Analyzing Senator Obama's handwriting

Barack Obama visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday and followed the custom of placing a handwritten prayer into an opening between the stones. Within minutes a local seminary student had yanked the note out of the wall, and by Friday morning a photograph of Senator Obama's private prayer was published on the front page of an Israeli newspaper.

The Jewish people haven't survived for thousands of years by being trusting.

The Associated Press sought to confirm the authenticity of the prayer note by publishing the handwritten letter that Senator Obama left at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial when he visited on Wednesday. "The handwriting was similar," AP writer Aron Heller reported.

Well, okay.

America Wants to Know can now analyze Senator Obama's handwriting and disclose to you the true personality traits it secretly reveals.

Recently we subjected President Bush's handwriting to our penetrating gaze (See "Analyzing the president's handwriting") and, after all, fair is fair.

(We haven't seen a sample of Senator John McCain's handwriting, but if you can point us to one, e-mail Susan@ExtremeInk.com.)

Here are the two samples of Senator Obama's handwriting:




With a little help from Dr. Hugo von Hagen, Ph.D., author of the 1902 book, "Reading Character from Handwriting," America Wants to Know will now endeavor to amaze you with our sketchy talent for graphology.

First we'll tell you what we found, and then we'll tell you where we found it. This will allow you to stop reading before you learn just enough to peek at everyone's handwriting and ruin all your relationships.

The traits that show up over and over in Senator Obama's handwriting are clearness, level-headedness, simplicity, exactness, perseverance, moderation, order, diligence, carefulness and independence.

Perhaps that's about what you'd expect.

But there were a few things you might not have expected.

Senator Obama's handwriting reveals a strong sexual imagination, but it does not indicate sexual frustration or infidelity.

The senator's handwriting reveals an extremely analytical method of thinking. He is not particularly intuitive -- he doesn't suddenly arrive at a conclusion without knowing how he got there. He is not especially methodical -- he doesn't wait for every single fact to be assembled in front of him before he makes a decision. Rather he has the type of mind that takes everything apart and analyzes all the components, seeking to understand how everything works.

Senator Obama's handwriting does not show signs of deceitfulness, but it doesn't show indications of great openness or frankness, either. His writing indicates reservedness and discretion.

There are repeated indications of good taste and an appreciation for culture and art.

We were surprised to see that Senator Obama's handwriting shows a strong indication of low self-esteem.

Senator Obama's handwriting reveals a man who is controlled by his mind and not by his emotions, a man bordering on coldness, a man who is calm, diligent, and careful. He is not an idealist pursuing intellectual flights of imagination. He is not a preening, careening egomaniac.

From his handwriting, we would guess that Senator Obama will disappoint people who expect grand plans to change the world. He doesn't appear to be interested in lofty ideals. He looks more like the grind-it-out quarterback who will pick up three yards here, six yards there, and end the season with a Super Bowl ring.

Now, if you don't want to know how the trick was done, click here and we'll take you someplace else.

You want to know about the sexual imagination first, right?

If you look at the letter "g" in the samples above, you'll see a wide loop below the baseline (the lower zone indicates physical matters, while the upper zone reveals interest in ideas). Loops like that indicate imagination; the wider they are, the greater the imagination. When the upstroke of the loop returns all the way to the baseline it indicates fulfillment; if the g-loop ended below the baseline, it would indicate frustration.

The straight, even baseline of Senator Obama's writing is an indication of faithfulness. If the letters in each word seemed to rest on a wavy line, that would be an indication of infidelity.

The slant of a person's writing is an indication of whether the mind or the emotions exert stronger control over them (and no, it doesn't matter if they are left-handed). Senator Obama's writing is just about perpendicular, which means he is controlled by his mind. Vertical writing also indicates coldness and an apparent lack of feeling. If his writing slanted far to the right, it would mean he was strongly influenced by his emotional responses. If the writing slants to the left, it's an indication of emotional withdrawal, suppressed feelings, pretension and disguise.

Good taste and culture are indicated by the clear writing, the letters that look like printed characters instead of cursive, and the amount of space on the left and right side of the pages.

Low self-esteem shows up in the t-bar crossed very low on the stems.

Independence is indicated by the clear writing, the block-capital letter "I," and, if we remember correctly, the short stems on the letter "d."

Reservedness and discretion are shown in the letters "o," "a" and "g," which are closed at the top and bottom in neat circles. If they were open or gaping at the top, it would mean frankness or talkativeness. If they were open at the bottom, it would indicate hypocrisy or dishonesty. If they were covered by a penstroke that looked like a drapery on the upper-left or upper-right corner of a window, it would indicate deceit or self-delusion. None of those things are present.

The heavy, even pressure of the writing shows resoluteness, diligence and perseverence, which are also indicated by the angular letter forms and the straight line of the writing.

Carefulness is shown by the short t-bar dashes and the orderly writing. The moderate height and relatively thin loop of the "l" indicates cautious thinking.

Lofty ideals and visionary plans would show up as letters reaching high above the baseline, big loops in the upper zone, and t-bars that are crossed above the stem instead of through it. None of those things are present in Senator Obama's handwriting.

The "v" shapes in the letters "m" and "n" indicate analytical thinking. The deep "v" indicates intelligence.

The way the letters in each word are connected, not separated in places, shows a logical, practical person who is less likely to invent intuitively and more likely to execute effectively.

The simplified letter forms that lack a first or last stroke (like the letter "y" at the ends of words, for instance), indicate simplicity, modesty, calmness and clear judgment. Simplified letter forms are also an indication of intelligence.

Notice those occasional uncrossed t-stems? Here's what Dr. von Hagen has to say about that:

"Some persons make no dash or stroke whatever, but bring the last penstroke of the t to an abrupt end. We can, without much trouble, locate 'ability to stick to one's purpose' in the writer, bordering on obstinacy, especially if they run strongly marked throughout the entire writing. Such a person will hold to his views, no matter what may happen, and if confirmed in connection with other signs of energy, such natures will brush aside unmercifully all, who may be in their way, so that they may win and carry out their purpose and design."

Since Senator Obama crosses most of his "t" stems, this harsh assessment should be dialed back in intensity. But there's definitely an indication of determination and a willingness to do what it takes to win.

Or maybe that's just the way they teach handwriting in Hawaii.


Copyright 2008

Update: Certified graphologist Carole Rule (www.HandwritingExplained.com) advises that our sketchy talent for graphology has mistakenly identified low self-esteem in Senator Obama's handwriting. We're happy to share her e-mail:

From: Carole Rule
To: Susan@ExtremeInk.com
Subject: Obamas handwriting
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:09 am

There was one mistake in particular. His t bars do not indicate low self esteem because they are connected to the next letter. In this case they need to be in the mid zone and it would be low goals not esteem. However he has star shaped T's when they start a word another indication of tenacity and persistence. The figure 8 g is an indication of literary ability and the curve of several of his letters f, b, p are an indication of feeling pressure from the future. An anxiety of how things will turn out. His words end with a squared look an indication of forcefulness and determination. Sort of this is my decision and he will not be moved. The long end stroke on many of his words show he keeps others at a distance and he will trust few if any totally. The short looped d stem is sensitivity to criticism of himself personally and the desire to be unique, one of a kind and not labeled or pigeon-holed.

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Katie Couric blames everybody

CBS News anchor Katie Couric complained to the Israeli press in Tel Aviv Monday that "many viewers are afraid of change."

Maybe it's all those drills they made us do in school, you remember, when the teacher would scream, "Walter Cronkite has retired!" and we all had to get under the desks.

"I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance," Ms. Couric continued, "and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable."

Let's just call a halt to this kind of thing. Let's not shout "Sexism!!" every time an accomplished woman falls short of a high professional goal.

Katie Couric is an exceptionally talented broadcaster who was wildly miscast as an evening news anchor, who took the job knowing it didn't play to her strengths, who believed the CBS executives when they said they wanted to do a new kind of evening news show.

She didn't look past the big contract and the ego boost to see that the CBS executives were promising her something that was never going to happen. CBS was never going to allow the Evening News to turn into a showcase for a personality.

"I'm not doing today exactly what I've been brought to do," Ms. Couric said Monday, "my chance to express myself is fairly limited in the 22-minutes format."

The executives made the mistake of thinking they could overcome a certain demographic group's dislike of news programs by hiring an anchor who's very well-liked by that demographic group.

But those people still don't like news programs, and they're not going to like Katie Couric much longer if she doesn't stop calling them sexist and saying they're afraid of change.

America Wants to Know keeps an assortment of psychics and fortune-tellers on the payroll, which might explain how we were able to predict this outcome very early in the post, "Bob Schieffer's Elegant Exit."

You might also like to read the October 2006 post, "Saving Katie Couric," along with "The coming bloodbath at CBS News," "The logical conclusion of CBS News" and "Saying something nice about Nancy Pelosi."

Copyright 2008

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The innocent tomatoes

Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that its June 7th warning about salmonella-contaminated tomatoes was completely mistaken.

There was never anything wrong with the tomatoes.

The FDA said the reported cases of salmonella poisoning that had been blamed on tomatoes may have been caused by peppers, or possibly cilantro.

Nobody got sick from tomatoes, except the tomato farmers who lost an estimated $100 million dollars when the FDA issued its terrifying warning that contaminated tomatoes could be fatal to children and the elderly.

Certainly the FDA is doing its very best to protect the public, and surely a lot of well-meaning, reasonably competent people looked at the data before making a mistake and causing catastrophic harm to farmers who were totally blameless.

Speaking of catastrophic harm, officials at the Department of Justice just agreed to pay former Army scientist Steven Hatfill almost $6 million to settle his claim that they violated his privacy, and destroyed his life, by telling the press he was a "person of interest" in the still-unsolved 2001 anthrax-in-the-mail case.

Dr. Hatfill was as innocent as a tomato.

So was Richard Jewell, whose life was destroyed when law enforcement officials told the media he was "the focus" of the FBI's investigation into a bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Certainly the FBI is staffed by well-meaning and reasonably competent people who were trying their best to protect the public from danger.

Sometimes well-meaning people make mistakes, especially when they're afraid they might be blamed for a lot of people dying.

On Monday the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two will begin at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, and last week U.S. Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered the Justice Department to stop stalling and give the Guantanamo detainees their day in court after more than six years of detention. "The time has come to move these forward," Judge Hogan told Justice Department lawyers, "Set aside every other case that's pending in the division and address this case first."

Officials in the Bush administration are not happy. They have labored to keep the detainees out of the U.S. courts, where they say there is a risk that dangerous terrorists might be released on some legal technicality. The administration says the president has a duty to protect the American people from terror attacks.

Actually, the president's oath is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the public safety, but let's not go off on a tangent.

The point here is that sometimes the government gets it wrong.

The reason our system of justice has all those "technicalities," like habeas corpus and the right to confront witnesses, is that the Constitution guarantees an accused person the opportunity to make the government prove its case in a public trial. Otherwise the power of government can too easily destroy the lives of innocent people.

Even if you believe, as some judges do, that the Guantanamo detainees are not entitled to the protections of the Constitution, you have to recognize that sometimes the government makes horrible mistakes. For the Guantantamo prisoners, there will be no crusading reporter or Innocence Project lawyer to dig out the facts and free them one day. The war on terror is shrouded in secrecy, and that means errors can go undetected forever.

So bear in mind, when the trials of the Guantanamo detainees finally begin, that we don't know whether any of the prisoners have been wrongly accused.

They might be terrorists.

They might be tomatoes.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You may be interested in the earlier post, "The trouble with waterboarding."

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Hillary refund update

The New York Observer reports today that Senator Hillary Clinton has sent her donors a letter asking for permission to keep the money -- up to $2,300 per person -- that they donated for the general election, so she can spend it on her 2012 Senate campaign.

The mailing includes a form for donors to sign and return if they want to authorize the rollover, but not, apparently, a form to sign if they want an immediate refund.

"If we do not hear back from you by August 28, 2008, we will automatically refund your contribution," the letter says.

That gives Senator Clinton six weeks, plus processing time, to come up with the money if, as we suspect, she spent the general election donations illegally on the primary campaign.

Watch for a hurricane-strength tantrum if Senator Obama continues to refuse to send out an e-mail to his supporters asking them to kick in a few bucks to pay the Clinton campaign debt and "unify the party."

Did you catch Terry McAuliffe on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show last week talking about all the Democratic candidates in the past who didn't release their delegates before the convention, and insisting that the party always has a roll call vote?

Well, don't worry if you missed it, you're certain to have plenty of chances to hear it again.

The Clinton team is giving every indication that they're ready and willing to pout and throw things during the convention next month. "You don't want a situation where anybody feels they've been cheated," political consultant Tad Devine told the Wall Street Journal.

No wonder Senator Obama moved his acceptance speech to a bigger stadium. He has to hand out an extra 50,000 tickets just to make sure he has a friendly audience.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Obama's big move," "Hillary's 'No Refunds' Policy" and "Why Hillary Won't Go."

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Why the Screen Actors Guild should go on strike

California Governor and Screen Actors Guild member Arnold Schwarzenegger offered Friday to mediate the contract dispute between motion picture and television producers and the Screen Actors Guild. He said he's waiting to be asked, but neither side has contacted him.

We might as well tell you that America Wants To Know is the daughter of an actor, the late Dave Shelley (1931-1989), and for a lot of reasons, the prospect of a Screen Actors Guild strike makes us really, really sad.

Actors' strikes are not like other strikes. Actors can stay on strike for a horrifyingly long time because most of them are not giving up their sole paycheck. Even though they can't perform in TV shows and movies, they can still work under their commercials contract; they can do regional theater under their Actors Equity contract; and they can collect residuals for TV reruns, payments that were won for them by earlier generations of striking actors.

So they can carry those picket signs in front of 20th Century Fox until half the studio employees in Hollywood join Ed McMahon in foreclosure proceedings.

And they might.

The kind of people who give up on longshot goals have already gotten out of show business.

Still, the prospect of the Screen Actors Guild going on strike for residuals from Internet use is particularly depressing.

As we wrote when the Writers Guild walked out on strike, the Internet is not quite the pot of gold that everyone expected.

Anyone in the newspaper business or the music industry can tell you the miserable truth about the Internet: Everybody using it wants everything uninterrupted and free, and they'll click right over to anybody who gives it to them. There's no habit. There's no loyalty. There's no geographic or national boundary. And there's certainly no need to get up out of the chair and cross the room to change the TV channel. The era of the captive audience is over.

But there's still the rosy projection, the perfect math of multiplying the total number of Internet users by the tiny little fraction who would have to click on or watch an ad in order to generate millions or billions of dollars.

Here's the trouble with perfect math: Sometimes nobody clicks and nobody watches.

So we'd like to suggest to our longtime friends at the Screen Actors Guild that they throw away the idea of residuals for Internet use and instead fight for a provision in the standard contract for a lump-sum upfront payment to cover anything the studios ever do with that performance online.

"What? After the way they screwed us on network shows that went into syndication? Do you know how much money Barbara Eden didn't make on 'I Dream of Jeannie?'"

Yes. Yes, we do.

We also know what some of those hard-won residual checks really look like.

This is a picture of America Wants to Know's dad with Loni Anderson and the future governor of California in the 1980 TV movie, The Jayne Mansfield Story:



Really, that's the governor:



Here's Dave Shelley with Farrah Fawcett and Robert Stack in the 1975 TV movie, Murder on Flight 502:



And with Tom Bosley in the 1979 TV movie, The Triangle Factory Fire:



And with Angie Dickinson in the 1982 TV series, Cassie & Co.:



We can't even imagine how much money the studios and production companies have spent on accounting and payroll services to send out the hundreds of thousands of residual checks for movies and TV shows run on cable and in syndication or sold on home video.

Residuals are forever, but as time goes on, the payments get lower and lower. Occasionally the price of the first-class postage is more than the amount of the check.

Yet the expense of the bookkeeping must be tremendous. And as complex as it is to track every airing of every show on every worldwide broadcast and cable outlet, the intricacies of tracking Internet viewing might make cable and syndication look like mud pies in the backyard.

America Wants To Know would be willing to bet that the studios are more reluctant to agree to the bookkeeping than they are to the payments.

So if the Screen Actors Guild is going to walk out on strike, we hope they do it to get actors a meaningful upfront payment for Internet rights to their performances, and not to win some hypothetical trickle of residual payments from a medium that has yet to demonstrate any real earning power for anybody on it who's not a porn star or a poker table.

We wish the Guild good luck in its contract negotiations. Actors are indispensable, and it's always nice to see Hollywood forced to recognize it.



Copyright 2008

Editor's note: Susan Shelley wrote a history of the Screen Actors Guild's successful 1978 commercials strike, which can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/strike.htm.

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What the White House is hiding

On Thursday, former White House deputy chief of staff and top adviser to the president Karl Rove defied a subpoena from Congress and refused to show up at a hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee.

Mr. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, told the committee that Karl Rove can't be compelled to give congressional testimony related to his official duties as a presidential adviser, which is what White House Counsel Fred Fielding told Mr. Luskin, which is what the Justice Department told Mr. Fielding.

Looks like everybody who works for President Bush is in agreement on this point: The Constitution protects the president from unwelcome questions asked by Congress.

Of course, there's no possibility that they really believe that.

President Bush and his team have demonstrated in the past that they know perfectly well there's no such thing as executive privilege, or any other privilege, that protects the executive branch from oversight by Congress. (See our 2005 post, "Senate Republicans fire the big gun," and our 2006 post "Rep. Heather Wilson pries open the White House.")

The Bush administration is simply luxuriating in the political reality that Democrats don't want to risk the political damage they might incur if they launch aggressive hearings and talk about impeachment.

And Congressional Republicans would rather defend the president than stand up for the institutional authority of the U.S. Congress and the principle that no one is above the law.

That's unfortunate.

Because now the only way you can know what the White House is hiding is to read America Wants To Know.

We think it's all about Jack Abramoff.

On September 4, Jack Abramoff is scheduled to be sentenced for his part in a Washington corruption scandal that has already resulted in the convictions of something like a dozen people, including former Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, a Republican.

Mr. Abramoff, currently in prison in Maryland for an unrelated Florida casino boat fraud, has been cooperating with investigators.

So has his former partner, Adam Kidan, whose prison sentence for the same fraud case was just cut in half. Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Paul Huck that Mr. Kidan has been cooperating in several investigations.

And we probably haven't heard the last of Italia Federici, the former Abramoff associate whose decision to cooperate with prosecutors last December won her a sentence of two months in a halfway house instead of prison time and coincided with Senator John McCain's still-unexplained decision to hire criminal defense attorney Bob Bennett.

Speaking of coincidences, there was a fire in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's political director, Amy Whitelaw, around the same time.

It's not clear how much contact Dick Cheney had with Jack Abramoff and his associates because the White House has refused to turn over visitor logs that would show how many times anyone came to see the president or the vice president or Karl Rove. Earlier visitor logs showed that in April of 2001, Jack Abramoff visited Dick Cheney's assistant for domestic policy, Cesar Conda, and five days later an Abramoff associate was appointed to a powerful job in the Department of Labor.

Cesar Conda is now a lobbyist with a firm called Navigators, and the former Abramoff associate, Patrick Pizzella, is still Assistant Secretary of Labor.

You might not know that Jack Abramoff's former assistant, Susan Ralston, went to work in the White House as an assistant to Karl Rove, and that when she was later asked to testify before a congressional committee, she asked for immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, citing her right against self-incrimination.

Remember, nobody's being prosecuted for lobbying. The Abramoff investigation is about corruption.

The Washington Post reported back in 2005 that Jack Abramoff had boasted two years earlier of his direct contacts with Karl Rove on behalf of Tyco International, a conglomerate that wanted to remain eligible for federal contracts even though it had relocated to Bermuda to save on taxes.

"A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove 'has no recollection' of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns," the Post reported.

It begins to look as if any public relations damage that the Bush administration sustains from stonewalling could be nothing compared to the kind of damage it will suffer if Karl Rove is immunized and forced to testify.

This would explain the White House's blanket refusal to allow any former aide to respond to any kind of Congressional subpoena. By insisting that they can't be ordered to answer questions about anything, they prevent any questions about the specific questions they don't want to answer.

We were going to call in one of our on-staff fortune-tellers to peer into a crystal ball and tell us when the Justice Department will announce new indictments resulting from the testimony of all the cooperating witnesses in the Abramoff investigation, but then we realized a six-year-old child could figure it out.

Expect the indictments right after the November election. Watch for the pardons to be signed on January 19th.

We won't be surprised if Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are both on the list.


Copyright 2008

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Jesse Jackson helps out

The Reverend Jesse Jackson was caught on camera saying he'd like to cut Barack Obama's nuts off for the way the senator has been talking down to black people.

Well, that was a lucky break for the Obama campaign.

If not for Rev. Jackson's astonishing mistake -- once you're wired up with a microphone in a television studio, somebody can hear everything you say whether the red light is on or not -- everyone might be talking today about Senator Barack Obama's outrageous and insulting remarks about Americans who speak no language other than English.

On Tuesday, Senator Obama was speaking to a town hall meeting outside Atlanta when he told a crowd that foreign languages deserve more emphasis in American classrooms. "It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here," the senator said. "They all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.”

On Wednesday, Senator Obama spoke at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia, and told parents, "You need to make sure that your child can speak Spanish."

Did Barack Obama really just say he's embarrassed by the American people, and that the American people speak the wrong language to get by in their own country?

It's a good thing everybody's talking about Jesse Jackson cutting off his nuts, or somebody might have noticed.


Copyright 2008

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Obama's big move

Politico reports today that the television networks may cut back their coverage of the Democratic National Convention in August because of the additional expenses they're going to incur now that Senator Barack Obama has decided to give his acceptance speech in a football stadium.

Senator Obama decided just last week that he'd rather speak at Invesco Field at Mile High, which seats 76,000, than at the Pepsi Center in Denver where the convention will be held. The Pepsi Center, an indoor arena, is about one-third the size.

Certainly there are many good reasons for Senator Obama to do this, but there might be one more that hasn't crossed your mind yet.

Today in the New York Times, Patrick Healy reports that Senator Obama's donors are not reacting well to his suggestion that they contribute to Hillary Clinton's primary campaign in order to help her pay off something like $23 million in debt.

"Not a penny for that woman. Or her husband," one donor wrote in an e-mail.

Since making her announcement that she is suspending her campaign, Senator Clinton has been in negotiations with the Obama campaign for assistance with her financial problem. It's not clear exactly what leverage she holds over Senator Obama, but she has taken the unusual, maybe unprecedented, step of asking Washington superlawyer Robert Barnett "to help structure a political relationship between them for the general election."

At the moment, her campaign is in a state of suspension. She has not released her delegates. She has not refunded $23 million in donations she received for the general election.

What has been going on in those negotiations, described as "so delicate" by the New York Times?

Has Hillary Clinton hinted that she could ruin Senator Obama's pretty TV pictures at the convention with some kind of delegate walk-out or counter-demonstration?

What does she have, eighteen hundred delegates? Something like that?

This is a picture of Invesco Field at Mile High:



Hillary Clinton's delegates could form a parade in the aisles at that place and it still wouldn't be as long as the line for the bathrooms.

No wonder Barack Obama beat her. She plays poker. He plays chess.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Why Hillary won't go"

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Analyzing the president's handwriting

The Times of London reported today that President Bush posted a message on a "wishing tree" in a Tanabata ceremony at the G8 summit in Japan. His handwritten note was hung in the branches of a black bamboo tree.



President Bush wrote, "I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized. I wish for the advance of new technologies that will improve the human condition and protect our environment."



Because President Bush has an unusual handwriting, America Wants To Know called in our on-staff psychic medium and asked her to contact the spirit of Dr. Hugo von Hagen, the noted graphologist and author of the 1902 book, Reading Character from Handwriting.

After half an hour of trumpets and tambourines flying pointlessly around the room we sent her home and just read the book ourselves.

The first thing we noticed about President Bush's handwriting is that it's large. "Large handwriting indicates enterprise," Dr. von Hagen wrote, "desire to do great things, nobility, pride."

It's apparent from the writing that the president uses heavy pressure with his pen. "Resoluteness, will power, obstinate diligence," Dr. von Hagen says.

We also noticed that the president's writing is slightly chaotic, not even and harmonious. Dr. von Hagen advises that "unharmonious" writing indicates "weak character, hard work to keep himself under control."

Do you see how the baseline of the writing is kind of wavy? If you drew a line under each letter in the word "wish," for example, you'd have almost a zig-zag instead of a level baseline.

Dr. von Hagen says that's a sign of unfaithfulness.

The letter "t" is crossed very low almost all the time. That indicates "perseverance and resistance," Dr. von Hagen says, and the long letters, "g" and "y" are "more developed above the line than below," indicating "idealism, mental and spiritual interests strongest."

Spooky, isn't it? Wait, it gets better.

We might have been forewarned about the federal budget deficit if we'd known that when "writing is drawn out wide" it indicates "immoderation, superficiality, generosity, carelessness," and when "words have much space between each other," it's an indication of "waste."

One of the most striking features of the president's handwriting is the way the letters in his words are frequently not connected. You can see that there's a space on each side of the "i" in "wish" and a space between the "y" and "r" in the word "tyranny." There's a space after the "g" and before the "m" in "governments" and if you look closely you can see many more.

This is what Dr. von Hagen says about that:

"Writers who never connect their letters, but always leave them separated, have no deductive powers, but have very much intuitive instinct instead. They judge largely by their sense of feeling. Such natures are rather difficult to get along with, they are always hard to convince, very nervous and sensitive and they often show stubbornness to a marked degree. When words and letters are more or less connected or disconnected, the graphologist must always weigh carefully the average number of connections or disconnections before passing his opinion. The more connections between letters, syllables and words, the more logic, sense of reality and adaptability are possessed by the writer."

And the fewer connections between letters, syllables and words, the less logic, sense of reality and adaptability.

Hey, we have no one to blame but ourselves, the book's been out since 1902.


Copyright 2008

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Starbucks cut from cheerleading squad

One of America Wants To Know's greatest disappointments in life was the sad realization that most people never really get out of high school.

It is astounding to us how many grown-up people in this country make their decisions, big and small, based not on any independent judgment or objective standard of value, but just on some deep-down desire to be one of the cool kids.

Alas, "cool" is ever-unattainable to those who seek it. "Cool" is the attitude of not caring what anybody else thinks.

So if you're seeking it, you're already disqualified.

But that doesn't mean companies can't capitalize on the yearning to be cool.

"Starbucks was a cool brand," trend expert Jim Carroll told Reuters on Sunday, "and then all of a sudden it's not a cool brand."

Life is, like, so unfair. Like, totally.

Starbucks announced last week that it will close 600 stores and lay off 12,000 employees. Signs of trouble have been in the air. Not too long ago the company closed all its stores for several hours in order to re-train its employees in quality control and customer service.

Of course, quality control and customer service were never the attraction at Starbucks. Anyone who was out of high school could have told them that, as comedian Jackie Mason did in his dead-on, pound-on-the-carpet-funny style. (Click here to read it or here to watch it or here to buy his book.)

No, the attraction of Starbucks was that it was cool. That's why people paid four dollars for coffee in a paper cup and sat on those uncomfortable chairs for hours staring broodingly into their laptop screens.

It was the Left Bank at the strip mall.

But then, something went terribly wrong.

Starbucks ceased to be cool. Suddenly people on Internet dating sites were writing things like "Anyplace but Starbucks" under the heading of "Perfect first date."

What did them in?

"There's this new global consciousness that is out there that can suddenly shift," Jim Carroll explained.

Oh.

That clears that up.


Copyright 2008

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John McCain's weekend off

For some reason, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States did not make a single public appearance over the Fourth of July weekend.

Not one.

Not one parade, not one speech, not one fireworks show, not one baseball game, not one picnic, not one VFW event.

Nothing.

He stayed in one of his houses in Arizona, in the air conditioning, and relaxed. All weekend.

Senator Barack Obama attended a parade, a picnic, and his daughter's tenth birthday party. He gave interviews to People, Essence and Parents magazines and to TV's "Access Hollywood." He spoke to the National Education Association convention by satellite from Montana and flew to St. Louis to give a speech about values to the African Methodist Episcopal Church conference. And that was just through Saturday afternoon.

As comedian Argus Hamilton observed, if John McCain were in the NBA, there would be a point-shaving investigation.

America Wants to Know can think of four possible reasons that, individually or in combination, might explain Senator McCain's decision to skip any public observance of Independence Day:

-- He's not smart.

-- He's not well.

-- He doesn't want to win.

-- He thinks he can't lose.

Republican lawmakers and campaign strategists have expressed some frustration over the shapeless campaign and shifting message of McCain's operation. Republican consultant Nelson Warfield compared the candidate to a quarterback who hasn't called the play yet.

It looks pretty bad for the Republicans.

Of course, it's early, and anything could happen.

It makes you wonder if John McCain knows what's going to happen.

Did you know that Senator McCain was briefed in advance about the top-secret Colombian military plans to rescue the hostages held for over five years by revolutionary terrorists?

Do you suppose Senator McCain has been briefed about some U.S. military operation to go after terrorists between now and November?

Or worse, do you suppose Senator McCain has been tipped off to some pending orange-alert terror hysteria that will be triggered by the Bush administration's prosecution of terror suspects, timed precisely to assist the GOP in November?

That would be cynical.

Would it work?

It's far from certain that the fear of terrorism would help the McCain campaign more than the Obama campaign. At one time it was easy to argue that one cause of terrorism was weakness shown by a Democratic administration. But six years into the war in Iraq and seven years into the one in Afghanistan, that argument looks a little frayed.

The Republicans might try it one more time. Senator McCain sure is campaigning like a man with an ace up his sleeve.

A presidential candidate has to be pretty cocky to blow off the Fourth of July.


Copyright 2008

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