Friday Coffee--Harar

Speaking of Harar, fans of Arthur Rimbaud might be disappointed that the poet-turned-gun-runner actually had a larger house in Ethiopia than in France. Today, the Ethiopian Government maintains the Rimbaud mansion--and it is--in Harar as a tourist attraction. Problem is that the only tourists allowed are Muslims since the city is the fourth most sacred city in Islam. Famous gate-crasher and explorer Sir Richard Burton went into the city by disguise.

Thank God for Mu'ammar Qaddafhi. The King of Kings, fresh off his defeat to win an unprecedented second term as AU chairman decided to declare jihad against Switzerland. Maybe he was disappointed that Steve Colbert beat the Swiss in fondue pong. At least he knocked the US today out of the CrazyTown Sweepstakes.

The blogosphere must have its own global intelligence. After my brilliant deduction that Frank Gaffney must be a stoner, the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe ran stories by separate authors who analyzed the tea-party movement as Baby Boomers having a mid-life crisis and acting out the protests of their youth. They found that the tea partiers are almost all college educated and earn quite a bit more than the average American and grew up during the Vietnam War Protests. The authors maintain while they never went hippie on us they have been heavily influenced by the whole distrust of government begun at that time. They don't say whether they smoke dope but another story appeared to report that Boomers over 65 are now smoking weed in record numbers.

Conservatives are attacking CPAC honoree Grover Norquist for his support of Muslims and his work to introduce Muslim leaders to the Bush White House. That's why they claim CPAC didn't have a good discussion group on terrorism because Grover is a jihadist.

The IOC ran out of the 100,000 condoms they had for the Olympics and wisely ordered more. But why are they investigating the Canadian Women's Hockey Team? After winning the gold, the team re-emerged on to the rink with bottles of champagne and cigars to celebrate. Were they going to drive somewhere afterwards? Were they going to practice unsafe sex? Puh--leese. Give it a rest. Meanwhile U.S.A.! still retains a lead over Germany. Both Russia and Canada have moved up so they don't need to feel disgraced.

Disgrace is what our congressmen should feel after grilling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the foreign aid and State Department budget. If the administration wants to restore diplomacy to its rightful top perch in our power projection, it would be useful to have a real budget for State and USAID. When conservatives were asked whether they would cut aid to Egypt or Israel, all that was heard were crickets. Foreign aid is a miniscule--actually less than a miniscule--part of the national budget.

Apologies for my sexist omissions from yesterday. Rita Moreno and Maya Lin also received the Medal for Arts and the Humanities from the President. If all you know about Maya Lin is the Vietnam Memorial, then you have missed some very fine work in recent years. Last summer, her recent work was showcased here in Washington,D.C. My favorite were her sculptures of all the world's inland seas.

President Obama has filled more seats on the Deficit Commission. There are Alice Rivlin, Ann Fudge from Young and Rubicam, David Cote from Honeywell, and Andy Stern, President of the SIEU. Of course, Stern's nomination was widely denounced. Remember the days when you would see George Meany on Face the Nation or Lane Kirkland? It used to be natural that labor leaders might be interested in such things. Oh well.

Baseball great and not so great Senator Jim Bunning single-handedly held the Senate floor yesterday so that unemployment insurance and COBRA could not be extended to over 1 million Americans. I've always felt that Bunning had alzheimer's or was senile. This time he yelled "TOUGH SH*T" at the top of his lungs while on the Senate floor. Maybe it's time for the guys with the butterfly nets to take him away.

Democrats tried to sneak an anti-torture amendment onto the intelligence appropriations bill. It would make torture illegal and would call for its prosecution and jail-time. The Republicans howled in indignation. "It would change the nature of the C.I.A." they said. Hummm! Is there something else you want to tell us?

Democrats are urging Eleanor Norton Holmes to accept the bill giving Washington,D.C voting rights in the House. This bill had bipartisan support before Virginia's Tom Davis retired. To kill the bill, Republicans attached a proviso that D.C. could not pass anything restricting the possession of firearms. Take the deal, Eleanor.

Newt Gingrich is making noise about running for President in 2012. He's even created his own Political Action Committee. Newt is convinced our President is a socialist--a socialist in the European sense. We're making progress--in the past he would be a Communist. Newt claims that his socialist agenda was on display by his bailout of the American auto industry--which saved 16% of our economy.--the feds taking over student loans and his healthcare reform plans. Now, Newt doesn't tell anyone that all the student loan plans are already federal--your tax money is just being given to banks to lend at market rates, and that there is nothing government at all in the health reform proposals. Even Bill O'Reilly tried to talk him out of the socialist line but failed.

From yesterday's health summit, I got some better sense about what Republicans mean when they say this or that is government-run. What is clear is that there is nothing about government plans in the health reform bill. But it's also clear that the government is being asked to regulate the health insurance industry. This is also the resistance by Republicans on financial reform. After at least two decades without serious regulations, the Republicans fear the government returning to its historic role post-Great Depression to regulate the financial markets. But what my lady Elizabeth Warren argues, If it broke, then it has to be regulated. I agree.

Spring training is producing the usual duds for the Washington Nationals. We are being sold a bill of goods by the sports writers who think our cheap owner is a genius at picking up bargains. I like Pudge Rodriquez for a catcher but he and three other catchers make one healthy one. Washington Post writers boast that Washington will be better but not get to .500 this year. I'll go to the park because it's a quick Metro ride but please give us a break about how improved they are!

Meanwhile, everyone is talking about the Dodgers being a transplanted Bronx with Manny Ramirez saying he would only play one more year in L.A., Joe Torre getting criticized, etc. FYI, the Dodger owners paid zero income taxes on their personal earnings last year. Not bad if you earn $160 million a year. Now Major League Baseball wants to separate the Bosox and the Yankees and place them in different divisions. Let's just make steroid use legal again and forget the whole thing.

A climate change denier--a guy actually paid to produce a newsletter on this stuff--tells me that climate change is only natural. Why do you think Greenland is called Greenland? I won't go into why that is, I just want to report that Jane Goodell, our favorite ape lady, travelled to Greenland to visit the Inuits. As Wade Davis has told us oral tradition from traditional peoples informs us. In this case the elders told Jane Goodell, there was nothing in their oral history or their living memories to compare to the ecological devastation of Greenland by climate change.

Archeology magazine this month reports that scientists have recreated the entire DNA for neanderthals. In my past lament about red-haired, freckle people being descendents from the neanderthals and facing extermination, shouldn't we clone them to replenish the stock?

In the field of arts, Edward Ruscha is having a 50-year retrospective (I can't believe it's 50) and several books are coming out. His Catalog Raisonne is hitting 4 volumes and counting. But if you like his LA signs and other word paintings, you might enjoy Alexandra Schwartz' Ed Ruscha's Los Angeles, which relates his paintings to LA landmarks and the movie industry. Also of interest is True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney by Lawrence Weschler. Weschler writes exceedingly well and , of course, Hockney is always provocative. This book goes from the Hollywood Hills to the recent paintings in East Yorkshire.