July 2009 Archives

Hard to be confident in the future of democracy when you see figures like this:

Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they were not willing to pay more in taxes in order to reduce the deficit, and nearly as many said they were not willing for the government to provide fewer services in areas such as health care, education and defense spending.

The "Birthers" are the messy afterbirth our presidential election. They live in rage, fear and denial. But just for a moment accept their premise that Obama was not born in Hawaii but somewhere not in America. If true, the enemies of America are crafty, evil and prescient. They will stop at nothing to destroy us. They might even have infiltrated a Manchurian Candidate into the body politic to destroy us from within.

But, as they say on TV, "That's not all!" Our enemies not only had to believe that a mixed race child with two Muslim names might be elected, they also had to have the amazing foresight to publish his birth announcement in a Honolulu newspaper the week of his birth--or his importation. And yes, I've seen the birth notice. Wow! If the "Birthers" are right, we might as well surrender now.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

I'm not going to characterize the birthers movement as racism per se. A few generations ago, their tactics could have been used to marginalize white Catholics. So while the issue isn't explicitly racial, it's decidedly a matter of xenophobia and old-fashioned prejudice.

I was proved quite wrong when I told friends last summer, "There's no chance in hell that the nation that elected George Bush twice [and yes, I do believe he was elected twice] will put a man named Barak Hussein Obama in the White House."

Indeed, McCain ran a close "race" with Obama till the meltdown convinced enough Americans that it was willing to elect as their leader a guy whose name rhymes with Osama.

Birthers say their concerns are simply procedural and constitutional, and yet oddballs such as Orly Taitz of Orange County misread our Constitution in concocting imaginary procedures. Still, I'm deeply disturbed by the image of the YouTube video Gail-Tz refers to, of the angry Delaware woman (and angrier mob) demanding her country back.

Neurologists tell us that our brain logic is driven inexorably and almost totally by emotions. Primal negative emotions, including xenophobic ones, are inextricably part of human evolution, and they lead to a quite deadly (but perfectly reasonable) logic. That's the reason America's emotional biases against words like "Hussein" worry me just as much as any specific racial bias.

Senator Joe McCarthy never left the building. Although the late senator led a movement to rid this country of supposed communists during the 50's, his methods of operation are still riding roughshod through this country over hill and dale. Now it's the Birther Movement people, whose members question whether Obama is a US citizen or a Muslim/ spy/ interloper/ and general commie in disguise, prove once again that old movements seldom die. They just roll along and morph into something else.

At a Town Hall meeting posted on YouTube, an irate citizen displayed her birth certificate enclosed in a baggy and said she wanted the president to do the same. Though somewhat suspicious, he does have an explanation for its disappearance. He was born in Hawaii and his hospital went and digitized the thing possibly in order to help the environment and go green.

If having the proper papers is the criterion for getting ahead, then I may be next because somewhere along the line, I have lost my birth certificate, driver's license(s) and several major credit cards. This does not make me less of an American; it makes me more of one because debt and possessions are the cornerstones of this country.

In the end, Obama should have the hospital Xerox a copy of the thing, and if they can't, then he should be impeached for having bad relations with people and for lying.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs got it right when he bluntly said that the deal is that the legions who are adamant that President Obama is an illegal alien and should be dumped from the White House will never go away. Not only won't they go away but in recent weeks they've gained even more steam, and they've gained it ironically with the unintended help of birther opponents. Every newspaper, magazine, talk show host that damns the birthers as a bunch of wacky, paranoid, Obama haters stirs the pot even more. They do it simply by acknowledging the issue with a column or a show. The birthers revel in that, and they should because there's a canny, calculated, and politically cynical motive behind their Obama birth certificate agitation.

The worst thing about the controversy over Obama's birth certificate is that none have connected the dots and seen the birthers as the shock troops to torpedo Obama's political agenda. Their hope is that by sowing enough conspiracy paranoia about him they can do just that.

The stock basketball one liner came to mind when I heard President Obama utter his now infamous "acting stupid" line referring to the cuffing of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The star player takes a wild shot and the livid coach screams "no," "no" "no" and then when the improbable happens and the ball swishes through the net, the coach's livid "no," "no," "no" instantly becomes a fist in the air shaking "yes," "yes," "yes."

My response was the same only in reverse. I said an instant and visceral fist shaking "yes," "yes," "yes" to Obama's Gates quip. After all, the president spoke boldly and unhesitatingly on the always contentious, divisive and painful issue of racial profiling. But then just as quickly I said "no," "no," "no." No, not because I didn't think it was the right thing to do, and no not because I didn't think he didn't have the right to give an opinion, and it was just that an opinion on a touchy issue.

All presidents weigh in with their personal views, opinions, and thoughts, no matter how ill informed at unscripted White House press conferences, and in countless network TV interviews on every subject under the sun. And certainly I didn't say no because Obama shouldn't toss racial matters and racial profiling out on the nation's table. No apology necessary for that. The no, was because I knew that Obama would take a monster hit for piping up on a racial case that's a ticking time bomb that could explode in his face. President's can and do recover from ill chosen words on emotion charged issues.
In this case, though, his words came at the worst possible time; a time when the president needs to squeeze and squeeze hard every ounce of the considerable personal and political capital that he's painstakingly built up over the past few months to get an ever growing number of push back Democrats, dogged obstructionist Republicans, and the recalcitrant powerhouse trio of insurers, medical professionals, and pharmaceuticals who flatly oppose or are waffling on Obama's public option component of health care reform. This is the centerpiece of the reform package, without it reform is a meaningless exercise in political gamesmanship.

Two new presidential approval polls from Rasmussen and Zogby, confirmed my "no," "no," "no" shout. The Rasmussen is an absolute number's nightmare for Obama. His disapproval rating has soared to nearly 40 percent among voters. Those that strongly approve of his performance sunk to 29 percent. That wasn't the worst of the bad news. A bare 25 percent of voters thought his answer was good. More than 60 sixty percent thought it was fair or lousy. Even more ominous was the voter breakdown. The crack in Obama's hitherto impregnable black vote support was glaring. Nearly 30 percent of black voters broke ranks with Obama on his Gates' answer.

Among Obama's two other huge breakthrough groups, independents, and young voters, the blowback was even more disastrous. Nearly 70 percent of Independents and nearly 50 percent of young persons rated his answer "fair" or "poor."

This is just the opening that the usual suspect Obama foes need to pound the president, and by extension his policies on health care, the stimulus, on foreign policy overtures. All are suddenly back in play and in question as set hit pieces for the Obama mashers; but especially health care reform. The issue is no longer the standard knock that it is too costly and a gross case of too much government interference in health care. Obama is now anti-police and an out of the closet race inflamer whose judgment can't and shouldn't be trusted on the crucial issue of health care reform.

The more charitable don't go that far, but instead firmly declare that the presidential honeymoon is officially over. The only good news is that Obama's popularity outside the U.S. is still off the charts. But foreigners can't vote for or elect the congresspersons and senators who make and decide major policy decisions, health care reform being front and center the most pressing.

Even Obama's still high personal popularity ratings don't mean much. Popular ratings are just that, over-hyped numbers that measure a president's likeability, not his leadership effectiveness.

The true test for a president and how the public rates him is the quality of his leadership. A foreign crisis, a souring economy, out of control partisan battles with Congress, fights with major labor and industry groups, and prolonged military adventures are the things that inflict mortal wounds on presidents. The same is true for real or perceived gaffes, slips, and shoot from the lip comments.

President Obama spoke from the heart and said would needed to be said about the thorny issue of racial profiling. Again, no apology needed for that. He just said it in the wrong case and at the wrong time. Gates was the trainwreck waiting to happen, in other words, "no," "no," "no."

Some people, like Bill Gates, make money the hard way. They zero in on their passion, turn it around and work on it through many a sleepless night. Others, like 23 year-old Richard Rodriguez, traipse along their chosen path, too even if it is the wrong one.

In 2007, Rodriguez, a gang member with enough body ink to keep a tattoo parlor alive, was involved in a police chase that ended when an El Monte police officer kicked him in the head.

Rodriguez and his lawyer, former LA councilman, Nick Pachecho, are suing the city for 5-million dollars, which is about 4-million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine dollars more than he is worth.

After all, a kick in the head may be just what he needed. He apparently didn't get enough of them growing up, which is probably what led him to jump into a gang to begin with. Although he claims to have suffered from dizziness and blurred vision since the incident, it was probably not much different before then.

His booking photo and the photoshopped picture his lawyer is proposing he copy for his court appearance may already give him an out, should he follow his counsel's advice, which he probably will. In the photoshopped after pictures, the gang tattoos are camouflaged and he sports a conservative suit and Tom Selleck-style, "Magnum PI" fuzzy mustache that hides the name of the gang that that genius tattooed on his upper lip. Should Rodriguez win and collect a payout from the city, then his victims will hopefully line up and sue him in return.

In the meantime, see how (sort of) nice he could look if he wanted to?

(courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009)

I don't agree with Earl that Obama needed not apologize or clarify his comments from Wednesday's press conference.

I look at the snippiness of Gates and Obama as reflecting a lingering touchiness on the part of blacks about racial profiling. It led Obama to, in the heat of a moment, say the wrong about Cambridge police acting "stupidly" -- but he did the right thing in retracting those words and in calling up Crawley.

I understand the snippiness, but I appreciate the clarity and sobriety that came after Obama slept on it.

PS -- Can we just say now that the proposed beer among the three parties will be a circus that will distract all of us from real issues, just as Obama's original comment distracted us from what he talked about for 57 prior minutes?

Few things are worse than dealing with an ingrate, except maybe dealing with one with an agenda.

Take Montejo Gaspar and the Martin Medical Center in Stuart, Florida. In 2000 Gaspar's cousin, Luis Jiminez, an illegall immigrant who had been sending money to his wife and sons in Guatemala, was in an auto accident with a drunk driver that left him quadriplegic and with the mental capacity of a fourth grader.

Although uninsured, the Martin Medical Center saved Jiminez's life and has provided him with 1.5 million dollars of medical care since. Unable to sustain his medical costs, they sought a court order to send him home and even paid $30,000 for a special charter flight. He was hospitalized for a short time in his country and is now living with his 73 year-old mother.

The hospital's actions did not bode well with Gaspar, and he is suing for false imprisonment and for punitive damages and is asking for one million dollars for Jiminez's lifetime care in Guatemala, which would probably cover some department's budgets in certain countries.

Had it been an American living in Guatemala, Mexico or any one of those countries, he would have been lucky to get a vial of morphine and an escort back to the border.

The case is out for deliberation now, but hopefully, the jury will bid Gaspar and his lawyers one grand "adios," so that we can focus on those who are already paying into the system.

President Obama may have used the wrong words when he called the actions of the Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crawley in cuffing Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates as "acting stupid." He backed off slightly from it in a follow up interview when he made it clear that he wasn't indicting the entire Cambridge police department. By all accounts Crawley is a model cop, a stellar family man, and he's even hailed for his effort to train other cops not to racially profile. And certainly Gates' arrest hardly fits the textbook definition of racial harassment, let alone profiling.

Yet, that doesn't change the brutal reality that racial matters are still every bit as agonizing, contentious, and divisive as ever. In the past couple of weeks, black and Latino kids were booted from a pool in Philadelphia, black parents were fighting a dogged battle to save a black high school in Louisiana ordered shut down by a majority white school board, blacks and whites squared off in Paris, Texas when charges were dropped against two white men previously accused in the alleged dragging death of a young black man, Brandon McClelland, and a reinvigorated mass movement complete with a name "the birthers" to prove that President Obama is an illegal alien and should be dumped from the presidency. There's also the rash of complaints and lawsuits alleging that several major lenders deliberately and systematically steered blacks and Latinos into extortionist interest rate, sub prime loans.

Then there's the internet, whether it's the issue of Michael Jackson's death or the relentless low intensity verbal broadsides aimed at Obama, legions of chat rooms and websites pulsate with unbounded hate chatter.

Obama's knock at the police in Gate's arrest, and his finger point at the overwhelming disproportionate number of unwarranted stops of blacks and Latinos by some in law enforcement, need no soft pedaling and certainly not an apology. Presidents are asked and offer their opinions, give their personal views, and even express their prejudices countless times in press interviews and in front of the White House press corps. Few dare demand that they apologize for a testy or intemperate quip. Bush certainly was never called on the carpet for his Testerone laced bring em' on crack in reference to unnamed terrorists, and his rough talk saber rattle against alleged "foreign enemies."
It took just the right touch of passion, and hint of anger that Obama brought to the table in the Gate's affair to get the tongues wagging about race and policing, and how widespread racial profiling really is. Obama has the world's most powerful and most watched bully pulpit to cajole, prod, and educate the public on compelling and even painful public policy issues; race being right at the top of the list. He should it use it every chance he gets even if he's just blowing off steam.

The perennial usual suspect Obama foes called him irresponsible for weighing in on the racial profiling debate. It would have been even more irresponsible for Obama to fire back "no comment, next question" to the reporter's demand for an opinion about Gates. A no comment or a waffling, duck and dodge pap remark to tough questions is not leadership or courage. No apology needed, President Obama for speaking out on Gates.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Gidget, perhaps the dominant animal icon of this generation, passed away today at the age of 105 (Lorne Greene's calculation).

Fans of the legendary chihuaha crowded the gates of her Santa Clarita compound, where she reportedly died peacefuly; however, media and police alike are investigating allegations that the death was a homicide when her owner's car backed up too suddenly.

"She was the most gifted animal entertainer of all time," said a visibly shaken Ronald McDonald, whose fast-food rivalry with Gidget turned into a poignant friendship over the years. "She broke boundaries and blazed trails. No sane person would have owned a chihuaha or even a pug before she came along. Nothing's changed as far as that goes, really -- but you see a lot more chihuahas now."

A regionally televised memorial is scheduled for Friday at Universal Studios. City officials expect four million people and have preemptively bankrupted the city to ensure that the expected crowds have enough portapotties.

President Obama, while calling Gidget "a model for pets and fast-food spokespersons everywhere," declined to attend the memorial, saying that he is "positively swamped with this difficult business of ruining your children's future."

As the nation grieves the passing of a national treasure, some see an irony in past GOP efforts to deport Gidget, an undocumented animal found by American tourists in Ensenada and initially mistaken for a rat.

In lieu of flowers, mourners are asked to buy chalupas, on sale through Sunday.

I think David Brooks is on to something here, when he says that Obama isn't feared enough by Congressional liberals to get his way. This could get ugly for him and for the nation, if he doesn't show a little more backbone.

I was taking my afternoon constitution down a Valley thoroughfare the other day when I saw a blind man about to cross the street, so I offered to help out.

Being sighted, I never thought about how hard it must be for a blind person to navigate his way across sans an audio clue like a buzzing or beeping sound for when the light is going to change. After all, they have them in Santa Monica. I mentioned this to this man who agreed that it would be more to have one.

Later on, I googled and called my councilman and suggested that the city install more lights to help the visually impaired cross the street. I know it would be costly but necessary to help those with disabilities, and I can only hope that others will do the same.

In case you didn't have a reason to go to TMZ, check out this video of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, KTLA anchor Lu Parker and host-about-town Ryan Seacrest exiting Mozzo after presumably dining together.

Funny: The headline at TMZ is "Seacrest out ... with the Mayor?!" ... no mention of Ms. Parker.

And this, dear readers, is exactly why we should not legalize marijuana.

"Hey listen. Pot is not a bad thing. When's the last time that someone got clocked in the head by someone else because they were stoned?! How about when they were intoxicated? Haha. I know, I know, I'm still wrong according to some. I understand that many of you don't like the idea of pot being legalized, but wouldn't you rather see someone stoned on the couch rather than running over a family because they were so blasted drunk that they believed that their pine fresh scent hanger on the front mirror of the car was real and they swerved to miss the "tree", then swerved to miss the other "tree"? Hahaha. People, I've never tried pot before, and sorry to the policemen readin this, but, I think it's a wonderful idea! I mean, having something to open your senses once in a while. Sometimes you need that in this world. I mean, come on. Where would the Beatles have gone if not for some "new experiences" or any bands of the sixties.

Oh! And somethin else to ponder in your completely "clear heads". hahahaha Maybe pot could help us get out of this horrible recession. Just think, everyone could be happier, money or no money, and there could, quite possibly be an elimination of threat or harm to one another, cause whose really to blame when we would rather not have the Atomic bomb blow up, but rather, the "atomic bong"?! hahahah Alright, I'm out people, love, happiness, and peace to all!"

Say what you will about habitual marijuana smokers. They're no better and probably no worse than an equivalent number of sloppy drunks.

There's nothing pretty or noble about smoking so much pot that you can't move off the couch, or drinking oneself to a failing liver.

The significant effort expended in government resources on keeping marijuana illegal and therefore somewhat harder to obtain than alcohol simply cannot be justified.

I don't doubt that more people would smoke marijuana if it were legal, but what we're doing now isn't working.

We're not going to ban the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages anytime soon. Prohibition didn't work. Now it's time to throw up our collective hands when it comes to anti-marijuana laws, stop the charade that is "medical marijuana" (aka quasi-legal cannabis sale to just about anybody with even a little motivation to obtain a prescription) and just out-and-out make pot legal, regulate its growth and sale — and tax the hell out of it.

The economic benefit to the state with marijuana as both a cash crop and tax boon is too large to ignore in these troubled times.

Let individuals decide whether or not they wish to indulge in alcohol or marijuana. Use a portion of the resultant tax revenue to fund education on the perils of these drugs' abuse and on treatment of the resultant addictions.

The average stoner can barely put together a sentence, let alone perpetrate a violent crime, so let's get real and get out of this futile front on the failing war on drugs.

I agree with Earl that the prohibition experience shows why it's pointless to ban certain substances. I often favor a society in which government allows people to do any thing, while culture encourages people to do the right thing.

I don't "get" pot and I never liked pot. But I've also seen, based on my Muslim teetotalling background, how counterproductive it is to ban a popular substance, since a) it pushes it underground, turning ordinary people into criminals, and b) it adds to its popularity by giving it a compellingly rogue quality.

It's the same reason I side with the Amethyst Initiative folks in seeking to lower the drinking age: Making something off limits often guarantees it'll be inordinately coveted by those who aren't given permission to have it. Hmm, maybe marriage falls in that category too....

Few things are more disgruntling than trying to have a conversation with someone who has checked out for another planet. That's part of the reason I don't think that marijuana should be legalized. It's hard enough to have a sane and rational conversation without dealing with someone with paisley brain cells.

When trying to justify the legalization of marijuana, some may point a crooked finger at prohibition and the legalization of hooch, but it is possible to have one or two drinks without going over the edge. With marijuana that's just not the case. You are either stoned or you are not.

And people have gotten themselves into some pretty fine fixes when they are high. Even though the official cause of the September 2008 Metrolink train crash that killed 25 people was text messaging, an investigation also turned up marijuana in the conductor's bloodstream. Residues of the drug have also been found in the bodies of other crash and accident victims as well. I know I wouldn't want a dentist working on me who was stoned or a customer service rep, though I am sure it's already gone down.

Earl and Rob may point to the "if you can't beat them then join them" philosophy or say that people are going to do it anyway so you might as well let them, but that would be like saying that looting should be legalized during a riot because everyone in some neighborhoods is going to do that, too.

The only time cannabis should be legalized is for medicinal purposes. Other than that, we should hold a giant bonfire and burn the stuff.

Just when I thought UPS couldn't be stranger, they go and outdo themselves. My latest tango with the company started when I embarked on one of my favorite hobbies, shopping, the place, deep in the throws of cyberspace.

Like most expert shoppers, I operate on the following premise: If I think I am going to need it at some point in the future, it will be placed in my cart, even if it is a cyber-cart. So if I think an outfit would be good for high tea with the emperor of Thailand, then I will go ahead and buy it regardless of whether or not I know who he even is. Die-hard shoppers are like that. We like to be prepared.

So I hit the "complete order" tab, which is when the whole affair began to unravel.

My regular delivery man, Miguel, is wonderful, kind and helpful, but alas he was absent the day the order arrived. I knew this when their requisite gold and white calling card was on my door but when the package was not laying on my back patio, which is where he usually throws the thing.

The requisite phone calls to UPS headquarters helped. They would reroute it to the local headquarters where I would pick it up later that night.

There at 8:12 p.m., I waited my turn in line. The problem was someone in front of me who apparently showed up on a weekly basis.

The clerk looked at him and said, "Sir, we've already told you several times to call ahead with this. Now everyone is going to have to wait in line while I go look for your package."

Being late already, that was something up with which was not going to put (borrowing a phrase from Winston Churchill.) If someone had the IQ and consideration of a string bean then I had to suffer as well. He was going to have to be that way somewhere else.

She accepted his slip anyway and she disappeared into the black hole of a place known of as the UPS Shipping and Receiving area. I, in turn, pulled out my trusty cell phone while he waited, looked in his direction and used the word "idiot." When the employee returned without his package, she repeated the company policy again, which he apparently hadn't followed thus far.

When my turn came, they nearly lost my package but then later found it in the time it takes to drive a mile on an LA freeway. Meanwhile, I had been there for an hour, so I called the manager to ask why they didn't follow their own rules and why everyone therefore had to wait because of one nimrod.

I described the nimrod as being a nimrod, which I thought was pretty mild considering all the other words I could have used, but he got mad and told me not to disparage anyone as if being politically correct was the point of the whole thing to begin with. Maybe a packing crate landed on his head.

One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first acts on taking office in 1933 was to push hard for the end of the prohibition of liquor. FDR had three motives for wanting to kick the nation off of its forced wagon. The first was that prohibition made no sense. People were going to drink, and drink, and drink, law or no law. The second was that it made a mockery of the law since everybody with a backyard, and a fence around it, tossed up a makeshift still, bootleggers turned the illicit trade in alcohol into a lucrative and bloody business, and cops and politicians (including one occupant of the White House) guzzled away on the rot gut while they turned a blind eye to the payoffs, graft and non-existent enforcement of prohibition.

The third reason was that state and federal governments were losing a kings ransom in taxes, licensing fees, and business permit fees from prohibition. Now substitute marijuana for alcohol and insert legal prohibition after it and we have the same disastrous scenario. That is a big consumer use and demand, a thumb nose at the law, and the further bankrupting of states trying to lock up legions of non-violent drug offenders. Finally as some on the L.A. City Council realize a king's ransom in taxes is being lost by trying to enforce a silly, outdated drug law. In 1933 the right call was to legalize alcohol. In the 2009 the right call is to legalize pot.

I've said this for years on this blog, but it'll be taken more seriously coming from the Wall Street Journal's uber-conservative editorial pages. Says Thomas Frank:

Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping.

This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the "elites" -- that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional -- Sarah Palin's long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.

To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.

I'll add, that after watching her resignation and reading Purdum's recent piece on her, it's become more obvious to me that she's unprecedentedly thin-skinned as she moves from perceived persecution to perceived persecution. She and her husband Todd seem to rally together around their shared anger at a cruel world. And yet the GOP voters like her more than ever, proving Thomas Frank's concerns correct.

I think this musing about political diversity from a University of Oregon student is worth considering on college campuses around the country. It's in the interests of liberal faculty to take this seriously, if they are serious about wanting to connect with and shape their world, rather than being cloistered away from it.

It doesn't much matter whether Alabama GOP Senator Jeff Sessions speaks for himself or Rush Limbaugh when he goes for the jugular during his hectoring of Sonia Sotomayor during her Senate confirmation hearing. The shadow of Limbaugh and the ultra-conservative hit attackers will hang heavy over the Senate Judiciary hearing room. Their hit points against Sotomayor can be recited in our sleep. She's too activist, too far out liberal, too pro victim's rights, affirmative action, civil liberties, and for the more rabid, a closet identity politics baiter.

None of this is true. Sotomayor has played it tight to the vest in her decisions, rulings and opinions on the appellate court. So tight, that she has drawn criticism from a prisoner who says she stiffed him on his appeal, and consumer and abortion rights groups who are cautious, if not outright leery of her.

Given the high stakes, the intense media and public scrutiny she's gotten, and the hard pounding from the right, the great fear is that Sotomayor could massage or even retreat from her moderate views on law and politics during the hearings. It's not an unfounded fear.

Sessions and company are not concerned with derailing her confirmation. Barring some monumental gaffe or disclosure, the confirmation is a done deal. The goal is to bully, cow, and badger Sotomayor on the hit points to insure that she toes the line not solely before the panel, but on the bench. The GOP hit plan is to send a firm message to the Obama administration that conservative politics and judicial and legal philosophy remains a potent force in court decisions on issues of race, gender, the environment, consumer, and civil liberties and criminal justice issues that future courts and future justices must decide.
The GOP attackers also are determined to use Sotomayor as their foil in their fierce and on-going battle to influence public opinion. This is especially crucial since there's little chance to stop her confirmation.

The instant Obama announced Sotomayor as his court pick, the massive effort to tar and brand Sotomayor as a race biased, judicial activist kicked into high gear. News clips, accounts, and commentators endlessly looped her reference to being a "wise Latina" on nightly broadcasts and in editorial pages. The aim was to hang the tag of activist judge on her. The Supreme Court's narrow reversal of her appellate court ruling against the New Haven white firefighters in their reverse discrimination affirmative action suit also was aimed at discrediting Sotomayor. Since polls show that a significant percent of whites oppose race based affirmative action programs, her decision supposedly marked her as a flawed, compromised, and biased judge. Hitting hard on Sotomayor as a race hawk and judicial activist paid another small dividend. In private meetings with moderate Democratic and conservative Republican Senators immediately after her nomination, she backpedaled from the wise Latina reference. She called it a poor choice of words. She followed that with another concession by resigning her membership in the Belizean Grove, a tame, moderate, mostly women's forum and discussion group.

She'll also be badgered to recant her 12 year affiliation with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Fund waged legal battles against job discrimination, and for bilingual education and minority voting rights. This won´t be the last mea culpa she´ll be required to make for her alleged racism before she´s confirmed.

The conservative assault has already sowed doubts about Sotomayor among much of the public. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in mid June found that the overwhelming majority of respondents backed her confirmation. A CNN poll at the end of the month found that the number of those who supported her had plunged to less than fifty percent; forty percent now opposed her confirmation.

A slip or a too confrontational pose by her during the hearings will instantly be pounced on and held up by conservative attackers as proof that Sotomayor doesn't have the right stuff to be a fair and impartial judge.

She'll be under tremendous pressure to assure Senators that she'll play it strictly by the moderate and conservative playbook on any and all decisions that even remotely touch on race and class issues on the bench, as well as abortion and other issues that are traditional conservative causes.

Sotomayor understands what's at stake, and that her every word will be taken by conservatives as a virtual etching on the Ten Commandment stone. She's already been through the wringer enough to know not to give her conservative hit attackers any more ammunition to take lethal pot shots at her. Hopefully, she'll do that without sacrificing any of her legal and personal beliefs in the process.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

I have no way of explaining it, but as I write at the Daily News' Click technology blog, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, quite a tweeter in his own right (at least that's the word on the virtual street) has begun following my very own, extremely nerdy Twitter feed.

I never "tweet" (as the verb describing the act of posting to Twitter is written) about politics, certainly not L.A. city politics ... although I just might now that Antonio is in the audience.

I mostly write about the computer hardware and software (mostly free and open-source) I'm using, how well it works (or doesn't), and what I'm going to do with that hardware and software in the minutes, hours and days ahead. I do throw in a little breaking technology news and generally anything I want to write about and be done with in seconds (rather than the minutes it takes to cook up a "proper" blog entry; yes, I have no attention span, that much should be clear).

We all know that Twitter is the geek/technology equivalent of Marilyn Monroe in the '50s, Brigitte Bardot in the '60s (and most of the '50s, it turns out), Farrah Fawcett in the '70s ... you get the idea. Twitter is now. And now Antonio is Twitter. Or so it seems.

At any rate, welcome to my Twitter feed, Mayor V. Only the best for you and my 82 other Twitter followers ...

Since the classic notion of the kind-hearted, house-calling family doctor began to fade a couple of decades ago, HMOs have gained a widespread reputation as terrifying and merciless Health Terminators -- pulling the plug on cancer patients based on technicalities and fine print, denying basic coverage to people with the slightest preexisting condition, and redefining heartless bureaucracy for a new age. In short, professionals known for giving and preserving life became characterized as the grimmest of reapers in the public imagination.

Certainly, the world's best health care was available to many, but ordinary Americans could lose it -- for years or forever -- based on the slightest misfortune. The Kaiser Permanente radio commercials, in their "up with everybody" attempts to re-brand HMOs as compassionate, only serve as self-parody.

That is why it seems a bit puzzling when pols and pundits portray government intervention in a bloated, $2.5 trillion-a-year healthcare industry as dangerous: "Do you want medical care to be more like the post office?" Um. Yeah. That would be helpful.

I don't want socialized medicine and I know we won't get it. We will get a hybrid, which works well: When public institutions are enabled to provide what a society needs, and private organizations are able to compete, you have the right mix of market forces, access and social responsibility.

Websites, blogs and chatrooms pulsed with garish cracks about it. Legions of commentators and news reporters snuck it in every chance they got. More than a few of Michael Jackson's fervent admirers and supporters made a dismissive reference to it. Even President Barack Obama in a cautious acknowledgement of Jackson's towering contributions to American music and artistry still made reference to the "tragedy" in Jackson's life which was a subtle nod to it. And New York Congressman Pete King skipped the niceties and flatly said it.

The "it" is the never ending myth of Jackson the child molester. It still hangs as a damning indictment that feeds the gossip mills and gives an arsenal of ammunition to Jackson detractors. This is not a small point. In the coming weeks, there will be a push to bestow official commemorative monuments, honors on and a national stamp for Jackson. The taint of scandal could doom these efforts to permanently memorialize Jackson.

The child molester myth doesn't rest on Jackson's trial and clean acquittal on multiple child abuse charges in a Santa Maria courthouse in June 2005. Only the most rabid Jackson loathers still finger point to that to taint Jackson. The myth of Jackson as child abuser rests squarely on the charge by a 13 year old boy a decade before the trial and the multi-million dollar settlement out of court. The settlement, then and now, feeds the suspicion that Jackson must have done something unsavory and probably criminal, or else why settle?

16 years later, though, the facts remain unchanged. The charge that Jackson molested the boy was brought by the boy's father. In interviews the boy repeatedly denied the charges. This changed only after he was administered sodium amytal, an invasive, mind altering drug that medical experts have frowned on and courts have disregarded in witness testimony. Prosecutors, police departments and investigators in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara spent millions of dollars, convened two grand juries and probed nearly 200 witnesses that included 30 children, who knew Jackson to try to substantiate the charge. Not a single corroborating witness was found. Nonetheless, a motley group of disgruntled Jackson's former housekeepers, attendants and bodyguards still peddled the story to any media outlet willing to shell out the cash that Jackson had engaged in child sexual wrongdoing. Not one of the charges was confirmed. Typical was this exchange between one of Jackson's attorneys and one of the accusing bodyguards under oath:

"So you don't know anything about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?"
"All I know is from the sworn documents that other people have sworn to."
"But other than what someone else may have said, you have no firsthand knowledge about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?"
"That's correct."
"Have you spoken to a child who has ever told you that Mr. Jackson did anything improper with the child?"
"No."
"Where did you get your impressions about Jackson's behavior?"
"Just what I've been hearing in the media and what I've experienced with my own eyes."
"Okay. That's the point. You experienced nothing with your own eyes, did you?"
"That's right, nothing."

When asked at the time about the charges against Jackson, child behavior experts and psychiatrists nearly all agreed that he did not fit the profile of a pedophile. They agreed that the disorder is progressive and there are generally not one but a trail of victims.
The myth of Jackson as child molester never hinged on evidence or testimony to substantiate it, but solely on the settlement. Why then did Jackson agree to it?
No charge stirs more disgust, revulsion, and pricks more emotional hot buttons than the charge of child molestation. The accusation stamps the Scarlet letter of doubt, suspicion, shame and guilt on the accused. The accused can never fully expunge it. There is simply no defense against it. Under the hyper intense media glare and spotlight that Jackson remained under, the allegation no mater how bogus would have been endless fodder for the public gossip mill. This would have wreaked irreparable damage on Jackson's ever shifting musical career and personal life.

A trial in Los Angeles in the racially charged backdrop of the Rodney King beating, the L.A. riots, and pulsating racial tensions in the mid-1990s would have been risky business. A trial in staid, upscale, and majority white, Santa Barbara County would have been even more risky.

Jackson and his attorneys knew that when it came to the charge of child molestation the presumption of innocence, or even actual innocence, is tossed out the window. Though Jackson did nothing wrong, a trial would have left him, his reputation and his career in shambles. The settlement was the only pragmatic, logical and legal way to end the sordid issue.

The settlement under extreme duress must not sully his name and place as an honored American icon. The myth of Jackson as child molester must finally be buried.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Socialized medicine is the Hope Diamond of politics. Every-so-often, some politician will trot it out, dust it off and display it before the curtain gets brought down on another political career. Just look at Hillary Clinton. But now, it is being shopped around again.

In spite of what the naysayers say, I am in favor of socialized medicine. It won't bankrupt our country because the sub-prime mortgage industry has already done that, and patients won't be left to die in the streets so long as our program is funded by the government but run by the medical community. If the government got involved, then people would wind probably up dying in the streets for things no more complicated than a hangnail.

It's not like it hasn't been tried and tested. Our neighbors to the north, Canada, already have socialized medicine, and there hasn't been a surge in their mortality rate or any crazy epidemics up there. Probably because theirs is run by the medical community, patients don't have to wait long for care, and doctors, nurses and other medical personnel don't wind up living in cardboard shacks. For those who don't want to get involved, there can always be privatized care where they could pay out of their own pockets, if they so choose.

It's also more just. Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive a good education or have a job that pays for health benefits, so it would be healthier for them and their children.

The one requirement I have is over who gets it and who doesn't. Anyone who is here illegally and has been filching off the government need not apply because they are the ones who helped lead us into this mess to begin with.

The L.A. City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should stop hectoring and badgering L.A. residents to pay for its botched handling of the costs of the Jackson Memorial tribute. City officials well knew that the city is in deep debt and couldn't afford to spend a scarce nickel of city money on the event. Yet, they barged ahead and rashly pledged at a press conference to use city money to pay for police and fire services for the memorial tribute. They in effect released AEG from any liability for the event and put the city in hock for the tribute.

City officials must live with their foolhardy promise. They should immediately shut down the website seeking donations and cease nagging L.A. residents to shoulder the costs they incurred because of their bad fiscal and political judgment. We can't chalk this up to Jackson mania, but to more bungling by city officials.

"Child molester" is the only two words in the English language that stir more disgust, and dread than "socialized medicine." Presidents FDR, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton were battered into submission with the two words when they had the temerity to propose universal public health care, or simply in the case of Clinton, measured health care reform. President Obama is getting the same socialized medicine smear treatment for suggesting a tepid and cautious public health option that will not even kick in unless private health insurers fail to reach a goal for health care affordability and availability that's set higher than a Challenger orbit.

But loud screeches about the alleged dire peril of socialized medicine have dumped nearly 50 million persons in the uninsured health care bin, pushed growing legions of the middle class into bankruptcy, foreclosures, and near destitution trying to pay for treatment for acute ailments, forced the shuttering of countless public and private hospitals, reaped king's ransoms for private health insurers, and made the U.S. the health laughingstock of the industrialized world. Call it socialized medicine if you will but if this will end America's long running health care travesty, than bring it on.

No, that's not a pun, but this is hopefully my last observation of the day about media bias.

My colleagues and friends expected me to run into a beehive of Jackon fans and policemen when I left my apartment a few blocks from Staples this morning. It was a piece of cake. I stopped at the nearby Starbucks to fuel up, and then walked closer to the barricades at Flower Street, a block from Staples. The crowds were sparse, but vendors were pushing shirts and posters every step of the way -- it was the most souvenir hawking I'd seen since my trip to the old city in Jerusalem a couple of years ago.

I asked one t-shirt vendor how business was.

"Light," he said. His wife said, "They said there would be a million people here."

I later asked a policeman, "Is this the crowd you expected?" He said it wasn't close. I mentioned that cops seemed to outnumber fans last night, and he said he too had heard that. I asked how they came up with the estimate of a million people, and he said the city had extrapolated that from past megafunerals such as Lady Di and Elvis.

"But I looked those up last night," I said. "Elvis had only 80,000 people and Lady Di had a quarter million. You weren't going to beat that."

"Well, it's always possible the crowd will get bigger later," he said. "Or maybe they stayed at home because they were told not to come."

"Not likely," I said. "If they came to LA for this, they at least would have come out last night to pay their respects, before the blockade. But they didn't."

I wished him a peaceful day and rode off. The city and the media both overestimated interest in this culmination of twelve days of non-stop coverage in America's quasi-royal family -- a family that sadly believes itself to be a bit more royal than it really is.

Above and below: Lighter business for opportunistic vendors than they'd been led to expect

Two blocks away from me, at Staples Center and LA Live, a few hundred people here, a few hundred there are milling around. It strikes me as a surprisingly small turnout on the final evening on which Michael Jackson fans will have unfettered access to the area prior to the memorial Tuesday morning -- and reports indicate that there are supposed to be a million of them around.

One policeman I spoke to seemed to believe that most of them will move in after midnight. Color me skeptical. Color this event over-hyped.

Tonight the crowd seems outnumbered by the media. The rented portapotties and huge police presence seem out of place. Staples has had plenty of large crowds before, and this seems at the moment like overkill.

Yes, news reports indicate that hotels and flights have been booked more than usual for this time of year. But as for the crowd itself outside Staples and LA Live, they seem to be lookie-loos, not mourners. A few wear RIP MJ shirts or other memorabilia, but most seem to be taking in the moment because they have been told by the 24-hour news-cycle media that this is a rare moment in human history. Ordinary people Tuesday will watch the memorial, like the Super Bowl, not because they care but because they are told everyone is watching it.

That is a self-fufilling prophecy. That brings out people like me, curious to see what the fuss is, and to take cellphone pictures of other people taking pictures -- as I've done below. Look closely at my first picture, of the sparse crowd shooting pictures of the large LA Live video screen as it displays pictures of Jackson. Again, this is not a historic throng of people, but rather a trickle of onlookers who have come because they have been convinced that they would witness history.

A few thoughts come to mind.

First of all, "It's not that big a deal" is not a viable storyline for a reporter in this setting. You sound like a fuddy-duddy, and you risk getting fired. So you have to go along with the hype. And as Solomon Asch pointed out, groupthink makes that easy enough.

Also, I think of the many ideologically motivated people who complain that the media is ideologically biased against their cause. First, it seems that the MJ hysteria, driven by and for the media, reveals the media's true bias -- titillation, hype and trivia.

Second, it seems that the light crowds and tepid atmosphere outside Staples, along with most Americans' irritation that the media coverage has gone overboard, show that there are limitations of the media's ability to "convert" people even if they tried. Some people came to LA because they love MJ. But the relentless media coverage didn't make many people love MJ more than they otherwise would have -- in fact there is a backlash among those who've had more than enough.

Tomorrow, the crowds will be much larger than tonight (but much smaller than the recent Laker celebrations), and the media will find ways of capturing the crowds on camera in a way that make the moment seem more momentous than it is. (My hunch is that the number of mourners at Neverland was lower than the reporters stationed there wanted you to believe, which is why I only noticed close-ups of the mourners over the past dozen days. Let me know if you saw or heard differently.)

I also think of the Jackson family, especially the narcissistic father Joe. Much has been said about how Michael's ambitions were shaped by a lack of love from his father. But we increasingly see genes as operative in behavior, and it's possible Michael just inherited Joe's congenital need for the spotlight. Since the 1984 Victory Tour, I've always felt that his father orchestrates everything in a manner that maximizes their public exposure. They take endless time pondering whether to hold MJ's memorial at the LA Coliseum, in Neverland, in Staples, or simply to shoot him to the moon so that he can belong to the heavens. Nothing is left to the imagination, no mystique, no mystery. All hype is gratefully accepted, even from a character such as Al Sharpton.

Jermaine Jackson is said to now be Muslim, and MJ is said to have possibly taken on a Muslim faith himself. It should be noted that the Islamic value is on quickly and quietly sending the deceased off to their rest, without fanfare. This, you could say, is a very un-Islamic affair that we are witnessing. It reflects the ultimate collaboration of media whores such as Joe and Al Sharpton and a media that is looking for the latest thing to hype beyond recognition.



Above: More cops than mourners? At times, it seemed the case.

Mr. President, you are wrong on Afghanistan. Your policy creates a roadmap to hell. We know where this road leads because it is well travelled and its ruts run deep in history and are filled with the blood of failed empires.

We cannot make a nation where no nation exists. We cannot impose democracy. At the very most we can get most Afghanistanis to agree on one thing: We have to go. And so we shall eventually. But after how much loss of life--theirs and ours?

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The scorecard reads 18 to 0. 18 is the number of icon celebrities who have died from prescription drug abuse in past decades. 0 is the number of doctors not sanctioned or prosecuted for aiding and abetting the celebrities in their drug binge. Pop icon Michael Jackson may raise the number of celebrities to 19 whose death may have been drug induced. The odds are that if a doctor is implicated in giving Jackson drugs that may have precipitated his death that doctor will end up in the 0 column of doctors reprimanded or prosecuted for aiding and abetting his drug use.

Yet, based on a few high profile cases such as the two pill pushing doctors indicted in the drug induced death of Anna Nicole Smith, the public believes that prosecutors and medical boards routinely nail doctors who peddle mega doses of pills for profit to their celeb clients. This is a myth. A study by the Center for Practical Bioethics, published in Pain Magazine in 2008, found that a grand total of 725 doctors were prosecuted or sanctioned by state medical boards for prescribing illict drugs from 1998 to 2006. The number of doctors who were prosecuted for laddling out drugs to their mostly celebrity clients was only 25. This is an infinitismal fraction of all practicing physicians in the country.

The doctors, especially doctors who indulge their client's ravenous drug appetite, have little fear of winding up in a courtroom docket. The occasional few who do may not serve a day in jail even if convicted. The courts, lawmakers, industry and patient rights groups have seen to that. In a landmark case in 2005, a federal appeals court in Virginia tossed the drug conspiracy conviction of Virginia doctor William E. Hurwitz. Hurwitz had deluged his patients with over half a million pain pills in just 40 months in 2004. Yet, the court ruled that the doctor had acted in good faith in feeding the hunger of his drug dependant clients. The medical establishment breathed a big sigh of relief at the decision. The ruling further hardened the Teflon legal coat over doctors.

The abortive prosecution of Hurwitz underscored another troubling fact about drug peddling doctors. While they are easy to ID, they're still virtually immune from prosecution. In Jackson's case, there are at least five or more doctors who are suspect in giving him one or more drugs at varying times during the last year of his life. Jackson's personal physician, Conrad Murray, who may have given Jackson one or more drugs was instantly fingered. Despite huge questions about Murray's emergency treament method of Jackson, the gap in time in his notifying paramedics, the discovery of a powerful drug Propofol and almost certainly other drugs in Jackson's house, lawsuits against him, and the unrelease of toxicological results, LAPD investigators still publicly wrote the doctor off as a suspect.

The celebrity drug dispensing doctors aren't shadowy figures who skulk behind pseudonyms and dummy operations. The Drug Enforcement Administration, state and local prosecutors, and medical associations in most cases know who they are. They are easily traceable through billing records on the medical software systems they commonly use. There is a permanent record of the patient's name, drug cost, drugs purchased, and date of purchase. The data can't be deleted from the servers. The DEA could also identify the doctors who had any medical dealings with Jackson and the kind of drugs they supplied him with through record checks, tips, informants, and pharmacy records.
A decade ago doctors also got a powerful boast in their fight to limit government prying into how and who they prescribe drugs to. Medical and patient rights groups mounted a massive campaign to defeat the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 1998 authored by Illinois Representative Henry Hyde. The bill would have given the DEA the power to revoke the prescription license of any doctor who intentionally prescribes a lethal dose of pain medication to a patient.

Doctors screamed that the bill would hamstring them in their freedom to prescribe legitimate pain management treatment for patients. That was an arguable point. But the defeat of the Hyde bill also sent the message that medical organizations have the might and resources to kill any legislation they deem restricts doctors from having absolute say over drug prescribing.

Doctors and medical groups defend the low number of prosecutions by pointing out that just the threat of investigations and prosecutions has a chilling effect on the medical profession and makes doctors even more skittish about abusing drugs. There's truth to that. The majority of doctors play it close to the vest in how and when they prescribe drugs.

But Jackson's death and that of other drug abusing celebrities show that there are packs of doctors willing to dump ethics, law and scruples, not to mention the health of their clients, for a buck and celebrity allure. They're safe in the knowledge that they will likely skip away scot free from prosecution. A doctor implicated in Jackson's death can very well expect to the same.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

It took the obstinate and abstinent Sarah Palin, "natch," to puncture the thick prophylactic of MJ media coverage. She and her spokesperson, Meg Stapleton, managed to characterize her resignation as a heroic act.

Palin lamented that the biggest problem facing our nation is apathy, and with that, she announced that she'd walk away from the final 18 months of a four-year term. Stapleton put a nice spin on that, saying that Palin can't make change within the current political system, so she's looking for other, unspecified ways to make change.

So the woman who said she'd bring change to America now complains that she can't change Alaska because people don't play nice. But what would a maverick do...?

Palin at her presser used a basketball analogy, saying that a point guard must break a full-court press by racing down court and then finding someone else to hand the ball off to. Stapleton, speaking later to an incredulous Anderson Cooper, repeated the analogy. When he failed to get it, Stapleton responded with a marvelous, booming and condescending laugh, arguing something about how Palin "passed the ball off, and said I'm going around it, and we all have the same common hoop, but I'm going around the block." Huh?

I guess what bugs me is the old issue we've dealt with around here too many times: Media "bias." Palin and Stapleton engaged in the most disingenuous game today, clumsily attempting to frame her resignation as a profile in courage and wisdom. The only people who will buy any of it are the diehard partisans. And those are the same persons who lament how any push-back from an Anderson Cooper represents reprehensible and insufferable ideology. For such persons, all nature will look like a conspiracy against them.

We political junkies all expected that a prominent Republican governor with presidential ambitions might resign over the long weekend. We are very smart and semi-prescient. We just expected that the governor would be love-besotted Mark Sanford. Sarah Palin, though as controversial as ever, looked secure in her job and in the hearts of conservatives.

As of this writing, we know nothing--but the Internet being the Internet and nature as well as blogs hating a vacuum--this won't stop us (okay, me) from analyzing this very curious and shocking development. First, across the political spectrum, let us hope that there is no family or medical emergency driving her resignation. Political friend or foe, there should be nothing mean spirited of a personal nature.

Sarah Palin was a major political talent. The raw talent that she showed on her debut in national politics was awesome. Had she remained in office and governed for another two years, schooled herself on issues and allowed herself to be coached, that rawness might have been polished and she could have been a contender. Now, we will never know. Sarah, we hardly knew ye.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

On my commute home, I snapped this shot of Michael Jackson coverage outside Staples Center. Very nice look for the NBC reporter - suitcoat, shorts and clogs.

Given the times we live in, I'd much rather see most families stick together rather than stick it to each other. Take the currently reigning mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa (nee, Villar). Okay, he did do some nasty things to his wife, in the marital arena, but in terms of his bloodline, he boy has been more faithful than a bloodhound.

The name Mary Lou Villar may not mean much to the average Angelino, but she was given the dubious honor of swearing him in at Wednesday's Inauguration Ceremonies at City Hall. To anyone who has ever done anything dubious, the name may mean a lot, for she is the mayor's sister and is a sitting judge.

Never mind that she wasn't educated at an ivy-league school (because, hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?), she was appointed by the guvernator. In fact, her credentials read, UCLA Law School and Cal State-LA. Not too shabby, but not a direct path to the top.

Then there is John Perez. The average mope on the street may not know his name, either, but he is the former President of the Los Angeles Teacher's Union, as in John-there-was-a-lot-of-dissention-when-you, Linda-Guthrie-and-all-your-other-cronies-were-in-office-Perez. That one. Though in spite of his credentials, whatever they may be, the mayor, who also doubles as his first cousin, appointed him to the City's Community Redevelopment Agency, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Proving once again that it's not what you know but who you know.

I really don't like writing about Michael Jackson, but what can I do? His life and death clog the news, the cable stations, the Today Show and all the special Hollywood oriented tabloid-type shows. There is just no escape--except for PBS which had the nerve to lead Wednesday's news hour with our withdrawal from Iraqi cities, the unemployment numbers, Obama pitching health care reform and the Korean ship turning back. No Michael. No Governor Palin and not even Governor Sanford. What could PBS have been thinking?

Save for PBS there is no escape--not from the pseudo-news and not even physically. Last week I was trapped in Westwood where Michaels dead, but not certified dead, body was taken. This week, all week, I'm trapped in the hills of Encino. The police and parking enforcement have closed off Havenhurst, blocking escape. As Andy Rooney might ask: "Did you ever wonder who authorized the closure of a street and who pays for the policing?" I wonder.

Every contradictory rumor is spread--and not just on the internet but on broadcast and cable shows. There's a will. There's no will. He is not the biological father. His ex-wife is not the biological mother. My favorite on MSNBC yesterday was the report that an African American Jewish woman living in England is his secret wife--and just possibly the biological mother. I'd be less surprised to find that I'm the biological mother. His brother opined today that Michael was in great health and didn't use drugs. This leads me to believe that like Elvis, he's faked his death and he and Elvis are serving burgers in Toledo.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Once a skeptic of downtown LA, I'm now a convert. I've been a downtown LA resident for five months now and remain convinced that the place is poised to become a major urban center. Allow me to offer an admittedly South-Park-centric list of some top attractions for locals, visitors and would-be downtowners:

1) The wine tastings at Ralphs, generally held on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings. I once laughed at how downtowners were so thrilled to get a Ralphs -- then I realized that this was one hell of a Ralphs, positively Whole Foodesque in its all-around excellence. Wine steward Mike Berger's wine tastings -- complete with elegant cheeses and occasional roasted meats -- are a hidden delight of local living. You can get schedule updates from Mike at downtownster.com. Then get down there and bask in his friendly wisdom about all things red or white.

2) Bottega Louie. The place is buzzing. I said, THE PLACE IS BUZZING -- sorry, it gets so noise there that a person has to shout. Its cavernous dining area has terrific pizzas, its elegant bar has great cocktails, and it also has a deluxe heaping of deli and bakery and grocer items. The fact that it's so packed late most evenings and on weekends may be the best evidence yet that downtown has popped.

3) The Cork Bar. A classy wine bar, with California specialties and wonderful food. Try the hanger steak or the cheeseburger.

4) New Zealand Natural Ice Cream. Believe it or not, the ice cream really comes from New Zealand. If you like mango, you will quickly become addicted to the Mango Passion there. Others rave about the rocky road and espresso, though. In any event, you can't go wrong.

Those are the first four that come to me. What am I missing? Disney Hall, Cafe Pinot, the Edison, what else...? More later....

Gail-Tzipporah and I have some similar views about America -- with important nuances. She loves America's free expression, but it "kills" her to see anyone use free expression to criticize America. She loves how immigrants such as her father or my father can come here to build a better life but is more wary than I of future immigrants. She believes that people who don't like it here can "leave the kitchen" -- but I note the irony, as Jonathan does, that it's usually the most brazenly patriotic persons (the Palins, anyone?) who are quickest to argue for the right of their state to secede from the great experiment of our Founding Fathers.

Me, I'm incomparably proud to be an American and would exchange it for nothing, under any circumstances. I love how America filled itself up with people from around the world who said, "We can do better," and who put their money where their mouth was. That progressive and reforming spirit imbues this country with the spirit of reinvention that always keeps us at the forefront. Other great nations were mainly just proud of their ancestry -- but we always believe we can do things better -- and over the long haul we always do.