Dispatches from Vilnius

Speaking of Thomas Nast, here is a political cartoon , from an 1875 edition of Harper's Weekly, depicting an attempt to lure U.S. Grant into running for a third term.  Hard to believe Grant was still that popular after all the scandals which plagued his administration.  Apparently, Nast was the first to use the elephant to symbolize the Republicans, and he used it extensively in his political cartoons.  Here is a broader sampling of his work.

In the latest uproar over banning assault weapons, Wayne La Pierre accuses Mayor Bloomberg of trying to buy the American people.  Just in case you are curious the NRA has an annual operating budget of over $200 million, paying La Pierre a cool million for his efforts to "defend" the second amendment.  That's nearly 20 times the amount Bloomberg has pledged to push for assault weapon bans around the country. Recently, we saw the ever resilient " Mama Grizzly " teeing off on Bloomberg's attempt at a Big Gulp ban in New York, proudly slurping from one of these half-gallon cups at a CPAC rally.  The Mississippi legislature followed suit by not only banning such attempted bans, but barring local governments from requiring nutritional information be posted at restaurants.  This from perhaps the most obese state in the nation, with the highest count of Type 2 diabetes. These and many other issues have put the Republican party outside the mainstream, l...

There's no question Homeland has reached a broad audience , including the President it seems.  Bill Clinton apparently brags that he turned President Obama onto the show.  But, after watching the first season over a long weekend I have to wonder what Smokin' Joe Biden thinks of the Showtime series, as it is the Vice-President, amiably played by Jamey Sheridan, who comes across as the "bad guy" in this elaborate spy thriller. While the creative team credits an Israeli television series, Prisoners of War , as its inspiration, it seems The Manchurian Candidate lurks in the back of their minds.  The story revolves around a American POW that isn't quite the returning hero he seems, but to the writers' credit there are so many compelling twists and turns in this series that you soon forget the link. Homeland plays out more like a 12-part movie than a serial, with each episode dovetailing into the next, as we watch Carrie Mathison, a feisty CIA agent, try...

Anyone interested in heading West?  One of the books suggested for our next reading group is George Black's epic journey of discovery, Empire of Shadows , where he charts the American discovery and eventually establishment of the National Park by U.S. Grant.  You can pull up a preview at amazon, and here's a chat with Park Ranger George Heinz from 2008 on the active geysers at Yellowstone. Other books that have been proffered are A Wicked War by Amy Greenberg, Freedom National by James Oakes, and Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine.  Of course, we are open for suggestions for some Spring reading!

It seems historians never grow weary of Lincoln, approaching him from any number of angles in trying to ascertain perhaps our most enigmatic president.  John Burt has chosen to re-explore Lincoln's philosophic grounding in Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism .  Unlike William Lee Miller's book from a few years back, Lincoln's Virtues , Burt focuses intensely on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, coming to terms with the dichotomy that exists between the two men when it came to the issue of slavery vs. states' rights.  But, like Miller he examines the debates and the speeches Lincoln gave, looking for salient clues as to his reasoning, although Burt doesn't go as far as his presidency. It sounds like quite a heady book to read Steven's Smith's review, moving well beyond the standard narrative like we saw in the movie, Lincoln , which Smith alludes to.  Burt apparently "sees Lincoln as a historicist for whom our moral concerns emerge only over time."  D...

After watching The Master the other night, I very much wish it had been Paul Thomas Anderson and not Stephen Spielberg who had taken on Lincoln.  Anderson is able to create a "profound sense of ambiguity" in his films that Spielberg is simply incapable of doing. This is Anderson's second film where he explores the American past.  In There Will Be Blood , he re-imagined Upton Sinclair's political novel, Oil .  He essentially created a parable out of the novel, and in The Master he does the same, this time drawing on a wide variety of sources in creating Lancaster Dodd and his protegee Freddie Quell.  To me, it was a more elegant rendering of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood .  Freddie reminded me a lot of Hazel Motes in his rawness, if not religious conviction. Lancaster Dodd doesn't really fit the image of Asa Hawks or Hoover Shoates.  Many reviewers have compared him to L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology, especially with his interest in scienc...

Here's a meander of MacDonald Creek in Glacier National Park -- probably about what it looks like right now.  Locals (mostly republicans) are up in arms because Glacier and Yellowstone are delaying plowing their roads in the spring to save money, which will have a serious effect on local economies.  Republicans don't want children to have school lunches, but they want those roads plowed on time so they can cater to the tourists.  Keep the government out of our national parks!

It seems all you have to do is make a series about the Bible and you have a ratings bonanza.  History Channel's 10-part series on the Bible drew a larger audience  than American Idol.  The series literally chronicles the Bible  from beginning to end, with the husband-and-wife team of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey recreating many of the scenes, and finding their " Jesus " in a 33-year old Portuguese model, Diogo Morgado.  Of course, this shouldn't have come as a surprise given the huge success of Mel Gibson's Passion a few years back, but apparently Hollywood execs were still left "dumbstruck." It seems that the so-called "fact based" cable channels have increasingly turned to religious, supernatural and hot button domestic themes in recent years to boost television ratings  National Geographic has been running all kinds of specials from Doomsday Preppers to Omens of the Apocalypse , which I'm sure would make the founders of the soci...

In an angry exchange, Ted Cruz tried to " school " Dianne Feinstein on the Constitution, equating the proposed ban on assault rifles to banning books.  It seems that Little Ted doesn't know that books are still being banned in school districts and state-supported libraries all over the country.  Here are lists of books that have been " challenged " in recent years, with To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men still being kept out of some libraries.  But, it seems the Tea Party enjoys these rhetorical arguments, even when Ted gets called out on his absurd comments. This was also the case with Ron Johnson, who offered a whole new spin on how Social Security is funded in a recent segment of This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  Paul Krugman took Johnson to task over his factual errors.  This led to a fiery exchange with George Will stepping in to point out that you can't reach any kind of budget deal in Congress if you can't agree on basic fact...

Greedy Lying Bastards pretty much sums it up.  This is a recent documentary that chronicles the attempts by so-called "energy companies" and  industries to dismiss global warming.  There are some pretty shocking figures cited, such as the $67 million Koch Industries has spent over the last 15 years in its campaign against global warming.  The documentary also looks into the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United that now allows for unlimited corporate contributions to political campaigns, essentially allowing industry to buy Washington and state legislatures, where these multinational companies successfully fight against environmental regulations. You have to wonder at what point does the cost to discredit the large body of scientific analysis that has shown that global arming is occurring exceeds the cost to pursue renewable forms of energy.  Already, we are seeing a big dispute over the costly process of fracking to unlock a few more drops of oil fro...

This documentary dates from 2008 on PBS, but I only saw it for the first time on History Channel the other night.  It is a fascinating exploration into the Mayan language.  The doc is based on a book by Michael Coe.  It starts with the destruction of many of the ancient codices by Diego de Landa, a 16th century priest determined to convert the Maya to Christianity.  However, the documentary fails to note that de Landa spent a long time trying to crack the code himself because he like many other priests originally saw the Maya as a lost tribe of Israel.  I have his book, Yucatan Before and After the Conquest , and Hugh Thomas writes quite a bit about him in Conquest . This intriguing special focuses on the long process of decrypting a language composed of over 800 glyphs and combined in a seemingly endless number of ways that had befuddled Mayanists for decades.   Eric Thompson , considered the dean of Mayanology, viewed the Mayans as relatively pr...

Celebrated around the world, except in America where our leaders are still trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

Hugo Chavez is being remembered in many ways.  The fiery Venezuelan leader wasn't afraid to antagonize the United States, which endeared him to many Latin Americans, but also made him a favorite villain in the American media.  Perhaps his greatest show of defiance was at a 2006 UN assembly meeting in which he openly castigated the Bush administration, and held up Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival as a must read for anyone who wanted to understand the United States' role in shaping the global order.  But, even Chomsky had strong words on the nature of his regime in Venezuela, calling it an "assault" on democracy.  That's the problem with befriending Libertarians, you never know when one will turn against you. But, like him or not, Chavez brought much needed reforms to Venezuela and definitely made it a better place to live for the 98 per cent.  He held his office for 6 terms, although his opposition argued over the fairness of these elections.  Of...

I started reading this book the other night.  It had been sitting on my shelf for a long time.  It dates back to the days of the old NYTimes forums when I used to get into those rows with Mosca over European history. Very interesting start as Ferguson relates his grandfather's experience in WWI and how the Scottish regiments sustained more per capita losses than just about any other country during the war.  Twenty-one per cent, as I recall.  The losses in WWI were great, estimated at close to 10 million, dwarfing that of the American Civil War. The US didn't get into the war until late, much to Teddy Roosevelt's chagrin, and in the end he lost his youngest son, Quentin, who apparently was short-sighted like his father, and died in a plane crash.  I don't think Roosevelt ever forgave himself for that, as he was insistent that his sons go to war, as he had done in the Spanish-American War. What I like most about Ferguson's account is the way he treats ...

On the surface, it looks like the Republicans have won this battle , as Obama is once again willing to put "entitlements" on the table in an effort to reach a grand compromise on the budget.  As Scarborough noted in his op-ed piece, $85 billion is a drop in the bucket when you consider the overall $3.8 trillion budget that was requested for 2013, and the only place it will be really felt is in defense, which needs to be cut anyway, even if it means losing a few jobs in the greater Washington DC metro area.  But, it seems our President still thinks he can work with the Republicans even after four years of stonewalling and renewed cries for massive budget cuts. What I don't get is how Social Security and Medicare even figure into these budget cuts, as they come out of a whole separate tax system, FICA, not income tax, and haven't figured into the manufactured "debt crisis."  In fact, the federal government has been borrowing against Social Security to mee...

In his latest ploy to get sympathy, John Boehner claims Obama is trying to "annihilate the Republican Party." This came in the wake of the President's inaugural address, which took on an unusually "liberal" tone according to pundits, essentially daring the Republican Party to defy him, and defy him they have done once again. The Repubicans have pushed this theme in every media outlet.  They even had Woodward sounding their drum by stating that Obama had "moved the goal posts" on budget talks, even though increased revenue had long been part of any budget package.  But, the Republicans yet again refuse to yield, preferring to call Obama's bluff. As usual, Joe Scarborough tries to play both sides of the issue.  In his latest op-ed piece in the NYTimes, he thinks this move will backfire on Obama, as the country will feel little pinch from the sequestration.  Yet, it is the Republicans who have been scaremongering the public of an economic ...

JFK with the first volunteers in 1961 Two score and 12 years, John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that established the Peace Corps in the Department of State.  A Peace Corps bill had been floating around in Congress since the mid 50s, but there had been no action taken on it until 1960 when Humphrey in the Senate and Henry Reuss in the House tried to push the bill toward passage, but ultimately it took Kennedy's executive action to make this volunteer service reality. The first group of 52 volunteers were sent to Ghana in August, 1961.  The country had been independent since 1957.  The Peace Corps has had its ebbs and flows over the years but today numbers over 8000 volunteers with a presence in 76 countries.  I served in Lesotho from 1988-90, as a math and science teacher in a rural high school, an experience I treasure.