Dispatches from Vilnius

I have to wonder what Jim Nabors thinks of Indiana's new "religious freedom" law?  He's been singing Back Home Again in Indiana at the annual Indy 500 Race at least since 1972.  He sang his final verse last year and will be replaced by the a cappella group, Straight No Chaser , this year, ending a run of over 40 years. If the federal courts don't step in and declare this law unconstitutional, you can expect to see more states adopt similar legislation.  Texas already has such a law, but was more careful in its language to not allow religious fundamentals to skirt anti-discrimination laws.  There are no such provisions in the law Governor Pence signed.  However, given the current religious fervor sweeping conservative states you can expect Texas legislators to update that law. So much for "compassionate conservatism," which George W. Bush extolled on the campaign trail in 2000.  This is a far more orthodox group of religious fundamentals who ...

You have to hand it to Ted "Country Boy" Cruz.  He knows how to turn a seemingly harmless question into a political statement.  The amazing thing is that Rolling Stone didn't call Ted out on this.  It took Bill Maher to point to the blatant hypocrisy in the statement, with one of his panelists noting that Cruz will say literally anything to pander to the religious right wing, who is decidedly country when it comes to music. It's not like "classic rock" musicians didn't respond to 9/11.  A huge concert was held at Madison Square Garden nine days later that had rock stars from around the world and across the political spectrum coming together to praise the first responders, with proceeds going to the ongoing recovery.  Among those were John Mellencamp and Kid Rock putting aside their political differences to sing Mellencamp's classic, Pink Houses .  Kid Rock comes in at about the 6 minute mark.  The Who capped off the evening with Won't Ge...

From Cicero to James Bond Jefferson's Library at the Library of Congress Who knew Richard Nixon regarded himself as a Tolstoyan?  Or, War and Peace  taught George H.W. Bush "a lot about life?"  These and many other insights into the favorite books of Presidents have been compiled for Buzzfeed.  Of course you can take many of them with a grain of salt, as obviously Dave Odegard has a pension for citing biographies and autobiographies to those Presidents he didn't like, or in Warren G. Harding's case, Rules of Poker , because he apparently bet the White House china on a single hand and lost.  Which set of rules, the author doesn't say. There is probably a grain of truth to most of these selections, but Odegard could have done a little more sleuthing.  Thomas Jefferson held Cicero in very high regard and purportedly modeled his own life on the Roman statesman's love of study and aristocratic country life.  Odegard does note that Jefferson donat...

Sean Hannity just can't resist running " exposes " on Spring Break.  It has become an obsession for him, probably because all those lewd clips help boost his ratings.  Each year, the Fox News pundit assembles a panel to "discuss" the raunchy behavior that has come to be identified with this rite of passage. Kids flock to the warm beaches of the Gulf Coast for a week of debauchery that has been chronicled as far back as 1958, when Glendon Swarthout penned Where the Boys Are , which was quickly made into a movie starring George Hamilton, Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux and Paula Prentiss.  A couple years ago, Harmonie Korine turned this particular story on its head in Spring Breakers , making Hamilton's suave Ivy-leaguer into a two-bit drug dealer, played by James Franco, in a darkly amusing romp that left parents flabbergasted. Fact of the matter, Spring Break hasn't changed much in all those years.  It has always been about sex, focusing on the male...

Sheldon Adelson apparently has a hole burning in his pocket and is determined to buy an election.  He was successful in Israel, where the electorate amounts to less than 6 million, but it is decidedly tougher in the US where over 120 million votes were cast in 2012.  You would think if you were Uncle Sheldon you'd put your money behind a horse that has a reasonable chance of winning, but in 2012, Adelson backed Newt Gingrich in the primaries.  Now, he is putting his money behind Lindsey Graham, assuming the dodgy South Carolina Senator runs for office. Lindsey is certainly sounding Presidential these days, chastising Ted Cruz for his extremist views, saying "you can't govern the country based on being angry."  This would also rule out Ben Carson, who wears his anger on his sleeve .  But, the GOP appears to embrace anger and extremism these days, sounding more like the Taliban than a party of reconciliation. Many conservative US Representatives and Sen...

If attention was what Ted Cruz was after, he is getting it in bucket loads after announcing his candidacy for President before a mandatory filled auditorium at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That's right, students faced fines if they didn't attend.  Others pitched up in T-shirts proudly proclaiming that they " Stand with Rand ." Unfazed, Ted delivered a sanctimonious speech, telling of his origins, which Donald Trump questions ; promoting small business, replete with a "Kenyan girl" coming to America (Obama's niece maybe?); telling us that "American Exceptionalism" is all about that "Shining City on a Hill" that St. Ronnie so often evoked; giving us a brief history lesson Tea Party style; lambasting "Obamacare" and the IRS while defending Hobby Lobby (thunderous applause); telling us what a great guy Benjamin Netanyahu is; and that if he was President it would be America first at the UN.  You can read the f...

Starbucks took it on the chin in its  latest attempt to attach a social statement to its cafe lattes.  I suppose Howard Schultz had the best intentions in mind, but let's face it this was nothing more than a coffee promo meant to garner media attention, which it did.  However, Schultz isn't the only one to blame.  Plenty of other companies use social messages to boost sales.  In fact, studies show consumers favor this form of advertising to conventional methods. American Apparel is probably the most racy in doing so with its anti-airbrushing campaigns and "normal" models designed to make their clothes feel real, but it too started feeling the heat and the new CEO vows to " clean up " the company, which saw many of its ads banned due to their explicit sexual nature. Schultz would never go that far, which is why he was no doubt flabbergasted his "race together" theme received such adverse reaction.  It was the timing more than anything els...

It is apparently not enough that Netanyahu won the special election, Republicans are now seizing on the opportunity to link Obama to non-profit organizations that campaigned against the Israeli prime minister and tried to get Arab-Israelis out to vote.  At the heart of these allegations is a Republican strategist, John McLaughin, who worked on Bibi's campaign. I suppose this is an attempt to counter the heat John Boehner got for inviting Bibi to Washington and now going to Israel to personally congratulate the blustery PM on his victory.  Of course, all this is done on the up and up.  It is our Communist-leader-in-chief, who mobilized his ACORN-like forces to oust Bibi and bring his brand of socialism to Israel, in large part to empower the Arabs, that is to blame. You really have to marvel at all these conspiracy theories, but then they are really nothing more than a smokescreen to divert media attention away from more serious issues, like our unquestioning s...

The big problem we face today is the media time spent on conservative ideologues like Ben Carson, who rose to political prominence largely for ripping President Obama at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2013.  Here is the New York Times devoting a huge chunk of copy to the guy, telling us little we hadn't heard a hundred times before.  The only part that was interesting was the intro in which the reporter had access to Carson interviewing a potential campaign press secretary, Deana Bass. One can forgive Jon Stewart for going after these conservative ideologues because they provide great comic material, but do we really need to take them seriously, as the NY Times apparently does?  It takes a special effort to read the long article, as it does anything about the Republican wannabes in 2016, because it is hard to imagine any of them as president, including Jeb Bush.  Would the Republicans actually nominate a third Bush?  Sadly, when you look at the alterna...

Disco is like one of those songs you can't shake out of your head no matter how hard you try, and just when you thought it was safe to go back to the night club ... it's back!  Of course, if you package Chic's latest release in what appears to be a Victoria's Secret ad it becomes quite appealing.   For those of us who lived through that era, we hoped bands like these would never return. The Disco Demolition Rally at Comiskey Park, in June, 1979, was widely regarded to be the death of the genre after it had dominated the air waves throughout the late 70s.  The beat lingered into the "very early 80s" as Wilt Stillman made fun of in The Last Days of Disco , giving way to Madonna and electronic music, which wasn't any better.  No more Donna Summer, Bee Gees or Gloria Gaynor.  But, like Gaynor's famous anthem , the music appears to have survived. Looking back in retrospect, it doesn't sound all that bad, especially in comparison to the pop mu...

It seems we have two governments now as "shadow president' John Boehner plans to travel to Israel to meet with re-elected Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.  I suppose this kind of back channel "diplomacy" isn't unprecedented, but the bald-faced way that the Republicans have chosen to directly engage in Foreign Policy, openly undermining the sitting Commander-in-Chief, is new and very unsettling. One of the dark figures behind all this subversive politicking is Sheldon Adelson, who contributes heavily to conservative groups in the US and Israel.  He has become the new media mogul of Israel, buying up tabloids that cater to the country's religious right, much like Rupert Murdoch's vast "info-tainment" network in America.  Adelson used it effectively to aid Netanyahu in his re-election bid.  This is a guy with money to burn and has an agenda that includes bringing American and Israeli conservatives together to fight what he sees as the scourge...

I'm left scratching my head after Bibi Netanyahu's election victory in Israel.  I always thought Israelis saw through cheap political stunts, but apparently they are as bad as Americans at falling for xenophobic cries of more security.  The current Prime Minister appeared to have no reason to call this election in the fist place.  It may have undercut his "majority" in the Knesset by resorting to what can only be described as American style campaigning, underwritten in large part by American citizens.  Yet, it is the Obama administration that is being taken to task for purportedly " funding " the Victory15 political coordinating group in the election, which was committed to ousting Bibi. I would like to think the US Senate would similarly probe Boehner's motivations for inviting Bibi to Congress only two weeks before the election, although the highly publicized state visit didn't give him much of a boost.  Many thought Netanyahu would lose t...

I've long abhorred the derivative nature of pop music, but the recent jury award against the song Blurred Lines seems to have gone too far.  There is no question that Pharrell Williams, who we eventually found out wrote the song, took the spirit of the song from Marvin Gaye's classic Got To Give It Up but to say he plagiarized the song opens the door for numerous other law suits, as one can say the same for many pop songs past and present. Pop music has long relied on a relatively limited vocabulary, and many musicians have lifted chords and lyrics directly from other songs without offering any compensation to the original composers, much less credit.  Bob Dylan got into some hot water for not crediting Henry Timrod, an obscure Civil War poet, in his album Modern Times , but the family of Timrod wasn't around to challenge him.   Poets familiar with Timrod's work did.  Dylan kept copious notebooks filled with such uncredited verses he lifted from obscu...

Meet the latest Bully Boy of the Republicans.  Tom Cotton has made an instant impact in the Senate with the letter he crafted to Iran, "warning" the government of signing any nuclear agreement with the President.  He had quite a track record from the House, where he previously served as US Representative of Arkansas. At 37, he is much younger than the other leading lights of the GOP: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse, and has the potential to be around a long, long time.  He is part of a new generation of religious conservatives, schooled in the ivy-covered halls of the Northeast, yet espousing the same religious conservative agenda of their less educated colleagues.  I suppose the Harvard, Yale and Columbia degrees give these Young Turks legitimacy, but the stunts they pull in Congress defy all credulity. I'm not sure why the Republican establishment is so willing to cast its lot behind these young senators.  I suppose it is a way of reaching out to...

How Republicans still see Iran Whether emboldened by Netanyahu or upset that Obama got to bask in all that sunshine in Selma, 47 Republican legislators took it upon themselves to "remind" Iran who controls Washington.  Their open letter has caused ripples in foreign diplomacy but hardly the tsunami they imagined.  Iran's foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, who studied in the United States, called the letter nothing more than a propaganda ploy and used the opportunity to "remind" Republican Congressmen that a nation is obligated to international agreements signed by its predecessors.  So, who schooled who here? President Obama didn't have any opportunity to enjoy his moment in Selma, where he gave one of his most stirring speeches on the progress of Civil Rights in America, touching on so many issues, notably renewing the Voting Rights Act, that it probably gave the Republicans delirium tremens.  It seems it has been very difficult for the GOP...

Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none Another season of House of Cards is upon us.  I'm still working my way through the first two seasons, which have been translated into Lithuanian for television.  I find myself having to explain the American political system at the office, as it is quite different from what it is over here.  However, this show isn't so much about the political system as it is how to subvert the process for your own political gain. Surprisingly, the writers made little effort to adapt the British television series from a few years back, which similarly had a parliamentary whip rise to the top of the party.  Even the names are remarkably similar, Francis Underwood and Francis Urquhart.  In fact the writers could have kept Urquhart too, as there are plenty of old Scottish families in South Carolina, but I suppose it is a bit difficult to pronounce. The show is fun in its Machiavellian sort of way, but the idea of a White Democratic ...

Recently, we have seen several attempts by Republicans to take on science.  The most amusing was the snowball fight Sen. James Inhofe tried to start in Congress over climate change.  I guess he like many other Republicans feels that if you can't see it, it doesn't exist, other than God of course.  Maybe the Senator meant it as a joke to break up the monotony of the session, but this isn't the first time he has resorted to such stunts to drive one of his pathetic points home.  Sen. Inhofe is the Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. Not to be outdone, Dr. Ben Carson believes that homosexuality is learned, basing his empirical studies on prisoners.  This is a world famous neurosurgeon mind you, who also doesn't believe in evolution.  For him it is a matter of faith, being  a Seventh-Day Adventist.  None of it would matter if he wasn't being regarded as a serious contender for the US presidency.  Not surprisingly,...

Bibi Almighty Having failed to make a stirring rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address, the Republicans opt for their " nuclear option ," Benjamin Netanyahu.  The long anticipated speech before a joint session of Congress finally came to pass, and like the big Creationism v. Evolution debate last year was a bit of a dud.  Bibi tried to play down the notion that his visit was politically motivated when everyone knew it was, particularly the Republicans who were determined to rub dirt in Obama's eye. Democrats would have been wise to ignore this pathetic political posturing, but instead they made their feelings known with some 40 Congresspersons choosing not to attend the speech.  The White House expressed its disapproval, with Susan Rice and Samantha Power both  condemning  the speech. Bibi has been struggling to gain leverage in the upcoming Israeli parliamentary elections, as he finds his coalition falling apart.  He crashed the Pa...