Stumble of the Week

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Buddhism. Perhaps jealous of the recent notoriety gained by Catholic priests and Muslim jihadists, Buddhist monks in South Korea’s largest order were videoed drinking, smoking and gambling huge sums of money at a seaside resort just days before the Buddha’s birthday. J.P. Morgan Chase. How can a company whose founders include J.P. Morgan and the Rockefellers be so bad at investing? Fittingly, for an organization that displays Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr’s dueling pistols at its headquarters, the bank lost $2 billion the now old-fashioned way: credit derivatives.

Joe Biden stumbled last week when his public support for gay marriage forced President Obama’s evolving hand. All has been forgiven at the Oval Office, and the expansion of human rights has received a shot in the arm. Here’s hoping that next week Biden stumbles over TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline.

Human Rights fared less well in North Carolina, where an overwhelming majority of voters – in a state that already has a Defense of Marriage Act – passed a constitutional amendment just to be super sure. “We are not anti-gay,” said the movement’s leader, “we are pro-marriage.” Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who have had seven wives between them, are elated.

Switzerland lost one of the most famous citizens it never knew it had when Michelle Bachmann renounced her dual citizenship, saying, “I have always pledged allegiance to our one nation under God, the United States of America.”

Stereotypes. Pam Shaw, whose stage name is “The Sexational Pam,” says she is now ready to give up her virginity to the right man. Ms. Shaw is 70 years old.

 

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It’s hard not to be tired of tawdriness after a week of such uplifting events as:

  • A British Parliamentary panel’s finding that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to run a large news company, which is quite a condemnation since Murdoch runs the largest such company in the history of the world. This is the same Murdoch who was Prime Minister David Cameron’s first official overnight guest. That’s the same Cameron who hired Andy Coulson as his communications director while Coulson was still on Murdoch’s payroll. And that Coulson is under arrest.
  • The testimony at the trial of John Edwards, a man some once considered fit to be president.
  • The abrupt resignation of Ric Grenell, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy expert, because of the outcry against his homosexuality by “pro-family community.”
  • The National Football League, which suspended four players for offering “bounties” for maiming opposing quarterbacks and whose former star, Junior Seau, became the second ex-player in two weeks to commit suicide.

So it is nice to note that one of the most heartwarming stories also came out of the NFL, when Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie coach, Greg Schiano, signed his former Rutgers player, Eric LeGrand, a defensive lineman who was paralyzed from the neck in his junior year. It was a gesture, to be sure, as LeGrand is in a wheelchair – although he has made more progress than his doctors ever thought possible. But Schiano’s act reminds us that it isn’t only in fiction that a coach can love his players.

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Political consensus allegedly took another hit last week, as two moderate Democratic Congressmen lost to more liberal opponents in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primaries. Reporters attributed the defeat of incumbents Jason Altmire and Tim Holden to their votes against the Obama health care plan and their opposition to global warming legislation – yet more evidence, they said, of the polarization of America’s two major parties. This raises an interesting question: why is it polarizing for Democratic candidates to support (1) the health care law that is the signature legislative achievement of their party’s president and (2) climate legislation, when the scientific debate on the issue has long been settled and the imperative to act is recognized by virtually everyone this side of Rick Santorum? To be considered a moderate, must you vote for the policies of the other party? When King Solomon threatened to cut the disputed baby in half, did he seriously believe that half a baby for each mother was a reasonable outcome?

In a recent documentary on New Jersey’s Raritan River, then-Governor Christy Whitman said, as she signed a Brownfields bill into law: “The fact that you have people on either side of the spectrum who are not 100% happy tells you that you probably struck a pretty good bargain right in the middle.”

But is the measure of moderation our willingness to sacrifice our beliefs to a more politically palatable consensus? What happened to the idea of standing up for them?

The public discourse in this country has turned ugly, I think, not because of the strength of our own beliefs so much as our refusal to respect those who disagree.

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The uproar over the recent dust-up in Cartagena, Colombia, has already cost a couple of secret service administrators their jobs, and the investigations continue. Media reports paint a picture of a wild night of heavy drinking and prostitution – one that potentially put the president at risk. That’s one side of the story.

Unmentioned have been the almost heroic efforts of federal agencies to rein in expenses and cut costs. In fact, the entire matter would never have seen the light of day, had not one overly zealous agent balked at the excessive price his companion demanded for her services the next morning. When it came time for her to leave (hotel rules stipulate that prostitutes must vacate before 7 a.m.), the woman asked for $1.4 million pesos. That’s a lot of money ($800 at the current exchange rate), and far more than new agency guidelines permit.

The agent countered with $30, which makes you wonder when he last used an escort service at public expense.

What spilled out into the corridor of the fancy resort hotel was a brouhaha that resembled a Keystone Kops routine. As the two principals continued to argue over the price, they were joined by another prostitute. Soon Colombian police officers showed up to back the woman’s claims (even they pay more than $30), as US federal agents tried in vain to hush everyone up.

The rest, as they say, has gone viral.

It makes me nostalgic for the days of Eliot Spitzer.

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Mitt Dumps Newt 

Withdraws Treasury Offer in Wake of Bounced Check

Amid the continuing fall-out over the return of the Gingrich campaign’s $500 check for insufficient funds, Mitt Romney has dropped Newt Gingrich from consideration as Secretary of the Treasury in his administration. The money was the filing fee for Utah’s presidential primary.

“After watching his handling of Callista’s Tiffany bills,” said a Romney spokesperson, “we were impressed with the Speaker’s nimbleness with large deficits. Unfortunately, the situation has called that into question, and Governor Romney will go in a different direction.”

Asked if the Koch brothers were now under consideration for the cabinet post, she declined comment.

Calling the matter “one of those goofy things,” Gingrich said he expected to be competitive in Utah now that Jon Huntsman is out of the race.

“Five hundred dollars!” Romney later told a convention of restaurant chain owners, “I wouldn’t leave that little as a tip.”

“Unless,” he chuckled, “the service was really bad.”

In other stumbles:

  • North Korea’s ballyhooed launch of its $450-million satellite lasted about a minute, at which point the Kwangmyongsong, or “Bright Shinning Star,” disintegrated and fell into the Yellow Sea.
  • Hilary Rosen apologized to Ann Romney in the so-called Mommy Flap, which is indicative of how irrelevant so much of this campaign is to most people’s lives.
  • France’s Beaujolais wine producers issued a statement denying any link to China’s disgraced former future leader, Bo Xilai.

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Fewer than 48 hours after James Murdoch had resigned as chairman of its parent company, the editor of Sky News announced that he had authorized his reporters to hack into private emails at least twice in the past – one instance involved John Darwin, the “canoe man” who faked his own death and lived for years with his wife on his life insurance payout; the other involved a pedophile. Far from manifesting contrition, John Ryley said, “We stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public interest,” noting that the satellite news organization had turned the emails over to the police in what turned out to be a successful prosecution of crime.

To suggest that it is a role of the press to gather evidence illegally to aid a police investigation insults all the reporters who have gone to jail or worse for refusing to turn their work into a tool of the state.

Compare Ryley’s comments with those of Anthony Shadid, The New York Times reporter who was memorialized in Cambridge last night. Shadid also broke a law when he entered Syria to cover that country’s carnage. He died there in February. Shadid was an impressive and humble man, who said shortly before his death that he believed some stories were worth risking his life for . . . because they were important to get out to the world and it was his job to do so.

There is a chasm between Shadid’s journalism and Ryley’s.

On a lighter note, this stumble didn’t happen last week but I only discovered it last night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34phsb4e6Eg

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  • Mitt Romney. If he’s the candidate, said Rick Santorum, “we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future."
  • Rick Santorum. “[I]t is clear,” wrote Romney’s political director, “that he is becoming the most valuable player on President Obama's team."

Silver Lining. Etch A Sketch’s stock price nearly tripled in yesterday’s trading.

  • Georgia. In a report published by the Center for Public Integrity that ranked the most corrupt states, Georgia came in dead last. The other states receiving failing grades: South Dakota, Wyoming, Virginia, Maine, South Carolina, North Dakota and Michigan.

Silver Lining. The top two states were #2 Connecticut and #1 New Jersey. Huh? Apparently the horrendous ethical histories of both states (Connecticut supreme court justices, state officials and governors have been indicted for abuse of power; in the last decade in New Jersey, “at least five state legislators were convicted on corruption charges.”) led to such public outrage that the voters have demanded – and instituted – significant reforms.

  • Young and minority voters. When Virginia’s pending Voter ID bill becomes law, 13 states, with 189 electoral votes (70% of a majority) will have new laws that (take your pick) reduce voter fraud or disenfranchise voters, almost all in states with Republican legislative majorities. But the real problem is not that too many people vote in this country, but too few. In the 2010 elections, 37.8% of those eligible voted. Two years earlier, the figure was 56.8%, the highest since 1968. Question: why would groups who did better in 2010 want to dampen the turnout we saw in 2008?

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Five things I stumbled onto this week:

  1. 54% believe that presidents can do “a lot” to control gas prices
  2. Tea Party support is at 22%
  3. Women prefer Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney by a 3-2 margin
  4. Women are split on whether health insurance should cover contraception
  • “Modern mega-slums like Kibera (Nairobi) and Citi-Soleil (Port-au-Prince) have achieved densities comparable to cattle feedlots” (Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, p. 92).
  • Rick Santorum’s remark in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, that “it’s good to be in the hometown of Rush Limbaugh, which some  people see as a trip to Mecca" came not long after he told a Bates College audience that Islam " is stuck in the 7th century ."

        •   Two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Reagan administration helped draft: Somalia and the United States.

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3rd Runner-up Amanda Clayton, whose food stamps were cut off by Michigan’s Department of Human Services after it was revealed that she had won $1 million on the “Make Me Rich" lottery game show. Clayton, who is unemployed, had continued to collect the public payments because, among other things, “I have two houses.” 2nd Runner-up The graceful concession speech took a hit this week when idiosyncratic Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich said, after losing the primary for a redistricted Ohio seat to fellow Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur: “I would like to be able to congratulate Congresswoman Kaptur, but I do have to say that she ran a campaign in the Cleveland media market that was utterly lacking in integrity.”

1st Runner-up Iraq seems to have stumbled off the list of countries that John McCain wants to bomb. It is not clear how long it can remain out of his sights, since it is firmly nestled between prime targets Syria and Iran. Other reported countries on his long list include Venezuela, Sweden and northern California.

This Week’s Winner Japan’s nuclear program has virtually shut down, with the last of its 54 reactors scheduled to go off-line next month. The country has responded to the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster with a combination of stringent conservation policies and increased dependence on imported fossil fuels – and the Japanese people have also, in the words of poet Madoka Mayazumi, begun to ask “some basic questions [about] the constant pursuit of more. . . . An aesthetic of reduction can be one way to reframe our lifestyle.”

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Civility took another step backward with Olympia Snowe’s announcement that she will not seek re-election to her Maine senate seat. Snowe, one of the few remaining moderates in the GOP, cited the atmosphere in Washington as a reason for her retirement: “I do find it frustrating that an atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.” Shortly after her announcement, she became the only Republican to vote against the Blunt Amendment. Ordinary People. While the Blunt Amendment failed by three votes, the arguments of its supporters that the issue was First Amendment rights for employers and institutions it ignores the needs and desires of the people who actually have the insurance policy or need the services. But don’t forget, corporations are people, too. Mitt Romney’s flip flop on the issue is only news because he took little more than an hour to do so.

Gut Instincts. In 2001 George W. Bush looked Vladimir in the eye and said, "I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Masha Gessen’s new book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, “is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and . . . made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world.”

Inhumanity. Asked about the boy who had killed her son Demetrius Hewlin at Chardon High School, Phyllis Ferguson showed the nature of true humanity: “You have to forgive because if you don’t forgive you hold that in your heart. It’s still in your memory of your child. You got that hatred in your heart.”

“On March the 8th, which will be Demetrius’ birthday next Thursday, I appreciate if everybody will light a candle for him. He would be 17 years old.”

 

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Runner-up The Virginia Senate. A lot of people these days talk about getting the government off our backs, which raises the question of where they would like us to put it. The majority of the Virginia Senate gave their answer earlier this month in Senate Bill 484 (http://www2.wsls.com/news/2012/feb/01/va-senate-approves-abortion-ultrasound-requirement-ar-1656051), which requires pregnant women even considering an abortion to have a “vaginal ultrasound,” a procedure that is as invasive as it sounds, particularly when mandated by the state. (Has it been that long since groups like those who backed this bill denounced ultrasounds for healthy women as a form of social engineering?) Gov. Bob McDonnell, who had sponsored a similar bill when he was a legislator and was initially a strong supporter of the Senate bill – but who also has national ambitions – made a U-turn, saying that “mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.” The House of Delegates, which had been poised to approve the Senate bill, instead passed a bill removing the mandatory provision. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/us/governor-of-virginia-calls-for-changes-in-abortion-bill.html?ref=us) This Week’s Winner: The Mormon Church, which apologized profusely for having baptized – posthumously and without the family’s knowledge – the parents of . . . I kid you not . . . Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor, who died in 2005. Simon’s father, Asher Wiesenthal, was killed in action on the Eastern Front in 1917; his mother, Rosa, died at the Belzec concentration camp in Poland in 1942. A spokesman for the Mormon church called the baptisms “a serious breach of protocol.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17036046)

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3rd Runner-up: Rick Santorum’s tax returns, whose release has again been delayed so Santorum can consult with his accountant, even though he says he files his own returns. I have never understood the issue with tax returns. Didn’t he file them? If so, what does he need to go over with his accountant? Is he allowed to change them? Why not just release the ones he filed? (Meanwhile, his primary financial backer, Foster Friess, defended Santorum's somewhat peculiar position on contraception, telling Andrea Mitchell, “Back in my day they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly.") 2nd Runner-up: “Fast Eddie,” aka Michael Maher, who was arrested in Ozark, Missouri, after being outed by his daughter-in-law as the legendary armed-car robber who disappeared from England with a million pounds in 1993.

1st Runner-up: Lee King, “Fast Eddie’s” son, whose wife of two months blew the whistle on the old man, but who then got outed on his own. Even though he is only 22, three former girl friends have appeared. They claim three children by him, plus one more on the way. Oh, and his wife is pregnant. Maybe Foster Friess is onto something.

This Week’s Winner: Saeid Moradi, the Iranian bomber, who mistakenly blew off the roof of his safe house in Bangkok. Badly wounded and bleeding profusely, he tried to hail a taxi, but the driver refused to pick him up. When police arrived, he threw a grenade at them, but it bounced back off a tree and blew his legs off. Which would all be amusing if this were a Keystone Kops movie instead of a deadly assassination tit-for-tat between Israel and Iran.

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3rd Runner-Up: Mitt Romney stumbled over the poor . . . but his donors have forgiven him. 2nd Runner-Up: Newt Gingrich watched Romney seize the coveted Trump endorsement and Rick Santorum land Tom Tancredo . . . which left Newt only half the wacko ex-candidates: Herman Cain and Rick Perry. No word yet on Michelle Bachmann.

1st Runner-Up: The current Mrs. Gingrich was reportedly spotted in public with a hair out of place and an expression on her face . . . information as yet unconfirmed, so probably just a rumor.

This Week’s Winner: Me. I went to move my car yesterday, and it wasn’t there. Unlike the incident with my computer (“Aging”), I did not lose my car. I knew exactly where I had left it . . . although I did frantically search a 10-block radius just to make sure. It turns out I had some minor confusion about the day of the week, and the car had been towed the day before I thought I’d parked it.

So I walked 70 blocks to Pier 76, where they tow misparked cars, following New York’s wonderful westside park system that seeks to reconnect city dwellers with their river. At Pier 76 I didn’t feel so alone or dumb, as I joined in line:

  • a sign painter who had been waiting for five hours because they couldn’t find his truck;
  • a contractor on a job in midtown whose truck had been towed from exactly the same spot for the second day in a row; and
  • a UPS guy in his brown suit, whose truck loaded with packages had been towed . . . while he was making a delivery.

When I was finally escorted to my car, there was a parking ticket on the windshield.

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January 27, 2012 Stumble of the Week Last week we focused on the stumbler. This week we look at the stumbling block:

4th Runner-Up: Switzerland: Its banks just can’t keep secrets any more, as Mitt Romney, whose omission of the account from his financial disclosure form was called a “minor technical” issue by his staff, was outed on his tax returns.

3rd Runner-Up: Margaritas: It turns out that the reason Pat Sajak seemed to stumble through entire episodes of “Wheel of Fortune” was that he and Vanna White had had “two or three or six” of those guys during the break. Consequently, they had “trouble recognizing the alphabet.”

2nd Runner-Up: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have become the clubs with which Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney beat each other up. “You tooted their horn.” “You own their stocks.” “You do too.” Lost in the campaign narcissism are the millions of homeowners and investors who continue to suffer deeply over the actions of the mortgage twins.

1st Runner-Up: Milk: Not only did the president’s sophisticated joke go right over the heads of Congress (particularly the two men sitting behind him with glazed eyes), but it enraged members of the environmental community who pointed out that spilled milk is no joke. These days everything is a serious matter, so perhaps we need to lighten up a little.

This Week’s Winner: The Moon: Apparently when Alan Shepard hit golf balls there 40 years ago, it awakened in a young Newt Gingrich the possibility that the moon could become, not just a gated colony of 13,000 Americans, but our 51st state. He’s aiming for 2020, the year scientists believe global warming will become irreversible down here (see Jan. 17 blog, “2020”).

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4th Runner-Up: Big Oil, although almost everyone seems to think Obama’s veto of the Keystone pipeline killed only the location, not the plan. 3rd Runner-Up: Newt Gingrich, whose former wife, Marianne, called him morally unfit to be president (although that seems to have sent him surging in the South Carolina polls).

2nd Runner-Up: Rick Perry, who stumbled from front-runner to dropout in near-record time. Only Herman Cain got there quicker, and he hadn’t fallen nearly as far or fast as Perry, who had 2% of the South Carolina vote when he quit. Will he get a cabinet offer? Since Cain dropped out first and dibsied Defense, Perry may have to settle for the Department of . . . um . . . you know.

1st Runner-Up: Mitt Romney, who did not have a good week. First there were the comparisons with his father who released 12 years of tax returns in 1968. Then there was the tax rate itself, which was “probably closer to the 15% rate than anything.” I am not sure what that means, except it is undoubtedly closer to 15% than my rate. Then came the Cayman Islands. And finally, it turns out he lost Iowa. But I like how he counts: his initial six-vote victory over Rick Santorum was a landslide; his 34-vote loss “a virtual tie.”

This Week’s Winner: Francesco Schettino, who after running the Costa Concordia aground off the Tuscan coast, claims that he “tripped” . . . directly into a lifeboat, where he was stuck for an hour and unable to get back aboard his sinking ship. He faces potential charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.