Rescuing homeowners who ventured into their own unwise and unaffordable mortgages isn't a popular  idea, the Times editorial board acknowledges, but it holds real value for all of us:

Such aid also is consistent with the principle of intervening when the market can't help itself. Despite the banking industry's voluntary efforts to help borrowers, statistics compiled by the industry show that the number of loan modifications only recently has caught up to the number of borrowers starting the foreclosure process.

The board also advises the state drop its hasty decision requiring all eighth graders to take algebra by 2011, and begins a series of handy endorsement recaps to help you figure out all those names and issues on the Tuesday ballot.

On the other side of the fold, op-ed writer Jenny Price tells the story of her brother's murder and why this is no reason to approve the "victim's rights" promised by the Proposition 9 campaign.

Punishment for murder should not depend on how angry and bereft survivors are, or how beloved the victim was. It should not be proportional to the size of the victim's family, or to how many family members are willing to go to court or a parole hearing, or to how long they are willing to keep going to hearings.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute is pleased that no one seems to be talking any more about paying reparations to the descendants of slaves in this country, and Joel Stein asserts that he's an erudite kinda guy even if he doesn't know at what temperature water boils, what language they speak in Iraq or--well, a bunch of other things.

Photo by Damian Dovarganes/AP

Good grammar doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy presidential campaign. But listening to Barack Obama give his stump speech in Indiana on Thursday, I was annoyed anew by his reference to the need for "good paying jobs." Obama's not the only one, of course. "Good paying jobs" is a mantra for politicians from both parties. I don't understand why.

OK, maybe someone -- though not Joe the Plumber, who's pretty articulate-- once said: "This job pays good." But is that any reason for otherwise grammatically scrupulous candidates to talk about "good paying jobs"? Whats next: A claim that George W. Bush presided over a "bad fought" war in Iraq? Or that Sarah Palin "rich deserves" the lampooning she has received from Tina Fey?

Maybe a retired English teacher should be given a well paying job correcting the candidates' grammar.

Photo: Mark Randall, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

	In September I attended the Values Voter Summit sponsored by an affiliate of the conservative Family Research Council. Among the speakers was former Reagan education secretary, virtuecrat and gambler Bill Bennett. Bennett, a more erudite Bill O'Reilly, galvanized (as they  say in political reporting) the faithful with a speech accusing Barack Obama of being insufficiently patriotic.
	Flash forward to Wednesday night, when Bennett appeared as part of a gaggle of "political contributors" on CNN's coverage of the third debate between Obama and John McCain. Another panelist was Donna Brazile, the former Al Gore campaign manager who played pundit in the primary season despite being a Democratic super-delegate. This morning I woke up to read in The Wall Street Journal a  campaign analysis by that well-known pundit Karl Rove.
	Is it just me, or are we seeing a new revolving door through which political operatives leave government or the campaign trail and are snapped up as "analysts," only to be asked to assess the performance or message of their erstwhile comrades-in-arms and opponents? Forget the ethical issue; partisans cast in the role of pundits make for Must-Not-See-TV, predictable and borrrr-ing. (Gee, I wonder what Bennett thought about McCain's performance....)
	I wouldn't insist on an absolute rule barring political types from ever morphing into journalists or commentators. Ex-Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos seems to have made the transition credibly after a decent interval, and Pat Buchanan was a polemicist before his quixotic campaigns for president. But, seriously, what's the point of asking partisans -- "retired" or otherwise -- to hold forth about a candidate from the opposite party?
	Apparently CNN thinks a panel of political plumpers and has-beens qualifies as "all-star talent" (a term used in the press release promoting its coverage). If that's entertainment, I'm Joe the Plumber Photos (top to bottom): Alex Wong/Getty Images; AP Photo/Gerald Herbert (file); AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall; ABC Inc./Steve Fenn; and AP Photo/Lori King

If Tuesday's presidential debate had been more compelling, I might not have noticed two peculiarities about the event: the bizarre behavior of moderator Tom Brokaw and the inertness of the audience of "real people" from Nashville.

Brokaw already has been scolded for a schoolmarmish insistence on holding Barack Obama and John McCain to the arcane rules of the format, lest they actually engage each other in a debate. But the oddest aspect of his moderation was an insistence on introducing the questioners at the "town hall" by referring to the section of the hall in which they were seating as if it were a town.

At the beginning of the debate Brokaw said that "we're going to have our first question from over here in Section A from Allen Shaffer." Later he introduced "Oliver Clark, who is over here in section F." Later still: "The next question does come from the hall for Sen. McCain. It comes from Section C over here, and it's from Ingrid Jackson." And so on. So often did Brokaw mention sections that he sounded like a Broadway usher.

Odd as it was, Brokaw's obsession with where people were sitting was out-weirded by the audience. Regardless of the section they occupied, they were to a person eerily immobile and expressionless, so much so that I was surprised when a seemingly stiffened teenager actually blinked his eyes. The pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" were more animated than this group. Maybe the drinking water at the debate was spiked with curare. Or the debate staffer who wrangled the audience "undecided" with "undead."

Photo: AP Photo/Jim Bourg, Pool

In addition to featuring an abbreviated Who's Who of prominent conservatives, last weekend's Values Voters Summit at the Hilton Washington offered aisles of conservative merchandise -- including a box of waffle mix that now sits on my desk in The Times' D.C. Bureau. I didn't purchase  "Obama's Waffles" out of ideological solidarity or even a fondness for waffles. Rather, I wanted proof that the Values Voters had undervalued good taste. Not becuse the purveyors of the waffle mix took swipes at Obama on the box -- I admit to chuckling over the slogan "Change you can taste"  -- but because of the gag product's echo of a "real" African-American purveyor of breakfast food.

I'm referring, of course, to Aunt Jemima. (Obama/Jemima -- get it?) The African-American icon for pancake and waffle mix and, later, syrup, is regarded as a beloved figure by her manufacturers. But she makes some consumers uneasy because she evokes black domestics of a bygone era. Recognizing that fact, Quaker Oats in 1989 gave her a makeover, putting her on a diet, removing her headband, and adorning her with pearl earrings and a lace collar. (This may have been overcompensation; who wears pearl earrings while preparing waffles? It's like putting Uncle Ben in a top hat and tails.) Even with her new look, however, Jemima as even a satirical role model for Obama is abysmally insensitive if not insulting.

That was recognized even by the sponsor of the summit, FRCAction, the legislative arm of the Family Research Council. In a statement issued the day after I bought my box of Obama's Waffles, FRCAction conceded that the product represented "an attempt at parody that crosses the line into coarseness and bias." When the waffles were brough to the attention of FRC officials, the statement said, "they were removed and the exhibit was dismantled by the vendor at our insistence. It is our responsibility to fully vet materials that are offered at any event we cosponsor, but we are deeply dismayed that this vendor violated the spirit, message and tone of our event in such an offensive manner." At least they didn't waffle.

Photos of the Obama Waffles box courtesy of AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

A few years ago I shook my head when a much younger colleague -- now a rising star at The Times -- included what seemed to me a gratuitous piece of information in a political story. Reporting on a rumble in the Senate over Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominations, she noted: "The fight between Republicans and Democrats inflamed passions to the point where Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the third ranking Republican, drew parallels between the 'hubris' of Democrats and that of German dictator Adolf Hitler."

"As opposed to all the other Hitlers?" I asked myself at the time, shifting into middle-aged-cranky mode. Who didn't know that Hitler was a German dictator? Would we have to begin referring to Jesus as "the first-century religious teacher whom many believe to have risen from the dead"? Or the Civil War as "a 19th century conflict between North and South over slavery"?

I had the same reaction -- only stronger -- this week when I read a Reuters story about a federal appeals court  overturning the kidnapping and conspiracy conviction of a former Ku Klux Klansman charged with holding two black men at gunpoint while companions beat and killed them in 1964. The story included this helpful historical aside:  "The secret group, known for its white robes and pointed hoods, formed in the U.S. South after the Civil War to reassert white supremacy and enforce racial segregation, terrorizing blacks with lynchings, cross-burning and murders."

Oh, that Ku Klux Klan!

But maybe I'm judging the Reuters reporter unfairly. In the 1959 edition of "The Elements of Style" -- the usage bible I first encountered in high school -- E.B.White argued for spelling out the full names of organizations like the NAACP because babies were being born all the time who one day would scratch their heads over what the letters stood for. Later editions removed the NAACP example, perhaps because "colored people" had become politically incorrect. But White's point about showing consideration for new generations of readers is a valid one. A baby was born today who doesn't know what "lol" means.

Instead of bewailing the fact that some newspaper readers don't know that Hitler was a dictator or that KKK members wore pointed hoods, maybe I should be grateful that these whippersnappers are reading the newspaper at all. Or perhaps I should say: "reading the newspaper, a primitive precursor of the Internet made of wood pulp."

It's hard to imagine a siller "controversy" than the kerfuffle over whether Barack Obama dissed Sarah "Pit Bull With Lipstick" Palin by commenting, in relation to John McCain's economic policies, that "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." But the fact that even a manufactured controversy could be generated by a porcine analogy is a reminder of the prominent position of pig put-downs in everything from political discourse to Holy Scripture.

Obama's (unoriginal) comment about red-lipped pigs is in the tradition of referring to wasteful government spending as  "pork" (from "pork barrel; see also "bringing home the bacon"). The term "earmarks," of course derives from the practice of clipping an identification tag to the ear of a pig or other farm animal. But pigs are the objects of defamation way outside the Beltway. Gluttons "pig out." My mother used to upbraid her messy sons for turning our bedrooms into pigsties. Even Charles Schulz, the gentle progenitor of "Peanuts,"  called one of his  characters "Pigpen" because the kid was a dirt magnet.

Even Jesus disparaged pigs, and not just because they were unclean. He also suggested that they were uncouth.  According to the Gospel of Matthew, he warned his disciples not to "cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (To be fair, Jesus also took a dig, however metaphorical,  at man's best friend, saying: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.")

Occasionally one will come across a revisionist view of pigs citing their intelligence and loyalty. But the Obama-Palin tiff is a reminder that when politicians jab at each other, there may be a pig in the poke.

I admit it: I was among the throng that helped "Tropic Thunder" supplant "The Dark Night" as the highest-grossing film over the weekend. For what it's worth, I found it amusing but overlong and derivative. The premise -- actors are mistaken for the roles they play -- was the same as "Galaxy Quest," and Tom Cruise's producer character was a raunchier version of Rick Moranis' Larry Siegel from SCTV. I, however, had a (ahem!) professional reason for attending: the movie is making waves on op-ed pages as well as at cineplexes because of its use of the word "retard" and Robert Downey's appearance in amazingly convincing blackface as a Russell Crowe-like Aussie actor whose insistence on verisimilitude leads him to undergo pigment augmentation and to affect a "street" accent even when he's not on camera.

As even some African-Americans admit, Downey's "blackface" act -- which itself is an object of ridicule in the film -- is far removed from the offensiveness of minstrelsy and even from the practice of actors playing people of a different race. The "retard" jokes are a harder case, and I don't quite buy the rationalization that Ben Stiller's performance as "Simple Jack" derives all its laughs from its lampooning of Hollywood's naive lionization of the mentally challenged. Yet it's funny in a sophomoric, guilt-inducing way. I confess that I laughed both at "Simple Jack" and the Downey character's advice to Stiller's character never to "go full retard" if he wanted an Oscar. (An aside: The word "retarded," originally a euphemism for slow-witted, has morphed into an insulting epithet, proving that all politically correct terminology has a short half-life.)

The question, raised in a Washington Post op-ed piece by the mother of a girl with Down Syndrome, is whether black humor about retardation somehow decreases the audience's empathy for real-life retarded persons. I don't think so, but I don't have any retarded relatives. If I did, my enjoyment of "Tropic Thunder" probably would have been a guiltier pleasure -- or no pleasure at all. Then again, if I had just buried a family member, I wouldn't find "Weekend at Bernie's" a laugh riot.

The photo of protesters demonstrating at the Los Angeles premiere of "Tropic Thunder" Aug. 11, 2008, is by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.

Late hit, but my friend Maria Russo's fine recent piece on the attempted comebacks of Tina Brown and Bonnie Fuller as worldwide interweb personalities gives me a rare chance to do something I've always wanted to do: post an item where all the commentary value is contained in the categories:

Xenia, Ohio Burger King declares a 2319 after an employee takes a bath in the kitchen sink. Timothy "Mr. Unstable" Tackett gets canned, along with several co-workers, after posting the clip to his MySpace page. BK orders the sink sterilized twice, liquidates all utensils involved:

I have low expectations of cleanliness anytime I dine out. So I'll ask: What made Mr. Unstable's baño any less hygienic than use of the sink to clean, say, pests and pest droppings, spoiled food, employee hands, vomit, stuff that fell on the floor, or any of the other contaminants that routinely need to be cleaned up even in the best restaurants?

"My first thought was oh my God," Greene County health commissioner Mark McDonnell tells WDTN's Megan O'Rourke, and his second and third thoughts aren't much more coherent. Mr. Unstable hosts a clip of McDonnell free-associating on the possible dangers involved in letting a tattooed punker take a birthday bath in a kitchen sink: "Contaminating a food utensil, cleaning sink; employee health; spreading bacteria all over food contact surfaces; spreading bacteria all over... Bacteria that happened to be on his skin could be deposited on the utensils too. Could promote a food poisoning."

Again, are these risks rendered any greater by a guy taking a bath? I say this is another case of aesthetic disapproval pretending to be a public safety concern.

Which isn't to say Burger King shouldn't have fired the guy (pity Xenia, where this is what an underappreciated show business genius has to do for fun on his birthday), though it's a shame to see that the real protagonist of the video — money-grubbing manager "Karen," the only person doing any real work in the joint — seems to have taken a fall as well.

So much for that speaking engagement at the Democratic National Convention. John Edwards is admitting to an affair with Rielle Hunter, AP reports:

Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair but said that he didn't love the woman. He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father of her child because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

Uh, wow. So, if he doesn't love the other woman, that makes it okay? And he said this to the media? Out loud?

Okay, we've heard enough about John. Here's my question:

Tell us why below.

One year ago today, when the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening rush-hour commute and killed 13 people, the disaster sparked a furious national debate about the crumbling state of our infrastructure. So quickly are such catastrophes forgotten that a major-party presidential candidate can now propose eliminating the tax that pays for bridge repair, and few bat an eyelash.

About a quarter of the public road bridges in the United States are considered functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, according to the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Fixing them would cost roughly $140 billion, but even a modest House bill to provide $1 billion for repair of federal bridges faces a veto threat from President Bush.

The money for things like road and bridge repairs comes from the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, which hasn't been raised since 1993 and doesn't adjust for inflation. With high gas prices prompting Americans to drive less, gas-tax revenues are dropping. This situation will get even worse if John McCain has his way. In one of this campaign season's more revolting pander-fests, McCain this spring proposed eliminating the federal gas tax for the summer. That would cost the government up to $9 billion that would otherwise go to preventing another disaster like the I-35W bridge collapse.

Weird, but it seems like we've been here before; weren't people screaming that New Orleans needed more money for levee repair, just before a great American city was flushed away like yesterday's sanitary napkin? How many more people have to die before Washington gets serious about transportation infrastructure?

* Photo by Jim Gehrz / Associated Press

Was former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unfairly blamed for destroying the image of the Department of Justice and riddling its hallways with political holes? Or was it all the work of dulcet-toned blondie Monica Goodling, former Justice Department appointee?

The department's inspector general seems to think so. Gonzales certainly came off as a bit of a bumbling idiot at his hearing last year in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee — and hey, given that she was certainly smart enough to get herself immunity, Goodling may well have masterminded Operation EvilJustice.

Then again, she did ask the following questions of candidates, according to TPMMuckraker:

Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

And, on occasion — in case the subtext hadn't been hammered home yet:

Why are you a Republican?

Okay, I've got to ask:

Post your own question suggestions below.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the U.S. for delaying the citizenship application of decorated soldier Julian Polous Al Matchy beyond what's legally allowed (120 days after the applicant passes a citizenship test). Here's more on Polous:

Specialist Polous is a permanent lawful resident of the United States, currently stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas. He is a native and citizen of Iraq. He immigrated to the U.S. in May 2001 and quickly applied for political asylum, which was granted in 2002. In 2005, he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States.

Polous joined the U.S. Army in March 2006 and served, among other duties, as a translator. He was deployed along with his unit to his native country of Iraq. In October 2007, he was seriously wounded when a suicide bomber detonated himself 10 feet from Polous and his fellow soldiers. After partially recovering from his wounds, he agreed to another stint in Iraq until December 2007.

You'd think this is one of those cases Citizenship and Immigration Services would want to speed along, if purely for PR purposes. Or, if it's too controversial to trumpet an Iraqi's decision to become an American citizen, why not stick to the usual timeline for processing a naturalization application? It speaks to the administration's general disregard for Iraqis who've helped the war effort. But mostly it's the backlog -- one that was bad enough before expanded background check requirements, a fee increase, anti-immigrant sentiment, and a historic presidential election prompted a rush of applicants. Fortunately, USCIS is working on the problem by hiring more staff, though it's unclear how much of an effect the increased numbers will have, as the Associated Press reports:

Since October, the agency has added 830 adjudication officers to its ranks, bringing the total working at immigration offices nationwide to 3,775. Another 590 are expected to be trained by the end of the year....

About 1.4 million people applied for naturalization in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007, nearly double the number of petitions filed the previous year....

Overwhelmed, the agency warned that anyone who had applied after June 1, 2007, would likely wait 15 to 18 months to attain citizenship....

The agency has since said the waits will be shorter, but it won't say by how much.

Barack Obama's VP shortlist might have gotten shorter: The National Enquirer yesterday published a story claiming it had caught John Edwards meeting with an alleged mistress and illegitimate child. Then again, the Enquirer hasn't been able to produce quotes, photos or even eyewitness accounts. And the mainstream media seems to be ignoring it, for the most part.

TalkLeft, among others, hopes it isn't true. And thus far, the claims don't seem to have hurt Edwards politically — although the Corner has something worth noting:

...after first seeming to take himself out of the running, he put himself back in the race two weeks ago, telling NPR, "I'm prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country."

But yesterday — the day the Enquirer story went live — the Rocky Mountain News reported, "former Sen. John Edwards told a Denver audience Tuesday that now he's plunged into a new kind of campaign, 'to end poverty as we know it in a generation.'"

Wonkette, in its own way, expresses exhaustion at the thought of another Edwards story:

The important question is not “Why is John Edwards cheating on his wife who had cancer?” We know that answer: He’s a Democratic politician. They have affairs with ladies. The important question is “Why do we have to hear about this again now?”

The answer is “Because a tabloid caught him with the mistress and the baby at a hotel!” A love child? Jesus! Bill Clinton must feel a million years old tonight. Joe Klein, too.

Pajamas Media plays savvier-than-thou:

Oh, one last thing, for those of you who say it’s The National Enquirer, how do we know it’s true? I suggest you Google the “National Enquirer and OJ Simpson.” They broke most of the important stories on that case. In general, these days they’re vastly more reliable than The New York Times.

But Outside the Beltway interrupts, "Indeed, the Enquirer breaks legitimate scandals all the time.  But they run with all manner of nonsense too — they just don’t care so long as they sell papers." It goes on:

Edwards has been widely touted for another run as vice president, although I can’t see why he’d want to go through that again, especially with his wife in ill health.  Certainly, those facts would make the scandal worse, if true.  Frankly, I hope it isn’t. 

Ditto.

The Open Society Institute's Laura Silber looks at Serbia's future after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, and former deputy prime minister of Jordan Marwan Muasher pushes Arab moderate to pursue reform. Columnist Tim Rutten discusses the haves (Aaron Spelling's widow) and the have-nots (working women). And Chicago Tribune writer Mike Downey wonders where he can pick up an addiction:

New York Times reporter David Carr admittedly was addicted to crack and treated more than one woman horribly and then the mother of his children worse, so where is he now? On the cover of the NYT Sunday Magazine, promoting his new tell-all, that's where. Neil Steinberg got arrested for a spousal tussle and had his Chicago Sun-Times editors very concerned, but instead of going from bars to behind bars, the thirsty columnist quickly labeled himself "Drunkard" and turned his flaw into a nonfiction book, which the Sun-Times has been only too happy to help him toast.

I envy them. Oh, how I want to make a mess of my life so that I can profit by it. I long to tell my story, if only I had a story to tell.

The editorial board asks LAUSD to give charters fair funding if they get a multi-billion-dollar bond measure, and explores the space policies of John McCain and Barack Obama. Finally, the board thinks Flint, Mich. police are taking baggy pants too seriously:

Flint, Mich., has run out of crime. There are no statistics to prove this assertion, but it must be true. Only the total absence of lawbreaking can explain why the police department has turned to fashion enforcement. Flint, best known as the hard-luck, gritty town featured in Michael Moore's documentary "Roger and Me," is being mocked across the globe for its police chief's decision to arrest and ticket the wearers of sagging pants.

On the letters page, readers discuss the state's not-too-bright financial picture. Anaheim's Dave Lieberman suggests to California legislators: "Admit that you're not smart enough to balance the budget without passing more debt to the future, and resign, all of you...."

*Cartoon by Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait pens a mega-smack down of anti-capitalist Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and all I can say is: Thank you, Jon Chait.

Why the gratitude? Buzz over her book has pushed Klein to the verge intellectual canonization, so much that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saw her as a worthy enough adversary to debate on a live radio program. Her conspiracy theorist-like contention in "The Shock Doctrine" is that profit-hungry free marketeers relish major disasters, (from everything to Hurricane Katrina to, yes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) which allow them to push their unpopular reforms on the the rest of us who are "shocked" by calamity. Her supporting arguments and examples are so absurd that, as Christopher Hitchens said in a debate on the existence of God, "There are no statements worth arguing here; all you can do is underline them.”

Where I merely underlined Klein's absurdities while reading her book, Chait ripped them to shreds. An excerpt from his piece:

Klein's model leaves little room for the non-economic varieties of conflict, such as ethnic or sectarian strife. "Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era," she observes, "which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical freemarket 'reforms.'" One example Klein cites in her list is the U.S. intervention in Kosovo. But the human rights violation that she deplores was not the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, it was the American response. And what motivated the American attempt to stop the mass atrocity? Capitalism, of course: "The NATO attack on Belgrade in 1999 created the conditions for rapid privatizations in the former Yugoslavia--a goal that predated the war." (Klein assures her readers that economics was not the "sole motivator" for the war, but her analysis makes no room for any such complication.)

What I find most repugnant in Klein's work is her unrepentant character assassination of Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist she indicts as a sort of evil genius behind disaster capitalism. Klein's smoking gun? A three-sentence statement plucked completely out of context from an introduction Friedman wrote to one of his books. Friedman died before "The Shock Doctrine" was published, allowing Klein to peddle her ridiculous accusations without so much as a reply from the accused. (I pointed out Klein's misuse of Friedman's quote here.)

ABC reports that Bill Clinton says he's ready to campaign for Barack Obama "whenever he asks." See? No hard feelings, B.O.!

The question is, given what a bang-up job he did on his wife's campaign, is Obama going to want the former president at his side, on camera, near a microphone? With campaigners like these...

Here's an idea: Have Bill campaign for John McCain instead.

Glamour got to sit down with Barack Obama yesterday, and the conversation inevitably veered toward Michelle. Not her fabulous style or her apparently expensive tastes, but — as usual — Michelle's political presence. And, in a comment reminiscent of Obama's admonishing the GOP to "lay off my wife" — a quote that Times columnist Jonah Goldberg gleefully seized upon — the candidate told the fashion mag, "I don't have a thick skin when it comes to criticism of my wife":

What happened was that the conservative press—Fox News and the National Review and columnists of every ilk—went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way.... spouses are civilians. They didn't sign up for this. They're supporting their spouse. So it took a toll....

Everybody who knows Michelle knows how extraordinary she is. She's ironically the most quintessentially American woman I know.... And I think that it is an example of the erosion of civility in our political culture that she's been subjected to these attacks, and my attitude is that the people who have attacked her in the ways that they have...if they've got a difference with me on policy, they should debate me. Not her.

"They should debate me, not her"? Now, I like and respect Obama. I'm also a huge fan of Michelle, and it's clear to me that certain pundits have sunk their teeth into her and just won't let go.

But the "lay off my wife" line of thought is a load of bunk. Hillary Clinton didn't shy away from politics while she lived in the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt, one of America's (and the world)'s most beloved first ladies, had a political life that far outlasted her husband's untimely death. Edith Wilson took on "stewardship" of daily presidential duties while her fascist dictator husband lay incapacitated. Abigail Adams, second only to Martha Washington, had some pretty definite opinions about women's suffrage. What's more, she was an active participant in the politics of her day:

After touring a New Jersey Army encampment, she reviewed the troops stationed there as "proxy" for the President. Often mentioned in the press, her opinions were even quoted at a New England town hall meeting. A highly partisan Federalist, Mrs. Adams helped forward the interests of the Administration by writing editorial letters to family and acquaintances, encouraging the publication of the information and viewpoint presented in them. She was sarcastically attacked in the opposition press... One anti-Federalist derided her as "Mrs. President" for her partisanship.

Loudmouthed first ladies are a fine American tradition. Obama should embrace that — and relax a little. The Times' James Rainey put it this way, regarding the New Yorker cartoon controversy:

Instead of his terse no comment, he should have played one of his strongest cards — his cool — responding something like: "Hey, I thought Michelle looked pretty good in camouflage."

Michelle Obama Watch, however, defends Barack Obama's position, asking, "Who could blame him?"

No one would want to see their spouse being publicly humiliated and distorted for no reason at all. Michelle is not running for office. She should not be treated as such. Anyone with half a brain would realize that the right feels the need to tear her down because doing so tears Barack Obama down by proxy — after all, why would a man with supposedly judgement sound enough to be Commander-in-Chief marry a reverse-racist, unpatriotic, “uppity” woman? 

National Review spends most of its time picking on Michelle in its response, but offers this point:

It is always nice to see a husband defend his wife or daughters — when they are truly "civilians" in the political wars. When, as in this case, the wife has the professional skills and the power to act for herself, that defense seems a bit condescending — and like wanting it both ways. As we learned from Team Clinton, a wife with with real power does better defending herself. 

Michelle Malkin, as usual, provides her own translation: "BO: Damn you conservatives for taking my wife seriously!"

And now (cue drumroll):

Tell us why below.

John McCain, the great foreign-policy hawk who promises to keep Americans safe from overseas threats, campaigned yesterday like it was 1989. An excerpt of his remarks:

I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech's agreement with us concerning missile defense, and again some of the Russian now announcement they are now retargeting new targets, something they abandoned at the end of the Cold War, is also a concern.

Some prime Soviet-era tchockes there: missile defense, the Cold War, an Eastern Europe dependent on Russia for energy and ... Czechoslovakia? Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent points out this isn't the first time this campaign season that McCain has erred on the former Czechoslovakia. Here's to hoping the GOP nominee holds steadfast on Poland at Yalta.

Barack Obama's latest foreign-policy flub, meanwhile, is a bit more deliberate:

Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province...

Obama's campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an "improved security situation" paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

Click here for before-and-after screen shots. At the current rate Obama is lurching to the right, by Election day, look for the Democratic presidential nominee to call for invading Cuba.

The ed board weighed in today on the New Yorker's magazine cover — and in one of those rare moments, seems to agree with conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who told the candidate to "grow a pair." From the editorial:

Let's be frank. People sophisticated enough to read, say, newspaper editorials are smart enough to know that the New Yorker's cover art this week — portraying Barack Obama as a be-turbaned Muslim and wife Michelle as an Afro-sporting terrorist with an AK-47 across her back — is a work of satire. But what about the millions of dumb Americans who will think otherwise?

Obama's campaign is deeply worried about the legions of morons who they apparently believe make up the heart of this great nation. 

But, as Swati Pandey pointed out in yesterday's round-up, not everyone agrees that the cartoon actually works as satire. Here's Pandagon's Jesse Taylor:

... it’s like holding a satirized Klan rally by holding a Klan rally...with a laser show that makes a three-story image of a burning cross.  A bigger, badder, better version of the thing you’re attempting to mock doesn’t constitute mockery, it just constitutes a gaudier version of the thing you’re addressing. 

What do you think?

Remember the "News Radio" episide where billionaire Jimmy James is giving a reading of his book, which has been translated into Japanese — and then back into English via machine translation? "The original title of this book was 'Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer,' "  James tells his audience, "but I see now that it's... 'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler.' "

The American Family Association probably should have watched that episode befopre entrusting a computer with the Web site of its Christian news outlet, OneNewsNow. According to Washington Post blogger The Sleuth, the site's automated system was set up always to change the word "gay" to "homosexual," which came out rather awkwardly when the subject of one story was a sprinter who had qualified for the Beijing Olympics named Tyson Gay.

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, or the first official day of summer (no, it wasn't Memorial Day, or whatever earlier spring day when Californians start dressing and beach-going like it's summer). For those of you sad sacks like me trapped in offices for most or all of today's long daylight hours, you can read what The Times had to say about the weather. Yes, weather was once a constant topic of editorials in The Times (now, it only makes the occasional appearance).

Check out our Cold Copy on California weather for some purple prose. A sampling of old-timey bigotry and weird science from 1909:

If any one is disposed to make an outcry about the only really hot weather of summer, take him aside and advise him to "keep cool." Really we ought to rejoice.... It is better than cold cream and enamel for my lady's complexion. It will bleach her out so that her cheeks will look like peaches and cream, the peaches unpeeled and glorious in their blushes.... Go to the nearest Chinese laundry and see wise John in his two white garments doing the "washee" as careless about the heat as you please.... If we eat here as we did in the cold lands where we were born, and do not exercise, the equable weather fails to open the pores of the skin, and the other organs are overtaxed..... Any wise and conscientious physician will confirm all this...."

Once you're finished reading editorials, get out there, take a book, cook some food.

With the presidential campaign in a lull, Time magazine this week devotes its cover story to that old standby: “Childhood Obesity: Threat or Menace.” Actually, the title on the cover of the June 22 issue is “Our Super-Sized Kids,” only slightly less trite than “Generation XL” or “Fat for Life,” the banner headline on a similar Newsweek story published eight years ago.

How did I remember that old Newsweek story? I didn’t, until I looked it up. What I remembered was the cover photo, which like Time’s showed an unpleasingly plump boy holding an obscenely overlowing ice cream cone. But whereas Newsweek’s chubster was set to gorge himself on a one-scoop cone, Time’s tubby tyke had been served with two scoops. Double the pleasure — and embarrassment. (Actually, Time was  cutting back: Its 2004 article about obesity showed a fat kid with a three-scoop cone.)

As a former fat boy, I cringed when I saw both photos, and only party because  the kids looked like me when I was 10 or 11. Posing a fat kid with a giant ice cream cone is tasteless and cruel (even if the models were paid for flaunting their adiposity). Worse, the iconography of the covers refelected the fallacy that fat people are gluttons. (Interestingly, that was not the burden of Time’s story, which spread the blame for childhood obesity to include high-tech convenmiences and evolutionary biology.)

I have written at length elsewhere about how even balanced journalism about childhood obesity may aggravate the ostracism of fat kids that seems to have survived the recalibration of the bariatric bell curve. Maybe bullies don’t need an excuse to pick on fat kids, but pack journalism about the obesity epidemic gives them one by making the fat kid not only “different” but a national menace.

I’m not one of those devotees of “fat culture” who believe that urging people to lose weight is like pressuring deaf people to read lips — a form of genocide. On the other hand, do we really want a  world without fat people? 

But put that debate aside. Think only of the Time and Newsweek covers. Asking a fat boy to pose with a gargantuan ice cream cone is demeaning to him and to other chubby kids who might see the magazine — or have it brandished at them in the schoolyard. At least they didn’t show him patting his belly or slobbering. But there's always next summer.

How does safety make people dumber? Courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily comes this Shankar Vedantam column describing how consequence mitigation encourages risky behavior.

And even if you don't increase your own risk-taking because, for example, you bike in a helmet rather than bareheaded, it turns out hell really is other people. One researcher studies how drivers react differently to bicyclists based on some perceived safety variables. And it turns out (what are the chances?) that if you really want to be rigorous in these experiments you have to pretend to be a woman:

Traffic psychologist Ian Walker at the University of Bath in England once conducted a similar experiment that vividly illustrates the problem with well-intentioned interventions that backfire.

Walker rode a bicycle equipped with a distance sensor, video camera and a computer. Over 15-to-20-minute periods, he rode with his helmet on, then with his helmet off. He rode some segments three feet from the curb and others closer to the edge of the road. With each iteration, he changed a single variable. In the interest of being rigorous, he even obtained a shoulder-length wig of curly black hair, so that some passing motorists would think he was a woman.

Results: Drivers are less likely to run over women cyclists. There's no way to protect yourself from safety. And as long as people are still having promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection while at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment, I'll be sound as a pound.

Full article in the WashPost.

Is safety burnout another problem we can pin on Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara? This American Heritage article suggests so:

The general election campaign is barely underway, but I already like what I'm seeing. Why? Both John McCain and Barack Obama want to address Americans' anxiety over the anemic economy by (drum roll) ... giving us money! Obama wants Congress and President Bush to doll out another $50 billion stimulus package ASAP:

On the first day of what is to be a two-week economic tour around the country, Barack Obama said Monday that lawmakers should inject another $50 billion immediately into the sluggish U.S. economy.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee cited the largest monthly increase in the unemployment rate in over 20 years, and record highs in oil prices, food prices and foreclosures.

"Such relief can't wait until the next president takes office. ... That's why I've called for another round of fiscal stimulus, an immediate $50 billion to help those who've been hit hardest by this economic downturn," Obama told a crowd in Raleigh, N.C.

Now it's your turn to bid for voters, McCain:

With gas prices reaching a national average of four dollars a gallon -- a record high -- John McCain is planning to resurrect his call for a national gas tax holiday, which became a staple of his stump speech in late April and early May.

A McCain aide told CNN's Dana Bash on Monday that the Arizona senator planned to plug the gas tax holiday in public statements throughout the day as a message to voters that he understands the plight of working families in a tough economy.

Before a fundraiser in Richmond, Virginia on Monday, McCain mentioned the gas tax holiday in remarks to a smaller event for about 40 high-dollar donors. "That was derided by Sen. Obama and others as a gimmick," McCain said, but added that working people and truckers would appreciate it.

"I don't pretend that it's an answer to our energy problems," he said.

Say what you will about voting responsibly and evaluating the candidates based on how their stances affect the entire country, but think about it: What is tangibly better for you than having more money? I thought the first stimulus package represented fiscal policymaking at its worst, but that isn't stopping me from cashing the $1,200 check that just arrived in the mail. And even though Obama's and McCain's respective vote-buying moves are just gimmicks, if they insist, I'll be more than happy to indulge in cheaper gas or another check from Washington.

You know how border hawks try to emphasize that they're only at war with illegal immigrants, not the legal ones? Wonder how they react to this AP story:

A new poll shows that more than half of new California immigrants who have green cards at some point lived in the state illegally.

...They found 52 percent of new green card holders in California had lived in the country illegally before.

When they looked at the country as a whole, researchers found a smaller but still significant percentage of permanent residents—42 percent—have lived in the country illegally.

The article notes that the Public Policy Institute of California study contradicts "the conventional notion that most legal immigrants wait in their home country for their permanent residency papers." Keep in mind, though, many of those offenders are simply what the study terms "visa abusers" — those who come in with valid documentation but end up overstaying.

And no, for all you Minutemen out there, they're not just from Mexico. The PPIC study points out:

Mexico is by no means the only country with a high percentage of 2003 [legal permanent residents] with prior illegal entries or stays. We estimate that more than one-third of those from Canada and 30 percent of those from Europe/Central Asia had prior illegal entries or stays.

Hard to blame them, given how rife with red tape the naturalization process has become.

*Photo: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

The Hispanic Journal asks, can fences be built without undocumented laborers? The not-so-shocking conclusion:

The irony is not lost on businesses that have come to rely heavily on foreign-born and Hispanic workers to fill vacancies left by a shrinking domestic labor pool.

"Is it possible to construct a wall without undocumented workers?" asked Perry Vaughn, executive director of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America. "It's probably borderline impossible to be honest with you."

In recent years, the construction industry has seen a dramatic increase in undocumented foreign-born Hispanic workers, according to a Pew Hispanic report published in 2007.

Based on information collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, the report also found that foreign-born workers held one in five construction jobs in 2006.

Is this good news for immigrants and fuel for immigration reform activists? Maybe not. The real-estate slump means the construction business itself has been crumbling, so those skilled workers, American citizens or not, are probably hurting as well. Business Intelligence points out that for construction companies — especially small ones — it's far cheaper to hire "independent contractors" than it is to deal with full-time employees with salaries and healthcare.

Scott Morrisey owns Red Line Walls Systems, a commercial drywall and metal-stud installer in Leominster, Mass. "Our company has prided itself on its ability to provide good jobs at good wages and a generous benefits package," he said. But that policy comes with a price. Morrisey estimates that providing those benefits, plus paying Social Security, Medicare, and workman's compensation and unemployment insurance adds 48 cents to every dollar of a contract bid.

Could the border wall itself become part of the fight over American jobs and immigrant laborers' rights? It may not be ironic, but it's apt.

You will be propositioned at least eight times on November 4, so you might want to carry a can of mace. Oh, and you'll be needing your wallet, as well.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said today that she has certified four new ballot measures for the presidential ballot. There's one (number five) to revamp sentencing for drug and other nonviolent offenders; it would cost more than $1 billion a year. Ah, but it would also save more than $1 billion a year. Or so the attorney general speculates.

And there's measure number six, state Sen. George Runner's anti-gang initiative. It would increase penalties for some crimes, and deny bail to illegal immigrants who also are members of gangs. This one would run the state about half a billion dollars a year, not including the extra costs for county jails, prosecutors, etc. Just a quick reminder: the state will likely have to add $7 billion to the $17.2 billion deficit that (today, anyway) already is going to mean deep cuts and/or tax increases. Why? We already can't manage our overcrowded prisons, and an overseer appointed by the federal court is empowered to take that $7 billion off the top of the state treasury. So how are we going to pay up? A bond -- a ballot measure -- is expected to come before voters. In November. So make that nine propositions. Now where were we?

Oh, yeah, number seven: A renewable energy mandate. It would require utilities to generate 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2010. And 40% by 2020. And 50% by 2025. This one would cost a relatively paltry $3.4 million a year, paid for by fees. But rate payers would get off cheap, because it would require all the costs to be borne by fat-cat utility executives! OK, just kidding about that last part.

Number eight: You were expecting this one -- it would amend the state constitution to provide that the only kind of "marriage" recognized in California is one between a man and a woman. Cost: nothing! Except our humanity. Come to think of it, both sides will probably make that argument.

Did I say nine? Make that 10. In addition to the likely prison bond, there is also a very likely redistricting revamp. Also bubbling under: a victims' rights initiative and an alternative fuels bond. So make that 12 ballot measures.

In case you forgot, measures one through four deal with a high-speed rail bond, a humane treatment of farm animals law, a children's hospital bond, and parental notification for minors' abortions.

But that's just State of California. The City of Los Angeles may have a parcel tax for anti-gang programs and an instant-runoff voting measure. The county and/or the city may have a transportation tax. The deadline for the city to act is July 2, so in theory we could get even more.

If you're keeping track -- and of course you are -- you'll find conflicting theories about What It All Means. Democrats will come out in droves to vote for president, so now is the time to get a new tax on the ballot. Or, Republicans and John McCain have an outside shot at California's electoral vote, so now is the time for a law-and-order measure, abortion notification and anti-gay-marriage to keep their interest up.

Get ready for fund-raising pitches. Wealthy Republicans, expect to be asked to pay out for those three conservative measures just mentioned. High-flying Democrats, plan to be called to help fund the sentencing, renewable energy and farm animals initiatives.

If campaign consulting firms and the companies that produce political mail were publicly traded, brokers would be recommending a strong "buy" order right about now. Alas, they're not publicly traded. Yet.

Top of the Ticket notes that Hillary Clinton has won the endorsement of U.N. Goodwill Ambassador and Menudo alum Ricky Martin, just days before the Puerto Rico primary. Martin is a Puerto Rico native who has evidently changed his political preferences since he shimmied with George W. Bush in 2001. (He said Bush's going to war made him switch; guess he didn't mind Clinton's vote on that matter.)

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has launched a campaign ad that's winning him praise (some of it faint) for his Spanish-speaking skills. It's not the first Spanish-language ad by either of the Democratic candidates (who also have Spanish-language pages), but it is the first time we've heard Obama speak the language at length. Clinton has attempted snippets of Spanish in the past, without much success. That puts her in line with many candidates past, but it probably won't hurt her -- it's usually (mis)translations that raise controversy, not simple statements, however flubbed.

So a shout-out from a native son might be what Clinton needs, as long as Obama doesn't convince Daddy Yankee to end mounting speculation on his political preferences.

More child-proofing in the red-hot center of American culture: You can get arrested for serving wine at an art gallery opening. Police in East Hampton, N.Y. cuffed and booked 67-year-old gallery owner Ruth Kalb (alias "Ruth Vered") on charges of serving alcohol without a license over the Memorial Day vacation. Partygoers, left to confront, stone-cold sober, an exhibition of photography by movie stars, were shocked.

Courtesy of ArtsJournal.

Aftershocks and rescue attempts continue to make their way through China's battered Sichuan region even as the death toll rises from Monday's 7.9 earthquake, but some inside China are beginning to ask why the country — particularly in its more rural areas — was so ill prepared. Take Melissa Block's NPR report of a high school that collapsed earlier this week, trapping hundreds of students:

The school, just outside the city of Dujiangyan, was expanded from two stories to four, which may have contributed to its collapse...

A man shows a piece of cement from what he says was a pillar. He breaks it in half to show how soft it was — how unable it was to withstand the force of the earthquake.

Other residents say the local education bureau knew the school was dangerous and had allocated money for it to be torn down and rebuilt. But locals say instead the building was renovated and given a coat of whitewash.

Residents seem equally outraged at local government's crisis management. Block explains:

We're hearing a lot of complaints from people here about local officials. They're saying the central Chinese government is good, they're doing a good job, but the local officials, they say, are very bad, they're corrupt, and they only do things for show — they don't care about the people.

It makes Francis Fukuyama's Apr. 29 Op-Ed look practically prophetic.

*Photo: Vincent Yu / Associated Press

People are talking about the anti-religion comments and sour attitude toward the Chosen People expressed in Albert Einstein's letter to his pal Goodchild, but I think the most interesting phrase is in in a throwaway clause:

And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.

Einstein produced plenty of random thoughts on the passing scene, most of which strike me more for their banality than anything else. Whether he did or did not believe in Goddess doesn't seem to me probative of much — and like Manley Pointer, I been believing in nothing ever since I was born. In fact, I'm pretty sure appealing to authority to support your disbelief defeats the whole purpose of being a rationalist.

But there's one aspect of Einstein's non-scientific punditry that has always been catnip to me: his abiding, total and frequently repeated hatred of patriotism and the use of force. You can always depend on Albert E. for good anti-bullyism, and his Actonian formulation here is the clearest expression of that philosophy I've seen. What sets it off from sermon-on-the-mount piety is that it doesn't pretend to any great moral position; force and power are bad not because they're wicked but because they're stupid and unhealthy.

Top of the Ticket blogger Don Frederick notes that Hillary Clinton has spoken out on one of the most pressing issues of the day — the racy Miley Cyrus photos. She told Yahoo:

"From everything I've heard she's a great kid and obviously very talented, but I think we need to do more to preserve our kids' childhood," Clinton said.

The presidential hopeful said she feels it is the parents' responsibility to protect a child.

"They grow up so fast and [there are] so many influences coming from all directions these days," Clinton said. "I think it's important that all of us as parents draw some lines here."

Let's leave aside whether the pics are appropriately allusive to classicism and the realities of contemporary young adulthood or plain creepy (and really, isn't the one of her with daddy Billy Ray way creepier?). And let's also ignore that people over the age of 18 probably can't even understand the Miley Cyrus-was-Destiny-Hope-is-Miley-Stewart-is-Hannah-Montana identity uroboros despite Slate's helpful explanation.

Instead, I'd just like to point out that John McCain and Barack Obama have both appeared with Miley Cyrus and seem to be supporters of her confounding identity politics and her corruption of American youth. I'm waiting for McCain and Obama to prove they're also for The Children with full Miley denunciations/renunciations/throws-under-the-bus.

*Photo courtesy the Associated Press.