UP@NIGHT

UP@NIGHT

UP@NIGHT

UP@NIGHT

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Early to bed, and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise

- Benjamin Franklin.

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I don’t see it.

- George Washington

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Now both of these are high authorities – very high and respectable authorities – but I am with General Washington first, last, and all the time on this proposition.

Because I don’t see it, either. . . .

Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin – but stake the last cent of your substance on the judgment of old George Washington, the Father of his Country, who said “he couldn’t see it.”

And you hear me endorsing that sentiment.

Mark Twain, “Early Rising, As Regards Excursions to the Cliff House,” MARK TWAIN IN THE GOLDEN ERA 1863-1866.

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A daytime view from the uptown Offices of UP@NIGHT (Proving that the blogger can survive the light.)

Spoiler Alert:  Do not read if you have not seen the final BSG episode.

Okay, we can all breath a sigh of relief.  BSG, which began in the shadow of 9/11, ended its last episode with images of a beautiful summer’s day in New York City.  We have, if you will, a degree of closure, and with humor.  Some, however, don’t appear to be clued in.

GINIA BELLAFANTE of the NY Times (March 20, 2009) writes in her review of the final episode, “Show About the Universe Raises Questions on Earth,”

But the show could not break with the genre’s tradition of hokey, hopeful earnestness. Landing finally on a pastoral facsimile of Earth, the human-Cylon partnership vows to start anew with pledges not to let science outpace soulfulness. One hundred fifty thousand years later, a city of neon stands on the green terrain — as well as the assumption that we won’t make all of the same mistakes over again.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.   The show does not end on a note of hokey, hopeful earnestness.  It ends on a comedic one that frames  questions that it raised about technology and the environment (especially in the last episode) in a satisfying fashion. How so?  Setting right two basic errors in Bellafante’s review will get us off to the races.  First, the crew of the BSG was not on a facsimile of Earth.  Had this been the case, the conclusion would have made little sense and lost its punch.  No, the crew had found good old terra firma.  Second, there is no assumption that our species won’t make the same mistakes all over again.  As a matter of fact, all we are told is that there is a chance that we will not do so, because not all complex systems behave identically.  And the possibility that the future might be different from the past is only offered after seasons of hearing over and over again about the myth of eternal recurrence; it has all happened before and will happen again.  Yada, yada, yada.  If anything, the latter was overplayed and hokey, not the “assumption” about the future in the last scene.

But what Bellafonte really misses, and which says a great deal about how we should now understand the trajectory of the show, is the sense of humor displayed at the end of the final episode, one that we had not seen sustained earlier in the series.  The remnants of the human race find an idyllic ancient earth and proceed to give up their technology (by sailing their ships off into the sun–yes, a bit corny).  All hope for humanity seems to lie in a kind of pastoral utopia.  But then a green Central Park appears and the “angel” versions of Balter and Six are found in present-day Times Square.  They are seen standing and looking at a magazine article at a newsstand (how New York/how urban!) about a 150,000 year old Eve that had been discovered by scientists.  This Eve is clearly supposed to be the child Hera that the crew of BSG rescued.  During this scene Ron Moore, in classic Hitchcock fashion, appears.  (Ronald Moore was the executive producer and a writer for the series.  He worked on the script for the finale.)  Baltar is wearing his oh so urbane sunglasses, and is in one of his dandyish outfits (which is pretty funny in itself given that it’s a hundred and fifty thousand years since we first saw him dressed to the nines).   Six is dressed in NY model mode.  They saunter off.  A discussion ensues about whether humanity will screw things up again.  Not necessarily is the word, but certainly no guarantees.  During these last eight or so minutes, we hear “All along the Watchtower” playing from a boom box, and we are shown playful toy robots, some of whom are dancing.  The scene is bathed in color.  I won’t go into any more detail.  Suffice it to say that it is in stark contrast to the deep darkness of almost all of BSG, and this darkness is stripped away not only by urban sights and sounds, but by humor.

There is a serious point here.  One can read BSG as an anti-technological jeremiad.  I mean, for gods sake, Adama wouldn’t even allow wireless communication on the BSG for fear that the Cylons could hack into the computer system.  And of course there are those all too deadly Cylons, etc.  Yes, the relationship to technology was always more complex than this in the series.  But in the last 30 minutes of the show they really had us going.  It looked as if the series had been hijacked by an anti-urban, technophobic wing of the Green Movement, offering us a pastoral utopianism in the tradition of Thoreau and friends.  Return to the land, build cabins, love nature, destroy your technology, leave your cities, etc.   Instead, by having the show end in the Big Apple (get it/Apple, Eve), after a clearly respectful treatment of the wonders of nature,  there is acknowledgment of the need to preserve nature and that human beings are social/urban creatures, that is, they “inevitably” build cities full of life, sound, fury, color, and playfulness.  The message is not especially hokey: we have to hope (and by implication, work) in order not to screw things up again given the powers that our species can unleash.  Here’s Moore on the topic:

TVGuide.com: Why did you choose to end the show with Six and Baltar walking through Times Square?
Moore: Two things: One, Dave Eick and I had the image of number Six walking through Times Square in her red dress a couple of years ago. We thought potentially that that was just a great visual note to end on. And that also came out of the idea that we eventually wanted the show to directly relate to us. That the show was always intended to be relevant and be current to our society and lives and that it wasn’t completely escapist — “Oh here’s a story about a bunch of people who are not related to us on Earth at all.” We wanted it to ultimately circle back and say look, these people were our forbearers[sic]; in a real sense what happened to them, could happen to us. Look around you. Wake up. Think about the society that you live in and we wanted to make that literal at the end. TV GUIDE March 20th, 2009.

My understanding is that this show was still being written during the American election.  The last sequence may have been shot after Moore knew Obama was going to get the nomination.   Perhaps we will hear from the people at BSG about whether the American election had an impact on the finale.

P.S.  This was a TV series that was broadcast and developed over some five years.  It can’t be judged by the standards of a two hour movie.  And science fiction, at its best a genre of ideas as well as action, is extremely difficult to pull off in a visual medium.  All in all, BSG had a pretty damn good run.  And the values of its cast are worth noting.  Here is Edward James Olmos, Admiral Adama, and members of the cast at the UN on March 18th, 2009.

At today’s Congressional Hearing:

“We are meeting today at a high point of public anger,” said Mr. Liddy, a former chief executive of Allstate who was installed as A.I.G.’s chief when the Federal Reserve announced its rescue package. “I share that anger. As a businessman of some 37 years, I have seen the good side of capitalism. Over the last few months, in reviewing how A.I.G. had been run in prior years, I have also seen evidence of its bad side.”  NY Times,  March 18, 2009.

I watched a good portion of Edward M. Liddy’s testimony before Congress today.  I hadn’t planned to.  I got caught up.   Liddy took on the job of CEO at A.I.G. for 1 dollar a year.  He appears to be a man sincerely dedicated to the service of his country.  However, while by no means clueless about the possible reaction of the American people to the AIG bonuses, he did not realize that his arguments amounted to telling the American people that we had been blackmailed.  If he hadn’t agreed to pay the executives of the compromised division their bonuses, they would have walked, AIG would have tanked, and our economy would have headed into a death spiral.  Or so he claimed.  Liddy needed to retain these folks.  And he could only do so by paying out millions.  (Yes, he made it clear time and again that there were contracts that had to be honored,  but as congressmen pointed out, the company could have chosen not to pay and accepted the possibility of being sued.)

“Of the 418 employees who received bonuses, 298 got more than $100,000, according to the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. The highest bonus was $6.4 million, and 6 other employees received more than $4 million. Fifteen other people received bonuses of more than $2 million and 51 received $1 million to $2 million.” NY Times,  March 18, 2009

The danger to the nation due to a complete financial collapse is far greater than the danger of terrorism.  And this is just what Liddy was claiming might happen if these executives walked and AIG tanked. So we have people dying in the fight against terrorism, but we have others insisting on the entire amounts of their bonuses in order to cooperate and prevent financial ruin. As patriotic Americans (that is, those who are Americans), they should have offered to work for a small portion of what they were being paid, especially the top earning executives.

Each contract with each employee had its own unique structure, reported Liddy.   They simply couldn’t hold back the funds.  However, today he reported that he has asked the executives to return 50% of the money.  They don’t have to, but as good Americans they might.   (Why didn’t he ask this of them last week? or a month ago? or ask for more?) Think about this, as you think about all those who are on the street without jobs, including Wall Street people.  Think about the sense of entitlement that these AIG executives have.   Think about why so many of us didn’t see this sense of entitlement as dangerous to the well-being of our nation until very recently.

The American people have been sold a bill of goods for almost two generations now, and it goes something like this: if we take advantage of the magic of the market, if we just look out for number 1, the free market will reward us as a nation.  Yes, there are folks in the military who sacrifice, and there are those who volunteer for civilian service, but at the end of the day we serve our country and communities best by seeking our own fortunes.

I am putting this too starkly you say?  Perhaps.  But it became the mantra of Wall Street.  And as they once said about GM, what’s good for Wall Street is good for America.   Just watch those 401k’s grow, and never take any money out of them.  The market always makes a profit in the long run.   (Of course what they forget to tell you is that the long run can be very long indeed.)

The party’s almost over, as so many have declared.  The party, however, is not just about living the high life in good financial times.  The party is about having a set of beliefs that comfort and aid us in getting on in the world.  And one set of these beliefs has involved the goodness of capitalism and the free market.  We have spoken about them as if they are gods.  They are not.  Capitalism can be an exceedingly productive economic system, but only when operating under proper guidance and regulation.  There are no free lunches and there are no entirely free markets.   Believing so is exceedingly dangerous, especially when this ideology replaces our common sense about the sacrifices and labors required to build and maintain communities and a nation.

The word is out.  Unless AIG pays their executives millions more in bonuses, they might lose the best and the brightest of their employees.  Corporate raiders will swoop out of the clouds and plunder their human capital.  And then where would AIG be?  And then where would we be?   (According to FOX, if AIG cannot retain their top execs, it has threatened to morph into a black hole and take the inner planets with it.)

But wait.  We may have nothing to fear but fear itself.   Let us not forget that AIG is in the business of insuring companies against their own incompetence.  The solution is simple.  AIG should insure itself against its own incompetence through one of its products, for example, FinancialGuard (see below).  So, even if it were to lose its best and brightest by not paying out the bonuses, AIG could still survive through the miricle of insurance.

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Here is AIG/Australia hawking one “product” that can help save it (and us):

FinancialGuard™ Civil Liability Insurance

What is it?

Professional indemnity insurance on a civil liability basis

Why do you need it?

The activities of regulators, the changing distribution of financial institutions products and a more informed and litigious consumer environment lie behind the increase in the frequency of civil liability claims against financial institutions….

Our Civil Liability product provides blanket protection against the financial consequences of a legally enforceable obligation in which a civil liability is incurred arising from services provided. Covers includes defence costs and civil penalties.

Who needs it?

All Financial Institutions including Banks, Building Societies, Investment Management Companies, Insurance Companies and Stockbrokers.

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And under a discussion of assets on the AIG site we find the following pitch:

A company’s assets are vital to its operations. And protecting those assets is essential to the well being of a business. Assets can be tangible and intangible and can include a company’s corporate reputation, as well as physical assets such as property or goods. We offer standard or customised programmes on a domestic or global scale as well as a wide range of products covering more demanding and specialist risks.

Protection of assets!!  Protection for corporate reputation!!  Protection from the activities of regulators!!  AIG can save itself (and us). 

Up until now little beside blind greed and gross incompetence have been offered to explain AIG’s behavior.  Here is an alternative hypothesis: Someone inside AIG decided that the best way to stimulate the market for its financial insurance products was to come up with an example (AIG’s own failure) that would scare the daylights out of even the most confident of finance people, pushing them right into the arms of AIG’s financial insurance sales force.   Insanely diabolical, wouldn’t you say?

And if this hypothesis is incorrect, I have another:  AIG is a corporate comic genius.

P.S.  Here’s five bucks.   Feel free to buy yourself half a dozen shares of AIG.

Here are several labels that have recently and often been applied to Obama: pragmatist, bipartisan, compromiser, and centrist.   The Republicans take no prisoners strategy regarding the stimulus package–which has been driven not by concerns about pork, but by an ideology that still affirms that the market always knows best–has depended on using Obama’s bipartisanship to their advantage.  They typically view him as someone whose pragmatism guarantees a willingness to compromise and operate in a bipartisan fashion.  And yes, it’s true,  Obama would prefer bipartisan solutions.   But be not confused, Republican comrades, pragmatism and bipartisanship are not two sides of the same coin.

Obama, as I have argued elsewhere, is not only a political pragmatist, but a philosophical one.  Two points here:  1) Philosophical pragmatists are not dogmatists; they are falibilists who are suspicious of those who claim to possess certainty in political and ethical matters.  2) Broadly speaking, pragmatists seek what works.

Much confusion is possible regarding these points.  One might think that if someone doesn’t believe in certainty and also looks to what works, he isn’t deeply committed to any values.  This is specious inference.  Pragmatists can be deeply committed to any number of values.  They just don’t think that they have a direct line to the Deity regarding the truth of these values.

So, then, how does this relate to the Republicans’ misreading of Obama?  Republicans have been assuming that Obama’s desire for bipartisanship and compromise is at the heart of his pragmatism.  If they push hard enough, his pragmatism (read: desire to get things done “only” through compromise) will win the day for them.  They will be able to hold back the tide of reform.

But bipartisanship and compromise are strategies and goods, not absolute goods for the philosophical pragmatist.  The pragmatist respects them because they speak to his or her commitment to fallibilism and community, and because they might help us get the job done.  However, if they are failing as strategies to achieve pressing ends, a philosophical pragmatist will not hesitate to engage in triage.  If people don’t have jobs and are without medical care, if the economy is in a death spiral, well, we have an obligation to address these problems.  Be nice to do so through having everyone on board, but we can always return to pursuing bipartisanship another day.  It’s a good, not The Absolute Good.

If bipartisanship is not working as a strategy to get the stimulus package through, which Obama deeply believes is necessary for the well-being of the country, his political and philosophical commitments, and temperament, will move him to turn his energies to figuring out what will work.  And what will work here may turn out to be an offensive against recalcitrant Republicans whose failed policies cost them two elections, 2006 and 2008.  And you know what, he’s got the upper hand if he makes this move. (Republicans might think that Obama wouldn’t dare because he will need them down the line.  However, if they aren’t playing ball now, he can’t be sure they will do so down the line.)

A piece of advice to Republicans:  Don’t push this guy too hard.  You are dealing with a mindset that you haven’t seen in a couple of generations. You will end up regretting it. (He’s perfectly capable of wearing the black hat.)

(Image from The Boston Phoenix)

UPDATE, February  9th, 2009, PM.  The following is an excerpt from The New York Times of Obama’s first press conference as president:

So my whole goal over the next four years is to make sure that whatever arguments are persuasive and backed up by evidence and facts and proof, that they can work, that we are pulling people together around that kind of pragmatic agenda. And I think that there was an opportunity to do this with this recovery package because, as I said, although there are some politicians who are arguing that we don’t need a stimulus, there are very few economists who are making that argument. I mean, you’ve got economists who were advising John McCain, economists who were advisers to George Bush — one and two — all suggesting that we actually needed a serious recovery package.

And so when I hear people just saying we don’t need to do anything; this is a spending bill, not a stimulus bill, without acknowledging that by definition part of any stimulus package would include spending — that’s the point — then what I get a sense of is that there is some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up. [emphasis added]

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UPDATE, February 10, 2009  Peter Baker in the New York Times writes (excerpt):

Taking on Critics, Obama Puts Aside Talk of Unity

“It is not too late to craft a bipartisan plan that creates more jobs and helps get our economy back on track, and Republicans stand ready to work with the president to do this,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said after the news conference.

For his part, though, Mr. Obama seemed to suggest it was too late, and that the time for bipartisanship lay further down the road. He said he recognized that some Republicans had good-faith doubts about his program, but he also characterized some of the opposition as an effort to “test” the new president.

(Baker’s article, which includes discussion of the press conference, is worth a read.  It’s clear that Obama’s pragmatism does not require him to stick to  “bipartisanship” and that the Republicans are about to find out that they have overplayed their hand.   Poor Boehner, the Republicans’ goose egg vote in the House, of which he was so proud, is coming back to haunt him.)

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UPDATE, February 14, 2009, excerpt from UPI.com:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) — U.S. President Barack Obama plans to travel and campaign more to pressure Republicans in Congress rather than trying to win their loyalty, sources say.

Now that a mammoth, $787 billion economic stimulus bill has been approved virtually without Republican support, White House advisers have determined that Capitol Hill horse-trading with GOP opponents wasn’t successful and that Obama should instead tap his immense popularity and public salesmanship skills to push legislation in the future, the Washington publication Politico reported Saturday.

Posters from the WPA, Library of Congress Collection

Sometimes you can almost smell a cheap shot.

The stimulus package that passed the House last week failed to receive one Republican vote.  Among the worthwhile provisions in the bill is fifty million dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts.  This is no mere give away.  The money would help to stimulate the economy, even though it is a rather paltry sum for the whole nation–the price of one CEO’s jet to be exact.   But the arts certainly make for an easy target, especially when you are willing to lie about  the contents of the bill.

While the debate over the stimulus package was raging, the Republican whip, Mr. Eric Cantor, claimed that $300,000 had been set aside in the bill for a sculpture garden in Miami.  Well, here are the facts.  No such provision exists in the bill.  It seems that Cantor felt that the package wasn’t specific enough for his taste, so he decided to claim on national TV that a project that had been funded in the past is in the current bill.   From Politifact.com (St. Petersburg Times):

In an interview with Fox News on Jan. 23, 2009, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, said that in a meeting with President Obama, Cantor asked if he “could use his influence on this process to try and get the pork barrel spending out of the bill. I mean, there’s $300,000 for a sculpture garden in Miami.” . . .

“We don’t know what they’re going to spend it on,” Bradley [a Cantor spokesperson] said. “There is no direction to the NEA on how to spend it.”

So to give people an idea of how the NEA spends its money, Cantor’s staff looked at some recent grants awarded by the NEA.

And in 2008, the NEA gave $300,000 to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami to restore an outdoor statuary. The Vizcaya estate is one of the country’s most intact remaining examples from the American Renaissance, a period when the very wealthy built estates to look European. The $300,000 grant was to help restore some of the outdoor sculptures — statues, urns and fountains — that had been severely deteriorating due to South Florida’s salty, damp and subtropical climate, not to mention the hurricanes.

But again, this was an NEA grant from last year .

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

Yes, there certainly have been more serious lies by politicians, but the point is that here you have the House whip willing to make stuff up (non-existent pork)  in order to help sink the stimulus package.  Pretty shameless stuff.   (As a matter of fact, Eric, it’s a shanda fur die goyim. You should know better.)

The fact is that 1) artists have lost jobs in the current recession and 2) the arts are economic engines in many communities.  There is good statement on the website of the National Endowment for the Arts detailing reasons for supporting the provision for the arts in the stimulus package.  For example, the statement cites a report by the National Governor’s Association:

A recent study released by the National Governors Association titled Arts & the Economy: Using Arts and Culture to Stimulate State Economic Development states, “Arts and culture are important to state economies.  Arts and culture-related industries, also known as ‘creative industries,’ provide direct economic benefits to states and communities:  They create jobs, attract investments, generate tax revenues, and stimulate local economies through tourism and consumer purchases.”

P.S.   Eric Cantor appears to be a major piece of work.  Here he is trying to blame Congress during Jimmy Carter’s administration for the current housing crisis.

UPDATE  2-11-09.  More Cantor…This guy is just what the Republicans need to make sure that they remain the minority party for the next few generations.  Go, Eric (and his Office), Go.

The Plum Line, Greg Sargent’s blog
Cantor’s Office Responds: Video Depicting AFSCME Members As Goons

By now I am sure that most of America has heard about the former VP’s outrageous interview with Politico, which has been generously quoted in the MSM. Besides reiterating what every sentient adult American knows, namely, that it is possible that there will be a serious terrorist strike in the U.S. in the next few years, Dr. Doom tried to set the stage for the blaming the attack on the Obama administration. “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.” Politico

This nonsense is from a man whose war in Iraq and torture policies have in all likelihood created more terrorists than all of the combined recruiting techniques used by Al Qaeda.  He has made us less safe and decent in oh so many ways. But just as my fury was reaching unspeakable heights, I heard about a rather amazing turn of events. The Obama Administration plans to use Dr. Doom’s “expertise” in a thoroughly new fashion. They are creating a department of soothsayers made up of individuals who claim to have powers that allow them to leap over historical realities in single bounds. Cheney will direct this group of Jeremiahs. He plans to use his gifts in reading bird entrails, especially ones that he has shot, to help educate his comrades.

Obama it seems is way ahead of us on this one. It turns out that those of us who have been hypercritical of Dick have not realized that he has been suffering for years from a rather rare syndrome that leads him to believe that he has prophetic powers. His pacemaker, which was implanted several years back, suffers from a serious defect. It produces a low frequency audio pulse to the Thermonuclear region of the Hiffocampus. (It goes softly “boom” about every 18 minutes.) This results in behavior that is hard to separate from that of sociopaths, especially in terms of their tendency to lose sight of the differences between truth and lies, right and wrong. So, yes, Cheney has been a pathological liar, but for an understandable reason. Unfortunately the pacemaker cannot be removed without creating the possibility that the patient might suffer from an overload of guilt and remorse, which could lead to suicide. And his doctor’s oath, unlike Cheney’s own as VP, requires that he do no harm.

The Obama administration’s plan to make Cheney Director of the Cassandra Complex is an elegant solution to the problem of Cheney. As you may recall, even when Cassandra was telling the truth about the future, she was fated to not be heeded. Cheney can now spend the rest of his days, along with a bevy of sociopaths, feeling good about the fact that they know the future but no one will listen to them.

Here is a model of their new building, right off the Mall in D.C. The design goes back to Bentham. (And since, needless to say, no one can really know what the future holds in store, this is a good place to store folks like this.)

Following the unregulated free market logic that has spiraled the country into our current economic morass, the Republican Party, especially those in the House of Representatives, have taken a page from the corporate world.  They have decided to downsize, and it appears that the execs at GOP, Inc. are expecting the downsize to be permanent.   The logic here seems to be that it is better to have a smaller, more efficient body of ideologues, that can be held in line, in order to toe the line.  This will guarantee that the rhetoric from GOP  Inc., its most important product line, will remain as pure as the first snows of winter.   After all, Republicans are principled folks, unlike Democrats and Obamanites who are willing to be “pragmatic.”

The unprecedented scope of their business plan has only become apparent in the last few days.   The Republican execs in the House of Representatives, Boehner’s band of boys, have been especially aggressive in supporting it.  A recent Washington Post-ABC News Poll has shown overwhelming support for the President’s stimulus package, yet not one Republican in the House voted for the President’s package.

Would you support or oppose new federal spending of about 800 billion dollars on tax cuts, construction projects, energy, education, and health care to try to stimulate the economy?

70% Support
27% Oppose

And Nate Silver reports on January 29, 2009, the following on FiveThirtyEight:

It’s not just the goose egg that the House Republicans laid on the Democratic stimulus package yesterday: Boehner’s Boys have been equally uncooperative on other matters. Case in point: a bill yesterday to delay the transition to digital TV. This measure was approved unanimously by the Senate; every Senate Republican gave it the green light. But 155 out of 178 House Republicans voted against it, which resulted in the measure’s defeat since a two-thirds majority would have been required for passage under the House’s suspension of the rules.

Or, take the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a seemingly fairly popular/populist (if not inscrutable) piece of legislation on gender-based pay discrepancies. This was something that Barack Obama whacked John McCain on on the campaign trail, with McCain offering little rebuttal. In the Senate, five Republicans — out of 41 — voted with the Administration on Ledbetter, including all four Republican women. In the House, just three Republicans did — out of 178.

There may be a few retrograde Republicans in the Senate not fully with the downsizing program.   But one has to understand that the  House represents the life blood of the Party.  They are the elected Republicans closest to the forces of production, those that produce the largest quantities of grade A  ideology.  So, unless there is an unexpected upheaval at the top of GOP, Inc., expect the downsizing to continue.  (The proposed new motto for the new GOP:  Change through Ideological Purity.)  There have even been rumors that GOP, Inc. would rather go bankrupt than compromise its principles.   (Unnamed sources suggest that bankruptcy filings can be expected any day now.  Stay tuned.)

(Image from The Boston Phoenix)

Obama Photograph by Jonas Karlsson in Vanity Fair

We know that the contrast between Bush and Obama could not be more stark.  But I have just come across a distinction that may trump many of those with which we are already familiar, for example, that Obama has studied history, while Bush has become an object lesson for historians.

As reported in Politico:

Bush famously arrives at the Oval Office by dawn, leaves by 6 p.m. and goes to bed by 10 p.m. Dinners out are as rare as a lunar eclipse.

Obama, by contrast, stays up late. He holds conference calls with senior staff as late as 11 p.m., and often reads and writes past midnight. Ahead of the Democratic National Convention, he spent consecutive nights holed up in a Chicago hotel room, working on his speech until 2 a.m.

Why, you ask, might this be important?  Night owls are often viewed with suspicion by day-timers, the morning people, the early risers, etc.  Base prejudice.  The list of productive night people is long, from Voltaire to Kafka to Winston Churchill.  As a matter of fact,  it seems that the odds of being creative increases if one is a night owl, at least this is what one recent study demonstrates.

Not a morning person? Take solace — new research suggests that “night owls” are more likely to be creative thinkers.

Scientists can’t yet fully explain why evening types appear to be more creative, but they suggest it could be an adaptation to living outside of the norm.

“Being in a situation which diverges from conventional habit — nocturnal types often experience this situation — may encourage the development of a non-conventional spirit and of the ability to find alternative and original solutions,” lead author Marina Giampietro and colleague G.M. Cavallera wrote in a study to be published in the February 2007 issue of Personality and Individual Differences.

Yes, one small study, but a giant leap for all humankind.  (The study was reported on The Discovery Channel’s on-line site.  You can read more of the details here.)

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Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942)

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If you are interested in the world of night folks, the final frontier, you can try the web site Night People. According to Night People:  You Know You’re a Night Person If...

• Sunrise comes as an unpleasant surprise.
• You call someone on the phone to just chat and discover that they’ve been asleep for six hours.
• You do your best work at 2 a.m.
• You finally force yourself to go to bed at 1 a.m. and then keep having brilliant ideas that you have to get up and write down.
• People who are perky or sharp in the morning appall you—and can run rings around you before noon, too.
• Birds start singing about the time you fall asleep.

“Night People” is connected to a site that sells items supporting the cause of night people.   Right on!  Here is the link. A couple of my favorites are pictured below.  (This, I might add, is the first product “suggestion” by UP@NIGHT.)

Okay, I thought that I was done thinking about Bush.  Just two more days to go and he will be deep in the heart of Texas, reading all those “Drive Friendly” signs posted along the highways and byways of the Lone Star State.  (A message that his foreign policy should have heeded more often.)

Unfortunately, it seems that this guy can’t leave us with any good news.  His presidency has helped confirm that a large segment of the American populace is either deeply illiterate about American history or perhaps just plain bonkers (or both).  I don’t know which hypothesis I prefer.   A recent Pew poll tells us the following:

Here is what I want to know.   Everyone is talking about how extraordinarily high Bush’s unfavorable ratings are as he leaves office, perhaps the highest ever, around 70% in some polls.    And yet, more than one in ten Americans think that Bush was an above average or an outstanding president.  And another 28% thinks that he was average.   We can leave it to future historians to tell us whether he has been the worst president.  (He might not have beaten out James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, or Warren G. Harding.  Then again, he might have.)  A survey of present-day historians tell us that he is going be at the bottom of the heap.   (Yes, all of these historians could be deluded.  Odds are they aren’t.   And if George was even an average president, I tremble for the future of The Republic.)

I know, this might seem a small matter.   However, I worry about stuff like this.  39% of Americans think that Bush was an average or above average president.  Can there be any better argument for increasing the funds for the study of history and politics in our schools?  We saw how much damage ignorance led to in the Oval Office, but no doubt it has repercussions in the hinterlands.  Remember, we, the American people, elected George for a second term.

There is, however, some good news in all of this.  Two of the worst presidents ever, Pierce and Buchanan, preceded Lincoln.  Maybe we will get lucky.  You know, it’s always darkest before the dawn.   (And, hey, Obama doesn’t have to be a Lincoln to succeed.  Just a truly above average president.)

P.S.  A personal note: as a former Houstonian, and as someone married to a former Houstonian, I was very pleased to learn that when George heads back to Texas he will be splitting his time between Crawford and Dallas.  Perhaps the Cowboys will make him an honorary dude.