WEDNESDAY,  OCTOBER 21,  2009

CHENEY STRIKES BACK - AT 8:55 P.M. ET:  The former vice president has struck back against the meandering, and endless whining, of the Obama administration, whose tactics are placing the nation in danger.  Andrew Malcolm, of the L.A. Times's great Top of The Ticket site, reports:

With public support for the Afghan conflict melting and approval of the president's job as commander in chief waning, two top Barack Obama aides -- senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- went on the TV talk shows Sunday and used very similar words to explain their latest lengthy policy review as the fault of the long-gone Bush administration ignoring the needs of Afghanistan for years.

Tonight, as first reported by Fox News's "Special Report," former Vice President Dick Cheney fires back in a candid, even blunt, retort:

Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission....

It’s time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.

Cheney's criticism of the succeeding Democratic administration is not new. However, he reveals tonight that the outgoing Bush administration handed a complete Afghan policy review to the Obama transition team, which asked the Republicans not to release it. The Bush team agreed and its recommendations formed much of the basis of Obama's announcement in March. But now Axelrod and Emanuel are stating that those review questions had not been asked for eight years.

COMMENT:  Axelrod and Emanuel were deceptive.  The questions were asked, and the incoming administration was fully briefed. 

Let's see if the mainstream media tags the White House for this obvious lack of truthfulness.  Don't hold your breath.

We're dealing with the lives of American troops.  There doesn't seem to be any great sense of urgency in the Oval Office.  Must plan the next big dinner party or night out on the town.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

THE WARNING THIS TIME - AT 6:23 P.M. ET:  There's been another terror arrest here at home.  From The Washington Post:

A Massachusetts man has been arrested on charges of conspiring to support terrorists in a long-running investigation into Americans seeking military-style training overseas, federal authorities announced Wednesday morning.

This is the new and growing threat - Americans who can get terror training overseas, and not stand out if they then target Americans anywhere.

Tarek Mehanna, 27, of Sudbury, a small town west of Boston, allegedly conspired from 2001 to May 2008 with Ahmad Abousamra and others to support and carry out attacks abroad, including on U.S. and allied soldiers in Iraq, the Justice Department announced.

COMMENT:  Of course, with Obama in the White House, all these people will become friends of the United States.

Laugh now.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

MORE STATISTICAL "OUCH" FOR OBAMA - AT 5:59 P.M. ET:  News from Gallup provides more evidence that the president is paying a heavy poll tax (okay, okay).

From Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ -- In Gallup Daily tracking that spans Barack Obama's third quarter in office (July 20 through Oct. 19), the president averaged a 53% job approval rating. That is down sharply from his prior quarterly averages, which were both above 60%.

In fact, the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953.

Who can they blame?  Who can they blame?

In Obama's first quarter and second quarter, his job approval average compared favorably with those of prior presidents. But after the drop in his support during the last quarter, his average now ranks near the bottom for presidents at similar points in their presidencies. Only Clinton had a lower third-quarter average among elected presidents.

Obama will send that last line, anonymously, in a plain white envelope, over to the State Department.

The president isn't producing.  He is not being well served by the roughhouse Chicago crowd around him.  He can actually drag down the Democratic ticket next year.  This is not the change he planned for, or believed in.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

NO WONDER THEY ACT THE WAY THEY DO - AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  The president and his team are from Chicago.  That may explain things:

NEW YORK — Striving to attain that perfect life, work balance? You're not alone, but if you live in Chicago you're more unlikely to find it with residents of the Windy City the most stressed in the United States.

A survey by Harris Interactive found Chicago is the most stressed city in the nation, followed by Houston, Boston, Los Angeles and San Diego, while Miami is the least stressed, along with Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Cincinnati and Minneapolis.

"It is (due) to a combination of different things. There wasn't one thing that made Chicago stand out but they were the ones who had the least attainment of life balance," Harris Interactive spokeswoman Regina Corso told Reuters.

COMMENT:  Yeah, do you get that feeling when looking at Rahm Emanuel?  This Obama crowd is snapping at Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, various friendly countries, most of American history, and Gen. McChrystal.

They need relaxation. 

Even better...retirement.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

GRIM, GRIM, GRIM - AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  We always stress that a poll is a snapshot in time.  We look for trends.  With that in mind, the trends for President Obama in the Rasmussen poll aren't very encouraging.  For the sixth straight day, equaling the record for this president, Obama has been in negative double digits in Ras's presidential approval index - measuring the gap between those who strongly approve of his performance and those who strongly don't.  It's now 27% to 40%.

In overall approval, Mr. Obama stands at 47% approve, 53% disapprove.

We're about to endure a bunch of TV celebrations of Obama's big win last November.  These figures will not add to the merriment.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

UPDATE ON IRAN - AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  What a difference excellent reporting makes.  David E. Sanger, superlative reporter for The New York Times, gives us an update on this morning's story - see our first posting - on Iran's "agreement" over its nuclear program.  Sanger's copy reflects some of the concerns we raised when we saw the first reports, and extends them.  This is important stuff:

VIENNA — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Iranian negotiators had agreed to a draft of an agreement to ship much of its stockpile of nuclear fuel to Russia, but cautioned that it would have to be approved by Friday in both Tehran and Washington.

The key to the agreement, if it works, would lie in the timing of the shipments — a detail officials were not discussing in Vienna in the hours after the announcement. If Iran actually sends the full 2,600 pounds of low-enriched uranium at issue to Russia in a single shipment, it would have too little fuel on hand to build a nuclear weapon for roughly a year, according to the agency’s experts. But if the fuel leaves Iran in batches, the experts warn, Iran would have the ability to replace it almost as quickly as it leaves the country.

That's the first asterisk.  There are more.  When dealing with Iran, there are many, many asterisks.

The 2,600 pounds amounts to about 75 percent of Iran’s known stockpile of fuel. That estimate, as one senior European diplomat put it on the sidelines of the three days of negotiations here, “assumes that Iran has accurately declared how much fuel it possesses, and does not have a secret supply.”

Something we noted earlier.  How will the White House react to this?  We hope it will react with heavy skepticism.

Ultimately, Mr. Obama would have to get Iran to agree to give up the enrichment process as well, or the fuel taken out of circulation in the draft agreement would soon be replaced. During the campaign, Mr. Obama and his aides said that Iran could not be trusted to enrich uranium. But he has not made the cessation of enrichment a prerequisite to talks, and it is still under way, in violation of three United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Another asterisk just dropped.

Iran’s representative to the I.A.E.A., Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told reporters on Wednesday that while his team of negotiators had accepted the draft agreement, senior officials in Tehran would have to approve it. “We have to thoroughly study this text,” he said.

You do that, fella. 

Don't you love it?  We've accepted the draft, but we have to study it.  I guess they're for it before being against it. 

Or, as Golda Meir used to say, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a carriage."

October 21, 2009   Permalink

THE PARTY LINE - BIG TIME - AT 8:25 A.M. ET:  I make a sharp distinction between women's rights and feminism.  Equal treatment for women is a responsible and noble goal.  (In this connection I should point out that George W. Bush appointed more women to high positions than any other president.)  Feminism is more of an ideological movement, sometimes almost religious, and often hard to define.  At Wellesley College, Hillary's alma mater, the word is often pluralized - feminisms - to denote the different interpretations.

But the question must be asked:  Does feminism today have much to do with women, or is it just a branch office of the political left?  The answer seems to be increasingly disturbing.

Kim Gandy, the radical former president of NOW (National Organization for Women) spoke at Harvard, which provides a loving home for every bad idea in American politics.  Her subject was the stereotyping of women in political affairs.  It's what she didn't say that was most telling.  From the Harvard Crimson:

The sexist portrayal of women politicians in the media is “not just a right wing thing” but a problem spanning across the ideological spectrum, said former President of National Organization of Women (NOW) Kim Gandy in a forum held last night in Emerson Hall.

The event—hosted by the Harvard College Women’s Center—featured the screening of television video clips followed by Gandy’s commentary and an interactive discussion between the current Kennedy School Institute of Politics fellow and audience members.

Gandy called attention to the apparent double standard that exists in the media’s treatment of women either running for or serving in public office, with the majority of the night’s conversation focused on Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary elections.

COMMENT:  There is not, in this article, a single reference to Sarah Palin, the only woman who actually ran on a national ticket last year.  She does not exist in the eyes of the "feminist" movement.

Yet it was Sarah Palin, not Hillary Clinton, who got the brunt of any sexism that we saw in the campaign.  Charlie Gibson would never have treated a man the way he treated Sarah. 

So-called "women's" organizations can address these issues intelligently when they become more inclusive, and come to understand that radical Marxists are not necessarily who American women look to for guidance.

October 21, 2009   Permalink

BULLETIN - AT 8:04 A.M. ET:  There's a story circulating this morning that Iran has agreed to a draft proposal on its nuclear program:

VIENNA (AP) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has agreed to a draft deal on its nuclear program.

In addition, diplomats say the deal would see the country ship out most of its enriched uranium to Russia, stripping Tehran of most of the material it would need to make a nuclear weapon.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Wednesday that Iran and the U.S., Russia and France have signed off on a draft deal that he hoped would be approved by the nations' capitals by Friday.

He gave no details. But a diplomat inside the closed meeting told The Associated Press that the draft foresees the export most of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium.

Iran says it is enriching to provide fuel for a future network of nuclear reactors. But enriched uranium can also be used to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

COMMENT:  In the immortal words of the great philosopher, George Gobel, wait a gosh-darned second. 

This is one of those reports that has to be looked at with three eyes.  First, it is coming from the IAEA, which would consider an Iranian nuclear bomb as wonderful news that showed that Muslims can do math.  So, take it with a truckload of salt.

Second, a draft agreement isn't a final agreement.  Even if there's a final agreement, what guarantee do we have that Iran, home to one of the most deceptive governments on Earth, would honor it?  Even if they did honor it, the extent to which they honored it is crucial. 

We know that Iran has hidden part, or even most, of its nuclear program.  So how can we be sure about the amount of enriched uranium that they actually have?  They can be running a shadow program, unseen by the world.  Remember, we recently revealed a nuclear plant that the Iranians had tried to hide.

Based on the record, this "agreement" may well be another attempt to buy time.  Trust, but verify.

October 21,  2009    Permalink

TUESDAY,  OCTOBER 20,  2009

IF THIS HAD BEEN BUSH... - AT 9:57 P.M. ET:  There's trouble with the flu vaccine, as Washington Times reports:

The H1N1 vaccine will arrive too late to help most Americans who will be infected during this flu season, according to a study conducted by scholars at Purdue University.

Can you imagine the reaction to this study if BUSH (!!) had been president?  Why, why, it's a medical Katrina!  It's an influenza Iraq!  It's Florida 2000!

And yet, there's no real reaction to this major failure, despite disturbing predictions:

The study also estimates that the virus - commonly referred to as the swine flu bug - will infect about 60 percent of the U.S. population, although only about 25 percent of Americans will fall ill.

That's quite a chunk of humanity.  Obviously, this is Bush's fault.

However, it's predicted that most cases will be mild. 

One of the researchers cautions us, with a rare touch of scholarly humility:

Ms. Towers cautioned in a phone interview with The Washington Times that while enough of the U.S. population probably won't get enough of the vaccine before or during the peak of the pandemic, that is no reason not to get protection.

"Based on our study alone it would be bad to discourage people from getting the vaccine, because what if our study is wrong," she said.

COMMENT:  Wrong?  WRONG?  How can a scientist possibly be wrong?  Does this mean that some of the global warming stuff...?

Don't go there.  Just don't go there.  Al Gore gets very upset.

October 20,  2009   Permalink

WE'RE BRAIN FOOD, PASS IT ON! - AT 6:40 P.M. ET:  There is good news today about the therapeutic effects of the internet.  (Yes, you read that right.)  Some UCLA scientists have made us medically respectable:

Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

But, of course, you have to go to the right sites.  I'm convinced that the left-wing sites have the reverse effect.  All right, that's my scientific opinion.

"We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function," Dr. Gary Small, study author and professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said in a statement.

COMMENT:  This will scare the daylights out of the mainstream media, which is certain that those who surf the web are airheads and sickies, looking for simple-minded, flag-waving solutions. 

They're not, and now we have evidence that their brains get better all the time.

October 20,  2009   Permalink 

IT'S ABOUT TIME - AT 6:20 P.M. ET:  The New York Times today runs a remarkable op-ed piece by Robert L. Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch.  Showing great courage, Bernstein, with absolutely good cause, attacks the very group he founded.  (He stepped aside in 1998.) 

He has watched Human Rights Watch become a farce, and, like other "human rights" organizations, a tool of the political left: 

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Bernstein is particularly critical of HRW's regular assaults on Israel.  The organization now has a Middle East department staffed entirely by Arab rights activists.  No one neutral.  No one on the other side.  Very trendy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

And...

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

Finally...

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

COMMENT:  Yay!  It's time someone broke the silence about Human Rights Watch, and who better than its founder? 

There are many organizations that operate the way red fronts operated during the Cold War.  They give themselves noble names like "Women for World Peace, Justice, and Equality," when in fact they support the world's worst regimes.  The language is familiar...except to some in journalism and in the academic precincts, who prefer not to know, or not to see.

Bernstein will be viciously attacked for his column.  He should get a medal.

October 20,  2009   Permalink

WAKE UP, MR. PRESIDENT - AT 11:37 A.M. ET:  I don't know about you, but I see this as a mild rebuke to the president of the United States, from his own secretary of defense:

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

Gates, speaking to reporters on board a plane traveling to Tokyo, described the situation in Afghanistan as an evolutionary process that would not improve dramatically overnight, regardless of what course is taken following the country's flawed August election.

"I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said.

"I believe that the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process."

COMMENT:  In other words, get off the dime and start doing the job for which you were elected.

October 20, 2009   Permalink

NO BREAK FOR OBAMA - AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen reports that the president continues to drop in public approval.  We like the Rasmussen survey here because he polls likely voters, not the general population.  People who don't vote don't decide elections.

For the fifth day in a row, Ras's presidential approval index - the gap between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove - is in double digits.  Obama today is down 12, 28% to 40%. 

Overall approval is also poor.  Some 47% approve of presidential performance, whereas 52% disapprove.

Other polls show the president higher, but they are often taken among all voters, or all citizens, or anyone with a pulse.

October 20, 2009   Permalink

OUTRAGEOUS - AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  Churchill said that democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others.  Well, free enterprise is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

We're all for free enterprise here, but the system can be terribly abused, and misused, and we're seeing that in the outrageous, contemptible behavior of some people on Wall Street and some corporate CEOs, whose greed is limitless.  These people can truly destroy the goose that lays the golden egg by prompting demands for massive regulation and the heavy hand of government.  What is especially enraging is that some of the greediest creeps have also shown themselves to be among the most incompetent managers, protected by pals in country clubs and by obedient boards.

The Washington Post reports:

NEW YORK -- Even as the nation's biggest financial firms were struggling and the federal government was spending hundreds of billions of dollars to save many of them, the companies as a group were boosting the perks and benefits they pay their chief executives.

The firms, accounting for more $350 billion in federal bailout funds, increased these perks and benefits 4 percent on average last year, according to an analysis of corporate disclosures filed in recent months.

Some chief executives, such as Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America and Jeffrey M. Peek of CIT Group, the major small-business lender now on the brink of bankruptcy, each received about $100,000 more than a year earlier for personal use of corporate jets. Others saw an increase in the value of chauffeured services, parking or personal security.

This at a time when unemployment hovers at 10%, with millions of other Americans underemployed or taking large salary cuts.

And the perk racket pales in comparison to the tens of millions in "bonuses" paid on Wall Street to people who come up with innovative financial gimmicks that contribute nothing to the economy, but much to their own wallets.

There is nothing new in this legal stealing.  It's just gotten much worse over the years, and is no ornament to free enterprise.  What is unique is that the chicanery is going on in the very firms that we, the American taxpayer, bailed out. 

We've seen some real visionaries on Wall Street, and in the corporate world - innovators who make real contributions.  We've also seen mediocre jerks, who just grab.  I'm afraid the jerks have been winning. 

It's time for a shareholder revolt.

October 20, 2009   Permalink

NOTHING LIKE THE POLITICS OF FEAR - AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  The British prime minister, likely to be gone by next year, gives us a dose of the new-time religion in employing the scare tactics now expected from the global-warming crowd.  From BBC:

The UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heat waves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned.

If a religious leader said anything like that, he'd be accused of being a right-wing fundamentalist.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the "impasse."

He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B."

World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.

COMMENT:  This comes at a time when more and more scientists are questioning the "science" behind global warming, a science that seems to be making some people hawking "alternative technologies" awfully rich.

What is lacking is definitive science.  What is also lacking is an understanding of the impact on the world's population, especially in poor countries, if Western economies are badly damaged by reckless "environmental" regulation. 

Let us by all means protect the environment and improve our technology.  But carefully.  Real science, not political science.

October 20, 2009   Permalink

A MILITARY VERDICT - AT 8:39 A.M. ET:  This story should be troubling to anyone concerned about national security, the morale of our military, and the future of the country.  The New York Times reports this morning on a growing anger toward President Obama within our military ranks.  The implications are not good:

WASHINGTON — Only nine months ago, the Pentagon pronounced itself reassured by the early steps of a new commander in chief. President Obama was moving slowly on an American withdrawal from Iraq, had retained former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary and, in a gesture much noticed, had executed his first military salute with crisp precision.

But now, after nearly a month of deliberations by Mr. Obama over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military.

A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room.

This is chilling:

“The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.”

COMMENT:  We have civilian control of the military.  No one wants it any other way.  But the commander-in-chief must be conscious of the morale of the men and women he commands.  If a commander loses the respect of his soldiers, he is all but washed up. 

Obama is losing that respect.  True, there are some officers, as the story reports, who understand his method and praise it, but there is a lack of leadership style in this White House, something that has to frustrate men in the field.  Combine that with Obama's endless apologizing for the United States, and you have a very bad mix.

There has been speculation that some top commanders may resign if the president pursues a strategy they believe can't work.  That may not change the strategy, but it can surely dent the armor of "The One."

October 20, 2009   Permalink

A NAME IN THE NEWS - AT 8:05 A.M. ET:  Howard Unruh has died.  Now, most readers have never heard that name, or may confuse it with the prominent Unruh family of past California politics.

But Howard Unruh was a killer.  On one day in 1949, in Camden, New Jersey, he gunned down a group of his neighbors in a crime that stunned the nation.

For members of the profession of journalism, of a certain age, though, Howard Unruh gave his name to one of the great pieces of reporting in American history.  When I was a student at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, decades ago, we studied the report of the Unruh killings written by Meyer "Mike" Berger of The New York Times, a report that won a Pulitzer Prize:

CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6--Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.

Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more.

Mike Berger was a reporter.  He wasn't a "journalist."  He became legendary for his ability to quickly, and quietly, gather the facts of a story and present them, in a neutral way, to the public.  I have no idea what his politics were.  As a reader, I wasn't supposed to know. 

Those of us who were on The New York Times were proud to be associated, in any way, with the name of Meyer Berger...even those of us who arrived too late to know him.

He left school at 13.  He was educated in the streets and in sweaty city rooms.  He proved that you don't have to wave an Ivy League diploma to be wise, erudite, and reflective.  He wrote beautifully, in that style of a great reporter who took himself out of the story, yet could make you feel it:

The first war dead from Europe came home yesterday. The harbor was steeped in Sabbath stillness as they came in on the morning tide in 6,248 coffins in the hold of the transport Joseph V. Connolly. One coffin, borne from the ship in a caisson, moved through the city's streets to muffled drumbeats and slow cadenced marches, and 400,000 New Yorkers along the route and at a memorial service in Central Park paid it the tribute of reverent silence and unhidden tears…

Mike Berger would answer his phone at The Times with "Balloon tires."  It infuriated the publisher, who had enough sense not to do anything about his annoyance with Berger's irreverence.

We need reporters like Meyer Berger today.  We don't have many of them.  Today we have "journalists," which is one reason why newspapers are in such trouble.  You can always tell when a profession is dying by the way it changes its labeling to puff itself up.  Reporters become journalists.  Movies become "film" or "cinema."  Newspapers are dying, and so is Hollywood.

So Howard Unruh finally passed on.  Mike Berger left us in 1959.  It is Mike Berger who'll be remembered.

October 20,  2009   Permalink