The cancellation was an embarrassment and something of a setback in the New York Philharmonic’s effort to cast itself as the nation’s flagship traveling orchestra. It made headlines with a trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, nearly two years ago (no United States government permission for patrons was required) and leaves on Sunday for an Asian tour that will take in another Communist nation, Vietnam.

This exposes how arbitrary the rules are governing American citizens’ rights to travel to Cuba,” Julia E. Sweig, an expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the Treasury Department’s position. “If you have a family member there, you can go. If you play an instrument or sport, you can go. But if you’re a philanthropist who wants to support arts in Cuba, you can’t?

Let me get this straight. The State Department requires no approval of patrons to accompany the New York Philharmonic on a tour of North Korea, a country that is openly developing nuclear weapons and one that would potentially divert the spending of those wealthy patrons to the development of the country’s nuclear program. But patrons must obtain permission from the State Department when traveling to Cuba, a country that poses no threat to the United States (anymore) except for ideologues that can’t let go of an outdated fear and grudge against an aging Cold War warrior who won’t be around much longer. I know I’m stretching things just a little bit, but the notion that Cuba is a bigger threat to the United States than North Korea is a joke. The restrictions, if there has to be any, should instead be reversed.

(Via New York Times.)

• Ready, Aim, Vote
• Ninja Bush
• Bush Game

If you have thrown a shoe in outrage over the Iraq War, perhaps you should send these guys a picture of yourself.

This Christianist president has a hard time with actual Christianity. He is of the fundamentalist psyche that holds that since he is on the side of the angels, he cannot do evil. And so even when presented with indisputable evidence of his own acts, his own memos, his own staff’s decisions, he cannot own the consequences. He asked for memos from apparatchiks saying it wasn’t torture, as if this guaranteed it wasn’t torture. He reacted to the tangible consequences of his own decisions as if someone else had been president, or someone else’s signature was on those memos, or someone else’s vice-president had publicly embraced torture as a “no-brainer.”

Even a president should be held accountable for his biggest lies.  Didn’t Richard Nixon teach us that? How easily history is forgotten or simply ignored.

Barack Obama sounds like he wants to reach back to the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration to jump start the economy with an economic stimulus proposal featuring infrastructure repair. If so, it may be time for the man who would be FDR to take a look at another successful–but largely forgotten–jobs program from the Depression era: the Federal Writers Project.

This time, the FWP could begin by documenting the ground-level impact of the Great Recession; chronicling the transition to a green economy; or capturing the experiences of the thousands of immigrants who are changing the American complexion. Like the original FWP, the new version would focus in particular on those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media. At the same time, the multimedia fruits of this research would be open-sourced to all media, as well as to academics. As an example, oral history as a discipline has made great strides in the past 70 years, and with the development of video techniques, the forum of the Internet could make these multi-media interviews widely available to schools and scholars, as well as to average Americans.

How would it work? Administering the new FWP as an individual grant program through community colleges and universities could minimize bureaucracy and overhead. In consultation with the Obama administration–perhaps through the National Endowment for the Humanities–and Congress, guidelines could be established and a small staff assembled in Washington to oversee the projects, in the form of grants, rather than hourly wages. Projects could be pitched locally to colleges, or suggested and posted by them, vetted preliminarily and then approved or rejected by the national staff.

I think the benefits of such a program would be tremendous, especially considering the technology available to tell these stories.  In a world where people are reading less and less, it would seem to be a great way at getting people to learn more about our less visible areas of society and culture, and also as a way to keep a large set of very talented writers and journalists occupied until they are ready to make the necessary transitions into other professions or retirement, or back into the journalistic profession, whatever that may be.

Perhaps his time had passed a few decades earlier, for Terkel was a remarkably honest individual who never wavered in his liberalism and social beliefs. In an era of Reagan, Clinton and Bush 41 and 43, when the L-word has taken on such negative connotation among people in many quarters of political life, it has been refreshing to hear such an unabashed liberal such as Terkel speak out so strongly about his political and social beliefs, regardless of the times.  He will be missed.

Here are some materials to peruse:

1.  Bob Edwards retrospective on Studs Terkel, XM Satellite Radio

2.  The Studs Terkel Program (radio)

The customary “honeymoon” for president-elect Obama is still in effect, considering the positive reviews in regards to his cabinet selections thus far, and his attempts at filling the leadership void in the current economic crisis less than two months before moving into the White House.  But I can’t help get the feeling that the media is sending strong hints about what conflicts they’ll be looking for once Obama assumes office on January 20.  Already CNN and Politico have written about possible infighting among Democrats once they take power.  Even the headlines are very similar (ie. Dems vs. Dems)  Of course, we’ve seen Democrats suffer pratfalls before, and it can happen again, right?  Is it what they want?  Time will only tell.  I will add articles to this post as they appear in the media regarding Democratic infighting.  My prediction is that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this, whether it’s stoking or reality.