Avuncular American

Mr. Eco-Security - Thomas Friedman Returns

Endless Energy, Limitless Wealth

Op-ed writer of the New York Times Thomas Friedman has spent the last several months on book leave, but returns today with a zinger of a piece, "Dumb As We Wanna Be."  Yes, the topic is a familiar one:

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

I never tire of Friedman's harping on this topic, because he is consistently correct: he was right about this when oil was at $10 a barrel, and he's still right now that is is at over $115/bbl.

In the May issue of Harper's Magazine, Wendell Berry's "Faustian Economics" touches on the American notion of "limitless" resources:

The entire contraption of "Unbridled Energy" [title of a conference on coal resources] is supported only by a rote optimism: "The United States has 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves - enough to last 100 years even at double the current rate of consumption."  We humans have inhabited the earth for many thousands of years, and now we can look forward to surviving for another hundred by doubling our consumption of coal? This is national security?

Berry goes on to speculate whether this American notion of limitlessness "perhaps arose from the coincidence of the Industrial Revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World."  Whatever the genesis of this type of conspicuous consumption, even climate deniers and Fortress Americans must be starting to doubt its "sustainability?"

The Bonus, the Malus, and the Horribilis

Contrast the picayune savings that the McCain/Clinton suspension of the 18.4 cents a gallon tax could mean to drivers, compared with the huge profits accruing to oil companies and Gulf kingdom exporters.  Contrast the American timidity on facing down the automobile and oil industries with a recent French innovation from a conservative, free market President, Nicolas Sarkozy: the "bonus/malus" system at point-of-purchase.

The French system, in effect since the beginning of the year, is by no means perfect, but it does recognize this: giving a "bonus" or tax refund for the purchase of an energy-efficient car will encourage more French drivers to buy same, as paying a "malus" or tax penalty for a gas-guzzler will discourage their purchase.

Instead of "pandering," as Friedman says, to Americans, politicians should show some leadership.  But "we are in the midst of a national political brownout," he concludes.  Spoiled by years of cheap gasoline with an already minimal tax (compare the 18 cent American excise tax, on gasoline that is now at $4.00 a gallon, with a French gas tax that is three quarters of the pump price of 1.384 € /liter (or a whopping $8.22 per gallon).

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I leave you, thanks to Chevrolet - who is to be congratulated for marketing small (South Korean-made?) Chevvies in Europe - pictures of Chevrolets available in Europe,  and a Chevy SUV for the American market.  It's a bit analogous to the size of a croissant bought at a French cafe and one from your local donut shop.  I could also post a picture of the typical French waistline compared to the US variety, but I won't... 

The SUV pictured here is the Tahoe, which is a hybrid, you'll be happy to know.  Personally, I would rather wait until GM puts out a Hybrid Hummer.  Really, what's the point?  You produce a vehicle that gets the worst gas mileage in the world, then you "improve" its "energy efficiency" by making a hybrid model?

By the way, the Chevrolet Belgium website (link below) advertising campaign shows a small Chevy next to a massive one, with the caption "Get Real."

(Photo source: Chevrolet)

Outsourced US Passports in Thailand – Bangkok Police Arrest Counterfeiter

A few weeks back, Pat Kushlis of “Whirled View” added value to the Washington Times story by Bill Gertz on the travesty of outsourcing sensitive “E-chip” passport production to foreign firms, including a subcontract to a firm in Thailand.  Now, an alert reader in Bangkok told me of today’s arrest of a Bangladeshi counterfeiter, found with hundreds of passports and "more than 1,600 counterfeit documents used to make fake US passports."  Thai police are still hunting for his Burmese business partner.  The police said the man was obviously “very rich.”  No wonder people are concerned about outsourcing American e-chip passports in Thailand.

Here’s a quick rundown of the timeline of action on outsourcing:

•    March 26: Washington Times breaks GPO outsourcing story
•    March 28: Whirled View analyzes implications for fraud
•    April 3: Avuncular American looks at GPO-GOP campaign angle
•    April 4: Whirled View urges us to “follow the money”
•    April 9: GPO chief assures Congress of “extraordinary measures” to secure passport production overseas
•    April 11: Congressman Bill Sali and 10 bipartisan co-signers submit H.R. 5752 to “require that all key components U.S. passports be made in America.”

Representative Sali’s bill has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Nice little MSM-blogosphere-Congressional concerted action on this issue!  Let’s hope that the House Foreign Affairs Committee reports the bill out for a full House vote, and that the ensuing Senate vote will be veto-proof.  Not sure how many American rice bowls are involved in this contract, but there’s absolutely no point in filling Bangladeshi or Burmese or Thai bowls with money from trafficked American passports.

Embedded in the White House: American Journalism Seen From Europe

(Photo source: White House Correspondents' Association)

Mutual self-debasement (though it’s not even necessary)

Last night’s annual celebrity bash presided over by a baton-waving George W. Bush (see the Washington Post’s appropriately chatty listing of who was seen in the audience) was another reminder that all is not quite right in the land of the free press.  Somehow this tradition (which started under Calvin Coolidge, who escaped from the White House just before the Crash of 1929) has evolved (degenerated?) into a yearly chance to live it up and show that “sure, most of us think this guy is the worst president since the office was invented, but we have to ingratiate ourselves with him for another few months, so that he remembers our names at press conferences.”  The President (all fourteen since Coolidge, that is) gets to show his humorous, human side, and agrees to gentle roasting (stress on gentle, ever since Stephen Colbert hit the quick in 2006).

At least the New York Times had the decency to pull the plug on its attendance: "These events can create a false perception that reporters and their sources are pals, and that perception could cloud our credibility," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty wrote, quoted in Editor & Publisher. "It's not worth it."

Other views on the state of American journalism abound, and they are mostly of the concerned family member variety.  American organizations like the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and the Newspaper Association of America, among others, have sprung into action to help counter a prevailing view of the Mainstream Media (MSM) as clueless, if not compliant, faced with the onslaught of the Bush Administration.  The concerns are shared abroad, with Reporters Without Borders (RSF in the original French acronym) putting the US way down on its list of country reports on press freedom.

One especially lucid view of America from a concerned friend of the United States is that of Jean-Paul Marthoz, a veteran Belgian journalist, academic, and human rights campaigner.  Marthoz has just published his latest book (Editions GRIP and Enjeux Internationaux) “La Liberté Sinon Rien: Mes Amériques de Bastogne à Bagdad.”  I don’t think there is an English translation yet, but with his long history of connections with the US, Marthoz probably had Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” phrase in mind for his title.  The Bastogne of the subtitle is a reference to Marthoz' Ardennes childhood, when memories were still vivid of the defiant American defense of the town in the Battle of the Bulge against superior German forces.

But the America of Bastogne is far from the Baghdad of the Bush administration.  Marthoz, who places himself squarely in the “liberal” (in the American, somewhat left of center sense, not in the European free market libertarian definition) camp, has no time for either neocons or for extreme leftists.  He knows both North and South America well (“Mes Amériques”), and his book chronicles his years as a correspondent and Human Rights Watch official covering the Western Hemisphere.

The heyday of American journalism, and of democracy

The United States that Marthoz most admires is that of Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, when the White House and Congress pressured Latin American dictatorships and - as survivors of human rights abuses told Marthoz - “saved lives.”  He recalls the kind of investigative journalism that inspired him as a young man, the kind that uncovered the true extent of Watergate, and that disseminated the facts from the Pentagon Papers.  A former Fulbright scholar in the US, he did his masters thesis on press freedom.  He likes to quote Senator J. William Fulbright’s dictum, which guides his life’s work:

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism -- a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

Marthoz told a group of Democrats Abroad Belgium members last week that all was not lost despite the current atmosphere in the States, and the RSF rating of the United States might actually improve for a change, thanks to a Congressional “shield law” to protect journalists from having to reveal their sources.  He notes that the Pulitzer Prizes in 2008 rewarded civic commitment and investigative journalism, both in great need of revival in these times of the “unitary presidency.”

This impressive Belgian journalist – whose goal is “to restore complexity to the world,” the antithesis of the sound-bite oversimplification of “with-us-or-against-us” – deserves a wider audience in the country that welcomed him as a young Fulbrighter.  Perhaps some day a bright Public Affairs Officer at the American Embassy will see that Jean-Paul Marthoz would be an excellent bridge builder between Europe and the United States.  One who believes in a “renewed transatlantic relationship, built on a new foundation,” after the disastrous Bush era.  Maybe under the next president?

Visions of Afghanistan - Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame

“Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame” is the latest film from the Makhmalbaf clan, the incredible Iranian family that keeps putting out films on the lives of ordinary people in Iran and Afghanistan.  Hana Makhmalbaf, now 18, has been living a life of cinema, and dropped out of school in second grade at age 8 to improve her education (how ironic that her main character in “Buddha Collapsed” risks everything to go to school).  Check out her lengthy interview at the "Makhmalbaf Film House," the family website.

Bamiyan is the site of the two immense statues of Buddha dynamited by the Taliban months before September 11, 2001, i.e., before all hell rained on them and their al-Qaeda allies.  Hana Makhmalbaf includes documentary footage of that affront to history, religion, and culture, and the film itself is shot at the foot of the ruins.

What to make of this film, which some reviewers have panned as an “obvious” anti-war story?  On one level, you can watch the story of the children (there are few adults in the film) as a sort of suspense yarn: will little Bakhtay (photo, from the Makhmalbaf website) make it, as she navigates the immensity of the valley, with all its dangers?

The imagery is striking, not least of which is the sight of Bakhtay (played with utter ease and credibility by little Nikbakht Noruz, five and a half years old), in a striking green robe, framed by the arid canyons.  At times, there are elements of magical realism, like a kite that catches fire, or a policeman on a traffic island, in a village with no cars.

The “anti-war” message is, yes, obvious in its depiction of boys playing Cowboys and Indians – though the Indians are the Taliban, and the Cowboys are the Americans.  But here is the way the director sees it:

By showing today’s picture of Afghanistan, I tried to depict the effects of the recent years’ violence on the country. So that the adults could see how their behavior affects the younger generation. Children are the future adults. If they get used to violence, the future of the world will be in great danger.

First, it was the Russian communists, then the Taliban showed up, and now the Americans. One was communist, the other Muslim and the last one either atheist or Christian. But they all had one thing common, and that was “Violence”.

I for one don’t have any qualms about Makhmalbaf’s “message,” and her cinematic skills and the talent of her little actors erase any sense of the burlesque.  You care about her characters, especially tiny waif Bakhtay (Nikbakht Noruz should be nominated for someone’s “Most Promising Actress” award – though she might need a stepladder to reach the podium).

No, this is a wonderful film, at times gripping (are the boys just “playing” Taliban, or are they true believers?) and funny (who said six year old Afghan girls don’t know about lipstick?).  And those cranky reviewers?  They are a distinct minority: the film has been racking up awards in film festivals from Berlin to Montreal to San Sebastian.  16 film festivals can't be wrong.

The Brilliant Senate Future of Clinton and/or Obama

Now that Pennsylvanians have given Hillary Clinton their vote of confidence, the Democratic primary campaign plods on to the fields of Indiana and the hills of North Carolina.  More weeks of nail-biting tallying of delegates – of both super and mortal varieties.  In the end (meaning in November), there will only be: a) John McCain (R-AZ) and b) one of the above.

Which means that at least one of the remaining Democratic candidates will return to the Senate.  Hillary Clinton has 4 years left in her current 6 year Senate term and Barack Obama has 3 years to go in his.  Given their popularity, both should be able to count on many more years of representing their respective states in Washington, should they choose that route.  So let’s try to imagine them back in the Senate, after a bruising Presidential race in 2008.

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

April 2010, Washington:

“Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Chairwoman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, appears to harbor little of the bitterness of the ill-fated 2008 Presidential campaign against her fellow Democrat, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL).  Their old rivalry for the Democratic nomination was seemingly forgotten as Senator Obama spoke before a rapt assembly today, castigating the McCain Administration for its failure to present a coherent plan for the drawdown of American troops from Syria.”

“Senator Obama, who has become the conscience and the voice of the Senate since the unexpected retirement of legendary orator Senator Robert Byrd in 2009, has done what few Senators in the 21st century would attempt: an extemporaneous filibuster, showing an almost verbatim recall of McCain’s promises when he first ordered the “short, sharp incursion” into Syria from Iraq’s Bandar Province in early 2009.”

"Senator Clinton, for her part, appears to be using her SASC Chairmanship to force McCain Administration figures (Defense Secretary David Petraeus and Secretary of State Joseph Lieberman) to testify in hearings on the alleged Israeli/US collusion in provoking the incursion into Syria.  Vice President Rice, for her part, has accused the Democratic Clinton/Obama duo of “taking out their frustrations on the winner of the 2008 elections, showing an uncanny ability to work in tandem thanks to their greater dislike for the President than for each other.”

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

A little bit of poli-sci fiction for this Friday afternoon.  But I am not the only Democrat beginning to worry about the consequences of the debilitating internecine combat between Clinton and Obama.  Forget the conventional wisdom about the inevitability of a Democratic win in November – this campaign has already lasted way too long, and more months of each side thinking up ways to hurt their opponent will only mean more months of McCain reaping the benefit.  It is entirely possible that both Democratic candidates will be back in the Senate after the election – and not to give the State of the Union address, but to listen to another Republican president give his.

At least we have this as consolation: both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are strong Senators, and both should view the chance of being a voice for their party and its policies as a worthy career choice.  Should either of them be “gaming” the 2008 race with a view to better positioning for the 2012 race, I might humbly suggest that s/he spare us the heartache and bow out now.  That is, if they truly want a Democrat to win the White House in 2008.  Otherwise, it’s back to the Senate for both of them.

When the Emerald City Ruled the Tigris

The University of Southern California (USC) Center on Public Diplomacy has just published my review of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s modern classic on the folly of Iraq, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.”  The book has garnered several awards; you can read an excerpt from the first chapter “Versailles on the Tigris” here, on the author’s website.

The timing is appropriate: almost five years ago to the day, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tapped L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer to head what was to become the Coalition Provisional Authority – the CPA, which is the centerpiece of “Imperial Life.”  The CPA existed for little more than a year, then handed over “sovereignty” to the “government” of "Iraq."  But not before publishing, as the Americans were packing their bags, a compendium still available on its archived website, “AN HISTORIC REVIEW OF CPA ACCOMPLISHMENTS,” which ends with this wonderful table of “comparative reconstruction milestones for post-Saddam Iraq and post-WWII Germany.”
                                                                   IRAQ                    GERMANY

Local Governments Installed                2 Months                8 Months
Independent Central Bank                    2 Months                3 Years
Police Established                               2 Months               14 Months
New Currency                                      2 ½ Months            3 Years
Training a new Military                          3 Months               10 Years
Major reconstruction plan                      4 Months               3 Years
Cabinet Seated                                    4 Months               14 Months
Full Sovereignty                                   1 Year                   10 Years
New Constitution                                  2 ½ Years              4 Years
National Elections                                3 Years                  4 Years
War Trials                                            Pending                 6 Months

And you thought Germany was a success story!  Readers who appreciate Chandrasekaran’s tragicomic realism will also appreciate the CPA’s magic surrealism; the 72 page CPA list of accomplishments is a ministry by ministry checklist of “progress” that might have escaped your attention in the ensuing five years.

Matt Armstrong of MountainRunner deemed Chandrasekaran's depiction of the first year of the American occupation of Iraq "instructive on how to create an insurgency through occupation."  Whether it's the Occupation that created the Insurgency, or simply the Invasion that inevitably led to Resistance, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” is a timeless work on this crucial period.  Its portrait of hubris in the early days of the American “Iraq era” has already come to serve as a reference, much as “The Ugly American” and the “Quiet American” are synonymous with the American misadventure in Vietnam.

The Military GRIP on US Foreign Policy

Europe’s fixation on the American presidential race continues.  Yesterday’s conference on “US Foreign Policy After Bush” sponsored by the respected Brussels think tank GRIP (“Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la securite”) focused primarily on American security policy.  The panel was composed of academics and journalists from francophone Belgium’s left-leaning firmament, though the message was not terribly different from that heard in previous (conservative) European fora: though there are differences between the remaining candidates, in certain key areas, don’t expect the heavens to open even if Barack Obama is elected President.

In a series of slides, GRIP researchers presented graphs showing the ahistoric (when compared to the country’s first century and a half) levels of American military spending since the end of World War II.  In previous major US wars (the Civil War, First World War), US military spending spiked, and then resumed (low) pre-war levels.  As late as the 1920s, US defense budgets sunk as low as 0.7% of GDP.  World War II, morphing into the Cold War, which morphed into the Global War on Terror (GWOT), set a new paradigm, where official defense budgets have built a graphical mountain on the historical timeline.  Accounting for off-budget spending (the “supplemental” spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as projected costs for war veteran medical care, etc.) would require an Al Gore-like “Inconvenient Truth” ladder, where spending would literally go off the charts.

My favorite slide summarizes how profitable defense spending has been – hence how difficult it will be for even a reform-minded president to change the course of the military juggernaut.  It’s a GRIP depiction of the AMEX Defense Index (DFI) over the period September 1996 to present.   It's worth noting that the good times really started rolling after the Clinton Administration's "Last Supper" at the Pentagon with defense industry chiefs in January 1993, when the military industrial complex was "right sized." With profitability like this, and with a defense industry spread over every Congressional District, it will indeed be difficult to steer the ship of state in a direction different to that of George W. Bush.

Today’s Guardian carries a excellent Simon Jenkins piece on a similar theme, “Despite Iraq, America's Love Affair With War Runs Deep.”

The one thing known by all three candidates for the presidency is that whoever wins must do something painful. He or she must negotiate the terms of an eventual retreat from Iraq, not with the Iraqi but with the American people. Even John McCain, who watched the retreat from Vietnam and swears he will "stay a hundred years in Iraq until peace, stability and democracy" are achieved, will eventually leave, if only under the lash of Congress.

Yet now is not the time to admit it. A war that is unpopular with 60-70% of Americans (depending on the question) is not politically sustainable, however stupefying the cost. But the modalities of its ending are unpredictable and possibly humiliating.  Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may call for early withdrawal, at least of "combat troops". But the real paradox of Iraq is that McCain knows he must find a way of leaving, and Clinton and Obama know they must find a way of staying, if only for the time being. For all of them, getting from here to there crosses uncharted territory and none wants to glimpse the map.

But “getting from here to there,” as Jenkins notes, includes obligatory war rhetoric to show that no candidate is “soft on defense.”  This is mainly a challenge for the Democrats, since no one assumes that McCain is a softie.  So Hillary Clinton delivers a pre-Pennsylvania blast at Iran, saying that she would “totally obliterate” the country if it attacked Israel.  Even Barack Obama has to rattle the sabers, in what amounts to unilateralism aimed at Pakistan.

Despite warnings from past soldier-presidents (George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower) on the dangers of large standing armies and the “Military Industrial Complex,” changing the mindset that puts military might above all other indices of national health, wealth, and yes – power - is more than a daunting task.  GRIP’s presentation yesterday on American military spending in the Middle East from 1950 through 2006 is enough to cause despair - especially when you realize that most of the US money in military assistance programs is out of the same budget that funds American diplomacy, the State Department.  From whatever angle (percentage of overall US aid, percentage of US aid to the Middle East, etc.), the countless billions spent, given, or sold in terms of weapons in the most flammable part of the world is astounding.  Oh yes: Iran is number four on the list of US military assistance recipients.  Iran?  The HQ of the “Axis of Evil?”  The place where they call America “The Great Satan?”  Remember, the graph also includes the period before 1979, when the Shah's Iran was the Number One US arms recipient.

So what has more than a half century of arms-trading-in-the-tinderbox procured for the US?  Several wars, whether direct or proxy (see Osama bin Laden, the fallen angel of the anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan); several regime changes, whether pro or anti-American (see Mossadegh>Shah>Ayatollah for the progression in Iran; for Iraq, Saddam>Bremer>Allawi>Jaafari>Maliki>TBD?); and several million permanently displaced people (Palestinians and now Iraqis scattered over the Middle East, miserable and a source of instability for their reluctant hosts).

GRIP provided the graphs.  But will Americans elect someone who can read them?

Overseas Pennsylvanian For Obama

Several disclaimers are in order:
•    Yes, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania
•    Got my undergrad degree in PA
•    And my first professional job - near Harrisburg, the state capital

However:
•    I haven’t lived there in almost 30 years
•    My adult life has mostly been spent overseas
•    I already voted for Obama in the Democrats Abroad Primary

But I am a Pennsylvanian born and bred, and I support Barack Obama!  Anything for a Google entry.

If a polling agency were to do a profile, I’d probably fit into the Clinton camp: son of Irish immigrants; brought up in a working class, union family.  But that would especially be true if I were in the Molly Maguire country of Scranton, Hazleton, or in the western part of the state around Pittsburgh, the areas where Hillary Clinton was seen trying to impress the locals by quaffing “a shot and a beer.”  For an in depth look at the area in the context of the Democratic Primary, look at this Nation article, "Bowling for Pennsylvania," by Gaiutra Bahadur.

But Pennsylvania – the nation’s 6th most populous state, and tending Democratic when it doesn’t vote for moderate Republicans – is much more than the blighted coal mining rustbelt towns that are so much in the news.  Consider the western Philadelphia suburbs, my native stomping grounds, in this profile by Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP (carried by my hometown paper, “The North Penn Reporter”

Philly suburbs hold the key in Tuesday's primary

MEDIA, - To bisect the heart of the Democratic presidential contest, take the Chester exit of I-95 and wend your way to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  If Barack Obama has any chance of cultivating an upset on April 22, this 20-mile stretch is fertile land.  These are Philadelphia's western suburbs - a patchwork of charming small towns, elite colleges and working class neighborhoods that constitute one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the state.

"It is, without question, right at the center of the fight for Pennsylvania," said Rep Joe Sestak, D-Pa., the retired admiral who represents this district and who has endorsed Obama's rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "How my district goes is how the state may go."

Clinton holds a lead in statewide polls. But Obama is strongly favored in Philadelphia and polls show him holding a slight lead in the arc of four increasingly Democratic counties around the city. Delaware County, the one which makes up most of Sestak's 7th congressional district, is his toughest with demographics that also suit Clinton and her blue collar appeal.

Kuhnhenn and Sestak capture an aspect of Pennsylvania that wasn’t depicted in “The Deer Hunter,” that Seventies ode to gun-toting good ole boys who have adjustment problems after Vietnam.  Southeastern Pennsylvania, starting with Philadelphia, has a long liberal tradition starting with the state’s founder, William Penn, whose Quaker pacifism left its imprint.  My own alma mater, state-supported Temple University, has a long history of diversity, and thrives in the middle of one of Philadelphia’s poorest African American neighborhoods.

Barack Obama will have to face racism, whether it's in Pennsylvania during the primaries or in the nation at large should he become the Democratic nominee.   Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton backer, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "You've got some conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."  I'd rather not try to game the relative strengths of racists vs. misogynists in Pennsylvania, nor would I want any Democratic contender to appeal to either group.  And my gut feeling is that both racists and misogynists are pretty much in the same camp, so it's a zero-sum game to appeal to either.

I wish my home state a good turnout on Tuesday.

El Baño del Papa (The Pope’s Toilet)

Readers will think I have something in for popes since my recent post on Benedict’s US trip, but I swear (though not in the sinful sense), that this is the title of the film, and its release in Brussels this same week is just a coincidence.  The toilet in question is not for the Pope’s own use, but for the expected crowds of thousands who will come to see Pope John Paul II in Melo, Uruguay, when he visits in 1988.  The visit is real; directors Cesar Charlone and Enrique Fernandez skillfully include actual footage from the visit on a B&W TV in the favela where the action of El Baño takes place.

Melo, near the Brazilian border, is a town that appears to exist for smuggling.  Either you’re a smuggler on a bicycle (big time banditos have scooters), or you’re a merchant putting in your order for whiskey, batteries, anything really, or you’re a Customs official.  The latter are mainly in the business of making life miserable for the poor cyclists, who mostly avoid the official border post and chance it in the fields.

We experience this through the travails of Beto, played with rogueish delight by Montevideo office worker and sometime actor Cesar Troncoso (who has said that he never wants to see another bicycle in his life).  Beto is a man of Big Ideas, and when you see the wheels start turning, it’s usually the signal for trouble.  Long suffering wife Carmen (Virginia Mendez) is the keeper of the cookie jar, and what little the family manages to own.  Adolescent Silvia (Virginia Ruiz) sees the Pope’s visit as a chance to practice her secret longing to become a journalist.

Beto’s answer to how to make a quick peso on the Pope’s visit (everyone in town is doing it) is to build a pay-as-you-go toilet in his garden, on the route where in a few days hoped-for thousands of Uruguayans and Brazilians will come to see His Holiness.  And that is the sum of the film.

At times funny, tragic, and visually stunning, El Baño del Papa will appeal to those who enjoy the slice-of-life social dramas of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.  It’s a rare chance to see life in Uruguay, through one of only 4 or 5 of their annual output of films - reason enough to see it.  Film festivals have bestowed several awards on the film and its writer/directors, and it featured at the 2007 Cannes “Un Certain Regard” category.

I wish I could provide links and photos for you, but my blog service has been acting up again.  Anyway, the film is a little gem, and a bittersweet time will be had by all.

Willkommen in Amerika - The Pope & Elections

(Photo Source: Salon.com)

Bush Owes Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI is flying to America this week to meet, presumably, American Catholics (my original tribe), but he will also reunite with the “closet Catholic” (see Daniel Burke’s incisive article “A Catholic Wind in the White House” in Sunday’s Washington Post) President, George XLIII (Bush 43, if you don't want to do the Roman numeral math).  They are friends from way back in 2004, when then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition, but we won’t hold that against him) in Rome sent a letter to American bishops, instructing them to have their priests deny communion to certain Catholic politicians who favored abortion - and any parishioners who voted for them.  Now, it so happened that the most prominent pro-choice American Catholic politician back then was Democratic Senator John Kerry, who was vying with George XLIII to take the White House away from the Republicans.  You know the rest of the story.  The point is, in their pews on Sundays back in 2004, many Catholics took away the message – whatever that stuff about “an obstinate persistence in grave sin” – that they should vote for George W. Bush.

Reflecting on Kerry's defeat, Sidney Blumenthal wrote of the Bush-Benedict alliance in "Holy Warriors" in Salon.com in 2005, saying "Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic vote."  It should be essential background for this visit in another Presidential election year:

President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.  About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops...

Once elevated to the infallible papacy, Pope Benedict proceeded to clean house in the US Catholic Church.  As the conservative American Spectator gloated in 2005: "'Pope Benedict knows better than any one else who the trouble makers are in the United States, and he knows who has worked against the Church's teachings there,' says an ordained source at the Vatican. 'You will be seeing changes soon'."  His victims included liberal Jesuit editors and recalcitrant bishops.
 
Bush has already returned the favor, making a pilgrimage to Pope Benedict last June.  At the time, the Pope had a full list of issues to take up with the President, including the war in Iraq and the plight of Christians in the Middle East.  No doubt these items will still be on the agenda.  But readers wanting to put in their two cents (asking, for example, “how come France, which didn’t invade Iraq, just announced that it’s taking in hundreds of Iraqi Christians, when America has taken in only 3,000 of the up to 4 million displaced Iraqis?”) can contact the White House Chief of Staff, Anita McBride, who is eager to answer questions about the Pope’s visit.

Don't Expect an Act of Contrition
 
Religion is on the minds of the Democratic candidates too, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continuing to fight it out in the arena – even on Sundays – until there’s only one gladiator-Democrat left to face 'Maverick' McCain.  But why does Obama get all the grief, whether it’s over his congregational ties to Reverend Wright or his family ties to Islam, when McCain slides by with his chums on the fundamentalist evangelical right?  Will the Pope meet with Republican presidential contender John McCain, and will he mention McCain endorser John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “The Great Whore?”  Or has the Pope’s own membership in the Hitler Youth (though we won’t hold that against him either) made him skittish about throwing stones?
 
Actually, no.  This pope is not shy about in-your-face confrontation over religion, as we’ve seen with his sometimes maladroit pronouncements on Islam.  But with Benedict's list of “new” Seven Deadly Sins, it's just too bad that George W. Bush is not an actual Catholic.  Otherwise, Benedict might have heard his confession.  Consider:

1.    “Thou shall not pollute the earth” – will the Pope convince Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol?
2.    Genetic manipulation – “Sorry, your Holiness, but gotta check with Monsanto on that one.”
3.    Accumulating excessive wealth – has the Pope cleared the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?
4.    Inflicting poverty – see Sin No. 3.  Also see Iraqi economy.
5.    Drug trafficking and consumption – generally a pass, but there is that burgeoning Afghan drug-lordistan...
6.    Morally debatable experiments – see Sins 3 and 4: do experiments in impoverishing the US count?
7.    Violation of fundamental rights of human nature – what will the Pope say to the Prez on American torture?

Then again, Bush has never admitted to the American public or to the world that he was wrong about anything.  No absolution if you are not truly contrite.

The agenda should be full.  But, Mein Papst, don’t dare tell Catholics how to vote (we wouldn't want a repeat of your 2004 Kerry-slam or the more recent February 2008 Spanish episcopal instruction on how to vote).  Maybe just sitting with the radioactively unpopular Bush will be enough to send American Catholics back into the arms of whichever Democrat emerges from the Coliseum.