Wednesday Morning Coffee

Washington is crippled this morning--we had all of one inch of snow, which sends everyone into hysterics. The good news is this means politicians will do less harm today.

I wish Bruce Springsteen would kill the strings. I guess he fell in love with them during the Rising sessions. Bruce's last few offerings have been a little lackluster. Working on a Dream presents 12 new songs and the title song for The Wrestler.I liked My Lucky Day,Queen of the Supermarket, the Last Carnival, Good Eye and The Wrestler. The one cut I especially enjoyed was the 2:30 minute blues song Good Eye. The rest of the album will make good elevator music.

John Updike always reminded me of Joyce Carol Oates and vice versa--prolific writers with technical proficiency but lacking fire. Critics will probably hail the Bech series, which left me cold. Every six books Updike would score. With his output, that meant he scored often. My favorites are The Coup, The Terrorist, Seek My Face, the Beauty of the Lillies, and Couples. The Witches of Eastwick was redeemed in the film version by Jack Nicholson.

The last two days have been terrible for the "birthers". The Supreme Court and a Texas Court both turned down the case that claims Obama is not a native-born citizen. NPR aired clips of an exchange between an Obama staff person and the press where the staffers joked about the birth certificate. So that shows there is a cover-up!! Ha-Ha. This really is a case for Ron Rosenbaum in my view the best debunker around. Today's press release claims that the Supreme Court has ordered that all such cases be dismissed. The "birthers" are outraged that the individuals bring suit are said to lack legal standing. Should we all have the right to sue endlessly? Now talk has gotten to where the "birthers" believe only China and Israel can reveal the truth. The new ploy is to recruit military personnel to file suit against "the usurper in chief"--no one will rule military personnel have no legal standing.

This subculture also feeds into the larger class of people complaining about socialism and the lack of Christianity among the current Administration. In FDR's time, we had Father Coughlin and a bizarre and little commented on episode, which was kept under cover, the attempt by General Smedley to pull a military coup in this country. Smedley was funded by some of the rich Americans, who saw FDR as a class traitor, and he recruited old WWI vets to seek the overthrow of the government. FDR quietly put the effort down and made sure that all the financiers knew he knew about their role. We may see something on these lines again. In some ways the Smedley story formed the backdrop to the rash of books and stories in the 1960s such as Seven Days in May, when liberals felt the military-industrial complex would topple JFK. On second thought, maybe it did.

Fox News proclaimed Obama's honeymoon is over. That was quick. For the Record, Obama's lowest approval rating is in central Virginia, where he is at 55 and his negatives at 25. He's even over 60% in Alabama.

Karl Rove has asked help from the Obama White House so he can assert "vestigial executive privilege" to avoid his subpoena. It's likely the Obama people will assert that Junior has some right of executive privilege but not old Turdblossom.

And for our last item, let's congratulate Johanna Sigurdardottir of Iceland, who stands on the brink of becoming the world's first gay Prime Minister. With Iceland in flames, everyone could care less about her sexual orientation. She's said to be a fighter for the little guy. But For The Record, the first gay Prime Minister, although for a very brief time, was Per-Kristian Foss of Norway. So Johanna would become first full-time Prime Minister.