What Happened to Barack Obama: This is one of the GREATEST editorials of the tragedy of the Barack Obama presidency I have ever read. I composed an email to its author Drew Westin, Professor of Psychology at Emory University. I post a link to his superb article below.

I wrote: Dear Professor Westin: I just finished reading your NYT editorial entitled "What Happened to Barack Obama?"

You have written, in my opinion, one of the GREATEST editorials of the tragedy of the Barack Obama presidency I have ever read. It is MUST reading and ESPECIALLY should be read by the man it is about himself! Indeed, what DID happen to Barack Obama?

Your article is BRILLIANT and sadly for those of us who loved him so much and worked so hard to elect him his presidency is proving to be a Shakespearean tragedy. I am hoping sometimes beyond hope that the Republican Party and its candidates are SO bad, the American public smarter than it is said they are, and the problems SO significant for the middle/working class and the poor that this country dare not elect another Republican at the peril of losing its soul to the ash bin of history.

Every word you said is true despite the small error of numbers regarding immigration. That matters not. What does matter is the ad infinitum signs of foreclosure which I see in the once vibrant town where I have lived for 63 years.

The seasons still pass, the trees still rustle with the knowledge somehow written on their DNA that fall and then winter approach. I yearn for the American spring and for the time that our country can re-capture what the trees do as a matter of course in their transition from winter to spring's renewal.

As Rabbi Hillel said: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?" Indeed when will our nation's spring ever return to its renewal and will our president hasten its onset? Who will be for me if not him?



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html?scp=1&sq=What%20happened%20to%20Barack%20Obama&st=cs

The Making of a Toasted English Muffin and the Greatest Madness: While I do think that some of the London violence is copycat and that some perpetrate it solely for ability to steal, I believe generally human beings are prodded to violence by a deep sense of social outrage and anomie. It is anger about things they cannot control and it is about a life that sees no hope. I understand this anger and share much of it about this country as well. I feel immense fury when I realize those responsible for the Greatest Recession in 2007 have received NO punishment and people on Main Street have received no justice. They see everything for which they have worked with diligence, dwindle.

I experience even more fury when I helped elect a president I loved who has not yet projected the vitriol promised against the forces of Wall Street and their Congressional lackeys he vowed to stop. They continue still to perpetrate this global economic monster NOT for the middle class but for the top 2% of wealth. What is happening now GLOBALLY is related to that. The youth who riot, do not understand the interconnectedness of it all.

The fraudulent scam that Wall Street and The City (London’s Wall Street) pulled in the early 2000’s while government stuffed its pockets with Wall Street gold, struck at the global heart. The people of the European failed economic states prompting the anger in riots can, in pertinent part, thank a system of greed-gone-wild with the help of a gentlemen’s agreement with power. They transmitted this mendacious viral contagion to the innocent while the guilty walk away with trillions of middle class money.

Were they creating jobs with the loot they received from us? No, they were buying yachts! Wealth, we should have learned, does NOT trickle down to us but trickles up to them. We pay and they play. The riots one sees in London have spread elsewhere and I believe will continue unless we force those to pay who rightfully should. Riots, I believe fearfully, are coming to a country near you UNLESS we stop those who turned a blind eye to Wall Street fraud, punish the guilty and put people back to work.

All of Congress, all of Parliament, all of Wall Street and all of The City eat like gluttons while the rest of humanity starves.

Wake up! Wall Street, The City, its Parliament and Washington stooges are NOT your friends. Through your vote and your voice get rid of the Machiavellian immoral scum who defrauded the middle class. Then regulate and punish those who are guilty of this fraud. Make power work for you and not for the top 2% whose money, corruption, greed and graft created the toasted English muffin and, I believe, the Greatest economic Madness man has ever known.