Archive for January, 2009
January 20th, 2009
Polls say that Barack Obama’s approval rating is 83 percent. What? He’s not even inaugurated yet. Starting at noon today, his popularity will begin to diminish, because he will start making real decisions.
Obama is expected to issue a flurry of executive orders, dictating the very slow closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, ordering abortion options included in U.S. aid to birth control grants to poor countries, allowing openly homosexual and lesbian people to serve in the military and reversing anti-environmental orders signed by the outgoing Bush administration.
All those things will bring his approval rating down to the low 60s, still fairly high. He will also name retired senator George Mitchel to be his special envoy to the Middle East and will begin to tilt our foreign policy back from supporting Israel at all costs, to an even-handed approach to the various Middle East crises. It’s no accident to me that Israel is pulling out of Gaza and signing a cease fire with Hamas in the final hours of the Bush administration. Israel might no longer have have carte blanche approval from the U.S. to ruthlessly bomb its neighbors.
But it’s the economy that most people expect Obama to put right, a tall, tall order. Looking at the version of his stimulus plan that emerged from a House committee, I fail to see how it’s going to protect or create 2, 3 or 4 million jobs. It’s mostly money that will go to existing entities. What we all thought was going to be a massive public works bill turns out to be just $30 billion for roads, $10 billion for mass transit and $1.1 billion for intercity rail.
Big deal? Not so much. If in 6 months the economy continues to slide, his approval rating goes into the 50s. In a year, if things aren’t getting better, he’s in the 40s, and then if he’s not careful, Obama will join the Bush leagues.
Obama will seriously hurt his relations with business groups if he pushes a “card check” bill that unions expect him to pass in order to make it easier for unions to organize chapters without secret ballot elections. However, he’ll offset that, but only partially, by improving his standing with unions.
Obama will get similarly mixed reactions by promoting the equal pay for equal work bill that feminist groups expect to be passed. It sounds good in theory, but who’s to decide what’s an equal job? Is unloading plywood from a train car equal to entering data into a computer? Beats the heck out of me. You?
If Obama hasn’t delivered the goods on the economy in 2010 he very well could lose Democratic majorities in Congress. To those of you who think the Republicans are dead as door nails, I have one thing to say: 1994.
Shut out of majority status for 40 years, the GOP came storming back that year to take both houses of Congress. Bill Clinton, elected in 1992, faltered miserably during his first two years in office, with his goofy don’t ask don’t tell policy for gays in the military policy, and with his wife Hillary’s draconian health plan that never made it out of what was supposed to be a friendly Congress. Voters decided to hire the Republicans instead. They passed welfare reform, which Clinton signed and promptly took credit for after vetoing similar legislation twice.
The American people have given a tremendous victory to Barack Obama, just as they did to Bill Clinton. The latter squandered his political capital. Let’s hope Obama learned from Bill’s mistakes.
And that’s the view of a skeptical reporter who’s been covering politics since 1972.
January 19th, 2009
The papers and blogs are chock full o’ nuts with columnists giving advice to Barack Obama about what he should say in his Inaugural address Tuesday at high noon. The Washignton Post even has a piece entitled “What Obama can learn from Moses.” Didn’t Martin Luther King already use the Moses theme in a big speech?
Well, yours truly has been thinking about what Obama can use as inspiration, and I’ve come up with something that fits nicely with Obama’s “we’re all in this together” theme.
It’s a song by the The Hollies.. That’s right. Obama can inspire the multitudes with words built around this theme:
“It’s a long, long road, From which there is no return,
While we’re on the way, to there, why not share?
And the load doesn’t weigh me down, at all,
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”
January 19th, 2009
The kickoff inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday was wonderful, especially because the musicians were able to play so well in freezing temperatures. As a musician I know first hand that strange things happen to instruments and fingers in the cold. It isn’t and it isn’t pleasant, either for the musician or for the audience who has to listen.
But these people played with such precision you would have thought they were doing a concert in Jamaica, which is where Will-i-am and Sheryl Crow thought they were during one reggae-inspired number.
For sheer energy, you couldn’t beat Garth Brooks, who did a shortened but rousing version of “American Pie,” followed by “You make me want to SHOUT.” I also enjoyed John Mellencamp’s Little Pink Houses, done with a gospel choir, and the U2 stuff, although Bono takes himself entirely too seriously.
Beyonce Knowles crowned the concert with a soulful rendition of America the Beautiful, performed with help by military and children’s choruses and a military orchestra.
Another highlight was Tom Hanks reading Lincoln passages while the orchestra played a tribute to the 16th president composed by Aaron Copland.
Altogether, HBO pulled off a masterful presentation in less than perfect weather conditions. Every once in awhile the camera showed the Obama family swaying or clapping to the music. But Barack was careful to keep his famous reserve. No dancing around like George W. Bush, who was famous for boogieing — and looking rather silly — with the locals while on foreign trips.
The only thing that bummed me out was that I couldn’t find this HBO free concert on my cable TV. HBO urged cable companies to carry the feed free. Never mind, though. I watched the concert later on my laptop, plugged into my Altec Lansing sound system. Marvelous.
I can’t wait for the day when cable is obsolete and I can watch TV on my computer.
January 19th, 2009
What’s in a name? Plenty if your middle name is Hussein. Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president Tuesday, and he will use his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
Of course, he’s named after his father, a secular Kenyan government official who was technically Muslim but didn’t practice his religion. That middle name was both the talk and the “word you can’t say on TV” of Campaign 2008. When rightwing talk show host Bill Cunningham called Obama by his full name while warming up a crowd at a John McCain rally, the Republican candidate later rebuked Cunningham for using the dreaded “Hussein” word.
What I wonder is why “Hussein” is such a verboten word if Chief Justice John Roberts and Obama are both going to be using it Tuesday at high noon?
“Repeat after me, I, Barack Hussein Obama, solemly swear …” Roberts will say, and Obama will respond, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemly swear.”
A couple of billion people will hear that.
Yes, we all know that Hussein has become a dirty word because of Saddam Hussein was the dreaded butcher of Baghdad, deposed in the 2002 invasion of Iraq, then tried in a circus-like court and hanged, the latter event captured on video via cel phone.
But it was not all that long ago that the word “Hussein” denoted friendship with America. You all remember the late King Hussein of Jordan. He was a benevolent monarch, did well by his people, and he was even married to an American woman.
Fact is, there aren’t as many names people can use in Arabic as in English. So there are a lot of Husseins. Some are bad guys like Saddam, some are good guys like the late king.
We have more important things to worry about than the president-elect’s middle name. Story over.
January 17th, 2009
While Obama’s stimulus plan shortchanges passenger rail, the Europeans are rocketing ahead of us, spending many billions of euros to essentially make the airlines obsolete for journeys of under 500 miles by replacing them with trains that travel at speeds up to 224 mph. The Independent (UK) has the story:
Could this be the age of the train, not the plane?
New high-speed rail links across the Continent will soon give the airlines a run for their money. Mark Rowe reports on the services we can look forward to
Sunday, 18 January 2009
This year really does appear to be the age of the train, or, at least, the age of the continental train. The opening of the high-speed link between Rome and Milan last month has cut an hour off the journey, with the trip now taking three hours, 30 minutes on Trenitalia’s Red Arrow train (pictured right), which plies the route at up to 186 miles per hour.
But the line does more than connect Italy’s first and second cities; it is just the first of a series of dramatic high-speed links and new train lines that will open, or on which work will begin this year.
By the end of this year, a new high-speed link will connect Brussels and Amsterdam, cutting the journey time from London to the Dutch city from five hours and five minutes to three hours, 36 minutes; a high-speed line from Brussels to the German border will open around the same time, reducing times to Cologne and other German cities by up to 30 minutes.
These follow recent openings such as the Barcelona-Madrid high-speed link in 2007, which has reduced airline share on the route between the two cities (once the busiest air route in Europe) from 88 per cent to 40 per cent. Meanwhile, France has announced plans for high-speed links joining the Rhine and the Rhone, as well as between Tours and Bordeaux and Paris and Rennes. Next year a TGV line will link France and Spain, between Perpignan and Figueres.
Air France-KLM is considering replacing some of its short-haul European flights with a high-speed rail service on a new generation of Alstom trains known as the AGV. These can carry up to 900 passengers at 224mph and could link Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport and Amsterdam in about one and half hours. And Denmark is working on a high-speed train network that travels at 130mph between Copenhagen and Aalborg.
This activity is driven by a European Commission mission to increase dramatically rail’s share of passengers against flights within the European Union. In 2007, the European Commission helped to launch Railteam, a consortium of high-speed operators, including Eurostar UK, Belgium’s Thalys, France’s SNCF, the Swiss network SBB, and Deutsche Bahn, the German operator. The aim is that, by 2010, 25 million international travellers will use the European high-speed rail network and that the network will triple between 2007 and 2020. Railteam also works on improving access and infrastructure for passengers and is implanting an integrated rail timetable across Europe that will ensure that you will wait no longer than 30 minutes for a connecting train at one of the major transport hubs.
This spring, Railteam launches a 30-million ticket distribution system, which should make it easier for international travellers to secure the lowest price for a through ticket from any distributor of European rail in a single transaction. Rail Europe can now sell tickets to 5,000 destinations across Europe. “The aim of Railteam is to improve waiting times, signage and make it easier for people to buy through tickets and cheaper tickets,” said a spokesperson for Eurostar.
Rail companies hope that this greater integration of pan-European services will entice travellers off aircraft. Railteam studies suggest that business travellers are willing to travel up to four hours on rail, while leisure travellers are prepared to enjoy longer
journeys of up to eight hours, comfortably enough to reach the south of France, Geneva, and, just, Spain.
More developments will come next year, when the EU opens its international passenger rail market to competition, so that private and state companies will be able to apply to run services in third countries. Deutsche Bahn has made it clear it wishes to run services from St Pancras to German destinations. Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains has also expressed interest in any franchises that might arise from deregulation. “The increase in rail travel across Europe is a good thing, and we can all see it is only going to increase,” said a spokesman. “It’s now been comprehensively proven that rail travel can match air travel over distances such as London to Paris and longer. Even if you’re not concerned about the green arguments, the advantages of rail over air are very clear.”
The developments are welcomed by Mark Smith, author of the website seat61.com. “High-speed links are great for travel from the UK. And cheaper tickets are really improving access.” However, Mr Smith added that high-speed rail was not the only way to gauge the success of Europe’s railways. “Sleeper trains can be more convenient than high-speed trains for certain destinations,” he explained. “Germany has really invested in its sleep train service. They can be more effective than high-speed trains in getting to Spain and Italian destinations south of Milan.”
“Rail is becoming more of an option as people realise there is an alternative to flying,” said Amanda Monroe, a spokeswoman for Rail Europe. “More tour operators are offering rail packages and that has to be because customers are asking for them. There’s a combination of factors: people are fed up with the hassle and stresses of flying; they’re thinking about green issues, and they’re also realising it’s often quicker. These are good times for Europe’s railways.”
Six new high-speed routes
Amsterdam-Brussels: present journey time, five hours five minutes; projected new time, three hours 36 minutes.
Rome-Milan: old time, four hours 30 minutes; new time, three hours 30 minutes.
London-Cologne: present time, four hours 45 minutes; projected new time, four hours.
London-Berlin: present time, 10 hours; projected new time, eight hours 30 minutes.
London-Milan: old time, 16 hours; new time, 12 hours.
London-Geneva: old time, 11 hours; new time, seven hours.
January 17th, 2009
And so the Rockford Township Republican Caucus of 2008 is history. Let the record show that it was an unmitigated disaster. Out of 17,000 eligible Republicans, just 133 braved the cold weather Tuesday night to trudge on down to the Flinn Middle School auditorium to take part in the sorry production in which most of the speakers mumbled incomprehensibly into a microphone.
(Side note: Improper mike use is one of my pet peeves. Microphones and sound amplifiers have been around for generations, yet most folks still have no idea how to speak into the mike properly. “Tap, tap, tap. Is this on?”)
People I talked to at the newly “Heartlandized” Flinn thought that having a caucus was a “dumb” idea in the largest township in the state because it disenfranchised so many people. The chief organizers of this event were a group of 16 Republican precinct committeemen who voted in November to replace the traditional primary with a caucus. The township’s last Republican caucus was in 1967 and it was held in a ballroom of the Faust Hotel, Dick Baer, former alderman and township supervisor, told me.
Ringleaders of the caucus coup were three, former Winnebago County Board members: John Harmon, the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, Chris K. Johnson and John M. Sweeney. Harmon and Johnson were defeated for re-election; Sweeney left the board to take a job with the county.
In a commentary he wrote in last Sunday’s Register Star, local GOP Vice-Chairman Jim Thompson defended the caucus, saying that “most of the people who have commented at the meetings held over the past months governing the caucus have expressed a new level of excitement.”
Well, 133 out of 17,000 does not excitement make. I hope that Republicans “remember the 133” the next time party zealots with entirely too much time on their hands propose a caucus to for Rockford Township. Let all the people vote because the GOP isn’t a private club, it’s one of our nation’s two, great political parties.
Having finished my diatribe, (and yes, I do feel better,) I must say that I was impressed with one speaker, and not just because he knew how to use the mike. Don Hall, a McCain delegate to the 2008 Republican convention, was a candidate for township trustee who asked to be removed from the slate and to be considered instead for slating as the party’s candidate for township supervisor against Democratic incumbent Mickey Goral.
Hall, a retired Air Force colonel, gave an impressive speech about the need for frugality and transparency in township government. He railed against the high salaries and 4 percent yearly raises township officials (except for Clerk Diane Mitchell) have given themselves. I’ll be talking more to Hall.
As for me, I’ve long favored abolition of the curious anachronism we call township government, and giving its few remaining functions over to cities and counties. The only place where township government makes any sense in the 21st century is at Midway Village.
January 17th, 2009
I figure that the “Miracle on the Hudson” will soon be either a TV movie or a cinema feature. Of course you know i’m talking about the water-landing of the US Airways flight that left LaGuardia on Thursday bound for Charlotte, N.C., hit a flock of geese and ditched into the Hudson River. All 155 on board were saved, thanks, everyone has concluded, to the cool-as a cucumber flying of ace pilot, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III. Sully, a former Air Force fighter jet pilot, is a safety expert with his own consulting firm. He’s also an accident investigator who helps the National Transportation Safety Board. He’s advised NASA.
Oh, and he’s a certified glider instructor. So, Sully knew how to turn his Airbus 320 into a glider for the ride down the river.
Read Sully’s bio at his firm’s website:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that if this were a movie, nobody would believe it. I believe it will be a movie, and people will have to believe it because it actually happened.
My question to you is, who should play “Sully?” I vote for Tom Hanks.
January 17th, 2009
The next president of the United States was on TV Friday night — reviewing neighborhood restaurants in Chicago.
No I am not making this up. The show was WTTW-11’s popular “Check Please” restaurant review program featuring average customers, not professional reviewers. Back in 2001 when the show was new, one reviewer on one of the episodes was a South Side state senator, Barack Obama. He reviewed Dixie Kitchen and Bait Shop, 5525 S. Harper in Hyde Park, saying he liked it because he could get good, southern food and a reasonable price.
“The prices are right and the portions are good. It has done booming business in the Hyde Park area attracting business from all across the South side,” Obama said.
“Really, it represents the kind of restaurant that every neighborhood should have,” he added.
What’s fascinating about the show is that Obama uses the diverse restaurants — an Italian place in far northwest Edison Park neighborhood, the French themed Le Bouchon in Bucktown, and the Dixie Kitchen on the South Side, to urge Chicagoans to explore other parts of the city that aren’t familiar to them..
He also does a little campaigning for the South Side, and particularly his legislative district, telling retailers and restaurant owners that if they provide good value and reasonable prices “you can do some good business out on the south side of Chicago.”
What’s uncanny in this episode — called the “lost episode” because it never aired before Friday night — ”is that Obama is exactly the same when talking about the relative merits of restaurants as he is when analyzing options for improving the economy or closing the internment camp camp at Guantanamo, Cuba.
You can watch this on WTTW’s website.
January 17th, 2009
OBAMA ON THE RAIL — Obama took a train Saturday from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., picking up Amtrak commuter and soon-to-be Vice President Joe Biden along the way in Wilmington, Del. The trip was a re-creation of the trip President-elect Abraham Lincoln took in 1861.
I hope that Obama will be an advocate for passenger rail, the agreenest of green transportation, but so far I’m not seeing a green light. At the outset of his administration, he appears to be an asphalt guy, according to a leading passenger train advocate.
Rick Harnish, director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Assn., says Obama’s economic recovery plan includes little money for intercity passenger trains.
“I just got news that the U.S. House Appropriations Committee released a summary of its proposed stimulus package bill today,” Harnish wrote Friday to rail advocates.
“The committee is proposing to spend just $10 billion on transit, with only $1.1 billion of that allocated for intercity passenger rail. Meanwhile, the proposal includes $30 billion for highway construction.
“President-Elected Obama has asked for a bill that will change our economy to be more fuel efficient and green. This proposed bill won’t do that. Please let your representatives know that this is unacceptable. This is not the the kind of change we can believe in,” Harnish said.
If there’s only $10 billion for transit programs in the stimulus package, and just a tenth of that for intercity rail, it’s bad news indeed for the Rockford area’s expensive Amtrak/commuter rail plan submitted to the government by area planners. Let’s hope more rail money shows up when Congress re-writes the Surface Transportation Act.
January 15th, 2009
I’ve heard of strange newspaper takeovers — real estate mogul Sam Zell buying the Trib comes to mind — but here’s something that takes the cake. Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, a KGB agent during the Soviet era, is poised to buy the London Evening Standard.He said he grew fond of the sensationalistic Standard while reading it as part of his spy duties for Moscow. The Guardian has the story.
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