The Feed From The White House

Helaine and (visiting) Stef are in the family room watching TV. I wanted to see the president’s statement on the budget talks. I grabbed my laptop, went to whitehouse.gov and watched the clean feed.

The president was late. The feed streamed a wideshot of the podium.

Like everything else on TV the White House briefing room is smaller than it looks. Take a look at this screengrab to see how close Jonathon Karl, Major Garrett and Ed Henry are standing though they’ll all be live simultaneously.

It takes a lot of skill to work like that.

It Started On Twitter

It started on Twitter with Kristen Cusato.

It started on Twitter with Kristen Cusato.

Kristen Cusato @kristencusato
So…I get the whole Monica thing. #billclinton

I love Kristen. She is talented, gorgeous and obviously witty. Her Tweet came after Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.

I replied,

Geoff Fox @geofffox
@kristencusato Is the most charismatic person I ever met. Ever!

I guess that’s a big deal.

Kristen Cusato @kristencusato
@geofffox you met him? #wow

I’m sure I’ve told this story before. I, along with every other broadcast weatherperson, was invited to the Clinton White House for a dog-and-pony show about global warming. Al Gore gave his famous PowerPoint presentation. I think it was his first time presenting it.

I spent the day hanging with Craig Allen, Al Roker, and Irv Gikofsy (aka Mr. G.).

It was a long time ago. Al Roker had the first digital camera I’d ever seen.

If you ever get invited to the White House you should know this, the pastries served with coffee are killer! For hoarders the bathroom I used had paper towels beautifully embossed with four color printing. Take a few.

I went pre-9/11 and security was very thorough. I can only imagine now.

We saw the presentation, had the aforementioned pastries, followed by a presidential reception.

We stood single file quietly waiting our turn to shake hands with President Clinton and Vice President Gore. As we approached the president a female Marine officer took a card we’d filled out earlier. She handed the cards to another officer who turned and faced the president.

“Mr. President, Craig Allen”

Craig took a step forward and shook the president’s hand.

“Mr. President, Al Roker”

Al walked up. The president began the conversation. He’d seen Al doing the weather from the White House lawn earlier on Today. How cool is that to have the president as a viewer? I would have soiled my pants.

I was next. I walked forward and looked up. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He oozed that. He is also the most charismatic person I’ve ever met. I understand why Kristen swooned.

Whatever he and I said to each other is lost in time. Trust me, my words were short and inconsequential. His too.

There was one more in our group, Irv.

“Mr. President, Mr. G.”

Really? No full Gikofsky in the White House?

If you get invited to the White House, go.

There’s More To Cagney’s Stair Dance Than Meets The Eye

How could Cagney be gutsy enough to do that? How could the studio allow the risk? There’s a story behind that and it too is on the Internet. The director didn’t know and Cagney never rehearsed it! What’s on the screen is take one!

Here’s where the Internet shines. It contains everything! Seriously.

Yesterday I watched a conversation on Twitter about “Yankee Doodle Dandy” being number 100 on the American Film institute’s top-100 movies of all time. That reminded me of a specific scene and of course it’s on YouTube which means it’s embeddable here.

If you’re not using the Internet as the world’s finest reference source you’re leaving cash on the table! But I digress.

I found the scene with Jimmy Cagney tap dancing down a staircase at the White House from Yankee Doodle Dandy and watched it… and then watched it again… and then again.

I know the film well because when I was a kid Channel 9 in New York City would play it twice a day for the entire July 4th week on Million Dollar Movie.

How could Cagney be gutsy enough to do that? How could the studio allow the risk? There’s a story behind that and it too is on the Internet. The director didn’t know and Cagney never rehearsed it! What’s on the screen is take one!

Here’s the story from Roger Ebert:

Cagney wasn’t a dancer by Astaire’s standards, or a singer by anybody’s, but he was such a good actor he could fake it: “Cagney can’t really dance or sing,” observes the critic Edwin Jahiel, “but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.”

You can sense that in an impromptu scene near the end of the movie. Cagney’s Cohan is walking down a marble staircase at the White House when he suddenly starts tapping and improvises all the way to the bottom. Cagney later said he dreamed that up five minutes before the scene was shot: “I didn’t consult with the director or anything, I just did it.”

Ann Nyberg and I discussed this tonight at the TV station. She rightly points out back in those days a good story like the one Cagney told might be cut from whole cloth to add a little spice to a movie’s promotion. Maybe so, but I’m going to believe it anyway.

This 13 second clip might be the most ambitious and dangerous dance ever put on the screen.

Have Hackers Unearthed Climate Change’s Real Inconvenient Truth?

It looks like some well publicized global warming evidence is the product of the books being cooked!

When people hear my opinions on human induced global warming they’re usually surprised… maybe shocked is a better word. I am a meteorologist with some training in climatology. I watched Al Gore present his global warming lecture as an invited guest in the White House. I’m a liberal. And yet I don’t believe we humans are changing our climate in a noticeable or troubling way.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for freeing ourselves from the grip of foreign oil, even if that’s painful in the short term. I’d like the air cleaner with less crap emitted by cars, trucks and industry. My goals are mostly the same as the goals of the global warming doomsayers.

Unfortunately, if you dissent on the issue of global warming you’re branded an idiot or heretic or maybe I’m in the pocket of big oil. The global warming theory proponents often have a religious-like fervor in their support. “How can you dismiss all the evidence,” they ask?

This is my blog. This isn’t the news. My level of fact checking is very low, but published reports say web servers at the England’s East Anglia Climate Research Unit have been hacked and some of the personal emails and data removed are damning!

It looks like some well publicized global warming evidence is the product of the books being cooked! It’s possible the loudest voices in this fight have been playing fast-and-loose with the truth when it doesn’t serve their purpose.

Even though I disagree with these people I am seriously shocked to hear this might be true. I expected the debate was educated and legitimate.

Here are two email snippets.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” – Phil Jones

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” – Kevin Trenberth

The problem is recent history has shown a halt to global warming over the last decade. Whatever the reason it doesn’t make sense to see this if the most well known theories are correct!

This is a story that’s just beginning to be written.

I don’t condone breaking into a computer, as these hackers allegedly did. I certainly don’t condone passing off lies as fact.

The Get Off The Pot Moment

The grief wasn’t because the Democrats proposals were bad after all. The grief was solely because the proposal was from the Democrats and if it benefits the Democrats it hurts the Republicans.

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader from Nevada (you know, the guy who looks like he’s always just a few seconds from saying, “Hey, you kids get off my lawn”) spoke about healthcare reform today.

“As we’ve gone through this process, I’ve concluded –with the support of the White House, Senators Dodd and Baucus — that the best way to move forward is to include a public option with the opt-out provision for states.”

So, the public option is in. Good.

It’s in with an opt-out provision. That’s not so good.

Well, actually it wouldn’t be good except it’s all a ruse.

From Huffington Post: Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican leader from Tennessee, said on the Senate floor Monday, in advance of Reid’s announcement, that the opt-out provision isn’t to be taken seriously. Medicaid, he noted, has an opt-out provision, but not one state has opted out.

We have come to the ‘shit or get off the pot moment’ and… holy crap, starting with Lamar Alexander they’re getting off the pot!

All this grousing… all these tea parties… all the tumult to slow things down–Alexander is really saying no one has the courage of their convictions, or maybe they just have no convictions. No one will opt-out because opting-in is so much of a better deal.

The screaming wasn’t because the Democrats proposals were bad after all. The grief was solely because the proposal was from the Democrats and if it benefits the Democrats it hurts the Republicans. Pols see this all as a zero sum game.

Maybe I was just naive growing up because I seem to remember a time when we were more interested in bettering our nation and less concerned about blocking our opponents.

Richard Nixon, Geoff Fox And A Wollensak Reel-To-Reel Recorder

There was no real purpose for me going to see Richard Nixon, a man I reviled, speak. I thought it might be fun, especially as a member of the working press.

wollensak.jpg

While out in Brooklyn with Matt I saw this Wollensak tape deck at the flea market.

So old. So outmoded. So close to getting me wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents!

It was October 27, 1970 at the Palm Beach Auditorium and Richard Nixon was speaking. I was working at WMUM, what was then called an ‘underground station,’ located on Palm Beach Island.

There was no real purpose for me going to see Richard Nixon, a man I reviled, speak. I thought it might be fun, especially as a member of the working press.

OK, I was pretending to be a member of the press–but the ruse worked!

I packed up our Wollensak recorder, threw it in my Volkswagen and headed to the venue. As I remember the White House staff set up a ‘mult box’ which provided a clean podium feed to all who needed to record it. I plugged in a cable I’d brought and waited.

When Nixon finally came out to speak I pushed the play and record buttons simultaneously (that’s how you recorded) and watched the reels begin to turn.

A few seconds later there was noise–lots of noise. The Wolly had slipped a belt and was complaining loudly about its state. People were turning to see what was causing the ruckus.

Three tall men in suits with identical abstract buttons on their lapels walked toward me. Two turned their backs while standing between me and the podium. The third asked what was wrong?

“I think it’s a belt,” is what I remember saying as the whir grew louder.

He looked at me and my long hair. He was not happy.

I took my hand, clenched it in a fist and hit the tape recorder hard a little left of center where the counter was. The bigger the problem the bigger the hammer, right?

Silence. All it needed was a zetz!

The Secret Service agents turned and without a word quickly faded into the crowd. I began to breath again.

Mistrust And Fear

There is too much distrust and too much fear. Neither black nor white America have a corner on this market.

The TV was on when President Obama walked into the White House briefing room today. He was ‘walking back’ his comment on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.”

Agreed. Here’s my takeaway on this whole thing.

1) President Obama did what our recent president(s) wouldn’t. He was conciliatory. He attempted to dial down the rhetoric. He admitted he’d been wrong in what he had said and characterizations he’d made. He was a mensch!

2) Here is a problem which cuts and separates our society.

There continues to be a racial divide in America. I am not proud to say I have been frightened by young, black men solely because they were young, black men. I am not alone.

Any time I hear a news story about some perp arrested during a ‘routine traffic stop,’ I think: DWB–Driving While Black. There is no doubt there is some… maybe more than some… racial targeting. It is an institutionalized manifestation of the fear I’ve experienced.

A significant portion of black America originally thought O.J. Simpson was framed because he was black and because… well because that’s what happens.

There’s an old joke: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t following you. Similarly, just because there is profiling didn’t mean O.J. was innocent. It is too easy and patently unfair to dismiss any incident as being wholly racial just because some are. It’s the other side of the racial paranoia coin.

There is too much distrust and too much fear. Neither black nor white America have a corner on this market. It is bad for all of us.

More than likely Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley (the Cambridge, MA police officer involved) came into this confrontation already primed. Tensions and tempers flared. Neither could find the easy way to get out with their dignity intact.

If this incident opens up a national dialogue it will have been worth whatever discomfort these two men have endured. We need that dialog.

The Repositioning President

I find myself interestingly tantalized by the president, his policies and his persona. There are things he’s done I fundamentally disagree with, yet I still think he’s doing a great job. Even I’m puzzled by that.

obama-in-egypt.jpgEarlier this week Jon Stewart did a bit about President Obama’s date night in New York City. He said the Obamas were the most glamorous couple in the world. Probably so.

I find myself interestingly tantalized by the president, his policies and his persona. There are things he’s done I fundamentally disagree with, yet I still think he’s doing a great job. Even I’m puzzled by that.

I wish he’d: Release the Iraqi prison photos. Shut down Guantanamo. Prosecute Bush-era wiretappers. Restore the rule of law to the ‘enemy combatants’.

Don’t hold your breath. He ran as a liberal. He’s governing as a moderate.

I once got to shake Bill Clinton’s hand. It was in the White House. There was no mistaking Clinton as the most powerful man in the world. Seriously–that aura just oozed from him. I watched Obama on TV today and he makes Clinton look like some political wannabe.

Maybe I’m willing to look the other way on some of this presidency because of how he’s repositioning us to the world. It’s possible America’s returning to a position where the world respects and envies us. That would be nice.

White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Unlike E!, Bravo or more entertainment oriented channels C-SPAN shows the video with no commentary.

We are on the sofa. We are watching C-SPAN. I have never watched C-SPAN wth Helaine before. It is the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. C-SPAN had a camera in the lobby as the glitterati arrived.

Unlike E!, Bravo or more entertainment oriented channels C-SPAN shows the video with no commentary. I actually like that.

Lots of Hollywood types. Denis Leary, Demi and Ashton, Tyra Banks, Rick Schroeder. “Since when is it Rick and not Ricky?” Helaine asked.

I saw Al Roker with Ariana Huffington… or maybe they were just nearby. Al is still thinner. Al Sharpton was notably thin.

The president walked in to Hail to the Chief. Does he like the tune? He will hear it as much as Rick Springfield hears Jessie’s Girl.

The guy playing clarinet has shifty eyes.

Star Spangled Banner. It’s not often heard as an instrumental. Is C-SPAN signing off? Sorry, old broadcasting reference.

Wanda Sykes is the emcee tonight. Will she be tough to watch like Steven Colbert and Don Imus have been in the past?

Helaine likes the president’s tux.

Helen Thomas is shaking Michelle Obama’s hand. They could do the female version of the Shaq/Ben Stein Comcast commercial.

Bill Scanlon on C-SPAN now reading Tweets from Twitter. No! This is like my parents getting into T-Pain.

Our Nation’s Hate

As far as I can tell the “facts” in the email are absolutely made up. There is not a shred of truth to it. But, to the sender it doesn’t make any difference because it’s just ammunition in an ideological war.

obama-poll.jpg

Nearly three million people have voted in the MSNBC poll at the top of this entry. It’s non-scientific in its methodology, but it’s incredibly telling nonetheless. Our country has no center in political opinion. The vast majority of the votes are for the two extremes.

We are a nation divided. I love Obama. I hate Obama. There, literally, is no middle ground.

It’s sad because we’ve come to the point where people are so stridently driven by dogma, they’d rather see their ideas used than see success. That is why to many Rush Limbaugh’s January 21 pronouncement is so upsetting and to others so enabling.

So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far- left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?

I have often said I’d use the Psychic Friends Network to forecast the weather if it worked. Rush’s words are the antithesis of that thought.

This morning I got an email from someone I don’t recognize.

News Alert:

The US Navy has stated that the Navy seals could have acted faster and rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama last week, but had to wait until the White House could confirm that none of the pirates were related to Obama.

That quote comes from a forwarded email nestled within the one sent to me. The sender, the unknown Andre Lefebvre, adds:

That S.O.B. will destroy this country.

You just watch.

One morning, very soon, everybody, in the U. S., will wake-up and find out that they have lost all of their rights and it will be too late to do anything about it.

As far as I can tell the “facts” in the email are absolutely made up. There is not a shred of truth to it. But, to the sender it doesn’t make any difference because it’s just ammunition in an ideological war.

The exact actions the president takes on any given day are much less important to this person than the overall political bent. And, I suspect, he’d say what he said even knowing it was false because it might injure his enemy–Obama.

This country needs to be righted economically. Then we have a whole lot of healing to do. The vitriol and hate from right-to-left and back again isn’t healthy.

Thanks to my friend Woody who sent along the MSNBC poll not realizing it would produce this.

I Cried

“Never,” was my father’s answer tonight when asked if he ever thought he’d live to see a black man in the White House.

I cried. I cried when John McCain spoke from Phoenix. He was gracious, eloquent and uncharacteristically warm as he conceded defeat.

I cried some more when Barack Obama spoke from Chicago a few minutes ago. It was an inspiring speech. When his wife came out and they embraced, I read her lips as she said, “I love you.”

What a wonderful night to be an American. What a transformational moment.

“Never,” was my father’s answer tonight when asked if he ever thought he’d live to see a black man in the White House. Never is a strong word. It’s a long way from never to where we are today.

I remember, probably when I was around ten, walking past the F.W. Woolworths in a little strip shopping center at Parsons and Jewel-a block from where I grew up. There were men walking in a circle, carrying signs. I didn’t understand at the time, but it was a picket line. The protest had to do with the Woolworths lunch counters in the south that would not serve ‘colored.” It was the beginning of the civil rights movement. It’s a long way from those pickets to where we are today.

We face immense challenges. Obama comes in off-the-bench with the team down a few touchdowns and time running out. I don’t know if he, or anyone, can get us out of our dilemma. We are in so deep.

Tonight, at least, there is hope.

Quotes That Keep On Giving

“I hate this,” Fox protested. “There is no skill in making these predictions.”

Blogger’s note: As I re-read all of this, Abe Katz did take my words in their proper context. The blogger noted below is the one who twisted them to his purpose. Life goes on.

Abe Katz of the New Haven Register (and others including the Bristol Press) interviewed me a few days ago about the oncoming winter. The Climate Prediction Center has issued their somewhat broad projections.

“I hate this,” Fox protested. “There is no skill in making these predictions.”

OK–maybe that’s a little over-the-top, but there’s little benefit to the average person who lives day-to-day and not on a seasonal basis. Later in the article I talked about sunspots and the suspicion of a casual relationship between them and the Earth’s temperature.

Fox said he is intrigued by a possible link between solar activity and weather. Sunspot activity, believed to be caused by incredibly strong magnetic fields, peaked in about 2000, and has been in decline since then, into what is called a Maunder minimum.

Activity should be rising again. Space weather gurus at NASA expect another sunspot peak between 2010 and 2015.

Unfortunately, the relationship between solar activity and weather remains obscure.

“No one knows what one has to do with the other,” Fox said.

I later wrote Abe asking, “Am I that negative?” I thought I came off a little surly… and with all due respect, Abe has written this article before in years past. My answers are always fairly similar. I’m not a big long term guy.

This afternoon I got word my quote had been picked up in a blog.

Case in point: Geoff Fox, a meteorologist with WTNH-TV in Connecticut, stated in an interview with The Bristol Press, that “he is intrigued by a possible link between solar activity and weather.” Then, Fox went on to say, “No one knows what one has to do with the other.”

So, I wonder how Mr. Fox would answer the question, “What if the Sun went out tomorrow? Would that affect the weather?” or “What if the Sun started burning hotter by millions of degrees? Would that affect weather?” Most kids in kindergarten would probably say yes to both questions!

Save your breath. I have already called him an ass.

Thanks for taking an out-of-context quote and bringing it further out-of-context. The fact that I do not support Al Gore’s theories (I had the honor of being invited to see him present it at the White House and left unconvinced) doesn’t make you less of an ass for not finding the source of the quote and asking it be put in perspective.

Within context, I brought up sunspots because I do believe there is a possible cause/effect relationship between them and the Earth’s temperature. As far as I know there is nothing other than anecdotal evidence connecting them and no quantification of the relative importance of sunspots in global climatology.

I believe I’m relatively easy to find. You probably owed it to those who read this to seek me out before typing.

Geoff Fox

Whether my comment is published is up to the blog’s owner.

The Money Doesn’t Upset Me

What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it?

Matt Drudge, who seems to be particularly critical of anything Hillary Clinton does, has this bold faced headline on his site:

CLINTONS SHOW $109M IN INCOME SINCE LEAVING WHITE HOUSE

Wow, that’s a lot of money. What exactly do you do with $109,000,000? Seriously, how could you spend it? I’m not sure I could, or would want to.

World Exclusive: 4/4/08 15:43:06 ET

2000-2007 Returns

Feds Taxes Paid: $33.7 million

Charity: $10.2 million

Her Senate Salary: $1,051,606

His Presidential Pension: $1,217,250

Her Book Income: $10,457,083

His Book Income: $29,580,525

His Speech Income: $51,855,599

That’s from Drudge too. I love the way he’s pinpointed to the second when his “World Exclusive” broke, though his link goes to (and his facts come from) Yahoo! and wire service copy.

I know his point is to upset me. I’m not upset. Yes, that’s a lot of money… maybe too much money, but we’re allowed to aspire to, and achieve wealth.

I don’t want anyone telling me how much to earn.

This is an equal opportunity pursuit. Presidents see their post-presidency as a time to make money. George Bush “43” certainly does. “41” does too.

From the BBC:

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers,” Mr Bush told Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.

What I really want to know is where the Clinton’s post-presidential money comes from. Who paid him and for what? That part of the story has not broken. The $109 million figure is sexier, but much less important.

Faith And Politics

I am Jewish. No surprise there. I have mentioned it enough times on the blog.

I’m not a particularly observant Jew. As with many other Jews, I look at my “Jewishness” as much an ethnicity as a religion.

I don’t think Jews have found a shortcut to heaven. In fact, Jews don’t believe in heaven. We are not the only nor necessarily the best religion.

I respect my friends who have religious beliefs different than mine.

God knows (he really does), I’ve been in enough churches during my 23 years in Connecticut! I’ve spoken to church groups and church schools. I was honored to eulogize my friend Kevin at a Mormon ceremony.

With all this having been established, I am troubled by things I read which suggests some people running for the White House feel it’s a job for a Christian.

Oh, it has to be the right kind of Christian too… maybe not the Mitt Romney kind. Maybe not the Rudy Guiliani kind either. Is Mike Huckabee OK? Depends who you ask.

We are a secular nation. Unlike England, for instance, there is no state church here. We are a nation of laws, not doctrine. Our leaders are elected by the people, not anointed by God.

In essence, I’m hoping the first amendment covers me when it says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

It is right for Christians, or any other group, to act in concert to advance their agenda. It is wrong to do that to the exclusion of others.

My Jewishness should never cause me to be uncomfortable in our society. At the moment, it does.

Only Following Orders

Did you see former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s op-ed in this morning’s New York Times? My blood began to boil.

This is one of those stories where a very limited subset of the full facts are known to mere mortals like you and me. It seems the federal government asked the major phone companies for all sorts of data on phone customers. That would be people like you and me.

The phone companies rolled over like a collie waiting for a treat.

What kind of data? Who knows.

Did they allow the government to listen in? I wish I knew.

Whatever it was, it was probably illegal. The phone companies are now sweating because they’re being sued.

When the White House asks you to help in surveillance, do you say yes in spite of the law? What if you’re a big business and feel a significant portion of that will go away if you say no?

I say, “no.” Our personal liberties are among the most important rights granted in the Constitution.

Here’s what Ashcroft said:

Whatever one feels about the underlying intelligence activities or the legal basis on which they were initially established, it would be unfair and contrary to the interests of the United States to allow litigation that tries to hold private telecommunications companies liable for them.

You’ve got to suspect these telecom giants are lawyered to the teeth. They knew what they were doing. I was only following orders doesn’t work here… at least it doesn’t work for me.

I lived through the sixties and seventies. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about government surveillance, whether it be against Dr. Martin Luther King or war protesters.

Our government has worked so well for over 200 years because our rule of law is based on what’s written, not who is elected.

Oh… did I mention, John Ashcroft is now a lobbyists for the telecommunications industry?