http://www.leecullum.com en-us http://www.leecullum.com N/A lee@leecullum.com Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:31:03 -0500 20 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/110/1/Who%26%2339%3Bs-Afraid-of-Goldman-Sachs%3F Richard Condon was a writer of best-selling, high-toned thrillers such as The Manchurian Candidate. He lived the last part of his life in Dallas, and above his desk he kept a saying which, paraphrased, went like this: Think of the worst you can imagine and it's probably even worse than that. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/109/1/A-Bad-Season-for-Science It has not been a good season for science. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations, has come under attack because the IPCC issued a report three years ago saying that the Himalayan glaciers could be all but gone by 2035. This came from an interview with an Indian glaciologist in1999, according to press reports, and never was put to the test of a peer- reviewed study. Other experts have insisted that those glaciers might hold up for hundreds of years. Indeed, another working group that contributed to the IPCC survey has attributed the problem to a sloppy error by "social and biological scientists" who allowed a faulty prediction to slip into their study. Some trace that mistake to a transposition of figures in the date 2350, a forecast to which many, apparently, can repair. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/107/1/Bishop-for-a-Stormy-Season The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori came to Dallas this month to spend a weekend at St. Michael and All Angels, where I am a member. During her three years as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of America, she has ridden a whirlwind of acrimony with a steady, determined drive to bring calm to chaos and to dispatch those who would rather be elsewhere anyway, or so they say. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/105/1/The-Pay-Problem%2C-Made-Easy President Obama has warned Wall Street that it must be a part of the change regime that he inaugurated when he came to office last January. And indeed, some of the big banks are changing -- from one dubious operation to another. If sub-prime mortgages won't work any longer, they seem to be saying, let's try life settlements instead. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/104/1/The-Meaning-of-Green Green -- there is no doubt about it -- is the color of the era. Certainly it has gone through wildly disparate iterations, dating back to the early 1860s when Lincoln issued $450 million in new bills to finance the War Between the States. They were printed in green ink, to distinguish them from other notes, according to one account. Hence the name, greenbacks. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/102/1/Inflation Inflation is back. So says the International Monetary Fund as well as the Economist magazine. In China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina and Venezuela, prices have risen over the past year from eight to 29 percent. In the United States, inflation looks modest by comparison -- 3.9 percent. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/101/1/Tale-of-Two-Perils%3A--North-Korea-and-Syria One thing George W. Bush has been right about the past several months is North Korea. After six years of the silent treatment, during which North Korean leader Kim Jong Il built his nuclear arsenal from two potential weapons to eight or ten, and tested a bomb besides, the president was persuaded by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to restart the six-party talks in Beijing and hold direct discussions between Washington and Pyongyang on the sidelines. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/100/1/Carolyn-Horchow When Marie Brenner wrote a book called Great Dames about Kay Graham, Pamela Harriman and others, she wanted to publicize it in Dallas at a party featuring great dames of this city. That never happened, but right at the top of my list, as I tried to help, was Carolyn Horchow, who earlier this week reluctantly left a world she loved and that loved her. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/97/1/The-Transition-to-Fear General Motors is on its way to bankruptcy, in all likelihood, and it's been clear since last June, at least, that this would be the inexorable, inevitable conclusion of a long decline, suddenly accelerated, that didn't have to be. Certainly Rick Wagoner, a likable but luckless CEO, impressed nobody with his last months in office, pleading for more and more help from the feds without realizing that each enormous bundle of cash bought him thirty, maybe sixty days at best. A year ago, GM was worth less than the Hershey's chocolate company, and now it is capitalized at a tiny fraction of the billions it requires to fight another day, though with little chance of another quarter, much less another year. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/96/1/The-Politics-of-Banking Once upon a time, there were two giant banks in Dallas called RepublicBank, where I was and still am a customer though not a shareholder, thank heaven, and Interfirst. They were bitter rivals, but, in the end, they also became shotgun mates, married in a desperate move to stave off a final and fatal tumble down the beanstalk. Nonetheless, down they went, into the waiting arms of an unlikely Jack, also known as Hugh McColl. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/93/1/The-Modern-Meaning-of-the-Golden-Mean I heard an Episcopal priest in Dallas say that the clothes and cars and gadgets we buy for ourselves are addictive, and they don't make us happy. He was partly right, and partly wrong. Acquisitions do make us happy. That's why they're addictive. We get hooked on pleasure, not pain. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/92/1/The-New-Capitalism As we career down the road to the unknown land of the next economy, it would be wise to ask ourselves what kind of capitalism we want to pursue. It will be some kind of capitalism, I feel certain. Even the most despairing in the nation do not seem ready to turn to communism, as some did in the 1930s in the wake of the great capitalistic crash. Nor will it be socialism as it was in Britain after World War II, despite the ascent of Washington to the commanding heights of our financial, and soon, industrial, system. In time the government will follow the lead of Sweden from earlier in the decade and sell its shares in American banks, and probably the automakers as well, to private investors. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/88/1/The-Year-of-Political-Women If ever there was a year of the woman in American politics, it is 2008. This was the year that Hillary Clinton arrived as a full-blown serious contender for president, front-running, inevitable even, until she bumped into an unexpectedly magical candidate she couldn't overcome. This was the year, also, that Sarah Palin rode in from the West to astonish the nation and rev up the race, pushing her running mate, John McCain, into a dead heat with Barak Obama, at least for a while. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/89/1/The-Uses-of-Money Money is educational. It teaches more than the things it buys. That is a paraphrase from Howard's End by E.M. Forster. And what does money have to teach? Or, to get closer to Forster, what exactly does money impart? To E.M. Forster, money, above all, endows its possessor with the opportunity to hold independent opinions. Virginia Woolf echoed this idea when she said that for a woman to write, she must have a little money and a room of her own. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/90/1/Beware-of-Three-Little-Words As we grope our way through yet another economic crisis, it's important to ponder the lessons of this catastrophe because it didn't have to happen. The price of oil is beyond our control, but the housing and credit calamity was made in America by Americans, mainly on Wall Street, who got carried away with their own financial acumen. Then everything "turned to ashes in their hands," to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those lessons lie in the language of finance. Especially revealing are three little words. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/86/1/Don%26%2339%3Bt-Fiddle-While-the-Dollar-Burns Inflation is back. So says the International Monetary Fund as well as the Economist magazine. In China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina and Venezuela, prices have risen over the past year from eight to 29 percent. In the United States, inflation looks modest by comparison--3.9 percent. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/85/1/Bush-and-North-Korea%3A-One-Course-He-Must-Stay One thing George W. Bush has been right about the past several months is North Korea. After six years of the silent treatment, during which North Korean leader Kim Jong Il built his nuclear arsenal from two potential weapons to eight or ten, and tested a bomb besides, the president was persuaded by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to restart the six-party talks in Beijing and hold direct discussions between Washington and Pyongyang on the sidelines. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/84/1/How-to-Really-Elect-a-President If there's one thing this country needs this year it is a clear winner in the presidential election. Nerves are too raw, given the bank-and-housing crisis, plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to withstand another bout of uncertainty at the polls. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/83/1/The-Regrettable-Departure-of-Admiral-Fallon The sudden, unexpected resignation of Admiral William Fallon from Central Command in the Middle East is worrisome. The admiral left his post abruptly, he said, because of perceived disagreements with Washington over Iran. He opposes military action and favors instead a diplomatic approach. Since his views have become known, he said he felt he no longer could serve effectively. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/81/1/John-McCain%3A-Wrong-winger It couldn't be clearer that John McCain will be the Republican nominee for president, barring some unforeseen calamity. But calamity is exactly what they're expecting in the far-right wing of the party if the senator from Arizona prevails. Rush Limbaugh has predicted that McCain's nomination would mean the end of the GOP. James Dobson has said he would rather stay at home than vote for John McCain. Ann Coulter would take Hillary Clinton over the dreaded John McCain. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/79/1/Sub-prime-Tar-Pit "The market made me do it." Thats what some lenders are telling us about the crisis they've created that's reverberating now from Asia to Europe. Hysteria even hit the Federal Reserve, which dropped its measured demeanor and slashed interest rates by 125 basis points in the space of eight days, with the first cut of three-quarters of a percent announced at 8:30 on the morning of January 22, with the hope of beating back the frenzy that surely awaited the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of a rout in other parts of the world. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/77/1/Benazir-Bhutto Not since the shooting of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel a dozen years ago has a political assassination been so fraught with bad fortune. The brutal death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Rabin led straight to chaos, and the killing of Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto while she campaigned for a comeback threatens to do the same. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/75/1/Star-Mayor-of-Dallas Where Bill White of Houston used to be the star mayor of Texas, soon he may well be displaced by Tom Leppert of Dallas. A Republican where Bill White is a Democrat, a construction magnate where White leaned toward oil and gas with some building thrown in, Leppert nonetheless shares with White an affinity for Harvard (source of his MBA and White’s undergraduate degree) and a startling ability to get things done. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/76/1/Karen-Hughes First, President Bush could have closed Guantanamo. This would have had high symbolic importance and done a lot to repair the damage done by holding prisoners there much too long under circumstances that are much too murky. I heard a former military chaplain say at the beginning of the war in Iraq that under circumstances as extreme as those following September 11, excessive actions often are taken, but they usually right themselves within a reasonable period of time. That, regrettably, did not happen at Guantanamo. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/74/1/Armenians This time President Bush is making an important point. A Congressional resolution passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee condemning the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks that began in 1915 is ill timed and quite possibly damaging to our interests in Iraq. There is no question that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I was genocide. The Turkish government would save itself and us a lot of trouble if it would simply say so, and make amends that are appropriate and necessary. But that seems unlikely for reasons both emotional and immoral. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/72/1/Love Love was central to the gospels of Jesus the Christ. St. Paul wrote about it at length in a letter to the Corinthians. He called it charity, which suggests that where there is no love, charity can sink into condescension. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/71/1/Cuba Though prisons in Cuba are overflowing with political inmates, and Bush surely was right about the quiet doom that hovers still over that unhappy land, nonetheless, it did seem gratuitous to speak so harshly about Fidel at the U.N. that Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and his delegation sprang to their feet and walked out. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/70/1/Every-Small-town-Banker-Knew-Better Every small-town banker in 1950s America knew that if you loan money to people who demonstrably cannot pay it back, you need not be surprised when they don't. So what went wrong with mortgage lending in this first decade of the twenty-first century? Some mortgage brokers have been dishonest, no doubt about that. Some homebuilders have gone into the mortgage business themselves, which could be considered a conflict of interest. Certainly there were those who, eager to collect the financing and get the dirt flying, probably were tempted to misrepresent their customer's credit situation. The builders would be paid, whether the lenders were or not. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/68/1/The-Importance-of-Being-Jane-Austen Jane Austen is back. With two movies appearing this month and next, and all of her novels to be dramatized on Masterpiece Theater come January, this novelist of the nineteenth century is taking up where she left off ten years ago when another spate of films demonstrated, once again, her durability. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/67/1/Iraq%3A-Time-to-Regroup%3F Now, finally, some in Washington are beginning to admit that the scene in Iraq may not be all that we might wish come September. It has been obvious from the beginning that a backup plan would be necessary. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said as much in February. Well before that, Dov Zackheim, comptroller at the DOD during the first George W. Bush administration, put forth a proposal that made a lot of sense to me. It went like this: lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/66/1/Hope-for-Texas-Democrats%3F Is there hope for Democrats in Texas? Certainly Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama are raising money here. It's not as much, so far, as Rudy Giuliani, but they're making a showing that's far from embarrassing. What are the chances that one of them could put this state in play next year so we could have some of those ugly ads? lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/64/1/Hillary-versus-Rudy Is Hillary Clinton writing off Texas as hopeless territory for a Democrat? Not at all. Terry McAuliffe, her campaign chairman, was in Dallas for a gathering at Kathryn and Craig Hall's, where he insisted that his candidate can win. What is needed now, he said, is $100 million within the next four months because the primary elections will be all but over on February 5, the date that ballots will be cast in many critical states, probably including California, New York, New Jersey and Michigan. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 31 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/62/1/Trinity It is fish-or-cut-bait time at the Trinity River. Either we go forward with the project as it has been developed over the past nine years or we let it go. The Trinity already has been defeated at least twice at the polls, once, in the early 1970s when there was a push to make it navigable all the way to the gulf coast and again in 1978, when the voters turned down Town Lake. They will get a chance to administer a real coup de grace if Councilwoman Angela Hunt can gather enough signatures during the city election to call a referendum to reconsider the project. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/59/1/Hugo-Chavez Hugo Chavez versus George W. Bush. It sounds at first like something from Gilbert and Sullivan -- one of them rolling along, seemingly unstoppable, toward the mantle of president for life, the other flailing his way toward the final curtain, anxious, before it's too late, to make good on his early promise to look south for friends and vital interests. But Chavez goes on railing against imperialism and the drive toward a Latin American empire by the United States. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/60/1/Ray-Nasher%3A-A-Life-in-Full I thought Ray would go on forever. He had the kind of stamina and vitality that could make a man immortal. Ray had a joi de vivre that kept in check the discipline with which he cared for his health. No fanatical fitness for him. He was always up for rack of lamb and dessert. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/58/1/Giuliani Can Rudi Giuliani pull the Republican party back to the middle? At first I thought he could. Remember his eventful past--the wildly public parting from his wife, actress Donna Hanover, who stayed in Gracie Mansion with their two children while he slept in the apartments of various friends, including a couple of gay guys? The malignancy and surgery he not only survived but also ignored to become a true hero on September 11, 2001? His marriage two years later to Judith Nathan, who had been on the scene longer than the previous Mrs. Giuliani wished to remember? lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/57/1/Molly-Ivins With Molly Ivins gone, is this the end of the liberal voice in Texas? Surely not. But it will be hard to find anybody to equal her. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/55/1/Another-Great-Wall%3F President Bush's call for reform in our immigration system brings to mind the 700-mile fence Congress authorized last year between the United States and Mexico, something that blessedly went unmentioned in his state-of-the union speech. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/53/1/Beauty It's dismaying to face the holidays with so much ugliness emanating from what we once called the "cradle of civilization" or what Christians referred to as "the holy land." The only help for it, it seems it me, aside from real peace coming to this part of the world, is beauty. This is no trivial or superficial pursuit. "Beauty teaches," wrote Virginia Woolf. "Beauty is a disciplinarian." What did she mean? What are we to learn from beauty? lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/52/1/Three-Speakers "The speaker always takes the word of a member." Sam Rayburn said that, and surely this was the key to his enormous success as speaker of the U.S. House from 1940 to 1961 with a couple of interludes that brought Republicans to the fore in Congress. Sam Rayburn understood the art of human relations. So well attended were his backroom booze sessions, called the "Board of Education," in out-of-the-way offices of the Capitol that this is where Harry Truman was found on the day that Franklin Roosevelt died and summoned to the White House to hear the news that he now was president of the United States. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/51/1/Iraq-and-the-Inescapable-Substance Someday, sometime, somehow, some president will decide it's time to pull our troups out of Iraq, or at least take them down considerably. In Newsweek magazine Fareed Zakaria has proposed a force of 60,000, reduced from the current level of 144,000. In a new book, Out of Iraq, former Sen. George McGovern and William Polk, once with the State Department, urge a phased withdrawal beginning on or before December 31st of this year and ending by June 30, 2007. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/54/1/Romney Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has filed the necessary papers with the Federal Election Commission that will permit him to raise money for a coming campaign for president. Romney has been a successful CEO of Bain & Company in Boston, which he saved from decimation, and a salvage artist also for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. That enterprise was floundering badly under the weight of bribes and resignations before he took over. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/49/1/North-Korea-Goes-Nuclear It is terribly discouraging to see trouble erupt in North Korea, trouble that quite possibly could have been averted. The government of wily North Korean leader Kim Jong-il now has tested a nuclear weapon. The old ambiguity, such a comfort to diplomats in Beijing and Seoul -- less so to Washington and Tokyo -- has evaporated. In its place is sickening clarity, making plain what many have preferred to keep strategically obscure. An excess of clarity, like an excess of zeal, can rupture existing arrangements that make possible the preservation of somewhat peaceful association. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 13 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/42/1/Condoleeza-Rice-Agonistes It's clearly a case of Condoleeza Rice Agonistes. Has any secretary of state been so besieged since the hapless Dean Rusk under Lyndon Johnson? Where Rusk had to defend the Vietnam War, Rice has had to endure the sacking of Iraq -- by insurgents, Shiites, Sunnis and our own allied forces -- the impudence of Iran, and the decimation of Lebanon, while, on the side, reassuring the people of Cuba, via TV Marti, that the U.S. does not intend to invade, no matter what happens to Fidel Castro. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/43/1/Corporate-Espionage The Hewlett Packard story may sound truly weird, with tentacles reaching from Silicon Valley to Omaha, Boston and Florida, but I heard a journalist, formerly with Time Magazine, now in the spy business himself, say that it's much more than corporate shenanigans at a company already notorious for dumping the controversial CEO, Carly Fiorina. While it may seem exotic to sic private detectives on board members and journalists as well as employees, all in a mad effort to shut off the spigot of leaking information, this is far from a funny spectacle of another high-tech company making a sap of itself. It's a revelation of the current way of the world, and more disturbing than many of us might have realized. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 06 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/36/1/John-McCain There's no question that John McCain, at this moment, is the Republican with the best chance of winning the White House in 2008. But that could change. For one thing, the photograph of him hugging President Bush two years ago, with Bush a head taller than McCain and McCain looking like a drowning man desperate to be saved, may haunt him in the same way that the picture of Jimmy Carter kissing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on the cheek at the conclusion of a strategic arms limitation treaty helped kill his reelection in 1980. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/41/1/A-Winning-Team-for-Democrats Is there a dream ticket for Democrats in 2008? I believe there is, if not a dream ticket, then certainly a sensible, centrist combination with a realistic hope for victory, and I've found a blogger, Dave Hawk, who agrees with me. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, in that order, would offer the country an approach that would not be completely appealing to the left wing of the party but would stand a strong chance of attracting independent Americans. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 10 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/47/1/Iraq%3A--Springtime-for-Hitler%3F When members of the administration insist that the situation in Iraq today is akin to Hitler's Germany, I worry that they really believe this. They really are convinced that an ultra- centralized, highly militarized, Teutonically organized, aggressive, land-grabbing regime like that of Adolph Hitler is the same as the chaotic, religiously mad, badly though lethally armed insurgents ripping through Iraq today, bent on imploding a single state. Perhaps you could say that the Middle Eastern mind of the moment resembles the brutal disposition of ruling Germans in the 1930s and 40s, but there the similarity ends. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/46/1/How-to-Cope-with-Iran Can the United States and Iran ever get together, even on the most abbreviated basis? The record is not good. In 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, met with the Iranian foreign minister in Algiers. Only two days later, the American embassy in Tehran was seized. . lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/45/1/Iraq-and-The-Lessons-of-War What are the lessons of the war in Iraq? These occur to me: lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/44/1/The-Naturalist We are so divorced from nature most of the time that it's startling to meet what once was called a naturalist. John James Audubon was a great naturalist. So were Teddy Roosevelt and Charles Darwin. And so is San Antonio lawyer Luke Kellogg who is more than an expert at hunting and fishing. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/34/1/The-Missiles-of-North-Korea Kim Jong-il, president of North Korea, is at it again. This time he may be about to test a Taepodong 2 missile which could reach the United States. The last time North Korea pulled something like this was in 1998, when Kim's father, Kim Il Sung, tested a Taepodong 1, which flew over Japan, then into the Pacific Ocean. It's the sort of thing that diplomats call "provocative," and indeed it is. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 27 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/33/1/A-Woman-to-Lead-Episcopalians-%28or-Grape-Juice-and-Saltines%29 Imagine my startled amazement when the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori to be presiding bishop, the national leader, of the Episcopal Church of America was greeted by the rector of St. John's Church in Columbus, Ohio with the declaration that she would not be welcome in his church. Here is what he told the New York Times: "Just like we can't use grape juice and saltines for Communion, because it isn't the right matter, we do not believe that the right matter is being offered here." lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/32/1/Global-Warming Dr. Michael Griffin, who runs NASA, has promised to come up with a plan in the next few weeks for allowing scientists within his agency to speak and write for a general audience about the work they do. He's acting in response to Dr. James Hanson, a climate expert at NASA, who has complained that the agency's public affairs people, egged on by political appointees, want to review everything he writes or speaks. They also want to approve his contacts with the media. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/31/1/Gilded-Age It's well known now that some American CEO's believe they are entitled to $100 million or more in good times and bad. Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli has made $115 million since 2000 though the company's share price has fallen by 12 percent. Exxon-Mobil's Lee Raymond made $51.1 million in 2005 alone and has been awarded a pension worth $98 million. Of course, his corporation is raking in oil profits, so the board apparently felt this is no more than he deserved. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/29/1/Choosing-Not-to-Know What happens when elites become so wealthy that they can insulate and isolate themselves, and, apparently with impunity, choose not to know what's going on around them? Nothing good, according to Dr. Bonnie Wheeler, a medievalist at Southern Methodist University. This was the case, she said, in the last days of Rome, when "great wealth became more and more concentrated, and the ruling class didn't have to pay attention to anything but themselves." lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/26/1/Bush-Hubris I heard a wise man, a supporter of George W. Bush, say that this president has two central personal problems in the conduct of his office. First, he wants to be a one-man show. Hence his appointment of Josh Bolton to be chief of staff, replacing Andrew Card. It marks the arrival of yet another behind-the-scenes manager when an out-front leader of acknowledged reputation is needed. There's nothing wrong with either Card or Bolton except that this change is no change at all. It will do nothing to bring a fresh new day to a badly depleted White House. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/25/1/Iran I heard a wise man, a supporter of George W. Bush, say that this president has two central personal problems in the conduct of his office. First, he wants to be a one-man show. Hence his appointment of Josh Bolton to be chief of staff, replacing Andrew Card. It marks the arrival of yet another behind-the-scenes manager when an out-front leader of acknowledged reputation is needed.There's nothing wrong with either Card or Bolton except that this change is no change at all. It will do nothing to bring a fresh new day to a badly depleted White House. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/23/1/US-China Americans have long been enthralled by China. Brooks Adams loved China. So did Henry Luce who was born there to Presbyterian missionaries. This country has sent countless missionaries to China, in fact, whether they were wanted there or not. Then in the 1950s, State Department careers were ruined over the question, "Who lost China?" as if it were ours to lose. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/22/1/Too-Many-Hitlers lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/21/1/Cheney We've just about exhausted the story of Dick Cheney and Harry Whittington except to say that the lawyer from Austin has handled the situation with a lot more grace than the vice president. When he left the hospital in Corpus Christi, Whittington expressed regret "for all that. . . Cheney has had to go through" and noted that the vice president has far more serious things to deal with than the hunting accident at Katharine Armstrong's ranch. He sent his love and respect to the Cheneys with the hope that the vice president will "continue to come to Texas to seek the relaxation that he deserves." You can hardly be more elegant than that. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/20/1/The-Peril-and-the-Pure Why is it that some artists or leaders last a lifetime in their work while others burn out too soon? It seems to me that the answer may lie in the quest for too narrow an excellence at the expense of too many parts of the personality, pared away in pursuit of an impossible purity. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/19/1/Too-Well-We-Knew-Ye It's now official: Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist right out of film noir, has pleaded guilty to showering one member of Congress and no doubt others, including Texas Rep. Tom DeLay with golfing trips in Scotland, tickets to sporting events and endless expensive lunches and dinners at his fancy restaurant. In return, according to press reports, the lawmaker in question helped Abramoff acquire a fleet of casino ships. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/17/1/Hillary Hillary Rodham Clinton returned to Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina this New Year's for the first time since running for the Senate. The annual gathering of 1200 people, declared to be Bill Clinton's national base, greeted her ecstatically at an interview program she did one night at 10:00. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/16/1/Jane-Fonda No one has been more a woman of her time than Jane Fonda. She has been perfectly in sync with every decade. In her memoir My Life So Far, members of a certain generation of women, liberated by the 60s, will find themselves. They may not have been sex symbols of Paris film as Jane was, but they led sex lives quite unlike their mothers'. They too evolved from bulimic adolescent to radical militant. They didn't go to Hanoi, but they filled the streets of America with unseemly... lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/14/1/Johnson-King It's an amazing American story -- the uneasy alliance between Lyndon B. Johnson, a wily wheeler-dealer president, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a scholarly, spellbinding Baptist preacher, to pass the most historic civil rights legislation since the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. In his new book, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America, Nick Kotz explores the complicated relationship between these two extraordinary leaders, both from the South, both excellent organizers, both brilliant at bridging deep divides among their followers. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/13/1/Clarity Charles de Tallyrand, French foreign minister under Napoleon, used to send forth his diplomats with this admonition: Above all, not too much zeal. It could be added: Not too much clarity. An excess of clarity, like an excess of zeal, can rupture the webbing whereby communities are held together, their differences suspended in solution. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/12/1/Leaving-Iraq Some, mainly Democrats, say we should leave Iraq as soon as possible. Others, some of them in the military, say we may need to stay for another five years. William Polk, who had a long career in the State Department, argues that if we endure another five years we will lose 5,000 lives instead of the 2,000 or more dead so far, and we will spend another $1 trillion. And even then, we will leave Iraq in a mess. He concedes, however, that if we pull out now, as he advocates since he believes the occupation is causing the insurgency, we also will leave Iraq in a mess and the Iraqis will simply have to manage it for themselves. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/11/1/The-IRS-and-the-Church Last week I heard a bright young intellectual proclaim the "death of secularism." That came as a shock to me, but it also set me to thinking about American politics, American religion and the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS is on the rampage at the moment, investigating All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, because George Regas, a senior priest, gave a sermon before election day last year in which he urged members of the congregation to vote according to their deepest beliefs, especially on issues of war and peace. Unfortunately the Los Angeles Times covered the sermon and called it a searing attack on George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/10/1/Balance Balance seems to be the watchword of the hour. From presidents to preachers, the exhortation is the same: life must be balanced or it isn't life at all. It's merely an extended stint on the elliptical trainer, rounded, as the poet said, by a sleep. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0600