Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2010 (22. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)
2010-01-29 / 4. szám
Hungarian Journal Massachusetts Senate Vote May Derail Obama Agenda Republican Scott Brown upsets Martha Coakley to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat Boston, Massachusetts (CNN) - In a stunning upset that reshaped the U.S. political landscape, Republican Scott Brown won Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy. Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley, the state attorney general. Brown’s victory made real the once unthinkable prospect of a Republican filling the seat held by Kennedy, known as the liberal lion, for almost 47 years until his death due to brain cancer last August. Before Kennedy won the seat for the first time in 1962, his older brother John held it for nearly eight years until his election as U.S. president in 1960. “This really does change everything, you know that?” said Mitt Romney, the former GOP governor of Massachusetts who introduced Brown at his victory rally. Voters across Massachusetts braved winter cold and snow for an election with high stakes - the domestic agenda of President Obama, including his top domestic priority, health care reform. Brown’s victory strips Democrats of their 60-seat Senate super-majority, needed to overcome GOP filibusters against future Senate action on a broad range of White House priorities. Senate Democrats needed all 60 votes in their caucus to pass the health care bill, and the loss of one seat now imperils generating that support again for a compromise measure worked out with the House. “Forty one, forty one,” chanted the crowd at Brown’s rally, referring to his new status as the Senate’s 41st Republican. Brown heralded his victory as the start of more election surprises in 2010. No Republican had won a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts since 1972, and Democrats control the governorship, both houses of the state legislature, and the state’s entire congressional delegation. “When there’s trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured there’s trouble everywhere, and they know it,” Brown said of the Democratic Party. Republican leaders sounded a similar theme, saying Americans were fed up with what they called Democratic arrogance in Washington. “Americans are investing their hopes in good Republican candidates to reverse a year-long Democrat trend of ignoring the American people on the issues of health care, spending and the growth of government,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a statement. The seat vacated by Kennedy’s death is currently held by his former aide and longtime friend Paul Kirk, who was appointed on an interim basis. Obama called Brown and Coakley on Tuesday night, and a White House statement said the president “told Sen. Brown that he looks forward to working with him on the urgent economic challenges facing Massachusetts families and struggling families across our nation.” Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin said last week that certifying Tuesday’s election results could take more than two weeks - potentially enough time to allow congressional Democrats to pass a final health care bill before Brown is seated. But multiple Democratic sources said that is unlikely. Even if House and Senate Democrats could reach a deal to meld their bills and pass them in the next couple of weeks, there would be a huge outcry from not only Republicans, but also an increasingly distrustful public if they appeared to be rushing it through. Galvin had predicted as many 2.2 million of the state’s 4.5 million registered voters would vote - at least double the turnout from December’s primary. In one sign of high interest, more than 100,000 absentee ballots were requested ahead of the election, according to Brian McNiff, Galvin’s spokesman. Coakley was initially expected to easily win the race to replace Kennedy, who made health care reform the centerpiece of his Senate career. Until recently, Brown was underfunded and unknown statewide. Waging a nationally backed campaign that included driving his pickup aröund the state, Brown surged in the weeks preceding Tuesday’s vote and led in all the final polls. In a sign of the high stakes involved, the Coakley campaign held an afternoon news conference Tuesday to complain that voters in three places received ballots already marked for Brown. McNiff confirmed that the secretary of state’s offices received two reports of voters saying they received pre-marked ballots. The suspect ballots were invalidated and the voters received new ballots, McNiff said. Kevin Conroy, the Coakley campaign manager, said the “disturbing incidents” raised questions about the integrity of the election. In response, the Brown campaign issued a statement criticizing Coakley’s team. “Reports that the Coakley campaign is making reckless accusations regarding the integrity of today’s election is a reminder that they are a desperate campaign,” Daniel B. Winslow said in the statement. Obama had been “surprised and frustrated” by the race, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday. Obama and former President Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail in the final week in an attempt to save Coakley’s campaign, which observers say was hampered by complacency and missteps. Obama crushed Sen. John McCain in Massachusetts in 2008, beating the GOP presidential nominee by 26 points. “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election,” Obama urged a crowd at a Coakley campaign rally on Sunday. Vicki Kennedy, the late senator’s widow, called on state Democrats to turn out to save her husband’s legacy. “We need your help. We need your support. We need you to get out there and vote on Tuesday,” Kennedy said. “We need you to bring your neighbors. We need you to bring your friends.” Brown, who has trumpeted his 30 years of service in the National Guard, hewed to traditional GOP themes in his victory speech. He promised to back tax cuts and be tough on terrorists, and to oppose Obama’s health care overhaul effort. “People do not want a trillion dollar health-care plan that is being forced on the American people,” Brown said. A Phone Call to God Hello God, I called tonight to talk a little while, I need a friend who’ll listen to my anxiety and trial. You see, I can’t quite make it through a day just on my own... I need your love to guide me so I’ll never feel alone. I want to ask you please to keep my family safe and sound, And fill their lives with confidence for whatever fate they’re bound. Give me faith, dear God, to face each hour throughout the day, And not to worry over things I can’t change in any way. I thank you God, for being home and listening to my call, For giving me. such good advice when I stumble and fall. Your number, God, is the only one that answers every time I never get a busy signal, never had to pay a dime. So thank you, God, for listening to my troubles and my sorrow, Good night, God, I love You too, and I’ll call again tomorrow. P.S. Please bless all my friends and family too! Margit Patterson 29,2010 ÍD George Jelűnek, WQXR Opera Host, Dies at 90 George Jellinek, a former music director of the New York radio station WQXR and the host of a weekly pro-gram on opera singers and singing that ran on the station for 36 years, died on Saturday. He was 90 and lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. His death, at a hospital in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., was confirmed by his daughter, Nancy Berezin. From 1968 to 1984, Mr. Jellinek was in charge of choosing the music listeners heard throughout the day on WQXR, then owned by The New York Times Company. They also heard him once or twice a week. He had an uncharacteristic voice for a commercial radio station in the days of booming rock’n’roll D.J.’s: he was a quiet and serious-sounding perfectionist, with more than a hint of a central European accent left over from his Hungarian boyhood. His hourlong weekly program, “The Vocal Scene,” ran for 36 years, until 2004 and was syndicated around the country. It allowed him to dip into his encyclopedic knowledge about singers and singing — and into his own huge record collection. Sometimes he interviewed opera stars on “The Vocal Scene.” At other times he built programs around themes: 10 basses singing “Boris Godunov,” say, or eight sopranos’ takes on “Carmen.” Mr. Jellinek said in an interview with The New York Times in 2004 that “The Vocal Scene” began as an experiment. The question mark was the host; he had no experience in front of the microphone. “Thank God, the pros around the station, people like Duncan Pirnie, were patient with me,” he said. “They taught me how to breathe, how to modulate my voice.” Mr. Jellinek became a frequent panelist on “Texaco’s Opera Quiz,” a segment of the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. He also produced another syndicated program for WQXR, “First Hearing,” in which a panel of music critics gave on-thespot reactions to new recordings without knowing who had performed the music they had just heard. George Jellinek was born in Budapest on Dec. 22, 1919. He never studied voice; he took violin lessons as a child and played with a Gypsy band in a restaurant owned by his father. But he gave up the violin as a teenager after he heard his first “Traviata,” in Budapest in 1936. It turned him into an “almost insane operagoer,” he said in 1990. His parents sent him out of the country in 1939, when he was 18, so he could avoid being drafted. At the train station, his father gave him his gold watch. That was the last day he saw his parents, who were later sent to Auschwitz, Ms. Berezin said. Mr. Jellinek made his way to Hamburg, Germany, and then to Havana, where he ran a coffee shop while waiting for a visa to the United States. On his first day in New York, in 1941, he met Hedy Dicker — it was her 18th birthday and he was invited to a party by two of her cousins, who had also just arrived from Cuba. She and Mr. Jellinek married the next year. Besides Mrs. Jellinek and their daughter, who lives in South Orleans, Mass., Mr. Jellinek is survived by a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter. Mr. Jellinek was soon drafted into the United States Army. He was eventually sent back to Hungary, where, after V-E Day in May 1945, he identified the Hungarian Nazi leader Ferenc Szalasi for American officers. In New York after the war, Mr. Jellinek worked in export-import trading, but spent so much time at the Merit Music Shop in Midtown Manhattan that the owner hired him as a clerk. He wrote record reviews for Stereo Review and articles for Opera News, and in 1960 published his first book, “Callas: Portrait of a Prima Donna.” He stepped down as music director of WQXR in 1984, but continued his work on “The Vocal Scene” and “First Hear-ing” and was also the host of a Sunday-evening opera program. WQXR is now at 105.9 FM. He said that Verdi was his idol and that “Otelló” was Verdi’s greatest opera, even though he himself preferred “Don Carlo.” “Otelló is a dope,” he said. “He’s screaming and agonizing all the time.” James Barron DUNA Travel 8530 Holloway Dr. ft102 W. Hollywood, CA 90069 Spa, Hotel foglalások, Kocsi bérlés Kedvezményes repülőjegy árak LAX-BUD-LAX $448. -«1 + Tax + Fee Információért hívják ZSUZSÁT TEL: (310) 652-5294 FAX: (310) 652-5287 1-888-532-0168 AMERIKAI lifagyap Hírlap
