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The Vanguard Blog The blog section is for you to send in comments and observations about current events or developments. A blog can be short and sweet or long-winded. Your choice. In this section, you can read everybody else’s blog. To submit a blog, send it by email to: hdorfman@aol.com.
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Polls, Shmolls: Obama’s True Religion By Harriet Posnak Lesser Recent polls show that 18 percent of Americans think Barack Obama is a Muslim, 34 percent believe he’s Christian and 43 percent don’t know his religion. Shocking, yes – especially in light of new evidence which proves that Obama is a Jew. Here are the facts: Our current president was born 49 years ago in the shtetl of Hawaii, which is old Yiddish for “how’s gesheft?” His real name, as it appears on his birth certificate, is Baruch Obamawitz. (Attention Birthers: Persistent denials about the document’s existence will help you like an (Orly) Taitz in bankes, so shut up already.) Although his family moved around a lot, little Baruch had a normal childhood. He played hopscotch in Hilo, Kick the Can in Kauai and Leper Frog in Molokai. When the time came, he attended chaider in Chonolulu. The Obamawitz’s mixed heritage was reflected in the food they ate. An average dinner consisted of luau latkes, huli huli hallah and Kahlua kishke. The traditional Hawaiian drink, known as guggle muggle, accompanied ever meal. Baruch was bar mitzvahed at Congregation Captain Cook, named for the famed Jewish explorer who discovered Hawaii and chopped liver Sandwiches. After high school, Baruch moved to Los Angeles and attended Occidental College on purpose. He also holds degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School where he was editor of the Law Review and president of Chabad House. The rest is history. Throughout his brief but brilliant political career, Obamawitz has never forgotten his Jewish roots as evidenced by his extreme fondness for horse radish. This also explains why he chose Yussel Buttinsky for his vice president and Hillel Clinton as secretary of state. I could go on, but my head hurts and I’m out of vinegar compresses. More important, I believe I’ve presented a meshuggener-proof case on the true religion of our 44th president, he should only live and be well. So maybe now we can start worrying about bupkis issues like the war in Aghanistan, peace in the Mideast, global climate change, nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea --and the economy, yutz? Not yet. There’s still the ongoing problem of why Jesse James prefers tattooed porn stars to Sandra Bullock. BTW, I’ve heard rumors that Jesse is Jewish. Aye, a shandeh.
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We can recognize the devotion.. |
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Submitted By Myron Kandel Greene: CSU fosters love of print journalismPosted: 08/17/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
There's a week before classes start at Colorado State University, and most students are squeezing every last minute out of their summer vacations. Except for the young men and women who packed for five days into a windowless room in a lecture-hall basement. This is the staff of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, one of the oldest college dailies in the West and the only one in print in Colorado that is still run by students. The team of reporters, photographers, designers and editors is carrying on the school's 120-year tradition of independent newspapering and taking its own gambles in careers as print journalists. "I'd probably make more money flipping burgers. But it's the only thing I'm ever happy doing," said sports editor Matt Stephens, 23, of his newspaper habit. It is tough to know what to make of these students. They are, in part, throwbacks — devotees of a medium that most of their schoolmates rarely use other than an occasional Sudoku during a tiresome lecture. The Collegian's staffers love the look, feel and even the smell of the newspapers for which their laptop-browsing friends mock them for skipping classes to produce. They're idealists — believers, still, in the power of the press to change the world. And they're risk-takers — opting out of steadier careers in sciences or finance, say, because they want to report the news in a paper made out of trees and delivered by trucks, even if their readers are mainly old folks like professors and parents. Downsizing be damned, they say about the print newspaper industry. If the ship is going down, they tell me, somebody has to go down with it. "What, are you crazy?" I asked them Monday, the first day of their five-day training. "Nope," said Alexandra Sieh, 21. "We're just in love with the print process." Sieh grew up reading the Rocky Mountain News, critiquing its content and noticing the way it was laid out so carefully. Now, as the Collegian's design editor, she is honing a craft that some day may be as impractical as book binding and as anachronistic as learning ancient Greek. "I feel like there's an expiration date on this skill," she said. Samantha Baker had planned a bioengineering major when she took her first shot as a Collegian photographer. She was hooked. It wasn't easy coming out of the closet about her journalistic leanings. "For a while, my family was like, 'Oh, it's just a hobby, you'll get over it and go back to engineering,' " she said. It's good work, print journalism, if you can get it — and are lucky enough to keep it. For the staff at the Collegian who make $10 a story, it is a labor of love that's barely enough to sustain them on Ramen noodles and Red Bulls. Madeline Novey had mapped out a career as a chiropractor when she enrolled at CSU three years ago. A chemistry class changed her mind. Now she's editor in chief of the Collegian, running a newsroom of 60 journalists. "We have the privilege of getting to step into people's lives, learning about what's important to them and how to change a community," she told me. Like every other print journalist I know, she's worried — even at age 20 — about the future of her craft. Someday, she knows, the ink will run out.
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For the Republicans He’s the Man Who… By Stan Isaacs The New York Times recently got an early start on speculation about who will be the Republican nominee for President in 2012. It suggested that visits to Iowa by various Republican notables was a tipoff on how serious they were about pursuing the grand prize. Among others the Times catalogued these visits to Iowa; Five by: Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. Three: Texas congressman Ron Paul; former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. One: Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate; Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor; Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor; and Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor. So who do you project as the Republican candidate to challenge President Obama in 2012? Pick one: _____Sarah Palin _____Mitt Romney ____ Mike Huckabee ____ Haley Barbour _____Ron Paul ____ Tim Pawlenty The prediction here is: none of the above. Consider this long, longshot. The Republicans will choose General David Howell Petraeus, the man in charge of the Afghanistan war now because he seemingly saved the day for President George W. Bush in Iraq, (Some 50,000 troops will remain, but who’s counting). Everybody likes him. In 2009 he received the Sam M. Gibbons Lifetime Achievement Award, American Legions Distinguished Service Medal, the Union League Club of Philadelphia’s Abraham Lincoln Award, and the National Defense Industrial Association’s Eisenhower Award. He also was named as one of the “75 Best People in the World” in the October 2009 issue of Esquire Magazine. And in 2008 a poll conducted by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines named Petraeus as one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals. In 2010 he received the right-wing American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award and Princeton’s James Madison Medal. The list goes on and on. Some Iraquis call him,”King David.” He has appeared before Congress with a chest full of fruit salad, having won, at last count, 35 medals--from the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (with Oak Leaf Cluster) to the Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. In a highly favorable profile of him in Vanity magazine Mark Bowden wrote of his appearance before Congress, “…his uniform so laden with insignia, badges, patches, ribbons and medals that it seemed to pull him into a slight stoop...” (I will interrupt here to wonder why military people have to flaunt their honors. Suppose a civilian showed up wearing medals and ribbons for achievements like “Prius driver,” “A’s in geometry,” “Grocery shopper,” “Visitor to all 50 states” and the like. But that is a digression). It did not hurt Petraeus in the least—no, it helped him immeasurably with the Republicans who will be seeking a 2012 candidate—when the left wing group Moveon.org protested his appearance before Congress by running a full-page ad in the New York Times in 2007 rhyming Petraeus with “betray us.” This inspired Texas Republican John Cornyn to rush an amendment condemning the personal attack on Petraeus. It was signed by all Republican senators and 22 Democrats. Petraeus is an acknowledged master at handling the media. In addition to Bowden in Vanity Fair, he has been written about, sometimes almost gushingly, by Trudy Rubin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Tom Ricks in the Washington Post, Michael Gordon in the New York Times and Joe Klein in Newsweek. Rubin even intimated that it was President Obama’s duty to get along with Petraeus, not vice versa. The only person who confronted Petraeus seemingly came out a poor second. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid objected when Petraeus said there were “astonishing signs of normalcy in Baghdad” in 2007, but Reid did not dim the Petraeus halo. If the U.S. doesn’t get out of the Afghanistan quagmire by 2012, it’s President Obama most likely-- and not Petraeus--will take the heat. The so-called “Petraeus media blitz” last week to persuade the administration to, in effect, stay the course in Afghanistan sets up a possible conflict with Obama’s desire to draw down troops starting July 2011. In any such conflict is there any doubt who the Republicans will support? Another sign that Petraeus is a man to watch is that he has stated he is not interested in running for the Presidency. That is de rigeur for all Presidential candidates at one time or another. Note that an Eisenhower Award was one of his many honors cited above. That is significant because the Republicans, in the words of an astute observer I know, “will sit in a room listing Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Palin and the others--and everybody will fall asleep. Then someone says, ‘We need an Eisenhower.’ ” And that clinches it for Petraeus.
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Sportswriters Can Be Funny |
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Vic Ziegel: He Wrote -- And Talked Funny By Stan Isaacs My friend, Vic Ziegel, died July 23. He was a rare person for being funny both in writing and spontaneously on his feet. The New York papers were full of tributes to him, and you can read many of them by Googling “Vic Ziegel tributes.” A sampling: He is celebrated for writing this line after a team won a game with a ninth-inning home run: “The game is never over until the final out, the New York Post learned last night.” A New York Giants fan, he taught his pet bird to recite Russ Hodges’ immortal cry, “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant.” He wrote about his immigrant father, “He was born in Russia and the boat he came over on didn’t have shuffleboard.” He carried in his wallet a photo of his childhood stickball team “to prove he once had hair.” Once he visited the ailing Muhammad Ali and Ali said, “You look the same.” And Ziegel said, “Bald guys always look the same.” His last assignment for the New York Daily News almost two months before he died at 72 of throat cancer (he did not smoke) was the Belmont Stakes. This concluding paragraph about the undistinguished winner, Drosselmeyer, was pure Ziegel: “His winning time was 2:31.57. Secretariat, who won his Belmont in 2:24, would have beaten him by, oh, 40 lengths. Drosselmeyer must never be told.” With all that, the thing I feel must be said about him was that he was misused by editors, particularly in his last stint with the Daily News. Though his deft touch allowed him to drop in Drosselmeyer-like droll lines when he could, he was a funny man operating with one hand tied behind his back on the typewriter, oops, computer. He too often was put into restrictive assignments covering the so-called important sports developments of the day, told to cover particular subjects, particular areas. He was a columnist who should have been told to fly fancy free, go out to the ball park or the racetrack or the boxing arena and “see what you come up with.” The Post did that with Jerry Mitchell decades ago and Mitchell came up with stuff that was sometimes funny, sometimes not so amusing, but something unpredictable enough to be worth a look most of the time. Would that editors were smart enough to give Ziegel that freedom. We are in a time, though, when sports talk radio and the blather of the hard core faithful dominate the sports dialogue. We are awash in palaver about who will be traded to whom for whom; who will sign humongous contracts; conjecture about drug users; and the biggest farce of them all, the LeBron James charade. It almost seems quaint to recall that people talked about sports as “fun and games” or sports being “the toy department” of the newspaper. Now we have baseball specialists who patrol the beat trying to come up with scoops on impending trades. We have football and basketball draft gurus ad nauseum. Larry Merchant, the HBO boxing analyst, a friend of Ziegel’s and mine -- and a standout newspaper columnist in his day -- says that you no longer look for change of pace columns in today’s sports pages. “You are getting that on the Op-ed pages of the Times with people like Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and Bob Herbert. I don’t always agree with Dowd, but she is unpredictable and has style.” Herbert, who is immersed in the most serious problems of the day--unemployment, poverty, a quagmire of a war--still trots out an annual column on his beloved if inept New York Jets. I don’t want to leave this without passing on my favorite Ziegelism. I have long run a wacky ratings column every year at Newsday and on the www.thecolumnists.com website in which I rate categories that nobody ever rated before. Like “Overrated, Underrated Athletes:” “Seventeenth Century Baroque Composers,” and “Bridges Over the River Seine.” I encourage guest raters, and the best guest rating I ever got was from Ziegel. He rated “The Numbers from One to Six.”
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Report to Vanguardians on Bill Taylor's funeral service
By Myron Kandel WASHINGTON -- Civil rights leaders, people of the politically liberal persuasion and just plain friends and family gathered at the Tifereth Israel Congregation on June 30 to celebrate the remarkable life of William L. Taylor, civil rights advocate, lawyer for the downtrodden and the last editor of the Brooklyn College Vanguard. Along with his daughter Deborah, speaking also for her sister Lauren and brother David, they extolled Bill's lifelong devotion to equal education, human rights and justice for all. They also noted his integrity, intelligence and sense of moral outrage against discrimination of all kinds. Ralph Neas, former chairman of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which Bill served as vice chairman, told of how Bill was a colleague, mentor and sidekick for many decades and how important Bill's work was in the civil rights era. He also mentioned Bill's long and loving marriage to former Brooklyn College classmate Harriett Rosen, who was a District of Columbia judge until her death 13 years ago. "There was never a better, warmer, more trusting partnership," Neas said. Rabbi David Saperstein, longtime friend and colleague once described by Newsweek magazine as the most influential rabbi in America, praised Bill's eloquent and persistent advocacy and called him a "consummate strategist" who "helped shape the way we educate children in this country." Bill's sense of moral outrage drove him to great accomplishments, he said. And he quoted the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, with whom Bill forged a long and productive relationship, as calling him "a long-distance runner on the road to justice." Rabbi Saperstein also noted that Bill was particularly proud of the black-Jewish alliance that spearheaded the civil rights movement. Debbie Taylor called her father "loving, stubborn, opinionated and argumentative," who helped shape "the kind of world I'd like to live in and I'd like my granchildren to live in." "Above all," she said, "he was a mensch." That was a refrain echoed by other speakers and by the many guests who filled Bill's house after the funeral. As we've already heard, Bill was praised by a Cabinet Secretary, a Congressional leader among other bigwigs. His longtime colleague Dianne Piche said Bill "thrived in the life of the law and its capacity to be a vehicle for hope, change and redemption." Another speaker was Roger Wilkins, author, professor and civil rights leader, who worked at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund with Bill and recalled how helpful and supportive Bill was to him as an intern and neophyte lawyer. He also noted that he had later worked at the same law firm with Harriett and how important Bill's contribution was to the civil rights movement. Bill's start as a young lawyer out of Yale Law School working under Thurgood Marshall at the Legal Defense Fund was mentioned by most of the speakers. Ironically, at the very same time at the Senate hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, several no-nothing Senators were derogating Marshall as an "activist" Justice. Bill would have laughed derisively at that criticism of that ground-breaking giant of the judiciary. A teacher in the Teach for America program may have summed up Bill's ultimate achievement when she said: "When I look into the faces of my students in New Orleans, I know that Bill's lifework has bettered their lives and chances of reaching their full potential." As Vanguard alumni,many of us basked in the reflected glory of his later accomplishments on the national scene. I consider one of my most significant accomplishments to be my recommendation to Brooklyn College's then-president Christoph Kimmich to award Bill an honorary degree, which he subsequently did. In addition to honoring Bill for all his achievements, the award also honored all of us who served on Vanguard. Finally, here is an editorial in today's Washington Post that pays tribute to Bill: The loss of civil rights advocate William L. Taylor
The Washington Post, Friday, July 2, 2010
BILL TAYLOR was not one of those bold-face Washington names -- except to those in the civil rights movement. If you were in that movement, you probably knew William L. Taylor, who died Monday at the age of 78; and if you didn't know him, you certainly knew what he had accomplished. For more than half a century, Mr. Taylor was at the center of every major civil rights battle. As a young lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he wrote the Supreme Court brief in Cooper v. Aaron, the case in which the justices insisted that the Little Rock schools be desegregated notwithstanding massive local resistance. He worked not only to pass the landmark civil rights statutes of the 1960s -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 -- but to ensure their extension and rewriting in the face of hostile Supreme Court decisions in the following decades. He focused particularly on school desegregation -- most notably negotiating a voluntary desegregation plan for St. Louis schools -- and ensuring educational opportunity for students in impoverished areas, a passion that led him to join forces with the Bush administration in writing the No Child Left Behind law. In his various roles, as general counsel and staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as a vice chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, as a law professor and private practitioner, Mr. Taylor was, in the words of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, "a long-distance runner on the road to justice." The Brooklyn-born son of Lithuanian immigrants, Mr. Taylor wrote in his memoir, "The Passion of My Times," that he turned up for work at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund fresh out of Yale Law School "with virtually no interaction with African Americans. Jackie Robinson provided my only civil rights education." But his passion for civil rights, like his passions for baseball and jazz, never waned. His funeral Wednesday featured repeated references to Mr. Taylor's strong, sometimes prickly, personality. "He was never afraid to share his side of the argument -- whether or not you wanted to hear it," his 13-year-old granddaughter, Simone, wrote in a memoir read at the service. "He knew when to take a stand, and he knew when to hammer out a compromise with integrity," said Rabbi David Saperstein, a longtime colleague. "The strange thing about working in civil rights is that you always feel that you are stuck in a period of great difficulty," Mr. Taylor said in a 1999 interview with the D.C. Bar magazine. "There was tremendous resistance to the Brown decision, and then we went through all of the tumultuous violence of the 1960s. There were times when it felt very grave, ugly and hateful. But every few years you look up and realize that things have changed in fundamental ways." Mr. Taylor helped bring about that fundamental change. Myron Kandel Founding Financial Editor CNN (347) 880-0285 |
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The End of an Era By Harriet Posnak Lesser On June 13, 2010, America said goodbye to an icon whose gentle wit and homespun wisdom had kept her in the public eye for 86 years. Relax, Betty White is doing fine. This is a tribute to Little Orphan Annie, our beloved comic page princess. Generations of children and adults were drawn to her. And vice versa. Annie’s eternally youthful appearance belied the fact that she was born in 1924 at the age of eight or thereabouts, making her older than some of our Vanguard bloggers and a contemporary of the rest. Let me repeat that. “Making her older than some of our Vanguard bloggers, etc.” Deee-licious Yes, it was a sad day for comic strip lovers everywhere; but not for me, I never could stand the little brat. Maybe I was jealous of her curly red hair. Mine was dark brown and straight. Or her dog, Sandy. I wasn’t allowed to have a dog. Or her extensive wardrobe of little red dresses. I wore stuff my big sister had outgrown and she liked purple. Annie also had a millionaire dad and an eight-foot tall servant. The one thing she didn’t have were eyeballs. I did. Still do, last time I looked. Annie was the brainchild of politically conservative cartoonist Harold Gray who, as legend goes, named her after the James Whitcomb Riley poem about a pushy little scullery maid who moved in on a nice local family and made them all miserable with her constant whining, corny colloquialisms and bad spelling. “Orphant?” I mean really, no, Riley. Like, what were you thinking James W.? Experts differ on the cause of Annie’s waning popularity and her eventual forced retirement. There is general agreement that it wasn’t the eponymous musical or the not very good movie which followed. “Barf,” says Sandy. Personally, I believe it was politics what finally done her in. About nine years ago, people began confusing Daddy Warbucks with Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush with Punjab, which means “he of limited mental acuity” in Punjabese. As a result, Annie morphed into Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s right wing daughter, and according to a reliable source, Sarah Palin was about to be introduced into the strip as Annie’s long lost mother. They were all going to live in Wasilla, where Annie would have eight children out of wedlock and spend the rest of her days making mooseburgers and shooting Democrats from a helicopter. Leapin’ Lizards! (And donkeys.) To save her from this fate worse than death, the writers decided to quit while Annie was still ahead. Sort of. The strip ends with our bald-eyed heroine in the cruel clutches of a war criminal known as the Butcher of the Balkans who sells her and Sandy to a human (and canine) trafficking ring. Gee, whiskers! I just love a happy ending, don’t you? Oh well, I’ll think about it tomorrow, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar we have not seen the last of Little Orphan Annie.
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Submitted by Myron kandel What Helen Thomas missed
By Richard Cohen, The Washington Post
Ah, another teachable moment! This one comes to us from Helen Thomas, the longtime White House reporter and columnist who announced her retirement on Monday. Thomas, of Lebanese ancestry and almost 90, has never been shy about her anti-Israel views, for which, as far as I'm concerned, she is wrong and to which she is entitled. Then the other day, she performed a notable public service by revealing how very little she knew. Asked at a White House event if she had any comments about Israel, Thomas said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. . . . Go home. Poland. Germany. And America and everywhere else." Well, I don't know about "everywhere else," but after World War II, many Jews did attempt to "go home" to Poland. This resulted in the murder of about 1,500 of them -- killed not by Nazis but by Poles, either out of sheer ethnic hatred or fear they would lose their (stolen) homes. The mini-Holocaust that followed the Holocaust itself is not well-known anymore, but it played an outsize role in the establishment of the state of Israel. It was the plight of Jews consigned to Displaced Persons camps in Europe that both moved and outraged President Harry Truman, who supported Jewish immigration to Palestine and, when the time came, the new state itself. Something had to be done for the Jews of Europe. They were still being murdered. In the Polish city of Kielce, on July 4, 1946 -- more than a year after the end of the war -- rumors of a Jewish ritual murder triggered a pogrom in which 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors were killed. The Kielce murders were not, by any means, the sole example of why Jews could not "go home." When I visited the Polish city where my mother had been born, Ostroleka, I was told of a Jew who survived Auschwitz only to be murdered when he tried to reclaim his business. In much of Eastern Europe, Jews feared for their lives. For that reason, those who had struck out for home soon returned to DP camps and the safety of -- irony of ironies -- Germany. Some of the camps were under the command of Gen. George S. Patton, a great man on the screen, a contemptible bigot in real life. In his diary, Patton confided what he thought of Jews. Others might "believe that the Displaced Person is a human being," Patton wrote, but he knew "he is not." In particular, he whispered to his diary, the Jews "are lower than animals." The Jews, Patton felt, had to be kept under armed guard, otherwise they would flee, "spread over the country like locusts," and then have to be rounded up and some of them shot because they had "murdered and pillaged" innocent Germans. All of this is detailed by Allis and Ronald Radosh in their book about the founding of Israel, "A Safe Haven." For the surviving Jews of Eastern Europe, there was no going home -- and no staying, either. Europe was hostile to them, not in the least appalled or sorry about what had just happened. Even the American military, in the person of the hideous Patton, seemed hostile. For most of the DPs, America was also out of the question. The United States, in the grip of feverish anti-communism and already unreceptive to immigrants, maintained a tight quota. When the Jewish DPs were polled, an overwhelming majority said they wanted to go to Palestine. They knew life would be tough there, but they would be among their own people -- and relatively safe. The Radoshes cite Branda Kalk, a Polish Jew who lost her husband to the Germans in 1942. Along with the rest of her family, she fled east to Russia, where they remained until the end of the war, when they returned to Poland. There, a pogrom wiped out what remained of her family. Kalk was shot in the eye. "I want to go to Palestine," Kalk told members of a U.N. investigating committee. "I know the conditions there. But where in the world is it good for the Jew? Sooner or later he is made to suffer. In Palestine, at least, the Jews fight together for their life and their country." Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda understandably canceled Thomas's commencement address. It would be wonderful, though, if Thomas could go through with it and tell the graduates what she had learned in recent days. I hardly think it would turn her into a supporter of Israel, but it might lead her to understand why so many others are.
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Que Sarah, Sarah By Harriet Posnak Lesser I dreamed that Sarah Palin became president of the United States. She won by a landslide because voters thought she was running unopposed. The other candidates, Romney, Huckabee, Paul and Clinton (pick one) were largely ignored by the press. Obama Who, as he was dubbed by the media, did get some attention, all of it negative; i.e. reports that he preferred wine to beer, and that Asiago cheese had been found in the White House refrigerator. A pair of baggy jeans and a lack of pitching prowess were offered up as proof that Obama was not fit to be president. And then there was the subliminal message buried in every overly publicized Tea Party protest; two unspoken words that led to the downfall of our 44th president. “He’s black.” News of the history making changes he had instituted were glossed over by media management who determined that people were more interested in dead, dying and divorcing celebrities than a major overhaul of the health care system, nuclear disarmament, gay rights and Wall Street reform. I was awakened by the sound of someone screaming. Ear splitting, blood chilling howls that brought my nightmare to an end and gave me a raspy throat for the next couple of days. I didn’t need a Freudian therapist to interpret my dream. Although John McCainenstein had created the Sarah monster back in 2008, he wasn’t to blame for what happened in 2012. The real culprit was the ratings motivated media, shaper of public opinion and withholder of information. I tried to remember when it began; when the press first decided to bring us only the news they thought we wanted to hear. My mind raced back to September, 2002 when members of the White House Iraq Group, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell (not a WHIG) hit the Sunday morning talk shows to make the administration’s case for the war. The most revered hosts in TV news listened respectfully to “proof” of Iraqi WMD, stockpiles of biological and nuclear arms, purchases of yellow cake uranium, and most important – the link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. It worked. A trusting public and a pandering Congress gave the Bush administration carte blanche to launch the war that has already killed some 4400 American troops, wounded 32,000 more, and claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. In retrospect, the sins of the press were more of omission than commission, which in no way lessens responsibility. From the beginning, anti-war protests were ignored while major coverage was given to pro-war demonstrations; there was little or no mention of WHIG despite the organization’s ubiquity; and almost unanimous indifference to the 2002 Downing Street Memo which indicated that the Bush administration knowingly manipulated information to win public support for the war. Even now, most Americans have never heard of the memo, which pre-dates the war by eight months. No one was safe from the selective snubs of the press. Not even Stephen Colbert. His iconoclastic speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents dinner never happened as far as the media was concerned. Even C-Span, which had recorded the event live, initially removed the Colbert portion. Despite major shifts in public opinion and a new administration in Washington, little has changed. A few weeks ago the British Parliament held an inquiry into the causes and consequences of the Iraq War. It made for riveting live television – on the BBC. A major source of interest in Great Britain, the inquiry elicited yawns on this side of the Atlantic despite rumors that George Bush might be called on to testify. Had the Brits substituted SP for W, there would have been an explosion of publicity with American journalists scrambling for front row seats. That brings me back to my dream and the widely held belief that the public can’t get enough of “rock stars” like Sarah Palin and “rock groups” like the Tea Party crowd. If you agree, stay tuned in; but if Sarah Palin and the Tea Baggers turn you off, turn them off. Use your television remote to show the networks that you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take this any more. It won’t be long before the media gets the message and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to sleep at night.
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No Permit? Sent along by Nancy Terrizzi
This is an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries regarding a pond on his property. It was sent by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality, State of Pennsylvania . .
Dear Mr. DeVries:
It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property.. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:
Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.
A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity. A review of the Department's files shows that no permits have been issued. Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.
The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2010.
Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff. Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action. We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
David L. Price
District Representative and Water Management Division.
Here is the actual response sent back by Mr. DeVries:
Re: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County
Dear Mr. Price,
Your certified letter dated 08/17/09 has been handed to me to respond to. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane , Trout Run, Pennsylvania .
A couple of (real) beavers are in the process of constructing and maintaining two wood "debris" dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of natures building materials "debris."
I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic..
As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity.
My first dam question to you is:
(1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers, or
(2) do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?
If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued.
(Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.)
I have several concerns. My first concern is, aren't the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation -- so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department's dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event, causing flooding, is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling them dam names.
If you want the stream "restored" to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers -- but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.
In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beavers' Dams).
So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2010? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them.
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality, health, problem in the area.. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! The bears are not careful where they dump!
Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.
THANK YOU,
RYAN DEVRIES
& THE DAM BEAVERS
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