[Update @ 0639 — Roldo is not the only unhappy Clevelander: Shame on you, Drew Carey. You missed the nuclear winter of deregulation all around you]

Roldo Bartimole writes:

You have to hand it to the Plain Dealer for incisive, penetrating attention to finding solutions to the city”s grave problems. I mean by giving special attention to someone who has the answers to those dire problems. Drew Carey.

Of course, I”m kidding.

Sometimes newspapers like to be “taken” by certain interests. That”s the only reason I can see for the PD paying any – any – attention to the self-promotion of a comic.

Thankfully, the alternative Cleveland Scene sees through the self-promotional nature of Carey.

C”mon, this a public relations trip that the PD has tagged along with for reasons that have nothing – nothing – to do with solving the city”s problems.

Shame on the Pee Dee.

The Scene, with an appropriate cartoon of Carey on its cover says, “Hey, Drew. Screw you.” Just the right tone. The piece by Editor Frank Lewis deals with the comedian”s pr and political nonsense in deservedly derisive attention.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I think we would have to acknowledge that some suspense and some immediacy is lost as a result of the frame device. Are there gains to offset this loss? And what might they be? It seems to me that there”s a significant gain in dimension. In Portis”s novel, we see Mattie”s whole life, not just the portion she tells us about. We learn by means of occasional asides that she never married, that she has become a rather hard-nosed business woman, that her neighbors and associates have come to regard her as somewhat eccentric, and by learning this while watching her perform as an adolescent we are seeing an illustration of Wordsworth”s observation that the child is father to the man (or, in this case, mother of the woman). p. 177

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

President Jimmy Carter pinned much of his foreign policy on universal human rights. While it was a celebrated globally by human rights advocates and leaders it was a non-starter as a political strategy. Will the ’10s be different? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks so. If the United States truly leads by example.

From The Washington Post:

Rolling out the State Department’s latest human rights report, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that, for the first time, the United States will submit itself to a process in which its record might be judged by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

“Human rights are universal, but their experience is local. This is why we are committed to holding everyone to the same standard, including ourselves,” Clinton said, referring to U.S. participation this fall in what’s called the “universal periodic review” process, run by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Critics say the 47-member council, which was established in March 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, has been hijacked since its inception by human rights violators such as Cuba, China and Egypt. George W. Bush’s administration refused to join, citing the council’s nondemocratic makeup and its frequent criticisms of Israel, but the Obama administration reversed that decision last spring.

All 192 U.N. member countries are supposed to go through the UPR process every four years, but some critics warn that the Obama team is simply giving human rights abusers the perfect chance to justify their own atrocities.

Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, defended U.S. participation in the review and the council in an interview with the Cable.

“My goal is to be able to complete the [UPR] report and after that come out even more aggressive on countries like Cuba, North Korea, Burma and Russia,” Posner said. “We’ll be in a stronger position if we do a good report, and we will.”

Practicing what you preach, now there’s a different political concept.

Tavis Smiley says:

I think we will become more aggressive in addressing the concerns black people are facing, just like the gays and lesbians have done, just like the Jewish lobbyists have done, just like the environmentalists have done. We have to do the same thing no matter the color of the president.

This is not about the president. It’s about the presidency responding to the needs of black people. The White House and other people need to be more aggressive in addressing the needs of black people, period, and unapologetically.

The president’s plate is full. It’s not just full. It’s overloaded. He was handed the worst recession since the Great Depression. He was handed two wars. Nobody is naïve about the pressure the president is under and the responsibilities he has. Yet we understand this was not a job that was forced upon him. He chose to run. He offered himself up as a public servant to deal with these issues.

Tim Russo is looking…

Uniquely odd campaign for local office in Cuyahoga County is seeking a campaign manager. Candidate is a progressive Democrat running in a Democratic primary on September 7, 2010, for a newly created, inner city, safe Democratic, county legislative seat.

Robert Stein writes:

Personalizing an issue is an old ploy, but Barack Obama has reminded so many of us why we put him in the White House.

Yes he has, and in the very nest of the mad teabagger herself…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Let”s consider a frame of another sort, one in which the framing device is not a conversation but the passage of time. An example that comes quickly to mind is True Grit, the novel b y Charles Portis. The book takes the form of the first-person narrative of a fourteen-year-old girl”s pursuit of her father”s killer, be we are being told the story years and years after the fact, by the woman into whom the fourteen-year-old girl has grown. p. 177

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Here in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the arguments for why the city is in such horrible political shape is that an emerging political power base in the ’60s consistently worked to maintain its own control by systematically crushing the aspirations of those that followed, essentially eating its young. The plan worked, for them.

As it creeps toward the maybe elections this fall, the similar actions by the State Peace and Development Council (aka, the military dictators of Myanmar) have created much the same climate and, predictably, the same results.

From the Integrated Regional Information Networks Asia:

A lack of capacity on several levels is likely to hamper Myanmar”s bid to change its political structure, diplomats and analysts say.

The military government this month took another step on the “roadmap” for what it says will be a transition to democracy when it unveiled laws for an election later this year, the country’s first in two decades.

The government has said the roadmap, launched in August 2003, will lead to a “discipline-flourishing democracy”.

Among the changes to be made will be the creation of a presidential system of government, a bicameral legislature and 14 regional governments and assemblies, which the International Crisis Group describes as “the most wide-ranging shake-up in a generation”.

But given the military’s reluctance to relinquish its grip on power and the long suppression of democratic activity in Myanmar, diplomats say the transition will face significant challenges – one of the most critical being whether the public service has the capacity to sustain the change.

A top-down decision-making process and limited development assistance and exposure to capacity-building programmes are among the factors that would hamper the ability of the public service to sustain a transition.

“There is obviously insufficient bureaucratic capacity in Myanmar today to manage and implement a ‘transition to democracy’,” Trevor Wilson, the Australian ambassador to Myanmar from 2000 to 2003, told IRIN.

All of that is, of course, to the benefit of the generals who, if they allow an election to take place, and further allow a new govern met to be seated, have sown the seeds of that government’s own collapse, which leaves them free to step in and restore order, peace and development.

I swear there must be something in the water.

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

HOW THE HECK DO YOU GET TO WALMART…? At first blush, the story that Walmart is the No. 1 GPS destination among users of the TeleNav system seems to be a bit of oh wow, until you actually sit back and think a bit. The story does not saw for what time period the data was collected. Keep reading…

WALMART”S THE VICTIM ON THIS ONE… Norman Rockwell”s Gossip, dealt with word-of-mouth reaching dozens. Last week law students spread faux news of the resignation of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in seconds to hundreds of thousands. Social media can be very unsocial. Keep reading…

IT WOULD MAKE CLASS ACTIONS FASTER… We”ve written here before about Walmart leasing out excess space in its stores to health clinics and other business, but law professor Gillian Hadfield has an interesting idea for even more leasing, but I”m not sure Walmart would be all that interested. Keep reading…

ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE SWEET JESUS… In the “60s and “70s we had a national discussion on whether or not individual women had a right to privacy that included the right to safely terminate a pregnancy. That debate ended with Roe v. Wade. Today we”re have another privacy/medical debate. Keep reading…

WORKING FOR WALMART, PART 3 NOW UP… Last week Jonathan linked to part 2 of the Chicagoist”s three-part Working For Walmart series. This morning, the third, and final, part was posted. The final installment begins with a bit of pure Walmart culture of fear. Keep reading…

DO YOU EAT WHAT YOU PAY FOR…? Americans have a false sense of security about their food supply. The days of The Jungle are long gone, we believe because the government inspects all our food and makes sure that its safe to eat. No matter how low the price, our food won”t harm us. Keep reading…

BLACK BARBIE SPEAKS… I”ve stayed away from the discounted Black Barbie story at Walmart because I thought it was a tempest in a tea cup and that with a little time to mellow a different story would emerge from all the clatter. That is what has happened, thank goodness. Keep reading…

THE STORY IS NOT ABOUT STONERS… Medical marijuana changed our conversation on drug use and President Barack Hussein Obama has told the Justice Department to stop wasting critical resources on busting operations supplying patients in states that had legalized marijuana for medical use. Keep reading…

WALMART WANTS 500 PSEUDO BANKS… We written much about Walmart”s quest to corner the market on the banking industry and the consistent failures in the effort. It looks now that Walmart has decided that it can accomplish most of what it wants with its pseudo banks. Keep reading…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

At least as important as what you call your lead is the extent to which you call him anything at all. The more you use any name, the more distance you create. If you want to draw the reader in close, the trick is to use pronouns at all times except when to do so would result in confusion. Use the name to establish who we”re talking about, and often enough throughout to avoid unclarity. At all other times, stick with he and she. You”ll probably find that you don”t have to use names very often. p. 173

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I’m sure that Myanmar is not unique in its relationship to the rest of the world and in how its ruling military dictators seemingly ignores external pressure to conform with some international norm of openness. Nonetheless, Myanmar is the nation I follow most closely and so I’m more aware of the ineffectiveness of such efforts.

When I read reports like this one from the Financial Times, I begin to devote more energy to thinking that what we are doing makes no difference and that a serious shift needs to take place in how nations deal with nations and, when possible, peoples deal with peoples.

Washington has conceded that international efforts to engage the generals who run Burma in a process that might lead to greater democracy have borne little fruit, but officials say they will not abandon their efforts.

Laws announced last week that effectively bar Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel laureate, from taking any political role in the country”s future have sparked a flurry of downbeat assessments from senior US officials.

“The US approach was to try to encourage domestic dialogue between the key stakeholders, and the recent promulgation of the election criteria doesn’t leave much room for such a dialogue,” Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said on Friday.

Thant Myint-U, a former UN official and author of the Burmese history book River of Lost Footsteps, said the US needs to keep working for a breakthrough.

“These talks are taking place after 20 years of sanctions which have reduced western influence to almost zero.”

Philip Crowley, state department spokesman, said the banning of Ms Suu Kyi would render this year”s election “devoid of credibility” leaving advocates of re-engagement with a dilemma: after the elections, should they continue to talk to an administration they believe is illegitimate?

Are governments — and the inherent limits they have on their actions — the problem? Could it be that peoples are the path to any solutions?