Obama Tax Plan Veers From Pay-as-You-Go (David Clarke and Richard Rubin, 9/14/08, Congressional Quarterly)
Barack Obama ’s campaign-trail accounting method is putting congressional Democrats in an awkward position: Their own presidential candidate is undermining the rule they use to fight the federal deficit.While the issue is arcane, it could determine whether the next Congress would have to find trillions of dollars in offsets for Obama’s tax proposals if he were elected president.
With pope's visit, Sarkozy challenges French secularism: French politicians don't talk about faith openly. But President Sarkozy wants a more open discussion of the role of religion. (Robert Marquand, 9/15/08, The Christian Science Monitor)
Unlike any French president in decades, Mr. Sarkozy sees a more open role for religion in French society. And he seized upon the conservative German pope's four-day trip to directly challenge French secularism, one of the most prized traditions of La République and a strict legal and cultural sanction against bringing matters of church and faith into the public realm.Secularism, or laïcité, is central to the modern French identity. It's a result of hundreds of years of efforts to remove the influence of the Roman Catholic church from French institutions and reduce its moral authority.
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Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?: Bush's orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies. (Howard LaFranchi, 9/15/08, The Christian Science Monitor)
But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan's leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.What Mr. Bush's July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan's military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.
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Democratic activists should stop digging (Clive Crook, September 14 2008, Financial Times)
If Barack Obama loses this election to John McCain – something which, for the first time, I regard as a real possibility – history will point to August 29 as the pivotal moment. That was when Mr McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running-mate, and when livid Democrats and their friends in the media voiced their feelings about her and much of the electorate, and gravely harmed their candidate’s prospects. [...][T]he Democratic talking-heads had to exult in their disdain for Ms Palin and all she represents – namely, a good part of the electorate whose support Mr Obama needs. In the space of a few days, they irreversibly damaged Mr Obama’s candidacy and transformed this election. [...]
Certainly, the Democrats can see they are in a hole. Somehow, though, the word has gone out: “Keep digging.” Mr Obama is also urged to be less cool and lose his temper. Voters adore an angry candidate, you see. “Dig faster, and be more angry,” is the advice coming down from the political geniuses who decided it was a fine idea to laugh at Ms Palin in the first place. A recurring television image in the past few days has been the split-screen contrast between a serenely smiling Republican operative and a fulminating red-faced Democrat about to have a stroke.
Efforts to smear the governor proceed at a frantic pace.
The Big 'What If': The hopes of black America ride on his shoulders. But the outcome's way up in the air. (Randall Kennedy, September 14, 2008, Washington Post)
The senator's progressive politics, cosmopolitan ethos and pragmatic style have turned me into an enthusiastic supporter, and I savor the prospect of his triumph. But I'm watching this election very closely as I teach a course about it this semester. And I know that the conclusion to this electoral drama is far from determined. Yes, political gravity would seem to favor the Democratic candidate after two terms of Republican control of the White House. Yet the possibility is very real: Barack Obama could lose.If that happens, then what? How will I feel? How will other black Americans feel? How should people like me feel? [...]
I anticipate that most black Americans will believe that an Obama defeat will have stemmed in substantial part from a prejudice that robbed 40 million Americans of the chance to become president on the day they were born black. They will of course understand that race wasn't the only significant variable -- that party affiliation, ideological proclivities, strategic choices and dumb luck also mattered. But deep in their bones, they will believe -- and probably rightly -- that race was a key element, that had the racial shoe been on the other foot -- had John McCain been black and Obama white -- the result would have been different.
This conclusion will be accompanied by bitter disappointment, and in some quarters, stark rage.
MORE:
No, wait, the Obamanoids aren't the new Black Panthers, they're the old French Revolutionaries!:
Joe Who? (Jake Tapper and Matt Jaffe, September 14, 2008, Political Punch)
Since the Delaware senator left Obama's side and ventured out on his own on Labor Day, he has hardly garnered any national media interest at all.His plane, a blue chartered 737, now crosses the country with about three-quarters of its seats empty, rows and rows with nary a warm body to be found.
Biden's supporters maintain that he is connecting with voters and garnering positive media interest on a local level. They also say that Biden is a "governing" pick, not a "political" pick, unlike Palin. That is, Biden will actually be able to help Obama govern; he's not just a cynical selection to help his boss win the election.
Distant Replay: How the greatest game in football history looks 50 years later, through the eyes of a modern NFL head coach (Mark Bowden, October 2008, Atlantic Monthly)
The game in question defined excellence for an era. It pitted the best defense in the NFL, the Giants, against the best offense, the Colts, playing for all the marbles. It featured 17 future NFL Hall of Fame players, coaches, and owners. On the field were great athletes like Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti, Frank Gifford, Andy Robustelli, Emlen Tunnell, Rosey Grier, and Sam Huff. Coaching on the sidelines were Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry for the Giants, and for the Colts, Weeb Ewbank, the only pro coach who ever took teams from two different leagues (the NFL and the AFL) to national championships.[Andy] Reid was born in the year this game was played, and one reason he had never seen it is that the TV broadcast has been lost. But for serious study, I had wrested something even better from the archives of NFL Films: the grainy, monochrome “coaches’ film” of the game, soundless footage shot from the sidelines high over midfield, with all the time-outs, huddles, and game breaks edited out.
Instant analysis envelops pro football like a cloud, but with most plays there is no way to tell what really happened and why without a careful, slow-motion dissection of the film. Reid is one of this craft’s most successful practitioners. Even among pro coaches, he is notable for toting thick binders filled with notes and plans, and for fielding highly complex systems on both sides of the ball. Earlier in his career, he was quarterbacks coach for the Green Bay Packers, grooming Brett Favre and helping that team to a Super Bowl championship in 1997. His tenure in Philadelphia has been the most successful of any coach’s in the team’s long history: starting in 2001, he led the Eagles to four consecutive National Football Conference championship games and a Super Bowl—although, much to the consternation of long-suffering Eagles fans, he has yet to bring the Lombardi Trophy home to Philadelphia.
We watched the game in his office in the Eagles’ training complex, just a few blocks from Lincoln Financial Field, where they play. When I covered the team in the early 1990s, the Eagles’ offices, locker room, and workout facilities were housed in a few cramped, dark, damp rooms in the basement of the now-demolished Veterans Stadium. Today the team, whose worth is estimated at more than $1 billion, is housed at a state-of-the-art facility that sprawls over an area as large as a college campus.
“Okay,” he’d say, when he had examined a play from snap to tackle, “here’s what happened.” Then out would pour a detailed explication: what the offense was trying to do, how the defense was trying to stop it, the techniques (good and bad) of the various key players, the historical roots of the formations and the play’s design, and ultimately why it worked or failed, and who was responsible, either way. The wealth of information Reid gleaned from a single play reminded me of the way Patrick O’Brian’s 19th-century naval hero, Jack Aubrey, eyeballing an enemy ship during a sea chase, could read from the play of its sails and the disposition of its crew the experience, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses of his opponent.
Reid’s insight told on the first offensive play of the game. Colts coach Weeb Ewbank had designed a trick play, so secret that in his pregame meeting with his team in the visiting locker room at Yankee Stadium, he had mouthed the play call to them, fearful that the room was bugged. Observing the opening formation, Reid noted with surprise that all but one of the Colts linemen were positioned to the left of center Buzz Nutter. “This is a completely unbalanced formation,” he told me. “You can’t even do that today.” The rules would no longer permit it: “You have to have some guys on the line of scrimmage.” In the backfield, fullback Alan “The Horse” Ameche, a Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Wisconsin, was lined up behind quarterback Johnny Unitas; right halfback Lenny Moore was three steps to Ameche’s right; and left halfback L. G. Dupre was split far out to the left side of the backfield.
Unitas didn’t give the Giants a chance to set up in a recognizable defensive formation, even if they had one for such a bizarre look. He bent over, and Nutter immediately snapped the ball. Moore took the handoff—and was tackled for a loss.
“So they came out with a trick play in mind, and it really wasn’t all that good,” Reid said, chuckling. The main reason the play failed, he pointed out, was a missed block by Dupre, a speedy back whose initials, which stood for Louis George, had earned him the nickname “Long Gone.” While Moore took the handoff from Unitas and followed Ameche around the left side of the Colts line, Dupre’s job was to race forward and hit Harland Svare, the Giants’ right-side linebacker, taking him out of the play. But the film tells the tale: “He didn’t get the crack [block] right here,” said Reid, using a red laser to point at Svare dodging Dupre, “and he kind of screws the play up.” Svare races into the backfield, forcing Moore to step in front of Ameche, his blocker; the two briefly collide, and then as Moore tries to recover and race to the outside, he is pulled down for the loss.
“And then, the fullback forgot the snap count,” Reid said, rolling the play back to the beginning again. Sure enough, on the snap of the ball, Ameche remains in a set position until Moore actually takes the ball from Unitas. “He forgot that it was a quick count … That’s that Wisconsin education right there.”
I told Reid that I had listened to the NBC radio broadcast, and had been struck by how much more quickly the game moved then than it does today. Breaks between plays and possessions are longer and more frequent now, to allow for more commercials, and the use of video replay to reexamine contested calls by the referees causes still more delays. Modern coaches use these gaps in the action for analysis, for sideline conferences and hand signals, or, in the case of the quarterback, for giving instructions over a direct radio link to his helmet. In 1958, the game, once started, was primarily in the hands of the players. Unitas called his own plays. Defensive field captains like the Giants’ Sam Huff were on-field tacticians. The game was faster and simpler.
It also lacked many of the refined mechanical and tactical innovations that are commonplace in modern football. For instance, Reid was surprised to note that wide receivers assumed a three-point stance before the snap of the ball—today they stand upright, which allows them a broader view of the defensive backfield. The pass defenders, meanwhile, stood upright on the old film, with one foot forward, one back, and then just backpedaled to stay with the receivers. In the modern NFL, backfield defenders poise in a forward crouch with their weight evenly balanced on both legs, and retreat by taking short stutter-steps backward, ready to bolt in either direction and avoiding the crossover step, a potentially costly mistake that can offer a receiver the split-second advantage he needs to break away.
Basic positioning along the line of scrimmage has changed as well. A few plays in, Reid noted that the Giants defensive tackles, Dick Modzelewski and Rosey Grier, were “flexed back off the ball”—that is, set up more than a yard away from the Colts linemen. “That’s probably for the run game,” Reid said, explaining that by hanging back from the line of scrimmage, the defenders could get a better look at the direction of the play before attacking.
I asked, “Why wouldn’t you do that today?”
“Well, you give those big guys a head start on you,” Reid said. “At that time I would imagine that the linemen were fairly equal athletically, and now the offensive linemen are so big and the defensive linemen are relatively smaller.” If you’re a defender today, he went on, and you spot a 300-plus-pound blocker a two-step running start, he’ll knock you “right on your [butt].”
Palin on Obama (Philip Gourevitch, September 8, 2008 , The New Yorker)
[This was two weeks ago,] at the statehouse, she sat, unattended by aides, curled up in a cardigan, and explained that what she had done every day since becoming governor was to stick her thumb in the eye of Alaska’s Republican Party establishment. “The G.O.P. leader of the state—we haven’t spoken since I got elected,” she said.She went on, “I guess if you take the individual issues, two that I believe would be benchmarks showing whether you’re a hard-core Republican conservative or not, would be: I’m a lifetime member of the N.R.A.—but this is Alaska, who isn’t?—and I am pro-life, absolutely.” She continued, “I guess that puts me in a box of being hard-core Republican.” But she said she recognized that “the Democrats also preach individual freedoms and individual rights, capitalism, free market, let-it-do-its-thing-best, let people keep as much of their money that they earn as possible. And when it comes to, like, the Party machine, no one will accuse me of being partisan.”
So the possibility that Obama might win Alaska did not worry Palin: “Turning maybe purple in the state means, to me, it’s more independent, it’s not the obsessive partisanship that gets in the way of doing what’s right for this state, and I think on a national level that’s what we’re gonna see.” And she added, “That’s why McCain is the candidate for the G.O.P.—because he’s been known as the maverick, as the conduit for some change.” In the state’s Republican caucus, McCain came in fourth, trailing Ron Paul. “I always looked at Senator McCain just as a Joe Blow public member, looking from the outside in,” she said. “He’s been buttin’ heads with Republicans for years, and that’s a healthy place to be.” Then again, on McCain’s signature issue—the prosecution of the war in Iraq—she did not sound so gung-ho. Her son is a soldier, and she said, “I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”
Obama still favored in Wis. but race is tighter (SCOTT BAUER and RYAN J. FOLEY, September 14, 2008, AP)
Sen. John McCain is sharply increasing his number of campaign aides and offices in Wisconsin, where he has worked his way back into a tight presidential race with Sen. Barack Obama.Through a barrage of television ads, campaign events and the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain has pulled closer in a state some Democrats hoped would be an Obama stronghold this cycle.
Gordon Brown seeks Barack Obama aides to help beat David Cameron (Sarah Knapton, 14 Sep 2008, Daily Telegraph)
Members of the Democratic presidential candidate's team are said to have been contacted to sound out the possibilty of work with the Labour Party.It is thought former advertising executive David Muir, who was hired by the Prime Minister earlier this year to revive his political fortunes, has come up with the plan.
How does President Palin sound? (Willie Brown, September 14, 2008, SF Chronicle)
Thanks to Sarah Palin, this is no longer a contest between Barack Obama and John McCain - it's between Brother Barack and Sistah Sarah.Rock star vs. rock star. Inexperienced vs. inexperienced. Newcomer vs. newcomer. Change vs. change.
His "change" is East Coast intellectual. Her "change" is NASCAR.
His change is wine and cheese. Her change is mayonnaise by the gallon.
And notice how everyone is calling her Sarah Palin - not Gov. Palin. That's not good for the Democrats.
Why Doesn't McCain Use a Computer? (Jake Tapper, September 14, 2008, Political Punch)
Assuredly McCain isn't comfortable talking about this -- and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this -- but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn't use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again "playing the POW card," but it's simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.
He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW -- ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair -- mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.
Again, it's not that he can't type, he just by habit avoids when he can repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs.
It's certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.
"I read my e-mails, but I don't write any," McCain told Fortune Magazine in 2006. "I'm a Neanderthal - I don't even type."
Barack Obama's big blunder (Michael Goodwin, September 14th 2008, NY Daily News)
With top Dems fearing Barack Obama is in a hole, the Obama campaign has made a weird decision. It's going to dig that hole deeper, harder and faster.No more Mr. Nice Guy, Obama vows. He's going to really start hitting John McCain now. He's going to make voters understand that McCain equals four more years of George Bush.
It's a weird decision because Obama has been doing exactly that for four months. The problem is not that Obama hasn't hit McCain hard enough or linked him to Bush often enough. The problem is that he hasn't done anything else.
How about a new idea? How about putting some meat on the bony promise of "change"?
And what happened to that post-partisan uniter who took the country by storm during the early primaries by offering an optimistic vision for America? Why not bring him back?
Apparently that Obama has left the building. He's been replaced with a party man who sees the other side as evil and beneath contempt.
"Palin pandemonium" in Nevada: At her first solo campaign stop outside Alaska, Sarah Palin inspired Republicans to embrace her lock, stock and barrel. "She represents me." (Katharine Mieszkowski, Sep. 14, 2008, Salon)
On Saturday, at her first solo campaign stop in the lower 48 as the GOP's vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin compared breaking the glass ceiling to breaking the sound barrier, while Chuck Yeager looked on with approval. To the handful of curious Democrats in the crowd, it may have seemed like they had fallen through the looking glass into a place where Palin can do no wrong.Inside the open-air Pony Express Pavilion in Mills Park in the state's capital, Palin introduced Yeager, the American pilot who in 1947 became the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound, who was sitting in the audience among a capacity crowd of 3,500 euphoric Palin fans, among them recent John McCain converts. Yeager "is a true American hero, and maybe as the first man to break the sound barrier, hopefully, he has a good idea of how that first woman can break the glass ceiling once and for all," Palin said, inspiring screams from the crowd as she stood before a giant banner reading "Country First."
At the spirited rally, T-shirts depicted Palin as Rosie the Riveter with the iconic slogan, "We can do it!" and posters decreeing, "Read my lipstick!"
If the election were to turn into a blowout she'd even vault Jeb as next in line, which guarantees the next nomination in the GOP.
Independents swing toward McCain (JOHN P. AVLON, 9/14/08, Politico)
In the wake of Sarah Palin, John McCain has opened up a 15-point lead among independents, according to a new Gallup Poll — and Barack Obama has a real problem.Since the GOP convention and his selection of the Alaska governor as his running mate, McCain has changed a months-long tie among independents into a 52 to 37 percent advantage. Support for McCain among self-described "conservative Democrats" has jumped 10 points, to 25 percent, signaling the shift among swing voters to McCain.
The candidate’s surge tracks the script the campaign had written for the party convention. Joe Lieberman’s sleepy but substantively centrist speech was the preamble to McCain reframing the Republican Party around national security, fiscal conservatism and corruption reform. The result: he elevation of the independent maverick.
Both McCain and Palin avoided almost any mention of the right-wing social issues that are a wedge between the GOP and most Independents’ political beliefs. Palin may prove to be a deeply polarizing figure to swing voters and suburban women, but for the time being she has shaken up Independents’ assumptions about the GOP—on the surface, it does not look like Dick Cheney’s party anymore.
McCain’s credibility with independents goes back more than a decade, and it’s far deeper than a veep pick. McCain was independents’ favorite political figure for most of this decade — he fought against Karl Rove in 2000 and Tom DeLay’s pork-barrel-spending, corrupt conservative Congress in the road up to ’06.
He has a heroic record of reaching across the aisle to forge bipartisan compromise against an ideological establishment that encouraged the opposite. For independents, this is profile-in-courage-type stuff.
Offshore Drilling Is Coming to a Vote: Democrats to Offer a Mix of Proposals (Paul Kane, 9/14/08, Washington Post)
With votes scheduled this week in the House and Senate, Democrats have essentially given up defending the current ban on drilling within 200 miles offshore along both coasts. Instead, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), they are offering a mix of proposals that would allow drilling, with the waters off Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia most likely to be the first affected.Environmentalists and industry analysts disagree over the impact the various legislative proposals would have on oil production, with industry experts contending that the most precious reserves still would be off-limits. But both sides agree that -- because of the politics of $4-a-gallon gasoline this summer and a pending legislative deadline -- the nearly 40-year drilling ban is in jeopardy. [...]
With revenue sharing, Virginia and Georgia would quickly approve offshore drilling at the 50-mile mark, Kennedy and some environmental experts predicted. The biggest target for new drilling at the 100-mile mark would be in the Georges Bank, off the coasts of Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, where cod fishing was once the dominant industry. Oil and natural gas already are extracted not far away, in Canadian waters.
The most sought-after area, however, is the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida's western coast. Drilling rigs already operate in the gulf off Houston, New Orleans and Mississippi, giving oil producers a near-certain guarantee of finding oil near Florida. It also would be less costly for producers to move their production and delivery systems to the other side of the gulf than to place new rigs in previously unexplored regions of the Atlantic or Pacific.
Even a drubbing from Ike can't keep oil over $100.
Mad Libs (William Kristol, 9/22/08, The Weekly Standard)
When the media get mad, they don't just pout. They pounce. How? By any means necessary. The day of Kurtz's article, September 11, ABC's Charlie Gibson conducted his first interview of Sarah Palin. Gibson asked: "You said recently, in your old church, 'Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.' Are we fighting a holy war?"Palin responded, "You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote."
"Exact words," Gibson triumphantly retorted.
Not so fast. As Palin explained, quite eloquently, what she was saying was in the spirit of Lincoln: "Let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side." The tape of Palin's church appearance bore out her interpretation and revealed Gibson's mischaracterization. "Pray for our military men and women," she had said, "who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God." Gibson had made it sound as if Palin were claiming to know God's will, rather than praying that U.S. actions might be in accord with God's will and in a cause worthy of God's blessing.
No doubt the mere fact of Palin's asking for any kind of blessing on our troops and our national leaders at some backwoods Alaska church was sufficiently distracting to the scripters of Gibson's questions that they didn't look closely at the wording. God knows (so to speak) what they believe at a place like that! Why, their kids probably even enlist in the Army to fight our enemies.
Speaking of enemies: Within hours of the ABC interview, the Washington Post distorted straightforward remarks made by Palin that same day to U.S. soldiers deploying to Iraq.
-Out of the Woods (Rob Patronite, Oct 18, 2004, New York Magazine)
1 pound hen-of-the-woods mushrooms
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 sprig fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons fresh-cracked black pepper(1) Turn mushroom over to expose the stem. With paring knife, remove the core of the stem.
(2) Using your hands, gently break mushroom into 8 pieces. In a 12-inch sauté pan, heat olive oil over medium flame. Season mushrooms with salt and pepper, and
(3) place them in the heated oil, taking care not to overcrowd the pan, and cook for 3 minutes. When the mushrooms have a golden-brown surface, flip them with a spatula and continue cooking for 2 to 3 minutes. Add butter and herbs, and baste mushrooms for 1 minute.
Drain on paper towels to remove excess oil, and serve.
MORE:
-WIKIPEDIA: Grifola Frondosa
-The Hen of the Woods, AKA Maitake: A bountiful Fall fungi fond of the mighty Oak tree (Forager Press)
-Grifola frondosa, the Hen of the Woods, a.k.a. Sheepshead or Maitake (Nik Zitomer and Tom Volk, Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month for November 2006)
-HEN OF THE WOODS: (also known as MAITAKE,RAMSHEAD or SHEEPSHEAD MUSHROOM): Scientific name: Grifola frondosa (David Fischer's American Mushrooms)
-Grifola frondosa: The Hen of the Woods (Michael Kuo, MushroomExpert.com)
-Hen-of-the-Woods (Grifola frondosa): Anyone Know a Quick Way to Clean, Cook, and Store 80 lbs. of Hen-of-the-Woods in less that 80 hours? (Wildman Steve Brill)
-Hen of the Woods Mushroom (RecipeTips.com)
-Fungi Perfecti
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The takeaway being that Ms Palin inherits Ms Clinton's mantle.
Bering Straight Talk (MAUREEN DOWD, 9/14/08, NY Times)
An Arctic blast of action has swept into the 2008 race, making thinking passé. We don’t really need to hurt our brains studying the world; we just need the world to know we’re capable of bringing a world of hurt to the world if the world continues to be hell-bent on misbehaving.
China’s Repression of Civil Society Will Haunt It (Minxin Pei, 8/04/08, Financial Times)
[F]or those who have been hoping that China’s rapid economic modernisation will foster a vibrant civil society which will push for future democratisation, the weakness of Chinese NGOs must be a rude reminder that the political evolution historically associated with economic development is not taking place in China – or at least not as quickly as one might have hoped.Of course, China’s economic development and opening to the outside world have given its people unprecedented personal freedom. In the 1980s, Beijing’s policy on civil society was also relatively liberal. NGOs faced fewer restrictions and flourished. However, following the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the Chinese government imposed registration requirements that made it very difficult for genuine NGOs to register and operate legally. The party feared that independent civic organisations would have the potential to challenge its authority.
Consequently, the growth of Chinese civil society, as measured by the number or quality of its NGOs, has woefully lagged behind China’s economic growth. China has more than 350,000 legally registered NGOs, but perhaps only about 10 per cent of them can be considered genuine NGOs in the western sense. Most of the rest are so-called “government-organised non-governmental organisations”, or Gongos, an appellation that would make George Orwell proud. As a rule, Gongos are affiliated with a government bureaucracy, headed by retired officials and funded by the state. They have no genuine autonomy.
Even among genuine NGOs, one cannot find civic groups, such as independent labour unions, student unions and religious groups, which are capable of large-scale collective action. Most Chinese NGOs are small groups engaged in leisure activities, environmental protection and local charity work like health and education. A promising development may be the formation of local chambers of commerce in Zhejiang province, where the private sector accounts for more than 90 per cent of the economic output. But this is the exception that proves the rule.
The hardline policy toward civil society was vindicated several years ago when the so-called “colour revolutions” swept through the Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. In China, as well as Russia, western-supported NGOs were seen as having played an outsized role in the ousting of unpopular regimes. Restrictions on Chinese NGOs were subsequently further tightened.
The Communist party perhaps knows better than anybody else the potential of even the most innocuous civic groups.
Miles Passed, Miles Ahead (KRIN GABBARD, 5/18/2001, Chronicle Review)
From the outset, Miles Davis bore little resemblance to other jazz trumpeters. Louis Armstrong, Charlie Shavers, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and the other African-American men who made their mark with the trumpet did not come from wealthy backgrounds. Following Armstrong, they all made flamboyant use of the trumpet to establish a masculine identity in a culture that viciously punished black men who demonstrated their manhood in more conventional ways.The dominant trumpet style among African-Americans before Davis was bold, fast, and full of climactic assaults on the upper register. Although Davis could keep up with aggressively masculine trumpeters, he was more likely to use the middle register of his instrument -- often muffled with a stemless Harmon mute -- to create lyrical, haunting solos that revealed vulnerability along with virility. Especially on ballads, Davis's muted solos suggested the earthy whispers of a highly attentive lover. Women and men alike have found them to be the epitome of musical seduction.
Perhaps Davis's relatively low-key and introverted approach to playing was related to the unusual affluence in which he was raised. His father was a successful oral surgeon who raised horses on a 300-acre farm near the family home in East St. Louis, Ill. Although the young Davis had to suffer the same indignities as any African-American living in America in the 1930's and 1940's, he had the kind of economic security that few other blacks enjoyed and thus had less reason to prove his worth. As an adult, he did not feel obliged to smile in the face of racism, as did Louis Armstrong and other artists of previous jazz generations. In an episode that made headlines in 1959, he was beaten bloody after talking back to a white policeman who had told him to "move along" while he was standing in front of the nightclub where he was the featured performer.
Thanks to the largess of his father, Davis had already studied classical trumpet for several years with first-chair symphony players in St. Louis when he came to New York, in 1944, to enroll at the Juilliard School of Music. John F. Szwed of Yale University, whose brilliant biography of Sun Ra suggests that his much-awaited Davis biography may be definitive, argues that the timbre of Davis's midregister, almost vibratoless trumpet, which became the paradigmatic "cool" sound, was basically the result of a classically trained musician playing jazz.
But at Juilliard, Davis paid little attention to the classical canon and vigorously pursued Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and the "bebop" artists who were transforming jazz in the 1940's. Davis brought an education in classical music to the even-more-daunting college run by the beboppers on 52nd Street, and uptown at Minton's Playhouse. A photograph of Davis from that period shows him looking up in wide-eyed awe at the trumpeter Howard McGhee, a prominent peer of Gillespie.
Davis survived and even transcended the boppers' hothouse conservatory. Seeking a viable alternative to bebop, he arrived in 1947 at the apartment of the white composer-arranger Gil Evans, a mentor to a group of jazz experimentalists in New York. According to a forthcoming biography of Evans by the jazz journalist Stephanie Stein Crease (Gil Evans: Out of the Cool, to be published this year by A Capella/Chicago Review Press), Davis had taken note of Evans's arrangements for Claude Thornhill's unusual dance orchestra, anticipating cool jazz with a relaxed sound cushioned by French horn and tuba. Davis and Evans began a rich artistic collaboration and a lasting friendship that withstood the racial tensions that destroyed many relationships between black and white jazz artists in the 1950's and 60's.
Evans did some of the composing and arranging for the nonet recordings made in 1949 and released a few years later on LP as Birth of the Cool. But it was the 23-year-old Davis who exploited his contacts with club owners to find bookings for the band. Thanks to Davis, a rehearsal band ended up with a public forum in which to try out a revolutionary music that put musical textures in the foreground, rather than the soloists who were at the center of bebop performance.
For the rest of his career, Davis surrounded himself with young musicians who were either highly promising or highly unusual. John Coltrane, with whom he worked through much of the 1950's, was both. Kind of Blue, their 1959 collaboration (with Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb), has become the best-selling album in jazz history. At the time, however, Davis was reaching his biggest audience with the ambitious albums he recorded with large ensembles led by Gil Evans, especially Porgy and Bess (1958) and Sketches of Spain (1960). (My personal favorite will always be the 1964 quintet LP My Funny Valentine, only in part because it was a concert to raise money for voter registration in Louisiana and Mississippi.)
Twenty years after the revolutionary Birth of the Cool sessions, and 10 years after Kind of Blue and the LP's with Gil Evans, Davis took the audacious step of embracing electronic music and reaching out to a young audience more attuned to Jimi Hendrix than to Charlie Parker. Although Davis was almost universally reviled by the clerisy of jazz writers for abandoning the true faith of acoustic jazz, some of the music on albums such as Bitches Brew (1969), Live-Evil (1970), and Get Up With It (1970-75) is as complex and challenging as anything he ever recorded.
Although many saw Davis's jump from his acoustic quintet of the mid-1960's to the large fusion ensembles of the 1970's as an opportunistic move toward a larger market, it can also be regarded as part of a gradual progression toward more-abstract, texturally based music that began in his collaborations with Gil Evans.
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Obama Surrogate Attacks McCain for Age, Cancer (Jake Tapper, September 14, 2008, Political Punch)
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a surrogate for the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., raised the age and health of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., when discussing the qualifications, or lack thereof, of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. [...]When Stephanopoulos asked her it was fair to raise McCain's age, McCaskill doubled-down and mentioned his past skin cancer, saying, "I think what we're talking about is a reality. Other people talk about his melanoma. We're talking about a reality here that we have to face. This is someone who's going to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. All of us know it. I just think that it's the facts, George, and that's something that we need to start focusing on, are the facts, instead of distortions and lies."
John le Carre 'considered defecting to the Soviet Union' (Aislinn Simpson, 14 Sep 2008, Daily Telegraph)
"When you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border it seems such a small step to jump and, you know, find out the rest," he said.Asked by his interviewer, former BBC Radio 4 Today programme editor Rod Liddle, if he was genuinely tempted, he said: "Yes, there was a time when I was, yes."
How to win Pennsylvania (Salena Zito, 9/14/08, Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Villanova University political science professor Bob Maranto says political undercurrents are playing against him. "This is an old state, demographically, and some older white voters will be reluctant to vote for a black candidate," he explains, "but there is something more at work. Even if they call themselves independents, most voters more or less automatically vote either Democratic or Republican."Maranto calculates that the 20 percent or so of voters who really are up for grabs will use information about a candidate's background to make assumptions about his policy views.
Pennsylvanians don't see McCain in the "failed Bush policies" category by which Democrats try to define him. Instead, they see a war hero, a brand that resonates in the blue-collar areas where their unions are trying to persuade them otherwise.
"He is a guy you can depend on," said Tom Miller, 54, of Lancaster, a registered Democrat who is very comfortable voting for McCain. "He has had no problem bucking his own party and he does not ask me to make sacrifices that he isn't willing to make."
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Grand Old Wit: Since when are Republicans better at humor than Democrats? (Ted Widmer, Sept. 12, 2008, Slate)
When did the Republicans become the party of wit? Liberals don't like to admit it, but George W. Bush deserves some credit—the man can be funny, and making sardonic fun of "elites" has been a core part of his routine since he entered politics. As a candidate in 2000, he went on Letterman and did well, making fun of his talent for mangled syntax: "A lot of folks don't think I can string a sentence together, so when I was able to do so, it, uh—Expectations were so low, all I had to do was say, 'Hi, I'm George W. Bush.' " Ronald Reagan is remembered as a sincere, emotive kind of speaker, but he, too, had a cornball genius. He would hear a good joke, write it out on one of his cards, and deliver it again and again and again until it was perfect. For example: "Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I've come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." Or: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' " Invariably, Reagan's jokes were about overspending Democrats, or clueless politicians, or people who tried to cut themselves off from the mainstream—exactly the kinds of people Palin was trying to throw to the pit bulls.Rather than complaining about Palin's cruel barbs and W's smirking put-downs of "the angry left," liberals should reclaim laughter.
Put Palin on the Supreme Court: Washington's old-boy problem hardly ends at the Oval Office. (Dahlia Lithwick, Sep 13, 2008, Newsweek)
If there is a lesson to be learned about Sarah Palin's dizzying political ascent, it's that America really loathes Washington insiders, especially those tasked with working inside Washington. The surest way to affront the American voter is to offer up a candidate with an Ivy League education, experience inside the Beltway and D.C. connections. If Palin stands for anything, it's that when it comes to both the presidency and Pixar movies, nothing good ever happens until the Stranger Comes to Town. But while our contempt for the Washington life touches everyone in the legislative and executive branches, it's become almost a job requirement at the Supreme Court. This third branch of government is wildly overrepresented by insider lawyers with identical résumés. You can swap out one Ivy League law school for another, but beyond that, the bench is ever more populated by folks like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito—brilliant men whose chief job experience consisted of work for the executive branch followed by a stint on the federal bench. It's not that these are bad qualities in a jurist. It's just that a court that once included governors and senators and former football stars is now overrun by an elite cadre of mostly male, mostly East Coast lawyers. If ever there were a branch of government crying out for varying life experiences, it's the Supreme Court. And if any branch of government is in need of a mother of five who likes shooting wolves from helicopters, the court is it.
OF all the mysteries surrounding President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, possibly the biggest is this: How could a man who got it so right with John Roberts get it so wrong with Ms. Miers?If the lesson of the Roberts confirmation was to pick someone superbly qualified and watch him whiz through his confirmation, why did President Bush almost deliberately flout that wisdom by nominating an inexperienced crony?
But Chief Justice Roberts and Ms. Miers may have more in common than you think. Both their nominations reflect a deep concern about a too-powerful court and the president's troubling new hostility toward the institution.
The World Isn’t So Dark: Ever since WWII, America has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers. (Fareed Zakaria, 9/13/08, NEWSWEEK)
We live in remarkably peaceful times. A University of Maryland study shows that deaths from wars of all kinds have been dropping dramatically for 20 years and are lower now than at any point in the last half century. A study from Simon Fraser University finds that casualties from terrorism have been steadily declining since 9/11. It is increasingly clear—look at their voting from Indonesia to Iraq to Pakistan—that very few Muslims anywhere support Islamic fundamentalists. More countries than ever before now embrace capitalism and democracy.It's also worth noting that ever since World War II, the United States has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers. During the 1950s, conservatives argued that Dwight Eisenhower was guilty of appeasement because he was willing to contain rather than roll back communism. The paranoia about communism helped fuel McCarthyism at home and support for dubious regimes abroad. John Kennedy chose to outflank Nixon on the right by arguing that there was a dangerous missile gap between the Soviets and the United States (when in fact the United States had almost 20,000 missiles and the Soviets had fewer than 2,000). The 1970s witnessed a frenzied argument that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States militarily and was about to "Finlandize" Europe. The reality, of course, was that when neoconservatives were arguing that the U.S.S.R. was about to conquer the world, it was on the verge of total collapse.
In Chicago, Discipline That Builds Dreams (George F. Will, September 14, 2008, Washington Post)
To work in the Sears Tower, a student must pass through something perhaps not encountered in his or her family's Mexican village or in Pilsen -- a revolving door -- and might have to change elevators en route to the tower's upper floors. Before going to work, many of the [Cristo Rey Junior High S]chool's 14-year-old ninth-graders, like their parents, have never been downtown.The summer before beginning at CRJHS, ninth-graders go to a behavioral boot camp where they get what David Whitman calls "a dose of cultural imperialism" to inculcate bourgeoisie values, from personal hygiene to table manners. The school believes that some Latino traditions should be tempered: Many of the students had been raised to show respect by speaking quietly and avoiding eye contact while softly shaking hands. That is not how things are done downtown in the city of broad shoulders. Before long, the children are introducing themselves with firm handshakes and are introducing their parents to the Loop.
Cristo Rey is one of six "no excuses" schools around the nation that Whitman examined in a new book, "Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism." Father James Gartland, now CRJHS's president, was back in America on a break from his work in Peru when he was assigned to walk Pilsen's streets and discover how the church might serve. He asked people, "What do you dream?" and "Why did you leave Mexico?" The answers pointed to what CRJHS has become.
VIDEO ARCHIVES: The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008 (Museum of the Moving Image)
Remember when Ronald Reagan was Sarah Palin?
Bruce Campbell’s Prime-Time Moment (JOE RHODES, 9/14/08, NY Times)
“I’ll have iced tea in a dirty glass,” Mr. Campbell said on a recent Thursday, plopping himself down in a corner booth, looking comfortable in every way, wearing cargo shorts, flip-flops and a loose-fitting Tommy Bahama shirt. That he finds himself on a hit television series at the age of 50 — playing big-lug sidekick to Jeffrey Donovan on “Burn Notice” — is an unexpected windfall for the lantern-jawed Mr. Campbell, best known as a horror-film hero since he starred in his childhood pal Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” trilogy in the early 1980s.“Burn Notice,” a breezy summer spy romp on the USA Network, is the kind of regular gig Mr. Campbell long ago stopped pursuing, deciding that instead of chasing stardom in Los Angeles he’d rather make his own movies, write a few books and basically not get involved in anything that would interfere with his ability to hang out on his middle-of-nowhere property, a lavender farm outside Ashland, Ore.
“All my neighbors are loggers and ranchers and tough guys,” he said. “One of them has a sign on his property that’s a big picture of a shotgun pointing at you, and it says, ‘We don’t call 911.’ I’m a fairly antisocial hermit type. So I like it up there.”
But he hasn’t been there much lately. Besides working on “Burn Notice” in Miami (where, he claims, he’s prone to “projectile sweating”), he’s been out on the hustings, finishing postproduction and greasing the promotional wheels for his next film, an indie horror-comedy called “My Name Is Bruce,” scheduled to open in October. He directed it and stars as a legendary B-movie actor named Bruce Campbell, who turns out to be a liquored-up jerk who ends up battling a nine-foot-tall sword-wielding Chinese god of war (and of bean curd) to save a small town. It is not a true story.
Iran's Ex-President Slams Ahmadinejad's Foreign Policy: Report (AFP, 9/14/08)
Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami has criticised the government's confrontational foreign policy, saying it plays into enemy hands and harms the country, a newspaper reported on Sunday. [...]The reformist former president also hit out at Ahmadinejad's administration for "presenting wrong statistics" about its economic achievements over the past three years.
There has been speculation that Khatami, who was president from 1997 to 2005, may seek a third term in office in 2009.
Ahmadinejad, who put social justice on top his agenda when he campaigned for president, has come under fire from reformists and conservatives alike for his expansionist economic policies and rising inflation.
Palin shifts outlook for undecideds: The VP pick raises new issues for "Wal-Mart moms," but many say they haven't made a final decision. (Allison Sherry, 9/14/08, The Denver Post)
Though Green says she is still undecided about her vote in November, her growing affinity for the McCain-Palin ticket — attributed solely to Palin — means that McCain's effort to target "Wal-Mart moms" may be working.Many of the undecided voters here are moderate, working, suburban women who say they like Palin because, at least on the surface, she seems to be one of them.
"She has the same problems and the same issues that everyone else does," said Jessie Rember, an Arvada mother of two, and a German professor.
The Republican vice presidential nominee is stopping here Monday morning for a rally at the Westernaires Arena. Interest in Palin's appearance — her second in Colorado in nine days, but first solo — was so strong that the event was moved to the larger venue.
Political observers say these fiercely independent voters, whose names tend to morph each election cycle from "soccer moms" to "security moms," will be who chooses the presidential winner this fall.
"People have realized that we can't lump all women voters together," said Karrin Anderson, a professor at Colorado State University. "This group and the Latino voters are going to be key."
Minnesota Poll: Obama, McCain are dead even in state: With 51 days before Election Day, Barack Obama and John McCain are tied with 45 percent support, raising the stakes in the campaign. (BOB VON STERNBERG, 9/14/08, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll shows that the race is now a dead heat between Barack Obama and John McCain, each supported by 45 percent of likely voters in the state. [...]The poll found that McCain has made gains across the board since a May Minnesota Poll that showed him trailing by 13 points. He has picked up considerable support among men and to a lesser degree among women. He also has boosted his standing with whites, young voters and all levels of household income and education.
Republican John McCain has opened a lead of 4 percentage points in Ohio since the GOP national convention, a new survey showed yesterday.The Ohio Poll gives the Arizona senator an edge over Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, 48 percent to 44 percent.