Too bad he’s a senator

NewMexiKen has just read Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Where’s the voting booth?

I am not entirely a fool. I recognize a campaign book when I read one. Even so, this is a remarkable person. I can’t say he’d be a excellent president or even a good one. I can say he’d be a positive one.

Americans are willing to compete with the world. We work harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We are willing to tolerate more economic instability and are willing to take more personal risks to get ahead. But we can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance—and if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall.

In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As the child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN General Assembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.

You should read this book, long-winded as a few parts of it can be.

Best lyric of the day, so far

‘Twas Halloween and the ghosts were out,
And everywhere they’d go, they shout,
And though I covered my eyes I knew,
They’d go away.

But fear’s the only thing I saw,
And three days later ’twas clear to all,
That nothing is as scary as election day.

Norah Jones, “My Dear Country”

March 7, 1539

Fray Marcos de Niza and Estevan the Moor leave Culiacan, Mexico, to explore New Mexico. Zuni Indians kill Estevan, but de Niza returns with false stories confirming the Seven Cities of Cibola. [The] Indians distrusted Estevan because he wore jewelry depicting serpents and, also, because he demanded women from the pueblo.

New Mexico Magazine

Creative Day

It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. He filed for his patent on the same day as a Chicago electrician named Elisha Gray filed for a patent on basically the same device. Bell only beat Gray by two hours.

It was on this day in 1933 that a man named Charles Darrow trademarked the board game Monopoly. Darrow based the game on an earlier game called “The Landlord’s Game,” which had been designed by a woman named Elizabeth Magie to teach people about the evils of capitalism.

It was on this day in 1917 that the Victor Talking Machine Company released the first jazz record in American history. There were various terms for this new music. It was called “ratty music,” “gut-bucket music,” and “hot music.” Historians aren’t sure how it came to be called jazz, but it’s believed that the word may have come from a West African word for speeding things up. It was also a slang term for sex.

The first band to record jazz was The Original Dixieland Jass Band, an all-white group led by an Italian-American cornetist from New Orleans.

The Writer’s Almanac

Livery Stable Blues

March 7th is the birthday

… of Willard Scott, 73.

… of Steelers Franco Harris, 57, and Lynn Swann, 55.

… of Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz. She’s 37.

… of The Office’s Pam. Jenna Fischer is 33.

Oscar winner Anna Magnani was born on this date in 1908. She won best actress in 1956 for The Rose Tattoo and was nominated again in 1958 for Wild Is the Wind. Magnani died in 1973.

Maurice Ravel was born on this date in 1875. Bolero premiered in 1928. It was originally written as a ballet — and I guess still could be.

Different strokes for different sports folks

Something wrong with this picture?

“In Utah,” noted Dan Daly of the Washington Times, “erstwhile Olympic wrestling champ Rulon Gardner survived a watery plane crash, a swim to shore in 44-degree water and a shivering night on the banks. “In Florida, meanwhile, John Daly hurt himself stopping his swing when a camera clicked and withdrew from the Honda Classic.”

Sideline Chatter

Indian Trackers vs. Smugglers

Somewhat interesting article from The New York Times. It begins:

TOHONO O’ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — A fresh footprint in the dirt, fibers in the mesquite. Harold Thompson reads the signs like a map.

They point to drug smugglers, 10 or 11, crossing from Mexico. The deep impressions and spacing are a giveaway to the heavy loads on their backs. With no insect tracks or paw prints of nocturnal creatures marking the steps, Mr. Thompson determines the smugglers probably crossed a few hours ago.

“These guys are not far ahead; we’ll get them,” said Mr. Thompson, 50, a strapping Navajo who follows the trail like a bloodhound.

At a time when all manner of high technology is arriving to help beef up security at the Mexican border — infrared cameras, sensors, unmanned drones — there is a growing appreciation among the federal authorities for the American Indian art of tracking, honed over generations by ancestors hunting animals.

150 years ago today

… the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision.

Dred Scott[Chief Justice] Taney’s “Opinion of the Court” stated that Negroes were not citizens of the United States and had no right to bring suit in a federal court. In addition, Dred Scott had not become a free man as a result of his residence at Fort Snelling because the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional; Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. . . . Because Dred Scott was not free under either the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 or the 1820 Missouri Compromise, he was still a slave, not a citizen with the right to bring suit in the federal court system. According to Taney’s opinion, African Americans were “beings of an inferior order so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” . . . Taney returned the case to the circuit court with instructions to dismiss it for want of jurisdiction.

Above from the Missouri State Archives, which has an extensive report on the case.

Scott and his wife Harriet, also a party to the case, were freed shortly after by their new owner, but Dred Scott died the following year and his wife and daughter not much later.

Before the ruling, many of those moderately opposed to slavery felt the institution would die out soon enough if it wasn’t allowed to expand. The 7-2 decision of the Court seriously undermined the effort to limit the expansion, however; indeed, some feared that under its precedent even the free states would soon be unable to outlaw slavery. The Scott decision eliminated the middle ground in the debate.

Email, god love it

Here for you on the internets, an Email from U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins Concerning Conversation with DoJ Official. It’s interesting enough for its own sake as part of the whole controversy over the firing of the U.S. attorneys, but what I love is the end of this two-week old message:

“I would appreciate maximum opsec regarding this email and ask that you not forward it or let others read it.”

And there it is on the internet.

Cummins himself made it available today.

(NewMexiKen has read some of his own emails out loud on the witness stand. Trust me, they never, ever go away.)

March 6th is the birthday

… of Ed McMahon. Johnny’s sidekick is 84.

… of Alan Greenspan. He’s 81.

… of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 79.

He was in law school in 1948, when a prominent Liberal Party politician was assassinated, and the event triggered a civil war that lasted for more than 10 years. García Márquez stayed in the city to write about the violence, but a riot in his neighborhood started a fire that burned down his house, and all his manuscripts were destroyed. So he moved into a tiny room in a four-story brothel called “the Skyscraper.” Márquez knew he wanted to write fiction, but he wasn’t sure what to write about. Then in 1950, his mother showed up and asked him to travel back to his hometown to help her sell the family home.

The trip filled him with nostalgia and flooded his mind with memories of his childhood and the stories told to him by his grandparents. A fictional town began to take shape in his mind, based on his memories, and he knew he had to write a novel about that town. That novel became One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which begins, “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude is now considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

The Writer’s Almanac

… of Mary Wilson. The Supreme who is neither Diana Ross nor the one Dream Girls is about is 63 today.

The members of the Supremes – Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson – first came together in a quartet, the Primettes, that had been recruited by singer Paul Williams as a sister act to his locally popular Detroit group, the Primes (later known as the Temptations). After persistently showing up at Motown’s “Hitsville” headquarters after school, the Supremes were signed to the label in January 1961. The group was slow to find its footing, enduring several years of flop singles before finally clicking with “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” (#23) in early 1964. After that, it was off to the races for the Supremes, who amassed a dozen Number One hits between 1964-69. In addition to the aforementioned singles, the Supremes’ other chart-toppers were “I Hear a Symphony,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Love Is Here and Now You’re gone,” “The Happening,” “Love Child” and “Someday We’ll Be Together.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Rob Reiner. “Meathead” is 60.

… of Shaquille O’Neal. He’s getting up there — 35.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on this date in 1475.

God

Detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on this date in 1806.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Bob Wills was born on this date in 1905.

You can see the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee,
It’s the home of country music, on that we all agree.
But when you cross that ole Red River, hoss,
that just don’t mean a thing,
‘Cause once you’re down in Texas,
Bob Wills is still the King.

(‘Bob Wills Is Still The King’ by Waylon Jennings)

Bob Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

Say Heather, wasn’t your whole campaign last year about character and ethics?

Mr. Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has stated that, in mid-October, two members of Congress from New Mexico pressured him about an ongoing corruption probe of state Democrats. Apparently, Rep. Wilson called Mr. Iglesias first and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) called a week later. After Sen. Domenici admitted calling Mr. Iglesias, Rep. Wilson finally admitted yesterday that she too had called the U.S. Attorney.

Rep. Wilson’s call to Mr. Iglesias violates chapter 7 of the House ethics manual, which prohibits members from contacting executive or agency officials regarding the merits of matters under their formal consideration. House rules also state that if a member wants to affect the outcome of a matter in litigation, the member can file a brief with the court, make a floor statement, or insert a statement into the Congressional Record. Directly calling officials to influence an ongoing enforcement matter is not an option.

House rules also state that a member may not claim he or she was merely requesting “background information” or a “status report” because the House has recognized that such requests “may in effect be an indirect or subtle effort to influence the substantive outcome of the proceedings.”

Rep. Wilson’s conduct may also violate the requirement that members conduct themselves in a manner that “reflects creditably on the House.” In a precedent cited by the House ethics committee when it admonished former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), the House has held that members are prohibited from asking an executive branch employee to engage in an activity having an impermissible political purpose.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Yet another book

Some time ago NewMexiKen began Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, but then set it aside about half-way through. I finished it today, probably one of the last last people in America to read it.

But if you haven’t read it, and you like your history laced with serial killers, then I urge you to pick it up. Subtitled Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Larson tells the story of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the mad doctor, serial killer than operated on its fringes. Fascinating reading.

(That’s two-and-a-half books in three days.)

Dowd is a cleaned-up version of Coulter

In [Maureen] Dowd’s work, John Edwards is routinely “the Breck Girl” (five times so far—and counting), and Gore is “so feminized that he’s practically lactating.” Indeed, two days before we voted in November 2000, Dowd devoted her entire column, for the sixth time, to an imaginary conversation between Gore and his bald spot. “I feel pretty,” her headline said (pretending to quote Gore’s inner thoughts). That was the image this idiot wanted you carrying off to the voting booth with you! Such is the state of Maureen Dowd’s broken soul. And such is the state of her cohort.

And now, in the spirit of fair play and brotherhood, she is extending this type of “analysis” to Barack Obama. In the past few weeks, she has described Obama as “legally blonde” (in her headline); as “Scarlett O’Hara” (in her next column); as a “Dreamboy,” as “Obambi,” and now, in her latest absurd piece, as a “schoolboy” (text below). Do you get the feeling that Dowd may have a few race-and-gender issues floating around in her inane, tortured mind?

Daily Howler

The New Bill

David Brooks wonders aloud, and compellingly, if perhaps New Mexico governor Bill Richardson might somehow rise above the glamorously noisy H. Clinton/B. Obama fray and become the Democratic candidate for President. Here’s what [David] Brooks likes about [Bill] Richardson:

He’s down to earth, accessible, funny, and smart.

He is “the most experienced person running for president. He served in Congress for 14 years. He was the energy secretary (energy’s kind of vital).”

He is a “successful two-term governor who was re-elected with 69 percent of the vote in New Mexico, a red state. Moreover, he’s a governor with foreign policy experience. He was U.N. ambassador. He worked in the State Department. He’s made a second career of negotiating on special assignments with dictators like Saddam, Castro and Kim Jong Il. He negotiated a truce in Sudan.”

He is the only Democratic candidate who is “completely invulnerable on the tax cut issue.”

And most of all, Brooks writes, “he’s not a senator. Since 1961, 40 senators have run for president and their record is 0-40. A senator may win this year, but you’d be foolish to assume it.”

Freakonomics Blog

NewMexiKen is thinking that David Brooks saw my take on Richardson back in January.