Observations on the 2012 Election 9.7

The Four; this November history can be made by winning marriage equality ballot initiatives in Maine, Maryland, and Washington State while in Minnesota the vote is one to stop a total ban on same-sex marriage. The organization was founded by Brian Ellner who was one of the forces behind last years marriage equality passage in New York.

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"Marriage equality is about to take a huge step forward. Momentum is on our side and - if we can create a massive groundswell - we can create a massive victory for marriage equality in the United States."
Do More: www.thefour2012.com

Observations on the 2012 Election 9.6

Watching the final night of the DNC I keep thinking back to last night's speech by former President Bill Clinton. If there is such a thing as a rock star in politics this is the man. One of the most popular politicians in the world he was able to quote the Republican god Ronald Reagan at the Democratic Convention and have it seem totally natural. At the RNC the the Repubes mentioned Reagan endlessly without ever having it seem as natural as when Clinton did. Maybe the fact that he would be way too moderate for today's GOP had something to do with that.

I managed to fall asleep and miss the end of Clinton's speech, and was called a dork because of it, but I saw more than enough. In a speech which was almost half ad lib Clinton made this election not a personality contest but a choice between two worlds. "We believe ‘we’re all in this together’ is a far better philosophy than ‘you’re on your own.’" With that line Clinton said more about what is at stake in this election than any speech that had come before him in either convention.

I talked to a few Republicans today, honestly I do know some, and they told me that listening to Clinton's speech scared them. They say that sometimes the truth hurts, I suppose the truth scares when it is delivered by somebody with Bill Clinton's oratory skills.

Joe Biden currently firing up the DNC for President Obama. Best line of the vintage Biden speech; "A future where we promote the private sector, not the privileged sector."

Sadly no f-bombs.

Observations on the 2012 Election 9.4.2

Night one of the DNC was impressive to say the least. I heard possibly three of the best speeches I have ever heard; Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro's keynote speech, and Michelle Obama. I heard a speech where Patrick said what I have thought for a long time, it's time Democrats grew a backbone and stood up for what they believe. I heard Castro, the possible next Governor of the uber red state Texas. And I heard the first lady of the U.S. say it doesn't matter who you love a week after Chris Christie told us love is totally overrated.

It's late and I need sleep so I'll let the middle part of Patrick's speech speak for me ....

"If we want to win elections in November and keep our country moving forward, if we want to earn the privilege to lead, it's time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe. Quit waiting for pundits or polls or super PACs to tell us who the next president or senator or congressman is going to be. We're Americans. We shape our own future. Let's start by standing up for President Barack Obama.

This is the president who delivered the security of affordable health care to every single American after 90 years of trying. This is the president who brought Osama bin Laden to justice, who ended the war in Iraq and is ending the war in Afghanistan. This is the president who ended "don't ask, don't tell" so that love of country, not love of another, determines fitness for military service. Who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. This is the president who saved the American auto industry from extinction, the American financial industry from self-destruction, and the American economy from depression. Who added over 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last two-plus years, more jobs than George W. Bush added in eight.

The list of accomplishments is long, impressive and barely told, even more so when you consider that congressional Republicans have made obstruction itself the centerpiece of their governing strategy. With a record and a vision like that, I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office, and neither should you, and neither should you and neither should you."

Tomorrow night brings Bill Clinton.

Observations on the 2012 Election 9.4.1

I'm posting this video as a public service. I think the chances are better of my seeing snow falling in the tropical air currently blanketing the Village than seeing Willard appear in a spot like this one.

"President Obama prepares for the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Don't miss the show, starts Thursday September 6th
at 8:00 p.m. Eastern."


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Watch it online. Get started here: BarackObamadotcom

Kal Penn joined Obama in 2009 as an associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement. He left for a bit in 2010 to film A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. This video is a promotion for
"Live From Charlotte," a web-only convention special that Penn will host on Thursday at 8PM. The special includes interviews with Marc Anthony, Elizabeth Banks, Aisha Tyler, Olivia Wilde, Fran Drescher, Zach Braff and Alexis Bledel. Penn will also be a featured speaker during the DNC's opening night.

Observations on the 2012 Election 9.4

The Democratic National Convention starts later today and Michelle Obama, she of the 64% approval rating, will be the main speaker tonight. Hopefully there will be no empty chairs on stage although Chris Rock had a good idea. Have an empty chair up there for the entire convention and if anybody questions it just say it belongs to Osama bin Laden.

This short film, it's 15 minutes long, was released by the Obama Campaign back in March and is still probably one of the best they have done. It should be required viewing for any undecided voter. The latest polls have the President and Willard in a dead heat, 45% each, which leaves 10% of the public undecided.

The Road We've Traveled ....


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Observations on the 2012 Election 9.3

The RNC ended Thursday night with Clint Eastwood's return to
stand-up comedy and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) begins Tuesday in Charlotte. President Obama, who speaks on this coming Thursday night, gave his opinion of the RNC during a speech Friday in Iowa.

"It was a rerun, We’ve seen it before. You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV."

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Observations

An open letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees as it appeared in the Friday edition of The Centre Daily Times, posted without comment.

Well one slight comment. Talking to people at yesterday's game one constant thread was that it didn't go unnoticed that the Freeh Report release, the NCAA's quick punishment without investigation, and the University's acceptance of both of these happened in the middle of the summer when State College is a sleepy little town and not the third largest city in Pennsylvania.

Dear Penn State Board of Trustees,

It is apparent you want us, the Alumni, to move forward. You implore us to move forward. Here is a simple fact. We can and will move forward, and will join you on a united front, if one of two things occurs. We will move forward if: 1) Indisputable evidence surfaces that clearly shows Joe Paterno knew that Jerry Sandusky was molesting boys since 1998/2001 and did nothing to stop him, (it is evident that the findings of your $6.5 million Freeh report were not factually derived: (EM Foundation)) or 2) You admit your hasty decisions starting back in November 2011, (including firing Joe Paterno, accepting the Freeh Report, and agreeing to the NCAA sanctions) were a mistake, made under pressure and not based on truth, and that, most importantly, you did not act in the best interest of Penn State University.

One day you will have to look in the mirror and admit that you allowed this debacle to spin out of control. In November 2011, Penn State had no crisis management in place, so the media naturally turned to Joe, the face of Penn State, but he was allowed to say very little. The media applied pressure and once you, the Board, fired Joe, that was all the world needed to conclude: He must have been guilty of a cover-up. You, the Trustees, were distancing yourselves from anyone the media labeled as ‘guilty’ so you could come out smelling like roses. Then you hired Freeh to validate your firing of Joe and again to make yourselves look like the good guys. Did it not once occur to you that, by making the icon of your own university take the fall, with no evidence of wrongdoing, you were potentially destroying the university? (NCAA sanctions, economic suicide, lawsuits, accreditation fallout) It seems you were anxious for so long to get rid of Joe that you could not wait to throw the last jab. And here you are reaping what you sowed.

There will never be unity between the Alumni and the Board until you start admitting your mistakes or until all of you who were active in November '11 vacate your positions, which could be years from now. You want to move on because it is too painful for you to live in this mess you made. I wonder how many of you, with the benefit of hindsight, would have done things differently the night of November 9, 2011. I’m sure it is difficult for some of you to look in the mirror or even get out of bed in the morning. We all know when we offend or do wrong to another, there are simply two choices: (wo)man up, admit our mistakes, make amends, and then move on, or sweep it under the rug and never move on. The one who was wronged can never move on until the offense is reconciled. This is why we, the Alumni, cannot and will not move on.

And now you find yourselves desperate to repair and rebuild the image of Penn State, an image which you single-handedly allowed to be torn apart. Perhaps your first course of action should be to repair and rebuild the trust within our family, and then together, we can restore the image of our great university. It is time to fight for what is right. It is time to be the leaders we have entrusted you to be. Please remember this, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Sincerely,
Eileen Morgan, Fellow Concerned Alumni, and Friends of PSU

Observations on the 2012 Election 8.31

You may or may not have seen Clint Eastwood's train wreck of a speech, and I use that word loosely, at the RNC last night. Short version is that Eastwood spent 30 minutes at the heart of prime time talking to an empty chair which represented the 'invisible' President Obama. There are plenty of places to read or watch the wreck, and it is entertaining in its own way, so I wont get into it here. I did want to share the President's short and to the point response which was posted on both Twitter and Facebook earlier today.

"This seat's taken."

Obsevations 8.30

With Saturday's game a new era of Penn State football begins, I'm talking about the post Paterno era not the WiFi at Beaver Stadium one. With other things going on, and in an attempt to put the scandal behind me somewhat, I haven't mentioned it much lately. What I am sharing here seemed a good reason to break that silence. Two days ago a group of past Chairs of the Penn State Faculty Senate released a statement concerning the NCAA and its "sweeping assertion that a culture permeating every level of the Penn State community places the football program "in higher esteem than the values of the NCAA, the values of higher education, and most disturbingly the values of human decency."

For what it's worth some highlights and a link to the complete statement with its 28 signatories.

".... as a document in which evidence, facts, and logical argument are marshaled to support conclusions and recommendations, the Freeh Report fails badly. On a foundation of scant evidence, the report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity, and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth. We make no judgment of the culpability of those individuals directly surrounding the Sandusky crimes. We lack sufficient knowledge to do so, and we are content to wait until guilt or innocence is adjudicated by the courts. But as scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on its own merits as the indictment of the University that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there.

More central to our concerns are the recent sanctions levied against Penn State by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and, more importantly, the rationale for those actions and their negative impact on the academic well-being of the University. The NCAA did not conduct its own investigation of the Penn State situation, but rather drew its conclusions from the findings of the Freeh Report. The NCAA Consent Decree, which substantially embellishes the initial Freeh findings in both tone and substance, claimed no standard of proof for its conclusions but nonetheless required Penn State to accept the Freeh Group’s assertions as fact. The NCAA actions were not predicated on any rulebook violations by members of the football team, the crimes committed by a former assistant coach, or even the alleged concealment of those crimes by University officials. Rather, the NCAA based its actions on the  sweeping assertion that a culture permeating every level of the Penn State community places  the football program “in higher esteem than the values of the institution, the values of the NCAA, the values of higher education, and most disturbingly the values of human decency.” The NCAA further alleges that “the culture exhibited at Penn State is an extraordinary affront to the values all members of the Association have pledged to uphold and calls for extraordinary action,” and it states that the sanctions are intended to change this culture.

As faculty members with a cumulative tenure at Penn State in the hundreds of years, and as former Faculty Senate chairs with intimate knowledge of the University stretching back for decades, these assertions do not describe the culture with which we are so very familiar. None of us has ever been pressured or even asked to change a grade for an athlete, nor have we heard of any cases where that has occurred. We know that there are no phantom courses or bogus majors for athletes at Penn State. Some of us have privately witnessed swift and unyielding administrative actions against small transgressions, actions taken expressly to preserve academic and institutional integrity. We have performed our duties secure in the knowledge that academic funds do not subsidize the athletic program. We have been proud of the excellent academic record of our student-athletes, and of the fact that Penn State has never before had a major NCAA sanction. And we have taken pride in an institutional culture that values honesty, decency, integrity, and fairness.

It is disturbing in the extreme to have that culture’s very existence denied by the NCAA. The NCAA has used its assertion of collective guilt to justify its collective punishment of the entire University community, almost all of whom had absolutely no involvement in or knowledge of the underlying crimes or the administration’s allegedly insufficient response."

Complete statement.

Also this is a good column by Walter Uhler who graduated from Penn State in 1976 with an MPA in Russian Studies. It's a little eye opening about being both a scholar and a football fan.

Observations on the 2012 Election 8.30

I don't even know how to begin to describe the final hour of last night's Republican convention. It began with a speech by Condoleezza Rice who honestly did a very good job of speaking to all Americans whether or not they agree with her. She was followed by New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez who seemed to channel both Steve Martin and Clint Eastwood with her 'I was born a poor girl with a .357 magnum in my hand' speech. The night ended with an admittedly very good but totally scary performance by vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

Condoleezza Rice gave a brilliant speech and what a friend said later is very true, to bad she isn't one of ours. After the speech one of the commentators said that if Pete Wilson had appointed Rice to the Senate seat from California, which he vacated to become Governor of the state, Rice and not Willard might be accepting the nomination for President tonight. Instead Wilson appointed John Seymour who was defeated by Diane Feinstein two years later. Her best; "On a personal note, a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham. The segregated city of the south where her parents cannot take her to a movie theater or to restaurants, but they have convinced that even if she cannot have it hamburger at Woolworths, she can be the president of the United States if she wanted to be, and she becomes the secretary of state."

Paul Ryan is something different entirely. He also harkens back to a dark time of the American soul. He is good, very good, but also a classic demagogue in the style of Huey Long or George Wallace. I'm in no way comparing Ryan to Hitler but looking at the faces in the audience during his speech I was reminded of the films of Hitler's early speeches at Nuremberg. Ryan is that scary good. When he said "sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government," my remote literally hit the wall yet I couldn't stop watching.

After two nights of very little actual ideas I come away with two predominate thoughts about the Republican Party. Noblesse oblige, a French term which implies that people of noble birth, or wealthy in our case, are obligated by that birth to be honorable and generous. The Repubes think they are being just that but all one most do is look at the smug face of Paul Ryan to realize they are actually being the polar opposite. That fact plays along with my second term which is manifest destiny. For the most part the speakers and their audience honestly believe all the rhetoric. They believe the country is in ruins, that Obama is the devil incarnate, and most of all they believe they are right and destined to save this country from itself while leading it into a second American 'century of greatness.'

As I said, scary good. More later.

Observations on the 2012 Election 8.29

This would be all too funny if it wasn't such a serious subject, still one must always laugh. I found it on of all places the Le Monde website, via Talking Points Memo, and even though it's originally from an American site it gives you a good idea what the Euros think of our political conventions. If I had only known such a video was going to exist I wouldn't have bothered watching last night but alas I did. Sadly in the end this may the only good thing to come out of the first night of the Republican convention.

La première journée de la convention en 100 secondes ....

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Observations from the Window 8.28

After a day or two of much needed decompression I'm finally getting back to normal. Yes, what passes for normal in my world. I was totally wiped due to the flight back, my inability to sleep when I fly, and the fact that I didn't sleep at all my last night in Paris. Why? Better question is why the hell would I?

While I was catching up with laundry and such today I was watching the Weather Channel, keeping up with news about hurricane Isaac, as a more entertaining alternative to the GOP convention. In my new capacity as style maven, more on that at some later date, I have to say there was something very wrong in the network's coverage. Picture two women in the studio, one wearing a red dress and the other an orange one, both sitting in front of a wall size screening of the Isaac radar. If the dresses didn't clash enough on their own sitting in front of the radar, which is predominately red and orange, did the trick. I just wanted to scream every time the network switched back to the studio.

In all seriousness before I move on I should mention that Isaac,
currently a Category 1 hurricane, is due to make landfall just south of New Orleans as early as tonight. Keep your fingers crossed and say a little prayer to whatever god/gods you pray to for the people down there as Isaac is probably going to track directly over the city itself and twenty inches of rain is predicted.

Finally, there seems to be some kind of political event going on in the wake of Isaac. Yes that would be the convention I mentioned earlier. Morning Joe is live from Tampa all week and yesterday Chris Matthews and GOP Chairman Reince Priebus got into a bit of a shouting match. About 3 minutes in Tom Brokaw says it all explaining why Americans are about fed up with politics, except for us political junkies. Just after that Priebus again accuses President Obama of looking to Europe for ideas, principally he is talking healthcare reforms. So if the President based his health reforms on Willard's in Massachusetts doesn't it just follow that Willard also looked to Europe? Again I'll remind you where Willard spent the Vietnam War years.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

video link

late update - After some thought I'd like to add this. If Willard really thinks his birther joke was just that, a joke, and didn't realize how it would be taken, well I don't want to think about what that says about his judgement.

Observations from le Voyage 8.26.1, mobile update

I may have mentioned last week how stunning it was flying into the sunrise. A week later chasing the endless sunset isn't quite the same thing. When your body thinks it is about 1AM and the sun refuses to set you start to feel like some human version of the British Empire. Than to taught you the sun finally sets just an hour out of JFK. To make matters worse we were delayed in the air over JFK for 20 minutes because of TS Issac related delays and airport closings to the south.

I'm not a big fan of baggage claim so when my bags were the last out all I could think was that my best two leather jackets had been lost over the Atlantic. It was not the case however and all my leather arrived safe and sound.

So I'm back, a bit sad maybe, most assuredly exhausted,
but back just the same.

Observations from le Voyage 8.26

Sitting outside at a cafe across from my one time hotel, sipping iced coffee, while my bags are all packed and stacked in the hotel lobby waiting to go home. Sadly I don't think I'm as ready for that trip as they seem to be. The inside of the cafe was decorated by Catherine Deneuve and though it looks good I'm not at all sure what she was after. It has the feel of a large living room but I mean seriously, a glass coffee table? It has a nice terrace to sit outside and ponder life so I wont complain about it. Actually I haven't found anything to complain about since I'm here other than the fact that I wont be here much longer. One thing I do miss is my Sunday New York Times, the IHT is basically the same thing but yet it isn't, something about it just seems off. It makes no matter as my cab is here to take me to Charles de Gaul, meh ....

When I was still at the cafe my brother called to ask when my flight landed at JFK and he got a bit confused when I answered. He wasn't the first to be confused by my schedule as it wasn't all that easy explaining to Ash that she should be at the airport just two hours after I left. It goes like this, my flight leaves CDG at 7PM Paris time and arrives at JFK at 9PM New York time which is six hours behind Paris. All this means is that my eight hour flight only takes two hours off the clock and my mind, not to mention my comps, will think it's 3AM which it will be in Paris. Got it? Well Sean came up with something more, in its day the Concorde made the same Paris/New York flight in three hours so in a way you would arrive in New York before you ever left Paris. Just try and figure that one out.

One thing I learned this week is that I truly do love this city and I really do want it to be mine one day. I also learned that I've changed drastically in the past few years. Thing is I may have changed just as much in the past week but than I suppose dreams will do that to you.

It's about time to board so I want to get this posted quick. It's not going to be my last post about this trip or my last about Paris but it will be my last post from Paris, for now anyway. I plan on being back soon one way or another.

Before I go, my sis moved yesterday and starts classes tomorrow morning. There is a little known secret that says she may even play field hockey but I didn't tell. No, no, not me. Good luck gurl!