Masterpiece Theater

I used to care. I really did. I canvassed for Mayor Daley in the last election before his death in 1976, passing out fliers (leaflets for European eyes) with the eagerness of a kid who had no idea what the word "money" meant in the context of a political system such as the one that I was campaigning so cheerfully for, because things were good. The sun shone on Northshore Avenue in those ever nearly so crisp autumn days at the corner of Ashland Avenue. I lived a fairly carefree existence to that point and it was fun to be a part of an organization that made things work, and for the most part, work well, despite certain illegitemacies that even I knew took place in order to keep the wheels of that city going.

I was politically aware because of the candidacy and fall from office of President Richard Nixon and only knew right from wrong because of the woman that raised me and my sister while our single mother was out trying to earn a living to keep a roof over our heads, food in our mouths and educated and, God bless her, Vahness Duncan taking care of us and teaching us about life. I don't know if I'm alone in the category of people whose best memories of childhood center in large measure around values inculcated into me by a black woman who had picked cotton in her hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas before the "Great Northern Migration" after 1940 for war and other jobs in, among other places, Chicago and Detroit that did not require stooping, at least physically. This woman was my second mother.

My political reality extended intensely at least as far back as August 13, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned his Presidency "effective at noon tomorrow" for breaches of his office which would, I think by now, have been topped multiple times over by succeeding Presidents as the "Imperial Presidency", as it has become known and which supposedly died with Richard Nixon. Not a chance. Until this President, who has eschewed leadership for brotherhood.

As I stood with my blond-wood handled broom, sweeping near the little area next to the rear cash register at Schwab's Drugs on the corner of Pratt and Clark Streets where I acted as garbageman, stocker, checker and delivery boy, and over which was mounted a small 12 inch portable television imported, no doubt, from Japan, I remember standing there as clear as day: the szhlub Kenny W., standing in front of and to the left and whose remarks I don't remember, but my own were as I recall, something on the order of "wow, he really IS a crook". It was what we would call in 2010 jargon a teachable moment. Even my newly bar mitzvahed brain knew you didn't give up if you're innocent. Or do you? It shook my world then and shaped all things that were to come later, including the eventual rise of Ronald Reagan and social conservatism and the ultimate succession to the Presidency of George W. Bush, ushering in as it did an age of cavernous cynicism and distrust of government that still shakes this country to its core right up until this moment.

It was in grade school during the election of 1968, when I was in second grade that I became fascinated with politics because of the very upheavals that I knew I was then a part of. The shouts on the school bus from my friends were "Humphrey, Humphrey, Humphrey", against which I heard shouts of "Nixon, Nixon, Nixon", thinking to myself, "how could those idiots vote for a guy like that? I remember clearly being for Humphrey as my mother, like her parents before her - my grandfather, Milton Diamond had run as a Democrat for local office at the county level in Hammond, Indiana -- and his parents before him in New York City, and so on, were all Democrats, because Democrats always looked out for the little guy and did the right thing. My mother volunteered for Chicago Democratic Congressman Frank Annunzio in some capacity or other, and she was proud of what she did and of what her party stood for.

Came Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush pere, Clinton, and Bush fils, the latter of whom has created a shitstorm so bad that it has blown right back into the face of the first black man who would be President of the United States, educationally and temperamentally qualified like no other in recent memory, politically tested and qualified by having risen as he did through the ranks of local Chicago politics, statewide office and finally to the Senate to represent Illinois. A more pristine curriculum vitae and politically saleable life story could not be asked for, and what did he get for his troubles?

I remember a cartoon that summed up the situation we are now in with a picture of a black man, Obama, in a white waiter's outfit, cleaning up the mess left after George Bush II left the White House with the country in shambles, much as he did, if you are inclined to believe even 10% of what Oliver Stone says is true, for a black man to clean up. What, pray tell, has changed since the institution of slavery plagued this country? He is among our best and brightest, and the shitstorm-covered country has been left to someone who very recently, had parentage that extended back to Africa, Barack Obama's father. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

For what is Obama but a cog in a machine run by this country's various industries? What has become of representative democracy in this country since I campaigned for Mayor Daley, regardless of the fact that it was always theory around our house that Daley didn't much care for black people and in particular, I later learned, Martin Luther King, Jr. in particular. Nor did he care for Jews by reputation. Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor's biography _American Pharoah: Mayor Richard J. Daley_ sticks in my head at this point for whatever substantiation or clarification might be needed on the latter point. Also instructive to my memories about Mayor Daley is study of Daley and his machine done by Mike Royko in _Boss_. The lesson from those books was "scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours". Everyone wins. Things were good in Chicago and there were plenty of people who were willing to overlook some moral, fiscal and political process-type shortcomings (the dead really did vote) for the fact that Chicagoans like my mother had jobs that paid the bills. Not today.

The previous occupant of the White House left a shitstorm on in November, 2008 which has caused too many people to lose their jobs, causing them to have difficulty paying their bills or paying them timely if at all. Too many people are without health insurance. Too many people have lost their homes, so that our own social fabric is tearing at the seams. 10% unemployment? Feh. I am sure if you defined "unemployed" along the lines of what "unemployment" means in reality, you would find there are plenty more who have been forced to face the fact that "things" are not good on a systemic, macro level because I can assure you that the reality-based unemployment rate is much, much higher than 10%. Define "things" as you see fit.

I can never remember feeling this hopeless about this country's future, but I am afraid that there is nothing left to do than what is being done. Obama has gathered the smartest minds on every topic, every issue, -- do not argue that he has not made made rational choices- and has come up with what we have now. Do you think his motivation is any less than on the day he took office? Coming out of Chicago, you can bet that he knows extremely well how to be political in a Chicago sort of way: backscratching and deal-making. His campaign showed that. It was run like a machine, organized Rolex-perfect, a giant commercial for hope and change embodied by a then 47 year old Harvard law graduate that we should have realized was largely campaign fluff, but also yearning to feel better about ourselves as Americans, sick and tired of being the laughing stocks of the world and amongst ourselves, good Germans all of us, knowing that the country was in a world of hurt from off-the-books-wars begun for reasons known only to those who are inspired by the rapture and a love of oil. We all must have known deep down that there was no way that Obama was going to be able to keep 90% of his promises owing to the shitstorm that only grew worse as November, 2008 approached. I had suggested in these pages that Obama should have resigned from the campaign and taken his money, wife and adorable daughters and bought in Monte Carlo and lived a decent life. He didn't bargain for a shitstorm when his campaign jumped off on a freezing February morning outside the Capital of Illinois in Springfield. Who could have imagined this?

Obama is in an absolutely impossible situation and the political backbiting by a Democratic Party feels as if its whole edifice, the one that is associated with FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ, has come violently tumbling down at our feet because we as a country have forgotten principle and worship only money and the things that it can give us to make us ostensibly yet, of course, temporarily happy. It is the need for money that drives this country.

And the sooner we try to make that happen again and possible for everyone who honestly tries to do his or her best, the sooner we will be at work, the better the country is going to be. That the Democratic Party could not have the will to ram through even a single piece of major economic legislation while controlling both houses of Congress and the White House is a travesty, but wasn't that in part Obama's mantra? - to change the way Washington functions by working together with Republicans for the benefit of everyone? But bipartisanship with moron tea-baggers? With people who think that the President is a Muslim-socialist-communist terrorist? With people whose only wish is to see you fail, and who proclaim that fact proudly and publicly? One wishes for a seance in the Oval Office with Mayor Daley to advise Obama about how to handle this, if only the old man had half the brains that Obama has.

There is no denying that the representatives that we have now, each and every one of them, is indebted politically if not financially to some corporation or other by virtue of the evil of campaign donations, which in too many cases, most notably and recently the Senator from the Great State of Blue Cross, otherwise known as Arkansas, who, along with another poster child for the transparency and change we were promised from the Democratic Congress, comes the Senator from the Country of Nebraska who essentially did the same thing by cutting a deal that would financially benefit his state and remove it from having to bear some of the burden for public health insurance, all of which means that they are not looking out for the 'little guy' or the -- can I say it -- dear departed middle class. They are looking out for campaign contributions and favors for friends, albeit with a very thin veneer of respectability. Democrat or Republican, take your pick. It doesn't matter. Deals that were made in Chicago at least resulted in a city that worked. Washington is a different animal, and back-scratching and deal-making beyond what is normally acceptable for that city are not what is going to get this country working again as Chicago did.

Trust me when I tell you this reeks of old-time Chicago politics, politics as usual in America, the politics of money. I've seen this movie before. Only in Chicago, things got done. The Boss made it so. But that was a long time ago in a different time; now the new Boss is the same as the old Boss, thank you Pete Townshend.

Which is one reason why I sat down to write these thoughts, as diffuse as they may seem at the moment -- and thank you if you're still reading. I just don't care about politics any more. Like I quit, cold turkey, the Cubs, whom I would no longer allow to hold me victim for a 41st year to its never ending parade of hope for victory "NEXT YEAR!" that hasn't come for 102 years. I suffer from Stockholm Syndrome no more as the result, though I am sure I suffer from other ailments as a result of too much loyalty. The same is true with my loyalty to politics, a delusion in which I thought I mattered politically. The fact of the matter is that we don't count. Money counts.

How can the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress possibly satisfy so many interest groups, domestic and foreign, all with lots of money and influence, and not get twisted up morally, or try to negotiate down significant, meaningful measures like health care for everyone to the least common denominator, the result of which is that absolutely nothing gets done or, as we have seen, actually ends up a windfall for industries that are slated to be regulated but who are the ones actually writing parts of the bloody law? The people in those industries are not selflessly motivated by the likes of Mother Teresa or Ghandi. We wonder no longer, or perhaps the call for change and hope by President Obama made us forget: the representatives are not in office for the people's benefit, but for the corporations that employ them and so that they can get re-elected, which is their real full time job. So here it is as I write these words and the President is supposed to be now 49 minutes into his "confidence building" speech and I honestly could not care any less.

It doesn't matter what he says or how he says it; nothing will change and that is just the plain truth. The man is doing the best he can. The Congress is, as was pointed out in today's Foriegn Policy magazine, "An Agglomeration of Nincompoops." Whether I care or don't doesn't matter.

I earned a political science degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982 -- and excelled -- and have come to the conclusion that we have all become the tools of our employers, from the albacore fishermen's association to the zinc lobby, the ones who have laid off so many, who have bought off those that the people thought were looking out for them and those who cannot fend for themselves.

But here it is, in our finest hour, and it feels gray, as if the whole experiment has failed, and when the evidence is submitted that I, in particular, have concluded that the best thing to do is get into the race for money, or get run over by it, and the sudden realization that as a political science major, and in studying politics, I was just only just starting, in my graduation year of 1982, to try to really count sheep not people. Little did I realize that never mattered how much I cared. Caring is an industry, isn't it? Hysteria, that's an industry, isn't it? Fear, an industry, right? Everybody's goal is to make money off of it all, from birth to death.

So like giving up on the Cubs, we are all forced into what we should have been doing all along: living for the right now, for things are not good, at least for too many people I know whose personal and professional qualifications are basically impeccable and who have no business waiting around for people to throw bones at them to feed on at the altar of the shitstorm that just spat them out like trash.

Sadly, this may be perceived as some concession of principles on my part: none whatsoever. I owe an obligation to my family to make money so that they can live as nicely and comfortably as possible -- and get educated and in general, live decently. It's about survival of one's self and one's own and being a decent person and about caring for each other so that we can each live up to our potential. What was it that Darwin guy said about the survival of the fittest?

Adaptation. Do it or die. Whatever happens tonight doesn't matter. It's just theater.

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question

View from a booth:

The world view of mainstream Orthodox Judaism, represented by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who made the decision to bar "M" from the Jews' Free School is closed, insular and stulted. As is pointed out at the end of this article, the order barring "M" because his mother was not converted according (allegedly) to Orthodox standards (too much of which is purely political) would bar 40% of those who consider themselves Jewish and who practice Judaism. The same people who will shry like banshees over this ruling are the same ones who think Sharia law -- or at least some elements of it -- is awful, when in fact those that follow the mainstream Orthodox line are the same rigid thinkers as are Sunni or Wahabbi Muslims -- no room to wake up to the reality that it's 2010 almost, not circa 1800 Poland. Either Judaism accepts change, either halacha changes organically like any other body of law, or it will devolve, if it already hasn't, into a moribund weltanschaaung that will eventually die. Too many Jews who do their best to practice Judaism with the right intention are being turned off by rules that those within the current Jewish power structure do not want to see change at any cost. This is a recipe for disaster for the future of Judaism, which should be a living, breathing organism, not what those on "the inside" say it should be, to the exclusion of far too many people. Can Orthodox Judaism afford to continue its present path? For me, no. The Court in Britain that decided that "M" was discriminated against was correct: if the JFS is going to accept government money, then it has to live by government rules.

Of course, there will be those who say "we have to maintain standards", a proposition with which I essentially agree, but it should not be up to one body or stream of Judaism to say what those standards are. Anyone or any group which claims a monopoly on what they think Jewish standards are correct and true to Jewish thought are to be viewed at least with skepticism. Judaism is too complex for one view to be right and all others to be wrong. That is a simplistic zeitgeist that only serves the simple minded who do not wish to explore the true essence and meaning of what it is to be Jewish.

Randy Shiner

November 8, 2009

By SARAH LYALL

LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself.

Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?

On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another.

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year.

The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy. It introduced a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work.

That has led to all sorts of awkward practical issues, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, because Orthodox Judaism forbids writing or using a computer on the Sabbath. That means that children who go to synagogue can’t “sign in,” but have to use methods like dropping prewritten postcards into boxes.

It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will have on other religious schools. Some Catholic schools, accustomed to using baptism as a baseline admissions criterion, are worried that they will have to adopt similar practice tests.

The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” Mr. Benjamin said in an interview. “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Lauren Lesin-Davis, chairman of the board of governors at King David, a Jewish school in Liverpool, told the BBC that the ruling violated more than 5,000 years of Jewish tradition.

“You cannot come in and start telling people how their whole lives should change, that the whole essence of their life and their religion is completely wrong,” she said.

But others are in complete sympathy with M.

“How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?” David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother’s conversion, told reporters recently. “I find it offensive and very upsetting.”

Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism here, said the lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would help make Judaism more inclusive.

“JFS is a state-funded school where my grandfather taught, and it’s selecting applicants on the basis of religious politics,” he said in an interview. “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”

The Dichotomy of the Failure of GM

The bankruptcy today of GM is instructive for America in dichotomous ways. The first part of dichotomy are the political calculations that had to be a consideration by the President in deciding to shepherd GM, an iconic, albeit ossified American institution, through what is essentially a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, while fighting the perception that the bailout money that had been given to GM in exchange for a 60% interest in the company didn't go to "CEOs" and other upper management who rode GM into the ground. The other part of the dichotomy are the questions of leadership that must have been asked by this President. What I mean by this is essentially this: which tough and thoughtful policy decisions -- questions a leader would ask -- were in fact asked by the President, apart from the political considerations, and what principles, what recognitions, undergirded those questions?

First, the political considerations and their ramifications. If President Obama would have left GM simply to completely fail and not have provided the bailout money he did, can there be any question of the immediate economic devastation wrought in the middle part of this country? I think not. Even with more than adequate funding for mass buyouts to auto industry employees, the damage to the social fabric (on a macro level)and the psychology of millions (on a micro scale) would be further harmed. There is already desperation in many areas of the country.

Why is it that the phrase "If it's good for GM, it's good for America" still holds sway in 2010? Quite possibly, it's because this country has been under the delusion, since the victory in WWII, that it can do no wrong. I would argue that we are far enough away from WWII that we need to enter a new phase of American economic history, one which recognizes that unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism in the information age (as opposed to the industrial age) simply does not work. Workers need a decent wage, family leave protection, health care, paid vacation and a pension. If these things are at all questionable these days, I cannot understand why, unless you believe that workers who do not take vacations regularly are more, not less, productive, that workers who are healthy are less productive, and the promise of some kind of retirement at retirement age are rights that the government should somehow ensure are in place for workers is likewise disposed to disincentivize workers. On the contrary. These things incentivize workers to greater productivity. We cannot go back to what labor standards and ways of viewing industry as a whole, to the end of WWII.

While it's true that there has been significant workers' rights legislation, what hasn't worked is the way companies like GM do business in 2010 until catastrophe was "this close" to millions of families.

GM in 2010, as opposed to its halcyon days when to have an American car was a point of pride, not necessarily shame, is a shell of its former self. It got used to Americans buying American because of the simple fact that we were, and are, Americans. Sooner or later, even Barnum's sucker, born every minute, gets sick of getting hit over the head with a mallet while the Germans and Japanese, and to some extent, the Italians, have taken what we in America used to do pretty well, and have improved on it to the extent that they do it better.

So the questions that had to be asked by the president were: should America figure out something else to make? From that question arises a slew of others: what will be the product(s)? What kind of workers do we need for this industry if it is to succeed on the order of BMW, Mercedes or Toyota or Nissan and the like? What kind of management retraining will be required of those new MBAs in or just coming out of school who will head these organizations in the future? Are they taking lessons from Toyota and BMW, or is jealousy and embarrassment getting in the way of admitting failure and taking advice from those who have succeeded in doing what you only wished you could do?

The resolution of the dichotomy, in which on one hand we consider the political ramifications of putting millions of Democratic voters into a further state of shock, all the while fighting a battle against the perception that the money given went straight into the pockets of undeserving "CEOs" and other upper management, and on the other what must be the knowledge on the part of the President and his advisors that, for example, the plant at Ypsilanti, Michigan, which used to turn out B-24 Liberators and other items of war during WWII, is not the future of this country unless massive institutional change in the way that American automotive manufacturers do business. World War II is over. It's time to recognize that ways of doing business "the American way" isn't always without its faults.

I imagine that based on what is happening now, it will take at least another five to ten years for this country to redefine its manufacturing bases. At this point, we are floundering. The bankruptcy of GM is simply a symptom of a deeper issue that no-one was paying attention to until fairly recently: the need to wake from the hubris-inspired way of doing business that was the result of out-manufacturing every country in the world and winning WWII. Time to get lean and mean again, and that will not be without pain.

Randy Shiner

View from a booth: Tell me Obama is out to destroy Israel after renewing sanctions on Iran and now on the junta that runs what we used to call Burma. He is setting the correct tone in his foreign policy, and his Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, is carrying it out very well. This is exactly the reassertion of true moral authority in the world by the United States that Candidate Obama promised us. Kol HaKavod for that, Mr. President.

Randy Shiner

Myanmar bars Suu Kyi lawyer, U.S. renews sanctions

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Reuters – A photo taken on Wednesday provided by Myanma News Agency shows U.S. citizen John William Yettaw (C) …

• Slideshow:Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi

By Aung Hla Tun – 58 mins ago

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar's junta has barred a prominent activist lawyer from defending opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as pressure intensifies on the regime to drop new charges against theNobel Peace laureate.

Aung Thein said the order revoking his license was issued on Friday, a day after a prison court charged Suu Kyi with breaking the conditions of her nearly six-year house arrest, which is due to expire on May 27. "I went to Insein Prison to be one of the five defense lawyers for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and they issued the order the next day," Aung Thein told Reuters.

Critics of the regime have denounced the trial of Suu Kyi and two female companions, due to start on Monday, on charges stemming from the mysterious visit of an American intruder who was arrested after he claimed to have spent two days at her lakeside home in Yangon.

Suu Kyi, 63, faces up to five years in jail if convicted.

Her lawyers insist she is innocent and did not invite U.S. citizen John Yettaw, who according to state media swam to her tightly-guarded lakeside home using homemade flippers.

Yettaw's motives remain unclear, but he has been charged with various offences, including encouraging others to break the law and "illegal swimming."

The military, which has ruled the former Burma since 1962, has so far ignored the international outcry over its latest crackdown on Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years in some form of detention.

SANCTIONS

U.S. President Barack Obama renewed sanctions against the regime on Friday, saying its actions and policies continued to pose a serious threat to U.S. interests.

"The crisis between the United States and Burma ... has not been resolved," Obama said, citing sanctions first imposed by the United States in 1997 and ratcheted up several times in response to repression of democracy activists.

"These actions and policies are hostile to U.S. interests," Obama said. "For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to ... maintain in force the sanctions against Burma to respond to this threat."

Washington has led Western governments in gradually tightening sanctions against the regime over its resistance to political reforms and detention of Suu Kyi and more than 2,000 other activists.

But neither sanctions, nor the policy of engagement espoused by Myanmar's regional neighbors, have succeeded in coaxing the generals into meaningful reforms.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's admitted in February that sanctions have not worked and Washington was looking for new ways to influence the regime. But analysts had not expected that review to lead to a swift change in America's sanctions policy.

Pro-democracy activists cheered Obama's announcement and urged him to lead a wider effort to pressure the regime.

"Now that President Obama has continued a wise policy from the United States, it is time for him to seize the moment and take action internationally," said Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

"We hope he will immediately pursue a global arms embargo at the UN Security Council, as well as an investigation into crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by Burma's military regime," he said in a statement.

Analysts say the charges against Suu Kyi are aimed at keeping her sidelined ahead of the junta's promised elections in 2010, part of its seven-step "roadmap to democracy."

The West has derided the roadmap as a sham to ensure the military's grip on power.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the military.

It has set several conditions, including reform of the army-drafted constitution and the release of all political prisoners, before it will decide whether to run in the 2010 polls.

(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Bank ‘Stress Test’ Results Due Next Thursday

View from a booth, on a late Friday afternoon: is it any wonder they are releasing the "stress test" results on a Thursday afternoon? To have done a "newsdump" -- like the Bushies used to -- of bad (horrible) news on a Friday would have had some interesting and poor consequences for the Obama administration, so they left an entire day for the news industry -- paid and non -- to panic the public over the condition of the American banking system. My guess is that it will not be pretty. I can only imagine the panic that is going to be created by the release of this news, as it will reveal what you and I already know: the banks in this country, even after receiving billions upon billions of dollars, are in the dump. The only question is how the government is going to force them to start lending again so that small business -- in my view what will eventually bring the economy back to solvency again -- can begin to expand and hire new workers, who can then start the wheels of commerce turning again.  But don't expect any really ballsy moves from Obama on that score. It's not politic for him to use government like that, lest he give lie to those who called him a socialist, which is, in my humble estimation, exactly what this country needs  in order to get right again. Socialism or socialist policies don't have to be permanent -- Roosevelt  and Truman are just two examples I can think of right now who acted far more socialistic than Obama has thus far, but who backed off once matters were set right.  

We'll see what happens. But I think the general health of the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. There is far, far too much up in the air at this point to make any solid prediction of imminent improved economic health. The things we hear about are nothing in comparison with the things we don't.    Cheer up - we could be living in Bolivia. Wait....we are living in Bolivia? Have a nice weekend.

Shabbat shalom.

Randy Shiner   

May 2, 2009

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators plan to release the much-anticipated results of their “stress tests” on the nation’s 19 biggest banks next Thursday, several days later than they had originally expected, in part because some of the banks continue to disagree with the government’s initial conclusions.

Senior officials at the Federal Reserve’s regional banks, especially the New York Fed, are expected to be in discussions with bank executives throughout this weekend and into next week, according to government officials and bank executives.

The goal of the tests is to determine how much additional capital each big bank will need if the economic downturn proves to be worse than expected. Many analysts expect that several major institutions, including Citigroup and Bank of America, will be ordered to come up with billions of dollars in additional capital.

Banks that do get such marching orders will be required to submit a capital-raising plan within one month and will have six months to actually raise the money. In practice, the banks will be under pressure to line up the new capital immediately, and several are expected to announce specific plans on the same day that the results are released.

The Treasury is expected to supply the weaker banks with much if not all the capital they need in exchange for voting shares of common stock, a move that could make the government a major shareholder in some institutions. The Treasury could provide the capital through cash infusions from what is left in its $700 billion financial rescue program, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But Treasury and Fed officials are also expected to simply swap out the government’s existing preferred shares, which offer dividends but have no voting power, into shares of common stock.

Treasury and Fed officials said they would publicly release both aggregate results for the entire group of banks and specific results for individual institutions. The public disclosures will include information on the estimated losses that each bank would suffer if the recession proves worse than expected and how much capital the bank will have left to absorb those losses. The regulators will also disclose how big a capital buffer they expect all the banks to have for at least the foreseeable future.

The public disclosures are expected to be much more detailed and revealing than bank regulators normally provide. Indeed, Treasury officials were highly reluctant to release any of the results themselves, fearing that the information could set off panicky reactions among investors and add to the banks’ existing woes.

But a growing number of lawmakers and financial analysts have demanded that officials make the results public, given that the taxpayer money will probably be used to fill whatever shortfalls the tests reveal.

Where the FUCK are you, Mr. Obama?

The Abdication of Leadership

No, not George W. Bush. Barack Obama, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?! The incredible 533,000 new unemployed, the 'auto bailout', et al., are going to be your fault if you do not somehow effectively deal with the problems that Bush has abdicated his position on. You have a mandate to get your ass in gear and start to fix this clusterfuck of an economy we are in.

I will not blame Bush for these billions and billions. You have to insert yourself and make sure that the money of our economy is not put into the toilet. You are, I fear, using too much of a narrow view of "when" your powers constitutionally begin, to wit, January 20. I suggest that the circumstances warrant a change in this element of your thought. You had better have your ass in a room 15 hours a day with your economic and social advisers reaching into the nervous system of the government and economy that you have inherited. Get your ass in gear. Otherwise, quit now and let Joe Biden step up and do what it takes NOW to get things in hand. This country is utterly rudderless and you have some responsibility. You asked for this job and you got it. Start, man.

Randy Shiner

John McCain: Drop Trou During The Debate!

Mr. McCain has wisely deigned to grace the viewing public with his presence. We need to hear from the putative next President of the United States. But given the events of the last week, I thought that Mr. McCain should signal that his campaign is back up and running, officially, by pulling down his pants tonight to reveal the boxers he has on, simultaneous to answering Jim Lehrer's question about what to do about Russia. It will be the most important part of the debate.

This would be a perfectly fitting end to a week filled with madcap wackiness and misadventure. Witness the way in which Mrs. Palin was literally shielded in a virtual "Get Smart" cone of silence from the media, including FOX "News" and the New York Times, which was branded "not a journalistic organization" by the McCain campaign, along with MSNBC, NBC and a whole host of others. This stunt, repeated in only a few countries in the world, like North Korea, was followed in apparently due course by the "suspension" of his entire campaign, which was in actuality a pretty smart move: if I was running that campaign, I would want Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin to hole up in southern West Virginia, eating only steamed gopher and moonshine until November 5. The suspension was based upon Mr. McCain's desire to put "country first" and then going to Washington, only to learn that he (and Mr. Obama) were only in the way.

But the kicker was when Mr. McCain decided to bail out of the debate which is scheduled for one hour from now. He pledged that he wouldn't come back to the campaign and would not debate until the Congress put the finishing touches on the "bailout" plan that has been floating about for the past few days. Sure enough, though, neither the Presidential Debate Commission which manages the scheduling of the debates nor the Obama campaign, was having any of this monkeyshines.

I know that John McCain is a maverick. He will never give up. Tonight, as Jim Lehrer of PBS asks him a question on what he'd do in retaliation on Russia for the shenanigans they are presently undertaking in Venezuela, I predict that Mr. McCain can only do the one thing that he hasn't tried yet: dropping trou right then and there in front of the estimated 100 million people who are expected to watch, live. Mr. McCain will tell the world just exactly what he'd tell Vladimir (the Impaler) Putin: "eat my shorts". It's time for some comic relief, don't you think? This will provide it to all of us.

As for me, I plan on going to shul and putting the debate on the DVR. Or maybe I'll watch the Cubs play the Brewers. That contest means something. The Presidential campaign is a waste of time and it speaks loudly to the notion that we ought to have a parliamentary system like they do in Britain. I don't care what McCain has to say. He is irrelevant. I can't stand even watching him any more. He's just a pitiful sight, to match that of his running mate. Pitiful. Except I don't feel sorry for either of them. If he wanted to put "country first", he would go on national television and admit defeat and let Barack Obama assume the presidency by acclimation so that the country can have some immediate leadership. McCain has to know he's not qualified to do the job.

Mrs. Robinson

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
(Wo wo wo)
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey hey hey – hey hey hey)

We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files
We’d like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home

And here’ to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
(Wo wo wo)
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey hey hey – hey hey hey)

Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It’s a little secret, just the Robinson’s affair
Most of all you’ve got to hide it from the kids

Coo coo ca choo, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
(Wo wo wo)
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey hey hey – hey hey hey)

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Ev’ry way you look at it you lose

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
(Woo woo woo)
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
‘Joltin Joe’ has left and gone away?
(Hey hey hey – hey hey hey)

It's a bleak time in American economic and political history. Let's just hope McCain's boxers have little ants all over them. Or hearts. Yes, I like hearts.

Randy Shiner

Is John McCain Suffering from the Onset of Alzheimer's Disease?

I. Introduction

Is John McCain suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's Disease? A Milwaukee-area physician who is familiar with the outward signs of the onset of Alzheimer's disease who has been observing John McCain of late says that he is. I ask the question not out of a mean-spirit. I had to watch my own grandmother suffer from the effects of and die from this horrible disease. The fact remains that Mr. McCain, while having beaten cancer so far, has made so many obvious and horribly bad errors concerning foreign affairs that one has to wonder if they are done out of ignorance, which I seriously doubt, or rather, as John Kerry said on "Meet the Press" last week, he is acting erratically (with specific reference to the nomination of Sarah Palin as the person who will be a breath away from the highest office in the land), one of the signs of the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The unsolicited comment by the physician caused me to give credence to the comment by Mr. Kerry, which was, to my way of thinking, mainly political posturing per the Sunday Morning News Program political ritual. In this article, I attempt to define what Alzheimer's Disease is, then go on to illustrate Mr. McCain's accomplishments and experiences in his life that show us just how smart he really must be, and then catalog the errors he has made over the course of the current election campaign. The sad conclusion is that Mr. McCain is too smart to have made the errors he has without some contribution of an organic brain problem that he has yet to disclose to the public.

II. Alzheimer's Disease

Wikipedia contains the following description of Alzheimer's Disease: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_Disease

Characteristics

The disease course is divided into four stages, with a progressive pattern of cognitive and functional impairment.

Predementia

The first symptoms are often mistaken as related to ageing or stress.[4] Detailed neuropsychological testing can reveal mild cognitive difficulties up to eight years before a person fulfills the clinical criteria for diagnosis of AD.[19] These early symptoms can have an effect on the most complex daily living activities.[20] The most noticeable deficit is memory loss, which shows as a difficulty to remember recently learned facts and an inability to acquire new information.[21][22] Subtle problems with the executive functions of attentiveness, planning, flexibility, and abstract thinking or with impairments in semantic memory (memory of meanings, and concept relationships) can also be symptomatic of the early stages of AD.[23][24] Apathy can be observed at this stage, and remains the most persistent neuropsychiatric symptom throughout the course of the disease.[25][26][27] The preclinical stage of the disease has also been termed mild cognitive impairment,[28] but there is still debate on whether this term corresponds to a different diagnostic entity by itself or just a first step of the disease.[29]

Early dementia

In people with AD, the increasing impairment of learning and memory will lead to a definitive diagnosis. In a small proportion of them, difficulties with language, executive functions, recognition of perceptions (agnosia) or execution of movements (apraxia) will be more prominent than memory problems.[30] AD does not affect all memory capacities equally. Older memories of the person's life (episodic memory), facts learned (semantic memory), and implicit memory (the memory of the body on how to do things, such as using a fork to eat) are affected to a much lesser degree than the capacities needed to learn new facts or make new memories.[31][32] Language problems are mainly characterised by a shrinking vocabulary and decreased word fluency, which lead to a general impoverishment of oral and written language. The person with Alzheimer is usually capable of adequately communicating basic ideas.[33][34][35] While performing fine motor tasks such as writing, drawing or dressing, certain movement coordination and planification difficulties (apraxia) may be present, which may appear as clumsiness.[36] As the disease progresses, they can still perform tasks independently, but may need assistance or supervision with the most cognitively demanding activities.[30]

Moderate dementia

People with AD can usually care for themselves during the early stages of the disease, but progressive deterioration hinders independence.[30] Speech difficulties become evident due to an inability to recall vocabulary which leads to frequent incorrect word substitutions (paraphasias). Reading and writing skills are also progressively lost.[33][37] Complex motor sequences become less coordinated as time passes, reducing the ability to perform most normal daily living activities.[38] During this phase, memory problems worsen, and the person may not recognise close relatives.[39] Long-term memory, which was previously left intact, becomes impaired.[40] At this stage, behaviour changes are more prevalent. Common neuropsychiatric manifestations are wandering, sundowning,[41] irritability and labile affect, leading to crying, outbursts of unpremeditated aggression or resistance to caregiving. Approximately 30% of the patients also develop illusionary misidentifications and other delusional symptoms.[42][25] Urinary incontinence can develop.[43] These symptoms create stress for relatives and caretakers, which can be reduced by moving the person from home care to other long-term care facilities.[30][44]

Advanced dementia

During this last stage of AD, the patient is completely dependent upon caregivers. Language is reduced to simple phrases or even single words, eventually leading to complete loss of speech.[33] Despite the loss of verbal language abilities, they can receive and return emotional signals.[45] Although aggressiveness can still be present, extreme apathy and exhaustion are much more common results.[30] Patients will ultimately not be able to perform even the most simple tasks without assistance. Muscle mass and mobility will deteriorate to the point where they are bedridden,[46] and they will also lose the ability to feed themselves.[47] Death occurs from some external factor such as pressure ulcers or pneumonia, and not from the disease itself.[48][49]

I want to see just how many very clearly obvious mistakes Mr. McCain has made over the course of the present Presidential campaign. The decision of Mr. McCain to make Sarah Palin his Vice Presidential choice was called "erratic" by John Kerry on Sunday.

III. John McCain's Background

Let us first understand Mr. McCain's background and the knowledge that he had to have to achieve the political/governmental status he has. Mr. McCain comes from a family that has deep and strong roots in the US Military. His father and paternal grandfather were four-star Navy Admirals. Together with his older sister and brother, they followed their father around the US and the Pacific as he was transferred from base to base. After high school, Mr. McCain entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, starring in wrestling and becoming a lightweight boxer. He graduated 894th out of 899, though apparently he didn't try terribly hard at subjects he disliked and did not get good grades in those subjects. He did well at subjects he enjoyed like literature and history. Not so well at mathematics.

He graduated from Annapolis in 1958 and was posted to Pensacola with the rank of ensign. He completed flight training in 1960. He was assigned to the USS Intrepid and the USS Enterprise, flying A-1 Skyraider ground-attack fighters. He crashed twice and got caught in power lines but walked away from all the mishaps. In 1965, he got married for the first time and adopted his new wife Carol's sons. Thereafter, he requested and received combat assignment to the USS Forrestal, flying A-4 Skyhawks. Actual combat came in 1967, when he was 30 years old and the Forrestal was assigned to bombing raids on North Vietnam. He barely escaped with his life when a rocket under the wing of an F-4 phantom accidentally fired while still on the ship, causing a huge explosion and fire in which 134 sailors were killed.

McCain flew his 23rd and final mission on October 23, 1967 when his plane was shot down over Hanoi and he began five years of imprisonment by the North Vietnamese, who refused to treat his very serious injuries (two broken arms, a broken leg and more, including a bashed shoulder and stab wounds received from angry North Vietnamese who pulled him out of Truc Bach Lake ) until they discovered that he was the son of a four-star Admiral, after which the North Vietnamese tried to cultivate world opinion by broadcasting the fact that they were treating Mr. McCain's wounds. Subsequently, he was put into solitary confinement for two years, beginning in March, 1968. He was tortured mercilessly by the North Vietnamese and was coerced into giving a "confession" of "war crimes". He was released on March 14, 1973.

After returning to the United States, he was reunited with his wife and rehabilitated, though he began a series of extramarital affairs which he disclosed to his wife. Beginning in 1977, he became the Navy's liason to the Senate, his entree into the Washington establishment. In 1979, he met Cindy Hensley, whose father had a very successful beer distributorship in Phoenix. In 1980, Mr. and Mrs. McCain (who had suffered horribly debilitating injuries as the result of an automobile accident while John was a POW) agreed to a divorce.

He and Cindy married on May 17, 1980. John and Cindy McCain entered into a prenuptial agreement that kept most of her family's assets under her name; they would always keep their finances apart and file separate income tax returns.

This might explain the reason why he was unable to answer the question concerning the number of homes he "owns" - undoubtedly many of them are in his wife's name and the question of "ownership" for someone in their tax bracket is a more complicated question that those who own but a single home without having paid much attention to tax ramifications of ownership.

McCain being pulled from Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi and becoming aPOW^[33] on October 26, 1967

Mr. McCain retired from the Navy as a Captain in 1981, as he realized he would never make full admiral because of failed physical examinations and had been given no major sea command. The prospect of becoming a rear admiral did not excite him and he made the decision to run for Congress in the first district of Arizona. His 17 military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medal, for actions before, during, and after his time as a POW.

As Vice President of Public Relations at his father-in-law's beer distributorship, he gained political support among the local business community in Phoenix, meeting powerful figures such as banker Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer Fife Symington III and newspaper publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully, all of whom supported his budding political career. He began his Senate career in 1987, replacing Barry Goldwater after beating his Democratic opponent by 20 points in the general election.

He was enmeshed in the Keating Five scandal by having accepted $112, 000 in campaign contributions and travel on Keating's private jets at the same time he was meeting with Federal regulators about their investigation of Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan. He was "mildly rebuked" by the Senate for the appearance of impropriety, confessing that he exercised "bad judgment" in connection with the Lincoln Savings and Loan matter.

Since January 1993, McCain has been Chairman of the International Republican Institute, an organization partly funded by the U.S. Government that supports the emergence of political democracy worldwide. In 1997, he was voted one of the top 25 most influential people in America by Time Magazine. In 1999, McCain shared the Profile in Courage Award with Russ Feingold (D-WI) for their work in trying to enact their campaign finance reform, although the bill was still failing repeated attempts to gain cloture.

Likewise in 1999, McCain published his memoirs, written with the help of a co-author entitled "Faith of My Fathers", which received mainly good reviews and was made into a movie. According to one reviewer, the book describes "the kind of challenges that most of us can barely imagine. It's a fascinating history of a remarkable military family." 115 Another reviewer observed that, "The appearance of John McCain's 'Faith of My Fathers' seems to have been timed to the unfolding Presidential campaign...." 116 Indeed, McCain did run for the Presidency in 2000.

The Arizona Republic would write that the McCain-Bush primary contest in South Carolina "has entered national political lore as a low-water mark in presidential campaigns", while The New York Times called it "a painful symbol of the brutality of American politics". A variety of interest groups that McCain had challenged in the past ran negative ads.Bush borrowed McCain's earlier language of reform, and declined to dissociate himself from a veterans activist who accused McCain (in Bush's presence) of having "abandoned the veterans" on POW/MIA and Agent Orange issues.

Incensed, McCain ran ads accusing Bush of lying and comparing the governor to Bill Clinton, which Bush said was "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary". An anonymous smear campaign began against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, and audience plants. The smears claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. The Bush campaign strongly denied any involvement with the attacks.

McCain lost South Carolina on February 19, with 42 percent of the vote to Bush's 53 percent, in part because Bush mobilized the state's evangelical voters and outspent McCain. The win allowed Bush to regain lost momentum. McCain would say of the rumor spreaders, "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those." According to one report, the South Carolina experience left McCain in a "very dark place".

McCain's campaign never completely recovered from his South Carolina defeat, although he did rebound partially by winning in Arizona and Michigan a few days later. He made a speech in Virginia Beach that criticized Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as divisive conservatives, famously declaring

"... we embrace the fine members of the religious conservative community. But that does not mean that we will pander to their self-appointed leaders."133

McCain lost the Virginia primary on February 29 and on March 7 lost nine of the thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday to Bush. With little hope of overcoming Bush's delegate lead, McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000. He endorsed Bush two months later, and made occasional appearances with the Texas governor during the general election campaign.

Beginning in 2001, Mr. McCain fought the Bush administration's tax cuts, HMO Reform, climate change and gun legislation. Indeed, he was one of only two Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. 138, 139 By the time the 2004 Presidential campaign rolled around, there was discussion of his possibly joining his friend Sen. John Kerry as his Vice Presidential pick owing to the reputation he had developed as a "maverick" who would not be bound by Republican Party Orthodoxy. The position was never offered, and he has said he would not have accepted it if it had been. 154, 155, 156.

McCain still had hard feelings left over from the 2000 Republican primary campaign yet campaigned with George W. Bush for his 2004 re-election bid, though he did this because he had to, not because he and George Bush were friends. 140

Breaking from his 2001 and 2003 votes, McCain supported the Bush tax cut extension in May 2006, saying not to do so would amount to a tax increase. 139 Working with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, McCain was a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, which would involve legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was never voted on in 2005, while the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed the Senate in May 2006 but failed in the House.151 In June 2007, President Bush, McCain, and others made the strongest push yet for such a bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, but it aroused intense grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others, some of whom furiously characterized the proposal as an "amnesty" program, 164 and the bill twice failed to gain cloture in the Senate.165

Following the publication of "Faith of My Fathers", Mr. McCain subsequently published four more books:

• Worth the Fighting For by John McCain, Mark Salter (Random House, September 2002) ISBN 0-375-50542-3
• Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life by John McCain, Mark Salter (Random House, April 2004) ISBN 1-4000-6030-3
• Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember by John McCain, Mark Salter (Random House, October 2005) ISBN 1-4000-6412-0
• Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them by John McCain, Mark Salter (Hachette, August 2007) ISBN 978-0-446-58040-3

He wrote the following Articles and Forewords:

• "How the POW's Fought Back", by John S. McCain III, Lieut. Commander, U.S. Navy, U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 (reprinted for web under different title in 2008). Reprinted in Reporting Vietnam, Part Two: American Journalism 1969–1975 (The Library of America, 1998) ISBN 1-883-01159-0
• "The Code of Conduct and the Vietnam Prisoners of War", by John S. McCain, Commander USN, National War College, 1974-04-08
• Foreword by John McCain to A Code to Keep: The True Story of America's Longest-Held Civilian POW in Vietnam by Ernest C. Brace (St. Martin's Press, 1988) ISBN 0-709-03560-8
• Speeches of John McCain, 1988–2000
• Foreword by John McCain to Glory Denied: The Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest-held Prisoner by Tom Philpott (W. W. Norton, 2001) ISBN 0-393-02012-6
• Foreword by John McCain to The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam (Random House, 2001 edition) ISBN 1-588-36098-9
• Foreword by John S. McCain to Unfinished Business: Afghanistan, the Middle East and Beyond – Defusing the Dangers That Threaten America's Security by Harlan Ullman (Citadel Press, June 2002) ISBN 0-8065-2431-6
• Foreword by John McCain and Max Cleland to Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming by Jonathan Shay (Scribner, November 2002) ISBN 0-7432-1156-1
• Foreword by John McCain to Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts by the Editors of Popular Mechanics (Hearst, August 2006) ISBN 1-588-16635-X
• Introduction by John McCain to Pearl Harbor, the Day of Infamy, an Illustrated History by Dan van der Vat (Black Walnut Books, 2007) ISBN 1-897-33028-6
• "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom: Securing America's Future" by John McCain Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007

I have not read any of Mr. McCain's books. I read his Foreign Affairs article. I disagree with many of the positions and statements Mr. McCain makes in the article, but it is well-written and thoughtful. Mr. McCain is, it appears to me, a thoughtful man but is clearly also a political animal who will do what it takes to get elected, regardless of his past positions or perceptions of his positions.

IV. Errors By McCain

On May 30, when he told a public gathering that things were going swimmingly in Iraq: "I can tell you that it (the Surge) is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-Surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."

Well, we can look McCain right in the eye and remind him that, as a matter of fact, we have not drawn down to pre-Surge levels. It's just a matter of comparing the actual numbers. Before President Bush ordered his troop escalation in January 2007, we had 128,569 soldiers in Iraq; today, we have 155,000 soldiers in Iraq. In accordance with how math generally works, the latter number is larger than the former. http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/19455269.html

McCain has twice confused the Sunnis and the Shiites. He has insisted that Iran was training al Qaeda operatives, whereas, in reality al Qaeda is a Sunni organization and Iran is run by Shiites. Fortunately, his friend and confidant, Joe Lieberman, was standing within earshot of this booming blunder, softly corrected Mr. McCain in his ear, whereafter Mr. Mr. McCain instantaneously corrected himself. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/and-another-john-mccain-error.php

Just as McCain’s initial assertion about Iran training al Qaeda was false, his claim that he “corrected it immediately” is also false. In fact, McCain made the claim at least three times on two separate occasions. He corrected himself only after the third utterance when Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) whispered in his ear.

While NBC aired only a snippet of O’Donnell’s interview, in the full video, which isposted online, McCain also played the common conservative game of using “intentionally deceptive language” to blur “the differences between groups with different goals and ideologies in order to create the illusion of a united Islamofascist enemy”:

Al Qaeda is military. Al Qaeda is killing Americans as we speak. Islamic extremists are being trained in Iran and they are being sent back into Iran, I mean into Iraq.

Making a false claim and then making it again is the opposite of the correcting it immediately. It’s also the opposite of “straight talk.”

Transcript:

KELLY O’DONNELL: I’d like to ask you about a moment yesterday when you were speaking about the influence of Iran and there was a gaffe, if you’d call it that. When you described Iran aiding al Qaeda, does that suggest that your depth of knowledge on some of the cultural issues may not be as great as some of your military knowledge?

JOHN MCCAIN: Al Qaeda is military. Al Qaeda is killing Americans as we speak. Islamic extremists are being trained in Iran and they are being sent back into Iran, I mean into Iraq. And explosive devices, these copper ones, which we just discovered, uncovered a large cache, are killing American soldiers. We should care about that. We should care about Iranians who are sending these lethal devices, the most lethal devices, into Iraq and killing Americans. That’s what I care about. That’s what the subject is. I just simply misspoke when I said al Qaeda. But they are training extremists and they are sending the most lethal devices that are killing Americans. That’s what we should care about.

O’DONNELL: Do you feel comfortable with understanding the differences between the Shia and Sunni political agendas?

MCCAIN: In all due respect, that was my eighth visit to Iraq. I am constantly briefed. I am constantly engaged in this issue. I’ve been involved in every major national security challenge this nation has faced for the last 20 years.

O’DONNELL: I ask it respectfully because people did notice that you made this comment and wondered, was it simply a slip of the tongue…

MCCAIN: I corrected it immediately. I corrected it, my comment immediately. I don’t claim that I won’t misspeak on occassion, but I will correct it immediately. Ha ha ha, I’m astonished. Frankly, I’m astonished.

O’DONNELL: You don’t think that’s a fair question?

MCCAIN: I think anything is a fair question, but to think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eigth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous.

O’DONNELL: Ok.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/20/mccain-gaffe-nbc/

To my way of thinking, the foregoing mistakes are too severe to overlook, even if it did come in the midst of the bruising Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination. This is either the mistake of a very uninformed person or someone who is unable to mentally hold simple facts in his brain due to some organic malfunction.

Mr. McCain has insisted that Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most powerful figure in that country, whereas, in reality, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's national security council are the powers that run the show. (McCain is fine with the idea of repeating the error about Ahmadinejad: "I think of you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they'd know.") And after a recent clash between Iraqi government troops and Shiite insurgents pledged to Moqtada al-Sadr, McCain erroneously stated that a chastened Sadr had sought a ceasefire, whereas, in reality, the ceasefire was kick-started when the Iraqi government asked its allies in Iran to broke the process; in the end, Sadr's forces were left virtually intact. http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/19455269.html

Mr. McCain gave an interview to Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on March 17, 2008 in which he said the following::

" As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq. I think Americans should be very angry when we know that Iran is exporting weapons into Iraq that kill Americans."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/and-another-john-mccain-error.php

This again betrays a fundamental mistake as to who is whom in the Middle East. Joe Lieberman was not around at that point to correct him and Mr. Hewitt did not of course correct Mr. McCain's mistake.

In July of this year, Mr. McCain gave an interview to Katie Couric of CBS News in which he attributed the "Anbar Awakening" of the Sunnis in that Iraqi province to his much touted "surge":

Katie Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is as-- such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/22/mccain-gets-history-of-th_n_114419.html

Sadly for the American pubic, this story ended up on the editing floor at CBS News. But the failure of the media to take Mr. McCain to task for an area in which he prides himself for his knowledge is just inexplicable, other than fear that the conservative base would howl and scream "liberal media bias". This has suppressed legitemate debate over the one area that Mr. McCain claims expertise. The indisputable fact is that the "Anbar Awakening" took place well before the "surge" was even conceived. A mistake like this or any of the others Mr. McCain has made by, say, Mr. Obama would have caused the entire Republican party to howl and moan that Mr. Obama was unqualified to be President or dogcatcher for that matter. No less a standard should be applied to Mr. McCain, whether it is ignorance or, again, an organic brain problem that is causing Mr. McCain to make these sorts of mistakes. They are not the sort of mistakes that an intelligent person with a functioning brain could possibly make.

There are simple geography errors that a reasonably educated high-school student would know, nevermind a United States Senator:

Two days back on Good Morning America he stated that Iraq and Pakistan share a border. That's his third geographical goof. Its predecessors were stating that Iran is training Al Qaeda operatives, thereby exposing his ignorance of the difference between Sunni and Shia, and referring to "Czechoslovakia," which hasn't existed for about 15 years, replaced by two countries. People have treated these lapses as trivial. I think they're significant of a real problem, he's indifferent to/unable to grasp the sort of details that are essential to statecraft. Expect more and more of these blunders, and better yet, expect it to become an issue.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/07/doddering-john-mccain-makes-3rd-geographical-error.html

V. Conclusion

These are not the mistakes of an intelligent man who has Mr. McCain's education, life and political experience could make unless something was organically wrong with his brain.

Mr. McCain, it is now widely known, wanted Joe Lieberman to be his Vice-Presidential running mate. Mr. Lieberman is very close personally and professionally with Mr. McCain, though I cannot see Hadassah Lieberman and Cindy McCain hanging out at an ORT Convention. I have to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Lieberman are informed about Mr. McCain's condition. It makes sense that Mr. McCain would want such a close confidant at his side during his tenure; but politics make strange bedfellows, and when it became evident that the core of the Republican party was demanding representation on the ticket lest there be a revolt of massive proportions, Mr. McCain was forced to approach the un-vetted Mrs. Palin about the slot. No matter how much his campaign tells the world that she was inserted to give the campaign a shake-up, the fact is that the sublimation of the entire McCain narrative prior to the selection of Mrs. Palin to Mr. McCain's own penchant for making impetuous and, dare I say, erratic decisions. As to whether this belies some organic brain problem with Mr. McCain, we can only speculate. But the facts are the facts: a person as smart, as educated and as experienced at foreign affairs as Mr. McCain certainly is would not otherwise make the clear factual and conceptual (e.g., Sunni vs. Sh'ia) errors if there were not some deeper underlying cause.

Randy Shiner


Unless otherwise stated, the data herein is obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain.