The Inquiring Manatee

Send This Man to Copenhagen

    

Wonderful, wonderful CO-penhagen, salty old queen of the sea!
                                                  -- "Hans Christian Andersen," The Movie

     If President Obama wants to go to Copenhagen to flog Chicago to the International Olympic Committee, let him go, says I.
     Those who criticize him for his decision -- they say it's unpresidential, it's too much like working for the "Illinois Chamber of Commerce," it risks having him look bad if Chicago loses -- are the same people who said he shouldn't even have dared to make a stay-in-school speech to America's children. Whatever Obama does or proposes, they're automatically against.
     Whether the 2016 Olympics end up in Chicago, Tokyo, Rio or Madrid, these carpers should be lined up in the stadium's javelin target area. Let the throwers heave at 'em.
      Now, personally, I think Rio deserves the Olympics more than Chicago does. No Olympics have ever been held in South America. And the Brazilians know how to throw a party, just as Chicagoans know how to rig an election.
     Oh, sure, there's lots of street crime in Rio, but how about Chicago, where a hapless teenager was beaten to death on the street the other day as a cellphone recorded the Third World scene? You want safety, go to Tokyo. Or maybe Madrid.
     But Chicago is Barack and Michelle's hometown, and if he's still thinking like the junior senator from Illinois that he was, it's hard to shake those habits. The benefits would not accrue merely to Chicago, moreover. It would be a patriotic plus for all Americans to snag another Summer Olympics, even though we had St. Louis in 1904, Los Angeles in 1932 and 1984, and Atlanta in 1996. We need something more to brag about these recessionary days.
     So bon voyage, President Obama. Come back with those quadrennial Games nailed to the wall. And if you don't succeed, you're still not likely to lose Illinois in 2012.

Recounting Those Iranian Ballots

      

The courageous Iranians demonstrating in the streets and demanding a recount in last Friday's election aren't quite making a strong enough point. They should be asking for a first count. The results favoring Mahmoud Ahmedinejad were announced far too quickly for the ballots ever to have been actually counted. What's needed now is the first legitimate canvass of the ballots, with full transparency that invites observers from the opposition candidates' campaigns to sit in on the counting and, if necessary, protest to duly constituted authorities who will investigate the grievances faithfully.
       In the demonstrators' determination, which has the establishment flummoxed, we see an example that outraged Democrats should have followed in 2000. Al Gore was like Mir-Hossein Mousavi: he never got an honest count in Florida. The Republican Supreme Court, in the worst ruling since Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, stopped the count and effectively declared George W. Bush president, with what consequences we now know all too well.
       Some resolute, nonviolent marching on a massive basis might have shamed even Republicans into going along with a recount in Florida, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris notwithstanding.

Another Flight, Another Continental Pilot Dying at the Control Wheel

       Poor Continental Airlines. For the second time in the past several years, a captain has died in mid-flight at the controls. This time it was a Boeing 777 over the Atlantic, flying to the U.S. from Brussels. The first officer and a relief pilot took over and landed the plane with its more than 200 passengers safely. The last time involved a 757 and a co-pilot who handled the landing alone.
        The lesson: Maybe Continental should hire more flight physicians to check pilots' health. And maybe air passengers should be just as concerned with pilots that are old and experienced (Capt. Sully Sullenberger being an outstanding exception) as with pilots like that Colgan Air pair in Buffalo who were young, inexperienced, underpaid and overfatigued.

A Modest Proposal on Guantanamo

    

As Republicans run wild on the issue of closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison and moving the 240 inmates to facilities on U.S. soil, even Senate Democrats can't be blamed for shying from President Obama's plan to remove this symbol of Bush administration high-handedness and torture.
      The NIMBY fears so easily stirred up by the entirely emotional issue, even though the detainees would be secured in Supermax federal lockups from which no one has ever escaped, have potentially vulnerable politicians running scared of a future opponent's simplistic 30-second commercials.
      But before Congress prevents the administration from moving anyone to the U.S. mainland from Guantanamo -- thereby making it virtually impossible to convince any other country to accept a detainee -- policymakers should consider an alternative that could be a win-win choice for everybody, except perhaps for the terror suspects.
      Want to gratify the rest of the world and frustrate jihadist propagandists by closing Guantanamo? Fine, go right ahead. Want to keep any Guantanamo prisoner out of any U.S. states? You can do that, too.
      The strategy: Relocate the prisoners to a high-security facility that would be newly built and opened in Guam, American Samoa or -- just a short flight from Guantanamo -- the U.S. Virgin Islands. (Quiet St. Croix, somewhat off the tourist track, has the most land. Just don't put the Muslims in Christiansted, the island's chief city.)
      All these potential prison sites have these advantages:
      -- They're on U.S. soil, so Obama won't have to back down on that point.
      -- Residents there have no votes in Congress, only nonvoting delegates.
      -- Building and operating the new prison would create local jobs, a prospect that could mute opposition from NIMPT (Not in My Palm Tree) forces. Some of those giant Samoans would make great prison guards after their careers as NFL linemen end.
      -- The locations are in tropical settings that beat the bleakness of tropical but barren and ugly Guantanamo. How could jihadists or European moralists object to housing prisoners in the balmy South Pacific, the North Pacific paradise of Guam or especially the lovely Virgin Islands? (There, the alleged terrorists would be getting a symbolic downpayment on the 78 virgins, or whatever the number is, that jihadi "martyrs" are promised in heaven.) Or the inmates could learn the Argentine tago in Pago Pago.* 
      The president's executive order to close Guantanamo by the end of 2010 would not be blocked. The detainees, whether tried by Obama's tweaked military commissions or detained Cheney-style without charges, at least would have more pleasant quarters under the American flag.
       So how about it, Mr. President and members of Congress? Try the American Territorial Solution to the Guantanamo dilemma.
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* That's a rhyme. Pago Pago, capital of American Samoa, is pronounced "Pango Pango."      
      

I'm Going to Death Row World!

  

Sorry for not having posted in the last couple of days. Busy making a home video and training for the San Diego Rock 'n Roll Marathon on May 31.
   OK, what have we got in today's Los Angeles Times? A peek at an upcoming proposal by California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to close what looms as a $21.4 billion budget gap by selling off some high-profile state property. If this trial balloon flies and the Legislature agrees, on the sales block will be such real estate as San Quentin prison, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Del Mar racetrack near San Diego, the state fairgrounds in Sacramento and the Orange County fairgrounds.
    Here's my counterproposal. Instead of getting rid of the aging San Quentin, with its spectacular setting beside San Francisco Bay (if there were a zoning change from "P-1 -- Prison" to "R-1," residential," the property could fetch $1 billion), California should move the Death Row wretches and other convicts out and operate the place as an amusement park.
     Think of it. The feds make money from boat tours out to nearby Alcatraz, which closed in 1963, but the bay currents are rough and tours are restricted. California could do much better by redubbing San Quentin as Death Row World or Gaschamberland.
     The world will beat a path to those famed, weathered yellow walls and iron gates. Wouldn't you pay a Disney-style $65 to see the old octagonal, glass-windowed death chamber? Or a hallway full of gurneys and needles used in today's execution method of lethal injection?
      Strap yourself into the old death chair. Watch as officials fill the room with a mysterious mist. No worries, it's Old Spice spray deodorant. It's an E-ticket to forever.
     See the cells formerly occupied by Charlie Manson and "red light bandit" Caryl Chessman. Admire the great sunset views they enjoyed at public expense. Sit behind old Warden Duffy's desk and try to sound gruff yet fatherly, like Spencer Tracy.
     Arnold's San Quentin Adventure: Good for California, good for San Francisco, good for America.

   

Call Off Your Dogs

   

Those who are criticizing the Obamas for accepting Bo the Portuguese water dog as a gift from Ted Kennedy are barking up the wrong tree.
     The president and first lady are being called out for breaking a promise to adopt a "mutt" shelter dog rather than a purebred who was not rescued in the traditional sense. It's said that they blew an opportunity to educate the public on the plight of sweet, adorable shelter animals and to help find homes for millions of them.
     It's all so much woofing. Let's shed (and this is my last doggie pun, I promise) some light on the subject.
     First of all, my credentials. I'm not a dog person. I'm a cat person. But I think Bo is cute. And the White House is his fourth home. He's been taken and rejected by more than one owner, and reverted to Sen. Kennedy, a booster of the hypo-allergenic Portuguese breed. This is a rescue of an unwanted dog.
     The 6-month-old Bo may not be a mutt, strictly speaking, but he looks like one. He's fuzzy and fluffy. Everything about him says "dog."
     Besides, shelters are full of purebreds, too. They need homes as much as mixed-breeds do. Let's not discriminate against purebreds.
     OK, so the Obamas broke a promise. But Sasha and Malia come first. Needed was a hypo-allergenic dog that was loveable and that could win the girls' hearts. First the girls were sold on Portuguese water dogs. Then they were sold on Bo. He's the dog they love. End of argument. The president made a donation to the D.C. Humane Society to make up for not going to the local shelter for a dog. That donation itself publicizes the good work that shelters do.
           It's getting so the president -- any president -- is criticized over every little thing that he (or she) does. The president is entitled to a private  life without having to be a world role model for every action. A normal family is entitled to have any kind of dog it wants. Why not the Obamas, too?
     Now let's all let Bo enjoy being the First Dog. And let the Obama girls enjoy playing with him.
     As long as the Obamas go out quickly and also get a cat!
     
    

The Sad Case of Natasha Richardson

   

A woman takes a fall during a ski lesson on the beginner slope at Mont Tremblant -- and ends up brain-dead?
   How awful and bizarre is that?
   One news report noted that poor Natasha Richardson was "not wearing a helmet."Well, of course she was not wearing a helmet. She wasn't a downhill racer. She was a celebrity actress taking a beginner ski lesson.
    This horrifying story offers one more lesson that snow and ice are treacherous and, so easily, potentially deadly. My ex-boss, Washington Post Co. owner Katharine (Kay) Graham, died from a slip on ice.
     I once took a pretty low-speed fall on ice while doing a winter run in Washington's Rock Creek Park. My shoulder, nearly broken, hurt for two years. Another slip while walking on Connecticut Avenue nearly broke my arm. Ice is bad news. You hit the ground amazingly fast and amazingly hard, and it's a matter of luck where you happen to land.
     I met Natasha Richardson once, briefly. I was interviewing her late father, the British film director Tony Richardson, at a house he owned or was renting in the Hollywood Hills, in the late '80s or early '90s. He was making a comeback with some film or other. As I was saying goodbye at his door and heading for my car, Natasha Richardson arrived for a visit and we spoke. She seemed down-to-earth as well as quite pretty and smart.
     I am so sympathetic to her husband, Liam Neeson, and their two young children.
     This is one more bad thing in a generally bad time.

Throwing Bonus AIGs at the Malfeasors

   

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was being too kind to the AIG bonus-winners when he suggested in an Iowa radio interview Monday that they follow the Japanese model by bowing deeply, apologizing humbly and then either resigning or committing suicide.
    (The Japanese, by the way, describe the act as hara-kiri, not "harry-carry," as the American news media frequently mispronounce it. The ritual act of running a sword across one's midsection also is known as seppuku.)
    Why ask them to commit suicide? Why not take matters into our own hands by boiling these incompetent, greedy morons in oil? Or feeding them to the sharks off Isla Morada? Or parachuting them into the tribal areas of Pakistan?
    In truth, nothing is too bad for these AIG financial executives who have earned bonuses -- bonuses! -- of up to $1 million for running their huge company into the sewer, and taking the world's econony with it.
    No matter whether the taxpayers ever get the $165 million back -- and I favor a 91% special excise tax to be passed by Congress aimed squarely at these jerks -- let this become the death knell of the way the financial sector compensated its traders and managers. No more of this outrageous compensation. The people were helplessly angry and increasingly bitter for years as they witnessed these yearly bonuses and these stratospheric CEO salaries and options. Now, as owners of these companies, taxpayers aren't about to put up with a continuation of the status quo.
     These guys should be fired and perhaps prosecuted, certainly not rewarded.
     Enough.

Swiss Cheesiness: Secret Bank Accounts Under Threat

   

On a day of riding Switzerland's crack trains around that small country in 1989, I stopped off to tour a little-known city called Zug, which means "train." I was astounded to see a skyline of modern office towers, an unknown New York in the Alps. What was going on?
    The buildings were there because Swiss banks were overflowing with money in secret bank accounts set up under Swiss laws for tax-evading Americans, kleptomanic African strongmen and Mexican drug bosses. The banks, paying little or no interest on this ill-gotten money or even charging the depositors for the convenience of keeping their stashes hidden, had to do something with the inflows. So they lent it out for the benefit of the prospering Swiss economy, building those towers to house all the lawyers dealing with the rich and secretive.
     What brings all this back to mind is a lawsuit announced by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service seeking to force the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS), Switzerland's biggest bank, to disgorge the names of 300,000 Americans allegedly dodging American taxes by maintaining those famous, numbered accounts.
     UBS had offered some concessions, paying a multimillion-dollar fine and yielding 300 names of big tax cheats to the feds, but doing even that much has enraged Swiss politicians and in turn much of the yodeling citizenry. All the Swiss are nationalistically up in arms over this attack on the foundations of their prosperity: their chosen profession as money-launderers for the world. And in other offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, there's a lot of trembling these days. If the IRS gets its way, bank secrecy will be a thing of the past. To me and to other U.S. taxpayers, that would be a good thing.
     Public radio's "The World" program on Wednesday ran a voice-doctored interview with an anonymous American millionaire who acknowledged having placed $900,000 in a Swiss account (later moving the money among several other countries) to escape U.S. taxes. The guy didn't say so, but his nest egg might well have been amassed in an illegal way -- in pimping or illegal bookmaking or even kidnapping.
     Without regard to how such a sum was amassed in the first place, earnings on the money wouldn't necessarily be taxed in the U.S. Americans can avoid federal and state taxes on the earnings on their money simply by investing in state and municipal bonds, particularly those issued in their own states. So there would be no reason to hide money abroad, particularly at no interest or low interest, unless the money originally had been piled up by evading due taxes on it as it was being earned. These are bad guys who have been cheating their government for years. Now the government is coming after them, and hard, needing its revenue more than ever.
     If the Swiss lose the cachet of the term "Swiss banker," supposedly standing for probity and canniness, I won't mourn. On a 1964 trip around Switzerland on a Vespa motorscooter, I found the Swiss to be cold, money-grasping and inhospitable. After a hard morning on the scooter I stopped off for lunch at an outdoor cafe in Lucerne, overlooking the beautiful Lake Lucerne. I guess that as a road-grimy American student tourist I didn't meet the place's dress code, because the waiters resolutely refused to approach my table for 45 minutes until I got the message and left. I've never forgotten the snobbish snub. So don't ask me to feel sorry for the Swiss if their corrupt economic foundation crumbles.
     Taking some of the jobs from people in those bizarre Zug edifices would mean more jobs in the office buildings of America. We need that these days. Sorry, Zug.
     
     

    

Let's Not Be Heading for Mexico (Get it? Beheading?)

    

The American high school and college kids currently trekking to Cancun and other Mexican resort areas for spring break are even more moronic than previous years' crops of drunken sots. They are risking their lives.
     With good reason, the State Department has issued a travel warning for Mexico. Rampant warfare between incredibly well-armed, arrogant and ruthless drug cartels and the government of President Felipe Calderon has led to 6,000 murders in the past year. Taking a page from Al Qaeda in Iraq, the cartels and their Zeta hitmen have been beheading Mexican police and soldiers by the score, leaving their bodies on roadsides or hanging from bridges.
      In addition, kidnapping is rife, as CBS' "60 Minutes" reported last night.
      It's true that little of this would be happening without demand for drugs from lowlifes throughout the United States. Our country also ships killer assault weapons to the Mexican cartels and supplies cash that buys Mexican police, military and government officials.
      But even though the mess is largely our fault, Americans should stay out of potential trouble in Mexico until the situation improves -- if it ever does, short of a total government collapse and takeover by the narcotraficantes.
      There are plenty of places to get drunk, disorderly and naked outside of Mexico. Remember Fort Lauderdale? How about the U.S. Virgin Islands? Or other places in the Caribbean? But don't try the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. There's been rioting there recently.
      For American partiers, the world is shrinking. First they took Cuba away from us. Then Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Now Mexico. We may end up barfing in our own backyards. But we're not there yet. Meanwhile, keep your head on. Stay out of Mexico.

Pakistan Gives its Women a Swat

       

Why was Babe Ruth called "the Sultan of Swat?" The monicker was based on the then-Indian region called Swat, whose reigning prince was called the Wali of Swat. (An even better title than the Nizam of Hyderabad, or, my Nigerian traditional favorite, the Sardauna of Sokoto.)
      Nobody should be joking about Swat anymore. On Monday, the region, now in Pakistan, became a glaring symbol of abject appeasement. Like Neville Chamberlain's pact with Hitler at Munich in 1938 giving the Nazis Czech Sudentenland, the decision of the weak Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari to let Swat be ruled by Muslim Sharia law was a victory for dark forces that will merely embolden them to make more and more demands from the forces of modernity and reason. The outcome could be as grim as Munich's was.
      Zardari's government capitulated to a Taliban-led campaign of beheadings of police officers and destruction of schools for girls. To get a cease-fire in the Swat fighting, the government sacrificed the women of Swat -- and soon, perhaps, of all of Pakistan -- who will be denied an education and any human rights, just as the women of Afghanistan were under Taliban rule. Hands and heads will be cut off. The official regional anthem of Swat will be "Everybody Must Get Stoned," sung by a chorus of adulterers.
      Let's not paint this development as anything other than a forboding victory for terror and 7th Century ignorance. All we can do is hope that brave women will start underground schools for girls.
      Ironically, even fundamentalist Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has been showing signs of progress. King Abdullah has appointed a woman to a deputy ministerial position, a first in Saudi government. Gee. Next thing you know, they'll allow women to drive.
      Pakistan is going the other way. As India progresses, Pakistan regresses. And it has nukes.