the rix mix

Shutterbug Fights Bogus Ticket
Photo of Subway Car Lands Man in Cuffs

JOHN DEUTZMAN
FOX 5 INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER
Published : Tuesday, 09 Feb 2010, 9:56 PM EST

Robert Taylor likes to take pictures of things, like subway trains. He works for the transit system, but as a private citizen, snapping photos of trains is sort of his hobby.

"It makes good wallpaper," he says. "It's a good backdrop on my computer."

He never thought the harmless hobby could land him in cuffs.

"I was just about to make a motion to get on the train and the cop said, 'Come here.' I was already on the train, he said get off the train," Robert says. "I came off the train and he said I'm not supposed be taking pictures."

But you are allowed to take pictures in the transit system.

After September 11, 2001, there was some talk about restricting the public's right to take pictures in public places, but that was so controversial it was dropped.

In fact, the MTA rules are very clear: "Photography, filming or video recording in any facility or conveyance is permitted."

And that's exactly what Robert says he told the cops. He says he even pulled the rules up on his cell phone to show the cop. But Robert says the cop insisted there was a problem, and told him: "You have to delete them."

When Robert refused, things went from bad to worse. He says an NYPD sergeant showed up and ended up telling the cops to handcuff him and take him into custody.

The cops whacked Robert with not one, but three summonses: One for "taking photos" even though photography is actually allowed. The second for "disobeying lawful order/impeding traffic." And a third for "unreasonable noise."

We asked Robert if he was being a jerk to these cops.

"No I wasn't being a jerk, but I was standing firm," Robert says. "I didn't curse at them or anything. I just said 'Well these are what the rules say.' If anything he was being unreasonable to me. He put his hands on me and he shoves me through the door."

Eventually, all three summonses were dismissed, and the NYPD admitted that the summons for taking pictures was issued in error.

But Robert didn't drop it there, he hired lawyer Gerald Cohen and he sued the city. In the end, the city settled and the boneheaded move by the "picture police" cost taxpayers $30,000.

The cop orders the guy to delete his photos. This station doesn't exist. Those trains don't exist. Forget you ever saw them. I take photos in public places, including train stations. I know serious photographers who shoot anything catches their eyes. They're not shy. I've not taken photos because I've feared an encounter like this man had, & I wasn't sure of the rules. Happy ending, unless you're a New York City taxpayer. He was, BTW, the second subway photographer suit NYC settled for thirty-grand.

Labels: in the news

Video: Why do people flock the stores for milk and eggs when a major storm hits?

About 28,000 homes & businesses in Cape May County were still without power this morning, including most of North Wildwood. National Weather Service issued a Cape May warning for rain, sleet, then another 4 - 8 inches of snow, & wind gusts up to 45 mph. Mainland South Jersey has a warning for 10 to 18 inches. This is extraordinary weather for South Jersey on top of last weekend's blizzard, the kind of weather that knocks down tree branches & powerlines, bad for the economy, potentially ruinous to property, dangerous for travel, & it's difficult to stay for very long in a home without heat & electricity in winter. Anyone stocking up on eggs & milk & might have to abandon them or cart them to a shelter.

Winter Storm Warning for 8 to 13 inches here, with wind on Wednesday. Unless the forecast is really off, we'll be moving around alright on Thursday. ShopRite wasn't busier than usual Monday evening. It'll pick up later today, as it sinks in kids aren't going to school tomorrow.

Labels: New Jersey, video, weather

I don't recall ever reading anything by Robert Patrick "RP" Dana, a respected Midwestern poet associated with Iowa Writers' Workshop, a teacher at Cornell College, & Iowa's Poet Laureate from 2004 through 2008, when he died on Feb. 6th. Wasn't aware he was the beloved father-in-law of former (& legendary) WFMU DJ Ericka "Wildgirl" Peterson Dana, who now lives on a farm in Iowa & rescues feral cats. I'm very fond of Ericka, for what she does now as well as for what she did at WFMU.

Reading the few Robert Dana poems online, seems he was, among many things, a poet of sophisticated, elegant page craft, from a post-WWII generation that approached a blank piece of typing paper as an open field. You could frame this stuff. It was a poetry of clackety typewriters, Royal, Underwood, Remington, Smith-Corona; conservative & avant garde poets played in the field. Dana stayed mostly on the left margin, but when he wandered away from it he did so beautifully. For many poets of my generation, seeing & writing poetry this way,with a visual component, was foundational, whether or not we kept doing it, because our teachers were of Dana's era, & the best ones wanted us to try everything.

Elegy for a Hometown
The Morning of the Red Admirals
Rapture
After the Storm
Mending Art

Those are lovely poems. Several of them bring a fond memory of a particular borrowed Smith-Corona electric portable with a manual carriage return. I was so attached to the machine that the guy I took it from was forced to buy another for himself. When that broke, he demanded mine. I replaced it with an up-to-date Smith-Corona word processor with Data Disk memory, which wasn't good for open form poems. But I was already headed back to the margin. I had finished the first version of Boardwalk, partly an homage to & parody of those poems. Editors of the poetry 'zines I favored were very patient with me, as they had to retype my wanderings across the page. I was at least thoughful enough to set consistent tabs for them, in spacings of fives. I'd also taken counsel of poet Ed Dorn when he wrote in the preface to his Collected Poems that he no longer understood how some of his earlier poems functioned; that is, he forgot how to read them.

Labels: about writing, what I'm reading

Great second half.

Doesn't matter if there weren't actually live back up singers on "Who Are You?" because they weren't actually "The Who."

Next year's halftime show?

• Steely Dan
• Boston
• Jimmy Buffett
• Steve Jones & the New Sex Pistols
• Fleetwood Mac (featuring original drummer & bass player)
  

Labels: music, sports, TV

Labels: New Jersey, postcard

Nuisance snowfall here (didn't need those eggs & milk, people), another big one for South Jersey. The third storm this winter that shaped up in this pattern. More typically, the Jersey shore is a few degrees milder & receives sloppy snow/sleet combinations while the hilly northwest part of Jersey is socked in.

5:30 pm; Still snowing in Cape May. I'm curious about the snowfall amount around Egg Harbor Township, Atlantic County. A heavy snowband was stalled over that area for hours before I went to bed last night, & another was there this morning.

Labels: New Jersey, weather

The Baja Marimba Band was comprised of first rate L.A. studio musicians led by Julius Wechter, made interesting albums, performed as a comedy novelty act - drunken Mexicans - so offensive even in the '60s they drew complaints from Hispanic organizations. But they lifted the costumes & schtick from mariachi bands, which sometimes feature a "clown" in the manner of the dimwit stand up bass player in old American country groups. An unseen star of this video is the person conducting the off-camera Hollywood Palace TV show band.

Labels: music, video

"Always Turned On" is the current promo phrase.

Atlantic City supervisor charged with selling drugs while working on city property

ATLANTIC CITY — A city supervisor allegedly sold drugs from the All Wars Memorial building while on city time and from his city-issued vehicle, leading to his arrest Wednesday morning.

Akbar Malik Salaam, also known as William McDaniels, is charged with official misconduct and multiple drug offenses...
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Over several months, Salaam received thousands of dollars selling more than a half-ounce of heroin to undercover officers while on his job in the memorial building — which functions as a meeting space and community center — and from his official city vehicle, the prosecutor said. Driving raised another issue, as Salaam’s license is suspended, according to a separate charge against him.
Salaam has been indicted at least eight times, according to court records. But not all of Salaam’s arrests were before his employment with the city.

On Sept. 5, 2003, he and 13 others were arrested in “Operation A.C. Pirates,” targeting the selling of name-brand knock-offs and pirated movies. At the time, Salaam was an assistant to then-Public Works Director Michael Scott. But he was not on duty at the time of the arrest.
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In September, The Press of Atlantic City revealed that the employees assigned to the All Wars Memorial Building were paid large amounts of overtime in 2009. Salaam, who supervised the group and approved the payments, received $15,532.46 in overtime — nearly half of his $35,211.78 salary from January 2009 to Sept. 14, 2009.
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Yes, innocent until proven guilty. Another story opening the lid on the garbage pail of Atlantic City politics. This one is especially outrageous. The timing of the arrest calls attention to a power struggle between the mayor & police chief. It reveals that a ex-con with alleged gang connections was hired to a supervisory position (he lives out of town & has a city car). It implies "open secret" illegal activity in & around a community center. Urban drug dealing is not invisible to residents.

Atlantic City was a mess when casino money bins were overflowing. Now, the economy & competition have the industry reeling in A.C. with no solutions at hand. Atlantic City cannot draw upon a former tradition of honest city government. There were only decades when City Hall had a few proud, well-funded, & competently managed departments, & had a greater capacity for doing good for residents who understood the rules. One rule I think is important: Place unqualified cronies in jobs with few responsibilities. Give them desks & nothing important to do, & tell them they'll be fired if they're caught doing anything else.

Labels: Atlantic City, in the news

My gripe on Blog Amnesty Day, celebrity blogs at HuffPost. Huffington Post generally annoys me. Too hard to browse. Too many blogs. Some things are unexplainable. Yesterday at Huff, Sam Stein block-quoted a Daily Kos post that had already been referenced by dozens of other bloggers & received over 12,000 comments & 1,200 Facebook links for his minimal effort.

Some people cannot resist clicking the Facebook share icon next to whatever they're reading or watching online.

Some years I'm into Groundhog Day, some years not. But in any year it doesn't matter to me if groundhog sees a shadow. The point is that Spring comes sooner or later. Some American Indians had a Dance With Bear day around this time of year. Young Indians would poke a bear out of hibernation. The groggy bear wasn't much of a threat. The Indians were, I imagine, tanked up on some fermented beverage.

My Groundhog Day gift to you is The Waikiki Brass playing "Tijuana Hula."

Labels: holidays, music

Game was closer than score shows. Irish in a tiring part of their schedule, they were vulnerable. They might be the second best team in the country. Problem is, UConn is far & away better than anyone else. Irish could lose four games this year, all to UConn, the fourth conceivably for the National Championship.

In a good year for Scarlet Knights, Rutgers wins this one at home & ND coach McGraw knows it. They all know it in the Big East. Outside the conference, coaches warn their teams about Rutgers. "They'll score 60 points & beat us." SEC & ACC teams don't listen. Rutgers counts on that come tournament time.

I don't know why Rutgers didn't gel this season. Maybe Epiphanny Prince was the glue. This game was typical - offense chipped away but defense couldn't hold down the stretch. But it's a good year to be mediocre.

Labels: Rutgers, sports

Calvin and Hobbes fans still pine 15 years after its exit

It's been 15 years since Calvin and his tiger buddy Hobbes pulled up and rather suddenly left the comics pages. At the time, in 1995, the strip was at the height of its popularity, running in a staggering 2,400-plus newspapers and reaching an audience in the hundreds of millions.

Then, with a short note citing shifting interests and "the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels," creator and Clevelander Bill Watterson retired his masterpiece.

I stopped buying the Star-Ledger every day when C&H ended. Calvin & Hobbes compensated for slow news days. A Transmogrifier story was always news. I wonder how much the end of the strip affected newspaper sales. Watterson's reasons for shutting down the strip made sense. He admitted he could have pulled a few more good years out of it. Jef Mallett's Frazz strip postulates one possible future Calvin in his school environment, where Calvin (as Caufield) has become an imaginative, smartass, underacheiving third grader & practical joker, but basically a good kid capable of real friendships. Of course, Mallett denies the connection. Caufield doesn't live in a fantasy world apart from his tired old schoolteacher; rather, he's intellectually ahead of her.

Labels: culture

The Grammys®. are no better than any other music award show. It's the award that's supposed to honor accomplishment across the broad musical spectrum, for performance & production. The actual TV show is ghastly, the award itself almost meaningless to the few superstars who collect them by the dozens during the programs.

Labels: New Jersey, postcard, shopping

This building has old plumbing. An unfamiliar noise in the wall that could, heard a certain way, be interpreted as a broken pipe cascade is enough to trigger an anxiety attack, expecially on a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon. Then it stopped completely & didn't start again. I have very good heat in this apt. It gets so warm I turn off the radiator in this room at night.
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The walk up the street wasn't bad, cold - no wind. But today is strange, which I attribute to the full "wolf" moon.
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Neil Young has never won a Grammy®. "It's an honor," he says. "I'm in good company." Typical Neil, & he's not being facetious. When he once said it was cool to be mentioned in "Sweet Home Alabama," he meant it.

(He won one Sunday, for art direction on a retrospective box set .)
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I read Salinger's slender books in high school because I thought I had to, so I can't provide an opinion on his writing style or skills or influence on John Irving. Let's say you live in a modest, small middle & working class Jersey town without wealthy people, attend a no frills public high school, rarely feel deprived - except when some of the kids mention spending the summer at the half-shacks their families own in the crowded beach towns north of Seaside Heights, bought by their fathers on auto factory union overtime. You have The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Motown, Jack Kerouac novels, cheap high school dances, & two good pizzerias. How well would you relate to a story about a rich preppie in the early 1950's who gets kicked out of his boarding school, calls everyone "phonies," & runs away to Manhattan for a weekend where he has an unpleasant enounter with a whore? How much would you care about the upscale Glass family? Existentialist crisis? Which Woody Allen movie do you really like better: Hannah & Her Sisters or Broadway Danny Rose.

But J.D. Salinger wrote what he wanted & lived the lifestyle he wanted to have, & Catcher In the Rye endured as an important book, a great accomplishment for an author.

Labels: obituary

Moving the the 9/11 trials (NYT)

More recently, in a series of presentations to business leaders, local elected officials and community representatives of Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly laid out his plan for securing the trial: blanketing a swath of Lower Manhattan with police checkpoints, vehicle searches, rooftop snipers and canine patrols.

“They were not received well,” said one city official.

That sums it up. Initially, a lot of New Yorkers had a typical bring it on attitude. But then what it would involve began to sink in. The trials would go on for a long time. Much of downtown would be paralyzed day after day, week after week, month upon month. The longer the trials went on, the more costly & difficult maintaining security would become, not to mention the bad impact on the area's economy. Certainly, there's more anxiety about terrorist attacks now, but this is mostly the business & real estate interests waking up & leaning hard on Bloomberg, & hizzoner, after all, belongs to them. The mayor of Newburgh, a struggling little city 60 miles north of Manhattan has already suggested the trials be held up there. Bring on those hordes of lawyers, reporters, & federal security bucks, he says.

If they go, I'm relieved. The trials will be big enough without making them a regular feature of newsradio traffic reports & daily hassle for commuters.

Labels: music

The truth is, the American people are not angry because of all the money the government has spent this year -- except, of course, the people who believe Obama was born in Kenya, is a Muslim, and a Socialist. The rest of the people, the ones Obama has a chance of reaching, are angry because the vast majority of that money went to -- and continues to go to -- rescuing Wall Street, which has thanked taxpayers by reducing lending, recording record profits, paying out massive bonuses, and using our money to pay lobbyists to scuttle financial reform. That is what is putting voters on the electoral warpath.

Arianna Huffington

Reading the transcript of the SOTU speech, I was relieved at least that the Prez hadn't really given up any serious ground. He's not Bill Clinton circa 1995 & stuck with a new Repug congress. But Obama needs to do more of what he did today: Go out & campaign. I've seen the numbers from the 1994 "Contract With America" debacle. We know what turned it from traditional midterm losses into a rout was the failure of Democrats & pro-Clinton independents to vote. There was no upswing in Repug votes over 1992. They just showed up at the polls. In his one brilliant idea, Newt Gingrich made that midterm a presidential election with a theme instead of a candidate.

Democrats have three political positives this year: They control both houses of congress; they have a Democratic President who more or less knows what he wants; Republicans are distrusted even more than Democrats. There's no evidence that the majority of Americans want Republicans running the country again. Newt's appeal was basically, "Give us a chance, we'll do better." Well, even teabaggers now know they either won't or they can't. They're deeper in the pockets of banks & corporations than Democrats, their empty form of "populism" can be discredited, there's still time.

Obama needs to attack Republicans as obstructionists & demand that they present alternatives. Because when it comes down to details, to alternatives, Republicans are hardly unified. He also must convince his base that its vote in November is just as crucial as it was two years ago. It won't be easy.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Bobby Hackett got this song just right on an out-of-print 1967 easy listening LP. "I Guess" made the rounds of the big bands in 1941, including Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey. Fitting number for State of the Union night.

Labels: music

John and Elizabeth Edwards Legally Separated

Former aide Andrew Young initially claimed that he fathered the child with John Edwards' mistress in the weeks leading up to the crucial presidential primaries. John Edwards publicly declared last week that he was the father of the child with Rielle Hunter, who worked as a videographer before his second presidential campaign in 2008.

Young's upcoming book details how Edwards went to great lengths to hide the affair. In excerpts from an ABC News interview, Young said that Edwards asked him to find a doctor who might fake a paternity test and asked him to steal a diaper from the baby, now almost 2, to determine whether it was really his. He also claims that the married couple sought to politicize her cancer diagnosis.

Both John & Young are scumbags. If using her illness to promote health care reform & spotlighting women's health issues was politicizing it, yeah, she politicized it. But him, I should've guessed about him. The haircut, the fact I'd have hired him in a minute for a medical malpractice suit because I'd want a lawyer who could be scumbag if necessary.

Labels: in the news, THE election

Last week, my friend Gina drove me up to Newark. I gave her wrong directions & we went up commercial Newark Ave. rather than residential North Broad St., just made the drive a little longer. A miserable low rise brick apartment complex caught my eye. "That's ugly, " I said. It was Seth Boydon Homes, public housing over 50 years old, now hopelessly gang & drug-infested despite efforts of good residents. Bill Cosby spoke there a couple of years ago.

I don't know the history of the place, but my guess is that it was originally built for white Newarkers, located on the far side of large Weequahic Park, & back then convenient to some big manufacturing plants. On the other of the park was a suburban, middle class, Jewish neighborhood around Beth Israel Hospital, an area already in white flight before the '67 riots. Interstate Route 78 was run through the northern part of the neighborhood, an insane decision, destroying a large portion & cutting it off from the rest of Newark. It's been theorized that Route 78 sped up Newark's economic collapse.

We returned by the correct route, through the old Weequahic neighborhood, still pleasant streets of neat single family homes. But even this area is loaded with gangs & drugs now, the curse of homeowners.

Labels: New Jersey

Democrats making bonehead decisions.

DOVER, Del. – Beau Biden announced Monday that he will not seek election to the U.S. Senate seat long held by his father, Vice President Joe Biden, putting another Democratic-held Senate seat in jeopardy and dealing another blow to President Barack Obama's flailing party.

Illinois got Roland Burns when Obama was elected. Paterson appointed a nonentity to Hillary's New York seat, probably the most desirable in terms of media access. MA Democrats nominated a stiff to replace Ted. Delaware Dems did Joe Biden a favor by keeping the seat warm with a placeholder for son Beau, who declined to run. Chris Dodd screwed himself when he kissed off his constituents & packed his family off to Iowa for a hopeless presidential run, so he's going & that seat's open. None of these senate seats should be seriously in play for Repugs, even in a down midterm year. It's like Democrats have no A-list anymore.

Had the Prez rolled out his "middle class under assault" ideas months ago, they wouldn't seem like a panic reaction now. This was a rather odd thing to say:

"Unfortunately, the middle class has been under assault for a long time. Too many Americans have known their own painful recessions long before any economist declared that there was a recession."

Odd for its belatedness. 2007 was a bad year. It & most of 2008 are not considered "recession" years because the government defines recession as an economic threshold crossed, while the American people feel the whole process coming & going, every bit of the uncertainty. The People are a lot wearier than Beltway politicians.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Bobby Hackett was the front man (& much more) for the famous early Jackie Gleason albums, enough to fill a four CD set. A facile cornet/trumpet player with a great tone, he could probably play ballad standards in his sleep, & most certainly played them while inebriated. This part of the easy listening "lounge" genre ain't my thing, & I have no regrets passing on the orchestral stuff, high or (mostly) low quality, during the great flea market & garage sale record collection sell-offs of the '80s & '90s. The bottom feeders of lounge have almost no musical acumen. It's all good to them. They're completetists or mesmerized by sexy album jackets, Their value is that by digging up everything they occasionally dig up a gem for everyone else, often without recognizing its true value. As a free form radio DJ of no specialized musical expertise, I have to trust my ears & tastes. This is special.

When Bobby Hackett was prohibited by his contract with Capitol from recording lush orchestral albums for any other label, he went into the studio for Columbia & made two LPs - Dream Awhile (1960) & The Most Beautiful Horn in the World (1961) - with a small combo including piano, bass, guitar, & Wurlitzer theater organ played by a guy named Johnny Seng. Seng provided the "strings." The result was a strangely ethereal imitation of Jackie Gleason. You're not sure at first what you're hearing. Listening to this music is like watching star-crossed lovers dancing at 3 am in a large, empty ballroom. Cheesy in its way, yet almost unbearably sad, but for the beautiful horn effortlessly sailing over it all.

Mystery how the creator of this You Tube video mistook it for a Gleason number.


The two Hackett/Seng LPs were packaged together & briefly released on a CD titled, "Music 'til Dawn."

Labels: music

Labels: Atlantic City, boardwalks, jersey shore, postcard

Listening to classy bossa nova & samba jazz circa 1960, mostly recordings made in Brazil for Brazilians. Although it's easy listening, it was smoothed out even more when it reached the United States. Only had to compare a Joao Donato piano trio record with one he recorded three years later with Bud Shank in L.A. Shank had been to Brazil a few years earlier, he knew, but it got the treatment anyway. Both are fine LPs. Walter Wanderley's Brazilian organ records are somewhat less laid back. The Brazilians were already stars in their country & they had a good deal of creative freedom there to do unusual things. They were just adapting to a new, wider market with different tastes & a potential for selling a lot of songs & records. We almost beat the bossa nova beat into the ground. But Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66 is nice ear candy to this day. Many of our better jazz musicians loved playing it.

The cover of this 1962 LP by Zoot Sims didn't look too promising when I found it at a flea market in the 90's. It turned out to be wonderful, with Jim Hall on guitar, a prominent flute section, first rate tunes & arrangements, Sims has a way with the style different from Stan Getz.

Here's Sem Saudades de Voce from New Beat Bossa Nova (RealAudio stream).

Labels: music, WFMU

Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, NYT

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has handed a new weapon to lobbyists. If you vote wrong, a lobbyist can now tell any elected official that my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.

Pardon my English. Five assholes. A telling quote:

“It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities.”

That's Benjamin L. "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" Ginsberg, a Republican campaign lawyer at the law-and-lobbying firm Patton Boggs. He means the candidate you support loses control. Brown won in MA by keeping a handle on his message, sticking to a few themes & points, & not letting his campaign get sidetracked by advertising that would alarm Bay Staters. He didn't want voters thinking he was Jim DeMint of South Carolina. The worst thing Chris Christie could have done in Jersey would have been to allow his campaign to sound like the extreme right wing ideologue he thumped in the primary.

Lobbyists & special interests won 't threaten opponents with negative ads. They'll intimidate "friends" who waver or want to work out legislative compromises. This kind of tactic is discussed all the time on political websites, but there are limitations. Anyway, on liberal blogs it's more about getting enough people to donate $25 each to buy radio ads in support of a longshot congressional candidate in Indiana.

A terrible Supreme Court ruling.

Labels: in the news

I made a small online contribution to the United Methodist Committee On Relief, checking the tiny UMC church around the corner for congregational credit (it wasn't required). That adds a little joke, because when the office over there receives notification, probably by automated e mail, someone will be really puzzled.

Seriously, UMCOR, a first rate relief organization, lost two great souls in the Hotel Montana collapse, & other Methodists on established Haitian medical missions were killed or injured. I was raised Methodist & have my problems with the denomination, but they are experienced, competent, & courageous in disaster situations, they honor John Wesley's vision of Christian service.
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Jet diverts to Philly over teen passenger's prayer

PHILADELPHIA – A Jewish teenager trying to pray on a New York-to-Kentucky flight caused a scare Thursday when he pulled out a set of small boxes containing holy scrolls, leading the captain to divert the flight to Philadelphia, where the commuter plane was greeted by police, bomb-sniffing dogs and federal agents.

The 17-year-old on US Airways Express Flight 3079 was using tefillin, a set of small boxes containing biblical passages that are attached to leather straps, Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore said.

I've resided near the Orthodox Jewish Educational Center in the Elmora section of Elizabeth since 2004 & I've never seen tefillim. I do see lots of kids from their high schools in Dunkin' Donuts, but aside from the yarmulkes, modest dresses, & tendency to hold the door open for you, they're indistinguishable from public school teenagers & just as noisy.
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Harrison Ford really is a difficult talk show interview. Audiences accept it & Letterman hangs in there with good humor because Ford knows how awkward he is, but he's game, & he gets three segments & always fires off a few zingers. I've always liked "Witness," where the grim, taciturn character he plays in so many movies is forced to rely on the close-knit, pacifist (but he learns, pretty tough) Amish, & features a very unusual & sexy love story.

Labels: movies, religion

One of the most famous & collectable LP covers, by Salvador Dali. The reverse side is here.

I'm probably a typical American in my unwonkiness. I read much & read widely, watch the news & late night talk show monologues. But basically I click on headlines from Associated Press & a few online newspapers, read the page, & go to something else. I form opinions less on the "facts" than on what others say or write about the "facts." There, of course, I have my preferences.

Matt Bai's piece in the today's NYT, The Great Unalignment, is much my view also.

I'm a liberal. More left than liberal in some ways. But I'm not especially ideological. Political ideology is something I believe ought to be kept close, a kind of pure standard. Ideologues in public office scare me. Ideologues always believe it's an ideology that wins an election, not a candidate. But good candidates often enough overcome prevailing views & sentiments to win elections. Brown had to do that In MA. I didn't see the election of Obama as deeply ideological. It was a coalition victory wrapped in liberal populism. Liberal populism is a still a strong sell in most states Obama carried, too bad Coakley wasn't carrying the brand. Obama seemed the obvious pragmatic liberal's choice in 2008. He probably was the best choice. I wish he was capable of leaning harder on his own party's legislators; he lacked the long experience of a political insider Hillary Clinton might have brought to the job, but that inexperience was his non-ideological appeal to me & to millions of others. So far, he disappointed me more on economic & banking issues than on health care, because I think he entered office with a real mandate to clean up Wall Street, not just punish a bunch of individuals who got rich legitimately no matter how much we dislike their methods or greed. Wealthy commuters with new mansions in Colts Neck NJ don't disturb me. Boarded up houses do.

On health care reform, the door had yet to be opened, & the bottom line was to get Americans accustomed to the idea that every citizen ought to have affordable public or private HMO coverage regardless of job or income, & that it would cost a lot of money upfront no way around it. But you couldn't just create a pharmaceutical company windfall, like W's "Medicare D" where there's complexities, baffling inducements for various plans, but nothing to make drug companies compete with each other to lower prices & contain costs. So Americans spend money subsidizing the national health plans of other nations, which then use these plans to entice business development. Western Europe sells an educated workforce & long term ideas while America still pushes nonunion labor & a one week vacation to start.

But how can a nation plan when the populace, driven here & there by a 24 hour news cycle, is unwilling to commit to any particular course of action other than to object to whatever is being done now? A political party has to stand or fall on some kind of basic ideology.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, in the news