a form of "progressive" hostility to established Western politics and, particularly, economics. It seemed to represent a new system that had rid itself of the market, of exploitation. Whatever its doubtless temporary—or invented—faults (so the thinking went), the Soviet ideology stood for a better world. Thus many Western writers, including Lion Feuchtwanger, Henri Barbusse, and even Romain Rolland, the sensitive follower of Gandhi, spoke out in defense of the purges. In the United States a number of authors, poets, professors, and artists, including Theodore Dreiser and Corliss Lamont, signed a manifesto attacking the Dewey Commission—a body formed in 1937 to examine the charges against Leon Trotsky, and whose findings were an unsparing, irrefutable indictment of the realities of the Soviet system. From 1939 to 1941, Soviet sympathizers went so far as to oppose the effort to stop Hitler. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Stalinist devotees in the West simply switched their stance on Nazi Germany. Even today some of their survivors imply that their anti-fascism was never interrupted.

The Holocaust stood clearly as a monstrosity from the start. The communist record was more blurred, more polymorphous; and for a long while it retained remnants of its initial luster (something that National Socialism never enjoyed outside Germany). As a result, many Western intellectuals, though no longer approving, remained nonjudgmental for many years.

There will probably always be an alienated intelligentsia, especially in tolerant, democratic societies. But the extent to which this stratum was penetrated, misled about reality, and to some degree fanaticized by Moscow's manipulations is striking. William James wrote that philosophical opinion is largely a matter of temperament. This applies to political and other types of opinion as well. The sort of temperament we have seen during the twentieth century, combining at its worst a blend of zealotry and unteachability, can be found in earlier eras. It will doubtless always be lying in wait for us. Knowledge of its recent embodiments, although useful, will not eradicate it. The evil will, alas, simply take new forms.

Sharansky's View from the Gulag

Sharansky was in a solitary cell in the Gulag when Reagan became president. This interview appears in the Weekly Standard. The whole interview is well worth a read, especially if you aren't old enough or cannot remember Sharansky as a Soviet dissident:

Do you remember the first time you heard the name Ronald Reagan?
I was already a longtime prisoner when Ronald Reagan was elected. I didn't know much about him, and I can't say I remember having heard much about him. None of us in the Gulag knew much, and I actually knew less than most because I spent so much time in private punishment cells, where for months at a time you were totally isolated. Our first indication that Ronald Reagan might well be the key figure in our struggle, the struggle of all people fighting against tyranny, came from the ferocious denunciations of him that appeared more frequently in the official Soviet press. Now, all Soviets were experts in the art of "reading between the lines," and of course us dissidents, we were the professors of this high art form. In fact, we were so good at reading between the lines, we almost could piece together events as they really happened by what the authorities were not telling us. What they did not tell us was as important as what they did tell us, if not even more important.

We had very mixed feelings at first. Remember, we accepted it as a given that Jimmy Carter was the world's great human rights advocate. Only later, after we saw what words without action can mean, did it occur to us that words were all he could offer. But to his credit, it was Jimmy Carter who insisted on keeping the issue in the international spotlight. Remember, prior to him, no one seemed willing to offer even words. All we knew about Reagan was that he was a poorly regarded actor, and after living for so long in an Orwellian world where play-acting was all we ever experienced from our own leaders, the very fact that Reagan was an actor, I will say, left us far more concerned than encouraged at first.

Were there any particular Reagan moments that you can recall being sources of strength or encouragement to you and your colleagues?
I have to laugh. People who take freedom for granted, Ronald Reagan for granted, always ask such questions. Of course! It was the great brilliant moment when we learned that Ronald Reagan had proclaimed the Soviet Union an Evil Empire before the entire world. There was a long list of all the Western leaders who had lined up to condemn the evil Reagan for daring to call the great Soviet Union an evil empire right next to the front-page story about this dangerous, terrible man who wanted to take the world back to the dark days of the Cold War. This was the moment. It was the brightest, most glorious day. Finally a spade had been called a spade. Finally, Orwell's Newspeak was dead. President Reagan had from that moment made it impossible for anyone in the West to continue closing their eyes to the real nature of the Soviet Union.

It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it. For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us. The lie had been exposed and could never, ever be untold now. This was the end of Lenin's "Great October Bolshevik Revolution" and the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution--Reagan's Revolution.

We were all in and out of punishment cells so often--me more than most--that we developed our own tapping language to communicate with each other between the walls. A secret code. We had to develop new communication methods to pass on this great, impossible news. We even used the toilets to tap on.


In your memoir, Fear No Evil, you write that President Reagan was captivated by this story.
The first time I met President Reagan I told him this story. I felt free to tell him everything. I told him of the brilliant day when we learned about his Evil Empire speech from an article in Pravda or Izvestia that found its way into the prison. When I said that our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration and that the world was about to change, well, then the president, this great tall man, just lit up like a schoolboy. His face lit up and beamed. He jumped out of his seat like a shot and started waving his arms wildly and calling for everyone to come in to hear "this man's" story. It was really only then that I started to appreciate that it wasn't just in the Soviet Union that President Reagan must have suffered terrible abuse for this great speech, but that he must have been hurt at home too. It seemed as though our moment of joy was the moment of his own vindication. That the great punishment he had endured for this speech was worth it.

Can it really be said that Ronald Reagan was actually responsible for an event as great as the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Yes.

A New Standard for Fiction - The Canellos Award

It seemed that Yvonne Abraham’s story on May 26 telling how most Democrats were gladly willing to go along with Kerry’s idea of not accepting the nomination at the convention was the height of fiction for a newspaper like the Globe. Within a month that story has been topped! Today’s piece by Peter S. Canellos amazingly labeled as Analysis devotes itself to the cause of the latest flurry of navel-gazing among the chattering classes – their complete surprise and incomprehension concerning the huge, spontaneous outpouring of affection for the late president Ronald Reagan.

With the Liberal Media in reaction mode to widespread complaints that it has offered only back-handed complements to the late President, (and even those unrelated to any accomplishments of his administration or to its policies) the Globeys must figure that a little bit of long term “analysis” will shed light on why the great unwashed were so moved by the passing of this second-rate moron who was so terribly un-nuanced. Unfortunately the analysis covers an alternative universe rather than just the alternative world view we have come to expect from Globey Op-Ed hot air. Its theme is that the post Cold War Presidents are not accorded the same measure of respect that citizens gave to Cold War Presidents.

I am not making this up. We begin:

Sense of loss extends to stature of presidency
Era of respect seen waning
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | June 12, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The call that summoned Scott Rockwell, like so many others, to the street corners surrounding the National Cathedral yesterday was stronger than respect, history, or even nostalgia: It was a yearning for a time when the president of the United States was the leader of the free world, all that stood between freedom and tyranny.

''He was always there, that face that we knew," said Rockwell, 36, who recalled looking up to Reagan throughout his teen years. ''When the shuttle Challenger went up I watched him on TV. That face. It's sad to see that face go."

The 1980s weren't so long ago, but for many like Rockwell they mark a sharp divide in perceptions of the presidency. As the clean ideological lines of the Cold War have melted away, the presidency has lost its sense of inviolability. Some Cold War presidents were reviled by their political enemies as much as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been disliked by theirs, but those past leaders of the free world weren't treated with the same contempt.

The worldwide fight against communism put the president on the side of freedom in the great struggle of the day, meaning that at the end of the day America was united in its most important task.

Yesterday, as thousands of young adults rode bikes and wheeled strollers to the neighborhood around the cathedral in Northwest Washington to catch a glimpse of Reagan's casket, they were bidding farewell not only to a figure of admiration but to an era of respect for the presidency.

There was some minor disagreement over Vietnam that did smudge the unity just a tad, but Peter must be thinking Big Picture here. Let me, then, offer what I would call a small picture analysis:

Here is the list of Cold War Presidents:

Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan

With the sole exception of Kennedy (who had the benefit of his father’s superb decades-old PR machine followed by martyrdom) none of these presidents avoided outpourings of contempt from opponents and from the press. Truman was regarded as an embarrassment and an accidental president. He was mocked for his pedestrian origins as a haberdasher, his pettiness, poor language skills, and undignified behavior. Mocking the America of the 1950s and Ike has been a parlor game among our left for more than 40 years. Johnson was hounded out of office by the left of his party, based on a policy difference over a small Asian country -- an affair so minor that you don't see it if you can see The Big Picture. Nixon…our only president to resign from office…nothing needs to be said about how he was regarded. Ford was denigrated as a klutz, a dumb football player, and another accidental and unelected president. Carter was a Washington outsider, and engineer, and regarded as a scold by both left and right. That leaves Reagan, the “B-movie actor”, too old, unintelligent, uncurious, manipulated by aides, inflexible ideologue, etc, etc. So where is the former presidential “sense of inviolability” that Mr. Canellos is preaching about? I have no [expletive deleted] idea! Ask him!

Reagan was, in the eyes of many, the definitive president of the Cold War period, literally from central casting. Bringing dignity and ceremony to an office strained by a string of traumas,

strained, yet still regarded as “inviolable”, right Peter?

Reagan embodied the American spirit in a way that few could, even in the days when all public-school students grew up reading laudatory biographies of US presidents.

It's not clear whether a president can achieve that stature again, given the lack of clarity of the struggles of the post-Cold War world. After Reagan, fewer Americans viewed the president as the protector of their freedom, and many more took the liberty of questioning the rightness of his stands.

I am rendered speechless. We all should envy those first 40 presidents. Each could hold office more easily while many dared not take “the liberty of questioning the rightness of his stands.” They had it made! No wonder Reagan seemed so immune to criticism. He wasn't coated with Teflon. No. His critics were not throwing the same degree of excrement at him that they throw at presidents today. Their criticism was muted by the Cold War! Of course! Not everyone was taking "the liberty of questioning the rightness of his stands". If he only knew how lucky he was to have such meek critics. He would be so grateful for their moderation, I bet he would thank them for holding back.

''I see celebration of Reagan as a celebration of the ideal of the head of state," said Boston University presidential historian Michael Corgan.

The State Funeral, with much of the pomp of a British royal procession, conveyed the sense that Reagan's was an earlier, grander presidency.

On Wednesday, when military guards performed an ancient ritual, placing the flag-draped coffin on a horse-drawn caisson, Washingtonians in their work clothes and tourists on vacation lined up 15 deep along Constitution Avenue to watch the procession. As the soldiers stood in silence, cellphones buzzed and clanged and played nursery rhymes throughout the crowd.

No one seemed to be bothered.

''I'm more a Democrat than a Republican, but I like the pageantry and realize that we do this sort of thing well," said Sean Grogan, 46, observing the funeral rituals yesterday. ''In a funny way it makes me glad I live here."

As for Reagan himself, Grogan recalled, ''I was not the biggest fan of him as president, but watching the clips of him I totally understand his gift."

At the National Cathedral yesterday, speaker after speaker remembered the '80s as a time of clear moral choices, what President Bush called ''one of the decisive decades of the century, as the convictions that shaped the president began to shape the times."

Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney lauded Reagan as a unique leader. ''I always thought that President Reagan's understanding of the nobility of the presidency coincided with the American dream," Mulroney said. ''One day [French] President Mitterrand in referring to President Reagan said: ''Il a vraiment la notion de l'Etat." Rough translation: 'He really has a sense of the State about him.' "

''What President Mitterrand meant was that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president," Mulroney continued. ''Ronald Reagan fulfilled both with elegance and ease, embodying himself that unusual alchemy of history, tradition, achievement, inspiration, conduct, and national pride that define the special role the president of the United States must assume at home and around the world."

After Reagan left office in January 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. The age of superpower brinkmanship came to an end, and smaller, nationalistic battles replaced the giant chess game of placing missiles and building bases overseas.

Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, declared that the United States must help establish a ''new world order," over which the one remaining superpower would preside as a kind of policeman.

And don’t mention that be he led a wide UN coalition to undo the conquest of Kuwait by Iraq.

Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, embraced that role, and committed US troops to peacekeeping missions in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

Read that again if the utter impossibility of it didn’t sink in the first time. Clinton endorsed Bush’s vision of the role of the US as world policeman, as proven by interventions in Haiti [which we do more often than a census], Bosnia, and Kosovo.

Conveniently omitted is the ill-fated intervention in Somalia during the first months of the Clinton administration, which marked the first and only time Clinton undertook a foreign military intervention where there was significant risk of suffering casualties. The others were UN initiatives that were more or less forced on an unenthusiastic Clinton. A statement this foolish reflects ignorance, blindness, or disinformation.

While many Americans endorsed the new role, they didn't necessarily support every intervention. The lack of an immediate threat to the United States made each move discretionary.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks brought back a sense of overarching purpose, and gave the second President Bush a strong international platform; but the Iraq war has proved to be more discretionary than necessary, and Bush is under constant criticism.

So a well organized cell of Islamic terrorists kills 3,000 Americans, disrupts our financial center for months, kills 300 people and damages the Pentagon, barely misses attacking the US Capitol or White House, and this event gives our nation some “sense of overarching purpose” that it lacked before September 11th? Pray tell, what overarching purpose is that? Is it to seek out and kill these terrorists? That needs to be done, but that is only a response, not a purpose. I must be thick as a brick. I just don’t see what grand purpose we have all been brought back to by September 11. If we knew, maybe some of us wouldn’t be so sore at Al Queda.

As for “the Iraq war has proved to be more discretionary than necessary” that is a value judgment, and a central issue in our upcoming election. It is indeed a point of contention, in spite of Kerry’s willingness to criticize the conduct but not the merits of the war. The question is hardly settled at this point, though, unless you have the vision of a Big Picture Analyst.

Yesterday, Bush depicted Reagan as the kind of leader he, Bush, has sought to be, with convictions ''as firm and straight as the columns of this cathedral."

The president then left the podium with the straight-shouldered walk he often uses on important occasions, as if straining for an extra half-inch of height.

Might this be the whole reason for all this fumbling? The author makes a point about the “sense of loss that extends to the stature of the presidency”, and so (just to illustrate his point, of course, nothing more) he closes by delivering a petty insult to the current president, making fun of his diminutive size and the way he carries himself on solemn occasions of state.

I guess this closing is designed to show all his clever friends how clever he too is – not one to be taken in by another grade B actor. I hope his friends are indeed clever, because such eludes me completely. Blame my upbringing, but the tone of this article brings to my mind a Biblical quote:

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you frauds! You erect tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the saints. You say, ‘Had we lived in our forefathers’ time we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ Thus you show that you are the sons of the prophets’ murderers.”(Mt 24:29-31)

Let me designate the Canellos Award – an occasional award for the best example of fact-challenged analysis in support of the Sole Progressive World View. The first winner is found here in the Boston Globe.

Lech Speaks

The heroes who made the 1980s were John Paul II, Reagan, Thatcher, Solzhenitsyn (my pick), and Lech Walesa. I would bet that poor old John Paul is doing the most for the late President through his silent prayer. Lady Thatcher, too ill to speak, we will hear from tomorrow by recording. Solzhenitsyn has returned to Russia and silence, now that it is Russia again. But Lech the electrician, who embodied the common man's rebellion against mindless totalitarian opression, today writes a short tribute to the Head of State of the world's most powerful nation whom he met. This is one VIP speaking of another saying:

"I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them. "

Somewhere now perhaps is a Lech Walesa of China, of North Korea, and of Cuba. But seeing one man defeat a cruel machine with pure courage and integrity is the gift of our lifetimes. Read it.

Frankness about "the Democrats' labor problem"

Joan Vennochi’s column in today’s Globe is a classic of Democratic intra-party whining. The best part about such whining in public (and this is true for any group) is the very uncharacteristic frankness with which the whiner will address their problems and the resulting liabilities.

I thought that we might have to wait until November to read such a column in the Globe, until after the election. After election losses these wails come in such a wave that you simply cannot savor them all the way they really should be enjoyed. So let’s consider this an appetizer to slowly and carefully consume for maximum enjoyment. Begin please, Joan:

JOHN KERRY has a plan for health care, the economy, and the war in Iraq. How about announcing a plan to stand up to organized labor when it acts like a spoiled bully?

"It's like the Mafia," said Thomas J. Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association.

Nee was standing in front of the Fleet Center yesterday morning as he offered this description of what he contends it is like to deal with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino in ongoing labor negotiations. A short time later, if anyone shared a resemblance to the Mafia, it was union members who blocked a crane driver from entering Fleet Center property.

Exasperation leads to name-calling. Yes, their behavior was thuggish. This is a picket line, not a Back Bay luncheon. What do you expect?

"Game's on," said Nee, as the driver started down Causeway Street then stopped before turning into the Fleet Center. A theatrical entreaty from Nee to the driver -- "Listen to your heart" -- quickly descended into expletives and threats from the rest of the pack. It all played out against the constant chant of "Do not cross, do not cross."

The crane driver looked at the surging line of picketers, listened to what they shouted, shook his head and turned away. Victory for the union.

That is the picture beamed from Boston. It is more than the picture of a showdown between one city mayor and unhappy union members. It is also the picture of the Democratic Party held hostage by organized labor.

The picture is not pretty.

Nobody would argue that it is a pretty picture, but is it typical? I don’t mean to bash the patrolmen in particular, because this is the nature of a picket line. Probably the Teamsters’ behavior on a picket line would make the patrolmen look like choirboys by comparison.

But what does this behavior have to do with growing the economy, or “making the pie bigger” or improving the standard of living and the quality of life for the citizens of Boston? Nothing at all. There is no give and take here. No organizational evolution. No irresistible external economic forces which force a restructuring. No flexibility in terms of change, only an argument about money which is how the unions keep score. It is a classic zero-sum argument, in which the public sector unions are almost always engaged.

I believe in unions, indeed belong to one. But belief in the organized power of many to negotiate fair wages and benefits for all workers does not go hand in hand with condoning the scene at the Fleet Center.

I would say this sounds like white-collar snobbery. I grew up in Detroit during the 1960s. After a UAW strike, the auto companies would quickly grant white-collar employees an equivalent or better package of any new benefits and raises that the UAW members had won through striking. Union members would ask their non-union colleagues (only half in jest) if they appreciated whose sacrifice had bought their new wages and benefits.

That's a personal reaction. However, looking at the bigger picture, it's hard to understand how a scene like this benefits the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential nominee Kerry.

Not hard. It is impossible. Most especially in some of the swing states where unions do not hold clout and appeal the way they do in urban areas of the Northeast.

It is a scene out of old Boston, old labor, old politics. You can smell the cigar smoke, even though no one is actually smoking one. You can imagine the leg-breaking, even if none actually takes place. It is the kind of old-fashioned, old-style labor politics that turns off young and independent voters. Could the timing be worse? At the very moment the nation is celebrating the memory of a president who stared down labor in the form of air traffic controllers, Democrats are celebrating union thugs?

Perfectly stated. Exactly right. I couldn’t have said it as well myself, Joan. You have captured the scene in its essence. I can also envision as part of the scene the English tongue being abused by both sides, and not an “r” to be found anywhere. The only thing lacking is an appearance by Honey Fitz or Mayor Curley.

I am a newcomer by Boston standards, having been here just under 25 years. It is not unfair, I think, to say that scenes such as these are very much a part of Boston. They are part and parcel of its 1-party, ultra-ethnic-aware, patronage-laced heritage. Natives argue that this is part of Boston’s charm. I do not. But it is certainly a big part of what comes to mind when I think of Boston. What about you?

The stand-off between the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association and the City of Boston is not just a problem for Menino. It is a microcosm of a larger problem for Democrats. It showcases their longstanding genuflection to labor, no matter how bad labor makes the party look.

Today it is a public sector labor union, because they had no contract and a golden opportunity. Waiting in line to receive their genuflections between now and the end of the convention are teachers unions, radical feminists, leftist gays and lesbians, the Clintons, Ralph Nader, Ted Kennedy and all the boomer Kennedys, the NAACP, George Soros, Jesse Jackson, and of course “the Rev” Al Sharpton. If you think a bunch of cops can make the Party look bad, wait until these folks have all had their turn abusing it. It will really look unpretty then.

Menino is standing up to the unions. It isn't easy, given his history of appeasement and recent past generosity to Boston firefighters. Rather than isolate this as a Menino problem, this is where party leaders and Kerry should stand behind him.

They are in campaign mode. Their only desire is for this to blow over quickly before it does any more damage and hurts the convention or the fall campaign. Nothing else matters to them, especially not future fiscal problems for the City of Boston. What makes this worse is the evolution of “the permanent campaign” by the Clinton team. Some people never get out of campaign mode, and the marathon primary and election cycle does not help matters either.

Menino has an offer on the table – 11.9 percent. “What is the problem with going to arbitration?” asks Menino. “I’m above board . . . I’ve always been upfront.”

Asked to respond to Nee’s “Mafia” description, Menino said: “I’m not into soundbites. I’m not into grandstanding. I’m into getting a contract done.”

What about the party that Menino is hosting for the Democratic National Convention? Shouldn’t the party and the party nominee stand up, too? Said Menino: “Mayors stand up and take heat. We’re used to it. We are on the front lines every day. Other people, will they stand up? I don’t know.” He says the response from taxpayers, directly and via e-mail is “stand your ground . . . stand your ground.”

You can argue Menino created the problem, and to some degree he did. But he was just following standard operating procedure for Democrats. To change the big picture, standard operating procedure must change, from the top down.

What if Kerry stood up to the picket line and asked them to let crane drivers and others in to do the work needed for the convention? How many votes would he pick up with a stand like that?

You need superb people skills, a thick skin, steady nerve, and strong kojones to settle this kind of mess, much less to do something dramatic and high-risk like that. You also need to be respected by all parties involved.

Joan, does that explain enough why Kerry would do no such thing?

Nee said he would “walk John Kerry in to be nominated.” He says that “nothing going on in Washington serves working class people.” If he believes Kerry is the nominee who can do something for working people, why stage photos that will undercut Kerry’s cause? According to Nee, it is necessary to convey “a sense of urgency"

There's a bigger urgency at stake: not just showcasing Boston, but the Democratic party.

Show some collective courage, Democrats. If you can't stand up to Tom Nee, how do you stand up to Jacques Chirac, Yasser Arafat or Al Qaeda?

A good question, Joan. Judging by how McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore did in their elections, I am not the only one who figures that they just can’t. Not even to a Chirac.

Here is the column in original form.

An Author Who Belongs in The Majors

Here is a wonderful article by restaurant critic William Grimes from last Sunday's NY Times mag about luxury meals. I found it...delectable, and recommend that you enjoy every morsel. My favorite passage:

"The moral argument falls apart for a couple of reasons. First, most people do not eat at four-star restaurants routinely. A fine meal, for the vast majority of diners, is a special occasion, a splurge. There comes a time, say once every two months, when the usual rules go out the window, all bets are off, price is no object and the gods of mirth and mayhem rule. This impulse is universal. It is the small, irrational motor that drives human beings and separates them from the animals. It's the reason for Las Vegas.

In the 1930's, when nearly a fifth of England's working class was on the dole, a helpful newspaper ran an article explaining how a family could eat a healthy diet on the approximately 30 shillings a week that the government paid in unemployment benefits. George Orwell analyzed the shopping list and the menus that had been calculated to the last halfpenny and admitted that the writer had done his homework. A family could survive, just barely, on the dole. But only a theoretical family. What the writer failed to take into account, Orwell said, was the need to break routine, to reward oneself with a treat, something ''a little bit 'tasty,''' and hang the cost.

That's what most people are doing when they eat out, and this is the big fact that my letter writers never considered. On purely rational grounds, human beings would eat only what's necessary to sustain life. Shelter and clothing would limit themselves to keeping out extreme cold or heat. Strictly speaking, anything more would be frivolous. But fallible humans, with their fallen nature, will demand cakes and ale. If given a choice, they'll opt for a cherry on top of the cake too. "

Kuttner Unmedicated

Another day of unbridled hysteria in Globey OpEd land. Bobby K must have forgotten to bring his meds today:

"It is appalling that a few grunts are taking the fall for torture that was official government policy. Donald Rumsfeld should not just be impeached. He should be tried as a war criminal. As for Bush, he can be dispatched by the electorate while we are still a democracy."

Sorry, but our time for today is up. Thanks for sharing, Bob. I think this was a good session for you. Please don't leave anything under the couch. Take two of these every 8 hours and call me in the morning if things don't improve. I'll see you next week at the same time.

all-white, all-male, (and all something else we can't mention here)

Yvonne Abraham penned this story back on May 26 which was should win a Pulitzer for best fiction or humor. So I gotta check her story out today, because she might just be on a roll. The story is that Charles Stith wants the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to include one fewer person of pallor, and believes he would be an ideal candidate as a replacement:

..."Knowing that the state's politics are going to be shaken up if US Senator John F. Kerry wins the presidential race, Stith says he wants black candidates -- unable to crack the state's all-white, all-male, congressional delegation for decades -- to enter the fray. And he's thinking about starting with himself."

Glad to hear it. Maybe they should start a racial preference program for Congressional elections. Of course there already is such a [de-facto]program in many states, implemented through the Gerrymander. Why not in the Athens of America? We might get a Republican congressperson out of the deal. Come to think of it, maybe that IS WHY we don't have a person of color in Congress. It might hurt The Party.

Bashing Bush for Invoking Reagan's Legacy (without mentioning Kerry's tasteless Photo-Op Appearance at Reagan's bier)

Today's fron page Bush-bash notes that both campaigns are trying to seize Reagan's legacy but does not note that JFK will have to stretch the truth a lot further to make this claim. Then there is the civility thing:

"The Senate minority leader, Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, used the occasion to lament that in the decade since Reagan announced his affliction with Alzheimer's disease, the spirit of bipartisan cooperation has turned sour."

Have you perhaps forgotten "the spirit of bipartisan cooperation" that prevailed in the Houses of Congress during the Clinton years? Sorry, but I missed that one, too. Perhaps he was referring to Clinton's getting 90% of the Repubs and just a few (but enough) of his own party on board to pass things like welfare reform and the NAFTA agreement. These made most of the Demos shriek at the time, but now are praised by The Presumptive Nominee. Is that what you meant, Mr Minority Leader? Well, let's bring 'ol Newt back to the House so we can try to return to those good old harmonious days!

Reagan "chose to assist tyranny"?

Who besides Crazy 'ol Derrick Jackson could think this line up as a eulogy? DJ is on a furlough today from the Bay State Home for the Bewildered, but should return quickly, it seems. In Reagan's heart of darkness he bashes Reagan for opposing economic sanctions against South Africa, and can't restrain himself from a jab at the Presumptive Nominee's opponent as well:

"President Bush said Reagan believed God was on the side of justice. On South Africa, Reagan was on the side of one of the most demonic governments on the face of the earth.

Kim Jong Il, Colonel Kadaffi, Haffez Assad, Saddaam, Castro, Taliban, Prince Fahd, Charles Taylor, Mubarak,...in fact ALL heads of African states except South Africa please call your agents! -Ed

He chose to assist tyranny and ignore brutality. Ronald Reagan's death has been followed by relentless descriptions of him as a president of sunny optimism. On South Africa he was no sunshine. He was the cloud who dimmed the skies as apartheid rained death upon black people."

Yep. You hit the nail right on the head there, Derrick. That will be Reagan's legacy all right. Wasted his time attacking the poor USSR and let South Africa sink into a state which every other country in Africa would like to be in today.

Is Reagan one of our "greatest" or "most consequential" presidents? Newsweek walks around its forehand

Here is a laugh. The table of contents on the Newsweek website notes on their Reagan story:

"A captivating and elusive man, Ronald Reagan rose from lifeguarding in Illinois to Hollywood and became one of our greatest presidents. An intimate look at how he played the role of a lifetime..."

The "good actor" schtick we have heard so many times. But the print edition contents page says about the same story:

The emotionally distant son of an alcoholic father and a pious, theatrical mother, Ronald Reagan rose from tiny Illinois towns to become one of our most consequential presidents..."

Abnormal [conservative] politics caused by trauma during a hard youth, I guess. Well, is Reagan "great" or merely "consequential"?

Both find a way to sprinkle some kind of subtle denigration with their tribute. As George Will notes in his Newsweek column in the very same issue:

Nothing is so irretrievably lost to a society as the sense of fear it felt about a grave danger that was subsequently coped with. So in measuring Reagan's greatness, insufficient attention is now given to his longheadedness and toughness in putting the Soviet Union on the path to extinction. This is particularly so because the intelligentsia likes nothing less than giving Reagan credit, and so has embraced the theory that the Soviet Union's extinction was an inevitability that just happened while Reagan was standing around.

No kidding, George! Although calling the current state of Newsweek magazine either part of "the intelligentia" or "consequential" would be a stretch.

SillyGlobe Says It Best

SillyGlobe comments wonderfully on the orgy of Bush-bashing in today's Globe OpEd page. On Renee Loth:

"Darn good thing Loth and her Globie editorial pals weren't around in 1776, eh? All those rigid ideologues! Thinking they were on a mission from God! Calling for democracy, of all things! How terribly, terribly un-nuanced of them."

They would be advocating detente with the King, of course.

Lame, ...make that "Editorially Challenged"

Is this the best they can do? Are they really trying to be nice? I doubt that. This kind of nice reminds me of "Bosom Buddies" from Mame:

"During Reagan's tenure, the Soviet Union began to crumble and a major arms control treay [sic] was signed. At home, the economy surged forward as inflation abated. Yet the Reagan legacy also includes the improbable 'Star Wars' missile defense proposal and the shameful Iran-Contra scandal. "

Reagan, of course, had nothing to do with any of his achievements. He was just lucky. The crumbling of the Soviet Union was just something that happened on his watch. Star Wars was a poor defense strategy (when compared to MAD, I presume), and Iran Contra was a major scandal.

Uh-huh. Support for totalitarians has flowed from the left from 1917 through 1989, and to this very day. Reagan's good ideas were all mocked and vigorously opposed on this editorial page -- "Evil Empire", tax cuts, defense build-up, Star Wars, Nuclear Weapons in Europe.

Reagan had the courage to name and to confront the prime evil of our time, and worked tirelessly to defeat it. Can no one in the media give him credit for that? As RWR knew so well, some ideas are so foolish only an intellectual could believe them...or still profess them after all these years, so many deaths, and so much evidence. Rest in peace, Mr. President.

Brooks on Reagan's Legacy

He writes that:

"...since Reagan's time, it sometimes appears that liberals and conservatives have traded places.

Now Democrats often accuse Republicans of recklessness and utopianism while Republicans accuse Democrats of being the timorous defenders of the status quo. Democrats are more likely to emphasize fiscal prudence, foreign policy caution and economic security.

But it's all really about American exceptionalism. Reagan embraced America as a permanent revolutionary force. His critics came to fear exactly that sort of zeal. "

Reagan's Greatest Legacy

John Fund points out the rise of Thatcher, John Paul II, and Reagan within a few months, and their right wing conspiracy (and yes, Hillary, that WAS a vast one) to break up the Soviet empire. One could add Solzhenitsyn to the list as well. He broke the will to fight inside the USSR. In the Gulag Archipelago and Letter to the Soviet Leaders Solzhenitsyn spoke exactly the same messages that Reagan would repeat later over the strenuous objections of the US State Department. An Evil Empire? Why not ask the tens of millions who perished there under Lenin or Stalin between 1917-1953? Of course the victims can't be interviewed.

Only a President Reagan would have the vision to call the Soviet system an Evil Empire destined for the "ash heap of history". Yes, these 3 or 4 people had the courage to act in spite of the outrage their actions sparked among intellectuals and the chattering classes. Thank God they each knew themselves well enough to remain serene in the face of the non-stop attacks they all had to endure from within their own country's press and academy (does this sound vaguely familiar in 2004?).

Their work in those years was harvested in 1989. These 4 served as the giants of the Cold War just as Churchill and FDR were giants during the Second World War. They deserve just as much credit for advancing human freedom.

"It's certainly safe to say that no other president would have made two famous speeches that drew a sharp moral distinction between the West and communism and lifted countless spirits behind the Iron Curtain. The State Department fought desperately to take out Reagan's reference to the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire' as well as his challenge to Mr. Gorbachev: 'Tear down this wall.' But Reagan's candor undermined Moscow's legitimacy. 'Reagan's truth-telling--together with the examples of Mrs. Thatcher's economic success and Pope John Paul's moral strength--gave millions of people courage to rise up when the opportunity for change came,' says President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic. "

Huh?

The Grey Lady reports: "

When word broke on May 21 that Senator John Kerry was thinking of delaying his acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president until after the convention next month in Boston, the reaction to the news there was swift, blunt and negative.
And that was among Mr. Kerry's friends.
All weekend long, as the idea met with an avalanche of public scorn, the men who have known Mr. Kerry longest and best made their opinions known in private. "

Silly guys! "Avalanche of public scorn"? No way. They should have read the Boston Globe, which reported in this story 5 days later that virtually all the Democrats were just fine with Kerry's ploy! Or is the Globe even LESS credible than the Times when it comes to supressing the truth in favor of the party line?

Thanks, Howell. I guess Kerry's REAL friends write for the Journal!

You hoped he would have the class to slink away and shut up forever. Instead Howell Raines proves the depth of his cynicism about US politics in this piece from The Guardian. Also the displaced but unashamed former editor comments on The Presumptive Nominee:

"I personally find him easier to talk to than Al Gore, but there's no denying that he's ponderous. And he's pompous in a way that Gore is not. With Gore, you feel that if he could choose, he would have been born poor and cool. Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem. The TV camera is an x-ray for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and Addams Family face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy. It's as if Lurch had gone to Choate. "...

Rosett Rocks in WSJ

"If you can keep you head about you when all others are losing theirs", then you might be Claudia Rosett...who is challenging Dorothy Rabinowitz for the title of world's most indispensible journalist. I wish the Whte House had somebody who could think and write as well as this. Please take the bully pulpit, Claudia:

Abu Ghraib is flourished not simply as evidence that America made horrible mistakes in handling prisoners, but as an argument that the U.S. should never have gone into Iraq in the first place. Though had America stayed away, the murderous atrocities of Saddam would still be going on. And if experience is any guide, there would be no leaked Red Cross reports, no digital-photo exposés, no apologies, redress or reform. Just more mass graves.

In the current zero-tolerance scheme, President Bush should have done nothing about Saddam until he had full U.N. backing, until he could guarantee a war in which no one would die, and until he had a clockwork plan for transition that within the year could draw forth from Baathist-devastated Iraq a gracefully sustained and peaceful democracy. Maybe on Venus they've developed policies of such perfection. But not on Earth, not in this life.

In all likelihood, the best way to prepare for a post-Saddam Iraq would have been to bust Saddam a lot sooner--giving Saddam himself a lot less time to prepare for a post-Saddam Iraq. Instead, U.S. effort and energy was absorbed by the immense effort to win allies in the U.N. Security Council--chiefly France, Russia and China--who were neck-deep in oil deals with Saddam, much of that via the U.N.'s own Oil for Food program.

The need was to introduce into the Middle East the revolutionary idea (in theory and practice) that a tyrant could fall and be replaced by something better. Setting this in motion was a risk; not to do it would have been a greater risk. And although it is beyond the power of any of us to predict with perfect accuracy all outcomes, there has been a force set in motion in Iraq that may yet, given time, bring the Middle East into better alignment--if not with the stars, then at least with the Free World.

Word Counting - Oliphant Style

He begins his column:

"THE PROFOUND differences over foreign policy between John Kerry and George Bush can be encapsulated in two words, the Middle East."

Can't blog more this week. A relevant story I plan to read on the Olympic fiasco and its ecurity implications here.

Happy June.