April 2008 Archives

Yesterday, the DN linked to an NPR story that was billed as a profile of Officer Jennifer Grasso, the first woman to enter the LAPD's SWAT school. Interestingly, the only thing it said about Grasso was that she refused to be interviewed. Some profile.

That may be the only thing the report got right. Top to bottom, the story is riddled with factual errors, blatantly stereo-typed prejudice and gross omissions (for instance, trumpeting an officers $2 million jury verdict, while failing to mention said verdict was overturned on appeal).

Here, then, is the commentary in response that I have prepared for NPR. They've not seen fit to get back to me. I'm shocked.

The Politically Incorrect Truth About LAPD's First Female SWAT Officer:

NPR's recent profile of Los Angeles Police Officer Jennifre Grasso, the first female selectee for the renown LAPD SWAT team, left out numerous key facts and advanced patently false misperceptions and liberal stereo-types.

Let's stipulate now that Jennifer Grasso is an outstanding cop. Those who have worked with her say she's far better than most male officers. SWAT officers I know were disappointed when she failed their stringent 2006 selection.

This doesn't change a simple fact: If Grasso is passes SWAT school, it will only be because she's a woman, and Police Chief Bratton wants a woman on SWAT, capable or not.

NPR failed to mention that Grasso recently committed a violation of weapons' safety so egregious that most present SWAT officers would have been removed from the team for the same. She accidentally fired an MP-5 submachine gun, without even having the weapon in a firing position.

Before now, SWAT officers were expected to arrive with the finest weapons handling traits. Just as diamonds can be cut and polished only to standards their chemical traits permit, so too are weapons skills limited. By choosing only officers with the finest innate traits - those with skills that need to be honed, not learned - SWAT has amassed a remarkable record - killing less than 1% of the extremely dangerous suspects they confront and only one hostage ever - and arguably not even her.

In past years, dozens of male and female candidates have been disqualified for even placing a finger on the trigger at the wrong time. Every professional weapons handling standard starts with "never put a finger on the trigger unless you are ready to fire." Grasso went one better, spraying rounds into the dirt in front of her.

She literally could have killed someone, yet is still in school.

Does anyone really believe no SWAT standards have been lowered, as CPT Jeff Greer asserted?

This is no minor matter to current SWAT cops. Would you want to confront an armed suspect knowing the officer behind you had accidentally fired the same machine gun that is now inches from your back? If you're a hostage, is that officer your first choice of rescuer?

NPR also failed to tell you that the selection procedure that picked Grasso used only five of the 18 standards that were previously used to evaluate candidates. Among the eliminated tests, was a simulated hostage rescue that very closely mirrored the 2005 incident in which SWAT is believed to have accidentally killed a little girl - the Suzie Pena case which supposedly led to this change. It is that same test that former officer Nina Acosta barely passed in the early 1990s before suing the City for discrimination. Contrary NPR's report that she wasn't selected because of her gender, officers who testified in the trial say Acosta hesitated for three or four seconds inside that room while fumbling with her weapon. Most police gun battles are over in half that time.

That is why Acosta's $2 million verdict was thrown out by an appeals court, another fact NPR left out.

NPR also was quick to quote LAPD observer Joe Domanick, a journalist who's never carried a gun, much less served as an LAPD officer. According to him, blacks and Latinos were only admitted to SWAT following a consent decree, and the unit is still largely a bastion of whites.

In fact, this is false. Among the very first SWAT officers were several highly regarded officers of a variety of ethnicities. One black sergeant is regarded by old timers as a key to the team's early growth. A large number of the team was Hispanic. Today, African American officers make up a greater percentage of SWAT than the LAPD as a whole - something that was true before Randal Simmons was murdered in Winnetka earlier this year.

But, to Domanick and NPR (who apparrently didn't bother going to look at SWAT), this is a white male bastion.

The fact is, contrary to NPR's assertions, SWAT is a bastion of excellence of all colors, and diverse in its expertise. Its record proves it rarely uses force, and its ranks include some of the world's best-trained - and most successful - hostage negotiators.

How could NPR get so many facts wrong and omit so many important points? I'd venture to say NPR is far more prejudiced against folks in blue, than SWAT cops are anyone of any color. Or any gender.

The loser in all of this is Grasso. Frankly, lots of folks can make mistakes with a weapon. Officers who have done so in the past have retested the selection process and made the team, without doubts. Grasso will not be so fortunate. Regardless of the selection standards used, she will now always be known as the woman who had the standards changed for her, and who got away with something no man ever would.

Sometimes when you shatter a non-existent glass ceiling, you still get cut be falling shards.

And, remember, the standards have not been lowered.

I like our mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. We have a very special relationship. I met him only once, but because I was seated with important people he didn't know that I'm not; and so exercising discretion, in at least this part of his life, he grasped my hand firmly in his two strong hands, gazed deeply into my eyes, as if no one else were in the room, and told me how sincerely pleased he was to meet me. Wow! Was he good! Imagine then my sense of bewilderment and betrayal when he never called and never wrote. Sigh. But what a guy. He never sleeps. He is at every banquet, school fair, retirement party and public event in Los Angeles. I'm sure my 8 year-old and 5 year-old grandsons were thrilled by his appearance at their elementary school fair on Saturday. When does he have time to work, to sleep, to think things through?

The great philosophical question before us is this: Are politicians born out of touch with reality and the public or do they become that way? This is variation of the "Nature versus Nurture" debate. What seems indisputable however is that politicians quickly display a degree of separation from our concerns, needs and realities.

We are witnessing our mayor proposing all kinds of increases on fees and fines. It will cost more to park. The fine for the expired meter will naturally also cost more. At the very same time our government is putting us at great economic peril and opening us up to a multi-million dollar fine by not paying the $81 million now due into our pension fund. The cost of this delay will be $15 million in the first year and accrue from there. Smart?

The garbage fees already recently raised will go up again. We recently received notice that a new company was being contracted to do our garbage pick up. Will they be sending three trucks as well? What are the ecological costs of three trucks instead of one doing our pick up? Does the increased pollutants in the air really balance the savings of trashing separation? Is the trash in fact remaining separate or is it being merged at the dump--as some have reported? We deserve to know. The new company will be replacing our black, blue and green trash receptacles. What will this cost? Who will pay? Ah, that we do know already. We will pay.

The libraries will close on Sundays, while other services will also be cut back. Money for police and fire departments will not be cut. However, we should at least ask how much of the increase in police budget will be used to pay for legal costs and civil judgments against the department? Are we paying for more protection or are we paying for a lack of professionalism and effective discipline? As we remember the May Day Melee of last year, we do need to know the true costs of policing and how much of our money goes to the beat cop and how much to cop beatings.

Most egregious and offensive of all the new "revenue enhancement" schemes is the special "congestion pricing" of our present carpool lanes. Since we no longer talk about taxes but revenue enhancements and fees, we are not supposed to notice that more is being extracted from our wallets--often for things we have already paid for.

The carpool lane itself turns out to be a misnomer. Designed to reward the socially acceptable behavior of carpooling, it was co-opted to reward those who could afford to buy a new hybrid. Then, as people actually complied, they started limiting the decals for carpool use by single drivers. Bait. Switch. Deny. Re-Purpose.

Now they are trying to takeover, slowly at first as a test project, the carpool lanes and turn them into revenue enhancers under the guise of "congestion fees."

Now there is no question that there is congestion. Just trying to breath un-conditioned air while driving congests me and creates a hacking cough and high-pitched wheeze. The traffic is also congested. How to handle it? Well, do what they did in London and charge people to enter the city. (Although I think they'd do better to charge people to leave. Many would pay any amount.) This way the rich can drive and the poor can take the train or metro. This way the wealthy will drive in comfort and the poor will waste $4 plus per gallon gasoline idling in the traffic jams. Hmmm. The rich will speed along while we have for the first time in history the "idling poor." This is as nasty a piece of Social-Darwinian social engineering as I have ever seen. You see, in London they have mass transit: trains, metros and several kinds of taxis. In Los Angeles we have, uh, well, not so much rapid transit. We do have freeways however.

Now they are desperately trying to take the free out of freeway. They began by building dedicated toll roads. Now they are trying to confiscate our already existing freeways and hold them hostage for money.

Aside from being elitist and unfairly benefiting the wealthy and punishing the poor, aside from doing nothing to truly solve our congestion problems, this has a still deeper flaw. Look at the gasoline tax you already pay. You and I have already paid for these roads--and we were probably fools for allowing the carpool lane precedent to begin the erosion of our rights.

I know the city and county need money. But we are not idiots. We see the fees and fines and are not happy. They want more money for less service. We can say No. We can ask them if our government really needs the staff and bureaucracy for each Council member and Supervisor? We can demand to know if they can justify being driven in city-owned and county-owned cars? Do the police need one person at a desk (sworn and unsworn) to support one officer in the field? Maybe the answer is Yes. Prove it.

None of these increased fees and fines, cut services and repossessed lanes is for any greater purpose than raising money. They are so much better at raising money than saving it. Maybe if Mayor Villaraigosa would do his own driving and pay for his own gas, he'd come to understand the plight of the growing poor and the shrinking middle class. Maybe. Mr. Mayor, be in touch.

Tom Hayden says that his wife screams at the television every time she sees and hears Hillary Clinton. Hayden says that at first that he thought the hate Hillary froth from his wife was irrational and even abnormal. Not anymore, he now hints that he might well join her in screeching at Hillary whenever her mug appears on the screen. But Hayden and the Mrs.’s reflexive and certifiable Hillary loathe is a clinical malady that he shares with thousands of others who, like him, call themselves progressives.

Before Clinton tossed her hat in the presidential rink in January 2007, the Nation where Hayden’s anti-Clinton hit piece appeared, Move-On Org, Mother Jones, dailykos, Alternet, In These Times, Extra, and a legion of Huff Post writers, and nearly every assorted left and progressive blog around kept up a non-stop, drumbeat assault on Bush and his appointee’s bumbles, fumbles, stumbles, misdeeds, misconduct, and borderline criminal acts. They pounded away in print and on their webs on the shambles and devastation of Bush’s foreign and domestic policies. Enter Clinton.

In Orwell’s 1984 novel on totalitarian mind manipulation, Big Brother commands the crowd to switch their hate and death chants literally in mid-sentence from Eurasia (the former enemy) to Eastasia (the former ally now turned enemy). Like the 1984 crowd, progressive writers and pundits did a stop on a dime and went from hammering Bush and company to hammering Clinton. The volte face would have made Big Brother smile.

Clinton (and Bill) in short order became an evil incarnate political con artist, a bag woman for corporate lobbyists, a consummate Democratic Party schemer and manipulator, and pathological liar. When the campaign heated up and progressive’s Obama love fest sprung full bloom, progressives’ collective amnesia about Bush’s sins worsened. They were no longer the headline, page turning items on their sites and in their publications.

The evidence has mounted and continues to mount with more fresh revelations that Obama shamelessly cut deal with lobbyists, influence peddled for his pals and campaign contributors such as businessman and contributor Robert Blackwell, Jr. who he helped get lucrative state grants for his tourism and gaming operations, has been notoriously MIA on major Senate votes (no accountability trail), orchestrated sneaky negative Clinton attacks (the MLK and Lyndon Johnson flap) and launched the initial smutty and personal character attacks on Clinton in the early debates. He has run false and misleading ads and shoveled in a king’s ransom in contributions from oil companies through their PACs, and corporate top brass, all the while claiming to be a political St. Paul and Mother Teresa when it comes to purity toward oil companies, corporations, and lobbyists.

Yet, Hayden, who of all people should know better from his long stint in the California legislature, and other progressives continue to delude themselves with the fiction that Obama is a new breed, breath of fresh air, progressive politician.

This is no small point. Hillary’s most grievous mortal sin in Hayden’s eye is that she supposedly betrayed her ultra-liberal even flirt with radicalism fling in the 1960s by dumping on Obama for his connection with ex-Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and fiery cleric Jeremiah Wright. Hayden is locked in a dreamy and by-gone time warp. Clinton was a 20 ish something college girl then who like so many others of that age and generation joined or cheered radical groups and causes. She was no different than thousands of other lefties and liberals of that generation who aged, prospered, became professionals and corporate businesspersons and grew into good Democrats and Republicans. When Hayden and a handful of others became politicians they dumped their Mao and Marxist tracts in the attic (or fireplace) cut deals, compromised, and took corporate campaign dollars. The same things they rag on Clinton for doing.
Then there’s McCain. If progressives have developed a bad case of collective amnesia about Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors, they’ve become downright lobotomized on McCain. They have taken only the most feeble, token, and perfunctory jabs at McCain. Hayden and his wife and the others that scream at Hillary would never dare publicly say it but the unmistakable inference from their ruthless Clinton bash is if Obama’s not the chosen one than better a McCain than a Clinton in the White House.

Now Back to Obama. His deal making and the betrayal of his alleged progressive leanings means nothing to Hayden. He exhorts progressives to stop the Clinton “self-destructive spiral” (let’s check to see if Hayden has ever coupled those words with McCain’s name) choke off the dollar supply, write letters and pound on doors to get the Democrat’s to muzzle her.

A final question: When Hayden and his wife get through screaming their lungs out at Hillary do they have any wind left in their pipes to scream at McCain?

The Democrats could take a lesson from USC football coach Pete Carroll, whose success is based on breeding healthy competition within all levels of his organization.

He has, for instance, seven or eight outstanding running backs, each of whom could start for most Top 25 teams. As they compete against one another, they bring out the best in one another. That's why Pete Carroll's team is a top national title contender for about the sixth year in a row. The tailbacks don't beat each other up and they don't trip each other or spread nasty rumors about none another -- they just bring out the best in one another.

Ronald Reagan promoted a similar ethos when he spoke of an 11th commandment: "Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican." His advice was ignored to an unusual extent by Mitt Romney and his talk-radio crowd this spring as they attempted to undercut John McCain, but Republicans are sufficiently organized to overcome their own previous claims that McCain would "destroy the soul of the party."

But something worse is happening among Dems. They have presented the nation with two interesting, credible options: A man who represents hope and a woman who represents experience. The latter is intent on exploding the former's credibility, out of her own desperate need for power. I say this as a longtime defender of her and her husband, as someone who was puzzled by how angrily Republicans accused them of being power hungry. Now I see that it's true.

The only saving grace is that, if Obama can't convince his own party that his brand of hope will be efficacious, he may as well lose now. Hillary is indeed testing his battle-worthiness. Still, she and Bill truly bother me now.

Barack Obama’s decisive Pennsylvania loss to Hillary Clinton was predictable and inevitable. Obama pretty much confirmed that when he tossed in the towel and spent the crucial countdown hours to the primary vote at a fundraiser in Indiana. But the loss in that state is the least of Obama’s troubles.

But let’s start with Pennsylvania. More than eighty percent of the voters there are white, a significant percent are blue collar, rural, less educated, and less financially well-endowed. Many are gun owners and devoutly religious. The Democrats among them are solid Clinton backers. Pennsylvania voters mirror the voter profile in a majority of states.

One in five Pennsylvania voters made it clear that race was a factor in their vote. Translated; they would not vote for an African-American for president, no matter how fresh, articulate and race neutral his pitch. If Obama hadn’t gotten ninety percent of the black vote mostly in Philadelphia and other urban spots in the state, Clinton would have demolished him.

Obama’s one big and consistent trump card has been the youth vote, those aged 18-29. They are voting.

And the overwhelming majority of them are voting for Obama. But Pennsylvania showed the problem in banking on them to propel a candidate to victory. There simply aren’t enough of them. They make up slightly more than 10 percent of the vote in the state. Their number is dwarfed by older voters over age 45 that make up nearly seventy percent of the vote there. Older, white male, rural voters have been the pathway to the White House for GOP presidents since Nixon. In a head to head contest with McCain, Clinton almost certainly wouldn’t beat him out for their vote, but she’d be competitive. Obama wouldn’t be. The highest percentage of young voters is in solid Democrat or Democratic leaning states. In 2004 the youth voter turnout was highest in Minnesota (69%), Wisconsin (63%), Iowa (62%), Maine (59%), and New Hampshire (58%). In Pennsylvania, there was even an ominous note with the youth vote; race sneaked in. Clinton did surprisingly well with white voters under age 30.

The hard numbers and demographics may be less troubling than voter attitudes and that’s Democratic voter attitudes towards Clinton, and especially Obama. They can be summed up in one word: polarization. That polarization has gotten wider and deeper with every swap of a name call, finger point, and character attack by Clinton and Obama on each other. One quarter of Democrats say they will either cross over and vote for McCain or stay home if Obama is the nominee. Fewer Democrats say they will defect if Clinton’s the nominee. Put bluntly, a general would be hard pressed to win a major battle if one quarter of his troop’s desert before the first shot is fired.

The dominant issue for voters is no longer the Iraq war but the economy. Those that are most likely to stampede the polls in anger over a turned South economy are the voters that Clinton best appeals to. In exit polls, voters said that they thought Obama and Clinton would do better than McCain in handling the economy, but more favored Clinton in handling the economic meltdown.

Pennsylvania was a crowning vindication of Clinton’s win the big state strategy. These are the states that are in play for the Democrats and these are the states that will decide ultimately who will sit in the White House. Obama’s wins in the South and West are side show, feel good wins. These are locked down red states. With the exception of Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, a Democratic presidential candidate has won only one of the eight western states of New Mexico, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Four of the states with remaining primaries are textbook examples of the meaningless of a Democratic primary win in these states. The last Democrat to win Indiana was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The last Democrat to win North Carolina was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Clinton was the last Democrat to win West Virginia. He also broke the Democratic presidential drought in Kentucky with his wins in 1992 and 1996. While it’s true that some of these states have Democratic governors and senators, this means little in a national election. The Democrats that win in these states are independent, self-reliant and conservative. They are the exact opposite of the Obama and even Clinton profile.

There’s one more troubling note for Obama. The majority of voters overall and that includes a significant percentage of Clinton’s backers think that Obama will eventually get the Democratic nomination they aren’t exactly doing handstands at that prospect. More Obama backers say that they will be just as content if Clinton gets the nomination. Fewer Clinton backers say they’ll be content if Obama gets the nomination.
Obama’s Pennsylvania loss does not dampen his chance of eventually getting the Democratic nomination. But the voter demographics that stack up high against him dampen his chance of getting the White House.

So which calamities should Hillary Clinton use in her next commercial, now that she's won Pennsylvania? Some suggestions:

• The Black Death
• The last day of Pompeii
• The shooting of J.R. Ewing (a statement about big oil?)
• Locust plague
• Jonestown
• Morgan Spurlock's latest movie's box office numbers
• A leper colony
• A Stalin pogrom
• Attack of killer bees
• Mongol horde invasion
• The Irish potato famine
• Apocalyptic scenes from "28 Days Later"
• Apocalyptic scenes from "An Inconvenient Truth"
• Hugo Chavez talking

If this Democratic primary has proven anything it is that pollers and pundits don’t know anything. But since nature and pundits hate a vacuum, let’s try to figure out what will happen on Tuesday. I’ll give you my reasoning and then you put yours in the comments section.

First know that I support Sen. Obama. This could mean that I will be positive, optimistic and irrationally exuberant. Or it could mean that I’ll be trying to protect myself from disappointment by anticipating tragedy. Either could be true, but I will be honest—probably honestly wrong.

I think Obama loses tomorrow by more than 10%. The luster of purity beyond politics is off (and it had to come off) and he is no longer the transcendent candidate beyond both race and politics. While Sen. Clinton loses support by going negative, that hurts Obama too. But it hurts even more when he fights back and goes negative, though he must. He has become a mere mortal. Some of his most idealistic supporters will stay home.

The mud thrown on him late in this race will inevitably appear to stick for a while. The flag pin, the supporter with old far left connections and Rev. Wright. These questions and concerns will let some who were initially excited by the idea and image of Obama to vote for Sen. Clinton.

Finally, many of the so-called “undecideds” are in fact decided and just don’t want to admit that instinctively they can’t vote for a Black man with a Muslim name. They will fall 3 to 1 for Clinton. I see Clinton winning by close to 100,000 votes.

However, to hedge my bet some and explain, if I’m wrong, why I’m wrong: The polls do not reflect the young people, the students who use cell phones and therefore are not polled by most organizations. They are the great unknown. They are as yet uncounted, and I’m not counting on them.

Now it’s your turn.

A month before the crucial Pennsylvania primary an aide to a superdelegate bluntly told a reporter that top Democrats don’t want the people to think the Democratic presidential nomination was stolen. The aide referred to the whispers, grumbles, and even loud shouts from both the Obama and Clinton camps about the superdelegates and their possible votes after Pennsylvania. Team Obama especially feared that some superdelegates might do their version of the old back room deal making that party bosses once routinely engaged in at Democratic conventions and handpick Clinton. That would be a smack in the face of the delegates who presumably by the time of the convention will have given Obama a majority of their votes. A superdelegate deal would defy the “will of the people,” and virtually insure a balkanized Democratic Party and a crippled nominee. Top Democrats shudder at that thought and say they are working hard to insure that a nominee reflects the wishes of the majority.

The nod to democracy party leaders make is noble and practical, the results of Pennsylvania notwithstanding. But politics being politics, money and political favoritism, but especially money, are making a mockery of the ideal of letting superdelegates decide a nominee purely on their conscience and the best interests of the party. Clinton and Obama have spread cash to any and every superdelegate that they think will back them. The disturbing prospect is that the eventual winner could be the one that spreads the most cash around. There is little evidence that the superdelegates are saying no to the money.

The Center for Responsive Politics reported in mid February that Obama’s political action committee had doled out nearly $700, 000 to the superdelegates. Clinton’s political action committee had ladled out close to $200,000. The figures almost certainly have jumped since then. And as the battle for the vote of the superdelegates intensifies in the remaining primaries and with neither one able to knock the other one out in the number of pledged delegates bagged, the cash spigots to the superdelegates will open even wider. The money Obama and Clinton has shoved out has been well spent. In February, 34 of 81 super delegates that announced that they’ll back Obama got donations from him totaling nearly a quarter million dollars. 13 of the 109 superdelegates that back Clinton got nearly $100,000 from her.

There are two reasons for the gaping disparity in the amount shelled out by Obama and Clinton to the superdelegates. Clinton had less money to spread around and for a time less need to spread it. Clinton and hubby Bill are the Democratic Party‘s consummate insiders. Before Obama’s meteoritic rise on the national scene, Clinton by dint of old ties, loyalties, and allegiances was the runaway choice of the superdelegates to get the party nomination.

Obama radically changed the equation for Clinton and the party. His surge has made many superdelegates rethink their Clinton tie or at least waver. With the king’s ransom of campaign cash that Obama has, he was able to nudge some of the fence sitters over to his column.

Clinton and Obama, though, hotly deny that they are trying to buy the votes of superdelegates. They paint their contributions to the superdelegates in the most innocuous and banal terms and say that the cash is simply meant to help Democrats stay in office. But a close look at who gets what belies their publicly professed high minded intent. In almost every case a superdelegate most of whom are congresspersons or senators who announced for Clinton got a Clinton contribution and the ones that announced their vote for Obama got a contribution from him. The reverse is not the case. Few of the elected official-superdelegates got a penny from Obama if they backed Clinton and the ones that backed Obama didn’t get anything from Clinton.

Undoubtedly some of the superdelegates that have announced for either candidate back them because they sincerely believe that their choice is the right choice for the party and that he or she stands the best chance of beating McCain. They had already or would have eventually committed to either Obama or Clinton even if they didn’t get a cent from them. The money they got from them was simply an added sweetener.

No figures have been released yet but undoubtedly a lot of cash changed hands before the Pennsylvania primary. And if Hillary wins big, a lot more cash will change hands before the final mini-wave of other primaries in May and June. More than 100 house members, senators and delegates from territories and the District of Columbia have not publicly committed to either Obama or Clinton. Their votes ostensibly are up for grabs. The money alone may not sway them to toss their vote to either Obama or Clinton, but it sure won’t hurt. Pennsylvania, then, is just another campaign bank stop for Obama and Clinton.

Whoever called the presidential campaign grind, the silly season got it wrong. It’s worse. It’s the farcical season. Let’s look at some of the latest things on the campaign trail that got some tongues wagging. First there’s the cheek scratch. Midway through a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, Obama paused to scratch his cheek. A mistake, with cameras whirling away, and reporters hanging on his every facial tic, an itch was simply not permissible. Obama should have let it pass. He didn’t. He made the second mistake. He scratched it with not his thumb, or index finger, but his right middle finger.

Unfortunately, the middle finger scratch came at the instant he was laying some leather to Hillary. No Ouija Board needed to predict the rest. The itch, the scratch, the middle finger and the Hillary knock in the world of minutiae punditry added up to one thing. Obama flipped her off. You Tube ran it incessantly, and respected pundits, jumped into the fray quickly. Obama committed the ultimate in a crude, no-class vulgarity. Mercifully, Team Obama, had the good grace, and sense, not to bother dignifying this inanity. No matter two days later, the blog tongues were still wagging furiously did he or didn’t he on it.

Then there is the silly petition floating around lambasting ABC newsmen Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for dumping on Obama. The petition demands that ABC moderators stick to the issues and stop the bashing by asking trivial and meaningless questions. The problem is that these types of questions have been routinely tossed at candidates in debates since there have been presidential debates, and there has been no mass slam of the networks or the moderators for asking them. The difference this time is that they asked them of Obama, and to his rabid supporters the rough and tumble, hardball stuff is verboten with him. When Obama took umbrage at the tone that did it. The fans were off to the petitions. But the questions whether inane, and trivial, the job of moderators is to make candidates squirm, wiggle, and sweat on issues from the mundane to the substantive. Politics American style has been reduced to candidate allure, posturing, and puffery. Candidates know that and feed into and encourage it. That’s their way of ducking and dodging, and tap dancing around tough questions on tough issues. Obama’s retort was that questions about his past had nothing to do with the big ticket issues that Americans care about—social security, health care, the Iraq war, housing foreclosures, stratospheric gas prices, and solutions to them.
He’s right. But Obama didn’t raise a peep of protest when Clinton was badgered for the thousandth time about her misstatement on sniper attack in Bosnia on her trip---TWELVE YEARS AGO. As the old saw goes it’s all a matter of whose ox is being gored. Or as the other Clinton, Bill, aptly put it "I didn't hear her whining when he said she was untruthful in Iowa, or called her the senator from Punjab. And you know they said some pretty rough things about me too. But you know, this is a contact sport. If you don't want to play, keep your uniform off."

Speaking of the past, in the litany of unfair items that Team Obama screamed about getting reamed on was his association with former Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers. They worked with him on a foundation, hosted a fund raiser for him, and had a few meetings with him over the years. The inference is that Obama is a closet radical. That’s a slander and Obama pretty much said so with his retort that the two are respected academics, and pillars of the community in Chicago, and besides he was 8 years old when the WU was in its thankfully brief rampage heyday. The problem with this is that as left field (pun intended) as the questioning about BO and the underground is, as Clinton correctly said better to deal it with it now than get distracted by it when the GOP hit squads spew it over every website in creation in the fall if he gets the nomination.

Finally there’s Chelsea Clinton. Hillary’s daughter, columnists have spent more time fixated on her looks and attire then her poise, articulation, and command of the issues. Here’s an erudite sampling “Her hair is long and highlighted blond. Her black flared jeans are tight, and her gray blazer nips at her small waist. She has a boyfriend, her own apartment and a terrier named Soren. (After the philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.)”
The parade of inanities, hype, sensationalism, irrelavancies, gossip, and just plain silliness that masquerades as issues and informed political discussion has been appaling. But it shouldn’t surpise even if American politics hadn’t long ago sunk to gutter sniping, the two decade dumb down of political discourse would have guaranteed that Chelsea’s tight jeans, a cheek scratch, a casual association with former aging terrorists and a hurt feelings petition would top the political charts.

And momentarily, the smell of sulphur left by Hugo was washed away...

This from The Politico:

"While Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to Washington received wall to wall coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer briefly held up a Senate resolution welcoming the pontiff because she objected to language about how the pope values 'each and every human life.'

The measure later cleared the Senate Thursday afternoon after the sponsor of the resolution, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), dropped the reference to 'human life' because some Democrats saw it as a reference to abortion. According to Republican aides, Brownback, a devout Catholic, did not want a high profile fight over the resolution, which was adopted on a voice vote. In fact, Brownback blackberried his staff from the Pope's mass at Nationals Park to direct them to drop the references to human life.

...'There was some politics involved here, and the objectionable language has been withdrawn,' a senior Democratic Senate aide said.

Three Senate Republican aides involved in the issue say that Boxer objected to the 'life' language, which Democrats see as an implicit reference to the Catholic church's opposition to abortion."

This was the part of the original resolution they raised a fuss over:

"Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life;"

Wow. WOW. Unfreakin' believable. How completely cold-blooded has American politics gotten when lawmakers object to giving value to human life? "Objectionable language"??? Particularly in praising the good deeds of the pope?

In the pic, btw, Benedict is celebrating life -- his 81st birthday, to be exact. Surely that shameless celebration of human life will earn him a censure from the Boxer wing at this rate.

The instant that LAPD chief William Bratton called for a fresh look at the practices and gender make-up of SWAT in 2005, the howls went up from the LAPD Police Protective League, and the reflexive opponents of any LAPD change that Bratton was out to gut SWAT. This was silly, hyper-defensive, and politically motivated. Bratton was hardly out to dampen down the effectiveness of SWAT. The unit has had a solid record in handling tough situations with tact, professionalism, and most importantly a relative minimum loss of life.

The problem is that SWAT has made glaring operational mistakes in some very volatile situations. The equally big problem is that SWAT simply does not reflect the changing face and gender of the LAPD. The department in its blunt report dissecting SWAT said so. It called it insular, a good ole boy, and self-protective unit. Translated that means the unit is an iron-clad closed shop outfit, that brooks no outside interference, direction, and has doggedly resisted the entrance into SWAT of any other than hand-picked, elite male officers. This is a sure fire prescription to reinforce the clubby “them versus us” mindset and code of silence that has bedeviled the LAPD for decades.

This is the mindset that Bratton has sworn that he will do whatever he can to end during his second term at the LAPD helm.

But judging from the horrified reaction to the report and the changes that it recommended to break down the insular culture of SWAT, Bratton will have his work cut out for him on this. He’ll have an even tougher job in trying to make operational changes, or better still policy changes, on the thorny issue of the use of force. While SWAT has been lauded for handling most stand-off situations without resort to gunplay, on a few occasions when it has used force the result has been disastrous.

The most glaring and tormenting example of this was the accidental slaying of 19 month old Susie Pena, in a South L.A. hostage standoff in 2005. That forced a deep soul search within the department and within SWAT on when and when not to use force, and how much force is appropriate in tense situations. It also forced the LAPD top brass and the police commission to look at something else about SWAT. And that is when force may be inappropriate, or flat out overkill, in a situation where innocent civilians are injured or slain as a result. The question is how accountable are SWAT commanders and officers for the killing, and what if any punishment is meted out when a shooting is ruled out of policy.

The report found that in almost all cases where there was the questionable use of force by SWAT, the shooting was not found out of policy. The couple of times that the shootings were ruled out of policy there was no indication what, if any punishment there was to the shooters?

This is no small point. This begs for a policy change and that change is that the department must establish clear and firm guidelines on when an officer, in this case a SWAT officer, can and can't use deadly force. The vague rule is that an officer can use deadly force when he or she feels their life is endangered. What does that really mean?
That's the first step to confronting this problem. The second is discipline. A chief must have full authority to punish an officer found guilty of using excessive force. That includes SWAT officers. This too must be addressed and changed.

The overuse of excessive force is still the single biggest thing that poisons relations between the police and minority communities. It has sparked deadly racial turmoil and civil unrest in Los Angeles and other cities.
Bratton should be applauded, not stoned, for having the foresight to examine all parts of the LAPD to see what works, what doesn’t work, and where appropriate changes can be made to make those parts work even better.

No one is condemning SWAT for the way it handles things, nor is anyone calling it an out of control bunch of Cowboys. It has repeatedly been praised for getting it right most of the time. However, it’s those times when it doesn’t that the report simply says demands some change. After all we all want to see SWAT be the absolute best that it can be. Don’t we?

Character is destiny, Heraclitus observed. Some 2,500 years later we can't seem to escape that fact.

One of my mentors is a prolific and respected management guru, famous for some 25+ books on the study of leadership. After decades of examining what makes a great leader, he announced a few years ago that it comes down to character.

That initially made me wonder if he really needed 25 books to make such an argument. I also wondered if, for my own sleazy and self-serving purposes, character just might be overrated for leaders or others.

But I tend to see the point, increasingly. And just as much, I see a great lack of character among our business and political leaders, especially as it relates to our quasi-recession.

Many home borrowers with bad credit took out large loans without committing themselves to the hard work of paying it off over 30 years, or committing themselves to the risks inherent in the loan terms that were appropriate for someone of their, um, uncreditworthiness.

I do not believe that our leaders in D.C. have funded the character deficit when they scramble to create silly solutions to the credit crunch. I do not believe it is in good character for some of our presidential candidates to turn consumer irresponsibility into an "us vs. them" rant against "corporate elites."

Nor do I believe that our leaders are showing great character when they insist that we keep low taxes -- or even cut them further -- given our increasing national debt to foreign rivals.

I do not believe that our leaders are showing character when they send rebate checks to ordinary Americans -- yet plead with such Americans to use it for added consumption, rather than for the paying off of credit card debts or for college savings. No, I do not believe we are forging character by increasing our collective debt in order to enable our worst consumerist addictions.

Nor do I believe that it shows good character for us to expect government leaders to coddle the emotions of jittery Wall Street investors. I expect those investors to show a little character. And I do not expect our leaders to have to puff up our national psyche while giving short shrift to our real economic and educational challenges. Collectively, we can do much better in terms of character.

The natural American character is resilient, patient and strong, self-reliant yet willing to give a hand to others. A return to good character would be a good start for a return to a good economy.

Seems we just can't win when it comes to wild fires here in California. Note this story from today's Daily News:

Last year, fueled by the driest year on record in Los Angeles that left the region tinder-dry, massive wildfires throughout Southern California destroyed hundreds of homes and scorched more than 500,000 acres.

We all remember that, don't we? It was a dry, dry year, and that led to enormous fires. Moral of the story: Pray for rain. Right?

Well, sometimes you have to watch out what you wish for. Because it did rain a bunch earlier this year. And you know what that means? More wildfires!

This year's fire season is arriving after a wetter winter; downtown has already seen roughly 13 inches of rain since July 1.

But some experts say that has simply led to a growth in vegetation -- literally more fuel for the fires. And they note that it hasn't rained recently -- and it's going to be a hot summer. ...

And that heat will dry out vegetation just as Santa Ana winds begin their typical swing through Southern California in September, October and November.

So to recap, when it doesn't rain, we get wildfires. And when it rains, we get wildfires. Real moral of the story: If you want to avoid wildfires, move to Maine.

... when liberals question a conservative vet's "war hero" credentials it's "fascinating commentary," but when conservatives question a liberal vet's "war hero" credentials, it's "swift-boating." Go figure.

The Christian Science Monitor offers a fascinating commentary by two professors who argue that we're too quick to pronounce men such as McCain as "war heroes." The authors contend:

The public has treated McCain's record in Vietnam and his status as a war hero as something unchangeable. But placing his sacrifice beyond the pale of criticism also implicitly places the cause he served beyond the pale, and that hushes important dialogue.

McCain's heroism stems entirely from Vietnam. McCain was brave in captivity, but he and his fellow pilots dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all those dropped in World War II, leading to the conclusion that "we had to destroy Vietnam in order to save it." But he did not acknowledge the war itself as immoral. Had he engaged in such "straight talk" about the war itself, or if we had a more enlightened concept of heroism, he might not be getting so close to becoming the next president.

It's a compelling read. I'll have to disagree with their view that Democrats can stop getting labeled as softies if they can just illustrate more effectively how some wars would be wrong to enter into. The fact is that human beings like going to war, they like worrying about the threats posed by outsiders, and the only time they ever believe a war is bad is in hindsight. I say that as a former pacifist who is no longer a pacifist because I'm tired of arguing with simple human nature. If we didn't fight wars, we'd find some other way to annoy each other to death. Maybe that explains reality TV.

The LAPD SWAT Board of Inquiry report that Police Chief William Bratton unveiled this morning is a remarkable insult to the people and police officers of Los Angeles. It recommends a litany of politically correct changes that have been used to eliminate 13 of the 18 standards SWAT has used for two decades in selecting its new officers. It even goes so far as to describe SWAT - not the criminals it captures - as “a threat to” Los Angeles as a whole.

In my research on this issue, I’ve interviewed officers whose experience totals more than 150 years on the department, a century in SWAT. Their comments on a draft copy of the un-released BOI report have been consolidated in a “Counter Analysis,” which will be released later today. It is a point-by-point review of both the BOI’s recommendations and their methodology for reaching them. In short, there was none.

These officers refuse to be identified because of an unprecedented campaign of intimidation LAPD management has pressed on SWAT. Bratton has gone so far as to remove officers from operations because of the comments of their wives and threatening to transfer out any officer who speaks his mind – publicly or privately.

These comments prove the BOI report is riddled with factual error; blatantly biased; ignorant of basic tactics; vaguely stated so as to be meaningless; and dramatically self-contradictory. Its recommendations are almost universally unsubstantiated. First hand evidence is almost non-existent.

And they make some compelling points. The BOI’s statement “we observed SWAT operations” is factually supported only by a single board member having observed only a single warrant service, officers say. Yet, Bratton wants to use that “examination” to trash procedures has saved countless lives.

Perhaps the two most bothersome aspects of the report are these: First, the BOI’s stated purpose – to investigate the death of a child – was a lie to the people of Los Angeles The BBOI was allegedly convened to review the July 10, 2005 killing of 19-month-old Suzie Pena during a SWAT standoff. Bratton’s statements and the LAPD press release were unambiguous. Yet, the BOI report clearly states that the BOI didn’t even attempt to examine the incident – and Bratton himself privately described the Pena case as a mere “catalyst” for a long-desired review, the report shows

Second, the 67-page report acknowledges then blatantly ignores SWAT’s remarkable record: In nearly 4000 call-outs (through 2005), the team lost only one hostage (Suzie Pena) and had killed only 31 suspects – less than 1% of the total they’ve confronted among the City’s worst offenders.

The analysis of these officers reveals that the BOI report is rife with factual errors. It repeatedly refers to SWAT having “Few African Americans.” In fact, there are more African Americans on SWAT than the LAPD as a whole (by percentage); something that would have been obvious if the board had simply shown up.

In reviewing a specific incident, the BOI (which had three lawyers but only one tactical expert) faulted SWAT for not using techniques “so that the less lethal weapon could be fired and its results evaluated before the (shot)gun was fired.” But, the BOI’s account clearly proves the officers did exactly that.

In reviewing a set of cases, the BOI said “In each of these instances, mental illness was not… taken into account in formulating an operational plan.” In fact, the LAPD Behavioral Science Services unit was on hand and making recommendations.

But, like any Politburo-style finding, the facts aren’t going to get in the way of these conclusions.

The BOI’s ignorance of tactical practices is shocking. In reviewing SWAT’s command and control methods, one member was quoted as saying “I like the sergeant being there. It establishes fire arms control.” However, most sergeants in SWAT have no SWAT experience where as many of SWAT’s Team Leaders have been on hundreds or thousands of missions. And sergeants can’t have a finger on every trigger.

The board’s pre-disposition to support rank (of which Bratton has the most) over SWAT experience (of which Bratton has none), and was obvious and gravely insulting to officers who have amassed such a reputation. Disparaging remarks about rank pepper the report, as though stripes and stars are actually brain cells.

The report is riddled with pre-conceived notions and bias. The phrase “military mind-set” is undefined yet repeatedly used disparagingly. What is wrong with having strict discipline among the most heavily armed officers in a peaceful democracy? The report doesn’t say.

Perhaps most insulting is this statement: “SWAT culture and insularity pose a certain danger to the LAPD and the Los Angeles community as a whole.” Yes, the Chief of Police’s handpicked board described his premier unit as “a danger to the community.”

Finally, the report is blatantly self-contradictory. In one matter, it states, “The Board was not presented with anyone espousing contrary views.” Yet, the BOI recommended a contrary course of action anyway.

It repeatedly recommends SWAT train less (despite officers stating they already have reduced effectiveness) yet also suggests multiple new training tasks and an expansion of the platoon that would require far more training than it has previously undertaken.

This Seinfeld-like self-contradictory farce climaxes on page 47 with a recommendation that SWAT use computer analysis to determine “…does or does not SWAT fail to make effective use of negotiation?” Yet almost all of the report’s recommendations flow from that specific conclusion. Well, if we need a computer to figure out the truth, what are the conclusions based on?

I submit: bias and pre-disposition.

The Officers I interviewed held out hope that this BOI would have found opportunities to improve on its already excellent record. Instead, Chief Bratton has chosen to shovel political correctness down the platoon’s throats, regardless of facts and impacts.

A handful of ideas in this report are harmless and potentially even positive. However, in the e-mailed words of a two-decade veteran of the team, in the main “these ideas will get people (officers/citizens/suspects) killed, and have no benefit.”

Chief Bratton should have the courage, humility and intellectual honesty to discard the BOI report and conduct a real analysis of SWAT.

In today's Daily News, we take the side of every Homer against plans in Sacramento to hike the beer tax:

"BEER," Homer Simpson once ruminated, "now there's a temporary solution."

The wisdom of Homer Simpson, it seems, has found its way up to Sacramento. A freshman lawmaker hopes to ease the state's budget crunch by jacking up the state's tax on brew by a stunning 1,400 percent.

Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, proposes raising the tax on beer from two cents per can or bottle to 30 cents. As even Homer Simpson can calculate, that would amount to $1.80 a six-pack.

A temporary solution, indeed.

LAPD Chief William Bratton came to the Daily News this afternoon, mostly to talk about how different the Mayday march will be from last year's breakdown, in which several members of the media were hurt. But the real interesting thing, to me, was his thoughts about everyone's favorite scapegoat: Special Order 40.

"I'm sorry, it's here to stay."

Last week the parents of murdered high school star Jamiel Shaw Jr. pleaded with the City Council to change the LAPD policy, which simply requires officers not to initiate action with the purpose of checking someone's immigration status. Councilman Dennis Zine reacted with an ordinance requiring officers to check status in certain cases. Bratton today dismissed the calls for revision or repeal (and Zine's ordinance), noting that Special Order 40 isn't going anywhere. He and his top staff said they already work with ICE agents and do everything they can to deport violent criminals and gangsters. Nevertheless, he said he is developing a clarification for Special Order 40 so that the misinformation will stop.

He also speculated that if SheriffJoe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Ariz, who is rounding up illegal immigrants himself, is already probably putting quite the strain on the federal government's deportation resources.

Top search terms the past few days as indicated by my blog stats program:

"jimmy carter a***hole"

"jimmy carter piece of s***"

* And yeah, I added the asterisks

With the Jamiel Shaw story in the news and Special Order 40 coming under scrutiny, the immigration controversy is raging yet again -- just in time for the next May Day rally, when the LAPD will do all it can to prevent all hell from breaking loose. (From the DN, see Doug McIntyre on the Shaw story, Mariel on what the sputtering economy means for immigration, and an editorial calling for a review of SO40.)

Meanwhile, I marvel once again that we are so bad at debating immigration that we cannot even agree on the vocabulary of that debate. One side prefers the dehumanizing "illegals," while the other chooses the disingenuously euphemistic "undocumented workers."

And so in the spirit of these trendily green times, I hereby recycle a column I wrote four years on the immigration-terminology wars:

IT STARTS WITH SIMPLE ISSUE OF SEMANTICS
By Chris Weinkopf
L.A. Daily News
July 25, 2004

WHEN the subject of immigration arises, it's possible to determine one's point of view merely by the terminology that's used. The immigration opponent speaks ominously of ``illegals,'' while the immigration champion makes heartstring-tugging references to ``undocumented workers.''

It's the slur vs. the euphemism - and neither is particularly useful.

In the late and unlamented Soviet Union the people had a joke about Izvestia, their highly regulated news service, and Pravda, their carefully managed newspaper. In Russian, Izvestia means “news,” and Pravda means “truth.” They would say there is no news in the truth and no truth in the news.

We have not reached that point yet in our country. Our news media is relatively unfettered by government censorship and even by too much commercial influence. We’re pretty good. But, as they say in the computer world, “garbage in, garbage out.” Our information is only as good as our sources. So much of what we hear, read, see and pass on is anything but “the whole truth, the plain truth and nothing but the truth.”

Take this week. President Bush announces that he is cutting the troops battlefield time down from 15 months to a year. Sounds like an improvement and a morale booster, except when you learn the rest of the story. These new shortened deployments do not come into effect immediately. They will only cover new deployments starting in the fall. This means that current soldiers will do 15 months—no matter how many deployments they’ve already served, and the newly deployed will be three months in when a new president is sworn in. The new Commander and Chief will ultimately determine their term.

Not to be outdone by his President, General Petraeus said that things were “better in Iraq but fragile and could slip back into chaos.” This is true, except as to the question of what the meaning of better is. Yes, fewer Americans being killed is better, objectively better. But this has been our worst week of 2008 with 19 Americans killed. The questionable part is what he wouldn’t say.

President Bush says that he listens to his generals, “Not politicians in Washington.” Again, half true. He listens to some Generals and fires those Generals and Admirals who say things he doesn’t want to hear. So our President says he listens to the “professionals.” However when the Senate committee asked the General what victory would look like, how we would know that we could come home, Petraeus said that this was a political issue and not his business. Neat. This is the Platonic form of passing the buck.

Meanwhile, Sen. Clinton is still dealing with having “misspoken” an implanted memory three times and not only once at 11 pm when she was exhausted and confused, as her less than helpful husband Bill uh misspoke. Her position on NAFTA—being for it before she was against—would not be too bad, were it not for her Pravdaesque re-write of history and her claim that she has always been against it.

Sen. Obama slides into “truthiness” too with self-paying healthcare. It may be a good plan. Probably better than what we have, but it will pay for itself the same way the Iraq war is paying for itself. He too is against NAFTA and you can count on that position being firm and non-negotiable until late evening on November seventh.

Nor is the Straight-Talk Express always on the road. Veering sharply to the right and onto the shoulder, Sen. McCain see us winning hearts, minds and neighborhoods in Iraq. Some charge that he is confused and doesn’t know a Shiite from Shinola. I believe otherwise. He conflates the Sunni Al Qaeda with the Shiites Hezbollah on purpose. In McCain’s defense, both Clinton and Obama are intentionally misconstruing his remark about years not being as important as the loss of blood and money. All are in the business of not informing us as to their true beliefs, positions and policies.

Prevarication is not just a characteristic of modern America or the old Soviet Union. It is all around. In Africa, Mugabe has destroyed his own legacy by not letting go and giving his people the gift of free elections and a peaceful transfer of power. (This may be Nelson Mandela’s greatest gift to South Africa.) Mugabe holds an election, intimidates the voters and then proposes a run off without releasing even his count of the votes! It would be laughable if it were not so tragic. His spokesthug said on BBC, “It is a well know fact that the president’s opponent didn’t get the majority. Therefore we are holding a run off.” A well-known fact based on secret information. Risible.

The Chinese too are busy competing in the Olympics of misdirection. The Dalai Lama is a terrorist, they assert with straight faces. Since everyone knows that the very word terrorist gives you a pass on any issues of rights, laws and common sense, they figure this is so crazy it just might work. Hard sell, while the Dalai Lama himself refuses to call for independence for Tibet and does not even endorse an Olympic boycott. The Chinese murderers of Buddhist monks and ethnic Tibetans are the clear inheritors of the butchers of Tiananmen Square.

All of these little pieces of mendacity combine to erode any sense of faith in the words of the leaders, and would-be, leaders of the world. Tragically and ironically the exceptions are Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden. When they say that they plan to destroy Israel and us, I believe them.

Chelsea Clinton is incredibly naïve, incredibly sheltered, incredibly in denial, or maybe a bit of all three. In late March, Hillary Clinton’s daughter told a Young Democrats audience in North Carolina that she was shocked at the nasty things some male (and even female) folk on the campaign trail are saying about her mother such as “Iron my shirts,” and “the nutcracker in your…….” The vulgarities are heaped on top of the hard headed belief of many men and women that a woman just doesn’t have the right stuff to be the nation’s commander in chief.

Chelsea would have gotten a healthy lesson in Sexism 101 if she had glanced at polls, and that includes a CBS News poll taken just a week before her talk, that have consistently shown that far more Americans have a bigger problem voting for a woman for president than an African-American.

The worst part of this is that if any one dared make a racial crack about Barack Obama they’d be pounded into the sand. Yet, blatant sexist and anti-woman remarks are routinely spewed out, often unchallenged, and even cackled at. In the CBS News poll though more said they have heard more racist cracks in the past few months than sexist cracks, they were less likely to be offended by the sexist ones than the racist ones.

The big worry for the Clinton camp is not the sexist inuendoes, wisecracks and even the double standard that gender and race are treated on the campaign trail but how many voters it might scare away from Clinton in a head to head showdown with John McCain. There’s good reason for the scare.
The gender gap was first identified and labeled in the 1980 presidential contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. That year Reagan got more than a 20 percent bulge in the margin of male votes over Carter. Women voters by contrast split almost evenly down the middle in backing both Reagan and Carter. Men didn’t waver from their support of Reagan during his years in office. Many of the men that backed Reagan made no secret about why they liked him. His reputed toughness, firmness and refusal to compromise on issues of war and peace fit neatly into the often time stereotypical male qualities of professed courage, determination and toughness.

The gender split is always apparent when there’s a crisis such as a brush fire war, a physical conflict, or the threat of a terrorist attack. Even before he took office, pollsters noted that far more women than men openly worried that Reagan would get us into a war. This was not a major concern for men. The divergence between men and women on the issue of war and peace showed up again in even more stark contrast two decades later on the Iraq war. Polls showed gaps of nearly twenty percent between men and women when asked how long they thought American troops should stay in Iraq. Far more women than men said that the troops should be withdrawn as quickly as possible.

The huge spread in male and female views on public policy issues was just as pronounced in the terrorism war. More men than women by nearly 20 percent took a harder stance against nations that they perceive back terrorist groups.
In countless surveys, polls, and anecdotal conversations, women say they are less likely to stay up on political issues than men, and are more likely to vote for a candidate based on personal likes or dislikes than men. When asked what they liked about Clinton, many women reflexively said they liked her toughness. That's generally considered a rough and tumble male quality.

The issues of war, national security, strong defense, and terrorism doesn’t totally explain the constant 15 to 20 percent gender gap between men and women on candidates and issues in elections noted as far back as 1980. Another possible explanation for that is how men and women perceive the messages that male candidates convey and whether they use code words and terms to convey them.

GOP presidential candidates and presidents in past decades have at various times skewered social programs and nakedly played the race card in presidential campaigns beginning with Goldwater in 1964. Since then other Republicans at times artfully stoked male rage with racially charged slogans like "law and order," "crime in the streets," "welfare cheats," and "absentee fathers." Bush's John Wayne frontier brashness, and get tough, bring em' on rhetoric in talking about the Iraq and the war against terrorism was calculatingly geared to appeal to supposed male toughness.

The endemic sexism buried deep in the skulls of many American voters alone won’t sink Clinton. It’s just simply another X factor for Clinton that Obama and McCain don’t have to worry about.

One reader wrote in to note that by reading my "Happy Property Tax Day" post reminded him (or her?) to pay the bill and avoid the late fee. I'm glad I could help, but when I read this I realized that not only are there huge disparities in the amount people pay in property taxes, the late fees are equally unfair. His (her?) late fee is $75 and mine is $193.

understand the disparity of my tax bill is due to Prop. 13, which means wealthy boomers who bought their houses last century might pay a fraction of the property tax that young buyers pay (thanks mom and dad!). I accepted that when I purchased a house. But do they have to stick it to us with a higher late payment as well?

There’s a good and bad note for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama in the recent exit polls of white voters in Democratic primaries. The good note is that by a lopsided majority of six to one whites said that race was not a factor in considering whether to back Obama or not. That pretty much conforms to virtually every poll that’s been taken since Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring a year ago. His red state Democratic primary and caucus wins and the handful of endorsements he’s gotten from the red state Democratic senators and governors seem to bolster the poll findings as well as his camp’s contention that the majority of whites have bought his race neutral change and unity pitch.

The bad note for him, though, is buried in the racial rose tinged poll numbers. In fact, they were actually buried there even as he rolled up big numbers in his primary victories in Georgia, Mississippi, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, and South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. Blacks make up a substantial percentage of the vote in those states, and he bagged eighty to ninety percent of their vote. But much less noted was that Clinton got almost sixty five to seventy percent of white votes.

It wasn’t just the reverse racial numbers for Clinton and Obama. Obama does incredibly well in netting the vote of college educated, upscale whites. But Clinton does just as well in bagging support from lower income downscale, and rural white voters. This has huge potential downside implications for Obama in a head to head battle with John McCain in the red states. A significant percent of the voters there are lower income, rural and less educated whites. Obama banks that he can pry one or two of the red states from the GOP. Yet, if he can’t convince Clinton’s white vote supporters, and they are Democrats, to back him, the chances are nil that he’ll have any more success with Republican and independent white voters in these states.

A hint of that came in the Democratic primary in Ohio. Clinton beat out Obama in the primary, and she did it mainly with white votes. But that wasn’t the whole story. Nearly one quarter of whites in Ohio flatly said race did matter in voting. Presumably that meant that they would not vote for a black candidate no matter how politically attractive or competent he was.

An even bigger hint of the race difficulty could come in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary. The voter demographics in the state perfectly match those in Ohio. A huge percent of Pennsylvania voters are blue collar, anti-big government, socially conservative, pro defense, and intently patriotic, and there’s a tormenting history of a racial polarization in the state. Pundit James Carville has even described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between. Carville’s characterization is hyperbolic, but devastatingly accurate. Take the state’s two big, racially diverse cities out of the vote equation, and Pennsylvania would be rock solid red state Republican. While polls show some fluctuation in Clinton’s decisive lead over Obama there, she still has a solid lead.

The near unanimous backing that whites give to the notion of voting for a black candidate for president also deserves to be put to a political test to see how much truth there is to it. The question: “Would you vote for a black candidate for president?” is a direct question, and to flatly say no to it makes one sound like a bigot, and in the era of verbal racial correctness (ask Don Imus), it’s simply not fashionable to come off to pollsters sounding like one. That’s hardly the only measure of a respondent’s veracity. In a 2006 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, a Yale political economist found that white Republicans are 25 percentage points more likely to cross over and vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate against a black Republican foe. The study also found that in the near twenty year stretch from 1982 to 2000, when the GOP candidate was black, the greater majority of white independent voters backed the white candidate.

Republicans and independents weren’t the only ones guilty of dubious Election Day color-blindness. Many Democrats were too. In House races, the study found that Democrats were nearly 40 percent less likely to back a black Democratic candidate than a white Democrat.

Obama’s Democratic primary and caucus wins certainly show that many white voters will vote for him. They obviously feel that he has the right presidential stuff. But a large number of whites aren’t quite ready to strap on their racial blinders even for a candidate who has leaned way over backward to run a race neutral, bipartisan, unity campaign. The big question is just how many whites will refuse to strap on the racial blinders on Election Day. That’s still the X factor for Obama.

There's a line in "Pulp Fiction" where Samuel L. Jackson's character, Jules, has a "moment of clarity" after several short-range bullets miss him: He decides to quit the hitman career, finally start living the Ezekiel passage he quoted to victims about the path of righteousness being beset on all sides by evil men, and even though totally unsure of his future he tells Vincent Vega (John Travolta) "I can't go back to sleep."

After this week's protests against the Olympic torch in San Francisco, one can't help but think -- and hope -- that many spectators now have that feeling about the myriad grievances brought against China: Tibet, the PRC's support for Sudan and Burma, press freedom (or lack of it, as the situation is), even the crackdowns on China's Uighur community (which showed up waving Eastern Turkistan flags). Media reports tend to leap to the loony protesters -- like the trio of nude guys I interviewed (and photographed, providing a scary surprise for my mother in her e-mail) -- but a strong message was sent by a passionate mass of protesters who generally heeded the call for nonviolence yet blocked the path for the torch to enter the closing ceremonies.

I was there for it. Protest events actually began Tuesday, with a Tibet-centric rally at U.N. Plaza, marching to San Francisco City Hall and the Chinese consulate after that. Many in the crowd were ethnic Tibetans, waving Tibet and American flags, but many were supporters from other walks of life. One speaker -- described as the only Tibetan in Appalachia -- eloquently compared this fight against communism to Eastern Europe's efforts, and hoped that Rangzen ("independence") would reach the same one-word movement recognition as Solidarność in 1980s Poland. One organizer handed me a sobering list -- names, ages, gender, town of those Tibetans thus far confirmed killed by the Chinese government since March 14. The elected North American representative for the Tibetan government in exile had sobering news: Some of those monks who were arrested and tortured for defying protest bans have committed suicide upon their release from Chinese custody. As it is, monasteries are under siege without access to food or water.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, of course, cowered inside City Hall and didn't come out when the protesters massed on the steps and spilled across the street. Marching up Van Ness Avenue (and yes, I did get new running shoes for the week) toward the consulate, cars driving the opposite way stopped in lanes to take pictures of the monks, the activists, and the plain ol' concerned citizens; drivers honked and flashed peace signs.

On Wednesday I got to the Embarcadero long before the torch relay was to start, sipping the best ever clam chowder on the patio of the Waterfront Restaurant as helicopters buzzed overhead and a plane flew a "Free Burma" banner. As Newsom decided to play hide-and-seek with the torch at the last minute, protesters made the wise decision to gather near the closing ceremonies site rather than spread out among the supposed waterfront route. Before long, the police barricades were null and the Chinese nationalists who had lined up to watch the missing torch were treated to a parade of demonstrators. I was in the middle of the protesters, dashing over to watch the latest shouting match or flag wrestling with China supporters who had wandered into the protest crowd.

At about 2:30 p.m. -- the relay was supposed to start at 1 p.m. -- Tibetan organizers told protesters to go through the Embarcadero Center building to get around police barricades branching far from the stage setup. “Block all the entrances!” a protest leader shouted. “Do not let the torch enter the closing ceremony!”
Demonstrators streamed through the doors of the shopping center, chanting slogans as shopkeepers peered from windows.

Once close to the ceremony site, protesters pressed against another set of barricades that kept the public out of reserved seating. “Bring down the barriers!” demonstrators shouted as police lined up and a band played covers of tunes such as David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure.” A couple of protesters asked me -- I was smushed in, close to the front of the pack -- if I would push in on the barrier: "You have a press pass, so you won't get in trouble!" they theorized. Uh-huh.

I find it interesting that so many stories are painting the day as a victory for Newsom when it was the strong protest efforts that made the torch run and hide.

This, I think, is one of the saddest stories of relay day:

"At least one torchbearer decided to show her support for Tibetan independence during her moment in the spotlight. After being passed the Olympic flame, Majora Carter pulled out a small Tibetan flag that she had hidden in her shirt sleeve.

'The Chinese security and cops were on me like white on rice, it was no joke,' said Carter, 41, who runs a nonprofit organization in New York. 'They pulled me out of the race, and then San Francisco police officers pushed me back into the crowd on the side of the street.'"

I'm so glad that, here in America, Chinese authorities are allowed to decide what's acceptable speech, and then our law enforcement officers go along with it, acting like her peaceful display of a Tibetan flag is a crime. Shame on the city of San Francisco!!

But major, major props to the people of San Francisco, who are unlikely to continue to be silent about the policies of communist China. Once you learn the truth, it's hard to go back to sleep. (Unless, of course, you're President Bush, who unfortunately refuses to ditch the opening ceremonies in Beijing.)

Here's the coverage roundup thus far from my trip:

MY VIDEO:

April 8 Tibet protests

April 9 torch relay protests

MY STORIES:

Round One of Anti-China Protests in San Francisco

San Francisco alters Olympic torch route to avoid protests

Olympic Protesters Run Torch Out of Town

And coming very soon, my Daily News column on an interesting angle of the whole torch protest affair...

Watching this video, I have three thoughts:

1. "Where's Bridget?" (the ultimate "McCain girl")
2. "That's it, I'm voting for Obama!"
3. "This song makes me think of Men on Film..."

It's property tax day, Don't forget to pay, or they'll take your house away.

If you're like me, you put off paying your Los Angeles County property tax bill to the very last minute possible. It's due today and I still haven't paid it (I will -- I can't afford the nearly $200 late fee!).

On Easter Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI baptized Magdi Allam, an Italian newspaper editor and a former Muslim, into the Christian faith. And ever since, various Muslim, secular, and even Christians have denounced this high-profile conversion as reckless and needlessly provocative. Allam, they argue, should have received the sacraments quietly, without all the attention and papal fanfare that could harm interfaith dialog and offend Muslim sensibilities.

But in terms of shock value and provocation, Allam’s conversion has nothing on Bl. Anthony Neyrot’s.

Neyrot, who celebrates his feast day today, was a Dominican brother living in Sicily in the Fifteenth Century. While sailing to Naples, Moorish pirates captured his ship, then sold him into slavery in Tunis. There, Neyrot would win back his earthly freedom by rejecting Christianity in favor of Islam. He was adopted into the Tunisian king’s family and took a wife, leaving his vocation, his order, and his faith behind.

It's quite possible Anthony would have died an apostate were it not for the intervention of his former Dominican prior, who had only recently passed away — St. Antoninus. Antoninus appeared to Anthony in a dream, the message of which was so profound that it spurred Anthony’s repentance. Neyrot sought out a priest, confessed his sins, sent his wife back to her family, and was readmitted to his order.

But his reversion didn’t end there. Anthony wanted his return to Christ to be as public as possible. On Palm Sunday of 1460, Anthony appeared at a procession before the Tunisian king, wearing his white Dominican habit for all to see. He publicly denounced his conversion to Islam and proclaimed his restored devotion to Christ.

Now that's a provocation.

Today's lead editorial

ONE of the important checks to weed out incompetent doctors, and keep them from injuring or killing their patients, is the prospect of a legitimate malpractice lawsuit.

For that reason, it's telling that the lawyer who filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Valley Village woman against the city of Los Angeles referred to the city's density bonus as "political malpractice."

And why not?

If malpractice lawsuits can help protect the public from harmful medical incompetence, why not a lawsuit that can protect the public from harmful political incompetence?

Sadly, suing City Hall often seems the only way that Angelenos can get their leaders' attention.

This suit, by Angeleno Sandy Hubbard, sprang from a recommendation by none other than L.A. Planning Commission President Jane Ellison Usher, who recommended that someone challenge the policy in court.

It was, to be sure, unusual for a top city official to publicly acknowledge the futility of trying to appeal to elected officials' sense of civic duty. But to her credit, Usher frankly advised residents to sue before this new building rule wrecks neighborhoods.

The so-called "density bonus" that the Los Angeles City Council adopted earlier this year - and which Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has endorsed in spirit - allows developers to run roughshod over the few city planning restrictions that could protect the public from bad development.

If developers include "affordable housing" in their project - a questionable prospect considering the volatility of the real-estate market at the moment - they are allowed to break rules, such as rules on providing parking, and to construct towering buildings that don't fit into a neighborhood.

This is not about the "smart growth" that the council, the mayor and developers like to talk about. It's about serving the needs of special interests - developers who line campaign coffers - while seeming to serve the needs of unfortunate Angelenos, thus appeasing community and housing advocates.

City officials can encourage affordable housing in Los Angeles without selling out already-stressed neighborhoods and making current residents pay the costs. So far, officials have just chosen not to.

Resorting to the courts is never ideal. But in this case, it seems that it's the only way the city's leaders will do the right thing for their constituents.

King Procrustus, the legendary host of Greek mythology, and the Chinese hosts of the up-coming Olympic Games have a lot in common. This is not a good thing—either for the Games or the Chinese.

Procrustus was said to be so concerned that his house (okay Palace) guests be happy and comfortable that he made them fit his bed. If they were too short, he put them on the rack and stretched them. If they were too tall, well, he lopped their feet off. The fit had to be perfect. He forgot about the real comfort of his guests and, of course, his own reputation as a host. He is clearly the tragic inspiration for the Chinese.

All Olympic host countries try to clean up in order to impress their guests. They don’t want beggars on the streets or civil unrest. They clear out the poor and throw a coat of paint on the buildings where tourists are likely to roam.

In Los Angeles we emptied skid row. We restricted traffic—both for the sake of speed and smog. However, we did not do mass arrests of the poor or protestors. Mexico City fought protestors in the streets and killed many. The scandal of those games is that the scandal of those games was two American athletes giving the Black Power salute—and not the slaughter of students in the streets by the government. What the public notices and is moved by is almost always unpredictable.

The Chinese government is very concerned about putting on a good face, looking like a modern country and a fitting member of the community of nations. In order to show their best face, they are taking perverse inspiration from Procrustus. They seem unable to understand that how they are acting in the lead up to the Olympics is poisoning both these Olympics and their image in the world. Rounding up dissidents and stifling dissent is making them appear exactly as they don’t want to. Again that implacable law of unintended consequences comes into play as the Chinese cut off the noses of dissidents, but the world smells what they are doing—and it stinks.

Were their oppression of internal dissent not bad enough (which it is) their brutality towards Tibet and ethnic Tibetans within their borders threatens to wreck their Olympics completely. The world might understand that they don’t want Tibet to lobby for independence, or even autonomy, right now. The world will not understand their beating and shooting of peaceful Buddhist monks and their ludicrous libeling of the Dalai Lama as a terrorist fomenting violence and hatred against the Han Chinese. They make themselves appear ridiculous at best and stupid and brutal at worst. They seem to be conspiring against their own best interests and any ability to save these Olympics from social and economic catastrophe. Their active support of the government that is committing genocide in Darfur further tarnishes their image, their reality and these “games.”

At home in China they can and do restrict the Internet and regulate what their own people see. But the most bone-headed piece of reverse damage control is surrounding the Olympic Torch ceremonies and worldwide relay with Chinese thugs—dressed in Chinese uniforms and therefore easily identifiable as being both Chinese and thugs. The pictures of these guys pushing Londoners around while protecting the torch does damage to what they are supposed to be protecting: the reputation of China. The pictures of them manhandling Parisians are equally disturbing. This disaster is due at least as much to Chinese tone-deaf arrogance as the actions of those protesting in favor of decent treatment for Tibet, Tibetans and Darfurians.

This whole run up to the Chinese Olympics has really been a stumble-up and fall down disaster. Instead of the torch spreading enthusiasm and goodwill, it has engendered rage and cast a light on their dark practices towards minority peoples, religions and subject territories.

When the torch arrived in San Francisco, for its one run in North America, it was quickly taken to an “undisclosed location.” This flame of shame has had to be run in virtual secrecy. In a game of hide and seek between the torchbearers and the protesters, the 6-mile relay has turned into a brief covert stagger with the torch protected by a cordon sanitaire of guards keeping it from the very public it was supposed to inspire. The closing celebration at the waterfront had to be cancelled. Expensive farce.

I don’t know if any nation in these modern days is clean enough to host a non-controversial Olympics. Someone is always doing something terrible almost everywhere. However, picking China really was a terrible idea. They employ slave labor. They crush workers who want to organize. They harvest the organs from prisoners who have been executed. They oppress Tibet, are stifling the freedom of the people of Hong Kong and threaten to cross the Taiwan Straits whenever a Taiwanese politician even talks about being independent. I guess the only explanation the Olympic committee has for selecting China is that Iran couldn’t be ready in time.

For the mayor of a city that prides itself on its supposed commitment to human rights and its love of free speech, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's attempt to spare the Butchers of Beijing a little embarrassment is downright pathetic.

Thousands of Americans, including FF's own Bridget Johnson, were in San Fran today to protest the passing of the Olympic torch, which was en route to Beijing for the summer games. Internationally, these protests have been the cause of much well-deserved shame and humiliation for China's thugocracy, which had imagined the Olympics would be the regime's global coming-out party.

But the protest was spoiled, thanks to Mayor Newsom, who had city officials lie about the route the torch would take, so that it could follow another, protest-free path.

Which is, to be sure, exactly what the tyrants in China wanted -- a controversy-free photo-op to inflict on their own people and show to the world. Maybe that's why, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, many of the "pro-torch demonstrators" who were there today "carried red Chinese flags and said they were bused in by the Chinese consulate and other pro-China groups."

And now no less than the mayor has given Beijing a hand. Nice job, Gav.

One wonders if Newsom would have extended such courtesies to any other potential SF protests. Do you think if, oh, the pope or the president were passing through down, the mayor would have gladly lied to spare them some bad publicity?

No, I'm not calling Newsom a Communist. But a good many Americans -- politicians in both parties, and most of the corporate world -- have turned a blind eye to the despotic regime's horrendous practices because, quite frankly, there's too much money to be made there. (Thus the International Olympic Committee's bizarre choice of Beijing in the first place.) Companies like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft, which refuse to block even the most horrific porn in the name of "free speech" here, gladly squelch any sort of political dissidence in Red China. Newsom, who hopes to be governor some day, knows better than anyone what interests he can -- and can't -- afford to offend if he wants to cultivate big-ticket campaign contributors.

But by sparing Beijing some shame, Newsom has earned plenty for himself. Check out this quote from SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin:

"Gavin Newsom runs San Francisco the way the premier of China runs his country - secrecy, lies, misinformation, lack of transparency and manipulating the populace. He misled supporters and opponents of the run. People brought their families and their children, and (mayoral officials) hatched a cynical plan to please the Bush State Department and the Chinese government because of the incredible influence of money.

"He did it so China can report they had a great torch run. It's the worst kind of government - government by deceit and misinformation."

Ah, maybe that's why Gavin is being a useful idiot for the Butchers of Beijing -- he admires their governing style.

"We are in the throes of a recession," former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on a CNBC business news show yesterday. The anti-immigration activists must be dancing in the streets.

Why? Well they may be losing their own jobs, not to mention their 401(k) profits, houses and cars, but they can rest easy knowing it will mean fewer illegal immigrants to worry about driving without licenses, having babies, stealing their jobs picking strawberries or washing dishes. A weaker economy means Mexican and Central American migrant workers they revile so much (Canadian and European illegal immigrants not so much) won't be risking their lives to cross a border for non-existent jobs.

A story this week by the bastion of conservative thought, the Wall street Journal, reported that "apprehensions" by the border patrol have dropped sharply -- and indication that fewer people are slipping across the border. It also found that money transfers from the U.S. to Mexico and Central America are growing at much lower rates than it has in recent years.

But what's more telling is that while the U.S. is moving inexorably toward a recession, Mexico isn't. In this Reuters story out of Mexico Mexican officials chirp over their fortune.

Mexico's economy has yet to suffer a significant slowdown despite a feared recession in the United States, as industrial output and investment stay fairly healthy, the central bank governor said on Monday.

Experts warn that a drop in the U.S. economy will hurt Mexico more than others in Latin America, but Gov. Guillermo Ortiz, at the Reuters Latin America Investment Summit in Mexico City, said recent data suggested Mexico is in relatively good shape.

"So far this year, we haven't really felt an important slowdown in Mexican economic indicators," he said.

Ironically, by the time the border fence is finally finished we may no longer need it. Though, perhaps someday Mexico might put it to good use -- keeping Americans from sneaking across to find jobs in all the factories that relocated to Mexico in recent years.

Looks like the cost of the war has cracked a half-trillion, and some leading economists believe it will swell to $3 trillion ultimately, considering longer-term costs.

Does Sen. McCain have a plan to pay for the current and future costs? And, though they want to minimize future costs, do his rivals have a plan to pay for the other costs?

Do politicians believe that we'll just "grow" our way out of it? Is that a sincere belief, or just an expeditious one? Does the public think about this?

Does anyone intend to cut spending elsewhere to make up for this "shot in the arm" to our national security? Who believes that their children will be more prosperous in 30 years due to the war than they would be if we hadn't gotten into this $3 trillion war?

Do great nations falter by failing to consider such matters, or by focusing on beer and circus in the meantime?

Here's another column of mine, in a similar vein as my recent Daily News piece.

As a former subprime staffer who ironically has never owned a home, I rue how people who put little or nothing down for their house might now get bailed out. The loans my old industry made to them helped inflate home values, and I'm not sure why bailouts involving my tax dollars should keep them in their houses and keep home prices too high for people like me....

Wyoming’s Democratic Governor Dave Freudenthal is the latest little known politico to endorse Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. But like most of Obama’s caucus and primary victories, Freudenthal’s endorsement is worthless in a fall showdown with John McCain. Harry Truman was the last Democrat to win the presidential vote in Wyoming--in 1948. Republicans hold a crushing voter edge over Democrats in the state. Freudenthal’s endorsement and the tout of it point to yet more mythmaking about the Obama surge. The myth is that his caucus and primary wins in states such as Wyoming and the handful of endorsements he’s gotten from the Democratic governors and senators in those states will spell a breakthrough for the Democrats in the red states in the head to head match with McCain.

An Obama win in the May 6 Indiana and North Carolina primaries will likely further inflate this wishful thinking. Indiana and North Carolina, as Wyoming, are two of the reddest states. The last Democrat to win Indiana was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The last Democrat to win North Carolina was Jimmy Carter in 1976. The vote demographics in Indiana and North Carolina are not much different than the demographics in the other top heavy GOP states that Obama beat Clinton in. A cursory glance at them shows that.
Obama swept to primary or caucus wins in Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia and Nebraska. Bush won these states handily in 2000 and 2004. But that’s only the start of the problem. Republicans outnumber Democrats in Idaho and Utah by a crushing margin of a three to one, and in other states by margins of two to one and half. If Obama wins the Kentucky primary May 22 his backers will wave this as a big red state victory. It won’t be. Republicans outnumber Democrats by a lop sided 400,000 vote margin in the state.

The red states that Obama won in the Democratic primaries have been the guaranteed pathway for Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. to win and stay in the White House. Their 170 to 200 electoral votes are in the GOP’s coffers before the first vote is cast on Election Day. The states are so bankable and reliable for the GOP that it’s the rarest of rare sighting to see a GOP presidential candidate even bother to traipse through the states in the stretch run of the campaign.

Clinton’s strategy to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency is the exact opposite of Obama’s. She recognized that the small Western and Southern states he won are not in play for the Democrats; so why squander time, energy and limited resources in a pointless chase of votes there. Better to spend the time and resources trying to wrest Ohio, Florida, and now even Texas with its surging numbers of Latino voters, solidly pro Clinton, from the GOP. Meanwhile there’s Pennsylvania. It’s a big, swing state that can make a difference.

A huge percent of Pennsylvania voters are blue collar, anti-big government, socially conservative, pro defense, and intently patriotic, and there’s a tormenting history of a racial polarization in the state. Take Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, heavily black and Latino, out of the vote equation, and Pennsylvania would be rock solid red state Republican. Clinton’s likely win there means far more than Obama’s side show wins in the red states.

Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and those of the other swing states can make the difference if the race is on the line. Florida and Ohio cinched Bush’s two election victories in 2000 and 2004.
Democrats are also ecstatic at the near record turnout by Democrats in some of the red states that Obama won compared to the relatively lower turnout in the Republican primaries in those states. This also means little. Far fewer Republicans turned out in the Republican primaries in the presidential election battles of Bush Sr. in 1988 and Reagan in 1980, and Bush Jr. in 2000. All three were still elected.

Obama’s wins in the rock solid red states have revved up his backers, swayed some fence sitting super delegates to jump aboard his bandwagon (it worked with Georgia Congressman John Lewis) and most importantly wildly boosted expectations that he can do what Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore and John Kerry couldn’t do in 2000 and 2004 and that’s win in the red states.

The hard numbers and the strong GOP tradition in these states tell otherwise. But wins by Clinton in the big states that are solidly Democratic and the must win swing states that are in play and that she won in the Democratic primaries will yield the needed electoral votes to insure that the race with McCain is competitive for the Democrats. If history and voter demographics are any gauge, these are the votes the Democrats can win, not the ones Obama has won in states such as Wyoming.

Forget the Spears or the Hiltons; The Tudors -- the royal family that included wild and crazy Henry the VIII, Ann Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth -- are the hottest thing in Hollywood at the moment.

There's the been the four queen Elizabeth movies, two starring Cate Blanchett, the latest one just last year, and two starring Helen Mirren on HBO as a package last fall. There's the second season of the Showtime series The Tudors. There was the recent release of "The Other Boleyn Girl" based on a book by the same name by Philippa Gregory (which I confessed I have read, and quite enjoyed), a novelized version of Anne Boleyn's rise to queen and fall to headlessness. Indeed, this was just one of a series of books by Gregory on the many women of Henry VIII which are also hot, hot, hot.

What was it about the royals of the 1500s that so fascinate us right now? That they lived their decadent lives with little care to the commoners? That they grossly indulged themselves with no regard to moderation? That they partied all the time? That they killed one another with impunity? That they wore outlandish clothes that cost a fortune? Sounds pretty familiar.

Writing for public consumption is always interesting. What I intend and what the readers get are often at odds. Usually I take full responsibility for this, since it is my job to communicate. Yet, when readers “get” such wildly different understandings of my message, I put some of it on the readers. Writing is, something of a Rorschach test and what someone sees or understands may say more about them than what is on the paper.

)">">That some people read my piece on Obama (Can Obama win with a third impression? Daily News April 6: as strongly anti-Obama, while others thought I was being overly kind to him, is pretty normal. People can see my observations, criticisms and suggestions as hypercritical or defensive. I think that his actions and inactions raise legitimate questions for all voters—and we will answer them differently.

My piece was very specifically a report on how I saw a portion of the electorate, the Jewish portion, reacting to Obama and the questions raised by Pastor Wright’s repeated clips. It was not about what it was not about; which is to say I was not reporting on all Jews, all Californians or all Democrats. I was not making a judgment on the fitness of the candidate. It was a limited topic, but I believe a valid one, and apparently it was both interesting and controversial. It is somewhat pleasing to have responses from London, England, Johannesburg, South Africa, Washington DC, Dallas and San Antonio, Texas—as well as the more expected Van Nuys, California.

That said, some of the comments both to my personal email and on the discussion page raise troubling questions about how we see each other as citizens of the world, Americans, Christians, Muslims and Jews and how we communicate with each other. Is communication meant to build a bridge, change a mind or to insult and punish? Writers and speakers should know their objective before writing or speaking.

I was disheartened by Chris in Dallas who wrote: “We Americans are getting tired of hearing from Jews about this politician or that politician loosing (sic.) support from Jews. Who cares if a politician is loosing support from Jews.”

Here’s the thing about this kind of unkind locution: Jewish citizens of America are, well, Americans. Those of us who are citizens are fully American and have viewpoints that give us a right to have and share our views and perspectives. Jewish Americans have legitimate interests. Remember that citizens of our nation who live in California are Americans, and Texans can be proud Texans, loyal Americans and Jews—all at the same time. I know this since I have family from Corpus Christi, now in The Woodlands who are patriotic Americans, life-long Texans and Jews.

My neighbors in the San Fernando Valley have particular concerns about services in the Valley and how we are treated or ignored by greater Los Angeles. These are narrow concerns but none-the-less they are real and important.
I believe that Texas, California and the District of Columbia can have special interests and make requests of our national candidates to see how they will serve our interests. We then get to decide for whom—or more often, against whom—to vote.
Gabi wrote from Johannesburg: “As usual, the Jewish community is only concerned about what is best for Israel. Not what is best for America.” This comment, like Chris’, assumes that the Jewish community (or the Muslim community or the San Fernando Valley community) is both monolithic and monomaniacal. Neither is true. Gabi’s comment asserts that American Jews are only concerned with Israel and not patriotically attached to America. This is an unwarranted assertion. We can care about more than one thing at a time. We can care about family, tribe, community, state nation and even foreign nations. I must assume that Gabi in South Africa cares about both South Africa and the larger world—particularly the Middle East. If he can multi-task, so can we.

One single geographic, political, social, international or religious issue might or might not be decisive. There being no perfect candidates, we all have to come to our own best sense of what serves our complex constellations of interests and concerns.

In the American Jewish community, most of us are interested in Israel, in its survival and in peace. This does not imply a rejection of Arab, Muslim or Palestinian needs and desires. Peace will involve their interests, and they too have every right and responsibility to ask questions of the candidates and express their own concerns. It would be un-American for them not to.

I believe we communicate—or try—in order to build bridges. It is simply self-indulgent to burn them. Bridges are difficult because while under construction they are supported by a flimsy scaffolding. As we build bridges with words made of air, ink or vibrating electrons, they are precarious structures. We can only bridge the real and important gaps with an attitude of good will, generosity and respect.

The Daily News' Sunday editorial, in full:

It was bad enough that the Los Angeles City Council turned its back on the people of the city and voted in years of higher DWP bills without changing any of the behavior that created the need for rate hikes.

But when city officials dredged up the death of a firefighter in Westchester in late March to justify the fleecing of Angelenos, it actually compounded this crime.

What DWP General Manager H. David Nahai and some council members perhaps don't realize is that by saying the Department of Water and Power needs these higher water and power rates to fix the electrical problems that led to the exploding manhole covers - injuring two Los Angeles firefighters, one fatally - it actually makes city officials bigger criminals than just misspending the public's money.

If Los Angeles' aging infrastructure is killing people, who's to blame? Here's a hint: It's not the manhole's fault.

The culprit is years of misspending utility revenues on non-utility needs, as directed by the city's elected and appointed officials, and that resulted in the smoldering underground cable, which was the reason for the series of events that led up to the firefighter's death. Instead of reinvesting the utilities' revenues that it reaped from ratepayers, as any publicly owned utility ought to, city officials diverted billions of dollars over the years to serve their own needs. Had the money not been lost in annual transfers of millions in water and power revenues to the city's general fund, the aging cables in Westchester might have been replaced years ago.

As well, that money could have been used to make the capital improvements that might have kept the lights on during the blackouts of recent summers.

Instead, that revenue has been siphoned off for years, in the form of those yearly transfers, unnecessary DWP costs like fancy PR campaigns, and the creation of the highest paid department in America.

Put those factors together and it seems as if it ought to equal criminal negligence.

But pilfering the public trust and coffers has become routine in government from City Hall to the White House. By squandering the taxpayers' investment, it means the money to upgrade electrical systems, water systems, critical bridges and who knows what next is deferred.

The council is correct that the DWP's infrastructure needs to be fixed. But what's incorrect about last week's vote to raise water and power rates over the next three years is who ought to pay for it.

This is a crime of utility, for which, once more, the public has to pay.

American politicians believe that democracy can only be achieved through free elections and a desire for self-determination. I have a different take. I say give them access to McDonalds, Wal-Mart and cell phones and you don't even need their hearts and minds -- they will fight for their right to buy more crap they don't need.

Last week, word that cell phones were going to be allowed in Cuba seemed a huge step toward freeing the people through the acquisition of stuff, until one realized that even the cheapest cell phone payment plan is beyond the means of most people. Still I image the Cuban relatives outside of Cuba would have no problem paying the cell bills to keep in contact with loved ones still on the island.

But I think I may have found the real catalyst for change in a post-Fidel Cuba: appliances.

Perusing through the Cayman Net News,a strange Caribbean newspaper in which the rules of punctuation seemed to be quite relaxed, I stumbled on a seemingly innocuous AFP story about Cubans buying (or at least, eyeing) rice cookers. (The Caymans are Cuba-adjacent,). Because of the strangeness of this paper's web site, I can't link to the story. But here's the line that I think says it all:

Cubans lined up outside stores Tuesday to gawk at, and enjoy their new right to buy, appliances such as pressure cookers, DVDs and electric bikes. Their sale had been banned by the government since 2003 amid severe power shortages.

Can western-style democracy be far behind?

On April 16, 1963 a group of prominent white Alabama churchmen wrote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. an open letter demanding that he call off demonstrations against segregation in Birmingham. The churchmen ridiculed Dr. King’s efforts by branding the demonstrations “untimely” and “unwise.” King’s first reaction was to shrug off their belittlement as the rantings of yet another pack of do nothing, obstructionists and nay sayers who delight in sitting on the side lines and taking cheap shots at any effort made for change. They, of course, won’t lift a finger to contribute time, energy or their dollars to groups and individuals that are trying to make positive change.

King made an exception and responded to his frozen in the sand critics with his famed Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “The demonstrations seek to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” King went further and said radical action was needed to wake up citizens and involve them in the change fight.

His response spoke to the ages and applies to the Los Angeles Times editorial board.

They blasted the call by the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, the L.A.Civil Rights Assn. and other civil rights leaders for a 40 Hour King Assassination Memorial Moratorium on Killing as “silliness” and a “stunt.” It supposedly sullied the name and legacy of Dr. King. The tip off on the Times misunderstanding, or deliberate distortion, of the goal of the moratorium was its incredibly, sloppy, wrong headed, and idiotic earlier news headline (“City Council rejects ban on homicide”). The Times couldn’t even get the story of what the Council did right. The Council approved the call to end killing for 40 hours (the 40 hours marked the 40 year anniversary of the assassination) as a tribute to King.

King, of course, passionately and eloquently argued in countless speeches, letters, and interviews for non violence and ending killing whether in Vietnam or the streets of America’s cities. In an article published 12 days after his murder, and what stands as his last admonition from the grave, his voice still rang out loudly for an end to killing.

The moratorium in his name was not a silly, utopian, or wasteful call to end homicides. It was simply a challenge to L.A. residents that have seen many neighborhoods in the city torn by murder violence to pay tribute to the man who is one of world history’s foremost and most beloved champions of non-violence. The call during the period of reflection and thought on the meaning of King’s life and death by violence was a call to residents to commit, engage, and dialogue with friends, relatives, and loved ones in the schools, at work and on the streets, about ways to prevent violence in our city.

It was a timely opportunity for citizen and community engagement, even empowerment, in the ongoing and tormenting fight against murder violence. The moratorium was a rare chance for Los Angeles to provide a working example and a model for peace and nonviolence for other cities torn by murder violence. The moratorium showed what could be done when citizens join in the fight to take back their streets.

We talked with many persons old, and especially, young. They, unlike the tin ears and blinded eyes of the naysayers and head shakers on the Times editorial board got the point. They did not ridicule or belittle the moratorium call. They are the ones that are most at risk from violence. They hardly considered any effort to reduce that risk as silly. They understood that if the moratorium saved even one life during the forty hour observance then the correct word that starts with the letter “s” to describe it is not stunt or silliness but success. This sailed way over the head of the Time’s editors.

Unfortunately, the moratorium did not attain one goal, namely no homicides during the 40 hour period. There were several fatal shootings. But the moratorium did attain the larger goals of calling attention to Dr. King and his struggle for nonviolent solutions to conflicts, and in engaging the community to continue the search for proactive solutions to the murder plague in L.A.

Does this sound like something that’s silly or a stunt?

I heard that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on Armed Forces Radio while I was living in Tunisia. I wept. His hopeful vision of change without violence seemed forever blotted out by the blood that covered him and stained the body politic of our nation.

I never met Dr. King but his life and struggle moved me work in politics, to register voters in South Central Los Angeles to try (unsuccessfully) to keep the public from repealing the Rumford Fair Housing Act. He moved me to march for fair housing at various demonstrations in Southern California and later, as a performer, to donate my time, and such talent that I possessed, to play benefits for the Congress of Racial Equality, and then briefly for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

The day after Dr. King’s death a special memorial assembly was held at the Lycee where I taught during my two years of Peace Corps service. Think about that for a moment. In Arab, Muslim, North Africa a service was held for an American Black Christian clergyman. My colleague Monsieur Attila read the “I have a dream speech” in French to the students. Again, I wept.

Then it was my turn to speak, to try to explain what had happened and why Dr. King had been murdered. I did not have good answers, and I couldn’t blame my stammering on my faulty French. I still don’t have a good answer.

In that Arab society, they taught that you follow rules and laws. The students did not have any understanding of the philosophy of civil disobedience. They did not know of Gandhi or Thoreau. The idea that Dr. King led based on a higher law than was legislated by men or imposed by dictators was nearly beyond their comprehension. They knew about revolutions and civil wars. They understood rebellion, but peaceful civil disobedience to appeal to the conscience, was a new idea.

I do not believe that hate triumphs over love, or that violence will be victorious over peace. I do believe that fear is a mighty toxic agent and we, as most people, fear fear itself. We fear change. We fear difference.

Now, forty years later, I still weep when I hear the speech. I weep because I miss the hopeful enthusiasm of my youth. But I also weep that Dr. King missed the progress we have made as a nation. He didn’t get to see his dream come true of his four little children walking hand in hand with people of other races and being judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Yes, racial prejudice still exists. Yes, we are still involved in both painful dialogue and painful denial about the role of race in our society and in our hearts. Yes, Earl Ofari Hutchinson is right in his poignant op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Daily News, we are still two Americas—with the Black community having made real progress at the upper half of the spectrum, but the lower half has fallen further behind socially, economically, in education and in hope. The issues are puzzling but Dr. King, as Earl Ofari Hutchinson, would, I think, struggle with complex issues based on fearless introspection and a deep sense of personal conviction, values and hope.

The struggle that the Dr. King exemplified goes on. We still search for justice and we know, as Dr. King knew, that justice is not divisible by race or class. Nor can it be divided into racial justice, social justice, legal justice and economic justice. It is one, as we must be one.

For both Black and White the anthem We Shall Overcome, must not be a battle cry against just some evil “them.” We have to overcome our own fears, insecurities and false securities. The Dream though not realized is still alive. We have not reached the Promised Land but it is within sight and not just from the mountaintop. We can see it from here. The only way to get there is together.

A picture says enough. And it's a school for the gifted, to boot.

Forty years ago on April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We have certainly come a long way in these 40 years of wandering in the desert of racism. We are still wrestling with whether a Black man can be president. Yes, we know it is legal (which is in itself progress) but we do not know if it is politically possible.

Dr. King was fond of quoting Scriptures, particularly “Let Justice roll down like waters.” (Amos 5:24) The Bible exhorts us to “Do Justice.” (Micah 6:8). It does not say, believe in justice, nor value justice, but to just do it. Both in Hebrew and Arabic the word for Justice implies Wisdom. Justice, therefore, is not simply good or right; it is also wise.

For too long, many outside the mainstream of our society, people kept out and looking in, have remarked that American Justice seemed to mean Just Us! Just Us that gets a fair deal, a tax break and a little justice from the so-called justice system.

Justice seems to serve not those who stand and wait but those with, in the words of Mohammad Ali, the “connection and complexion” to get special treatment. Yes, American justice is supposed to be blind and not see race or wealth. But many believe that Justice has been peeking through the blindfold and that the scales were weighted against the poor; that justice was in fact more deaf than blind, deaf to the cries of the downtrodden and oppressed—what the Gospels call, “the least of us.”

At this 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, I think of all those poor whites who wanted to keep blacks poor, who wanted them in their ghettoes and not as customers in white shops, stores and restaurants. They put off bringing the South out of the antebellum fantasy of the White Ages.

No ruling class, no privileged class ever gives up its benefits without a struggle. We resisted Black freedom and equality. We fought the franchise for women. We killed the Equal Rights Amendment for women. Historically, we battled the union movement in this country. We libeled Social Security as a communist scheme. We attack universal healthcare as a radical socialist takeover of our God-given right to be bankrupted by a catastrophic health event.

Religion is not simply about rites; it must also concern our rights as human beings, our relationships with each other and the wisdom to understand that we share a common planet and a common fate. Religion teaches us the wisdom of knowing our connection to life and each other today. Do justice. Not some day. Today. Do wisdom by healing our beautiful fragile world.

We must know that there is no such thing as separate justice. As we share one planet; there is only one common sea—not seven. There is one common atmosphere. The rain that falls on one falls on all—and justice denied one is ultimately denied all. Life, liberty and justice are the common right of all humanity—not just here, not just now, not just today, but always.

This world is ours to save, to make, not so much holy as, whole; to bring the broken shards of shattered cities, societies and lives together to make a beautiful mosaic of many colors, customs, peoples—people bound together by common rights, common purpose and common justice. Our purpose is no longer to look for Justice; it is to “Do Justice,” and remembering Dr. King, to “Let Justice roll down like waters” bringing new life and new hope to our parched world.

Former President Bill Clinton, in what the New York Post describes as "a purple rage" over Richardson's decision to endorse Barack Obama. Apparently Clinton doesn't like being lied to. Go figure.

In today’s New York Times on the Op-Ed page two of Hillary Clinton’s former White House staff, her chief of staff and her head speechwriter, prove themselves to be as tone deaf and clueless as their former boss. Rushing to her aid after the Tuzla whopper they take 634 words to miss the point. Intentional or clueless? I cannot say.

Entitled “Straight Shooting from Tuzla,” they defend the entitled acting candidate’s personal courage. They write of how unstable Bosnia was, how they had to take a military plane in order to do a corkscrew landing to evade potential sniper fire. They write about how they spent more time exposed than was planned and how dangerous Bosnia still might have been.

Okay. Let’s stipulate that Hillary Clinton is brave and willing to expose herself to danger for her country. This is demonstrably true. She certainly was exposed to danger as a president’s wife—even as a former president’s wife. She is exposed to physical danger every day as a candidate. There are crazy delusional people in the world.

The question is not her physical courage. The question involves her judgment and her memory in making a very specific claim to a very explicit memory of running under sniper fire to a car. You do not miss-remember something like that unless it is an every day occurrence. How stupid a lie would it be if this were a knowing lie? Well, she was traveling with the reporters who tend, well, to report what they see and in some cases what they didn’t see. Among the press was Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, the then head of the Federal Reserve. In other words, a person with some credibility, not just the rabble of the regular working press. She was traveling with people with cameras and memories. How could she so recklessly believe that she would not be outed?

Either she told a very stupid lie—and that goes both to judgment and character, or she really thinks it happened and that would go to her stability. These are not good choices for either her or her people to have to make. So, they change the subject. They change it badly and blatantly.
Her friends ought to stop trying to help on this. The more we think about this, the worse it looks.

Do you recall Mike Feuer, a dynamic young pol now comfortably, if ambitiously, ensconced in Sacramento as the Assemblyman for (or against) the 42nd district? At one time he had ambitions to be our mayor. Today he may long for even higher things. I have some bad news for his ambition. In the words of my New York relatives I say "Fuggitaboutit."

Assemblyman Feuer has proposed a bill in Sacramento to put on our Los Angeles ballot an increase of either the tax on gas up to 9 cents a gallon or increase our automobile registration fee by up to $90. (AB 2558, if you think I’m making this up) Now all of these monies would doubtlessly go to good and worthy causes. Increased revenue I’m sure would be very efficiently and well used for wonderful public purposes. The idea of this is not to punish Angelinos for, well, being Angelinos, but to raise money for public transportation. This is to help our buses and subways. A noble idea. Truly.

A reasoned argument against Feuer’s seemingly serious proposal would be: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? HAVE YOU COMPLETELY TAKEN LEAVE OF YOUR SENSES?

Okay, I’ll stop shouting. It isn’t the money he’s trying to extract from us. He is, after all, trying to put this on our local ballot. But that is the rub and the reason that I’m not simply questioning his political judgment but his sanity. How out of touch with reality does an elected official have to be before being adjudicated as incompetent to represent us, either by dint of isolation in a bubble or delusional madness?

Notice, if you will, the price of gasoline. As we hit and surpass the $4 per gallon mark, guess the results of asking the public to raise it another 9 cents. Yes, I know the legislation says “up to 9 cents.” That’s the ceiling—in theory. How crushingly overwhelming the defeat of such a measure would be is beyond calculation.

Okay, then let’s look at the alternative. Raise the registration fees, again “up to,” $90 per vehicle. Yes, surely another big winner at the polls. We will vote to make driving more expensive as gas prices skyrocket, as insurance premiums cost more and cover less. We will vote to give more money to the Transit Authority that has used it so well so far, that spends huge amounts defending law suits from the Bus Riders Union, who built a marble mausoleum that rivals the Taj Mahoney Cathedral, that fights its users and rolls over on cost overruns from its contractors.

The question is not if we need better public transportation. We do. The issue is if anything is the record of the MTA encourages us to reach deep into our pockets in the present economy and turn our bucks over to them.

Seeing no chance of this proposition passing, my concern is not that we will vote to increase our own fees (they shy away from using the word “tax”—the sin that dares not speak its name). This dead pre-arrival measure raises several interesting questions—beside the sanity of Assemblyman Feuer. How much time will our solons waste debating this silliness? How much money will it cost the public to have this on the ballot? How will special interests be involved in raising money to pay for the TV ads, flyers and robocalls for and against the measure should it reach our ballot? Last questions: Do you recall when Mike Feuer had a political future or should his district just recall Mike Feuer?

It's too bad that Dodger fans aren't as proud of their city as they are of their city's baseball team.

Blue-shirted Dodger fans started the partying early Monday, barbecuing and drinking beer way before 9 a.m. in the picnic areas of Elysian Park adjacent to Dodger Stadium. As I walked the dogs at 8:30 a.m. I was surprised to see so many people drinking beer, blasting music and cooking up afternoon food. That's Opening Day for ya.

I can forgive people partying on a special day, which was also Cesar Chavez Day. But I can't forgive their trashing of my neighborhood. Here's a few snapshots of just one corner of Elysian Park this morning. It was pretty representative of the other areas I saw as well. I did learn something, though: Dodger fans seem to prefer light beer, a conclusion I came to from the sheer number of discarded cardboard Bud Light and Michelob Light 12-pack holders on this morning's run.

And Dodgers flacks wonder why the stadium's neighbors aren't thrilled on game days.

More pictures after the jump.

“Dangerous,” “evil,” “colossal fraud,” were the choice terms that then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and other top FBI officials routinely spit out about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They didn’t stop at the name calling. They talked ominously of “neutralizing” him as an effective leader. And even more ominously they sent him a letter flatly saying “King you are done.”

The FBI’s name calling, paranoid harassment and violent threats brutally and disgustingly captured the secret and patently illegal wiretapping of King. This is not smoking gun proof that the FBI had a hand in King’s murder. The tapes do raise the legitimate question: What did the FBI know and when did it know it about it about possible attempts on King’s life?

Americans certainly deserve to know the whole truth about the killing of King. But there are two truths about the murder. The first is too painful for those who fervently believe that James Earl Ray was a Lee Harvey Oswald-type patsy and that the government orchestrated King's killing. Yet, the evidence is still overwhelming that Ray was the triggerman. His fingerprints were on the alleged murder weapon. He was at the crime scene, and he confessed. At different times before his death, Ray gave conflicting, confusing and muddled accounts of his activities and whereabouts at the time of the murder.

His protests of innocence and frame-ups sounded like a discredited man's desperate effort to salve his conscience, grab media attention, and cash in on the notoriety of the case. It worked. Ray's public trashing about on the King murder sent conspiracy buffs stampeding to the barricades shouting that the government killed King. The King family gave Ray's much belated feigning of innocence credence when Coretta Scott King took the stand on his behalf at a civil trial in Memphis in 1999.

. The verdict of history stands that Ray killed King. But Ray's guilt, however, doesn't let the government off the hook, as the FBI wiretaps disgracefully show. Unfortunately, the other truth is that the House Select Committee on Assassination that investigated King's murder ordered the files sealed for fifty years. They are still sealed. So we don’t really know what the FBI did or didn’t do in the run-up to King’s murder. The files just might answer many questions about the secret war the FBI waged against King from the late 1950's to his murder.

The assault on King was more than Hoover’s acting out his paranoid obsessions against King. It was a war against the Black movement. Hoover decided that the cheap and dirty way to win that war was by discrediting the most respected and admired symbol of that movement.

Hoover assigned Assistant FBI director William Sullivan the dirty job of getting the goods on King. Sullivan branded King as the "most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation." In his book My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI, Sullivan described the inner circle of men assigned to get King. The group was made up of special agents mainly drawn from the Washington and Atlanta FBI offices. Their job was to monitor all of King's activities. Much of their dirty tactics are well known. They deluged him with wiretaps, physical surveillance, poison-pen letters, threats, harassment, intimidation, and smear sexual leaks to the media, and even at the time of his murder, Hoover had more plans to intensify the spy campaign against King. Decades later, Sullivan still publicly defended the FBI's war against him, and made no apology for it.

We know only the bare outline of what the FBI actually did toward King in his final days. There are still a lot of dots that beg to be connected in the FBI's murky onslaught against King.

Then there's the actual assassination investigation. FBI officials who directed the illegal spy campaign against King and the FBI agent who played a major role in running the program in Atlanta were also involved in every phase of the assassination investigation. That's raises even more questions about the scope, or lack thereof, of the investigation.

The re-opening of the King assassination won't uncover any solid evidence that the government had a deeper hand in King’s death than is so far known. But full disclosure by government agencies involved in the investigation of King’s assassination at the very least could allay some of the lingering doubts and suspicions that government agencies didn't tell the complete truth about King's murder.

However, even this won't absolve the FBI of its shameful, destructive, and illegal campaign against King. The climate of suspicion and hostility it helped nurture toward the civil rights movement made it possible for Ray to murder King. Forty years later, the FBI wiretaps still tell the sordid tale of a government agency out to destroy King at any and all costs.