Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Stardom in the eyes of the directors who know more about the subject than anyone else equate the rare phenomenon with the ability to generate interest.  They explain that while studying one's craft will make one a better performer that this is a different element than stardom.

There are those with inferior diction and emphasis who have electrified screen audiences.  On the other hand, many who have mastered the basic elements of the acting craft were unable to generate the level of excitement that enthralled cinema audiences.

Hollywood born and bred Gloria Grahame was a combination of both, someone who had that indefinable electricity that prompted fans to buy tickets to her films while at the same time delivering her lines in the most professional fashion, her emphasis on consistent perfection.

Progressives were highly incensed over the use of torture under the Bush-Cheney team that made Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib household terms denoting harsh abrogation of fundamental liberties under the U.S. Constitution and international law.

As Massimo Calabresi noted in the July 12 issue of Time, the Obama "White House ... has moved steadily to the right on national security in the past 18 months."

This movement by the Obama Administration has led to a rare clash between the executive branch and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The appeal is all the more dramatic and meaningful in this year's edition of the international football classic in that the host nation is South Africa, for all too many years the home of the racially oppressive system called apartheid.

Pictures of Nelson Mandela, the towering beacon of unity and fervent opponent of racism, are seen in evidence at the stadiums where the games are held throughout the nation.

Before the games begin player representatives of the competing national teams deliver statements condemning racism.  

The 1952 case of  Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company vs. Sawyer was the outgrowth of a strike launched by steel workers during the Korean War.  

Truman seized control of the steel mills, using a "theater of war" argument linked to his executive power as the nation's commander in chief during an emergency, in this case the Korean War.

The seizure resulted in steel company lawyers making a late night visit to a D.C. federal district court judge.  This prompted a series of quick actions resulting with the U.S. Supreme Court deciding the case.  

The reason for reportorial delight is that they do not have to strain for a story.  Brown supplies interesting copy by just listening to him and reporting what he has to say.

Brown, who launched a political comeback in California by initially becoming mayor of Oakland, then the state's attorney general, last week achieved the Democratic Party nomination for governor.

George Skelton, a political reporter for the Los Angeles Times, did a piece on Brown.  He mentioned that Brown has been quiet as of late, especially for him.  Skelton speculated that the reason could relate to Brown not wanting to provide a target for the opposition.

What was at stake and continues to be the major issue that Romney confronts as a Republican presidential aspirant in a party where a major ideological confrontation is in vigorous progress is the direction of the party.

The contrasting force to former Massachusetts Governor Romney is former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  This confrontation, as in so many others, finds at least quasi-historical precedents.

A tenacious battle for ideological control of the Republican Party occurred in 1964.  This was a period when a prominent Eastern wing existed.  It was headed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who waged a no-holds-barred battle for the Republican presidential nomination with Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.

Years ago in Southern California I worked on a writing project with an astronomer and college professor.  When I posed the question to him about the existence of other civilizations in the universe his answer dovetailed with what Hawking with his astronomy background related the other day in his Discovery Channel interview.

The issue involved calculating the number of possibilities in the universe for sustaining life.  A London Times article of April 25 revealed, "Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved."

That conclusion having been reached, Hawking moved onto the topic of whether Planet Earth spokespersons should seek to interact with entities from worlds beyond.  The watchword from Hawking was trepidation.

The John Birch Society became active and many grassroots members attached themselves strongly to the national political figure they saw as an agent for change, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

Forces quickly developed during the historic 1964 presidential campaign, which saw Goldwater ultimately emerge as his party's nominee against President Lyndon Johnson.  As the first southern president of the twentieth century, Johnson engineered a landmark legislative breakthrough with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

A strong ideological battle emerged that pitted Goldwater against major senatorial figures from his own party such as the stalwart of the then eastern liberal wing, Jacob Javits of New York, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who had actively supported and voted for the milestone legislation.

In April 1955 I arrived in Chicago just in time to see the first Mayor Daley elected for the first time.  Twenty-two years of residency provided a practical course to those years of study concerning American government.  

Mayor Daley was dead before I left but his name remains on the Square at City Hall.  He was famous for instructing Cook County, not to mention Springfield, how to run things.  

Perhaps hizzoner was most famous during the 1960 election where Illinois decided the election of two Senators, veterans both, for the highest office in the land.  Wiki at one time described Hillary Clinton, a resident of a northern suburb and a youthful adherent of Barry Goldwater, as being asked by the Republicans to help with a recount of voters in the South Side.  

It was one thing for President Obama and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to back Senator Arlon Specter for reelection after he switched parties and became a Democrat.  It was an entirely different matter for the state's progressive activists to accept their recommendation, as evidenced by his defeat and the uphill and ultimately decisive victory of Congressman Joe Sestak.

Specter prior to his career in elective politics was a Philadelphia prosecutor.  He used his adversarial interrogation skills against Anita Hill as she offered testimony into the Senate hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

The tactics used by Specter and Republican pro-Thomas advocate Orrin Hatch were deemed so odious by Senator Ted Kennedy that near their end he charged in a tone laced with bitter emotion that the "treatment of Ms. Hill was disgraceful."  When Hatch chimed in a quick objection, Kennedy repeated, "Yes, the treatment was disgraceful."

The Tories anticipated winning a clear majority of parliamentary seats.  Instead they fell short by 20 seats, gaining 306.  The popular vote share of 36.1 percent was comparable to that achieved by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in his last of three national victories.

That early morning of 2005 Blair looked somber, like a losing candidate, while wife Cherie looked close to tears.  An immediate tug of war commenced in earnest thereafter to coax Blair to resign and give then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown a chance to establish a positive record and image before facing Britain's voters.

Brown almost certainly knew from the outset that achieving another electoral victory for Labour would be difficult.  First of all, Blair sought to stay on longer than his party wanted him.  Increasingly broader hints turned to a gigantic shove at the Labour Party Conference at which Blair finally announced he would step down.

The title of his book was "The Vital Center," which ultimately became a catch phrase for a political phenomenon that was far from his intent, and in fact incurred the disapproval  of the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Age of Jackson" and "The Age of Roosevelt" series'.  

The title referred to the ideological struggle between democracy and totalitarianism.  Schlesinger let it be known that vital center in a domestic political context involved a muddle, a splitting of differences that was contrary to the case he was making for progressive politics.

Nonetheless the phrase and meaning stuck in a contrary context to the author's intent.  It involves the considered truism, substantiated repeatedly, that the average American voter resides in the center as opposed to the components of activist party politics.

Today's ongoing tragedy involves the same British Petroleum that in 1953 used the CIA in a menacing way to overthrow a popularly elected leader.

Iran had just elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, that nation's most popular political figure.  

The fact that Mossadegh was elected by the will of Iran's citizens did not deter the efforts of an invigorated CIA that used the Cold War as a pretext to move away from the fact finding agency conceived of by President Harry Truman to an aggressive international political body willing to overthrow nations in contravention of popular national will.  

Except while one commands the floor, referring to "my good friend from whichever State.'   he/she may be skewering the opposition with lack of understanding, intelligence--or a floor vote.  Perhaps that is how Barack Obama got into his mode of bi-partisanship.  

He can be the judge of his success.  To me it seems like he should avoid lectures in earshot of the public and those contrived party summits where he sits in the tallest chair.

While I am speaking my mind I would also offer advice to those in the media who claim to be giving news.  Others who admit they are analyzing it are on their own.  

You can read the details here. There's an anti-incumbent leaning that still makes the result hard to interpret.

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives~~Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock"

...Perhaps the school system's decision is based in fear rooted in flawed and prejudiced assumptions, that by allowing a teenager to bring her same sex date to such a traditional event as the prom, the powers that be may appear to be condoning gayness to the local masses. More likely,moral concerns extending from literal interpretations of scripture, verses located on the same pages where one finds instructions for the stoning of adulterers and punishments for wearing certain types of textiles. But then again, the Mississippi prom case is more likely just another piece of fallout from a very commonly held membership in a society where there is a quiet tolerance of homophobia which is nothing more than a phobia of homosexuality itself....

I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life's been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.
~~Leonard Cohen

I stared at him, mouth agape, my mind trying to shore up all that activity. "Well ... I --"

"And that's just the generals -- David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal -- and their boss, or cohort, defense secretary Robert Gates. They were everywhere -- everywhere!" Bernie said, rolling his eyes. "And still are. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, check out Congress, look under a rock -- peek behind a tree -- and there they are. They're a three-man brigade -- "we're going in, we're coming out -- we're winning, we're losing. Or maybe not. We won't know for 15 years...20 years...or until it's over --"

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.~~Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers~~Albert Camus

Glenn Beck has always been desperate for two things -- attention and ratings.  And he learned early in his career that nothing works as quickly nor as well with the media as personal insults, public humiliation and character assassination.