Under the Broom Tree: Observations, Opinions & Occurrences

Mollie Sugden: 1922-2009

2009-07-02T08:40:00.006-05:00

Mollie Sugden (1922-2009), Mrs. Slocombe of Are You Being Served Fame

Mollie Sugden, the actress who died on July 1 aged 86, endeared herself to television viewers as Mrs Slocombe of the Ladies Separates and Underwear department in Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft's long-running sitcom Are You Being Served?

Like all the best sitcoms, Are You Being Served?, first broadcast on BBC One between 1972 and 1985 and set in Grace Bros department store, drew on the venerable music hall traditions of familiar social stereotypes, heavy double entendre and jokes that could be seen advancing over the horizon from several miles away. The show benefited from strong portrayals by all its main characters, but it was Mrs Slocombe and her counterpart in menswear, the outrageously camp Mr Humphries (John Inman), who made it unmissable.

Mollie Sugden's Mrs Slocombe was a recognisable working type – the shopworn divorcee trying to keep up appearances, defying the years with ever more lurid rinses, and returning home alone each night to her "little pussy", to which there was always at least one reference in every show.

End of the blue rinseMrs Slocombe had an arch, Ortonesque way with the unfortunate phrase: "Captain Peacock, I do not respond to any man's finger!", she says in response to a summons from the boss. "Before we go any further, Mr Rumbold, Miss Brahms and I would like to complain about the state of our drawers. They're a positive disgrace."

Mrs Slocombe had no children, which must have been a personal relief to Mollie Sugden, who was more usually cast as the interfering mother figure. As for similarities between the character and her own, she conceded that, like Mrs Slocombe, she could be "a bit bossy", but "unlike me, Mrs Slocombe could never find a fella".

Mary Isobel Sugden was born in Keighley in Yorkshire on July 21 1922. Her father ran an iron and steel company. When she was four years old, she heard a woman reading a comic poem at a village concert. The following Christmas, after being asked if she could "do anything", she read the same poem. It made her realise "how wonderful it was to make people laugh". Her first public performance came a year later in a Sunday School play in which she played a "bold,
bad cat".

Mollie Sugden was educated at the local Grammar School, then worked during the war in a munitions factory in Keighley making shells for the Royal Navy. When she was later made redundant, she enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

After graduation she spent eight years in rep with a company that included Eric Sykes and Roy Dotrice, then took small roles on radio and television. Before Are You Being Served? she appeared with Benny Hill, Just Jimmy (as Jimmy Clitheroe's mother), Z-Cars, Up Pompeii!, The Goodies, Steptoe and Son and, in 1968, five episodes of Jackanory.

In 1973 she had a 23 week stint on That's Life! and also appeared as Terry Scott's mother in Son of the Bride.

Her first regular sitcom role, from 1962 to 1966, was as Mrs Crispin in Hugh and I. The series was written by John Chapman and when he got involved with The Liver Birds, he suggested Mollie Sugden for the role of Mrs Hutchinson, mother of Sandra (Nerys Hughes). Sugden portrayed Mrs Hutchinson from 1971 to 1979, and reprised the role when the series was revived in 1996. She also played Robin Nedwell's mother in Doctor in Charge (1972) and John Alderton's mother in My Wife Next Door (1972)

The first episode of Are You Being Served? was a one-off Comedy Playhouse, ignored until terrorists struck at the 1972 Munich Olympics, leaving the BBC with free airspace. The pilot was watched by 19 million viewers and the response was so huge that five more episodes were filmed. In total, 74 were shown between 1973 and 1985. In early episodes, Mollie Sugden had her hair dyed, bleached and re-dyed every time Mrs Slocombe changed her hair colour. It had been her own idea, but it meant that she sometimes had to turn up at her sons' school with her hair a multi-coloured mess. Later, she saved her roots and her dignity by wearing wigs.

In 1978, when it was thought that the series was about to be pensioned off, she appeared in the title role of Come Back Mrs Noah, about a housewife accidentally blasted into orbit on a space rocket, a sitcom which, despite the fact that it had the same writers as Are You Being Served?, is widely regarded as one of the worst ever made. From 1965 to 1976 she made occasional appearances as Nellie Harvey, the landlady of The Laughing Donkey, in Coronation Street.

Mollie Sugden also had roles in other sitcoms, including That's My Boy (1981-86), in which she played housekeeper to Dr Robert Price (Christopher Blake) and his wife Angie (Jennifer Lonsdale), and My Husband and I (1987-8) in which she played opposite her real husband, William Moore, whom she had married in 1958 after meeting him at Swansea rep.

Seven years after the end of Are You Being Served?, five of the original cast – including Mollie Sugden – came together to appear in Grace & Favour, in which the staff are left a manor house in the country by young Mr Grace, head of Grace Bros, who has died while scuba-diving on holiday in the Caribbean with his personal secretary, Miss Jessica Lovelock. This lasted for two series until 1993. Other television appearances included Just William, Oliver's Travels and, inevitably, The Bill.

In the early 1990s Mollie Sugden found herself acquiring "cult" status across the Atlantic – particularly on the San Francisco gay scene – after American television started running repeats of Are You Being Served?. In 1993 she appeared on the San Francisco operatic stage as the Duchess of Krakenthorp, a speaking role ("I'm no Pavarotti") in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. In 2002 a tribute programme called Celebrating Mollie Sugden: An Are
You Being Served? Special was aired on American PBS stations, featuring many of the original cast.

Away from showbusiness, Mollie Sugden enjoyed gardening, cooking and driving fast cars. "I used to speed about in a Porsche," she told an interviewer in 1995. "But seven or eight years ago I was done for doing 92mph on the motorway, so now I drive a Mercedes."

Mollie Sugden and her husband had identical twin sons, born when she was 41.She confessed that when they were very young she had to keep them labelled so that she could tell them apart and that "more than once I bathed the same one twice".

Her husband died in 2000.

Obituary: Wendy Richard, Star of "Are You Being Served?"

2009-02-26T08:30:00.003-06:00

Actress Wendy Richard dies at 65
Former EastEnders actress Wendy Richard has died aged 65, her agent has confirmed.

The star, who played Pauline Fowler in the BBC One soap opera, had been suffering from cancer.

Her agent Kevin Francis said: "She was incredibly brave and retained her sense of humour right to the end."

Last October, Richard revealed she had an aggressive, terminal form of cancer. Soon after that she married her long-term partner John Burns.

Francis said the star passed away in the Harley Street Clinic in London with her husband by her side.

In an interview with the Sunday Express last year, Richard revealed she had already planned her funeral and written her will.

She discovered the disease had returned after her usual annual check-up, which revealed cancerous cells in her left armpit.

THE CAREER OF WENDY RICHARD

•1965 Aged 22, joins the cast of soap The Newcomers
•1970-73 Stars in four episodes of Dad's Army as Private Walker's girlfriend, Shirley
•1972 Plays Miss Willing in Carry On Matron
•1972-85 Stars as Miss Brahms in the series Are You Being Served? (pictured)
•1985-2006 Appears in more than 1,400 episodes of EastEnders as Pauline Fowler
•2008 Films her last TV role as Mrs Crump in Marple: A Pocket Full Of Rye

She told the paper: "Now I have a cancerous growth on my right kidney and the cancer has spread to my bones.

"It's more aggressive this time, unfortunately, and has spread to the top of my spine and left ribs."

Minder star Shane Ritchie, who played EastEnders' character Alfie Moon alongside Richard until 2005, said he was, "absolutely devastated" by news of her death.

"I send all my love to John and her immediate family," he added.

Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, said: "Wendy Richard is going to be incredibly missed by the BBC and by our audiences."

Veteran actress, June Whitfield, added: "She was always delightful.

"I'm very, very sorry. I did not work with Wendy. We met at dos. It's very sad."

Presenter Dale Winton had known Richard for years.

"I'm very saddened to hear the news, she was a real fighter and actually a very kind and funny lady in her own right," he said.

"My thoughts are with her family, she will be missed."

In 2000, Richard was awarded the MBE for services to television and in 2007 she was given a British Soap Award for Lifetime Achievement for her role in EastEnders.

As well as her 21 years on Albert Square, Richard starred in sitcoms Are You Being Served?, Dad's Army and Grace and Favour.

She joined EastEnders when the programme began in 1985 and remained in it until 2006, when her character died.

The reason she gave for her departure was because she objected to a storyline that saw her character remarry.
"I left because I wasn't happy," she revealed in 2008. "Also, I couldn't believe in what they wanted me to do and unless I can find some truth in what I am doing, I cannot play it.

"Pauline remarrying was wrong. Some women never remarry. My mother never remarried after Daddy died. I always had it in my heart that Arthur was Pauline's husband and that was that."

"When We Mix with Dwarfs..."

2009-02-20T12:15:00.003-06:00

"Brothers, it is a very healthy thing for us who are ministers to read a biography like that of M’Cheyne. Read that through, if you are a minister, and it will burst many of your windbags. You will find yourselves collapse most terribly. Take the life of Brainerd among the Indians, or of Baxter in our own land. Think of the holiness of George Herbert, the devoutness of Fletcher, or the zeal of Whitfield. Where do you find yourself after reading their lives? Might you not peep about to find a hiding place for your insignificance? When we mix with dwarfs we think ourselves giants. But in the presence of giants we become dwarfs. When we think of the saints departed and remember their patience in suffering,their diligence in labor, their ardor, their self-denial, their humility, their tears, their prayers, their midnight cries, their intercession for the souls of others, their pouring out their hearts before God for the glory of Christ—why, we shrink into less than nothing and find no word of boasting on our tongue! "

Charles Spurgeon, from a sermon entitled Onward! [Philippians 3:13-14]

Thomas Sowell: Of Ants, Elephants, and FDR

2009-02-10T10:19:00.001-06:00

Of Ants, Elephants, and FDR
Scattershot observations on a world gone mad.

By Thomas Sowell

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.

The adage “follow the money” will be hard to apply in the current administration, when there is so much money going in all directions that it is doubtful whether anybody can follow it.

I hate to hear about “partnerships” between government and business, or between government and other organizations. When there is a partnership between an ant and an elephant, who do you suppose makes the decisions?

There are too many people, especially among the intelligentsia, who will never appreciate the things that have made this country great until after those things have been destroyed—with their help. Then, of course, it will be too late.

How can a president of the United States be reelected in a landslide after four years when unemployment never fell below 15 percent for even one month during his first term? Franklin D. Roosevelt did it by blaming it all on the previous administration. Barack Obama may be able to achieve the same result the same way.

Can you name the only baseball player to bat .382 in his last year in the major leagues? The first five readers who can will receive a free copy of my new book, Applied Economics.

Do you want to have to jump through bureaucratic hoops when you are sick? If not, why would you be in favor of government-run medical care?

The Wall Street Journal Report is one of the few things on television worth watching. It is worth it just to see the sardonic smile of Kimberly Strassel whenever she discusses politics.

Democrats could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.

Anyone who wants to understand the housing crisis without getting a headache from reading economic jargon should read the new book Financial Shock by Mark Zandi.

Human beings are going to make mistakes, whether in the market or in the government. The difference is that survival in the market requires recognizing mistakes and changing course before you go bankrupt. But survival in politics requires denying mistakes and sticking with the policies you advocated while blaming others for the bad results.

I know that there are still voices of sanity around because I have counted them—on one hand.

More frightening to me than any policy or politician is the ease with which the public is played for fools with words. The latest example is the “Employee Freedom of Choice Act,” a bill that will do away with secret-ballot elections among workers voting on whether to be represented by a union. It is an open invitation to intimidation—which is to say, loss of freedom of choice.

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.

One of the wonders of our times is how much more attention is paid to the living conditions of a bunch of cutthroats locked up in Guantanamo than to the leading international sponsor of terrorism getting nuclear weapons.

The great sense of urgency of the Obama administration to get legislation to authorize slow-moving spending projects may seem inconsistent. But the urgency is real, even if the reasons given are not. The worse-case scenario for the administration would be to have the economy begin to recover on its own before this massive spending bill is passed, reducing their chances of creating the kind of politically directed economy they want.

I realized how far behind the times I am when I saw a TV commercial for some weight-loss product, showing Marie Osmond “before” and “after.” I thought she looked great “before.”

War should of course be “a last resort”—but last in terms of preference, not last in the sense of hoping against hope while dangers grow and wishful thinking or illusory agreements substitute for serious military preparedness—or, if necessary, military action. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “If you wait until you see the whites of their eyes, you will never know what hit you.”

James Whitmore, 1921-2009

2009-02-06T18:52:00.006-06:00

Note: I loved the way he played the role of Brooks Hatlen in The Shawshank Redemption.

James Whitmore dies at 87; veteran award-winning actor was familiar to many as pitchman for Miracle-Gro

By Dennis McLellan

February 7, 2009

James Whitmore, the veteran Tony- and Emmy-winning actor who brought American icons Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt to life in one-man shows, died today. He was 87.

Whitmore died of lung cancer at his home in Malibu, said his son, Steve. He was diagnosed with the disease a week before Thanksgiving.

"He cared about acting; his whole life was dedicated to the theater and to movies," said actor David Huddleston, a longtime friend who appeared in Whitmore's 1964 movie "Black Like Me" and did a couple of plays with him. "I asked James Cagney one time to tell me the best thing you can about acting. He said never to get caught at it. That's kind of how I'd sum up Jim Whitmore."

James Arness, who appeared with Whitmore in the movies "Battleground" and "Them!," said Whitmore was "an actor's actor," adding that " it was always a treat to work with him."

Arness also remembered the "great intensity" Whitmore could bring to a role.

"When we wanted to get an actor to play a character who had that quality, Jimmy was the guy you'd think of," said Arness, who starred in "Gunsmoke," a TV series that Whitmore appeared on a number of times.

A stocky World War II Marine Corps veteran who bore a resemblance to actor Spencer Tracy and shared Tracy's down-to-earth quality, Whitmore earned early acclaim as an actor.

In 1948, he won a Tony Award for outstanding performance by a newcomer in the role of an amusingly cynical Army Air Forces sergeant in the Broadway production of "Command Decision."

Whitmore's Broadway success brought him to Hollywood, where he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in his second movie, the hit 1949 World War II drama "Battleground," in which he played a tobacco-chewing, battle-weary Army sergeant.

Supporting roles and occasional leads in some 50 movies followed over the next 50-plus years, including "The Asphalt Jungle," "Them!," "Kiss Me Kate," "Battle Cry," "Oklahoma!," "Planet of the Apes," "Tora! Tora! Tora!," "The Serpent's Egg," "Nuts," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Majestic."

A frequent guest actor on television, Whitmore also starred in three series: the 1960-62 legal drama "The Law and Mr. Jones," the 1969 detective drama "My Friend Tony" and the 1972-74 hospital sit-com "Temperatures Rising" (although he left after a year, he later said, "because it was just a series of jokes").

In 2000, Whitmore won an Emmy Award as outstanding guest actor in a drama series for "The Practice," and he received a 2003 Emmy nomination in the same category for "Mister Sterling."

An avid flower and vegetable gardener, Whitmore also was known to TV viewers as the longtime commercial pitchman for Miracle-Gro garden products.

Whitmore often said he found acting in films and television boring because of the long waits between scenes; his passion was for the theater, and he continued to act on stage throughout his long career.

"I've been very, very lucky," he said in a 2003 interview with the Nashville Tennessean. "The stage is human beings sharing something together -- flesh and blood together -- and the others are mechanical and shadows on the screen."

Although he starred in productions of plays such as "Our Town," "Inherit the Wind" and "Death of a Salesman," Whitmore was best known for his three one-man shows: as Truman in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," as Roosevelt in "Bully" and as Rogers in "Will Rogers' U.S.A."

The 1975 film of his performance in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" earned Whitmore a best actor Oscar nomination.

But the one-man-show character he said he "always felt most comfortable with" was Rogers.

"He was wise with a sense of humor, and that's an unbeatable combination," Whitmore told the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader in 2003.

He was initially resistant to the idea of playing the gum-chewing, lariat-twirling humorist -- his first one-man show -- when adapter-director Paul Shyre brought "Will Rogers' U.S.A." to him in 1969.

"I didn't think I could conceivably carry an evening by myself. I had difficulty holding the attention of my family," Whitmore recalled in a 1995 interview with The Times.

But any qualms he had disappeared when the show premiered in a small theater in Webster Groves, Mo., in January 1970.

"I realized immediately that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man," Whitmore told The Times. "I didn't realize that until I heard the response of other human beings to him."

Whitmore ultimately had about eight hours of Rogers' various comments about the topics of the day memorized, changing the show each time he did it.

"I tried to use whatever seemed to be of interest to the folks in the audience that day," he told the Tulsa World in 2001. "I took the news from today's newspaper but didn't change what Will Rogers said. It's amazing how little things have changed since Will was about."

Whitmore completed 30 years of on-and-off touring as Rogers at Ford's Theatre in Washington in 2000, and his costume is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.

Born in White Plains, N.Y., on Oct. 1, 1921, Whitmore later moved to Buffalo, N.Y., where he attended public schools until his senior year of high school, when he attended the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., on a football scholarship.

He was a pre-law major on an athletic scholarship at Yale University, but he had to quit playing football after suffering two knee injuries.

While at Yale, Whitmore helped launch the campus radio station.

"I was able to stay in school with a nightly sports show, 'Jim Whitmore Speaks,' with interviews and sports news. I made 40 bucks a week," he told the Tennessean in 2003.

With World War II underway, Whitmore joined the Marines during his senior year in 1942 and served in the South Pacific. After his discharge, he eventually moved to New York City and used the GI Bill to study acting at the American Theatre Wing.

In 1947, he married his first wife, Nancy Mygatt, with whom he had three children. They were divorced after 24 years. After Whitmore's second marriage in the 1970s, to actress Audra Lindley, he and his first wife were remarried but divorced after two years

Whitmore, who was an early student at the Actors Studio in New York in the late '40s, taught an acting workshop after moving to Hollywood. Among his students in the early '50s was young James Dean, whom Whitmore advised to go to New York.

"I owe a lot to Whitmore," Dean told Seventeen magazine in 1955. "One thing he said helped more than anything. He told me I didn't know the difference between acting as a soft job and acting as a difficult art."

For his part, Whitmore remained modest about his own acting talent.

"I never thought I was good," he told the Palm Beach Post in 2002. "I've touched the hem of the garment a few times but never grabbed it full-hand."

When he died Friday, Whitmore "was surrounded by what he considered to be the most important thing in his life, which was his family," his son Steve said.

In addition to his son, Whitmore is survived by his wife, Noreen; his sons James Jr. and Dan; eight grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Services are pending.

Inflation Explained to a 10 Year-Old

2008-12-02T18:25:00.003-06:00

The following letter was written by Beth Hoffman, the managing editor of The Freeman, which is the flagship publication of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Ms. Hoffman passed away on December 1 at the age of 58.

I think the following explanation of inflation, written in response to a letter from a 10 year-old, should be sent to the members of Congress for their education.

**********************************

A ten-year-old student's query to FEE about inflation drew this response from Beth Hoffman in 1981. It captures what so many people saw in her: her dedication to freedom and her eagerness to help others to understand.

Thank you for your letter, asking for information about inflation. The members of the staff here at The Foundation for Economic Education have been studying inflation for many years. We have published books and many articles about the subject. I will share with you some of the things I have learned.

Government causes inflation by printing lots of paper dollars. Many people believe that inflation is high prices. But actually inflation is the increase in the quantity of money. How does this increase lead to high prices?

Well, let's pretend that you're not happy with the allowance that your parents give you. You don't have enough money to buy all the bubble-gum, hamburgers, comics or toys that you want. Let's also suppose that you had a Magic Machine that could print all the dollars you wanted. (This is called counterfeiting and people go to jail for doing this. But just pretend that you could print as much money as you'd like.) Since you would have all the dollars from this Magic Machine you could spend as much as you like and would not have to worry about asking your family for a bigger allowance. When you're on a limited allowance you have to watch your pennies pretty carefully. But if you had a Magic Machine, you could be less careful with your dollars. You wouldn't have to choose between a new book and a pad of drawing paper. You could buy both and even more! This would be fine and dandy for a time.

But suppose your friends all had these Magic Machines or that you had so many dollars that you gave a lot of them to your friends. Well, if enough of you had loads of money to spend at the local candy store pretty soon something interesting would happen. The candy store owner has only a certain amount of bubblegum to sell. But suddenly, with you and other rich kids, there's a big demand for bubblegum! If he had only 5 packages of gum for sale and there were ten of you who wanted to buy it, any one of you might be willing to pay $10.00 or more for one package of gum. (Remember that back when you had only your allowance, you'd never pay that much for a little pack of gum!) Because of the bigger demand, the owner of the candy store might decide to ask a higher price for the gum -- and you will pay it because each of your dollars has lost some of its value. You may seem rich but your money has lost a lot of its buying power because there are others who also have lots of money and are rich.

In very simple terms, this is what our government has done. Through many decisions made by the officials in the government, there has been an increase in the number of dollars printed. There are just many more dollars -- paper dollars -- that don't buy as much as the old dollars did. (You've probably heard adults say, Gee, the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.)

The people in this country give the government its "allowance' by paying taxes. But taxes are not popular. So, rather than asking for a bigger allowance, that is, for higher taxes, the government tries something else. It prints money with a printing machine. And when the government does it, it's legal! Because it can legally print almost as many dollars as it wants, the government doesn't have to go to the people and say, "We need more money to pay soldiers and policemen and to buy all the things we want to give people." The officials can print more money to pay all their debts. And they can print more money to pay for lots of benefits for their friends. And if they can't print enough, they can ask for an "advance" on next year's "allowance." This way, people don't have to pay more taxes, the government can hand out goodies and everyone seems happy. But eventually everyone begins to realize that the dollars are not worth what they once were. And, just as with your Magic Money Machine, the government's money machine doesn't make everyone rich. Some people seem rich for a while. But when some of the people get some of the newly printed dollars, they bid prices up. Then many other people can't buy the things they want. And so on.

I'm enclosing some articles you might want to read, particularly one by Mr. Henry Hazlitt, “Inflation in One Page.” In different language, he says the same thing I've told you. When you are a bit older, you may also want to read Mr. Hazlitt's book called Economics in One Lesson. If you have any questions or would like some more information, please write to me. I will try my best to help.

Cordially,
Beth Hoffman

From David Wells, "The Courage to be Protestant" [2008]

2008-10-28T21:19:00.003-05:00

Note: If you haven't picked up this book, you need to put it on your reading list. [PI]

"A serious engagement with culture, though, is not what most evangelicals are about. What they want to know about the culture is simple and easy to understand. They want to know what the trends and fashions are that are ruffling the surface of contemporary life. They have no interest at all in what lies beneath the trends, none on how our modernized culture in the West shapes personal horizons, produces appetites, and provides us ways of processing the meaning of life. All of that seems like pretty complex and useless stuff. Pragmatists to the last drop of blood, these evangelicals are now in the cultural waters, not to understand what is there, but to get some movement. They are there with their surfboards trying to get a little forward motion as each tiny ripple makes its way toward the shore. This quest for success, which passes under the language of 'relevance,' is what is partitioning the evangelical world into its three segments [classical evangelicalism, marketers, emergents--PI]." [pp. 3, 4]

"The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liability in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the convenience of one's living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment. Few demands are made by television preachers, or on borrowed DVDs, and every pitch for a financial contribution is subject to death by the mute button. That cannot be said of the preacher in a church! This conquest by the market, accomplished silently and without any fanfare, has not only greatly diminished the church but, one has to say, has also greatly diminished what it means to be a Christian believer." [p. 11]

Krugman’s Posthumous Nobel [From the Krugman Truth Squad]

2008-10-14T09:44:00.001-05:00

Krugman’s Posthumous Nobel
This year’s prize in economics goes to an economist who died a decade ago.

By Donald Luskin

Prior to 2008 the Nobel Prize had never been awarded posthumously. So great minds such as John Maynard Keynes and Fischer Black never received the coveted award. But all that has changed. This year, the prize for economics is going to Paul Krugman, an economist who died a decade ago.

To clarify, the person named Paul Krugman, the living and breathing man who will accept the Nobel in Stockholm this December, is merely a public intellectual — a person operating in the same domain as, say, Oprah Winfrey.

The living Krugman’s rabidly liberal New York Times column has, for nine years now, traded on the dead Krugman’s reputation as an economist, a reputation that only will be burnished by the award of the Nobel Prize. Yet his column is pure politics, not economics. It is the equivalent of astronomers Mather and Smoot — the 2006 Nobelists in physics — writing on astrology.

This living Paul Krugman can’t be the same person as the dead economist. The dead economist wrote eloquently of the supreme importance of globalization and international trade as engines of prosperity. But the living public intellectual remains silent on these subjects when the Democratic party’s nominee for president threatens to abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

These days Krugman’s liberal agenda always takes precedence over economic principle. He has described himself as “an unabashed defender of the welfare state.” He has declared, “For me, Sweden of 1980 would be ideal.” He has called Barack Obama’s sweeping plan for socialized medicine “naïve” because it doesn’t contain enough mandates. He has said that “We should be getting 28% of GDP in [tax] revenue,” when the highest level ever collected, even in wartime, is less than 21 percent.

Krugman is entitled to such opinions, whether as a public intellectual or an economist. But there have been serious questions about his journalistic integrity — suggestions that the living Krugman has debased and corrupted the very science the dead Krugman did so much to advance.

In 1999 Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron as a consultant on its “advisory board,” and that same year he wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine. But he would change his tune. After Enron collapsed in 2001, Krugman wrote several columns excoriating the company. (One featured what may be the most absurd howler in the history of op-ed journalism: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.”) In most of these columns Krugman worked hard to link Enron to the Bush administration, and in one he actually blamed Enron’s consultants for the company’s collapse — while neglecting to mention that he, too, had been an Enron consultant.

Daniel Okrent, while ombudsman for the New York Times, wrote that “Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers.” Indeed. But Krugman’s distortions were so rampant, and his unwillingness to correct them so intransigent, that Okrent — no doubt pressured into service by my Krugman Truth Squad column for NRO — did something about it. Okrent forced the Times op-ed page to adopt for the first time a corrections policy for op-ed columnists. That was in 2004. Later, when Krugman flouted that policy, the Krugman Truth Squad went to work on Okrent’s successor, Byron Calame, who pressed for the adoption of a new, more stringent policy in 2005.

Krugman wasn’t happy about the pressure coming from the Krugman Truth Squad. After I met him in person at a lecture he gave in connection with one of his books, he smeared me on national television by saying, “that’s a guy who actually stalks me on the web, and once stalked me personally.”

That didn’t stop me from writing many more Krugman Truth Squad columns for NRO. But this one is the first in quite a while. I stopped not because I was afraid of Krugman’s defamations, but because I became aware that Krugman’s influence was waning.

Before the Times began to hold Krugman accountable for what he actually wrote in his columns, Krugman was having a powerful impact on the way public policy was being debated and decided. But no longer. Funny thing — it’s a lot harder to have a political impact when you can’t lie.

In this sense, Krugman is not only a dead economist. He’s also a dead propagandist.

With last year’s Nobel Peace Prize having gone to Al Gore, one has to wonder whether Krugman’s award is a left-leaning political statement, perhaps intended to revive Krugman’s influence. Probably not. In recent years several right-leaning economists have won the prize.

More likely, the Nobel committee decided deliberately to overlook Krugman’s political extremism, just as it chose to overlook John Nash’s schizophrenia in 1994. That’s not to say Krugman is crazy, though he has stated: “my economic theories have no doubt been influenced by my relationship with my cats.”

Whatever the committee was thinking, the only remaining question is what the living Paul Krugman will do with his $1.4 million prize. Will he pay taxes on it at the low rates established in 2003 by George W. Bush, a president and a policy that Krugman has worked so assiduously to discredit? Or will he voluntarily pay at the higher rates he advocates?

— Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm. He invites you to visit his blog and welcomes your comments at don@trendmacro.com.

Chicago City Sanitation Workers Loafing on the Job

2008-10-08T10:14:00.001-05:00

Chicago Inspector General Targets Garbage Crew Loafers

Posted by Dan Mihalopoulos at 10 a.m.

Workers on Chicago’s garbage pick-up crews spend about two hours a day loafing on the clock, according to a report released today by the city’s inspector general.

Between May and September, investigators for Inspector General David Hoffman spied on 77 garbage truck drivers and 145 laborers in 10 wards. They reported what they called "systemic, pervasive" waste and fraud.

In 10 weeks of surveillance, they "did not see a single laborer doing a full day’s work," according to the report.

"The investigators found a remarkably consistent pattern throughout all the wards," the report said. "Although the crews were well paid to work 8 full hours a day, on average they only worked less than six hours a day."

Assuming the same work habits by employees throughout the city, the report calculates that loafing on city garbage crews costs $14.3 million a year in lost wages. Add in worker benefits and equipment, and the loss grows to more than $20 million.

The negative attention could not come at a worse time for Streets and Sanitation Department employees. Facing a massive budget deficit, Mayor Richard Daley has warned that he may have no choice but to lay off more than 1,000 city workers, with 302 laborers targeted for dismissal.

You can read the full Inspector General report here:

Download ig_report_re_bureau_of_sanitation_10.7.08.pdf

Three years ago, in the wake of federal corruption scandals, Daley appointed Hoffman to a four-year term investigating wrongdoing by city employees. The new report marks an unusual effort for the office because it suggests reforms rather than calling for dismissal of workers.

Investigators allege that they observed employees who were at their post but not working as well as drivers and laborers who played hooky. The report placed the blame primarily on "extremely poor supervision."

"Any supervisor even mildly interested in ensuring that the truck crews ... were working full-time jobs would have noticed that employees were absent for long periods of time while swiped in, or were hanging around the ward yards or truck checkpoints without working—sometimes sleeping in their cars, sometimes loitering, sometimes taking long, leisurely lunches," the report said.

Hoffman declined to name the wards where his investigators conducted the undercover probe, but he said he turned over the findings to the mayor, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi, and aldermen of the 10 wards.

Hoffman’s report noted that the typical city truck driver makes $30.70 an hour, or $63,856 per year, while the average laborer is paid $28.92 an hour, or $60,154 per year. The perks include overtime, as much as five weeks of annual vacation, "excellent pension benefits" and full family health insurance.

According to testimony in the 2006 trial of Daley’s patronage chief, Robert Sorich, top city officials rigged hiring for coveted union posts—including openings for laborers and truck drivers—to favor campaign workers for the mayor and his endorsed candidates in other political races.

The report concluded that the city could cut its garbage-collecting workforce by 25 percent and still complete the same amount of work. But Hoffman said job cuts would be in vain unless the city takes action "to ensure that its workers are working a full day."

The report features vivid details that reinforce some of the worst stereotypes of city workers in Chicago.

On July 25, investigators say they witnessed several laborers in one ward drinking beer on city time. A two-man crew allegedly didn’t begin working until 6:42 a.m. and stopped for the day at 10:55 a.m., even though the shift wasn’t supposed to end until 2:30 p.m.

After spending more than 90 minutes at their homes, the laborers met up again, parked on the street and drank beer out of plastic cups with two laborers assigned to a different garbage truck in the same ward.

"One of the laborers was observed urinating on the street before driving to the ward [Streets and Sanitation] yard to swipe out," according to the report.

Russian Court Rehabilitates Last Czar

2008-10-01T10:22:00.001-05:00

October 2, 2008

Russian Court Rehabilitates Last Czar

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of full rehabilitation for Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, and his family, officially recognizing the executed royals as victims of Soviet repression 90 years after their deaths.

The ruling brings Russia closer than ever to public reconciliation with the execution, one of the most significant events in a bloody revolutionary period that led to more than 70 years of Soviet rule.

Nicholas II and the monarchy were reviled in official Soviet history. But since the fall of the Soviet Union they have increasingly come to be seen as important, if not positive, elements of Russia’s past.

Until Wednesday, however, the Russian government seemed hesitant on the question of rehabilitation because of the czar’s own repressive and bloody rule.

The ruling “recognizes their unfounded repression and rehabilitates the members of the royal family,” a spokesman for the court, Pavel Odintsov, said. “This is a final decision,” he said.

It is unclear why the court reversed its ruling made last November when it decided that the Romanov family was not eligible for rehabilitation because their execution was ordered in 1918 on criminal, not political grounds.

“This decision shows the supremacy of law and the victory of justice over evil and tyranny," said German Lukyanov, the lawyer for Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a descendant of the czar who first filed a suit for the rehabilitation of her family three years ago.

In July 1918, under Lenin’s orders, the czar, his wife, Aleksandra, and their children, Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia and the 13-year-old heir to the throne, Aleksei, were shot to death in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains in central Russia.

The killings by the fledgling Bolshevik government were meant to solidify its hold on power in the midst of an intensifying civil war.

The Romanovs’ bodies were likely doused in acid to mask their identities before being buried in secret graves. The remains of Nicholas and Aleksandra and three of their five children were discovered in 1991 in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and interred in a special chamber in St. Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral, where many other Russian royals are buried.

The remains of the czar’s two other children stayed hidden for another sixteen years, until in August 2007 an archeologist in Yekaterinburg unearthed bone fragments from a site not far from where the other Romanovs had been buried. Authorities announced earlier this year that DNA testing had confirmed that the remains belonged to the royal children, Aleksei and Maria.

Other members of the royal family had been rehabilitated previously. In 1999, four Romanov princes killed by the Bolsheviks, including the son of Aleksandr II — the Russian czar blown up by revolutionaries in 1881 — were found innocent of criminal wrong-doing.

But the reputation of the last czar, referred to as "Bloody Nicholas" in revolutionary propaganda, has been clouded by the brutality of his own reign, and by the famines, wars and social collapse that some historians claim he helped provoke.

Mr. Lukyanov said that in the coming months he would file suits on behalf of other Romanovs who have yet to be rehabilitated, including the czar’s brother, Mikhail, and several other members of the royal dynasty.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized the Romanovs as martyrs in 2000 and was itself subject to massive persecution by the Bolsheviks, welcomed Wednesday’s decision. "It is an important step to remove from our history the heavy burden of this crime against the czar’s family," said Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Church.

"In one way or another the perceptions of society toward Nicholas II and his family are changing,” he said. "More and more people are becoming free of the sharp clichés that were imposed in the recent past."

A.J. Pierzynski Defends Home Plate: September 30, 2008

2008-10-01T08:14:00.007-05:00

A.J. Pierzynski Defends Home Plate: September 30, 2008

Chicago White Sox Advance to Playoffs

2008-09-30T21:17:00.003-05:00

Jim Thome Homers in the 7th Inning;
White Sox Advance to Playoffs

Don't Sell America's Economy Short by Max Boot [LA Times]

2008-09-24T21:28:00.002-05:00

Don't Sell America's Economy Short
Despite the current financial crisis, there are many reasons to trust that the U.S. will, as always, rebound.

By Max Boot

September 24, 2008

A visiting Israeli Cabinet minister made two interesting points at a conference in Washington over the weekend. The current financial crisis, he said, is undermining the perception of American power when it comes to dealing with problems such as the Iranian nuclear program, Russian adventurism or the growing threat from Hamas and Hezbollah. Various actors around the world look at the U.S. and see a crippled giant. That reduces incentives to make concessions to Washington.

That problem is real, but so is the additional sentiment that he expressed after having been here for a few days. The economic woes of the U.S., he found, are not as readily apparent up close as they are in sensational media coverage abroad.

So far, Main Street has shown a surprising amount of resiliency given the problems of Wall Street. Even if the economy eventually succumbs to recession, as now appears more likely, it will bounce back before long. It always has.

There have been plenty of crises in the past -- the stagflation and oil-price spikes of the 1970s, the savings and loan debacle and soaring trade and budget deficits of the 1980s, the popping of the dot-come bubble and the terrorist attacks in the early 2000s -- that led many observers to predict that the United States would soon go the way of Rome.

What the pessimists ignore is that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. Indeed, the World Economic Forum has ranked the United States as the world's most competitive economy for the last two years. (The new survey comes out next month.) Its statistics show that per-capita gross domestic product in the U.S. consistently has grown faster than in other developed economies since 1980.

Looking deeper at the causes of American competitiveness shows that we score especially strongly not only in domestic market size (No. 1 in the world) but also in such areas as time required to start a business (No. 3), venture capital availability (No. 1), the cost of firing an employee (No. 1), ownership of personal computers (No. 2), university/industry research collaboration (No. 1) and quality of scientific research institutions (No. 2). The availability of venture capital might be affected temporarily by the market turmoil, and we should worry if Democrats gain control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in November because they might exacerbate what the survey found to be the two most "problematic" issues for doing business in the U.S. -- high tax rates and cumbersome tax regulations.

But whatever happens in the next few months, most of the other advantages that have been powering the U.S. economy forward for decades will remain unchanged.

So too will another vital statistic: population growth. According to federal statistics, the fertility rate in the U.S., where each woman has on average 2.1 children, is now the highest among major industrialized economies. We are above replacement level while Europe, Japan and other industrialized economies have long been beneath it. That means that, even as our major competitors have to cope with graying populations, declining productivity and increasing pension costs, our population will remain relatively youthful and vibrant, notwithstanding the retirement of the baby boomers. This advantage is enhanced by our ability to attract and integrate hardworking immigrants from around the world.

America's competitors display other weaknesses that become apparent in times of crisis. As Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson noted over the weekend in the Washington Post, while the U.S. stock market has declined roughly 18% this year, China has seen a fall of 48% and Russia of 55%. "These figures are not very good advertisements for the more regulated, state-led economic models favored in Beijing and Moscow," he wrote.

Although the current crisis exposes vulnerabilities in the American financial system, it also shows one of our greatest strengths: the ability of our politicos to cross party lines and formulate a decisive response in a time of crisis. We saw that kind of bipartisan action after 9/11, and there is a good chance that we will see it now -- assuming that lawmakers can agree on a bailout package that makes sense.

Contrast that with Japan's dithering, delayed response after its real estate and stock market bubbles burst in 1990. A sclerotic political system dragged out its recovery for more than a decade and put paid to predictions -- heard so often in the 1980s -- that Japan would supplant the U.S. as the world's economic powerhouse.

Given America's record of resiliency, it would be foolish to "short" our prospects based on recent turmoil. The smart money will stay "bullish on America," even if that was Merrill Lynch's slogan before its downfall.

Of Interventions and Conservative Principles [National Review]

2008-09-24T13:47:00.001-05:00

Of Interventions and Conservative Principles
Is the $700 billion authority necessary? Will it work? Is it morally justifiable?

By Donald Luskin

What’s a principled conservative to think of the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion authority to allow the U.S. Treasury buy illiquid securities? On the one hand it would appear to be a necessary step to solve a systemic crisis in the U.S. banking system. On the other, it promises to be an enormous expansion of government power and commitment of taxpayer dollars.

To arrive at a principled view on this intervention, we must answer three critical questions: Is it necessary? Will it work? And even then, is it morally justifiable?

Unfortunately, we are thwarted at the outset. There’s simply no objective way to know whether the banking system is as close to disaster as top officials at the Treasury and Federal Reserve claim. They themselves don’t really know. This is a “banking crisis,” they say. But then again, other politicians claim there is a “health care crisis,” an “immigration crisis,” an “energy crisis,” and so on.

There’s no doubt that there is serious turmoil in the banking system and financial markets. But that doesn’t mean the proposed extraordinary intervention by the government in private markets is justified, considering that throughout history we have periodically gone through convulsions worse than today’s and survived them without such interventions.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation there have been 15 bank failures in the U.S. between 2007 and today. We had thousands over a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since the stock market hit an all-time high last October, the S&P 500 has fallen 23 percent. It fell more than twice that — 49 percent — during the last bear market, between March 2000 to October 2002.

Even if you grant that this really is a “crisis,” and that it justifies an extraordinary intervention, there can be no doubt that the $700 billion authority being sought for the purchase of distressed mortgage-related securities is far too great an amount. Of the $1.26 trillion in non-prime mortgages — that is, “sub-prime” and “Alt-A” mortgages — $743 billion is already either owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, companies that were shored up by a government rescue earlier this month. That leaves $521 billion, which means the Treasury’s $700 billion would be more than enough to buy them all. And that’s even if the Treasury paid full value. In fact, the Treasury will get a steep discount, considering that many of the mortgages in question are in delinquency or default. Does the Treasury really have to buy every single non-prime mortgage — even the healthy ones — twice over?

And if the Treasury’s authority were scaled down to something more in proportion to the size of the asset market it claims to address — say $350 billion — must that authority be granted all those dollars at once? Couldn’t we start with $100 billion and see how it goes, and go back later for more if necessary?

In order to restore confidence in these shaky markets, there’s no doubt the administration would claim that its commitment must be both large and irrevocable. But considering the enormous powers being vested in the discretion of a single unelected official — the Treasury secretary — markets may also find solace in the idea that there will be an accountable process for learning from mistakes and making appropriate corrections.

Which brings us to the next question: Will it work?

Nobody knows. On the face of it, it is plausible that the banking system could be reinvigorated by having unwanted assets taken off its books. With those assets gone, and replaced by government cash, banks could stop worrying about the bad decisions of the past and get back to the business of financing investment and consumption in the American economy.

Yet there is ample room for doubt. The officials advocating this — Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke — are the same ones who, in similar haste, engineered interventions this year in the collapses of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and American International Group. With each intervention the banking crisis has gotten progressively more severe. Experts differ on this, but it is my professional judgment that these interventions actually made matters worse, because of the unintended consequences that were nearly impossible to forecast at the moment of decision. We simply cannot know what unintended consequences might be unleashed in the process of a massive acquisition of mortgage assets by the federal government.

And it is a false comfort to compare the proposed $700 billion purchase authority to the Resolution Trust Corporation, the government program of the early 1990s that was created in the aftermath of the savings-and-loan crisis. The RTC was quite successful in managing the assets of insolvent banks and thrifts, and the administration’s current proposal bears little resemblance to it.

The present proposal is primarily about the government acquisition of unwanted assets from solvent banks. The RTC acquired its assets automatically when thousands of banks and thrifts became insolvent and fell under receivership by the FDIC and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. There were no troubling ethical questions about which assets would be acquired, from whom, in what priority order, and, most critically, at what price. All the RTC had to worry about was eventually selling the assets it already had.

And assuming that it is necessary, and assuming that it is likely to work, is this epoch-making intervention in private markets morally justifiable? Die-hard conservatives — especially deficit-hawks and free-market libertarians — would say no. But some mitigating circumstances should be considered.

It seems at first blush that spending $700 billion to buy mortgage-related securities would be a budget buster. But remember, this is not government “spending.” It is government “investment.” The Treasury would issue bonds, pay a low interest rate on those bonds, and use the proceeds to buy mortgage-related bonds that pay a high interest rate and can probably be sold at a profit in the future.

It also seems at first blush that the government ought to not bail out banks that made terrible investments they now regret. But remember, many of these bad investments were the result of government meddling. Would we be experiencing a sharp housing downturn, and a wave of mortgage defaults, if the Federal Reserve had not created a housing bubble and a mortgage bubble in the first place by artificially lowering interest rates to 1 percent in 2003 and 2004? And how much was the housing bubble inflated by the highly leveraged mortgage buying spree of government-sponsored and government-influenced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Shouldn’t the government shoulder some responsibility for its own mistakes?

As the week goes on, and as more details become known about the form the intervention legislation will take, it could be that the principled conservative who supports the administration’s plan today will find that he must ultimately oppose it. It’s hard to object to calls by Democrats for more oversight and accountability. But the Democrats are threatening to poison the legislation as they attempt to grab equity stakes from, and control executive compensation at, the companies that would sell securities to the Treasury under the program. And they are larding the program with pork to further subsidize the already heavily subsidized housing industry, turning some of what should be government investment into government spending.

In the end, each principled conservative will have to use his or her own judgment to weigh the imponderables here and come to a conclusion, yeah or nay. As of this writing, I’m inclined to support the administration’s proposal, although I wish it could be made smaller, at least at the outset.

One thing I know for sure: While the administration and Congress wrangle over the details, markets will continue to flail. It’s going to be a rocky week. Let’s hope it has a happy ending.

When Philosophers Play Soccer

2008-09-23T20:39:00.004-05:00

International Philosophy: Germany vs. Greece

Flooding in Munster, Indiana: September 13-14, 2008

2008-09-16T10:28:00.002-05:00

Flooding in Munster, Indiana: September 13-14, 2008.

Palin's Small-town Ways will Play Big Across U.S. [John Kass]

2008-09-04T10:26:00.001-05:00

Palin's small-town ways will play big across U.S.
John Kass

10:37 PM CDT, September 3, 2008

ST. PAUL — Sarah Joan of Arc isn't as catchy as Sarah Barracuda, yet even so, the throng called for her to lead them, an unknown from the edge of nowhere, a woman with no experience in the great city of light.

So Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the conservative running mate for Sen. John McCain, hit the necessary themes in the most anticipated speech of the Republican convention: pummeling the high priests of the Washington media establishment, pushing for oil drilling in the wilderness even though the Democrats don't like it, and promising political reform while reveling in her small-town ways.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin told the delegates. "And I've learned quickly these last few days, that if you are not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the great people of this country."

Despite the Republican spin, Palin is a political animal, a real human with the capacity for ambition and revenge and all that comes with it, including all the flaws. As I mentioned a few days ago, she is not some plaster saint to be venerated, not a Mother Teresa with a Buck knife. Her record and her background must be fully investigated if she is to be a heartbeat from the presidency, and her conflicts examined, like those of Joe Biden and his son the lobbyist.

But there's been a zeal to the Palin media vetting. Reporters here have acted like perturbed clerks, snippy that established procedure wasn't followed when McCain surprised them with Palin. Perhaps he should have gone to a party at Sally Quinn's house and asked for opinions. Years ago, McCain might have done so, back when he shamelessly sucked up to the press, but they've left him for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and they're not coming back. So McCain had no obligation to go through that ridiculous pantomime expected by some in my business, who think politicians actually give a rat's ears about sitting down and consulting with journalists.

And there's that family issue with Palin. Her 17-year-old daughter is unmarried and pregnant. Palin herself has a 4-month-old infant with special needs. The suggestion has been made that if she's such a good mom, she should stay home with her family rather than run with McCain. If Palin were a Democrat, such talk would be grounds for serious shunning. But Palin is a conservative. She receives no such protection.

She also poses the greatest threat yet to the Obama reform narrative. The cynical epic has become the establishment media bedtime story, with Obama as the young King Arthur riding forth to promise change. In this, the Washington Beltway media colony has been his eager Merlin, hoping to guide him, cleaving desperately to the theme that he's some kind of reformer, even though Obama is a politician backed by Chicago's Daley machine and never once challenged the political corruption in Chicago and Illinois. Not ever.

The contrast with Palin—who actually went after the Republican Party bosses in Alaska on the corruption issue—is profound and challenging for the Obama-friendly media that willfully ignore his lack of leadership on the reform front, yet are consumed to find out if Palin has an overdue library book.

In her speech, Palin also pulled an old political trick, publicly reveling in what is considered a deficit—that she's from a tiny town, almost as far as geographically possible from the sophisticated salons of Washington. Electoral vote-rich Pennsylvania and Ohio don't have salons either, but they do have small towns.

The Republicans will remind them relentlessly in the weeks ahead that former community organizer Obama—in a foolish display of ego—said that small-town folk deal with an uncertain world by clinging to their guns and their religion.

"I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA . . . because I wanted to make my kids' public education better," said the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,471). "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Expect Palin to knock squirrels out of trees across Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with other critters, fur and feathered. Unlike other candidates, she'll probably do her own shooting and skinning, and maybe roast them on sticks, with a pinch of salt, demanding reporters eat some, so they can say it tastes like chicken.

St. Joan was a threat to the established order, and Palin is being positioned as a threat. Unfortunately, the French handed Joan over to the English, and she was burned. I don't think we know yet what happens to Sarah.

My Favorite Olympic Moment

2008-08-15T08:58:00.001-05:00

My favorite Olympic moment:

A Victory for the 2nd Amendment

2008-06-26T11:54:00.003-05:00

Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has delivered a brilliant defense of the 2nd Amendment in the recent SCOTUS case, District of Columbia v. Heller.

You can read the majority opinion here.

Now watch the rage from the Left.

10 Concerns About Barack Obama [National Review]

2008-06-25T08:56:00.002-05:00

10 Concerns about Barack Obama
It's policy.

By William J. Bennett & Seth Leibsohn

1. Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history. For at least the past five years, Democrats and liberals have said our standing in the international community has suffered from a “cowboy” or “go-it-alone” foreign policy. While politicians with favorable views of our president have been elected in Germany, Italy, France, and elsewhere, Barack Obama is giving cause to make our allies even more nervous. This past Sunday’s Washington Post reported, “European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.”

Barack Obama’s stance toward Iran is as troubling as it is dangerous. By stating and maintaining that he would negotiate with Iran, “without preconditions,” and within his first year of office, he will give credibility to, and reward for his intransigence, the head of state of the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism. Such a meeting will also undermine and send the exact wrong signal to Iranian dissidents. And, he will lower the prestige of the office of the president: In his own words he stated, “If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time.” Not only has his stance toward Iran caused concern among our allies in Europe, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton called it, “Irresponsible and frankly naïve.”

Barack Obama’s position on negotiating with U.S. enemies betrays a profound misreading of history. In justifying his position that he would meet with Iran without precondition and in his first year of office, Barack Obama has said, “That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; that’s what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev.”

In reverse order, Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirety of his first term in office, not (ever) with Brezhnev, not (ever) with Andropov, not (ever) with Chernenko. He met only with Gorbachev, and after he was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader — and after Perestroika, not before.

If Barack Obama wants to affiliate with Richard Nixon, that’s certainly his call. But one question: Was Taiwan’s expulsion from the U.N. worth “Nixon to China”? That was the price of that meeting.

As for the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit of 1961, Kennedy himself said “He beat the hell out of me.” As two experts recently wrote in the New York Times: “Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was ‘just a disaster.’ Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed ‘very inexperienced, even immature.’ Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was ‘too intelligent and too weak.’ The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.”

So successful was the summit that the Berlin Wall was erected later that year and the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Soviets deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba, commenced the following year.

2. Barack Obama’s Iraq policy will hand al-Qaeda a victory and undercut our entire position in the Middle East, while at the same time put a huge source of oil in the hands of terrorists. Barack Obama brags on his website that “In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.” His website further states that “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” This, at the very time our greatest successes in Iraq have taken place. And yet, as Gen. David Petraeus has stated (along with other military experts from Michael O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institution to members of the U.S. military), our progress in Iraq is “fragile and reversible.”

Obama’s post-invasion analysis of Iraq is anything but credible or consistent, leading one to even greater doubt about his strategy as commander-in-chief. When President Bush announced the surge strategy in January 2007, Barack Obama opposed it, saying it “would not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly,” and that “the President’s strategy will not work.” Of course, the surge is one of the greatest achievements in Iraq since the initial months of the invasion, and is has reversed much of the loss suffered since the invasion.

Beyond these miscalculations and poor judgment on Iraq strategy, Obama has been anything but consistent on Iraq. For example, the same year (2007) he stated it would be a good idea to bring home the U.S. troops from Iraq within March of 2008, three months later he stated, we should bring them home “immediately…. Not in six months or one year — now.”

3. Barack Obama has sent mixed, confusing, and inconsistent messages on his policy toward Israel. Earlier this month, Barack Obama told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The next day, Obama backtracked, stating: “Obviously, it’s [Jerusalem] going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues…And Jerusalem will be part of the negotiations.” Later, Obama’s Middle East adviser tried to explain the flipping of positions on Jerusalem by stating Obama did not understand what he was saying to AIPAC: “[h]e used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East.”

Such quick switches of policy may stem from mere inexperience or they may stem from a general tone-deafness on the meaning of words and policy when it comes to the Middle East. After all, earlier this year, a leading Hamas official endorsed Barack Obama stating, “I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle. And he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance.” Rather than immediately renouncing such an endorsement, Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, embraced the endorsement, saying “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.” Given Barack Obama’s long-standing ties to Palestinian activists in the U.S., one has good cause to wonder.

4. While his Mideast policy may have been the quickest turnaround or flip-flop on a major issue, it is not the only one. In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues. During the primary, Obama sent out a campaign flier that said “Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA,” and called it a “bad trade deal.” He also said NAFTA was “devastating,” “a big mistake,” and in what the Washington Post labeled as a unilateral threat to withdraw from NAFTA, Obama said “I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage.”

No longer. Recently, Barack Obama backtracked on NAFTA and said, “I’m not a big believer in doing things unilaterally.” “I’m a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.” He explained his primary campaign opposition this way: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.”

This is of a piece with his further change of position on public campaign financing. As a primary candidate, he touted his support for the public financing of presidential campaigns, but then witnessing his own fundraising prowess, as a general election candidate he has gone the unique route of forswearing the system. As David Brooks put it in the New York Times:

Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system. But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck.

5. Barack Obama’s judgment about personal and professional affiliations is more than troubling. On March 18, after several clips of sermons by his longtime friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright surfaced (showing Wright condemning the United States with vitriolic comparisons and denunciations), Obama defended his friend stating: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” After Rev. Wright delivered two more talks along the same lines as the clips that led to the March 18 speech, Sen. Obama finally denounced Wright the following month, stating: “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.” “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs,” he said.

It strained credulity to believe Obama was unaware of Wright’s previous rants — especially after a 20-year membership in Wright’s church, especially when in February of last year Obama asked Wright not to attend his campaign announcement because he “could get kind of rough in sermons,” and especially when his church’s magazine honored on its front cover such a man as Louis Farrakhan. Nonetheless, once he ceased being a political asset and turned into a political liability, Obama dumped him.

Jeremiah Wright is, of course, not the only person close to Barack Obama who holds vitriolic anti-American views. Bill Ayers was a founding member of the Weather Underground. According to his own memoir, Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. As recently as 2001, Ayers said “I don’t regret setting bombs….I feel we didn’t do enough.’’ When asked if he would engage in such terrorism again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.” When confronted with his friendship with Bill Ayers, Barack Obama dismissed the negative connections saying he is also friendly with abortion opponent U.S. Senator Tom Coburn. While Obama has never, himself, discussed his relationship with Ayers, what we do know is that Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama in his home and, according to the Los Angeles Times:

Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama’s aides….

Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to the group’s president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago, records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

6. Obama is simply out of step with how terrorists should be handled; he would turn back the clock on how we fight terrorism, using the failed strategy of the 1990s as opposed to the post-9/11 strategy that has kept us safe. The most recent example is his support for the Supreme Court decision granting habeas-corpus rights to terrorists, including — theoretically — Osama bin Laden. When the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was delivered, Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.” His campaign advisers held a conference call where they claimed the Supreme Court decision was “no big deal” according to ABC News, even if applied to Osama bin Laden, because a judge would find that the U.S. has “ample grounds to hold him.”

In a recent interview, Obama stated: “What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’”

Ask the legal officials during the 1990s just how cowed terrorists were by our continued indictments against them. Or, witness the bombings at the African embassies, the attack on the USS Cole, or the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, ask yourself why we have not been attacked since 9/11, and, even more specifically, why there have been no successful attacks against American civilian interests abroad since 2004.

7. Barack Obama’s economic policies would hurt the economy. As Kimberly Strassel recently put it in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama is hawking a tax policy that would take the nation back to the effective marginal tax rates of the Carter days. He wants to further tax income, payroll, capital gains, dividends and death. His philosophy is pure redistribution.”

When Barack Obama speaks of taxing only the wealthy, keep in mind this could have a devastating effect on new small businesses. As Irwin Stelzer has written: “Taxes change behavior. By raising rates on upper income payers, Obama is reducing their incentive to work and take risks. The income tax increase is not all that he has in mind for them. He plans to increase their payroll taxes, the taxes they pay on dividends received and capital gains earned, and on any transfers they might have in mind to their kith and kin when they shuffle off this mortal coil. If the aggregate of these additional taxes substantially diminishes incentives to set up a small business of the sort that has created most of the new jobs in recent decades, the $1,000 tax rebate will be more than offset by the consequences of reduced growth and new business formation.”

8. Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices. While Barack Obama has opposed off-shore drilling and a gas-tax holiday (as supported by John McCain or Hillary Clinton), his solution to our energy crisis does include additional tax burdens on oil company profits, taxes we can only imagine will be passed on to the consumer, thus causing an even more expensive trip to the gas station. As the New York Times recently detailed, ethanol subsidies are a major plank in Barack Obama’s view of energy independence and national security; the “Obama Camp is Closely Linked with Ethanol,” and “Mr. Obama…favors [ethanol] subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax.”

9. Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life. As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, a law that would have protected babies if they survived an attempted abortion and were delivered alive. When a similar bill was proposed in the United States Senate, it passed unanimously and even the National Abortion Rights Action League issued a statement saying they did not oppose the law.

10. Barack Obama is actually to the left of every member of the U.S. Senate. According to the National Journal, “Sen. Barack Obama…was the most liberal senator in 2007.” As the magazine reported: “The ratings system — devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal — also assigns ‘composite’ scores, an average of the members’ issue-based scores. In 2007, Obama’s composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden (D., Del.), with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), with a 92.8.”

Whom will a man this far left appoint to the Supreme Court?

Obituary: Henry Chadwick, Church Historian [1920-2008]

2008-06-19T09:30:00.001-05:00

Henry Chadwick
He was a leading Anglican scholar and strove for ecumenicalism

"The Anglican church," it was said, "may not have a Pope, but it does have Henry Chadwick." Nothing could better illustrate the unique position held for many years by this aristocrat among Anglican scholars, who has died aged 87. His erudition was legendary, in practically all areas of the study of late antiquity, but it was also deployed to memorable effect in the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

Many sensed that the more recent history of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations was a source of some sadness to him. He had little love either for radical fashions in theology or for the fierce neoconservatism characteristic of some parts of the Roman Catholic church in recent decades. He represented that earlier and more hopeful phase, begun and aborted in the 1920s at the Malines conversations (named after the French spelling of the Belgian city of Mechelen where they were held), where Anglicans and Roman Catholics discovered unexpected common ground in the study of the fathers of the church and in a deep but unobtrusive liturgical piety.

In that first spring of ecumenicalism exchange, continental Catholic scholars came to regard Armitage Robinson, dean of Wells, as the summation of everything admirable in Anglican devotion and learning. In that respect, Henry was undoubtedly Robinson's heir. It often seemed that, at any major ecumenical gathering, some representative of a foreign communion would sudddenly wax eloquent about what Henry was and represented. And, as a devout savant of the kind he was, he might be said at times to have reminded Anglicanism of its better self.

He once proclaimed ecumenism "a good cause to die for", and was certainly deeply committed to finding consensus - not by coining a conveniently vague formula, but by a real excavation of common first principles. On matters where this seemed utterly elusive - such as the debates over women's ordination - he felt, I think, impotent and frustrated. He had no relish at all for conflict, even for the gentlemanly blood sport of academic controversy. His learned work is notably short on open war with other scholars, even where it is advancing new and potentially controversial conclusions. The fastidiousness made some of his professional life very hard.

Henry was born in Bromley, Kent, into an accomplished, academic family. His father, John, was a leading barrister; his elder brother, Owen, became an authority on ecclesiastical history. Educated as a king's scholar at Eton, Henry became a music scholar at Magdalene College, Cambridge - he retained a lifelong passion for music in general and church music in particular - while also studying divinity at Ridley Hall.

He graduated in 1941 and became a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1946 following a short spell as assistant master at Wellington school, Somerset. At a relatively young age he moved from Cambridge to take up the regius chair of divinity at Oxford in 1959, which he occupied with distinction for 10 years.

Henry had already established himself in the field with a superb translation of an early work of Christian apologetic, Origen's Contra Celsum (1953), and had assumed the editorship of the Journal of Theological Studies (1954-85). More books, and a steady stream of papers, followed his move to Oxford, including works on Sextus and St Hippolytus.

In 1969, however, he paid the price of having won the trust and affection of his college when he was appointed dean of Christ Church. The scholarship never dried up, and Henry became a venerated figure on a wider stage, presiding with inimitable grace and dignity in his cathedral. But the college went through some contentious and bad-tempered times, and he was much worn down by the storms of donnish ego that swirl around every Oxbridge institution. He suffered, too, from the last relics of old-style anti-clericalism in Christ Church. Altogether these cannot be said to have been happy years, though in 1976 he produced a widely admired study of the little-known early Christian figure and heretic, Priscillian of Avila.

His move back to Cambridge in 1979, to the other regius chair of divinity, which he occupied until 1983, was clearly a relief. In Cambridge his lectures were as popular as ever with a new generation of undergraduates, and still more substantial research saw the light of day. When in 1987 he was persuaded out of retirement to become master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, the experience did something to redeem the memories of running a college. He was more manifestly at home than he had been in the deanship, and was universally seen to have steered this college into calm waters by the time he left the post in 1993.

Henry was a profoundly shy and private man for all the generous hospitality that he and his wife Margaret "Peggy" Browning, a constant, "lively, intelligent and warm-hearted support" whom he married in 1945, offered in all their various homes. The dislike of confrontation could lead not only to the almost incredibly judicious and Olympian style of conversation (beautifully and affectionately caught by JIM Stewart in his "Surrey" novels about Christ Church, where the provost is clearly drawn from Chadwickian life), but at times to a real unwillingness to express commitments - on matters of learned detail, on issues in contemporary theology, on public affairs - and some found this tantalising, to say the least. Yet its positive fruit was shown in the results of the Anglican-Roman Catholic conversations, where his hugely resourceful reticence somehow drew out possibilities of reconciliation.

Many (sometimes surprising) names from all over the globe will bear witness to his unfailing kindness to, and encouragement of, younger scholars. The innate shyness behind the massive and majestic public and academic presence meant that there was never a "school" of Chadwick disciples. But, if anything, this meant that his mark was more widely imprinted.

No one could replace Henry and no one will. The Anglican church no longer shows so clearly the same combination of rootedness in the early Christian tradition and unfussy, prayerful pragmatism, and the ecumenical scene is pretty wintry with less room for the distinctive genius of another Chadwick. But the work done stays done, and it is there to utilise in more hospitable times.

But, meanwhile, there can be no doubt that Henry will be remembered as one of the most influential and admired Anglicans of the century, in church and academy alike.

He is survived by Peggy and their three daughters, Priscilla, Hilary and Juliet.

· Henry Chadwick, theologian, born June 23 1920; died June 17 2008

WWII Vet Who Earned Medal of Honor at 17 Dies

2008-06-05T12:06:00.001-05:00

WWII vet who earned Medal of Honor at 17 dies

By CHRIS TALBOTT
Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Jack Lucas, who at 14 lied his way into military service during World War II and became the youngest Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, died Thursday in a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital. He was 80.

Lucas had been battling cancer. Ponda Lee at Moore Funeral Service said the funeral home was told he died before dawn.

Jacklyn "Jack" Lucas was just six days past his 17th birthday in February 1945 when his heroism at Iwo Jima earned him the nation's highest military honor. He used his body to shield three fellow squad members from two grenades, and was nearly killed when one exploded.

"A couple of grenades rolled into the trench," Lucas said in an Associated Press interview shortly before he received the medal from President Truman in October 1945. "I hollered to my pals to get out and did a Superman dive at the grenades. I wasn't a Superman after I got hit. I let out one helluva scream when that thing went off."

He was left with more than 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body and in every major organ and endured 26 surgeries in the months after Iwo Jima.

He was the youngest serviceman to win the Medal of Honor in any conflict other than the Civil War.

"By his inspiring action and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice, he not only protected his comrades from certain injury or possible death but also enabled them to rout the Japanese patrol and continue the advance," the Medal of Honor citation said.

In the AP interview, written as a first-person account under his name, he recalled the months he spent in a hospital.

"Soon as I rest up, I imagine I'll run for president," the story concluded. "Ain't I the hero, though?"

Big for his age and eager to serve, Lucas forged his mother's signature on an enlistment waiver and joined the Marines at 14. Military censors discovered his age through a letter to his 15-year-old girlfriend.

"They had him driving a truck in Hawaii because his age was discovered and they threatened to send him home," said D.K. Drum, who wrote Lucas' story in the 2006 book "Indestructible."

"He said if they sent him home, he would just join the Army."

Lucas eventually stowed away aboard a Navy ship headed for combat in the Pacific Ocean. He turned himself in to avoid being listed as a deserter and volunteered to fight, and the officers on board allowed him to reach his goal of fighting the Japanese.

"They did not know his age. He didn't give it up and they didn't ask," Drum said.

Born in Plymouth, N.C., on Feb. 14, 1928, Lucas was a 13-year-old cadet captain in a military academy when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

"I would not settle for watching from the sidelines when the United States was in such desperate need of support from its citizens," Lucas said in "Indestructible." "Everyone was needed to do his part and I could not do mine by remaining in North Carolina."

After the war, Lucas earned a business degree from High Point University in North Carolina and raised, processed and sold beef in the Washington, D.C., area. In the 1960s, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper, Drum said, to conquer his fear of heights. On a training jump, both of his parachutes failed.

"He was the last one out of the airplane and the first one on the ground," Drum said.

He was diagnosed with a form of leukemia in April and spent his last days in the hospital with family and friends, including his wife, Ruby, standing vigil.

Congratulations, Detroit Red Wings

2008-06-04T23:34:00.006-05:00

The Detroit Red Wings are the 2007-2008 Stanley Cup champions.

This official photo of Detroit Red Wings left wing Darren McCarty says it all.

Got to love these guys!

On This Day in 325: The First Council of Nicea

2008-05-20T09:14:00.002-05:00

On this day in 325 the First Council of Nicea was convened by Emperor Constantine in an attempt to address the heretical teachings of Arius. Other topics were addressed as well, including the validity of baptisms performed by heretics.

You can read more about this important ecumenical Council here.

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

2008-05-13T11:44:00.002-05:00

May 14, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82.

He died of heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the artist's gallery in Manhattan.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated. “I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

The remark reflected the optimism and generosity of spirit that Mr. Rauschenberg became known for. His work was likened to a Saint Bernard: uninhibited and mostly good-natured. He could be the same way in person. When he became rich, he gave millions of dollars to charities for women, children, medical research, other artists and Democratic politicians.

A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, he had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that nevertheless masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did. Having begun by making quirky small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan, he spent increasing time in his later years, after he had become successful and famous, on vast international, ambassadorial-like projects and collaborations.

Conceived in his immense studio on the island of Captiva, Fla., these projects were of enormous size and ambition; for many years he worked on a project that grew literally to exceed the length of its title, “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece.” They generally did not live up to his earlier achievements. Even so, he maintained an equanimity toward the results. Protean productivity went along with risk, he believed, and risk sometimes meant failure.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

This attitude also inclined him, as the painter Jack Tworkov once said, “to see beyond what others have decided should be the limits of art.”

He “keeps asking the question — and it’s a terrific question philosophically, whether or not the results are great art,” Tworkov said, “and his asking it has influenced a whole generation of artists.”

That generation was the one that broke from Pollock and company. Mr. Rauschenberg maintained a deep but mischievous respect for these Abstract Expressionist heroes like de Kooning and Barnett Newman. Famously, he once painstakingly erased a drawing by de Kooning, an act both of destruction and devotion. Critics regarded the all-black paintings and all-red paintings he made in the early 1950s as spoofs of de Kooning and Pollock. The paintings had roiling, bubbled surfaces made from the torn scraps of newspapers embedded in paint.

But these were just as much homages as they were parodies. De Kooning, himself a parodist, had incorporated bits of newspapers as flotsam in pictures, and Pollock stuck cigarette butts to canvases.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s “Automobile Tire Print,” from the early 50’s — resulting from Cage’s driving an inked tire of a Model A Ford over 20 sheets of white paper — poked fun at Newman’s famous “zip” paintings.

At the same time, Mr. Rauschenberg was expanding on Newman’s art. The tire print transformed Newman’s zip — an abstract line against a monochrome backdrop with spiritual pretensions — into an artifact of everyday culture, which for Mr. Rauschenberg had its own transcendent dimension.

Mr. Rauschenberg frequently alluded to cars and spaceships, even incorporating real tires and bicycles, into his art. This partly reflected his own restless, peripatetic imagination. The idea of movement was logically extended when he took up dance and performance.

There was, beneath this, a darkness to many of his works, notwithstanding their irreverence. “Bed” was gothic. The all-black paintings were solemn and shuttered. The red paintings looked charred, with strips of fabric, akin to bandages, from which paint dripped, like blood. “Interview,” which resembled a cabinet or closet with a door, enclosing photographs of toreros, a pinup, a Michelangelo nude, a fork and a softball, suggested some black-humored encoded erotic message.

There were many other images of downtrodden and lonely people, rapt in thought; pictures of ancient frescoes, out of focus as if half remembered; photographs of forlorn, neglected places; bits and pieces of faraway places conveying a kind of nostalgia or remoteness. In bringing these things together, the art implied consolation.

Mr. Rauschenberg, who knew that not everybody found it easy to grasp the open-endedness of his work, once described to the writer Calvin Tomkins an encounter with a woman who had reacted skeptically to “Monogram” and “Bed” in his 1963 retrospective at the Jewish Museum, one of the events that secured Mr. Rauschenberg’s reputation: “To her, all my decisions seemed absolutely arbitrary — as though I could just as well have selected anything at all — and therefore there was no meaning, and that made it ugly.

“So I told her that if I were to describe the way she was dressed, it might sound very much like what she’d been saying. For instance, she had feathers on her head. And she had this enamel brooch with a picture of ‘The Blue Boy’ on it pinned to her breast. And around her neck she had on what she would call mink but what could also be described as the skin of a dead animal. Well, at first she was a little offended by this, I think, but then later she came back and said she was beginning to understand.”

Milton Ernest Rauschenberg was born on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Tex., a small refinery town where “it was very easy to grow up without ever seeing a painting,” he said. (In adulthood he renamed himself Robert.) His grandfather, a doctor who immigrated from Germany, had settled in Texas and married a full-blooded Cherokee. His father, Ernest, worked for a local utility company. The family lived so frugally that his mother, Dora, made him shirts out of scraps of fabric. Once she made herself a skirt out of the back of the suit that her younger brother was buried in. She didn’t want the material to go to waste.

For his high school graduation present, Mr. Rauschenberg wanted a ready-made shirt, his first. All this shaped his art eventually. A decade or so later he made history with his own assemblages of scraps and ready-mades: sculptures and music boxes made of packing crates, rocks and rope; and paintings like “Yoicks” sewn from fabric strips. He loved making something out of nothing.

He studied pharmacology briefly at the University of Texas in Austin before he was drafted during World War II. He saw his first paintings at the Huntington Gallery in California while stationed in San Diego as a medical technician in the Navy Hospital Corps, and it occurred to him that it was possible to become a painter.

He attended the Kansas City Art Institute on the GI Bill, traveled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he met Susan Weil, a young painter from New York who was to enter Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Having read about and come to admire Josef Albers, then the head of fine arts at Black Mountain, Mr. Rauschenberg saved enough money to join her.

Albers, a disciplinarian and strict modernist who, shocked by his student, later disavowed ever even knowing Mr. Rauschenberg, was on the other hand recalled by Mr. Rauschenberg as “a beautiful teacher and an impossible person.”

“He wasn’t easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it,” Mr. Rauschenberg added. “Years later, though, I’m still learning what he taught me.”

Among other things, he learned to maintain an open mind toward materials and new media, which Albers endorsed. Mr. Rauschenberg also gained a respect for the grid as an essential compositional organizing tool.

For a while, he moved between New York, where he studied at the Art Students League with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor, and Black Mountain. During the spring of 1950, he and Ms. Weil married. The marriage lasted two years, during which they had a son, Christopher, who survives him along with Mr. Rauschenberg’s companion, Darryl Pottorf.

Mr. Rauschenberg experimented at the time with blueprint paper to produce silhouette negatives. The pictures were published in Life magazine in 1951; after that Mr. Rauschenberg was given his first solo show, at the influential Betty Parsons Gallery. “Everyone was trying to give up European aesthetics,” he recalled, meaning Picasso, the Surrealists and Matisse. “That was the struggle, and it was reflected in the fear of collectors and critics. John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.”

Cage acquired a painting from the Betty Parsons show. Aside from that, Mr. Rauschenberg sold absolutely nothing. Grateful, he agreed to host Cage at his loft. As Mr. Rauschenberg liked to tell the story, the only place to sit was on a mattress. Cage started to itch. He called Mr. Rauschenberg afterward to tell him that his mattress must have bedbugs and that, as Cage was going away for a while, Mr. Rauschenberg could stay at his place. Mr. Rauschenberg accepted the offer. In return, he decided he would touch up the painting Cage had acquired, as a kind of thank you, painting it all-black, being in the midst of his new, all-black period. When Cage returned, he was not amused.

“We both thought, ‘Here was somebody crazier than I am,’ ” Mr. Rauschenberg recalled. In 1952 Mr. Rauschenberg switched to all-white paintings, which were, in retrospect, spiritually akin to Cage’s famous silent piece of music, during which a pianist sits for 4 minutes and 33 seconds at the keyboard without making a sound. Mr. Rauschenberg’s paintings, like the music, in a sense became both Rorschachs and backdrops for ambient, random events like passing shadows. “I always thought of the white paintings as being not passive but very — well, hypersensitive,” he told an interviewer in 1963. “So that people could look at them and almost see how many people were in the room by the shadows cast, or what time of day it was.”

Kicking around Europe and North Africa with the artist Cy Twombly for a few months after that, he began to collect and assemble objects — bits of rope, stones, sticks, bones — which he showed to a dealer in Rome who exhibited them under the title “scatole contemplative,” or thought boxes. They were shown in Florence, where an outraged critic suggested that Mr. Rauschenberg toss them in the river. The artist thought that sounded like a good idea. So, saving a few scatole for himself and friends, he found a secluded spot on the Arno. “‘I took your advice,’’ he wrote to the critic.

Yet the scatole were crucial to his development, setting the stage for bigger, more elaborate assemblages like ‘“Monogram.’’ Back in New York, Mr. Rauschenberg showed his all-black and all-white paintings, then his erased de Kooning, which de Kooning had given to him to erase, a gesture that Mr. Rauschenberg found astonishingly generous, all of which enhanced his reputation as the new enfant terrible of the art world.

Around that time he also met Mr. Johns, then unknown, who had a studio in the same building on Pearl Street where Mr. Rauschenberg had a loft. The intimacy of their relationship over the next years, a consuming subject for later biographers and historians, coincided with the production by the two of them of some of the most groundbreaking works of postwar art.

In Mr. Rauschenberg’s famous words, they gave each other “permission to do what we wanted.’’ Living together in a succession of lofts in Lower Manhattan until the 1960’s, they exchanged ideas and supported themselves designing window displays for Tiffany & Company and Bonwit Teller under the collaborative pseudonym Matson Jones.

Along with the combines, Mr. Rauschenberg in that period developed a transfer drawing technique, dissolving printed images from newspapers and magazines with a solvent and then rubbing them onto paper with a pencil. The process, used for works like “34 Drawings for Dante’s ‘Inferno’,” created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secretive. Perhaps there was an autobiographical and sensual aspect to this. It let him combine images on a surface to a kind of surreal effect, which became the basis for works he made throughout his later career, when he adapted the transfer method to canvas.

Instrumental in this technical evolution back then was Tatyana Grossman, who encouraged and guided him as he made prints at her workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions, on Long Island; he also began a long relationship with the Gemini G.E.L. workshop in Los Angeles, producing lithographs like the 1970 “Stoned Moon” series, with its references to the moon landing. His association with theater and dance had already begun by the 1950s, when he began designing sets and costumes for Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Trisha Brown and for his own productions. In 1963, he choreographed “Pelican,’’ in which he performed on roller skates wearing a parachute and helmet of his design to the accompaniment of a taped collage of sound. This fascination both with collaboration and with mixing art with technologies dovetailed with yet another endeavor. With Billy Klüver, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, he started Experiments in Art and Technology, a nonprofit foundation to foster collaborations between artists and scientists.

In 1964, he toured Europe and Asia with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the same year he exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Venice Biennale as the United States representative. That sealed his international renown. The Sunday Telegraph in London hailed him as “the most important American artist since Jackson Pollock.’’ He walked off with the international grand prize in Venice, the first modern American to win it. Mr. Rauschenberg had, almost despite himself, become an institution.

Major exhibitions followed every decade after that, including one at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1981, another at the Guggenheim in 1997 and yet another that landed at the Metropolitan Museum in 2005.

. When he wasn’t traveling in later years, he was in Captiva, a slender island off Florida’s Gulf coast, living at first in a modest beach house and working out of a small studio. In time he became Captiva’s biggest residential landowner while also maintaining a town house in Greenwich Village back in New York. He acquired the land in Captiva by buying adjacent properties from elderly neighbors whom he let live rent-free in their houses, which he maintained for them. He accumulated 35 acres, 1,000 feet of beach front and nine houses and studios, including a 17,000-square-foot two-story studio overlooking a swimming pool. He owned almost all that remained of tropical jungle on the island.

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

He added: “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”