On this day in 1386, King Henry V was born. He died of dysentery at the age of 36. It wasn’t always so good to be king. The truth is that what the conservatives say is true: it is better to be poor in America today than it was to be King of England in the 14th century. The problem is, if we followed conservative policy, our presidents would today be dying of dysentery at the age of 36. We have gained much as a result of the free market, but we have gained even more by having a strong and stable government that has worked for the general welfare.

A couple of businessmen have birthdays today. The first is James Cash Penney, the man who started the department store that bears his name, was born in 1875. He lived to be quite old, so when I was a little boy eating a grilled cheese at the J. C. Penney coffee shop (they really had them), the old man was still alive. Just two years after he was born, Jacob Schick was born. He got the first ever patent for an electric razor. After the United States government gave him this monopoly right, he paid it back by evading taxes. In order to avoid prosecution, he moved to Canada. That’s a typical American businessman for you: all in favor of the rights that the government provides but totally against any responsibilities toward it. He died soon after, so there’s that.

The fine French composer Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887. But she is better known as one of the greatest music educators of the twentieth century. A partial list of her students is shocking: Aaron Copland, Igor Markevitch, Dinu Lipatti, Astor Piazzolla, Quincy Jones, and Philip Glass. I enjoy her work very much, but I don’t think she ever got beyond her love of Debussy. But if you have to be stuck somewhere, that’s a very nice place to do so. Here his her Fantaisie Variée pour Piano et Orchestre:

Two giants of television were born in the 1910s. First was Paul Henning, who was born in 1911. He was a comedy writer who went on to create some of the classics of “ruralcom,” such as Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies. Then in 1914, Allen Funt was born. He actually did a lot of different things in radio and television, but he will always be remembered for Candid Camera. It’s very interesting to watch it now because it is so sweet compared to similar shows now. Here is a very funny bit with a woman who drives into a gas station without a motor:

Actor Peter Falk was born in 1927. He is most remembered for Columbo, but he was a whole lot more than that. Here he is in A Woman Under The Influence as Nick , who is not really dealing well with the life he finds himself leading:

The great B.B. King is 88 today. He is not one of my favorite guitarists. It isn’t because his playing is bad, of course. It is simply that just about every rock musician of the last 60 years has ripped him off so thoroughly that he sounds kind of generic to me. Still, he’s very pleasant to listen to, with an easy and soulful style that most people can’t copy:

Also having birthdays today: Anne Francis (1930); Elgin Baylor (79); Ed Begley Jr (64); Mickey Rourke (61); David Copperfield (57); Jennifer Tilly (55); and Amy Poehler (42).

The day, however, belongs to the great actor Lauren Bacall who is 89 today. No one can quite compare to Rosalind Russell, but Bacall is a close second. She’s just so great up there on the screen, so smart and sexy. And she outlived both her actor husbands, although admittedly Bogart was 25 years older than she was. Here is a great scene from The Big Sleep, although you really can tell that it is a reshoot. It is great to see the two of them together, but it doesn’t belong in the story at that time:

Happy birthday Lauren Bacall!

You know how no major media outlet ever reports on people dying of malaria? It is, as they say, “dog bites man.” It isn’t news. It would be like publishing an article, “President uses bathroom multiple times per day.” Yet when someone goes out in public and kills a large group of people, it is all over cable news. Why is that? It strikes me as completely “dog bites man.” Yet the media are feasting on the Navy Yard shooting today.

Don’t misunderstand me: I care a great deal about such things. What’s more, I want to do something about them. I would like to make mental health more available to people. I would like to make guns less available. I would like to make the economy better for working men and women; I think our social Darwinian approach to the economy makes a more anxious and volatile population. I could go on (and on and on). There are many things we could do to create a more peaceful society while still allowing gun nuts to have their guns. Of course we don’t. Such measures could have all kinds of unintended consequences like a percent or two reduction in Walmart profits. Can’t have that.

But just because I think such stories are important doesn’t mean that I think the news agencies should care. I’ll go further: I don’t think the American people ought to much give a damn either. The truth is that we don’t really care about gun violence. It has been less than a week since two Colorado state senators were recalled because they pushed very minor changes to gun laws: universal background checks and magazine size limitations. But unlike a gunman killing 12 people, such restrictions to gun rights were an outrage!

So I think we should either do something about our gun murder problem, or we should just shut up. It shouldn’t be hard. As it is, we now pretty much ignore single gun fatalities, unless they involve a famous football player or other “important” American. I’m thinking maybe we could just set a limit. Killings of 12 or 13 are so common, I’m not sure they deserve much more than a passing reference in the newspaper on page 14 along with local police activity. It’s already the de facto policy that shooting sprees of only 3 or 4 are not worthy of national attention. All I’m saying is that we raise that number up to 100.

I think that’s a good number because I don’t remember a shooting spree with 100 deaths. And that would work out great, because then our coverage of shooting sprees would be the same as the amount that we actually care about them.

Afterword

In all seriousness, I know that most people do care and do want to do something. But as the Colorado vote shows, it doesn’t much matter. After Sandy Hook, polling for universal background checks were polling really high: in the 90% range. But when politicians did what the people said they wanted, the people voted them out. I think it is all about attention span. If today’s tragedy had happened last week and the vote was this week, I suspect those legislators would still have jobs. But it doesn’t speak well for us as a people that we can’t remember one of the biggest shooting sprees in American history for even a couple of months.

I was just reading an article by Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal, ‘Twas a Famous Victory. It is about how a lot of liberals are making a big deal of the fact that Pennsylvania has more or less agreed to join in Obamacare by accepting piles of federal money for a Medicaid expansion. Kilgore rightly notes that this is entirely due to the fact that expectations have been so lowered since the Supreme Court first said that states could opt out.

I’m not quite so pessimistic as he is. I figure in the coming years, Republicans will get past this and finally yield to medical providers at least, who do not like the extra cost of treating people who don’t have insurance. There will, of course, be a great deal of unnecessary suffering during that time. But what else can we expect when Republicans are in control? They are going to make life for the poor as bad as possible. As I often say: the only way forward is to destroy the Republican Party.

But there was something in Kilgore’s article that really struck me. After mentioning that it looked like New Jersey was going along with the Medicaid expansion, he wrote, “Chris Christie had vetoed legislation simply accepting the expansion and was preparing his own ill-defined plan.” As regular readers know, I really dislike Christie. He’s a bully and I hate that. But more substantively, he is extremely conservative—especially on economic issues. And he really wants to become president. So I wouldn’t doubt that right now he is pretending to go along just so as to not hurt his re-election chances. I won’t be surprised if he comes up with a reason after the election to kill the Medicaid expansion. That would be an excellent way to shore up support with the national Republican base.

This would, of course, be SOP for Republican governors in blue and purple states: claim to be a moderate and once you are (back) in office, go full Ayn Rand on the liberal rubes who voted for you. After all, even if you have to run for office again, just say a couple of liberal things in the months before the election and all will be forgiven—or forgotten, as the case usually is. Part of this really exasperates me. In North Carolina, I have to stop myself from saying, “Well it’s your own damned fault!” But it is important to stay focused on the positive: next time it will be easier to make the case.

In Chris Christie’s case, it is clear what the appeal is. New Jersey is a very liberal state. Christie has done all kinds of things that the people dislike. But he’s always done it in the same old asshole way that says, “I’m one of you!” Except that he isn’t one of them. He’s just a corporate owned and operated politician who’s watched The Sopranos too many times. I’ve been to New Jersey many times and that isn’t how people act at all. The way Christie acts is the way that many people in New Jersey want to think they act. But that’s because they too have watched too many mob movies and television series. I’m expecting major buyer’s remorse fairly soon. Fantasies only last so long and after his re-election, Christie’s only constituency will be the Republican base.

It does now look as though there really was a chemical weapons attack in Syria on 21 August. My skepticism has always been based on the Yellow Rain incident. This involved supposed attacks by the Vietnam and Laos governments against the Hmong who live in the mountains of that region. Something bad clearly happened to those people. But it does not appear to have been a chemical attack, even though everyone was certain at the time.

The problem is that a lot of people are harmed in a lot of different ways when a modern war is underway. And it is indiscriminate. One thing I really hate is how people talk about how we never intentionally kill civilians when we bomb. There is also the ridiculous notion of our “smart bombs” and their accuracy. The truth of the matter is that we don’t actively try to kill civilians, but we don’t make any concessions for them either. I don’t consider our government particularly bad, of course; this is the nature of modern warfare and this is a big reason why we should do everything we can to avoid war.

The report stated, “[C]hemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.” And according to the Wall Street Journal, “The report also found that the weather conditions on the morning of Aug. 21 may have increased the number of victims because the temperatures had been falling.” This means that the toxins were not mixed well vertically and so hung around on the ground longer. This may explain why the attack didn’t have as high a fatality rate as usual because it was allowed to diffuse horizontally. Also, it would be particularly deadly to those hiding inside buildings—thus the high civilian casualty rate.

The UN weapons inspectors made no claims as to who did it. To me, it’s pretty clear. The rebels would have to be some very callous people to attack their own just for the sake of hopefully getting western support for their cause. Just the same, it doesn’t make sense for Syria to use chemical weapons. As it was, a UN inspection team was already in Syria on the day of the attack to investigate earlier alleged attacks. What’s more, the pro-government forces appear to be winning the war. So it makes no sense for them to use chemical weapons. And that’s why I think they did. I can imagine the rebels wanting to do something like that, but even if they have chemical weapons, they don’t have a lot. The Assad forces do. So I can well imagine some colonel calling for a strike. It didn’t have to come from on high, although it might have. The pure stupidity of such an attack does provide a certain amount of plausible deniability.

Regardless, none of this matters. I get tired of hearing about the supposed 400 children who were killed in that attack. There have doubtless been thousands of children killed by ordinary weapons since this civil war started. We should care about all of them, regardless of their ages and method of death. But it seems to be the clear action plan should involve applying our formidable diplomatic power to ending the civil war. What we’ve done instead is egg on the rebels and talk about how we would like to see “regime change” in Syria. I’m certainly not against that, but it isn’t on offer. An end to the civil war would be good for the Syrian people, and it really doesn’t matter what the United States thinks is in its long term strategic interests.

We could also do more to fight malaria.

When I saw the headline last night, I was pleased, Summers Withdraws Name for Fed Chairmanship. As I wrote about only Saturday, there are lots of reasons why Summers should not get the job. So it is good he is stepping back. Of course, I’m sure that he is only doing so because the White House counted up the votes and saw it just wasn’t going to happen.

That makes this whole thing a little less of a happy event. Now it is clear that despite Summers being at best a suboptimal pick, Obama really was committed to installing his golfing buddy as the head of the Federal Reserve. What’s more, in a statement, Obama said that Summers was “a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom, and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth.” Yeah, they faced down the economic crisis and they did a really bad job of it! For workers, this last 5 years has been an unmitigated disaster. I will allow that it’s been great for the banks, but that’s a reason to make Summers stay at Harvard, not to give him a promotion.

What’s most annoying about all of this is even with Summers stepping aside, we may still not get the best candidate to run the Fed. According to the Wall Street Journal, “One leading candidate is Janet Yellen, the Fed’s current vice chairwoman, who has garnered substantial support among Democrats in Congress and among economists. But the public lobbying on her behalf appears to have annoyed the president, say administration insiders, and may lead him to look elsewhere.” Is that really how it’s going to be? Is Obama going to nominate another member of his team that “faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”? Are we going to see Timothy Geithner nominated now?

A poorly reported aspect of the Obama administration is just how insular it is. Obama has his little boys’ club—And it is a boys’ club!—that he doesn’t like to go outside of. It seems he thinks they are all smart guys. Why would he look any further than the narrow confines of these men’s New Democrat ideology? It is shockingly reminiscent of George W Bush.

This is another test of Obama. If he can’t manage to nominate Janet Yellen to head the Federal Reserve, something is really wrong with him. There are lots of reasons he may not nominate her: he may simply be sexist, he may be unable to bring himself to support someone for a high profile position who isn’t a buddy, or it may be that he’s just spiteful and can’t deal with his constituency telling him what they want. None of these speak well of the man. My advice is to just get over all the personal pettiness and nominate the best person for the job.

Please note: I am drinking a second beer tonight. That means I am well past my comfort zone for alcohol. What am I drinking? Our own great local Lagunitas’ The Censored Rich Copper Ale. It’s a damned fine beer.

On this day in 1254, it is possible that Marco Polo was born. There is a 1 in 365 chance. But he’s got to go somewhere and Wikipedia mistakenly put him on this day, so why not? The French astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly was born in 1736. He isn’t that important, but he was executed during The Terror, and that’s pretty cool for a scientist. More cool? Evariste Galois, who will definitely win the day on 25 October.

The author of The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789. Physicist Edward Bouchet was born in 1852. He was the first African American man to earn a PhD at an American college (Yale in his case). He spent most of his life as an educator but you know her must have been an amazing intellect, or he never would have received the degree. In a fundamental way, he is a great example of how racism harms all of us. But there is no doubt that he was a very great man.

Composer Horatio Parker was born in 1863. I don’t especially like him, but he writes nice stuff. Here is the suite that he created from his opera Fairyland:

Novelist Robert Benchley was born in 1889. I mention him only because he is a good example of the fact that America is a class society. Peter (this son) is really not that good a writer. Mystery writer Agatha Christie was born in 1890.

The great filmmaker Jean Renoir was born in 1894. Until today, I had no idea that he was the son of the painter. I’ve only ever seen his movies. And if you haven’t seen his movies, you really should. The following trailer of The Grand Illusion does provide some idea of his greatness. It is, after all, a 1937 film and it looks much more modern than that. On the other hand, it gives a totally skewed idea of what the film is about; it is really about class, or at least, that is always what strikes me.

Jacques Becker was born in 1906. I mention him only because he was Renoir’s assistant director. Co-writer of “Frosty the Snowman,” Walter E. Rollins was also born in 1906.

John Mitchell was born in 1913. He was a real villain as Attorney General under Nixon. But I love everything Nixon. Have I mentioned that I’ve written a number of puppet plays that involve the Nixon administration? But I’ve never included John Mitchell. I really should. I think he would shake things up. Awful people are always improved when they are presented as puppets.

And comedian Nipsey Russell was born in 1918.

Comedian Norm Crosby is 86 today. Most of his act was a series of malapropisms. When I was kid, I thought he was hilarious. Now, not so much. Actor Tommy Lee Jones is 67 and looks 86. And the great screenwriter and director Oliver Stone is 67 and looks about that old. In addition to his art, his politics are right on:

The day, however, belongs to the great singer Bobby Short who was born on this day in 1924. He was great, but I mostly love him just because of the songs that he sings. Unfortunately, it is hard to find much video of him. But here he is doing Cab Calloway’s “She’s Tall, She’s Tan, She’s Terrific”:

Happy birthday Bobby Short!

This has been on my mind for some time. I come upon jokes now and then that are both amusing and sweet. And so I’ve been thinking that I should package them up as jokes you can tell at family gatherings. There is something else about the jokes. Most of the jokes I really like are very meta. For example, one of my favorite jokes is, “A priest, a rabbi, and a pastor walk into a bar and the bartender says, ‘What is this, a joke?'” I’m also very fond of quasi-intellectual jokes. For example, “Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?” Or the easier, “How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Fish!” These are not especially great jokes for most of my family. But more to the point, they are a little too clever for people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

So I put together the following video with three of my favorite “sweet” jokes. Will pointed out that the sound is terrible. This is true. In fact, if you turn up the sound, you can hear the camera motor running. Maybe some day I will get an external mic that will work with the damned thing. Until then, I’m afraid that the technical quality of the videos is about the same as the my onscreen acting. But if anyone wants to loan their equipment or face, I am more than willing!

Afterword

The following is Will’s kids’ favorite joke. It has long been on my list, but you can’t really do it alone:

ABC News reported this morning that Obama will not negotiate with Republicans over the Debt Ceiling. He said, “If we continue to set a precedent in which a president… is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to put—pay the bills unless you give us… what we want,’ that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely.” Good for him. The problem is that he said the same thing last November and what did he do in December? He negotiated with the Republicans on the Debt Ceiling. So I’m not convinced and I can well see why the Republicans would think that the Debt Ceiling is a good bargaining strategy.

Of course, it is one thing to ask Obama to steal money from the poor and old. After all, he’s neither poor nor old! But asking him to destroy his signature legislative accomplishment? The thing he will be remembered for? His “legacy”? I don’t think so. What’s more, what exactly does Obamacare have to do with debt and the budget? It doesn’t make sense. Stealing money from grandma at least would do something (Very little!) about the debt. Obamacare actually saves money. So this newest Republican demand really is just the conservative issue du jour.

More than anything else, they want to win something. But they aren’t reasonable about it. In the Fiscal Cliff negotiations, there were a number of things they could have gotten that they claim to want. The biggest was that they could have screwed the poor and middle class by changing over to chained-CPI. But instead, they are like children. They don’t want to just make some progress in their goals. And they certainly don’t want to have to give up anything in exchange. So it’s extortion time! As Representative Dennis Ross said, “We have the opportunity of a lifetime. We have public sentiment, we have the facts and figures on our side and we have the leverage with the debt ceiling. Let’s put it all together and make it happen…” Every single thing he said there is false.

The Hill now reports that many in the House Republican caucus are freaking out, Angry House Republicans Demand Better Communication. Conservatives and centrists (whatever that means in the context of the modern Republican Party) are upset that Boehner and Cantor have allowed the “repeal Obamacare” fantasy to grow and fester. According to them, the problem started two months ago when Ted Cruz started pressing the House to defund the healthcare reform bill as a condition for raising the Debt Ceiling. The Republicans are complaining that their leadership didn’t push back and explain why that was a crazy idea.

That is rich! I don’t think that even the most “centrist” of Republicans can think that it would have helped the situation for Boehner to go before the cameras and explain that shutting down the government and defaulting on our debt was not only bad for the country but bad for the Republican Party. Over the last three years, there has been an big rise in the Republican belief that if they are only strong and true, they can do anything. So anything Boehner said that indicated that they couldn’t bring about their preferred policies through force of will would have been taken as proof that he was part of the problem. If only we could get Republicans to believe in fairies:

I don’t doubt that there are a fair number of Republicans in the House who are now worried about what is coming. First, there is the issue that this whole thing could get out of control and that it could destroy the Republican Party. And second, there is the opportunity costs: if Republicans were acting rationally, they might actually be able to get some policy concessions they want. But I think it is a bit much to blame the situation on Boehner and the rest of the Republican leadership. The problem is much bigger—bigger even than the Republican Party.[1] If these “centrist” Republicans want to look at a major villain here, they should look in the mirror. After all, the only difference between themselves and Ted Cruz is that he wants to crash the economy to end Obamacare and they want to crash the economy to end support of the poor.

[1] I continue to believe that the Democratic Party’s move to the right on economic issues has played a big role in turning “conservative” into “crazy.”

This is a good idea, although this design may not be the way to go. Also, the economics are a little trick. That’s why the government should get involved. Perhaps I’ll talk more about that later.

Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported, For Summers, Path to Fed Job Gets Bumpier. It is primarily about an announcement yesterday from Senator Jon Tester that he will not vote for Larry Summers if Obama nominates him to head the Federal Reserve. A spokeswoman said, “Senator Tester believes we need a consensus-builder to lead the Federal Reserve. He’s concerned about Mr. Summers’s history of helping to deregulate financial markets.” This is a big deal because it brings to 4 the number of Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee who are expected to vote against Summers. (The other three are: Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren.)

There are many reasons that Summers should not be made Fed chair. The Tester statement mentions two in as many sentences. First, Summers is known for not getting along well with others. He made a mess of the job as president of Harvard. Second, his economic policies have been terrible. He was indeed a very big player in deregulating the financial markets. In addition, he has long pushed a strong dollar policy. That’s a policy that supports the rich at the cost of jobs for the poor. Just based upon this, I think he shouldn’t even be considered for the post. It is an outrage that he is one of the main people under consideration. Obama should be shamed out of the country for this.

But I think there is a more important reason for Summers to not be made chair of the Federal Reserve. I am sick to death of people in the upper echelons of power being rewarded for their incompetence. It seems that these people cannot screw up badly enough to cause them to be toxic. Imagine if after World War II, instead of being hanged, Hermann Goering had been put in charge of the West German government. That seems to be where we are today. “Oh, you were wrong about every major economic issue over the last 20 years? Well, why don’t you run the Fed?!”

By all accounts, Larry Summers is a great economist. He should just go back and be an economics professor. There’s no shame in that and he may even be able to make some contributions to science that way. But in government, he should be toxic. And the fact that he isn’t is an indictment of our current system.

The Wall Street Journal also noted that overwhelmingly, economists in academia and Wall Street think that Janet Yellen would be a better choice as Fed chair. But those on Wall Street are more fond of Summers than are those in academia. That alone should be reason enough to not pick Summers. But we will have to see how this all goes. If Obama is willing to fight for Summers, it will show that my very worst fears of Obama are true: he’s too conservative and too insular. He rarely surprises me in a good way.