Saturday, July 19, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
HOORAY FOR OBAMA
Do I dare say a little hope is beginning to hatch. Do I dare to hope without jinxing us all?
Op-Ed Contributor
My Plan for Iraq
By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008
CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Op-Ed Contributor
My Plan for Iraq
By BARACK OBAMA
Published: July 14, 2008
CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.
The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
THANK YOU SUSAN, MARK, DAISY,DYLAN, HALLE AND MARLEY
We spent a sweet and relaxing evening with the Oliver clan on Saturday. First we met for a yummy dinner at The Fly, and then back to Susan and Mark's for coffee and dessert. The air was cool enough to sit out by the pool, and a good time was had by all.
Friday, June 27, 2008
TRUMBO ~ The Film
This film about Dalton Trumbo, one of the "Hollywood Ten" promises to be an important documentary. Trumbo was a very talented screenwriter, who was blacklisted by Hollywood due to his political beliefs. His, and many people's, lives were ruined, at least financially, if not more, by the tacts of the McCarthy era. It's too bad that this subject is not publicized more, and that the present generation has never even heard about the horrors of McCarthyism. Communists were demonized, just as people, who are not of Judeo-Christian belief, are demonized today.
Movie Review
Trumbo (2007)NYT Critics' Pick This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
June 27, 2008
When an Eloquent Voice Was Stilled in Hollywood
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 27, 2008
Peter Askin’s stirring documentary “Trumbo” gives you reasons to cheer but also to weep. It makes you lament the decline of the kind of language brandished with Shakespearean eloquence by Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter, in his witty, impassioned letters excerpted in the movie.
Some of those letters, collected in the 1999 volume “Additional Dialogue,” are delivered as forceful dramatic soliloquies by a battery of distinguished actors including Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy, Michael Douglas, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas and Donald Sutherland.
Another cause for lament is the shortness of historical memory in today’s climate of infinite distraction. Why chew on the unhappy events of six decades ago when you can drool over pictures of Brangelina or get lost in the latest video game? Anyway, who cares what happened way back then?
But we should care. If the story of the Hollywood blacklist and the lives it destroyed has been told many times before, it still bears repeating, especially in the post-9/11 climate of fearmongering, of Guantánamo, of flag pins as gauges of patriotism.
“Trumbo,” which Dalton Trumbo’s son, Christopher, adapted from his own 2003 Off Broadway play of the same name, is much richer than its source, which originally starred Nathan Lane as Trumbo. It is a portrait of this notoriously cantankerous and combative writer as a noble champion of free speech who was willing to lose everything to defend his principles.
Beginning in 1950, Trumbo spent 11 months in prison for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee three years earlier by refusing to identify colleagues in the movie business who, like him, had dabbled with Communism. Trumbo joined the American Communist Party in 1943.
Before his blacklisting, Trumbo, who died in 1976 at age 70, was one of the most successful Hollywood screenwriters of the 1940s, with credits that included “Kitty Foyle,” “A Guy Named Joe” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” With the blacklist, he became the most famous member of what came to be called the Hollywood Ten: writers and directors who had flirted with Communism during the Depression and World War II, when the Soviet Union was an ally and the horrors of Stalinism were yet to be revealed.
The movie’s clips of the Congressional tribunal in which the elite of Hollywood were publicly interrogated by a sneering kangaroo court are as shocking as ever. After the hearings, producers and studio heads met at the Waldorf-Astoria to draw up the Waldorf Statement, which banned the Hollywood Ten from working in movies; henceforth they were pariahs.
A devastating Trumbo letter read by Mr. Neeson blames the producers more than Congress for the effectiveness of the blacklist, because they could “apply the only lash that really stings — economic reprisal.” Their livelihood denied them, the Hollywood Ten were financially ruined and socially ostracized.
One of the saddest letters (read by Mr. Strathairn) is Trumbo’s outraged protest to a teacher at his daughter Mitzi’s school when Mitzi found herself shunned by her peers after word circulated about her father’s history. The funniest letter (read by Mr. Lane), addressed to Christopher, is a hilarious high-flown disquisition on masturbation, an activity that Trumbo pursued as a youth with terrible guilt and fear of the consequences.
Interwoven among the letters are clips from television interviews with Trumbo, including one in which he calls the verdict “contempt of Congress” a just one because contempt was exactly what he felt. There are also home movies; personal reflections by Christopher and Mitzi; and revealing scenes from postblacklist movies like “Papillon,” “The Sandpiper,” “The Fixer” and “Spartacus” in which Trumbo used his characters as explicit moral and political mouthpieces.
Trumbo emerges as a fervently resolute, highly literate man of principle who, along with the other members of the Hollywood Ten, cited the First Amendment, protecting free speech, and not the Fifth, protecting self-incrimination, as his defense.
After his release from prison, Trumbo and his wife, Cleo, moved with their children to Mexico, where he soon exhausted his reserves. He returned to California, living as anonymously as possible, and resumed screenwriting for low pay, using pseudonyms (13 in all).
Two of those screenplays won Oscars: “The Brave One,” in 1957, for best writing of a motion picture story, was awarded to the fictional Robert Rich and went unclaimed. (Trumbo was finally given his award in 1975.) In 1954 he won in the same category for “Roman Holiday,” under the name of a friend, the British screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter, who had fronted for him. The Oscar was presented posthumously to Cleo Trumbo in 1993.
In 1960 Trumbo finally received screen credit for his work again when Kirk Douglas, the star and a producer of “Spartacus,” and Otto Preminger, the director of “Exodus,” overrode the blacklist. The documentary’s biggest lapse is its failure to show exactly how they did it and the risks they took.
If only the movers and shakers of Hollywood 13 years earlier had stood together like the slaves in “Spartacus” and all claimed to have been Communists, the blacklist might have been averted. But they didn’t. Fear can make people instant cowards and informers. Resisting it may be the ultimate test of character.
Today few would dispute Trumbo’s assessment of that very dark period: “The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one who survived it on either side came through untouched by evil.”
TRUMBO
Movie Review
Trumbo (2007)NYT Critics' Pick This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
June 27, 2008
When an Eloquent Voice Was Stilled in Hollywood
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 27, 2008
Peter Askin’s stirring documentary “Trumbo” gives you reasons to cheer but also to weep. It makes you lament the decline of the kind of language brandished with Shakespearean eloquence by Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter, in his witty, impassioned letters excerpted in the movie.
Some of those letters, collected in the 1999 volume “Additional Dialogue,” are delivered as forceful dramatic soliloquies by a battery of distinguished actors including Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy, Michael Douglas, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas and Donald Sutherland.
Another cause for lament is the shortness of historical memory in today’s climate of infinite distraction. Why chew on the unhappy events of six decades ago when you can drool over pictures of Brangelina or get lost in the latest video game? Anyway, who cares what happened way back then?
But we should care. If the story of the Hollywood blacklist and the lives it destroyed has been told many times before, it still bears repeating, especially in the post-9/11 climate of fearmongering, of Guantánamo, of flag pins as gauges of patriotism.
“Trumbo,” which Dalton Trumbo’s son, Christopher, adapted from his own 2003 Off Broadway play of the same name, is much richer than its source, which originally starred Nathan Lane as Trumbo. It is a portrait of this notoriously cantankerous and combative writer as a noble champion of free speech who was willing to lose everything to defend his principles.
Beginning in 1950, Trumbo spent 11 months in prison for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee three years earlier by refusing to identify colleagues in the movie business who, like him, had dabbled with Communism. Trumbo joined the American Communist Party in 1943.
Before his blacklisting, Trumbo, who died in 1976 at age 70, was one of the most successful Hollywood screenwriters of the 1940s, with credits that included “Kitty Foyle,” “A Guy Named Joe” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” With the blacklist, he became the most famous member of what came to be called the Hollywood Ten: writers and directors who had flirted with Communism during the Depression and World War II, when the Soviet Union was an ally and the horrors of Stalinism were yet to be revealed.
The movie’s clips of the Congressional tribunal in which the elite of Hollywood were publicly interrogated by a sneering kangaroo court are as shocking as ever. After the hearings, producers and studio heads met at the Waldorf-Astoria to draw up the Waldorf Statement, which banned the Hollywood Ten from working in movies; henceforth they were pariahs.
A devastating Trumbo letter read by Mr. Neeson blames the producers more than Congress for the effectiveness of the blacklist, because they could “apply the only lash that really stings — economic reprisal.” Their livelihood denied them, the Hollywood Ten were financially ruined and socially ostracized.
One of the saddest letters (read by Mr. Strathairn) is Trumbo’s outraged protest to a teacher at his daughter Mitzi’s school when Mitzi found herself shunned by her peers after word circulated about her father’s history. The funniest letter (read by Mr. Lane), addressed to Christopher, is a hilarious high-flown disquisition on masturbation, an activity that Trumbo pursued as a youth with terrible guilt and fear of the consequences.
Interwoven among the letters are clips from television interviews with Trumbo, including one in which he calls the verdict “contempt of Congress” a just one because contempt was exactly what he felt. There are also home movies; personal reflections by Christopher and Mitzi; and revealing scenes from postblacklist movies like “Papillon,” “The Sandpiper,” “The Fixer” and “Spartacus” in which Trumbo used his characters as explicit moral and political mouthpieces.
Trumbo emerges as a fervently resolute, highly literate man of principle who, along with the other members of the Hollywood Ten, cited the First Amendment, protecting free speech, and not the Fifth, protecting self-incrimination, as his defense.
After his release from prison, Trumbo and his wife, Cleo, moved with their children to Mexico, where he soon exhausted his reserves. He returned to California, living as anonymously as possible, and resumed screenwriting for low pay, using pseudonyms (13 in all).
Two of those screenplays won Oscars: “The Brave One,” in 1957, for best writing of a motion picture story, was awarded to the fictional Robert Rich and went unclaimed. (Trumbo was finally given his award in 1975.) In 1954 he won in the same category for “Roman Holiday,” under the name of a friend, the British screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter, who had fronted for him. The Oscar was presented posthumously to Cleo Trumbo in 1993.
In 1960 Trumbo finally received screen credit for his work again when Kirk Douglas, the star and a producer of “Spartacus,” and Otto Preminger, the director of “Exodus,” overrode the blacklist. The documentary’s biggest lapse is its failure to show exactly how they did it and the risks they took.
If only the movers and shakers of Hollywood 13 years earlier had stood together like the slaves in “Spartacus” and all claimed to have been Communists, the blacklist might have been averted. But they didn’t. Fear can make people instant cowards and informers. Resisting it may be the ultimate test of character.
Today few would dispute Trumbo’s assessment of that very dark period: “The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one who survived it on either side came through untouched by evil.”
TRUMBO
Monday, June 23, 2008
THIS IS CHARLEY
This is a touching video about a wonderful, somewhat disabled cat, who has a very loving family. I want to cry for joy every time I watch it.
BIG BROWN'S REAL VICTORY
Maybe Big Brown's real victory will be getting stables to STOP drug abuse in the racing industry, not that I think they're doing it for humane reasons, but it is a step in the right direction.
Big Brown’s Owners Say Stable Will Go Steroid Free
By JOE DRAPE
Published: June 23, 2008
The owners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Big Brown, saying they want to lead the way to the elimination of performance-enhancing drugs in horse racing, announced Sunday that they would immediately begin withdrawing all steroids and any unnecessary medications from their horses.
Michael Iavarone, a co-president of International Equine Acquisitions Holdings, said that the more than 50 horses owned by his stable would be drug free by Oct. 1, and that he would pay for tests to be administered by state or track veterinarians before and after each of their races to prove it.
“I know Big Brown or any of our horses do not need this stuff to win,” he said. “I’m not worried about an uneven playing field, either. The cost of the drug tests are a small price to pay for the integrity of the sport. I’m urging other owners to join us, and let’s turn the game around.”
Iavarone said Big Brown’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, backed the self-imposed ban on all medications perceived to be performance-enhancing. The stable’s horses will run on the legal antibleeding medication Lasix when necessary, however.
It was Dutrow who put steroids and performance-enhancing drugs front and center during Big Brown’s failed run for the Triple Crown this spring when he acknowledged that Big Brown had been receiving steroid injections in the months before the Derby. Dutrow later said that Big Brown had last received the drug on April 15.
Big Brown’s owners, known as I.E.A.H., also came under scrutiny when they said that they intended to create a $100 million horse fund that would operate like a hedge fund, then struck a deal to sell Big Brown’s breeding rights for about $60 million.
Last Thursday, a Congressional subcommittee lambasted the sport for lax drug policies, faulty breeding and an emphasis on greed over transparency in a hearing titled “Breeding, Drugs, and Breakdowns: The State of Thoroughbred Horseracing and the Welfare of the Thoroughbred Racehorse.”
One member after another told witnesses, who included owners, breeders and veterinarians, that if they did not clean up their sport, Congress would reopen the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978, which provided the legal basis for wagering on horse races across state lines. Last year, such wagering accounted for 90 percent of the $15 billion wagered on thoroughbred races.
“I was moved by the hearing and I saw one witness after another say they wanted zero tolerance on drugs,” Iavarone said. “Someone has to take the first step. We want other owners to join us immediately. Racing can’t wait for state laws or house rules or Congress. What we have to get this done is the integrity of the people involved in the sport.”
I.E.A.H. has had some notable success on the racetrack in its few years of existence. So far in 2008, I.E.A.H. horses have won more than $5.7 million in purses and won at a 23 percent clip. They have also captured prestigious races in Dubai, where the rules against drug use are the most stringent in the world. In fact, Dutrow, in written testimony submitted to the subcommittee, cited his horses’ victories in two $1 million races there as evidence that his stable could thrive in a drug-free environment.
It was the on-track euthanization of the filly Eight Belles after she finished second in the Derby, and Dutrow’s admission that he injected Big Brown with the anabolic steroid Winstrol, that have fueled the Congressional and public scrutiny of horse racing.
Before the Belmont Stakes, Dutrow said he had taken Big Brown off Winstrol, last administering it in mid-April. When Big Brown was eased at the far turn and loped home in last place, his performance fueled speculation that the colt’s previous unbeaten record had been the result of drug use.
Beyond damaging Big Brown’s reputation, the stunning loss in the Belmont cost I.E.A.H. at least $50 million in the breeding shed and in future marketing deals, Iavarone said.
If Big Brown, a bay colt, never raced again, he might attract $40,000 to $75,000 for a breeding session versus the $100,000 to $200,000 he would have earned as a nobly defeated Triple Crown challenger or the 12th horse to sweep the series.
Iavarone said he was going to ask racetracks and Daily Racing Form to print in their programs that horses owned by I.E.A.H., and any owner who adopts the policy, be listed as drug free.
Iavarone also said that if any of his horses failed the drug test that I.E.A.H. intends to pay for, the company would return the purse money.
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Friday, June 13, 2008
Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev
This ballet by Kenneth MacMillan is one of the most stirring, romantic pieces of theatre I've ever seen.
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About Me
- Abby C.
- The most important thing to remember is I'm a New Yorker who is living in Tampa
