Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000

Associated Press/Bloomsbury Auctions

A letter from Einstein that sold for $404,000.

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: May 17, 2008

From the grave, Albert Einstein poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion this week.

A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a “chosen people,” sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.

The Associated Press quoted Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, as describing the unidentified buyer as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that that entails.” Among the unsuccessful bidders, according to The Guardian newspaper, was Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist.

The price makes the Gutkind letter one of the best sellers among Einstein manuscripts. That $404,000 is only a little less than the $442,500 paid for the entire collection of 53 love letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, at an auction at Christie’s in New York in 1996. At that same auction a paper by Einstein and his best friend, Michele Besso, attempting a calculation that would later be a pivotal piece of his crowning achievement, the General Theory of Relativity, went for $398,500.

Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald, a historian at the California Institute of Technology and head of the Einstein Papers project, said she was not surprised that the Gutkind letter, which was known to Einstein scholars, fetched such a high price.

“It is an important expression of Einstein’s thoughts and views on religion, on Judaism, on his views about God and religious texts,” she wrote in an e-mail message. She said the letter, which was not written for publication, was “concise and unvarnished” and more straightforward than the metaphors he usually turned to in public.

Gerald Holton, a historian of science at Harvard and a longtime Einstein expert, also was not surprised. He said Einstein’s marketability had been improved by the last few years of hoopla about the 100th anniversary of relativity, which included his selection as Time magazine’s Man of the Century in 2000, and several new biographies. Dr. Holton described the letter as “a feat of eloquent Credo in short form.”

Einstein, as he says in his autobiographical notes, lost his religion at the age of 12, concluding that it was all a lie, and he never looked back. But he never lost his religious feeling about the apparent order of the universe or his intuitive connection with its mystery, which he savored. “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility,” he once said.

“If something is in me that can be called religious,” he wrote in another letter, in 1954, “then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as science can reveal it.”

Einstein consistently characterized the idea of a personal God who answers prayers as naive, and life after death as wishful thinking. But his continual references to God — as a metaphor for physical law; in his famous rebuke to quantum mechanics, “God doesn’t play dice”; and in lines like the endlessly repeated, “ Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” — has led some wishful thinkers to try to put him in the camp of some kind of believer or even, not long ago, to paint him as an advocate of intelligent design.

Trying to distinguish between a personal God and a more cosmic force, Einstein described himself as an “agnostic” and “not an atheist,” which he associated with the same intolerance as religious fanatics. “They are creatures who — in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium for the people’ — cannot bear the music of the spheres.”

The problem of God, he said, “is too vast for our limited minds.”

Einstein’s latest words offer scant comfort to the traditionally faithful.

In the letter, according to the A.P. account, he wrote that “the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

As for his fellow Jews, he said that Judaism, like all other religions, was “an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”

He claimed a deep affinity with the Jewish people, he said, but “as far as my experience goes they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

The All-White Elephant in the Room (by Frank Rich)

by Frank Rich, New York Times, published May 4, 2008

Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times.

Drawing by Barry Blitt.

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives’ favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.”

Mr. Hagee didn’t make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America’s most widely heard radio programs, “Fresh Air” on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as “nonsense” and the preacher retract it.

Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.

That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot’s endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive “holy war” with Iran. (This preacher’s rantings may tell us more about Mr. McCain’s policy views than Mr. Wright’s tell us about Mr. Obama’s.) Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”

I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full “Great Whore” glory. But Mr. McCain didn’t have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

Perhaps that’s why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright’s fiery claim that 9/11 was America’s chickens “coming home to roost.” That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America’s foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers “agents of intolerance” and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006.

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

When Rudy Giuliani, still a viable candidate, successfully courted Pat Robertson for an endorsement last year, few replayed Mr. Robertson’s greatest past insanities. Among them is his best-selling 1991 tome, “The New World Order,” which peddled some of the same old dark conspiracy theories about “European bankers” (who just happened to be named Warburg, Schiff and Rothschild) that Mr. Farrakhan has trafficked in. Nor was Mr. Giuliani ever seriously pressed to explain why his cronies on the payroll at Giuliani Partners included a priest barred from the ministry by his Long Island diocese in 2002 following allegations of sexual abuse. Much as Mr. Wright officiated at the Obamas’ wedding, so this priest officiated at (one of) Mr. Giuliani’s. Did you even hear about it?

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000.

This year Mr. McCain has called for a respectful (i.e., non-race-baiting) campaign and has gone so far as to criticize (ineffectually) North Carolina’s Republican Party for running a Wright-demonizing ad in that state’s current primary. Mr. McCain has been posing (awkwardly) with black people in his tour of “forgotten” America. Speaking of Katrina in New Orleans, he promised that “never again” would a federal recovery effort be botched on so grand a scale.

This is all surely sincere, and a big improvement over Mitt Romney’s dreams of his father marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Up to a point. Here, too, there’s a double standard. Mr. McCain is graded on a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low. But at a time when the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows that President Bush is an even greater drag on his popularity than Mr. Wright is on Mr. Obama’s, Mr. McCain’s New Orleans visit is more about the self-interested politics of distancing himself from Mr. Bush than the recalibration of policy.

Mr. McCain took his party’s stingier line on Katrina aid and twice opposed an independent commission to investigate the failed government response. Asked on his tour what should happen to the Ninth Ward now, he called for “a conversation” about whether anyone should “rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is.” Whatever, whenever, never mind.

For all this primary season’s obsession with the single (and declining) demographic of white working-class men in Rust Belt states, America is changing rapidly across all racial, generational and ethnic lines. The Census Bureau announced last week that half the country’s population growth since 2000 is due to Hispanics, another group understandably alienated from the G.O.P.

Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04rich.html

Arnaldo Jabor -- "Roubar é humáno!..."

O Globo, Segundo Caderno, página 8, 15 abril 2008

Nada gruda nos ladrões-teflon

"Roubar é sexy, meu amigo" - me disse o ladrão assumido, deitado numa bóia roxa, flutuando na piscina, com um coquetel amarelo e rosa na mão. - "Roubar dá tesão! Tem algo de orgasmo. Quando eu embolso uma bolada, o fluxo de libido é inesquecível. Roubar é uma aventura louca, um filme de ação, roubar é um vício secreto; mesmo o roubo pequeno dá prazer - entrar numa loja e estarrar um livro ou uma jóia, com o coração disparado do pavor de ser pego, e depois a alegria de sair na rua, sem ninguém ver, dá um baratão, meu amigo... No ladrão de galinha e nas grandes roubalheiras há o mesmo prazer doce da adrenalina. Há muitos tipos de ladrões" - continuou o meu entrevistado, inteligente, articulado, sem uma mácula de culpa no rosto de Botox -, "mas o desejo geral é "dar um tapa numa nota" e resolver a vida para sempre, se bem que a vida não se resolve nunca", refletiu, filosófico, bicando o coquetel amarelo-rosa.

"A fantasia comum é sair da vida social e de seus contratempos, ir para uma praia infinita e nunca mais parar de beber água-de-coco. Mas isso é coisa de amadores. Profissas como eu querem roubar sempre. Depois do primeiro milhão de dólares, o negócio é mais pelo prazer. Já peguei muita mala preta debaixo de banco de praça. A libido que rola na hora de ver as "verdinhas" é melhor que morfina, palpar os dólares arrumadinhos pela concessão pública de um canal de esgoto ou de um golpe no INSS é uma volúpia inesquecível. Uma vez, peguei uma pasta com cem mil dólares. Fui tomar um cafezinho e tive o capricho de deixar a pasta em cima do balcão, ao lado do açucareiro, onde se acotovelavam operários com copinhos de cachaça, e eu pensava: "Nessa pasta aí está a salvação deles, e eles nem imaginam..."

Hoje, trabalho muito na política. Estar em Brasília é uma proteção. Antigamente, o sujeito roubava e fugia para o mato. Hoje, não. Foge para o Congresso, para dentro da Lei. A minha turma de ali-babás tasca cerca de 70 bilhões de reais por ano no país todo; é o cálculo estatístico. A concorrência é grande... E somos intocáveis... - somos os ladrões-teflon, pois nada gruda em nós.
Neste governo, então, está um maná! Com as alianças escrotas, onde a estratégia é topar tudo pelo poder do Lula e felicidade geral dos sindicatos, o Tesouro nacional é visto como um butim a ser "legitimamente" saqueado. Você viu outro dia a comemoração dos pelegos no Congresso, felizes, tudo de gravata, com uísque 30 anos, ameaçando jornalistas? A ideologia absolve e justifica os malandros. "Não tem nada demais pegar mais 100 milhões por ano e não prestar contas ao TCU... - afirmam - trata-se da vitória dos sindicatos sobre os burgueses que exploram o povo, pois, como dizia Lenin: os fins justificam os meios..." É assim....

Eu sou muito olhado com ódio e uma ponta de admiração nas churrascarias e shoppings. "Olha lá o ladrão!"..., o executivo diz, traçando uma picanha. Mas sei que o outro responde: "É ladrão, mas é espada, dá nó em pingo d"água!...". E nem ligo, porque me sei invejado pelas aventuras que me atribuem. As mulheres imaginam os colares que ganhariam se fossem minhas piranhas louras, como as putinhas dos filmes de gângsteres dos anos 40. E ainda se viram para o maridão otário e lhe atiram na cara: "Você não é honesto, não; você é burro!!"

Eu confesso um certo orgulho kitsch por meu sucesso na corrupa e no cafajestismo. Há uma beleza dionisíaca nisso. Depois que eu enriquei, fiz como todos: passei a entender de vinho... - nada como um Chateau Margaux 2000 - , comprei uma lancha de cinco milhões de dólares, gado holandês e, claro, tenho duas amantes "cachorras", de cabelo pintado e correntinha no tornozelo.

No roubo da coisa pública, tenho culpa zero (aliás, em tudo). Todos roubam - eu me justifico - e, então, eu tiro o meu. Antes eu do que eles...

Eu me vingo da humilhação da pobreza na infância: mãe lavadeira, sapato furado. Eu tenho justa causa, sim. E sou pessimista - não há o que fazer... sempre foi assim. O ser humano é nocivo por natureza... Por isso, taco a mão no dinheiro público...

Sinto até um toque de patriotismo. Deixar dinheiro lá para eles pagarem o FMI? Nunca... Sou meio de esquerda... E tenho minhas taras também. Quem não tem suas taras? Eu por exemplo, confesso, adoro ver os olhos covardes do empresário pagando-me propina pelo empréstimo conseguido no banco estatal ou para o perdão de uma dívida. O empresário tenta fingir naturalidade, mas o ódio acende-lhe os olhos. Adoro ver-lhe a raiva travada na boca, o sapo engolido, fingindo-se simpático, adoro ver-lhe as mãos trêmulas, adoro até o desprezo impotente que ele tem por mim. Gosto de me sentir conspurcado pelo nojo do outro. Eu me babo de prazer quando vejo a cara do juiz comprado ostentando alguma severidade, enquanto exara uma liminar comprada, e que se exaspera quando vê a piscadela cúmplice que eu lhe atiro na hora da sentença. Sinto-me superior aos otários que me compram, não me ofendo, ao contrário, olho-os do alto!

E vou mais longe. Superei a dor patológica de uma perversão mal assumida. Vou lhe contar o que não conto nem para o espelho. Outro dia, cheguei em casa, depois de ganhar uma grana negra tirada das verbas de remédio para criancinhas com câncer e, quando entrei em meu lar, doce lar, meus filhos felizes viam desenho animado na TV. Sabe que senti zero de culpa? Tive orgulho. Minha gelada indiferença me pareceu prova de macheza, uma novíssima forma contemporânea de integridade. É isso aí, meu ingênuo jornalista, pode botar tudo aí... eu sou inatingível... o Código Penal todo foi escrito para me proteger. Por que não passa na Câmara a reforma da Lei de Execuções Penais? Porque não deixamos... ah, ah... Este país foi feito assim: na vala, entre o público e o privado. Há uma grandeza na apropriação indébita, florescem ricas plantas na lama das roubalheiras. A bosta não produz flores magníficas? Pois é... o Brasil foi construído com esse fertilizante.

Sempre foi assim e sempre será. Roubo é cultura, meu amigo... Um forte abraço..."

Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter (by Mayhill Fowler)

Huffington Post, April 11, 2008

When I began following the Obama Campaign through Pennsylvania, the place was new to me -- as apparently it was to Senator Obama, since his Road to Change bus tour was heralded as the candidate's introduction to the Keystone State. Now the Senator has moved on to Indiana for a spell, but I'm back in PA, thinking about Obama's and my experiences of the people here.

Pennsylvanians are as friendly as Iowans-- and that's a huge compliment. (I love you Texas, but you get up on the wrong side of the bed a lot, or at least you did during the weeks before the primaries.) These Pennsylvanians are patriotic. On several occasions, they've awarded Barack Obama a standing ovation for his promise to restore the Constitution. Clearly, Quaker Staters feel a connection to the part their state played in the making of the Constitution; they see themselves in America's larger history.

At two town hall meetings in Pennsylvania, Senator Obama drew plenty of remarks about patriotism. In Harrisburg two weeks ago, one person called on by Obama chose not to ask a question. Instead a man who introduced himself as only Dennis told Obama, "Make a speech on patriotism because the Republican Party does not own the flag." In Wilkes-Barre a few days later, Obama fielded a similar comment from a man who said, "I believe that this nation now has dangerously low levels of patriotism and national pride.... My question to you is How are we going to reestablish America's reputation to Americans?" After leaving Pennsylvania and stopping over in Montana on his way to California, Senator Obama must have had these Pennsylvania questioners on his mind, because in Butte and Missoula he talked a bit about patriotism, introducing the subject as a theme we'll likely will be hearing more from him in the future, perhaps in a major speech at some appropriately historic date and time. Barack Obama and the rest of us will owe that to Pennsylvanians.

Another thing about Quaker Staters. The ravages of mining and old-style manufacturing have been unable, after all, to break the bond Pennsylvanians have with the natural world. Driving through the western part of the state, I thought again and again what great deer hunting country it is, and how my dad, a hunter in his younger days, would love it. Clipping a poem from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Jeff O'Brien, a citizen of Upper Turkeyfoot, Somerset County, I imagined Turkeyfoot's "ice hard in the cavities of the derelict woods/the long dark coming in the magnesium shifts of twilight" as I drove through and determined to order O'Brien's poetry collection from Amazon. I've wondered about Pennsylvania and its citizens in other times and seasons, and I would like to stay longer here to see.

In the midst of this harsh pastoral, Pennsylvanians are scrappy survivors. They complain (particularly about their governor and Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell, who doesn't seem as popular as the media make him out to be), but they endure. They refuse to be bound to the broken temples of commerce and manufacturing, the vacant Beaux Arts hotels, the rotting nineteenth-century row houses, the abandoned sidings and once-grand railway stations that inscribe Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and diminish Pittsburgh and Lancaster. Pennsylvanians are remarkably chipper. In the end, the material world that once gave them prosperity has not defined them. On the contrary, Pennsylvania unfolds in an interlocking chain of Turkeyfoots and Allentowns, held separately and together by a sense of shared community, of humor, of history, and of abiding faith.

These qualities of hospitality, patriotism and endurance are exactly what Californians need to hear about Pennsylvanians. And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.

I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among Californians, who are a people in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known. (Of course, this is a generalization, and as such does not fit everyone; but as a state characteristic I stand by it.) Californians might be better served by hearing that Pennsylvanians have a strong sense of their place in American history, for here California is wanting. California needs to hear that other Americans have gone through hard times and survived, humor intact. Since Barack Obama sees himself as the candidate best able to unify the country, these are the messages he needs to carry and his frank words about Pennsylvania may not have translated very clearly.

To give Obama his due, he spoke about working class Pennsylvanians likely because he had been thinking about them a great deal. And he spoke, as he often does away from large rallies, in a calm, even, matter-of-fact way. Every town hall meeting I've observed, from California to Iowa, Nevada to Texas, has showcased Senator Obama's core decency and high measure of regard for each individual.

It's curious, then, that he often has such a hard time making a connection with many working class Americans. With plenty of time for people to get to know him, like in southern Illinois before his first state legislature race and in Iowa before the caucuses, Obama has forged that connection. People get comfortable with the way his mind works. Obama is the man with the big picture; he jumps quickly from the particular to the general and back again, for he makes sense of the world in a synchronic rather than a linear way. For all his soaring rhetoric, there is a dispassion about him. And yet he blends rationcinative intelligence with empathetic understanding. This is a rare combination, and for many people, this aspect of Obama takes some getting used to. His Puritanical streak, moreover, while amusing to the press can be off-putting to everybody else.

Wednesday in Levittown, Obama told his audience, "We can find areas of common ground." But if we are going to move from divisiveness to comity, then Obama must show that he can lead us to see one another at our best and to measure one another at our highest worth. "I'm going to have a big table and will invite everybody," Obama often says. These were his exact words to Johnstown March 29. "I'll have the biggest chair, because I'll be President," he added.

One of the roles of host is making introductions. Just as Californians need to learn a few things from Pennsylvanians, the reverse is also true. California is the, most racially tolerant and ethnicity-tolerant state in the Union. California has found a way to bring strict environmental standards to prosperity's table. Californians celebrate entrepreneurship, open-mindedness and creativity.

In answer to the Wilkes-Barre gentleman's question about low levels of national pride, Senator Obama said, in part, that a new generation needs to move into government service, for there is "something big and noble and exciting and important about serving the country." First, however, Senator Obama-- and also Senators Clinton and McCain-- must see us and talk about us in such a way that sets the bar high. A leader will hold us to that standard. "Californians and Pennsylvanians," our next president must say, "find your best selves in one another."

Link to blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html

Leaf-tailed Gekko, Madagascar

MOOOOOOM!!!!!! MOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

Philly Mayor Michael Nutter Would Quit Obama Church

Mayor Michael Nutter Tells ABC News He Would Have Quit Church if His Pastor Made Such Remarks

By DAVID MUIR, URSULA FAHY and JOEL SIEGEL
PHILADELPHIA, March 29, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton's most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama's church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery and controversial sermons.

"I think there's no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time," said Philadelphia's newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News' David Muir.

"If I were in my own church and heard my pastor saying some of those kinds of things," he added, "we'd have a conversation about what's going on here, what is this all about, and then I would have to make my own personal decision about whether or not to be associated or affiliated."

Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama's church, Nutter said, "Absolutely."

Wright preached that the U.S brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." He also said the government "wants us to sing 'God Bless America'" but that it should be "God damn America" for the way it has treated minorities.

Obama condemned the comments, but said he could not "disown" Wright. He suggested the incendiary remarks reflected longstanding anger over past injustices against blacks.

Nutter said, "I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate."

Clinton needs a decisive victory in Pennsylvania to keep her White House hopes alive. And Nutter, who took office in January, could play a pivotal role if he is able to help Clinton make inroads with African-American voters, a pillar of Obama's political base.

The pressure on some of Clinton's prominent black supporters to abandon her has been intense. An icon of the civil rights movement, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., switched allegiances to Obama, partly because of anger in his home district over his choice for president.

Nutter has been called Philadelphia's Barack Obama. He is black, Ivy League-educated, popular and an agent of change -- just like Obama. But Nutter has remained steadfast in his support of Clinton -- to the surprise of many in this city.

The mayor acknowledges that some voters have approached him and asked, in his words, "Why not support a brother?"

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Nutter is sticking with Clinton, even though by doing so, he said he might be thwarting the election of America's first black president.

"Certainly the opportunity to demonstrate to my 13-year-old daughter that there is a bright future for her, that a woman could get elected president of the United States, is equally compelling," he said.

"I think that we are at this historical moment," Nutter said. "Either candidate will clearly make history. But you only get to vote for one. The most important thing is winning in November, putting a Democrat in the White House."

He added, "I'm a great fan of history. I don't know that when people are struggling to pay the bills, that they ultimately conclude that, 'Well, if we can just make history with this vote, then all of my problems will be solved.' It still, for me, always comes back to performance [and] track record."

Nutter met with both senators before deciding his endorsement. He brushes aside those who say he did not back Obama because Obama endorsed someone else for mayor.

"We're talking about president of the United States. They're not running for high school class president," he said.

"I think Sen. Clinton is the absolute best candidate for not only Philadelphia but for other cities like us, certainly for Pennsylvania [and] the United States of America, to restore our leadership role all around the world."

In a wide-ranging interview, Nutter voiced outrage [BLOGGER'S NOTE: the word "outrage" is a completely incorrect characterization of Nutter's comments -- he was quite calm while speaking.] that the Democratic Party is opposed to counting the Michigan and Florida primaries because both states scheduled the elections early in the primary season, against party rules. Clinton won those primaries -- though candidates were barred from campaigning in the states and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.

Counting the abridged votes from those states would help Clinton to narrow Obama's lead in delegates.

"Think about who we are in the Democratic Party and the country we are in," Nutter said. "That we would somehow leave out any of our citizens in this process, I think, would be an absolute disgrace. We need to be a bit smarter about it."

Political observers say Nutter's pick for president perhaps could cause him political problems down the road.

"The people who swept him to victory are exactly the same people who are over the moon for Barack Obama," said Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo.

The Rev. Ellis Washington, president of Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, told The National Journal "there is some frustration" with Nutter's endorsement.

"I do speak to some who look at Nutter's name and kind of shake their head," he said.

A random sampling of voters here found others shaking their heads, too.

Philadelphian Victoria Walker said, "I would have thought that he would have endorsed Obama."

"I've struggled with this one a little bit, because from the perspective of Philadelphia, in many ways I see Nutter as a parallel to Obama," said long-time resident Fred Rosenfeld.

Nutter endorsed Clinton back in December, when she was the clear front-runner. Now she is struggling. But Nutter is having no second thoughts.

When asked if he would endorse Clinton again, Nutter said, "Absolutely. Same endorsement. Never a hesitation."

Link to article: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4549699&page=1

Inspiration versus Substance by Joe Klein

TIME Magazine, February 7, 2008

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Barack Obama said in yet another memorable election-night speech on Super-Confusing Tuesday. "We are the change that we seek." Waiting to hear what Obama has to say — win, lose or tie — has become the most anticipated event of any given primary night. The man's use of pronouns (never I), of inspirational language and of poetic meter — "WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK" — is unprecedented in recent memory. Yes, Ronald Reagan could give great set-piece speeches on grand occasions, and so could John F. Kennedy, but Obama's ability to toss one off, different each week, is simply breathtaking. His New Hampshire concession speech, with the refrain "Yes, We Can," was turned into a brilliant music video featuring an array of young, hip, talented and beautiful celebrities. The video, stark in black-and-white, raised an existential question for Democrats: How can you not be moved by this? How can you vote against the future?

And yet there was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism — "We are the ones we've been waiting for" — of the Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you." That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

That is not unprecedented. It has echoes of Howard Dean's 2004 primary effort, although in Dean's case the propellant was substance, not rhetoric — the candidate's early courageous voice against the war. But Dean soon found that wasn't enough. In June 2003 he told me he needed to broaden his movement, reach out past the young and the academic and find a greater array of issues that could inspire working people. He never quite found that second act, and his campaign became about process, not substance: the hundreds of thousands of supporters signing up on the Internet, the millions of dollars raised. He lost track of the rest of the world; his campaign was about ... his campaign.

Obama would never be so tone-deaf, but he is facing a similar ceiling, a similar inability to speak to the working people of the Democratic Party (at least, those who are not African American) or find an issue, a specific issue, that distinguishes him from his opponent. And his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has proved herself tough, specific and reliable — qualities that become increasingly important as the economy teeters and as worries about the future gather in the land.

This has become an odd campaign for Democrats. There is good news ... and fear. The good news is that this time the people seem far more interested in their party than in the Republicans. On Super Tuesday, at least 15,417,521 voted Democratic, and 9,181,297 voted Republican. And more good news: both Obama and Clinton are very good candidates who hold similar positions on most issues, moderates who intend to reach out to Republicans after they are elected — although, given Clinton's undeserved reputation as a partisan operative, that may be a tougher sell for her than for Obama. But this is not a struggle for the ideological soul of the party. It may, however, be a struggle for the party's demographic soul — older voters vs. younger, information-age workers vs. industrial and service workers, wine vs. beer. There is also — and I will try to tread lightly here — the classic high school girl/boy differential: the note-taking, front-row girl grind vs. the charismatic, last-minute-cramming, preening male finesse artist. Both Clinton and Obama have difficulties reaching across those divides, and that is where the fear resides: neither candidate may prove strong or broad enough. As this campaign progresses, their weaknesses — the reasons for their inability to put away this nomination — are going to become more apparent than their strengths.

Clinton's strengths are most apparent in debates, which is why she is pressing to have one each week. She simply knows more than Obama does. In recent weeks, she has been far more likely to take questions from the press and public than Obama is. That appeals to voters more interested in results than in inspiration; it especially appeals to the middle-class women, juggling job and family, who are the demographic heart of the Democratic Party. Clinton's weaknesses are intractable. They are wrapped up in her husband, who nearly ruined her campaign in the two weeks after Iowa but seems to have been relegated to the back of the bus in recent days. And they are wrapped up in her age. She is a baby boomer, of a generation that has been notably obnoxious and unsuccessful in the public arena. Perhaps the most dreadful baby-boom political legacy has been the overconsulted, fanatically tactical, poll-driven campaign — and Clinton has suffered whenever she has emphasized tactics over substance. Her lame attempts to "go negative" on Obama have been almost entirely counterproductive. Her husband's attempts to paint Obama as a "race" candidate — his resort to the most toxic sort of old-fashioned politics — only reinforced the strangely desperate nature of their campaign. It was the very opposite of "Yes, We Can" politics.

Obama's strength is inspiration, and it's also his weakness. In the recent past, Democrats have favored candidates who offer meaty, detailed policy prescriptions — usually to the party's detriment — and that is not Obama's game. After his Iowa victory, his stump speech had become a soufflé untroubled by much substance of any sort. He has rectified that, to some extent. He now spends some time talking about the laments of average Americans he has met along the way; then he dives into a litany of solutions he has proposed to address the laments. But those are not nearly so convincing as Clinton's versions of the same; of course, Clinton has a tragic deficit when it comes to inspiration.

There is an odd, anachronistic formality to Obama's stump speech: it is always the same. It sets his audiences afire, but it does not reach very far beyond them. It is no accident that Obama is nearly invincible in caucus states, where the ability to mobilize a hard core of activists is key — but not so strong in primaries, where more diverse masses of people are involved. He should be very worried that this nomination is likely to be decided in the big working-class primary states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Then again, one of Obama's most effective lines is about the "craziness" of trying the same old thing in Washington "over and over and over again, and somehow expecting a different result." The first politician I ever heard use that line — weirdly attributed to everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein — was Bill Clinton. It is a sad but inescapable fact of this election that Bill and Hillary Clinton have now become "the same old thing" they once railed against. In a country where freshness is fetishized — and where a staggering 70% of the public is upset with the way things are today — the "same old thing" is not the place to be. Unless, of course, the next new thing turns out to be a mirage.

Link to article: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1710721,00.html

Arnaldo Jabor -- O homem versus o mosquito

And this is once again the reason that sometimes Arnaldo Jabor is my hero:

O Rio é uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida

Não interessa saber se a dengue é uma epidemia ou não. A dengue é apenas a forma microbiológica que expõe o caos geral da administração do Rio. Os vírus proliferam pelo mesmo fertilizante que estimula a corrupção, a violência, a vergonha burocrática. A verdadeira epidemia é a administração da cidade que já atinge um grau de gravidade talvez irreversível.

Vivemos no Rio (oh leitores de outros estados!...) a sensação permanente do Insolúvel. Já temos a dengue, a febre amarela; um dia chegaremos à perfeição da varíola. Mas muitos sintomas eclodem alem da dengue: depressão, miséria, violência, ignorância. A própria crise psicótica do Cesar Maia também é um sintoma. Ele, que pareceu um exemplo de pragmatismo para quebrar a cadeia do populismo, entrou em catatonia, em paralisia mental, e não fala mais. Diante do Insolúvel, ele emite ruídos de e-mail como um robô quebrado.

O Rio de hoje é o filho defeituoso que a ditadura militar criou, pela fusão com o Estado fluminense, a estratégia "geiseliana" de afastar o MDB de uma possível vitória na política nacional em 75.

A des-fusão dos dois estados e a volta da Guanabara é um tema que surgiu, fervilhou e esfriou de novo, como tudo aqui. Seria uma utopia? Na Prefeitura, na Câmara Municipal, assembléias, repartições, vemos a cenografia e figurinos de nossa desgraça.

Estamos salpicados de favelas, de onde descem hordas de assaltantes para pescar cidadãos como num parque temático, somos governados por populistas de direita há décadas. Nosso melhor governador ("prefeito" do Estado da Guanabara) foi o Carlos Lacerda. Homem inteligente e competente - o ódio máximo de minha juventude - ( podem me esculhambar, velhos comunas...), mas que nos trouxe luz, água, túneis, urbanização e o conceito de administração moderna contra a politicagem fisiológica. Lacerda, com todos seus defeitos, era um atalho no populismo que tirou o Rio do ciclo "de dia falta água, de noite falta luz..."

Hoje, há um caldo de cultura de onde germina nossa tragédia. Ou melhor, duas grandes poças de cultura que se somam.

A primeira grande poça trágica é a imensa ignorância da população pobre, presa da demagogia de oportunistas que usam a religião, o clientelismo, o cabresto, grana, tudo para conquistar votos.

A crassa ignorância dos despossuídos é o chão onde crescem os pseudo-políticos, como a água parada gesta ovos de mosquitos.

A segunda poça de germes é mais sutil. Não está no analfabetismo, nem na crendice, nem na ingenuidade. Está no carioca médio e em sua "cultura malandra". Depois de décadas de desgraça, ainda não sabemos como agir, como nos mobilizar, além de vagos protestos, cartas a leitores ou comentários (como eu mesmo faço), na facilidade da indignação impotente.

Atraso x modernização

Cariocas, somos considerados criativos e manemolentes, quando hoje estamos mal informados e sem inspiração. Somos malandros com o terno esfarrapado, a navalha sem aço e o chapéu panamá rasgado. O carioca tem uma "poética" irresponsabilidade política. Carioca gosta de falar de política mas não de agir politicamente; tudo se afoga no chope ou na praia e chegamos, no máximo, a movimentos abstratos, pedindo paz, abraçando a Lagoa, cantando, chorando. O carioca é ideológico, mas deixa a política para os canalhas. E nossa única saída para a tragédia que vivemos seria uma virada pragmática, uma mudança, uma diferença de métodos e de ética. O Rio está organizado para "não" funcionar.

Tornou-se impossível governar sem uma macro-mudança administrativa. Precisamos de cinturões industriais na periferias, precisamos criar algum objetivo econômico para a região, seja a criação de uma "hong kong" carioca, uma base financeira e cultural. A idéia de que há uma "solução" para o Rio é uma falácia. Precisamos de atalhos, de imaginação. Não dá para retornar a uma "normalidade" ideal, apenas por uma corriqueira substituição de poder. O Rio tem de planejar seu futuro em cima de um luto, da aceitação de uma grave encrenca em estado adiantado.

Com a aproximação das eleições para a Prefeitura, dois cenários se apresentam na paisagem política: o atraso e a possibilidade de uma modernização. Marcelo Crivella é o uso da política como instrumento de outro poder. A prefeitura não como um instrumento para o bem da cidade. A cidade não como fim, mas como meio. Seus eleitores já foram escolhidos e apontados em sua primeira declaração contra Fernando Gabeira: "Ele é a favor de homem com homem, aborto e maconha". É nítido que ele vai usar a superstição, o moralismo tacanho, a ignorância e a obediência religiosa para se eleger, depois de ter sabiamente desviado Wagner Montes do caminho, ele o mais forte candidato no mundo da ignorância pública.

Para esta vertente político-religiosa, quanto mais paralisada a máquina da cidade, melhor. Quanto mais indefesos forem os aparelhos do estado, melhor. Depois do populismo chaguista no estado, depois da honestidade incompetente de Saturnino Braga, depois do brizolismo, da piração de Cesar Maia, involuímos para o populismo da fé.

Por outro lado, a possibilidade de eleição de Fernando Gabeira pode ser uma oportuna retomada de um pragmatismo que não se vê desde o boom do Estado da Guanabara. Não falo por salvacionismo, nem Gabeira seria um bonaparte. Falo porque ele pode criar uma nova vertente política, cortando caminhos pela imaginação, pela criatividade e pelo nível intelectual e contemporâneo que ele representa. Mudança de rumos, mudança: quase um Obama carioca.

Quem pode atrapalhar Gabeira? Homens e mulheres de bem, como Chico Alencar, Jandira, Eduardo Paes, que pensam ainda em termos legítimos (sem dúvida) mas também sem possibilidade alguma de vitória.

Eles teriam de entender e se coligar com o único que tem uma chance de vencer o populismo psicótico (sou um romântico). Entender que o Rio não é uma cidade a mais à espera de uma eleição. Somos uma calamidade urgente que tem de ser assumida, como o desmatamento da Amazônia ou a seca no Nordeste.

Alexander Calder!

Alexander Calder, Romulus and Remus, 1928. Wire and wood, 30 1/2 x 124 1/2 x 26 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 65.1738. © 2007 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Star Trek -- Enterprise theme song: "Faith of the Heart"

OK, so now you know I'm a Trekkie.



One-minute version above.

If anyone knows where I can find the high-def 4-minute version (old copy taken down at youtube), please send me a message or make a comment here with the link -- I really miss it!  Thanks!

"Faith of the Heart"

It's been a long road,
To get from there to here.
It's been a long time,
but my time is finally here.

And I can feel a change
in the wind right now.
Nothing's in my way.
And they're not gonna
hold me down no more.
No they're not gonna hold me down.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

It's been a long night,
Trying to find my way.
Been thru the darkness,
Now I finally have my day.

And I will see my dream
come alive at last.
I will touch the sky.
And they're not gonna hold
me down no more.
No they're not gonna change
my mind.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
I've got faith,
Faith of the heart.

I know the wind's so cold,
I've seen the darkest days.
But now the winds I feel,
Are only winds of change.
I've been thru the fire,
And I've been thru the rain,
But I'll be fine.

'Cause I've got faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
I can do anything.
I've got strength of the soul.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...

Faith of the heart.
I'm going where my heart
will take me.
I've got faith to believe.
And no one's going to bend
or break me.
I can reach any star.
'Cause I've got faith,
'Cause I've got faith,
Faith of the heart...