I Hate the Sinner, Too

The honeymoon lasted just six months, and now President Obama is in the dog house of the American people, a collection of the smartest individuals ever evolved but dumber than amoebae when acting as a group.

Today’s polls show the more Obama talks up the necessity of health care reform, the less the people support him or reform. The Republicans are winning because they, alone among mammals have the ability to stick together -- and lie without shame.

They have opposed everything Obama has done, said or believed without ever coming up with a counterproposal to anything. The reason for that is simple – Republicans do not want anything done at all on any problem facing the country. So their strategy has the benefit of simplicity, as befits their intellect. If you are for nothing, then you are free to attack someone on the basis of his party and now, thanks to Glenn Beck, his skin color.

Everything Republicans have done in the past 20 years has been intended to divide Americans from one another, spew hatred and protect the very wealthy, or those who wish to be wealthy but are too dim to understand they never will be as long as any Republican is ever elected to office. As Harry Truman, as partisan a Democrat as ever lived but who conservatives would have you believe was a Republican, once said: “If you want to live like a Republican, you have to vote Democratic.” When nothing happens, those who have it all prosper. There is no hope for anyone else, and that is the way the debauched demagogues who put their religion above their public responsibilities and their dicks into anything that moves want things.

On health care, the venomous vermin in the Republican party have succeeding in tipping the political debate after losing handily in the last couple of elections. Their lies have finally convinced a majority of Americans that health care reform will hurt them. They have convinced most people that Obama has failed because the economy that Republicans wrecked in eight years has not turned around in six months.

Consider, in the past week elected Republicans have said health care reform legislation will kill old people, allow for an upsurge in abortions, take their doctors away and destroy freedom. And that is because – remember this is all from elected Republicans – the president of the United States is an undocumented Muslim socialist.

I am making none of this up!

Then there is Glenn Beck who has called Obama a racist! And Lou Dobbs, still employed by CNN, who is demanding Obama produce the birth certificate that is part of the public record. And there is Rush Limbaugh, the thrice-married drug-addicted bloviator who could not tell the truth of if he were waterboarded. (If he were, I would feel sorry for the board.)

The problem is that Democrats, or progressives, are incapable of agreeing on even general principles and they are too decent, in general, to adopt Republican tactics that have not changed since Dick Nixon, Dick Armey and Dick Morris crawled out from under rocks. Democrats and progressives are doomed; handicapped by the inconvenience of thought.

So to anyone who thinks Republicans have the answers (and these are people who demand that the federal government keep its hands off their Medicare!), I suggest they:

Lose their Medicare coverage.

Lose their veterans benefits

Lose their Social Security

Lose use of interstate highways

Lose tax deductions on their home mortgages

Lose flood insurance when their trailers are swept away by the Big Muddy

Lose police protection and

Get sick from unvaccinated children or AIDS-infected whores and die.

Then, the only government they will have to worry about is that of the Eternal King. And He is going to be mighty pissed at them.

Issa That a Pistol in Your Pocket?

The science that has given America the best health care in the world – at least according to myopic Republican politicians – is grounded in the unique system by which the federal government awards research grants for the independent study of important medical issues. Most of the grants are issued by the unassailable National Institutes of Health (unassailable because I work for it as a contractor), and the value of those grants are decided upon by panels of experts in the field. Partisan politics does not play a role.

But since this is taxpayers’ money, every once in a while a cretinous Congressman thinks he can make political hay by arousing the public over grants that have to do with one subject and one subject only. Sex.

Several years ago, the House came within one vote of canceling grants because the eponymous Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona didn’t like studying the prostitutes who are largely responsible for the African AIDS epidemic that has killed millions of black people and ruined the economies of half a continent.

Now, another yahoo who should know better got the House to pass, without debate and without a vote, cancellation of several other AIDS studies.

This living example of the need to for further brain research is Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. His amendment – which one hopes will be quietly dispatched by the Senate or a conference committee – high-handedly would cancel behavioral research studies on 1) the factors that put Thai prostitutes at special risk of HIV; (2) decreasing high-risk HIV behaviors among Russian alcoholics; and (3) an intervention program targeting HIV risk and alcohol use among Chinese prostitutes.

Why does Issa care? He cares because these three grants were brought to his attention by a news organization that was rooting around the tens of thousands of grants the NIH awards to find those having to do with sex. The news organization? The reputable Christian Broadcast Network, founded by the always reputable Pat Robertson.

I sure hope Issa or anyone in his family never gets AIDS, never has sex outside of marriage and never needs their lives saved by discoveries made through scientific inquiry.

Mr. Issa is the guy who made a fortune with the Viper car alarm system, and is literally the voice behind “Please step away from the car.”

While convicted only once, he has a very interesting history regarding the use of cars, as explained on Wikipedia.

In 1971, Issa allegedly stole a Dodge sedan from an Army post near Pittsburgh. The allegation was made by a retired Army sergeant, and published in a 1998 newspaper article. Issa denied the allegation. No charges were filed.

In 1972, Issa and his brother allegedly stole a red Maserati sports car from a car dealership in Cleveland. He and his brother were indicted for car theft, but the case was dropped.

Also in 1972, Issa was convicted in Michigan for possession of an unregistered gun. He received three months probation and paid a $204 fine.

On December 28, 1979, Issa and his brother allegedly faked the theft of Issa's Mercedes Benz sedan. Issa and his brother were charged for felony auto theft, but the case was dropped by prosecutors for lack of evidence. Later, Issa and his brother were charged for misdemeanors, but that case was not pursued by prosecutors. Issa accused his brother of stealing the car, and said that the experience with his brother was the reason he went into the car alarm business.

A day after a court order was issued, giving Issa control of automotive alarm company A.C. Custom over an unpaid $60,000 debt, Issa allegedly carried a cardboard box containing a handgun into the office of A.C. Custom executive, Jack Frantz, and told Frantz he was fired. In a 1998 newspaper article, Frantz said Issa had invited him to hold the gun and claimed extensive knowledge of guns and explosives from his Army service. In response, Issa said, "Shots were never fired. ... I don't recall having a gun. I really don't. I don't think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.”

The views expressed in this post are mine and not those of the National Institutes of Health or any other component of the U.S. government.

D.C. Droppings -- XVII

Squeaky Gates
I am sorry for what happened to Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, arrested for disorderly conduct outside his home after police arrived to investigate a report of a burglary, which turned out to be him trying to force his way into his own house due a lock malfunction.
Gates not only is black, he is a historian and the most famous, honored and accomplish black person in academia. In fact, when I saw a quick Internet headline about a professor arrested, I assumed it was that buffoon Cornell West, who left Harvard in a snit because then president Larry Summers had the temerity to ask him about his level of actual scholarly work.

But in the hoo-hah about Gates, I have to wonder about his own scholarship after reading he now plans to undertake a “study” and produce a documentary film about racial profiling. What kind of scholarship is it to undertake a study and produce a documentary on a question you already know the answer to? Will Gates study the issue and find to his surprise that there is less racial profiling than he thought? Does Elie Wiesel forget?

A Washington Post writer has an interesting take on the situation such as Gates faced, and, frankly, while I don’t think it is constitutionally possible to disturb the peace of a police officer, I do suspect that the “Don’t you know who I am” response is not likely to make the police go away.

Finally, President Obama had one of the more hilarious lines I have ever heard at a presidential press conference. Asked about the Gates incident, he tried to be Mr. Everyman, Mr. Homeowner, and momentarily forgot where he was.

There was a report called in to the police station that there might be a burglary taking place. So far, so good, right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into -- well, I guess this is my house now, so...
(LAUGHTER)
... it probably wouldn't happen. But let's say my old house in Chicago.
(LAUGHTER)
Here, I'd get shot.

Seriously, I don't think the nation's "chief magistrate" ought to be commenting on local police cases at all, especially without the facts. Save the comments for Gitmo.

United Snakes of America
The purpose of the news conference was for Obama to make the case for health insurance reform. I have some knowledge and many thoughts about this subject—mostly to the left of Obama’s.

But I liked the way he went after the real villains of the system, the insurance industry, a day after the nation’s largest company, UnitedHealth reported a profit of $859 million. According to my math (disclosure: I am not good at it), this company which profits by raising premiums and denying care, increased its profit by about 250 percent in a year when every other part of the economy was in the bedpan.

Keep in mind, however, that it is the insurance industry more than any other that owns state legislatures and Congress lock, stock and barrel. It is yet another indictment of what H.L. Mencken called “boobus Americana,” the citizenry that allows insurance companies and car dealers to write the legislation that keeps the public stupid and broke. The insurance companies are writing the health legislation and the car dealers are successfully hectoring Congress to do something about General Motors and Chrysler forcing dealerships to close, as if that isn’t the essence of capitalism. Sell or go out of business.

Back to UnitedHealth, the Washington Post has just revealed that the consulting firm that for all my years of following the subject has been considered the icon of nonpartisan analysis is actually owned by the insurance conglomerate and has been cooking the numbers.
Disclosure: Like Exxon and other corporate miscreants, UnitedHealth spends a lot of money on global health, a field in which I am employed, and works with the U.S. government, which employs me, on the subject, and UnitedHealth contracts with the U.S. military to provide health care to service families. If Obama had any balls, he would not just talk about greedy corporations, he would end the relationships.

Cubbie Scum
Finally, I have been going to some baseball games lately, and the only thing worse than the Nationals are the fans who come to root for the opposing teams.

Because my father was born and raised in Chicago and played a decent brand of baseball as a young man, I grew up with a sympathy for the Cubs, my favorite team after my own hometown team of the Senators I, Senators II and now the Nationals.

I was a Cubs fan until I met Cubs fans.

Although fans of the Mets, Yankees and Phillies are more obnoxious and more prone to fisticuffs, it is the fans of the Cubs and Red Sox who make me want to take a baseball bat to their heads. The ones who attend games in Washington are trendy frontrunners who try to make themselves look human by following long-suffering teams. In reality they know nothing about baseball, show up decked out in team gear and come to games to socialize—to the point they stand up, wander in and out of aisles not only during an inning but during crucial at bats. I just hope the next fan who gets nailed by a foul ball is such a wannabe, and it is likely because foul balls only cream those who are not watching the game.

As bad as they can be, New York and Philly fans are at least passionate about baseball and their team, while Cubs fans are media creations by the likes of political camp-followers David Broder and George Will. They couldn’t tell you the name of more than two players on their team and they go to games to be seen and to drink a lot. Only Cubbie-scum can afford $8.50 beer after $8.50 beer.

The best that has been said about Cubs fans was said by their one-time manager, Lee Elia, in 1983. The only thing different about today's Cub fans is they are now unemployed from better jobs.

Portrait

Some of you might be able to identify what this is, and I post it here only because I didn't use the correct setting on my camera.

If you really don't know, take a guess!

javascript:void(0)

The Way It Will Never Be Again

How quaint; how definitive; how final. When Walter Cronkite ended the single half-hour of national news that anyone would see on television with the words “and that’s the way it is,” that was the way it was.

I met Cronkite only once, a few years ago when he could barely hear anything but still had a voice so ingrained in us that when I do my weekly recorded reading of textbooks for the blind, I hear his crisp clipped, matter of fact, that’s-the-way-it-is voice through my own headphones when it comes time to give a historical date (“On Julyyyy seven-TEENTH, twothousandNIIINE…”

In our household, it was Huntley and Brinkley who defined our suppertime view of the world in my formative years, but after that, in our house and in my own young adulthood, Cronkite became the epitome of news itself -- delivered soberly and confidently -- so much so that if he was on vacation or an assignment, you felt the news that day wasn’t very important, that news itself was on hold till he returned.

The voice that rattles around my head when I think of “Uncle Walter” was not primarily from the evening newscast that he pioneered (demanding the title of managing editor, doing serious reporting himself and eschewing the garbage coverage that demeans today’s broadcast news.)

The Cronkite I first heard and the one that stays with me is the narrator of World War II documentaries called “Air Power” and “The Twentieth Century,” shown every Sunday evening. (The raw material for those shows is now the staple of various Hitler networks owned by Discovery.) He later became the voice and personification of the U.S. space program at a time when it was all right for a television news person to root for something. (Well, it wasn’t okay, but Cronkite pulled it off.)

Later on, as he was becoming “the most trusted man in America” (by actually polling), Cronkite did as much as any single human being to end the Vietnam War by making a reporting trip there and concluding in a special segment of his newscast when he returned that the war was “unwinnable.” (Well, that wasn’t okay, either, but Cronkite pulled it off, especially when Lyndon Johnson said out loud that when he lost Cronkite, he lost the American public.) During that memorable broadcast, Cronkite did something else that was unheard of. He got out from behind the anchor desk and stood up to deliver his verdict. (And that was okay.)

Cronkite, one of the cadre of “Murrow boys” who reported live on radio from the World War II battle theaters, helped make CBS for generations the network you tuned to in a crisis, when you absolutely, positively had to know what was really going on.

What made Walter Cronkite great was that, no matter his title or status, he never rose above the job description of “reporter” – the lowest rank in the hierarchy of journalism but the one anyone who has ever been in the business wears with pride. And it was always with pride that Walter Cronkite and I began our careers with the same company, then United Press, later United Press International and now, its name desecrated by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s ownership, just a memory.

-------------------------------------

For a reminiscence from a former colleague who knew Cronkite well, click here.

I Love Loony

Like her or not, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is serving an important function during her confirmation hearings. Her presence, not what she says, has exposed the virulent racism of the most conservative members of the Judiciary Committee.

As has been pointed out here before, the ranking Republican on the committee, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, was denied a federal judgeship by the same committee because he was (and remains) a racist troglodyte who is offended that Sotomayor thinks there are attributes that suggest wisdom other than being a white southern male.

She was accused of being a "bully" from the bench and having an angry disposition by unctuous Sen. Lindsay Graham, the lifelong bachelor with manicured nails and a manner more oily than a small Arab emirate. Graham, this morning, praised Sotomayor's personal story, telling her, "you have come a long way." He didn't add "baby," but he may as well have. Of note, Graham was a national presidential campaign chair for John McCain, whose temperament would have had us reduced to nuclear rubble had he been elected.

Sotomayor told the committee she was inspired as a child by watching Perry Mason on television (and reading Nancy Drew adventures.) Yet when it came time for Sen. Tom Coburn--most recently in the news for counseling adulterer and sexual harrasser Sen. John Ensign to pay off the cuckolded husband--to inject a TV show into the proceedings, he joked that in a hypothetical case in which she claimed self defense for shooting him, "you'd have a lot of 'splainin' to do."

Nice going, Republicans. Going the way of the Whigs.

The Cowardly Lyin'

Not only is he a murderous lowlife and war criminal, but Dick Cheney is also a coward. I am not referring to the fact he skipped out on the draft five times during the Vietnam war on grounds “I had better things to do,” I am talking about him hiding behind the skirt of his equally mendacious daughter.

That would be daughter Liz, the one who actually wears skirts.

Having found a compatriate in Mika Brzezinski, hosting the “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC in Joe’s absence, Liz keeps appearing as a guest to accuse Democrats of disloyalty, and Mika nods her heads and kisses her ass rather than ask any obvious questions. This could be because Mika Brzezinski is the spawn of a previous generation’s war criminal, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, who I first encountered in 1964 when he was, from an academic perch, calling for escalation of the war Liz’s father ducked out on. He later became the national security adviser to that genius of American foreign policy, Jimmy Carter, and a staunch opponent of Israel’s security.

The issue today is Dick Cheney’s reliably reported order to the CIA to keep Congress in the dark about a program that apparently planned to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11.
While her daddy went out a few months ago on a public relations offensive to slime Democrats the way his former boss Richard Nixon did without a twitch, all of a sudden when the heat is on him for traducing the Constitution and his boss, Cheney the coward is in hiding and sending his daughter out to friendly TV shows to not quite make his case.

What is her expertise? Liz Cheney served in the Bush administration as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Like she was really qualified for it. Like Mika Brzezinski is qualified for anything but giggling and defending Sarah Palin “as a woman.”

What is the substance of my complaint? When Liz Cheney is asked to defend her father’s illegal act in telling the CIA to hide information from those whom the law dictates be informed, she says he has not spoken to her about it because it involves classified information. Yet Lying Liz then goes on an uninterrupted rant saying Democrats are “emboldening” the enemy and “weakening us” – without a shred of evidence, because such evidence is classified. Or is it?

I won’t argue the United States should not have done everything possible to kill al-Qaeda leaders – though it is illegal for the CIA itself to do so. And it sure would have made more sense than invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

But there are three facts to keep in mind that apparently have slipped through Liz Cheney’s pleated brain: 1) The program was never put into operation and the only reason why not apparently is that we didn’t have the means or will. 2) The law requires eight congressional leaders to be apprised of CIA activities as a measure of oversight caused by the very rogue activities – like overthrowing the popular leader of Iran in 1953—that put the United States in the weakened condition it is now. 3) In the 34 years of the notification requirement, there has never been a leak.

As for Cheney the Dick, one assumes he has gone underground either because he could be arrested and extradited for crimes against humanity or because he is much more comfortable closer to hell.

Chocolate Peril

The following is the kind of headline and story that trips the b.s. detector of anyone who has been in journalism for a day. Stories like this abound, cooked up by mischievous desk sergeants and sometimes even grizzled news people.

Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, named below, it appears to be true, despite appearing in the headline "news" section of American Online.

Man Falls Into Vat of Chocolate, Dies
AP CAMDEN, N.J. (July 8) – Authorities say a man died after falling into a vat of melted chocolate in a New Jersey processing plant.

The Camden County prosecutor's office identified the victim as 29-year-old Vincent Smith II of Camden. He was a temporary worker at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant.

The accident happened Wednesday morning as Smith was loading chocolate into a vat where it's melted and mixed before being shipped elsewhere to be made into candy.

Prosecutor's spokesman Jason Laughlin says a co-worker tried to shut off the machine and two others tried to pull Smith out of the 8-foot-deep vat. He was hit and fatally injured by the agitator that mixes the chocolate.

Why do I think this is funny? Because it reminds me of an old Smothers Brothers routine about what to do if you should actually fall into a vat of chocolate and require assistance. Tommy Smothers pointed out one should yell, "Fire," because no one would respond if you yelled "Chocolate." Impeccable logic.

Which also reminds me ...

Once we were at cineplex when the fire alarm went off and the building had to be evacuated. As the firefighters were tending to an overheated popcorn machine, I got to live out a civil libertarian's dream and yelled "Theater" in a crowded fire.

A Brown Stain on Ivy

Brown University has always been a joke, having let the student body determine grading policies in the 1970s and producing generally poor academic scholarship. Let’s put it this way, the Hillary Clinton health care disaster was conceived and executed by a Brown graduate.

The latest example is the woman pictured below, one Dr. Tricia Rose, whose entire body of scholarship is about blacks and women in the 20^th century.

As chair of the university’s Department of Africana Studies (as opposed to “African?”), she caught the attention of the loony lefties who run MSNBC, and they can’t get enough of her explanation of Michael Jackson. Not content to call this pedophilic self-mutilating drug addicted hermit freakazoid a “hero,” she said to call Michael Jackson just a popular entertainer is like calling Jesus a carpenter.

Christian readers – please let Dr. Rose know what you think about that at Tricia_Rose@brown.edu

Amusingly, she also spoke of his influence on modern stars like girlfriend-abuser Chris Brown and accused (and acquitted) child rapist R. Kelly, who got off, so to speak, only because a jury couldn’t tell whether the person he was videotaped was actually 15.

And don’t forget Stevie Wonder and all the other stars in the entertainment firmament who publicly wept at the loss of a person they could have saved at any moment by being his friend before he died.

King of Pop, King of Poop , King of GOP, King of Hell

With all his plastic surgery and self mutilation, I wonder if Michael Jackson even had to be embalmed.

The spectacle of his death and the frenzy of fulsome flattering fools makes me tremble for America, much more so than from nuclear arms proliferation, economic ruin or even Sarah Palin.

Among the indecencies is the insertion of Al Sharpton into the proceedings and his calling out of the mass media for pointing out the obvious truth that Michael Jackson had “issues.”

Sharpton, as you will remember was, before he became self proclaimed king of black America, a charlatan rabble-rouser who claimed as fact that a troubled 13-year-old girl was raped and smeared with feces by white racists, defamed a cop and refused to pay libel judgment, sparked a riot in Brooklyn in which a man was killed because he was Jewish.

As a result of his first descent into infamy alone, Sharpton is the King of Poop.

I don’t know why black America, to the extent one can say it exists at all, keeps elevating moral monsters like Sharpton, O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson -- a crazed narcissist who has done more damage than a street corner full of Jesse Jacksons; a stone cold murderer; and a pedophile who turned himself into a puke-inducing freak who made the Joker look normal.

Then there is Congressman Peter King, Republican of Long Island, who, crazy like a fox, told the truth about Michael Jackson. All other politicians and celebrities found something innocuous to say about Jackson, but not King, who said:

"He was a child molester. He was a pedophile. And to be giving this much
coverage to him day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country.
We're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say, 'We don't need
Michael Jackson.' … There are men and women dying today in Afghanistan. Let's
give them the credit they deserve.”

(As I try to point out to no one there, not even a chair, the men and women in uniform already are overglorified for doing their jobs. You cannot go to a public event without “our brave troops” being deified in a manner that suggests a daily nationwide Nuremberg rally.)

Even the right wing malefactor Patrick Buchanan said that when God puts his hand on someone (Jackson) it is time to take yours off. But Peter King, who has a long record of publicity stunts, said what he said because he wants to be senator from New York. And he is well aware that blacks don’t vote in the percentages that white people do.

So, call him the King of GOP.

The queen of GOP, of course, is Sarah Palin, whose rambling retreat from reality last Friday forever marked her as flat-out crazy. Many in public life are paranoid and narcissistic, but no one has been as politically incoherent or as wild-eyed and breathless. She makes Mark Sanford look viable as a Republican leader. Watch it and you decide.

Finally, Robert McNamara, personally responsible for 58,000 dead Americans, died yesterday and immediately joined Lyndon Johnson in hell.

Obamanipulation

Every president since Kennedy has tried to manipulate the news media. It is what they are supposed to do. And it is the job of the news media to resist, however futilely, and to bring to public attention the attempts.

As many readers know, I used to cover the White House and was an active, sometimes abrasive, participant in the daily briefings by the press secretary. But as in the production of sausages and of legislation, the process by which news is created ought not to be viewed by the weak-stomached. When the daily interchange between journalists and the White House press secretary went on TV some years ago, things went to hell, and it diminishes everyone.

The function of the White House press is not to dig up dirt or investigate government programs. It is to report what the president and his administration are doing on a short-term basis and, most important, to hold the president accountable by asking and receiving on-the-record answers from his spokespeople.

President Obama, however, is taking news management to a new level by selecting reporters and advising them they will be called upon at a press conference, staging town meetings the way Richard Nixon did at the behest of media adviser Roger Ailes and even arranging for a particular question to be asked.

It is his right to do so and it may advance his policies, which I am generally in favor of. But thanks to my mentor Helen Thomas and CBS’ Chip Reid, the public now knows how this manipulation of public opinion is being conducted.

The following Is from the July 1 White House briefing:

Q At today's town hall meeting, questions coming in on YouTube
and Twitter and such -- who decides what questions will be asked?

MR. GIBBS: I think a group over at New Media is shuffling through
questions. I think if you go on -- I did not do this today, but I think if
you go on our Web site you'll see some of those questions. And I think,
Chip, at the end of the day, when you -- I think the questions that will be read
to the President -- obviously he'll take some questions from the audience there
-- I think will be a representative sample of the issues in this debate that
we're dealing with.

Q And the audience is all preselected, right?

MR. GIBBS: No, we usually just generally hand out tickets on a
first come, first serve basis.

Q Well, I think in this case, the people were invited either by the White House or by the university -- I mean, invited by this community college, as it was explained to us.
MR. GIBBS: Well, if the university is --

Q It just feels very tightly controlled. It feels -- I mean, the concept of a town hall I
think is to have a open public forum, and this sounds like a very tightly
controlled audience and a list of questions. Why do it that why? Why
not open it up to the public?

MR. GIBBS: How about we do this -- how about you can ask me that question tomorrow based on what questions were asked rather than preselecting your question based on something that may or may not come through.

Q But why pre-select? Why not just open it up for people and allow any question to come in?

MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, I think if you get on your computer from your e-mail address
--
Q I have. I have.

MR. GIBBS: Have you sent in your question?

Q I think that would be inappropriate. This is for the public.

MR. GIBBS: I'm sorry, I'm confused -- are you not a member of the public?

Q Well, I think if you were going to allow questions from the press you'd have us in a
prominent position over there and allow us to ask questions -- you haven't done
that.

MR. GIBBS: Let's not get into the notion of where you'd be sitting -- (laughter) -- if I let you ask a question, but
--
Q Well out of shouting range.

MR. GIBBS: Well, but you could e-mail.

Q Would you put my question in there? I don't think so.

MR. GIBBS: Maybe. Have you e-mailed?

Q I mean, this is a town hall.

MR.

GIBBS: It's a little -- if you haven't e-mailed.

Q This is an open forum for the public to ask questions, but it's not really
open.

MR. GIBBS: I couldn't agree more. Q But it's not open.

MR. GIBBS: Based on what?

Q Based on the information that your staff gave us on how the audience and the questions are being selected.

MR. GIBBS: The questions are being selected by people that e-mail on Facebook and Twitter.

Q Well, they're not deciding what questions actually get in.

MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, I appreciate, again --

Q It just feels completely controlled
--
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate, again --

Q -- in a way unlike his town meetings all the campaign and --

MR. GIBBS: I appreciate the pre-selected question on your part.

Q Will there be dissenting views --

Q Yes, how about that?

MR. GIBBS: I think that's a very safe bet. But, again, let's -- how about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP's tradition of asking the first question. I will let you ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted at Annandale --

Q I'm perfectly happy to
--
Q That's not his point. The point is the control
--
Q Exactly.

Q -- we have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not
--
Q This White House.

MR. GIBBS: Yes, I was going to say, I'll let you amend her question.

Q I'm amazed -- I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and --

MR. GIBBS: Helen, you haven't even heard the questions.

Q It doesn't matter. It's the process.

Q You have left open --

Q Even if there's a tough question, it's a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.

Q It's shocking. It's really shocking.

MR. GIBBS: Chip, let's have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?

Q Okay.
MR. GIBBS: I think --

Q No, no, no, we're having it now --

MR. GIBBS: Well, I'd be happy to have it
now.

Q It's a pattern.

MR. GIBBS: Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?

Q It's a pattern. It isn't the question --

MR. GIBBS: What's a pattern?

Q It's a pattern of controlling the press.

MR. GIBBS: How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I'm
controlling the press -- poorly, I might add. (Laughter.)

Q Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.

MR. GIBBS: How so?

Q Well, and controlling the public --

Q How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they're going to be called on. That is shocking.

MR. GIBBS: We had this discussion ad nauseam and
--
Q Of course you would because you don't have any answers.
MR. GIBBS: Well, because I didn't know you were going to ask a
question, Helen. Go ahead.

Q Well, you should have.

Q Thank you for your support.
MR. GIBBS: That's good. Have you e-mailed your question today?

Q I don't have to e-mail it. I can tell you right now what I want to
ask. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: I don't doubt that at all, Helen. I don't doubt that at all.

Make Mine a Malden

David Carradine
Ed McMahon
Farah Fawcett
Michael Jackson
Billy Mays

What do they have in common, besides taking a dirt nap?

All together their talents and humanities add up to what Karl Malden had in his pinkie.

Honestly, I was surprised he was still with us until I read that he died at 97. The obits will talk of all his great roles, but the one I liked best was as the star of an ill-fated one-season TV drama called "Kaz," in which he played a steelworker.

He actually won an Oscar as supporting actor in a movie "Streetcar Named Desire" that everyone thought Marlon Brando would win "best actor" for. But Brando, much more famous, lost that year to Humphrey Bogart, no slouch.

In "On the Waterfront," Malden was part of a stellllllaaaar ensemble that including one of my favorite actresses Eva Marie (is she still alive?) Saint.

What gave him gravitas as an actor was the fact that he did not look like a leading man, and he never really was. He looked like anybody you might know, especially if his name were Mladen Sekulovich. But he could act, and the obits say his preparation for a role was legendary. In fact, he never left home without it.