With Gerald Ford's passing yesterday...

...we're currently being treated to dozens of stories that feature some riff on the angle of "Ford stepped in after Nixon and healed America." Not surprisingly, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States posits a different view.

Zinn points out that, for starters, Nixon's resignation was designed to avoid an inevitable impeachment, which would have dragged sordid details into the public eye - including Nixon's ultra-cozy relationship with the corporate world, and his secret, year-long bombing of Cambodia. Ford then took over, and as Zinn puts it, "Nixon's foreign policy remained. The government's connections to corporate interests remained. Ford's closest friends in Washington were corporate lobbyists." And, of course, "One of Ford's first acts was to pardon Nixon, thus saving him from possible criminal proceedings and allowing him to retire with a huge pension."

How would Ford compare today? Based on one of Zinn's anecdotes, at least, Ford seems like he suffered from the same type of militaristic myopia that plagues the neo-cons currently running our show. Even with American troops finally home from Vietnam, he continued to cheerlead for victory, and to ask for money to support the South Vietnamese:

On April 16, 1975, Ford said: "I am absolutely convinced if Congress made available $722 million in military assistance by the time I asked - or sometime shortly thereafter - the South Vietnamese could stabilize the military situation in Vietnam today." Two weeks later, April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese moved into Saigon, and the war was over.

My biggest beef with Bush...

...is his seeming indifference to the sanctity of human life. From the 130 executions he oversaw as governor of Texas to nearly 3,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the guy has played a lead role in extinguishing so many existences that sometimes I wonder how anyone can be in the same room with him, let alone shake his hand, laugh at his jokes, or allow him to continue leading our country.

Of course, if you think about the ripples of pain that emanate from each of Bush's deaths, his indifference grows exponentially more callous. For each executed criminal, each lost soldier, and each Iraqi casualty, there are friends and family members who have to suffer the unnecessary loss.

Personally, I'm lucky enough to not have experienced this type of pain, so I can only imagine its true depth. But I think it's important to try to imagine, to try to understand how the actions of our leader and our nation have affected others. With that in mind, I'm grateful for poems like the one below, recently published in The Sun. It's a different context - a mother facing the possible loss of her infant daughter - but to me, it helps drive home how much we've all got riding on each and every human life on this planet.

from Infant Pneumonia, by Cheryl Gatling:

When they handed her back,
I wouldn't lay her down again.
I slept that night in a chair,
holding her up so the mucus would drain.
In sudden, sharp focus, I cherished it all:
the sweaty spikes of her damp hair,
the rattling vibrations of every breath.
I hold no moments more precious than these,
the nearly unbearable,
a pain so pure, it was almost like happiness.

So here's some great news from DC...

...Kirsten Gillibrand, a new congresswoman from New York (she pulled off an upset victory on November 7, with a campaign my uncles Bill and Brian worked for), will publish the details of her daily calendar online - every day of her term. This is a great idea, and an encouraging opening gambit from Gillibrand, who could be one to watch. From an opinion page column in The New York Times:

At first, the innovation sounds simple enough: Representative-elect Kirsten Gillibrand has decided to post details of her work calendar on the Internet at the end of each day so constituents can tell what she is actually doing for their money.

In fact, it is a quiet touch of revolution. The level of transparency pledged by Ms. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York — down to naming lobbyists and fund-raisers among those she might meet with — is simply unheard of in Congress. The secrecy that cloaks the dealings of lawmakers and deep-pocket special interests underpinned the corruption issue that Ms. Gillibrand invoked as voters turned Republicans from majority rule last month.

For all the worthy proposals for ethics reform being hashed out by the incoming Congress, a heavy dose of Internet transparency should not be overlooked in the effort to repair lawmakers’ tattered credibility. The technology is already there, along with the public’s appetite for more disclosure about the byways of power in Congress.

I don't know what it is about Brits and graffiti...

...but between Banksy and this other guy, Moose (aka Paul Curtis), the streets of Britain are sure home to some interesting portfolios. From a 2004 article on NPR.org:

July 15, 2004 · A British street artist known as Moose creates graffiti by cleaning dirt from sidewalks and tunnels -- sometimes for money when the images are used as advertising. But some authorities call it vandalism.

Moose, whose real name is Paul Curtis, tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that he got the idea when he saw that people had written their names with their fingers on dirty tunnel walls in his hometown of Leeds. Moose does some freehand drawing, but also uses the grid from wall tiles to create perfect shapes and letters.

The tools are simple: A shoe brush, water and elbow grease, he says.

British authorities aren't sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I'm waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

One place where paperless isn't cool...

...is the voting booth, and thankfully, it looks like we'll be headed back to casting ballots that can be recounted if necessary. As the New York Times reports, purely electronic voting machines will be out by November 2008:

New federal guidelines, along with legislation given a strong chance to pass in Congress next year, will probably combine to make the paperless voting machines obsolete, the officials say. States and counties that bought the machines will have to modify them to hook up printers, at federal expense, while others are planning to scrap the machines and buy new ones.

Motivated in part by voting problems during the midterm elections last month, the changes are a result of a growing skepticism among local and state election officials, federal legislators and the scientific community about the reliability and security of the paperless touch-screen machines used by about 30 percent of American voters...

Many of the paperless machines were bought in a rush to overhaul the voting system after the disputed presidential election in 2000, which was marred by hanging chads. But concerns have been growing that in a close election those machines give election workers no legitimate way to conduct a recount or to check for malfunctions or fraud.

Money, money, money...

...is the elephant in the room in this New York Times excerpt on a Barak Obama elbow rub in NYC. Money still means access, that's for sure. Isn't it this kind of cozy money-grubbing that voters spoke out against last month?

One of the donors who met with Mr. Obama, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend Mrs. Clinton, said that he and several others had supported Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaigns but were not committed to her as a presidential candidate.

“I like Hillary a lot, but I’m also impressed with Obama — his message, the way he connects to people,” said the donor, a prominent businessman. “It’s a little too early for Democrats to be certain that Hillary is the strongest bet for 2008. There are a lot of good people interested in running.”

Mr. Obama’s reconnaissance mission came as Mrs. Clinton was starting to talk about 2008 not only with New York elected officials, but also with some prominent donors whom she would like to lock in for a possible White House bid.