We've got a new "Think Again column called, ""Will-ful Ignorance, Round 26," and it's about George Will's shameful global warming columns and Fred Hiatt's defense of them, and it's here.

My new Nation column is here and it's an argument for newspapers to give up on making a profit, stop pretending their editorial endorsements matter to anyone and embrace a nonprofit model for survival.

I also did a post for the Daily Beast about the impressive shamelessness--I assume it's that rather than foolishness--of Bush ex-flacks Michael Gerson, Karl Rove and David Frum, etc. That's here.

Alter-reviews:

I saw the Flatlanders at B.B. King's last night. It's hard not to love a band of old gray-haired guys that was founded in high school and has a terrific time with one another up on stage, playing roots music that they, themselves, helped invent. Their material ranges from ok to wonderful beyond words. "Dallas" was rockin' with Joe Ely doing most of the vocals rather than ethereal as when Jimmy sings it, as Jimmy sings everything ethereally. They've got a bunch of new material which sounds better than their reunion album, but the show is really the thing. Go see them if you need to be reminded that Texas has plenty to offer besides America's worst president ever.

Rhino has a new Dead show out, drawn from what I've always thought is their best period, though it also happens to coincide with my adolescence. To Terrapin: May 28, 1977 Hartford, CT. This show Connecticut's Hartford Civic Center on the closing night of their spring '77 tour. The sound is pristine and among other things, it's gots the best "Sugaree" I ever heard, and clocks in at around twenty minutes. Plus for three cds, it's really cheap. I suppose it depends on a lot of things at this point but if you know what you're getting going in, you shan't be disappointed. Getting even more a workout in my cd player this week is Leonard Cohen, Live in London, which was recorded on his recent tour and sounds terrific. It's the single best collection of Cohen's career you'll find anywhere, and I do think, song for song, he writes the best lyrics of anyone alive, including Dylan, because he tries so much harder to get it perfect. His voice is lower, deeper and more mystical than ever. Really, how can anyone live without this thing?

You can live without Simon & Garfunkel, Live 1969. It's not bad. It's fine, actually. It's just that they're not really a live band--or if they were, it was owing to the intimacy of the music, which would be impossible to recreate here. This was recorded after "Bridge" on their final tour before breaking up and has lots of great songs that you really ought to have already and it's up to you whether you want/need live versions of them. Some of it is acoustic and some of it has a band. It was actually recorded before the album came out so the version of "Bridge" for instance, and "The Boxer" are being heard by the audience for the first time.

We've got a new "Centennial Edition" of The Odd Couple film. To be honest, the movie, which is based on the play, is nowhere near as great as the TV show. But almost nothing is. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon did create a classic with Neil Simon's material, it's just that that classic was superceded by something even classic-er. So if you haven't seen it yet, you'd better. This release, coming 41 years after the movie came out features a second disc with the following extras:

Sons Charlie Matthau and Chris Lemmon provide the commentary, offering reminiscences about their fathers, stories about the film, and reactions as they watch it. We get also get interviews with the director. Saks, Robert Evans, Larry King and the actors. In addition there's"In the Beginning..." discusses the play, "Memories from the Set" and "Inside The Odd Couple" discusses the movie, and "Matthau & Lemmon" has recollections about the actors.

I also see a "Centennial" edition of the great, To Catch a Thief. Let me tell you all you need to know about this movie. It's directed by Alfred Hitchcock in his glory years. It stars Cary Grant and a luminous Grace Kelly. It takes place on the French Riviera. The screenplay is by John Michael Hayes, who also wrote Rear Window. It's not the greatest effort by any of these people but it's still better than almost anything else you're likely to rent. And prettier. Here's what you get on disc 2:

"A Night with the Hitchcocks" (23:20)--The daughter and granddaughter of Alfred Hitchcock, Pat Hitchcock and Mary Stone, respectively, are interviewed by the Hitchcock scholar, Drew Casper; "Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America" (11:47)--A look at the Production Code and its enforcement; plus: "Writing and Casting To Catch a Thief" (9:04)--2002 ; "The Making of To Catch a Thief" (16:53); "Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly" (6:12); "Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch a Thief: An Appreciation" (7:32); "Edith Head: The Paramount Years" (13:43); "If You Love To Catch a Thief, You'll Love This"--An "interactive travelogue; Original Theatrical Trailer (2:11)--In 1.33:1 aspect ratio and lots of stills.

The mail:

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA

Hey Doc:

"The man who spurred us on/sits in judgment of all wrong/They decide and the shotgun sings the song."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Night Of The Purple Moon" (Sun Ra).

You probably didn't notice it on TV, but when Teddy Kennedy threw out the first pitch at Fenway on Tuesday afternoon, there I was behind him, writing on the infield grass how much I love New Orleans.

Part The First: Speaking of which, I saw a special showing of this astonishing film on Tuesday night at Boston University. It strikes me as odd that President Barack Obama has not yet made a visit to New Orleans as president. (He went down there as a candidate in February of 2008) I mean, Istanbul's nice, and things seemed to go well at the G20, but a great American city is still dying at its heart, and it might be worth a look-see.

Part The Second: A further update on the subject of Ye Lamentable Tragedye Of Waldo The Drunk Security Guard. On duty the other night at Salon HQ, Waldo fired down 19 beers, a shot of Jager, and attached a drip bottle of Sterno to his right arm. As he sailed off into the Land Beyond Thought, a crazy person dropped out of a heating duct and typed something that was just inches from English-As-Translated-From-The-Original Urdu. A sample: " Barack the Magic Negro" was a song parody by a longtime contributor to the Rush Limbaugh Show, Paul Shanklin, whom I consider to be one of the most brilliant satirists of our time."Next week, why Allan Sherman beats Mark Twain like a red-headed stepchild. I think it's time for Salon to consider investing in a couple of pitbulls for backup.

Part The Third: Well, they're still going nuts. I wonder if Rep. Bachus has any children who fancy a nice game of solitaire.

Part The Last: These are not good times at the day job, for a number of reasons, most of which The Landlord has discussed hereabouts. There aren't many people who have been as critical as I have of people whom I believe have debased a craft that means a great deal to me. But, I'm sorry, this and this are examples of what John Peter Zenger would've called, "just being a prick."

I admire what Markos has accomplished. But, despite his pale and worthless disclaimer late in that first post--Spare us your pity--if this isn't gloating, I'd hate to see what he thinks gloating would be. A few points:
a) this is minor, but handing along a pivotal anecdote about the behavior of a "star columnist" without naming that columnist is what we in the old media refer to regularly as "chickenshit," and setting that story at a place where recently a couple of hundred people lost their jobs is graceless and cruel;
b) regardless of the columnist's behavior, most of the comments attached to the bottom of newspaper stories are pretty much substantively worthless and some are simple poo-flinging;
c) Are you really seriously offering to trade, say, the national political staff of the NYT for The Politico(!) Charlie Savage for Roger Simon? Really?
d) I would like an explanation, in detail, of how much the people who work for the various "organically sprouting" news operations, both locally and nationally, actually will get paid. I know the HuffPo doesn't pay its contributors, and I'm willing to bet that nobody at A Better Oakland makes enough to live on, either. Is this the new business model for the new paradigm? Don't pay the reporters and writers?

Geez, Louise, I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before. I have been a working journalist for 30 years now, in one way or another. I have made a living and raised three children that way. I'm one of the lucky ones. There are thousands of people all over the country at newspapers large and small, people who cover sewer commissions and city councils and high school football, and who do so because they believe in the importance of newspaper journalism as a life's work, and even though they realize at some level that they might be working in the buggy-whip industry. I am not unaware of the problems in my profession. I frequently rail against them. But it is still a profession and, I believe, an honorable and important one, and one at which people should be trained and paid what they're worth. It deserves to be a profession at which people can make a living. It deserves more than to be the Lawn Tennis Association, where amateurs, talented and untalented, get to play for the fucking honor of it. It deserves better than glib contempt and fake piety. If that's the new age, it's going to have to learn to do better.

And, Markos, your sports site is a silly conglomeration of sweaty fanzines. SB's pregame account of Thursday night's game at Fenway ended with the phrase, "Go Sox!" That really blows. Ask around.

All of that being said, if there's anyone doing more valuable work these days than Glenn Greenwald, I don't know who it is. His bulldogging of the inexcusable behavior of the Obama administration over the various Executive branch atrocities of the previous bunch is beginning to develop traction within the political classes as well. (Hey, Russ Feingold. Call him back, OK?) It has been said -- most recently by Parson Meacham at Newsweek -- that "anger can only take us so far." OK, if that's the case, then how about we determine exactly how far it can take us? Throughout the campaign, if there was one thing that the Obama people either missed, or deliberately chose not to engage, it was the fond desire of a considerable amount of people for someone's head on a stick. And a startling amount of that had to do with what the collection of thugs, mountebanks, and shyster castrati in and around the national-security bureaucracy were up to doing. People were mad about that -- not in the carny-barker sense of Glenn Beck, but deeply, profoundly disturbed because their beliefs in what their country was supposed to stand for had been thrown into disarray. They are still angry. Most people are. The Obama administration is going to have to recognize it, and channel it, and placate it with more than vague assurances of what good people they are and what good people we are. On this issue particularly, I wonder if the president and his people aren't vaguely disappointed that the national Republican party has grown too crazy to surrender to. In any case, the salutary effect of a head stuck on London Bridge is very much underrated.

Name: Timothy Barrett
Hometown Louisville, Ky

Daniel Trotta, Reuters, reports that Kevin Phillips, economist and author, is predicting runaway inflation because of the recent ineptitude in handling the financial crisis. Trotta writes that a year ago, Phillips "warned of a the pending explosion of a 25-year "multibubble" that started in the 1980s, when the financial sector accounted for 10 percent to 12 percent of the US economy had started metastasizing into an "arguably crippling" 20 percent to 21 percent by the middle of this decade. Overleveraging and easy credit was bound to create disaster."

Who does Phillips blame for not avoiding the calamity and for mishandling the crisis? Former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan. Trotta writes: ""What you're seeing Bernanke do is he's trying to create a bailout reflationary bubble, which he can't describe as a bubble, just as Greenspan couldn't describe the housing mortgage bubble as a bubble. What we're seeing by Bernanke is a covert attempt to rebubble." Moreover, a commodities cycle probably started early in this decade and is only being masked now by recession, Phillips says, presaging a repeat of 1970's style inflation."

You'd have to be at least 45 years old to recall 1970's inflation as high as 14 percent. President Ford gave his famous "Whip Inflation Now" speech to Congress in October 1974 and laid out his agenda for recovery. It included familiar themes in favor of a comprehensive energy policy, to start drilling in California and Alaska, and to develop clean coal technologies. He vowed to expand the money supply and ease credit, start a federal job creation program, and give tax relief for low-income families while raising taxes on corporate earnings. He also called for increased domestic food production and to monitor commodity pricing.

The parallel doesn't stop there; President Ford inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. The creation of OPEC with it's subsequent oil production limits and skyrocketing prices, and the US dismantling of the Bretton Woods monetary system, both contributed to global consumer fear. The subsequent mishandling of the financial crisis created stagflation where the wages and consumer prices battled in a lengthy upward spiral for years.

We face another financial crisis brought on not by an artificial oil price bubble and its resulting scarcity, but by an artificial financial bubble and its resulting contraction. Now we hear credible evidence that the Fed has, at best, been incompetent, and at worse, been overly protective of Wall Street. Obama's administration is struggling and the answers sound very familiar. The last time it took six years until steady economic growth led the way out of the wilderness and into the GOP embrace of trickle-down economic theory under Reagan.

It all seems so familiar. A GOP presidency ends in disgrace from years of illegal activity, Democrats inherit a terrible financial crisis, financial geniuses mess up the recovery, and then the GOP successfully courts a recovering nation with a bold vision for America. They seem at a loss for ideas now, but just give them six years of tough economic times. They break, we fix, they take credit. I called it here first!

Name: Michael Green
Hometown: Las Vegas, Nevada

I second your motion in calling for the piling-on Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., to end. First, the article rehashes his childhood to explain him right now, but I don't see where it draws a connection to major business decisions. Second, his father would tell you he was no reporter, but his son actually did all right--not the next Sy Hersh, but who is? Third, that he made mistakes in the business end is clear enough, but the tone suggests that only he would have made them, and I think it's safe to say that Sulzberger is hardly alone. Fourth, many of the criticisms about him, and sometimes worse, were also directed toward his father, who became publisher younger, under different circumstances, and without the same kind of broad training, but now is held up as a guiding genius. Since Talese is mentioned in the article, perhaps the author should have re-read some of Punch's more dubious moments--and I don't say that as a criticism of the senior Sulzberger, who had to deal with a financial crisis at The Times in the 1970s and managed to overcome it.

Like you, Dr. A., I sometimes get mad at The Times. But then I read my local paper and marvel all the more at what The Times accomplishes on a daily basis. It truly is The Daily Miracle.

Name: Timothy Barrett
Hometown: Louisville, Ky

The Center for American Progress Action Fund has published a report at AmericanProgressAction.org, entitled Lessons from Medicare for Healthcare Reform wherein Marilyn Moon highlights many instructive policy decisions that have made Medicare a shining example of a federal program that exceeds its mandate and provides a critical safety net for "some of the sickest and frailest of the US population, along with a substantial number of disabled Americans."

She notes, appropriately, that the low administrative costs for administering Medicare (less than 2% of total spending) is attributable, in part, to the special relationship the Medicare program has with the Social Security Administration (SSA). SSA administers retirement, disability, survivor and Supplemental Security Income programs under the Health and Human Services Department, whose Secretary holds a cabinet level position. It also signs up the eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. According to the latest OMB report, SSA accomplishes its goals while keeping its administrative costs at about 1.5% of total spending. You need to visit HHS.gov to see just how well your tax money is spent.

Why should we care about this? Because the conservative media would have you believe that a single payer system for American healthcare coverage is socialism and that the private sector does everything better and with less waste than the federal government. The above- mentioned programs are the direct result of the New Deal legislation made effective in 1935. The success of such programs in providing for Americans health, safety and welfare is unparalleled. In a world of want, despair and inequity, any so-called First World Country must provide services along these lines, and they all do, some with greater success than ours.

The term "socialism" has been bandied about among ignorant pundits too often as the 20th century boogieman and it may well be the undoing of real progressive advancement in this century, too. As a member of our self-described "Christian Nation", you have to ask yourself whether your comforts are more important than your fellow citizens health and wellbeing. If so, you are more likely to vote against a progressive agenda, like universal healthcare, because you view the costs as prohibitive and even unnecessary. You may need to get out of the country club more.

The progressive agenda has no similarities with socialism. It is in fact, a necessary part of capitalism in modern times when the weak, uneducated and disenfranchised among us pose our greatest risks for failure. The costs of care, disruption, turmoil, and non-productivity are becoming increasingly apparent on a global scale.

We have ample evidence that the 130,000 or so government employees at DHHS and SSA are up to the job of administering a competitive privately insured universal healthcare program that currently provides some 43 million people with appropriate and affordable care. Why we aren't simply opening it up to all 305 million of us is ludicrous. Recall, that Obama's plan would allow you to opt out of federal coverage if you want to stay in the current failing system. It's all the more ridiculous, when we are being told that the reason to dismiss universal healthcare is that an adherence to a false sense of capitalism is more important. But don't expect your representatives, or the media, to educate you, they are the ones most blinded by their misguided ideology.

Name: Vicki Cheikes
Hometown: Boca Raton, FL

Regarding the issue of taxation and charitable deductions, what is totally overlooked is the potential impact that elimination or substantial reduction in estate taxes would have on charitable giving. Right now, there are only two deductions which can eliminate Federal estate taxes, the marital deduction, for estates going to the decedent's spouse, and the charitable deduction for estates going to charity.

Were the Federal estate tax to be either eliminated or substantially reduced, there is a great likelihood that the very wealthy would leave their vast estates to their children or other relatives (other than spouses), rather than to charity.

It needs to be repeated (over and over) that the real (actually the sole) beneficiaries of estate tax repeal or material elimination are the children and grandchildren of the very wealthy. This is why I call estate tax repeal the Paris Hilton Welfare Act. But, I am just a tax attorney, so no one listens to me.

Name: Greg Panfile
Hometown: Tuckahoe NY

The past coupla weeks, with light blogging from Eric and no Pierce or LTC Bob, I started to think, why is this bookmarked, why do I check in here and follow this guy... he writes nothing and likes *Springsteen* after all. Then I read the bit on Stewart and it was like oh, I remember, that's why...

Speaking for the hoi polloi we'd love to read more LTC Bob ASAP, OK, as in PDQ. To Charles we send best wishes for a speedy recovery with no attendant attempt at humorousness because writing anything snarky at a superior scribe violates the Croce principle about Superman's cape and windward urination; it is best not contemplated, and if thought about, left undone.

Name: Martyn Luberti

Eric,

Thought you might enjoy this also. Another even rarer Leonard Cohen song, and you will probably understand the lyrics better than I would. It's called "Un as Der Rebbe Singt" recorded live in Vienna when Leonard, you, and I were much younger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPvpXg7pPXM

Name: Larry Cowan
Hometown: Temple, TX

Dr. A,

We saw Bruce in concert last night and as my cousin said, "He's still got it." Despite Austin's laid back demeanor and a heavy audience shift to "Boomers", the place was rockin' to the rafters. From Bruce's first appearance at the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1974 until now Bruce has been "The Boss" in Austin. The repetoire was a nice mix of old and the not so old. Imagine that, strong music and a message from the heart. The E Street Band was just as powerful as thiry-five years ago. This stop was early on a long tour so the energy met all expectations. President Obama would be well advised to appoint Bruce as a Special Secretary of Energy. Get in soon, you won't be disappointed.

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