Before Hallmark Cards There Was . . .

My Mother: Jane Page Snellenburg Mullen (1927-2000)

A Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)
By Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

"We're Number 17! We're Number 17!" America's Hellbent Race To The Bottom

The United States was once an indisputably great country, and in some respects perhaps the greatest country.  I speak not of American Exceptionalism, the belief of neoconservatives and some fundamentalist Christians that God made this nation to spread liberty and democracy to the unwashed masses, in the case of the Iraq War at point of gun.   I speak of a nation where prosperity and success could be attained through hard work, where there were myriad educational and job opportunities, and where borders were open to people in pursuit of the American Dream.

But in recent decades America's standing has steadily eroded, and today it is indisputably no longer a great country, ranking at or near the bottom among the 17 industrialized nations in quality-of-life and other social measures.  This, of course, will come as news to many of us, not the least of whom are the inside-the-Beltway politicians who fiddle while America crumbles.

America is first by some measures, all of them negative: These include infant mortality, incarceration rates and anxiety disorders, as well as a gulf between the rich and everyone else that accelerated during the Bush Recession as the economy tanked and unemployment soared, but CEOs and their corporations pocketed record stock dividends and profits.  But by other measures, including life expectancy (despite by far the highest health-care costs in the world), as well as obesity, child poverty, commitment to infrastructure development, broadband access and arts funding, America ranks dead last or nearly so.

* * * * *

This hellbent race to the bottom ("We're Number 17! We're Number 17!") has been a group effort, but the three arms of government -- the executive, legislative and judicial branches -- that are supposed to be the custodians of our national interests must shoulder most of the blame.

Nixon's excesses and Clinton's infidelities aside, the Bush-Cheney interregnum was not merely the darkest chapter in modern American history with its gross distortion of presidential power, including the use of torture and governance by fear, it has remained a debilitating presence in the four-plus years since Barack Obama took office.  While the young president has suffered his share of self-inflicted wounds, as well as the slings and arrows of cruel Republicans and spineless Democrats, the toxic fallout from the first eight years of the decade has compromised his ability to lead.

Congress deserves the harshest criticism because it is so out of touch with all but the most affluent and powerful Americans.  I recently read David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest and was struck by how President Johnson and his advisers had to escalate the Vietnam War by stealth because Congress would never have approved massive troop increases and a sustained bombing campaign because the American people would not have supported them.  Contrast that with how Congress rolled over on gun control in fawning obeisance to the National Rifle Association, America's largest terrorist organization, although most of us favor toughening laughably weak federal laws and demanded action in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has become a branch of the Republican Party and the plutocracy, its hackery evident in decisions from Citizens United to enshrining workplace discrimination and validating civil liberties abuses, to protecting Big Pharma from liability for killer drugs and medical devices.

* * * * * 

I am in the clutches of a malaise.  It is impossible for me not to conclude that America is abandoning its youth, its elderly and its poor; is suffocating its middle class, increasing numbers of whom have become working poor; is timid and risk averse; is allowing the drift from productive manufacturing to a service economy where little is made of value; continues to give obscene tax breaks to the super rich and corporations; fails to confront the fossil fuel monster that saps our resources and further dirties our environment, and has turned its back on newcomers while disenfranching voters.

And not least has turned away from its own rich history, core values and virtues to the point where many of us, if shown a copy of the Bill of Rights, would believe it to be a subversive document.

* * * * *

What makes my malaise so deep is that I do not merely believe things will continue to become worse in a land for which I have bled red, white and blue.  I believe they may never get better.

If you feel otherwise, please offer your thoughts on how the country can rebound within the present political and social framework.  And if big changes are necessary beyond that framework, as well, what are they?  If the darkest hour is before the dawn, what should a new American dawn bring?

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/The Washington Post

(2011)

Satchmo On Jazz: 'Man, If You Have To Ask What It is, You'll Never Know'

THE MOST FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH IN JAZZ HISTORY

Writer and essayist Gerald Early once wrote that when American civilization is studied two thousand years from now, there there will only be three things that Americans will be known for -- the Constitution, baseball and jazz.

"They're the three most beautiful things Americans have ever created," Early said, and I could not agree more.

The Constitution is a remarkable and remarkably enduring document that has been amended only 27 times in 223 years. Six of those amendments are technical fixes, while recent efforts to pass "family values" amendments have flopped.

Baseball is my favorite sport bar none, notably because of its languid pace, atmospherics and inter-generational nature. My father introduced me to the game and I to my son.

This brings me to jazz, the only uniquely American art form and one that I embraced from the first time I heard Dave Brubeck's Take Five album when I was in my early teens.

My musical tastes have become fairly sophisticated in the intervening half century. I enjoy classical, opera, rock, soul, R&B, funk, blues, folk and reggae, but as my ear has matured, my hair receded and my paunch grown, I find myself listening to jazz more and more.

I have come to believe that it is no accident that my adoration of jazz -- from the early syncopation of ragtime and blues to swing, big band, bop and bebop to fusion and avant-garde -- is substantially because I am a student of American history.

Jazz, after all, is the soundtrack of our society and its myriad themes of boom and bust, world wars, human relations, sex and drugs, assimilation, discrimination and immigration. It is about opening your mind, moving your behind and tapping your feet. It is about despair and joy, breaking free, breaking up and falling in love.

Does any of kind of music evoke all these things while often making itself up as it goes along? I don't think so.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. So go get yourself some!

N.Y. Times Reports That World Ends: Women & Minorities Are Hit Hardest

Among my all-time favorite April Fools Day hoaxes is the Great Swiss Spaghetti Hoax in which the respected BBC news show "Panorama" announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop.

The announcement was accompanied by footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in and many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

More great hoaxes here.

How Power Companies Hoodwinked The Nat'l Park Service & Screwed Ratepayers

The 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, located on the middle section of the scenic Delaware River in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, is breathtakingly beautiful. Some 75 miles from New York City, it is visited by upwards of three million people a year.  Within its boundaries is a stunning range of flora and fauna, waterfalls, the Appalachian Trail and historic homes and farms.  But if two power companies get their way, the recreation area will be cleaved by high-voltage electric transmission lines strung between looming 197-foot-tall towers over clear cut forest that will dwarf everything in their path and be visible for many miles, despoiling a leafy, river-straddling panorama without peer in the region.  It will be like running a razor blade across the face of a beautiful woman, leaving a hideous scar that will never heal.

A coalition of New Jersey environmental groups has filed suit against the U.S. Park Service in federal District Court in Washington to stop work on the 500-kilovolt Susquehanna-Roseland Power Line, which would run 130 miles from Berwick in Columbia County in Northeastern Pennsylvania to Roseland in Essex County in North Jersey.  The coalition argues that the Park Service unlawfully granted permission for construction of the line on the existing 4.3-mile footprint of a much smaller 230-kilovolt line build in the 1920s, nearly a half century before the recreation area was created.  This, it says, is in violation of the agency's own rules, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the Environmental Policy Act of 1969.  They note that the Park Service itself acknowledges in its own impact study that the line "would adversely affect protected resources within the park, in some instances irreversibly."

But that is not the half of it.  PPL of Pennsylvania and Public Service Gas & Electric of New Jersey, the power companies that would operate the line, claim it must be built because of an order from PJM, the regional electric grid operator, in order to upgrade existing lines to address power demand issues that were expected to occur in North Jersey by 2012.  But not only have such issues not materialized, demand has dropped because of energy conservation, while four cleaner burning natural-gas powered generating stations will be coming on line in North Jersey in coming years that will provide more than enough electricity.  As it is, electricity for the line would be generated by coal-fired power stations in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, pollutants from which will blow easterly into New Jersey, among other states.

The real -- if unstated -- reason that PPL and PSE&G are anxious to build the Susquehanna-Roseland Line is that the utilities would be able to pass on the entire cost of the $750 million project to 51 million ratepayers in the PJM region while making a tidy profit.  The electricity available because of the line would be sold by PSE&G to New York City at rates far greater than it charges its New Jersey customers.  When PSE&G completes a long-term agreement to manage the Long Island Power Authority, electricity from the line also would be sold there at inflated rates. 

In other words, other than temporary construction jobs, the project will be of no benefit to Pennsylvania and New Jersey residents while despoiling the heart of what is arguably the region's greatest natural resource.

Soil testing and other pre-construction activities already are underway in the recreation area.  Construction isn't scheduled to begin until later in the year. but  would be delayed if the plaintiffs in the lawsuit prevail.

* * * * *

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is, in part, an outgrowth of a bitter war over the Army Corps of Engineer's plan to dam the Delaware at Tocks Island, which sits upriver about seven miles from the Delaware Water Gap.  The Kittatinny range, the mountains that define the eastern edge of the Pennsylvania Poconos, are worn down as any in the Appalachians.  The ridge line is broken in only one place by a spectacular mile-wide gap where layers of limestone, quartz and shale are laid bare and plunge 1,300 feet from the ridge line at an almost precise 45-degree angle to the river before reappearing in mirror image on the other side.

In signing the legislation creating the 47,500-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in 1965, President Johnson declared that "If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology.  We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."  Another 24,500 acres originally designated for the Tocks project were added later. 

The recreation area does not compare in size to the millions of acres within the Yellowstone or Yosemite national parks, but unlike those treasures it is a relatively short drive from densely populated cities, a precious swath of open space that has become even more important in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated another great natural resource -- New Jersey and New York beaches.

Nancy Shukaitis, a Poconos environmental activist and a key player in the defeat of Tocks, considers the recreation area to be "an open air/clean water classroom, a rare place for solace, for human peace within oneself. . . .  The very presence of a transmission line within the DWGNRA speaks to insensitivity and disrespect for the values of our nation's natural National Parks and its visitors."

* * * * *

The war to dam the river at Tocks, creating a vast reservoir that would submerge hundreds of homes and farms, including land farmed by the family of Shukaitis's father-in-law since the 1780s, would be a lightning rod for the nascent American environmental movement.  Before the war whimpered to a conclusion at the end of the 1970s, it destroyed the careers of politicians, was the cause of suicides, arsons and violence, and exposed deep tears in the social fabric of the Poconos.  The war unleashed a bitterness against outsiders and the dam's powerful, politically connected backers that seems just as intense today.

But while the Susquehanna-Roseland Power Line has brought together an eclectic coalition of opponents on the New Jersey side of the river ranging from the Sierra Club to Appalachian Trail groups to the Delaware Riverkeepers, it has elicited barely a hiccup on the Pennsylvania side of the river, and although no conservation or open space group in the Poconos will say so publicly, there seems to be a consensus that what is done is done.  This is because these groups believe they may benefit from a provision in the murky agreement that the utility companies struck with the Park Service to set aside $66 million for a so-called mitigation fund.  The fund would be used, among other things, to purchase open space primarily in Pennsylvania adjacent to or near the recreation area that, the utilities say without a hint of irony, would provide unobstructed "natural views" of surrounding areas.

New Jersey opponents of the power line recognize this agreement for what it is: A bribe in return for groups seemingly dedicated to conservation and preserving open space to look the other way.  The Park Service will be the nominal custodian of these bribe lands, which is something of a joke.  This is because the Park Service struggles to manage the recreation area as it is, and is so overwhelmed that a Park Service official recently asked the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service if it would consider taking over management of the recreation area lands below the Interstate 80 toll bridge at the Water Gap.

"The public has no information about the lands . . . that will be purchased through the fund," wrote attorneys for the groups suing to block the power line.  "Neither is there any indication or certainty that land acquisitions will be . . . managed in a way that genuinely offsets damages to existing parklands."

The opposition of the Sierra Club to the power line project led one Poconos public official who considers himself to be an environmentalist to rail against the powerful environmental group at a recent board meeting of an open space group.

"I will never give another damned cent to the Sierra Club," the official said, perhaps unaware or not caring that it was the Sierra Club's clout, combined with the good works of Shukaitis and other determined environmentalists on both sides of the river, that defeated the Tocks Island Dam project and helped create a magnificent recreation area that would be scarred forever by the power line he and others tacitly support.

Why Have Our Dear American Golden Retrievers Become Cancer Time Bombs?

(ORIGINAL VERSION PUBLISHED IN 2006)

It's not hard to see why Golden Retrievers are among the most popular breeds in the U.S. year in and year out. They're cuddly cute as puppies and beautiful as adults. They're great around kids, energetic, intelligent, intensely loyal and easy to train. In fact, they often train their owners.

But American golden retrievers are also are ticking time bombs. An extraordinary six of every 10 Goldens succumb to cancer well before living to the once typical 12- to 16-year life expectancy. The mortality rate for other dog breeds, as well as for humans, is three in 10.

While any dog that has lived beyond its normal reproductive years is at increased risk for cancer and Goldens are not alone compared to other breeds in this regard, anecdotal evidence suggests that an inordinate number of Goldens are dying before they reach middle age

This post has become somewhat of a Wailing Wall for people who have lost their Goldens. Some 73 of them have shared stories of their losses as of thid date. The average age of these dogs is 8.4 years.

* * * * *

The outlines of the Golden epidemic have been clear for over 10 years, but organizations like the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA), while on the one hand funding studies on and supporting research into the cancers, have done little or nothing to rein in greedy member breeders who play God in knowingly selling interbred, cancer-prone puppies to unsuspecting buyers who end up heartbroken.

Their rationale, in so many words, is that it's not their job. The GRCA's homepage contains no mention of the epidemic and the association has not updated its National Health Survey of the breed since 1999.

The GRCA has gone so far as to recommend that owners give their Goldens a regular regimen of a drug that has been shown to inhibit cancers, which is not unlike a car manufacturer recommending that drivers wear crash helmets when using vehicles that it knows cause an inordinate number of fatal accidents.

Meanwhile, it would seem to stand to reason that if breeders only bred Goldens whose parents were long-lived, progress could be made against the epidemic.

Alas, many breeders seem to be in the business only for the money and have little interest in improving the breed. No surprise there. Purebred Golden pups can fetch upwards of $2,500 and the alternative to selling dogs with shortened life expectancies is to stop selling them. Period.

And while the canine genome has been successfully sequenced, the fine print of the genetics of Goldens and their cancers is still not understood well enough to hold out hope for Goldens less vulnerable to cancer in the foreseeable future.

* * * * *

I know of the Golden Retriever cancer epidemic all too well. I have lived with and been acquainted with a dozen or so goldens over the years. I have midwifed their births, taken them to the vets, helped breed them and cradled them in my arms as they drew their last breaths.
It's hard to name favorites, but Ruffie (Medford Ben's Ruffles was the snooty name on her pedigree papers) would have to be at the top of my list.

Ruffie was special from the time she opened her tiny eyes. While she played with her litter mates, there was an unpuppy-like serenity about her which grew deeper as she matured. She in turn seemed to impart a Zen-like quality on her own offspring, who included Cody, the companion of a good friend, and a sweetheart by the name of Luna.But despite careful attention to their diets, plenty of exercise, regular visits to a terrific vet and the love and devotion of their owners, Ruffie departed this world well before her time, a victim of lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) at age five, while Luna died at age three, also of lymphoma. Cody, meanwhile, lived to the relatively ripe old age of 11 before succumbing to hemangiosarcoma (cancer of the blood).

While hemangiosarcoma and lymphoma are the leading killers of Goldens, the breed also is at increased risk for osteosarcoma (cancer of the bones) and immune system diseases -- primarily allergies and hypothyroidism -- that can comprise their ability to destroy abnormal cells before they can cause cancer.

In fact, it may be that the first litter of founder dog Goldens -- a cross between a registered Tweed Water Spaniel and unregistered yellow flat-coated retriever bred in 1865 by a Scottish land baron who was seeking a superior sporting dog -- carried genes that have led to widespread immune system dysfunction in the breed.
All purebred dogs are technically interbred, but as Rhonda Hovan, an Ohio breeder and health and genetics writer puts it, Goldens may have a very similar inherited "germ line" that put them at greater risk.

"One gets cancer, another becomes hypothyroid, another gets lots of hot spots, and another has food allergies -- but the underlying genes that put them at risk for cancer and which are passed on to the next generation, may be very similar," Hovan explains.

This situation is further complicated because cancers usually don't appear until after a Golden is no longer bred but has passed on its genes to multiple puppies.

* * * * *

There is little that Golden owners can do to detect cancers in their dogs and they often are too advanced to treat when discovered, although there have been strides in treating the cancers with Palladia, the first FDA-approved cancer drug for dogs, as well as some of the same chemotherapy drugs used in humans.

Such treatments can be quite expensive, $26,000 in the instance of one owner who managed to prolong her Golden's life by only a few months, while some pet health insurance policies have cancer riders that do not cover hereditary conditions.

There are some early warning signs. These include lumps or masses on or under the skin, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, difficulty in breathing and changes in eating habits, but many Goldens seem fine one minute and are deathly ill or dead the next.

Hovan had a Golden who had hiked 8,000 miles by her side and died of hemangiosarcoma."As experienced as I am," Hovan said, "I didn't know until 12 hours before she passed away."

As with humans, lifestyle can make a difference. Studies show that dogs that are lean and fit have a lower risk of cancer, as well as other health problems, but there is no evidence that exotic diets make a difference.

Not much of a defense in the face of an unrelenting epidemic without end.

SOURCES

"Pedigree Dogs Exposed," a BBC One documentary first aired on August 19, 2008; "When Cancer Comes With a Pedigree" by Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal (May 4, 2010); Winning Cancer Fight: No Longer Automatic Death Verdict Thanks To Advances" by Amy Sacks, New York Daily News (November 14, 2009); "Understanding Cancer In Golden Retrievers" by Rhonda Hovan; Email interview by the author with Hovan.

Why Joe Biden Has Become The Most Influential Vice President In History (Sorry, But Dick Cheney Doesn't Count)

When Barack Hussein Obama takes the presidential oath of office on January 21, at his side will be Joseph Robinette Biden, without question the most influential vice president for good in American history.  This by way of differentiating him, as if one needs to, from Richard Bruce Cheney, without question the most influential vice president for evil in American history.

Perhaps one reason Biden's star has risen so high is because he succeeded Cheney, who acted as a de facto president when it suited his imperial self, usurped the roles of national security adviser and secretary of state, was a tireless cheerleader for the use of torture and fear mongering, a scold in accusing anyone who didn't agree with him as being unpatriotic, a key player in going to war against Iraq, and a man who brooked no dissent.  Ever.  

By contrast, Biden's chops as a conciliator, honed through 36 years in the Senate, has thrust him into the spotlight at key junctures since Obama was elected, most recently in breaking the fiscal cliff logjam.  Additionally, and perhaps most importantly as history will show, Biden has played a special role as Obama's devil's advocate with the encouragement of a president nearly two decades his junior. 

Biden has spoken up when he believed Obama was not making the correct decision, notably in being the sole holdout among the president's inner circle in opposing the daring raid that took out Osama bin Laden, and as the harshest skeptic of the president's Afghanistan strategy, so harsh that some Pentagon bigs labeled him a traitor behind his back.  As history will also show, Obama got lucky with Bin Laden and Biden was right regarding Afghanistan.

There are those who will tell you that Biden was destined for greatness, but I would not be one of them.

I met the future vice president when I was 12 and on my way to junior high school, and he was 17 and entering his senior year at a Roman Catholic boy's school. He was a gangly kid with no apparent social skills and had a stutter. We played beach volleyball together at the Delaware shore for a couple of summers, and his folks and my folks became friends. Delaware, you see, is even smaller than it looks on a map.

Biden went on to the University of Delaware, where he excelled at political science in a department later chaired by the late Jim Soles, who was to attract the future managers of both the 2008 Obama and McCain campaigns to Delaware as undergrads. I followed Joe to Delaware where I excelled at nothing except getting in trouble with the university administration as editor of the student newspaper.

Although I sort of kept up with Biden through my parents' friendship with his, our paths didn't cross again until 1972, my second election as a voter, when I pulled the lever for a Joe who had long left behind the traits of awkward adolescence.

Biden upset a longtime Republican U.S. senator, but within days of the election suffered the tragic deaths of his wife and baby daughter in a traffic accident.  (Years later, he had his own brush with mortality after suffering a potentially fatal brain aneurysm.) Persuaded by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to not quit, he began the first of six terms in Washington -- at 29 the youngest senator in modern history -- and a tenure in the upper chamber that was to be characterized by hard work, growing foreign relations expertise, a willingness to conciliate, which is to say compromise, and a successful hair weave, as well as a tendency to shoot from the lip.

As my friend Mark Bowden wrote in an Atlantic essay, Biden is in some respects the antithesis of the president he serves.

"No one believes Obama would want, need, or tolerate a Rasputin across the [West Wing] lobby," Bowden wrote. "But whether it has been managing the tricky drawdown of American involvement in Iraq, or implementing the $787 billion Recovery Act, or soothing worries in Eastern Europe over Obama’s revised missile-defense strategy, or helping select two Supreme Court nominees, Biden seems the opposite of a pain in the ass. He has made himself indispensable."

Biden's indispensability was on offer during the many meetings on how to take out Osama bin Laden.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates, like the vice president, also opposed an air or ground operation, but later went along with the high-risk ground mission that Obama advocated.

"Mr. President, my suggestion is: don’t go," Biden said during one Situation Room meeting. "We have to do . . . more things to see if he's [at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan]." Biden believed that if the raid failed, Obama could say good-bye to a second term. 

Like vice presidents in general, Biden has been subjected to ridicule.

Beyond his verbal blunders, there was The Awl's liveblog (with the sound off) of the Biden-Ryan vice president debate and a hilarious series of articles and images in The Onion to which Biden has reacted to with good humor and then some.  A consequence is that these send-ups have burnished his image as a Joe Sixpack.  (For the record, Biden does not drink alcohol.)

"Look, I ran for president [in 2008]," Biden told Bowden, "because I honest-to-God believed that for the moment, given the cast of characters and the problems of the country, I thought I was clearly the best-equipped to lead the country . . . But here's what I underestimated: I had two elements that I focused on, which made me decide to run. One was American foreign policy, and the other was the middle class and what's happening to them economically. If Hillary were elected or I were elected, and assume I did as good a job as I could possibly get done, it would have taken me four years to do what [Obama] did in four weeks, in terms of changing the perception of the world about the United States of America. Literally. It was overnight. It wasn’t about him. It was about the American people . . . It said, these guys really do mean what they say. All that stuff about the Constitution, and all about equality, I guess it's right."

The biggest reason for Biden's success is revealed in that reflection on 2008: As in the Senate, he has made his own political fortunes secondary and those of the president and country he serves first and foremost.

Dance Of The Dunes: The Biggest Lesson To Be Learned From Superstorm Sandy

An iconic Sandy-damaged house in Union Beach, New Jersey

I was a beach baby, a fortunate child who spent much of each summer at the Delaware shore.  I was able to swim in the ocean by age three, mindful of big breakers and undertows because of a father who had been a lifeguard.  And had met my mother when she introduced herself to a ruggedly handsome man atop a lifeguard stand at the very beach where my brother, sister and I were to later swim, built sand castles, eat Boardwalk fries and Old Bay-seasoned steamed blue crabs, took surreptitious sips of beer offered by my father's Irish emigre mother, and endure raucous late-night poker games while tossing and turning on uncomfortable cots in the hot and stuffy attics of rental cottages. 

I cannot recollect exactly when I first understood that this beach was a sort of house of cards, but I did eventually become aware that cottages, hotels, and boardwalk shops and concessions had been built chockablock on the dunes that are the environmental underpinnings of many beaches, disrupting the cyclical ebb and flow of the beach.  That became obvious after the Great Nor'easter of 1962, which pretty much wiped out the beach block and dozens of ratty wood frame buildings, including the cottages where we had stayed.

When this beach town rebuilt, it was mindful of allowing the dunes free rein.  Then in a second victory for common sense, in 1971 Delaware established a landmark Coastal Zone in which construction of industrial plants and high rises were prohibited.  Most of the shoreline, save for a few relatively small incorporated communities, became state park where the dunes could come and go unfettered.  And have provided surprises on our first trips to our particular state beach of choice each spring.  Had the beach grown or shrunk over the winter?  How much had the dune line moved?  Toward or away from the ocean? 

This so-called Dance of the Dunes was a lesson never understood -- and in some cases rejected outright --  by many of the New York and New Jersey shore communities devastated by Superstorm Sandy in late October.  Meanwhile, communities mindful of the dunes' crucial role that had allowed their beaches free rein, suffered substantially less damage from Sandy's vicious storm surge.

There perhaps is no more pungent example of the wisdom of allowing Mother Nature to have her way than Long Beach, New York and three neighboring beaches on the westernmost barrier island off Long Island's South Shore. 

Barrier islands are narrow strips of sand that are parallel to mainland coasts and especially vulnerable to hurricanes.  This prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to propose a $98 million plan in the late 1990s to build dunes and elevate beaches along the six miles of barrier island where Long Beach is located, but its city ouncil voted unanimously against paying the community's $7 million initial share in the project.  Surfers said a new beach would interfere with the curl of the waves, while businesses dependent on tourists railed against it because the ocean view from the Boardwalk would be obscured by new dunes.

The neighboring communities of Point Lookout, Lido Beach and Atlantic Beach approved construction of 15-foot-high dunes. Those dunes -- sea walls of sand and vegetation -- spared them a catastrophe, while Long Beach was flattened, suffering at least $200 million in damage. 

Other examples abound.

Bradley Beach, on the North Jersey shore, began building a 15-foot-high dune barrier along its mile-long beach in the 1990s, laying 25,000 feet of snow fencing in a saw-tooth pattern, and later adding 20,000 recycled Christmas trees as traps for drifting sand. After wind pushed sand over this artificial dune, shoots of dune grass were planted to further stabilize the barrier.

When Sandy came knocking, the force of her surge flattened the dunes but left the town's Boardwalk and houses only 75 feet from it intact.  The town suffered a mere $3 million in damage, while many of its unprotected neighbors were destroyed.

(Overall, Sandy caused an estimate $80 billion in damage, second only to Hurricane Katrina at $108 billion, but this did not move 32 Republican senators who voted against giving New York, New Jersey and Connecticut disaster relief, although the senators in those Mid-Atlantic states stepped up when disaster hit the Gulf Coast and elsewhere.)

The big question for this beach baby in the weeks since Sandy has been whether those devastated shore communities have gotten religion.  The short answer, fueled in part by an Obama administration that is making aid largely contingent on not repeating old mistakes, seems to be "you betcha."

The Long Beach City Council now embraces an environmentally-friendly beach rebuilding project, while the Surfrider Foundation, an advocacy group that opposed dunes at Long Beach, has softened its stance. 

Chad Nelsen, environmental director for the national group, said rising sea levels and the threat of more intense storms required a thoughtful consideration of all strategies.

"We're more likely to have a less black-and-white view of the issue," he said, however belatedly.

A FOOTNOTE

Awareness that climate change is not merely a liberal fantasy has been growing by the year.  Superstorm Sandy should be a knockout punch for conservatives and industry stooges who have been in denial.

At least one can hope in the New Year.

. 

'Keep Them Coming Till I Say Not To'

NEW YEAR'S EVE ON CHEW AVENUE (1962)
By Arnold Schnabel

It's New Year's Eve, it seems we've made it,
If only barely, through another year;
The terror, if not gone, has abated
Into a dull and grey persistent fear.
My mother’s sound asleep by eleven,
So I go to the VFW,
Shove to the bar of this drunkard's heaven,
And say, "Pat, if you please, I'll trouble you
For a Schmidt's, backed with an Old Forester,
And keep them coming till I say not to,
Or until you throw me out; whatever;
Do what your conscience says that you've got to."
I take that first sacred drink of cold beer:
"Happy new (let’s hope it’s not our last) year."

A tip of the Hatlo to Dan Leo

Season's Greetings From Kiko's House

Signe Wilkinson/Philadelphia Daily News
(2007)

'Well, Mr. Potter, In My Book He Died A Much Richer Man Than You'll Ever Be.'

Sixty-seven years ago on Christmas eve, George Bailey was at the end of his rope and was about to jump off a bridge in Bedford Falls, New York. So began the beginning of the end of It’s A Wonderful Life, a movie that I never tire of seeing this time of year.

Even when I was at my most cynical, It’s A Wonderful Life was never corny. On one very lonely Christmas Eve, it helped me through a long night, while with every passing year its message -- considered too simplistic by the movie's few critics -- continues to humble and inspire me.

That message reverberates even more strongly in the wake of the Newtown massacre: Each of us, no matter how insignificant we may seem, has the power to make a difference. Think meaningful gun control.  And that the true measure of our humanity has nothing to do with fame or money, but with how we live our life.

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen It’s A Wonderful Life, check your TV listings or download it from Netflix. If you’ve never seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so.

Oh, and have yourself a happy holiday.

Why The Nat'l Rifle Association Would Shoot The Moon & Obama If It Could

(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 2011)

America is a gun-sick country, a place where people can legally possess and in some cases carry weapons specifically designed to kill large numbers of people. Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, as James Carville famously remarked, and the Dixie-like legislature is so in love with guns that they are easier to obtain in the Keystone State than a driver's license or -- get this, fireworks. For good measure, the legislature refuses to allow Philadelphia to enact its own tough gun laws in an effort to end a slaughter that takes four times as many lives on a per capita basis than New York City, which has among the toughest gun laws in the nation.

This state of affairs is largely the result of the pernicious influence the National Rifle Association has on many congressfolk and state legislators. Except for the usual whiners such as gun violence victims, emergency room doctors, the occasional mayor of a liberal city, President Obama and some sane Democrats,  The New York Times editorial board, and most recently the good burghers of Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA would have pretty much run roughshod from sea to shining sea in its jihad to arm America to the teeth. 

(And please spare me the false equivalency of the knife attack today at a school in China, where guns are outlawed.)

HR822 -- The National Right-to-Reciprocity Act of 2011, would allow an individual with a concealed-weapons permit in Alabama to travel from New York City to San Diego packing their Glock, which kind of takes the concept of state's rights to stratospheric levels.  .

I had my fill of guns in a place called Vietnam and being shot at a few times while covering civil unrest stateside.

My own view, certainly in the minority, is that each adult American should be allowed no more than one rifle, one shotgun and one handgun each unless they have a collector's permit and keep their multiple weapons under lock and key. Assault weapons would be outlawed, the process of buying a gun, getting a carry concealed permit or a collector's permit would be arduous with all costs being borne by the individual and none by the state, and penalties for running afoul of gun laws would be harsh. Perhaps a few thousand people who are serving long prison terms for smoking a joint could be released to make room for the influx of gun law violators.

HR822 zoomed through the House but had no chance of getting through the Senate, let alone being signed by our cry-baby president.  So the good burghers of New York City, New Jersey and Florida -- jurisdictions that have tough gun laws because of the toll that gun violence has taken -- can breath a little easier when a guy from Alabama walks into their neighborhood 7-Eleven with a bulge in his pants.

No, he's not packing heat, he's just happy to see you.

Cartoon By Mike Keefe/The Denver Post

The Extraordinary Hail Mary Play To Persuade Petraeus To Oppose Obama

It was obvious long before the presidential primary season got underway that many Republicans thought they could take back the White House, but didn't believe they had a winning candidate in a field of wannabes long on wingnuttery and short on competence.  And so in the most extraordinary attempted Hail Mary play in modern American political history, as well as a betrayal of journalistic ethics breathtaking even for America's favorite right-wing television network, longtime media guru and Fox News founder Roger Ailes dispatched one of his most sycophantic reporters to Afghanistan in the spring of 2011 to plead with then-General David Petraeus to run for president. 

As reported by the legendary Bob Woodward last week in the Washington Post, the upshot was that shamelessly partisan Fox talking head K.T. McFarland met for 90 minutes in Kabul with Petraeus, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, to plead Ailes' case, which was that the general should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director, accept nothing less than chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then resign his commission and run for president.

"Here's the thinking," McFarland tells Petraeus in a digital recording of the meeting obtained by the Post:

"That they're nervous about . . . They feel that Obama had this mandate. And the mandate -- in his own mind. Obama wanted to do Obamacare . . . He wanted to do environment, which is basically controlling all aspects of the economy. And education, which is the future. So he pushed for Obamacare. He got that done. They didn't anticipate 2010 results. But he now is going to lie low and be very centrist so that they win in '12 and they get the other two. Now, what they need -- and this is not from the chiefs, this is from political people -- and what they need to cement it so that it doesn't get reversed is a third term. And that means 2016, they need to win, the Democrats need to win, and they need to win with their guy. Their kind of guy. So that then you'd have the stuff as locked in place for a generation. Nobody can come in like Reagan came in and reverse."

 * * * * *

McFarland's rambling statement made political sense, but it also reflected the paranoia gripping old-timers like Ailes and now-cashiered Fox analyst Karl Rove 18 months before the 2012 election.

While the Democrats had cleaned the Republicans' clock in the historic 2008 election, Republicans had done well in 2010, but at a price: While they had recaptured the House, Tea Party zealots had captured the GOP, and their out-of-the-mainstream views would be a turnoff to independent voters, notably women, in 2012.  That is why a four-star general positioned as a centrist and not a flip-flopping former Massachusetts governor was viewed as having the best chance of ousting Obama. 

McFarland also told Petraeus that Ailes might resign to run his presidential campaign, and Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., which owns Fox News, would finance the campaign, or as she put it: "The big boss is bankrolling it.  Roger's going to run it.  And the rest of us are going to be your in-house [cheerleaders]."

"Rupert's after me as well," Petraeus acknowledged in referring to the press baron, who has long sought to be a kingmaker with prime ministers in Great Britain.

In any event, the general wasn't biting, and in fact had spurned previous overtures from conservative Republicans to get into politics.  He accepted Obama's offer a few weeks later to become CIA director.

As events played out, the story of Petraeus' affair with biographer Paula Broadwell broke on November 9, three days after Obama won re-election.  But what if Petraeus had accepted Ailes' offer and won the election? Would Paul Ryan or another vice presidential running mate become president-elect after the former general's all-but-inevitable resignation because of the Broadwell scandal? Possibly. (See sidebar below.) 

Incidentally, Ailes -- as is his wont when caught out -- told Woodward the whole thing was "a joke."  He later walked back from that, explaining that "I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate."

McFarland also claimed it was a joke, but she has shown a disinclination in the past to distinguish fiction from fact.  She told a group of Long Island Republicans in 2006 when she was planning to try to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the incumbent was spying on her by sending black helicopters over her house to take pictures.

* * * * *

Like most Americans and most journalists, I was seduced by Petraeus.  Unlike most journalists, I suspect there is a back story to Obama's decision to make him CIA director.  He was viewed in the White House as something of a loose cannon and a potential rival.  As head of an intelligence agency that in my view is dysfunctional, Petraeus might actually do some good, while staying out of the limelight and the president's way.

How ironic -- although in retrospect not surprising -- that Petraeus was felled not by an enemy, but by lust.  Michael Hastings goes deep on this while unraveling the Petraeus mystique at BuzzFeed Politics in the best piece on the general's rise and fall. 

"More so than any other leading military figure, Petraeus' entire philosophy has been based on hiding the truth, on deception, on building a false image," Hastings writes.  "Yes, it's not what actually happens that matters -- it's what you can convince the public it thinks happened."

To that extent, the Petraeus-engineered surge in Iraq, while strategically savvy, was oversold as a success by the man himself. He became a symbol of how things finally were going right, while the reality is that Iraq is in a sort of perpetual chaos today and much more cozy with Iran than the U.S.

Positive media reports fueled by Petraus aside, his not dissimilar strategy in Afghanistan was a failure, although that was inconvenient for the Obama administration story line.

Jon Lee Anderson writes in The New Yorker that there may yet be another act for Petraeus:

"If he licks his wounds and is seen praying humbly at his local church and does the right thing by his wife and family, America will probably forgive him. He can return to public life as a paid military consultant for CNN; he might even be able to run for political office. Senator Petraeus has a good ring to it. But that is a redemption tale yet to be told. For now, it may be enough to ponder what it is that brought Petraeus—and all of us all, together—to this particular rise and fall."

 WHAT IF PETRAEUS WON, THEN HAD TO RESIGN?

The Democratic and Republican national committees have adopted rules for selecting replacement candidates in the event of a nominee's death, and presumably his resignation, after the election.

If the apparent winner of the election dies or resigns before the Electoral College votes in December, the electors probably would endorse whatever new nominee their national party selects as a replacement.  If the apparent winner dies or resigns between the College vote and the official counting of its votes in Congress in January, the Twelfth Amendment stipulates that all electoral ballots cast shall be counted, presumably even for a dead or resigned candidate.

In cases where a president has not been chosen by Inauguration Day -- January 20 -- or the president-elect "fails to qualify," the vice president-elect becomes acting president on January 20 until there is a qualified president.

In case you're wondering, if there is no president-elect or vice president-elect, the Twentieth Amendment gives Congress the authority to declare an acting president until such time as there is a president or vice president. At this point, the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 would kick in, with the office of  president going to the Speaker of the House.  That would be John Boehner.

15 Big Takeaways From The Election Of The Century (Okay, So Far Anyway)

Republicans need to stop, take a deep breath and learn.

~ NEWT GINGRICH

Nearly two weeks after the most important presidential election since 1932, my big takeaway is that Barack Obama's re-election was even more historic than his victory in 2008.  That is, despite continuing economic ills and a Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan campaign deft at tailoring its message to what audiences wanted to hear -- whether fat cats at closed-door fundraisers or on the stump in the heartland -- the coalition that elected the first African-American president not only did not fray but it grew, handing the incumbent an unlikely but well-deserved victory.

Other takeaways:

* Despite all the high- and low-tech tools, as well as a mind-boggling $1.2 billion at their disposal, Romney-Ryan ran a Campaign of Magical Thinking that was a study of what happens when people live and think in a bubble.  It wasn't until about 10 p.m. on election night when Pennsylvania fell to Obama and Ohio became out of reach, that it began to dawn on the candidates and their yes-man advisers that it takes more than fairy dust to persuade a majority of voters -- let alone a majority of voters in swing states -- to believe you are of presidential caliber.

* Romney never could seal the deal primarily because he was unable to articulate an economic message that went beyond lower taxes and the hair-brained notion that he could create 12 million jobs with the snap of a finger.  This is because he didn't give a crap about people and was terrible at attempting to show that he did.  While voters were disappointed about the slow economic recovery, many understood it was the Bush administration that had caused the recession.

* Despite Citizens United, national elections still are not for sale. At least not yet.  PACs and Super PACs spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads to attack Obama.  Republican wrestling magnate Linda McMahon spent $100 million of her own money while her campaign distributed door hangers urging Connecticut votes to support she and Obama. McMahon and most Republicans bankrolled by wealthy donors were rejected, while Romney spent $6.35 per vote and Obama only $1.83.

* The Republican Party will not win another national election until it alters its extremist message.  Minorities have accounted for 85 percent of the U.S.'s population growth over the past decade, with the Democratic Party reaping an overwhelming majority of newly-registered blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans. Republicans will not be able to turn their party around by merely pandering on immigration, although they certainly will try.

* A post-racial America seems to be, if anything, further away than it did after Obama's 2008 victory.  The depiction of him as not being American -- and alternatively Kenyan, Indonesian and Muslim -- and therefore ineligible to be president, was not just the view of the lunatic fringe but a sizable minority of Republicans, while the fact remains that beyond Obama only two other blacks have been elected to the Senate since Reconstruction.

* Virtually every voter ID law enacted in states where Republicans held sway was overturned or held in abeyance until after the election, but efforts to disenfranchise minority voters through baseless allegations of fraud and corruption continued through Election Day in some states where poll workers made it more difficult for minorities to vote.  Overall, suppression efforts were at their greatest since Jim Crow laws were abolished in the late 1950s into the 1960s.

* The president fully leveraged the advantages of incumbency.  Like George W. Bush in 2004, his campaign team had the benefit of having run a national campaign and faced no primary challenges.  Obama had the most sophisticated GOTV organization in electoral history while Romney had a jalopy of an organization. 

* Obama benefited from an October Surprise -- Superstorm Sandy -- that enabled him to be presidential, lip lock with Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and get New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's endorsement while Romney fumed on the sidelines.

* What happened on the fourth Wednesday of June had repercussions on what happened on the first Tuesday of November.  Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' deciding vote in upholding the Affordable Care Act did not remove it as a campaign issue, but the high court's validation of health-care reform left Romney with little other than repeatedly saying that he would repeal it on his first day in office.

* Fact checkers came into their own.  They found many of Romney's statements to be demonstrably false as well as a few of Obama's, but this did not prevent the Republican candidate from lying with relatively impunity because a cowardly mainstream media more or less looked the other way as he simultaneously held opposing positions on issues ranging from abortion to Medicare to education to defense policy. 

* Democrats have surrendered the intellectual high ground over decades of Republican opposition to government intervention in personal, social and economic affairs.  The result is that with the exception of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats have stopped thinking big and Obama has shied away from major initiatives such as public works projects and immigration reform.

* Although that opposition has been no better personified than after the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, a vast majority of voters -- as many as 80 percent in exit polls -- have had it with hard-nosed politics, particularly the refusal to compromise, although that lesson remains unlearned by the Republican leadership post-election because the obstructionist Tea Party remains the tail that wags the GOP dog.

* Unbelievably, some Republicans are proclaiming that hanging onto the House despite falling further behind in the Senate and failing to retake the White House is nevertheless a mandate to continue pushing its tired agenda. After all, the popular vote was close.

* Despite a gracious concession speech, Romney continues to gripe that Obama won because he gave "gifts" to minorities and young voters, which is code for his 47 Percenters.  This must have entailed quite an effort since Obama got more electoral votes than any winner since George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988.  

* At the end of the day -- in this case, Election Day -- Obama made the better argument that he would make voters' lives better.  Nothing else mattered as much.