People who damn the media should be careful about what they wish for

Although life hasn't been going well in the media world with the decline of newspapers, it's getting even worse these days with  deranged presidential campaign rhetoric  delivered as applause lines for a mindless right-wing audience.

  Donald Trump, America's first multi-billion-dollar demagogue, hysterically refers to journalists as "scum and garbage'" while his dreamy rival, Ben Carson, insists that without Fox News, "America would be Cuba".

The vituperative pile-on by all of the "Republican" candidates after the CNBC-sponsored debate merely contributed to the national delusion that we would all be better off watching geezer-friendly old TV movies than reading printed words (except Bibles and NRA newsletters).

As a long-time journalist who has been known to be at odds at times  with the modern TV and print media, I have a few words for the critics of the so-called "liberal media". It's called the First Amendment.  It includes, you know,  Freedom of the press", a durable concept  hundreds of years old  that has survived royalty, tyrants and colonial governors.  Moreover, it  doesn't exclude media that you, nor I,  might not  happen to like.

Even a panicky University of Missouri commnications professor, who should have known better, ignored the roots of her profession by shouting for more "muscle" to prevent a  student journalist from doing his job during the  campus protests.  Melissa Click,  who was on courtesy assignment to the staff of the respected  School of Journalism showed such little regard for  press freedom that she later withdrew from the journalism school program with an apology.

Always an apology these days when things go wrong to your disadvantage.  Her troubles may just be beginning.   Another student is seeking action for a charge to  be filed against her for obstructing his presence at the site. She should have learned about such misbehavior  in Journalism 101.

Well, here I go again appearing to be an apologist for my profession when in fact the more relevant issue is whether the political fringe will find its  way to tolerate a free press in a free society in a not- so- free world, even as  Carson finds it political convenient to warn his crowd about Cuba.

Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times that more than 20,000 newsroom jobs have been lost in America since 2001 - a work force drop of 42 pct.

The problem today is not the press,  but rather its rising death toll.

The brutal bio of Tom Cotton - Kristol's guy.

Reposted from Plunderbund


The New York Times Sunday magazine  added to  freshman Sen. Tom Cotton's scrapbook rise to celebrity with a full-page interview and tall photo  of the young Arkansas Republican who fatuously wrote the letter to Iranians warning them of a bad outcome for the deal supported by the U.S.

The vital statistics of the man included his NBA dream team (which, alas, did not include LeBron James!)  and his non-answer as to whether he is dreaming about more trivial matters as a vice presidential candidate on the GOP national ticket in 2016.  He cryptically answered: "I am focussed on the work that the people of Arkansas sent me to do."

As Seinfeld's Kramer would blurt:  "Oh, Mama!"

All of the commotion about the guy sent me back into the files to learn  how he ended up in the Senate in the first  place from the Razorback State.

Think: William Kristol,  the big-time neocon who merged Sarah Palin onto John McCain's ticket in 2008.  Think of the same neocon whose New York Times op-ed columns were eliminated after the editors finally lost patience with his many factual errors.  Think of the same neocon who seeks relevancy as editor of the  right-wing Weekly Standard as well as the smarmy guest on TV shows. And think of the warrior neocon who was a major figure in calling for the Bush invasion of Iraq and who now supports a re-invasion of  that hapless country.

Now, think of the neocon as a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel with considerable  sway among other donor allies.  Kristol sent upward of $800,000 to his newly bought and paid for  Tom Cotton, another acquired alter ego (who happens to be a Methodist).

As I learned in so many years in the newspaper world, names make news.    So when you see Cotton's name, you need to know more about what the political world is now talking about, the man who wanted to imprison NY Times editor Bill Keller and two reporters over something the Times printed.

As a congressman in 2013 Cotton also proved he can be damned cruel.   He wanted  to insert an amendment in an Iran sanctions bill (amendment later withdrawn) that would have severely punished anyone who violated the sanctions.  He even levied that on their families  as a "corruption of blood" that automatically included "parents, children,  aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids."

The guy is driven - but do you really want to be a passenger?

Here's stuff to brighten your day...

In my querulous quest to bring light to the planet's endless darkness, I offer today  some vignettes  that you may have missed  in the numbing front-page  media coverage of LeBron's return:

Dollar Tree has converted its dollars $8.5 billion times for its purchase price for Family Dollar. Don't know where that leaves discounter Dollar General, whose latest flier told us of scads of items well above a buck (The only stuff  that sustained the $1  tag were Animal Crackers and a few other Back to School "Snacks and Treats" .)  As a wag once  said of Starbucks in New York City, they should call it "FiveBucks".

* * * * *

All writers, including me, should mightily thank  New York Times columnist Gail Collins for liberating us from the cumbersome burden of politically correct references to his/her...When she began a sentence "Look, everybody has their own way of demonstrating..."  it was a wicked dismissal of a singular subject and plural pronoun that has tormented me since I was still  figuring out how to replace a typewriter ribbon. Now,  everybody and their  have been reconciled in the Times by a leading national columnist.   Will she now move on with who and whom?  Gail, I'm waiting.  Desperately.

* * * * *


After years in my line of work, I learned that you can't  tell  politicians from their covers. No better example of that is Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine, a
Republican,  who seems so meek and mild but is a first-tier religious zealot.  On Tuesday,Team DeWine was in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati, again arguing against what he considers sinful, lawbreaking same-sex marriage.   No one has  been keeping score on how much all of this costing Ohioans - a personal crusade that extended  for DeWine in earnest when he ran for the office in 2011 promising to fashion an AG  career on family values and opposition to ObamaCare. (Summit County Republican Chairman was a paid DeWine liaison in northern Ohio, which paid adequately and required no heavy lifting). Although Outlook Ohio Magazine pointed out that 29 consecutive court decisions support marriage equality, DeWine is Ohio's King Sisyphus, who was  forced  to repeatedly roll a huge boulder up the hill and then see it roll back.

* * * * *

Finally: It's getting harder every day for a baseball writer to cover the sport.  When Pirates star outfielder Andrew McCutchen was forced out of the lineup with a fractured rib, the medical report  called it an "avulsion fracture involving the costochondral cartilage of the left 11th rib."

Anybody?

Germ warfare without soap and shampoo

The New York Times, which boldly inquires where others fear to ask, has given us an entirely new perspective on germ warfare. It arrived via an essay by  radio producer and essayist Julia Scott in the paper's May 22  magazine in which she said she went 22 days without showering with soap or shampoo.  Something about checking out bacteria in the human skin. She said she also wanted to find out what she smelled like when the test ended.  

What a cue for folks who are trying everything short of sandpaper to clean up the germs.  Here are what some readers told the Times:

Eat a vegan diet to minimize body odor; sit in a Dead Sea salt bath weekly; only rinse in warm water; wash with spring water; use natural salts; use organic soaps ,"like Dr.Bronner's".

One reader commented on the importance of washing hands, noting that "soap saves lives".

Wrote another: "Yes, the hands carry bad germs, but plain old soap and water or  ethyl alcohol take care of that."

Even in his day, King Louis X1V was quite aware of the evils of dirty skin.  He is said to have rubbed spirits and   alcohol on his body.   Of course, body odor was around in epidemic proportion in those days, which drove the upper classes to soak up extraordinary amounts of perfume.

Next, we have been told that billionaire Howard Hughes was so obsessive about germs that he even wore tissue boxes on his feet to ward off the evil germs. A former University of Alabama psychology professor, Raymond D.  Fowler, wrote that Hughes  was  phobic about germs throughout his life.   Fowler said Hughes wrote a staff manual on how to open a can of peaches - including directions for  removing the label, scrubbing the can down until it was bare metal, washing it again and pouring the content without touching the can to the bowl."

Maybe nobody had told Hughes about the miracle of Lysol.

I prefer the Roman remedies to healthier skin.  Their engineers created the remarkable Baths of Caracalla, an enormous five-year project.  It had hot and cold water and attracted 6,000 Romans a day.   Problem solved.

Student newspapers: In sports, timing is everything

Most folks in the industry as well as the readers would agree that America's newspapers are in serious trouble. But when a college newspaper scoops the mainstream paper in its town, the New York Times could not ignore it.  Maybe not  a newsworthy shaggy dog story, but at least one that's of a tail wagging the dog.

It happened in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the university's  student newspaper, the Michigan Daily,  revealed the  unseemly absence of news coverage  involving the Wolverines'  senior place kicker .  It came to light after he was "permanently separated" from the college for violating the student sexual conduct policy back when he was a freshman in 2009. He remained on the team until the current football season ended,with the sexual assault charge long hidden from public view.  It's difficult to win some games without a place kicker.

"It's unclear why sanctions were not decided  in this matter until recently," the Michigan Daily reported. Indeed.

The the New York Times  accepted the cue in its own piece this week, reporting:

"It was a shocking revelation for a university town that has a population of 116,000  and a football stadium of nearly the same capacity.  But almost as surprising was the origin  of the report: The story was not broken by the local professional news organization, the Ann Arbor News.  Instead it was uncovered by The Michigan Daily, the university's independently run student newspaper."

The News is owned by Advance Publications, which also owns the Plain Dealer  and other papers. In 2009,  it installed its plan to cut back daily print editions to two days a week in favor of a web-first model.  The student paper is now the only five-days-a week print paper in Ann Arbor.

The student paper's aggressive reporting reflects the growth of campus dailies as well as news sources via other media.  The Times noted that the University of Kansas has started a wire service and covers the legislature. Arizona State now has a Washington Bureau - the state's  largest in the nation's  capital.  It is  staffed by students who receive college credit. (The University of Akron suspended its student paper for lack of able young bodies to run it.)

Meantime, don't you wonder about priorities  when a football player remains at a school four years after he is accused of sexual assault until after his last season has ended and he's no longer useful as an athlete?   Fortunately, they didn't stop all of the presses in Ann Arbor.









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The flags at half-mast for James Gandolfini. an extraordinary talent

They lowered the flags to half-mast in New Jersey on Monday to honor an iconic actor whose  51-year-old life ended in Italy last week not as a bullet-riddled mob boss but rather as a soft-hearted human being in real life.  Acknowledging the deep impression that James Gandolfini has left on the viewers of the TV series, The Sopranos,  Gov. Chris Christie defined him as "a fine actor, a Rutgers alum and a true Jersey guy."

I'll leave it to the voluble governor to tell us more about  generic "true Jersey guys,"  but we do know this much: It is quite doubtful that America's unwavering fascination with the mob as art will ever find a more compelling character than Tony Soprano.  Unlike so many of his predecessors in the mob genre, the role expanded the dimensions of gangland dons to give us a ruthless killer, who also was on Prozac,  hallucinated,  sat uncomfortably through sessions with his shrink and came home each day to an often contentious wife and a couple of unruly kids who drove him nuts as a father who wanted so much more good from them.

The New York Times found Tony to be a "complicated actor who made a complicated mob boss indelible."

Alessandra Stanley noted in her TV Watch column that Tony had said of the role as a "more violent version of Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners".

Those of us who followed Tony's monstrous moments (even the lighter times)  in the TV series were never sure that we could explain our own addiction to the man.  I had to tell myself that, after all,  I was pulling for a murderous mobster.  Tony, with a superbly-drawn script and an outstanding cast, all came together in our living room, some of the scenes so vividly explosive and bloody that we were never prepared to consign them to  fiction.

As one who  considered the first  Godfather film as the gold standard for mob art, a comparison with Michael Corleone (piercingly played by Al Pacino) was inevitable.  To a point.  Michael was forever sullen and sinister.  Even believed that his brother Fredo had to go.

With Tony Soprano, there was a an occasional merry glint in his eye, an attempt to be a regular guy, a boyish grin, an impossible yearning for his psychiatrist who fearfully strained to maintain her professional task in her sessions with Tony.

These were the facets of character that we didn't find in Michael Corleone, who single-mindedly obsessed about klling his enemies and nothing else.

 I will miss Tony,  and not apologize for it.  It's never right to dismiss such unique talent in a human being. The series led us on with squeamish suspicion that something awful was about to happen at the next turn. With James Gandolfini gone, there will be no more scary plots arising with this gang, nor a quick smile from a bear of a bully.

Send Congress to Broadway to amuse theater lovers

These are not the best of days for Broadway.  As Patrick Healy wrote in the New York Times, the theater lights are vanishing in what he called a "weak Broadway season defined by unusually long vacancies."  It is getting so gloomy that an apparent new booking that showed up on the St.James Theater marquee was actually a fake. (Alas, it was part  of a movie shoot!)

If the angels need  a new tenant to nourish the box offices,  we have a candidate: The U.S.Congress.  It would guarantee an extended stay, because political plots are never  played out in three acts. For example, the Republicans' tireless effort to destroy Barack Obama is now in its fifth year (that I can remember) with no denouement in sight.

Where but on Broadway's make-believe circuit could you stage 37 or 38 revivals of
Kill Obamacare  as the House of Representatives has chosen to do with moronic pratfalls only to revive its childish  histrionics  after each defeat.

And where, as the New Yorker has noted, would a script call for a serious debate over  the proper number of eligible Tibetans to be admitted in the immigration debate as a subplot line - even for a comedy?

The saner customers in the seats would be rolling in the aisles.

Such dark theatrics , of course, is not a new idea.  It has been called the theater of the absurd.  And since all of us must chip in to pay these B-rated thespians,  there should be nothing  paid to the cast while it is appearing in this special road show. Other than to amuse us, they are accomplishing nothing in their chosen line of work.  So, yeah, cart them off to Broadway to be a little more useful. Who couldn't use a good laugh these days?

The governor's food for political thought

Privately run prisons, as the New Yorker  recently described the TV series "Girls," has become a "trending topic".  That's because Gov. Kasich, determined not become privatized himself  when the voters head out to the polls in 2014, has found still another way  to downsize the government he manages with swagger each day.  He wants to turn over food services at  Ohio's prisons to the non-elected  entrepreneurial class  that swells with each new opportunity for its investments.  He says it will save the state maybe $16 million a year.

Like so many of  his "bold'"  initiatives, once the headlines fade into yesterday, you have to pay more attention to second opinions.  Privately run prison services   have a history of failure that equal the inmates they're supposed to contain.

Cost savings for taxpayers? As Paul Krugman has pointed out,  a study by the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded that such savings in other states "have simply not materialized.''

"So let's see," Krugman wrote, "Privatized prisons save money by employing fewer guards and other workers, and by paying them badly.  And then we get horror stories  about how these prisons are run.   What a surprise!"

Reviewing earlier  consequences, Plunderbund reported an audit by former Republican State Auditor Jim Petro  of privatized food service at the Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell, Oh.    The audit showed Aramark, the company involved,   "failed multiple sanitary inspections and was unable to provide   acceptable portion sizes as agreed upon in the contract. What's more, Plunderbund said the audit revealed that "Aramark ended up billing the state for millions of meals it never actually served resulting in $2 million in overpayment being made to the company."

Never mind, the Kasich people contend,  we're looking at $16 million in savings even though a transfer to private hands would eliminate 456 state jobs.  Oh, it says here, the private operators would hire some of these people.

And now we come to the real bottom line.  Kasich, who has no use for unions, would eliminate that many jobs covered by Civil Service.  Christopher Mabe, president of the Ohio Civil Service  Employes Association, is already preparing for a brawl. "This is unfair, unsafe and hurts us all and we will not stand for it," he told the Columbus Dispatch.

From the standpoint of purely practical politics, after being drubbed in his fight against public employe  unions with Senate Bill 5, is Kasich really prepared to provoke labor again in an election year?

Confirmed: Crocodiles are great swimmers

The New York Times reports that 15,000 crocodiles escaped from a South African farm. Having watched some of the  Republican senators swarm  Hillary at the hearing, I can tell the farmer where some of his missing crocs are hanging out.

More leftovers - and those diehard Republicans

 

How well this banner describes the Republicans' preoccupation with women's personal choices instead of unemployment and other economic matters.  These women were engaged in a protest in Columbus where a legislative committee was considering a bill to ban public money from  going to Planned Parenthood.  Being  Republicans-tilted, the committee ignored  the protest and voted 11-9 along strict party lines to send the bill to the House floor for further consideration and a vote.  News of President Obama's election that gave him the edge on social issues had apparently not found its way into the GOP cave in Columbus.

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Speaking of issues, how did Paul Ryan arrive at the conclusion that during the campaign his side was talking about the "popular" issues (i.e., the ones supported by the voters, I guess)?  Ryan also scoffs that Obama won a mandate from the voters because the House of Representatives remains in Republican hands.   That overlooks the math that told us a majority of America's voters supported Democratic congressional candidates, but gerrymandering  remained the decisive factor in electing Republicans. Case in point:  Although the president carried Ohio, Republicans won 12 of the 16 congressional districts.  Go figure.

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Let's stop talking about "mandates" - fuzzy references to the width of a winner's margin to carry out his or her plans.   A wise old politician once told me he didn't have much interest in mandates.  Rather, he said, a true leader looks at a situation and simply says to himself, "I gotta do what I gotta do".  Makes sense to me.

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In case you felt overwhelmed by all of those TV political ads, there was a reason:  The New York Times reported 1.4 million ads were aired, estimated cost: $952 million.

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Biggest  losers in Ohio were Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted and Atty Gen. Mike DeWine, both of whom traveled down dark paths by mistakenly ignoring  the potency of  those voters who had been  profiled  to lose .   DeWine  worked with Husted in trying to shrink the vote.  And U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbus assailed Husted's late-campaign directive   to further alter the vote , declaring  it was "surreptitious" and a"flagrant violation of a state election law." Clear enough?

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My column on Jon Husted's lashing by a federal judge and the GOP attacks on Planned Parenthood has been posted on Plunderbund
  

Cohen: A divisive conflict among Jews in Cuyahoga County

 There's an online piece by New York  Times Columnist Roger Cohen that reports the fierce  mano- a-mano  dispute among Cuyahoga County Jews  that has ripened during the current presidential election campaign.  It has been long seeded by the distrust by some Jews that President Obama, of all things, is anti-Israel.

Cohen sets the stage for his report in the first paragraph, writing in the paper's Global Edition:

Things are getting ugly among the Jews of Cuyahoga County, with family splits and dinner   invitations declined.  "I have never seen the divisions this acute," said James Ratner, an executive of the Forest City real estate group.

Normally, the family argument would be just that:  a purely inside event with little more than passing attention from beyond its sphere.  However, in this case the implications are broader because any fallout from the traditionally progressive Jews  could determine the outcome of the Ohio election and therfore,  the U.S. election.  Not that Mitt Romney hasn't noticed its electoral possibilities with his constant pandering to Israeli interests on this side of the ocean.  (Obama has thrown Israel under the bus!, Mitt has quacked, as though all blessings of foreign policy, even such myths as these,  flow from his Bain cornucopia.)  

To heighten the intensity of the Jewish  combat in Cuyahoga County, the Ohio  Senate race has  devolved into the spectacle of Josh Mandel, a conservative Jewish Republican who has been on message since grade school.  He married into the influential Ratner family but today enjoys no more  than partial support from his in-laws.

Cohen  writes that Mandel's  anti-abortion stance included "calling the indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock a  'class act' [!] after Mourdock said pregnancy resulting from rape was 'something God intended to happen' and was 'always a gift from God.'"

Back to James Ratner:  Cohens reports that Ratner  emailed him with word that a Jewish womens' group, with 60 members attending a meeting  at Park Synagogue, unanimously supported  Obama.

"Those Jewish women," Cohen writes, "know exactly what Romney and Mandel represent: an obcurantist and invasive threat to their rights in the name of God whose wishes these men presume to know'.

The NY Times may be on to something

   

This war-like headline ran over half of the cover page of the New York Times Sunday  Review section.  It led me to check the Ohio situation before  resentful Republicans started quacking their age- old complaint about the liberal media. Would you be surprised  if I reported that four of Ohio's top political leaders had roots in towns with a total population of 16,804?

Here they are:

        Gov. Kasich, McKees Rocks, Pa., 6,118

        Secretary of State Jon Husted, Village of Montpelier, 4,071

        Senate majority leader, Tom Niehaus, New Richmond, 2,582

       Atty. Gen.. Mike Dewine, Cedarville, 4,033

(I purposely left out this list of small-town politicians House speaker  Bill Bachelder, who, compared to the others, arrived in Columbus from the megalopolis of Medina, pop. 26,827.)

                                                                  * * * *  *
As Mitt Romney continues to back away from his 47 percenters and other odd numbers, is it possible that he might be suffering from percentile dysfunction?  After all, as he has shown, percentages aren't for everyone.  If side effects  persist,  he should call his doctor, but only if he has coverage for pre-existing conditions.

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The Sunday Plain Dealer reported at length that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has been hit b y a $19 million  avalanche of radio and TV  ads that have made the race closer than it deserves to be  against Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.  The money is from outside groups , including Karl Rove's vault.  I haven''t heard much from Josh's cheering section, which says it's an up-and-down race about Brown by Super PACs  and corporate interests who care little about the challenger and would  be  satisified to replace Brown with Donald Duck without a pleasant nod to Mandel. If  Mandel's money machine happens to pull an upset - Good heavens, don't even think about it! -  will he stand up in the winner's circle  on Election night and declare that he built the victory himself.  He will because he has a very inventive mind when there is a need to say, "I am Josh Mandel and I approve this message."

Chicago...that toddling town

One of the gems of Chicago lore is the quaint  tale of how the Chicago Cubs  have been a miserable baseball team  for so long because of the "Billy Goat Curse".  As it has been explained,  the curse derived from an unhappy Greek saloon-keeper who had a pet goat in his tavern across the street from Wrigley Field. When he tried to enter the stadium with his goat during the 1945 World Series, he was turned back because the goat had an unpleasant odor. The Cubs didn't win that series and have never played in one ever since.   Sam Sianis,  the goat's owner, is said to have laid an eternal  curse on the wretched Cubs  over the incident.

Other versions of the team's woes  have survived, but  I like this one because it fits  perfectly  into the city's exceptional  trail of colorful characters  - whether sinister, deadly or just your  average Runyonesque  ward-heelers. One of the latter, a Democratic alderman,   once knowingly responded to a complaint that a city project would  tear up too much green space.  "You can have too much grass," he said with a straight face.

 Then there was  alderman  Mathias "Paddy" Bauer, a  friend of former titanic Mayor Richard J. Daley,  who declared early in his spotty political career,"Chicago ain't ready for reform".

Much of the city's political shenanigans was recorded by the late columnist Mike Royko, who rose to journlistic stardom simply by recording what the hooligans were uttering with an unusual writer's eye for detail. (During the  many times that I visited the Chicago area,  I looked forward to watching Columnist Irv Kupcinet on a  TV show with his unique version of the English language.  In one instance, in good form, he came up with  the unforgettable term, "misleading nomers".   Somehow it worked in the context of the Daley-controlled wards.)

Newt Gingrich never  let anyone forget that President Obama was a community organizer on Chicago's South Side where Saul Alinsky held forth for many years.  What he never said was that Alinsky was conservative in some respects, patriotic, ate at the best steakhouses  and included a Catholic priest, businessmen and a member of the Marshall Field department store  family among his many his friends.  (Of course, Newt said a lot of things that weren't true.)

Deservedly,  the Democrats were accused of all sorts of political mischief to sustain their hegemony over Sandburg's  "Hog butcher for the world".  Yet  Chicago also came to be known as the "the city that works."  My late father-in-law, a suburban businessman  with an office  in the Loop, was a Republican who praised Daley.  "I've never voted for a Democrat, but if I lived in the city, I'd vote for Dick Daley," he said.

I should tell you that these vignettes of the lives and times of the impolite  Chicago pols was encouraged by a recent Republican implosion that added another notch to the city's awkward political history,  Meet Joe Ricketts, bloated billionaire, right-winger  and founder of the on-line  brokerage, TD Ameritrade.  It surely ranks higher than a mere dishonorable mention. Although Ricketts  is full of denials, he was nearing the moment when he would put up $10 million  in an advertising assault  on President Obama, described in the plan as a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."  (I can't imagine Billy Goat Sianis or Paddy Bauer using a word like "metrosexual," can you?  In their day, it would have cost them tons of support on the street.)

The  key to the attack on Obama would be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a dumb idea back in 2008 whose sponsors planned to stretch a few more wearying miles.

Funny,  but there may be a link to the Billy Goat Curse here. The Cubs are currently in last place and in an extended losing streak.  At the same time, thre NY Times" exposure of  Ricketts' association with the anti-Obama preliminaries probably has set back  his efforts to haul in $300 million in taxpayer money to rennovate  Wrigley Field,  in which the Ricketts family-owned Chicago Cubs, play -  when they're up to it.

Worse yet, the mayor of Chicago is a feisty Democrat named Rahm Emanuel, former top-ranking member of the Obama team.   When Ricketts called Emanuel after the Times article appeared, the mayor didn't bother to return the call.

Yep, irony of ironies, the same Joe Ricketts who also founded the Ending Spending Fund to reduce government spending.

Mitt Romney tells us to rely on the business world because they know how to do it.

On the other   hand, Mike Royko might have won another Pulitzer  playing with this one.

Media parachutes: When life is worth living

IT'S OFTEN SAID that it's lonely at the top. But for the one percenters, topness does make life worth living.

There's a piece in the current Columbia Journalism Review that clearly tells you why golden parachutes are the best way to survive a frail economy. Posting figures from Bloomberg News, CJR focused on just two media ex-CIO's who will never miss a meal: Janet Robinson of the New York Times Co. and Craig Dubow of Gannett.

Although the Times' stock crashed more than 80 pct. during Robinson's seven years of watching over the shop, she managed to leave with a $21 million parachute. She also got a $10.9 million pension at the same time that employee pensions were frozen. The article reports what the $21 million could have otherwise paid for: 230 starting reporters salaries: 14 years of Baghdad bureau funding; 21 million reporter's notebooks; 17,514 iMacs, and 4,200 digital cameras, among other things.

Gannett's Dubow got a $37.1 million parachute that could have bought 3,550,239 shares of the company's stock; 1,474 starting salaries at the company's Indianapolis Star; 37,100,000 reporter's notebooks and 2,555,096 copies of Job Hunting for Dummies, which, mercifully, neither Robinson nor Dubow will ever have to read.

CJT noted that after awarding Dubow his retirement package, "the company announced it would force employes to take their fifth unpaid furlough in three years".

But as Mitt Romney has so often reminded us, the one percenters should not be criticized for their hard-earned and well-deserved success. In this instance, however, I'm never a good listener.

Monroe Beachy: Amish insist on going it alone

AS HOT WIRES LIKE "Religious liberty" and "conscience" flare between religious conservatives and President Obama, there is a another religious issue being played out in the Amish village of Sugarcreek south of Akron. It swirls around the arrest and indictment of one of Sugarcreek's leading Amish citizens, Monroe L. Beachy, a man in his 70s, who has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme that has stripped its investors' savings of $16 million. The victims included charities, congregations and some of his own relatives.

In a lengthy story in Sunday's New York Times, the case details the clash between prosecutors who are sworn to uphold the law, and the Plain Community of Amish who insist their members' faith is being trampled by the insensitive state. They argue that they can privately handle the case in their own way without secular society butting in. It is a classic tale of church and state, which has so dominated the GOP narrative these days.

At stake, the Amish witnesses maintained in bankruptcy court, was nothing less than religious liberty, no matter whether Beachy was guilty or innocent.The Times noted that "many of Mr. Beachy's investors have said in court that it is more important to forgive him than to recover their money." Creditors said the court's way of dealing with the alleged scheme's "downfall could not be squared with their faith or with his."

They further asserted that by leaving the Plain Community to its own protective framework of religious imperatives in the Beachy case, they would achieve "worthy goals that would be less expensive and be based on Christian principles of love and care for the needy and the poor". It also would sustain "religious forgiveness and repair the tarnished testimony and integrity of the Plain Community."

They failed to discourage the prosecution. The Beachy trial is scheduled for later this month.

Meantime, how coincidental this is in matters of faith! I'm sure you can see a certain connection with the argument by the Catholic church and other religious conservatives that faith and conscience trump all else in the lively debate over contraception and other forms of birth control (slide rules excluded, for whatever convenient reason of conscience!).

It will be interesting to see whether Rick Santorum, who is recklessly opting for sainthood if not the presidency in his travels around Ohio for the Republican primary, will take a moment to stop by Sugarcreek to describe his version of America's dictatorship.

Unfortunately, it may take a while for the Alka-Seltzer to settle his nausea over President Kennedy's speech on church and state more than a half-century ago. In mauling JFK's words to serve his own out-of-control jeremiads, it can easily be documented that not even sainthood awaits him. He is, and probably will continue to be, America's most passionate liar.

Nicknames in the nick of time?

IT WAS GOOD to see Gail Collins, the delightful New York Times columnist, promoting Butch Otter as a Republican presidential candidate. Among her reasons for supporting the Idaho governor was that he would be the first president to be a member of Ducks Unlimited. Besides she notes happily, his candidacy would give her the opportunity to visit Idaho for the first time.

She has made a good choice. Otter would restore to the American culture the use of nicknames that disappeared from the days when mobsters were best remembered by such colorful references as "Machine Gun Kelly" or, more recently, "Vinnie Carwash", to give you some idea of their line of work.

(Butch means "wisdom" in early German - but good luck on that one in these fluttery days.)

Maybe Butch Otter could do something to bring back nicknames to other fields in the public eye. There was something compelling about calling a pool shark "Minnesota Fats", or crowd-stirring wrestler "Man Mountain Dean".

Ah, baseball was all the more interesting with characters named Catfish Metkovich, Peanuts Lowrey, Hammerin' Hank, the Splendid Splinter, the Yankee Clipper and PeeWee Reese. And how could anybody ignore Ernie Lombardi, whose nose reached first base long before the rest of his body. He was, as everyone lovingly knows, "The Schnozz".

Finally, there were Dizzy and Daffy, and even a "Butch,'" Wynegar, in this case. And if you don't remember it, I know a guy who has his baseball card.

So, on to Idaho, Ms. Collins. Butch Otter does have something to offer and should be rewarded for it. Sorry, Mitt, but that is really your middle name. Between Willard and Romney.

Portman works well with Democrats?

Do you have as much trouble trying to understand today's political reports as I do? For example, I stumbled on this in the New York Times' report on the new members of the destined-to-be- deadlocked (@$#&#) super committee - a feel-good initiative with the impossible mission of a bipartisan attack on the Federal deficit.

In reference to Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman's appointment, the Times reported: "Mr. Portman, a House member from 1993 to 2005 , was White House budget director under President George W. Bush. Throughout his time in Congress, he has worked well with Democrats even as he voted consistently with the other Republicans." (emphasis added.)

Now I humbly ask the deep thinkers: How can you work well with the other party by consistently voting against it? Is that the same as offering the other side a mop after you've spilled the milk all over the kitchen floor. But maybe there will be a revealing side of his presence on the panel.. Would it be rude to again note that one reason we have this economic mess is that he was Bush's budget director when the deficit climbed to over $10 trillion?

Pawlenty casts himself as the truth candidate

THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that Republican Tim Pawlenty mentioned the word "truth" 16 times in his 20-minute announcement that he was officially running president. It was left to our imagination what he might have been thinking the other four minutes.

Risch:Stolen Humvees for nuclear arms treaty

SEASON'S GREETINGS to New York Times columnist Gail Collins for telling us of one conservative's unique foreign policy gambit. Her op-ed piece today was all about Sen. James Risch of Idaho. Until deep thinking Republicans come along, we don't hear much about Idaho other than reports that it has a lot of wolves roaming around, potatoes and a very good college football team that plays its home games in Boise on the world's only dark blue astroturf . It is supposed to be an imaginative color coordinated scheme to match the team's uniforms. (I confess to having a bit of trouble singling out the players on TV as they blend and vanish into the dark field.)

But back to Risch. He obviously has no use for the Russians. "They cheat. They are serial cheaters," he declared in his failed effort to amend the START nuclear arms treaty. It was all down hill for him after that. His amendment would block the pact until the Putin gang returned four Humvees to the U.S. that were grabbed by Russian soldiers during the Russia-Georgia war.

• Displaying photos of the monstrous vehicles being driven away, Risch snorted, "You can watch your property right here being towed away by the Russians! Back to Moscow!"

His indignant remarks were not a simple case of apples and oranges. They compared nuclear weapons with gas hogs as a reasonable trade. He might have at least sweetened the pot by demanding that the oil-rich Russians also give every American driver a gift card for 10 free gallons at the pump. Now, senator, about that blue astroturf...

Headlining a victory doesn't make it so

NO, THAT's not a satirical knockoff of a Newsweek cover by an anti-war graphics artist at Comedy Central. It's the real thing that was published back in the March 8 issue. It seemed so blatantly optimistic at the time that I saved it as reminder of the cheerleading that has been going on in the national media ever since George Bush escorted them into the Iraq invasion.

You'll notice that the Newsweek editors didn't hesitate to adorn the cover with the spurious Bush "victory" on the aircraft carrier, one of the biggest theatrical props since the DeMille days. As I watched that fiasco I could only wonder why they had not also rented some of Aida's elephants as a subliminal way of boasting of another Bush triumph.

Democratic Iraq?

That would only make sense to the corrupt politicians on the ground over there who have yet to figure out how to run the place without giving up some of their U.S. largesse. The "government" has been deadlocked ever since the last elections (scarily like the worsening conditions here - which likely will grow worse after the November elections), frequent bombings and the absence of electrical power in Baghdad for nearly 20 hours a day in searing summer heat. A New York Times reporter on the streets told of polluted drinking water, trash strewn streets, blackouts, unsafe hospitals and still-shattered buildings destroyed by insurgents and American bombings.

For a more authentic comment on the democracy we created with nearly a trillion dollars, hear what Haitham Farhan cynically told the Times as he stood in his shop without electricity:

"Democracy didn't bring us anything. Democracy brought us a can of Coke and a beer."

So now president Obama is removing U.S. troops from Iraq with many of them destined for another losing cause, Afghanistan. Like his predecessors, Obama has trapped himself in the belief that there is something to win in that part of the world even as internal reports tell him otherwise, costing us more and more in lives while strangling the treasury. What is it about American presidents, anyway, that they can't escape the grasp of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about, a merger that prefers hawks to eagles?

Lyndon Johnson, who was responsible for so many progressive social programs, was dogged by Vietnam, and eventualy gave up any notion of seeking a second term. Obama, who crashed though an eternity of indifference or obstruction to preside over health care, Wall Street reforms and many other sorely needed programs, needs to have a copy of the final LBJ years on his desk. Obama can't win in Afghanistan because despite the assurances of the military and right-wing chorus, nobody has yet given us a clue to what winning really means.