ELOQUENCE:

I listened, last evening, to Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment. It was THRILLING and true – all of it. You can, if you did not hear it, go to Keith Olbermann’s web page and through its Special Comment section listen to one of the most eloquent and fervent thoughts about this country’s historically racist past and present as it relates to the Sherrod incident. It is entitled “The witch-hunt vs. Sherrod, and those who made it possible.” I place the following link to it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38353683/ns/msnbc_tv countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

I sent to him and posted my thoughts:

Keith, last evening's Special Comment was, perhaps, among the best that I have ever heard you make. This comment WAS, INDEED, special. I am GLAD you apologized to Ms. Sherrod for ALL of us as the White House is often anemic in its response when it counts. It shamefully went along with and did not even take the time to investigate the fraudulent charges trumped up by right wing media against this innocent woman which led to her ultimate dismissal from the Department of Agriculture. Shame on the White House. And SHAME on the NAACP for falling for something against which they have fought for over a century. I am THRILLED you said it as adamantly as you did. Moreover, SOMEONE MUST talk about the nature of this country's mental illness and its HISTORICALLY deep roots of contemptible injustice to people of color.

There is NO question, no question whatsoever, that the screams of WHITE racism are utterly fabricated by Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity and all the other sick right wing media. It is the most ridiculously neo-Nazi like fraudulent cause this time uttered by the so called Tea Party having its roots in the Phillips "Southern Strategy" of long ago. It wanted, at all costs, to maintain white power not only in the south but anywhere else its appeal could take root among whites. Salt and peppering in, as they do, an occasional black person for the cameras is a RUSE for others who may have conservative sympathies but do not like the Tea Party's CLEARLY systemic and overt white racism. They want to keep white power EXACTLY has it has been since the country's inception EXCEPT that the hue of our population is changing and they are desperate. Fox News, with its nearly UNLIMITED fountain of cash, is the perfect vehicle for them to ride this white horse and try to regain the power which they thought they were and are entitled to posses. It is a DAMNABLE thing.

I wish the STRENGTH of your words would be shown and heard on right wing extremist media but, alas, they would not air what you say since they do NOT report the truth but twist it to fit their own sociopathic view. They are about lies -- BIG lies -- and could not countenance their viewers listening to people like you and Rachel Maddow because you both negate this mendacity with reality. The festering sore of powerful white racism -- slavery's cement --, The Southern Strategy of a bygone era and the Tea Party of this era are our country's curse and its INSANITY which pathologically and purposefully divides our nation. How can we EVER overcome this cancer eating away at our body politic?

You are the chemotherapeutic HOPE of this nation by doing what you so eloquently do providing us hope. You are, I believe, gifts to to our country and to those of us who really do believe in truth, JUSTICE and what we THOUGHT was the American way.

THANK YOU! Just in case a viewer of my blog does not check the comment section I posted his comment which to me was sent in Chinese. Many times this Asian person comments on my blog. I should be posting the comments but since they are in Chinese I hesitated. I do now use "Google Translate" to understand them and this one was particularly nice: so it means in English: "Whatever we do, believe in yourself, do not let anyone steal, you down."

I want to thank him/her for that. It means a lot to me as sometimes I doubt myself and it is SO nice that a person a distance from me takes an interest. I thank you, sir (or madam) as I do not know them but I surely do appreciate support from wherever it comes and it is so nice of you to send it!

Shanda: The incidents of child sexual abuse that have become illuminated in recent years, among mostly orthodox and Hasidic sects among Jewish males sicken me. The July 20, 2010 The Boston Globe front page article (Link below) about a child sex abuse case allegedly committed by a teacher and a rabbi within the employ of Maimonides, a prestigious Jewish day school, and elsewhere with its attendant details made me want to regurgitate my lunch possibly to purge this contemptible sin from our collective souls. Yes, I as a Jew feel a sense of shanda (shame) as if the abuse stains our entire Jewish community. I feel a sense of utter outrage at the abnormal abuser but I feel even more outrage at a community and educational institution whose hierarchy possibly did not want to BE aware or, if aware, looked the other way when this pathological behavior was perpetrated upon the innocent. We have heard this tune before, as the article points out, the all familiar refrain the Catholic Church sang, hoping a few years would dull its impact and make it go somewhere else or simply just fade away. A few years passing does NOT dull its impact. It, rather, in my opinion, makes its impact worse. The child is rarely rid of its deleterious impact on his psyche and will probably always have at least a part of this monkey on his back.

It is a fact that this deviant behavior is a part of the human condition and that a Jew who allegedly committed these horrible crimes surely does not mean all Jews should be indicted for it. MOST, I dare say, would never even THINK of doing such a thing. And yet I feel the sting and I feel ashamed that someone within our ranks, no mater what Judaic sect he occupies, may have done these dastardly acts and worse, still, that others may have known and could let such monstrous things happen without taking appropriate action. That it allegedly happened at the hands of a teacher at a Jewish school which is supposedly one of our finest Jewish institutions makes me sickened even more.

One must now act accordingly using the road map that the Catholic Church so courteously but inadvertently bestowed upon us which clearly shows how NOT to act when pedophile sex abuse happens within the walls of an institution. A child MUST be encouraged NOT discouraged to report it to an authority and the authority must NEVER be blind to its occurrence. The authority should contact local police and a proper investigation should ensue. This should be done secularly and NOT by the community within which the abuse took place. We live in a country of secular LAW which screams out to everyone justice, justice, justice!

Shame on you, Maimonides, if you knew about this crime and did nothing. You have committed a grievous sin against your god, against your people, against the state but most of all against the victims who will probably have to suffer the consequences of these rancid acts, sadly, for the rest of their lives.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/20/sex_abuse_case_against_rabbi_raises_larger_issues/

Yet another opinion worthy of consideration -- Rethinking Afghanistan, Islamic radicalism and us: Two people whose opinion I respect sent opposition to my post on pulling out of Afghanistan. They are smart, well read, and most of all thoughtful. This time a friend of mine offered his assessment and strong alternative view. Maybe Rachel Maddow, so many on the left and I who criticize US foreign policy do not really understand what is happening and are not seeing the forest through the proverbial trees. Honestly, not being in the echelons of power, I do not know.

Perhaps, we must play the ball where it lies and not think about or wish we had done something historically different which would have changed the course of our present day confrontation with fanatical Islam. I offer his point of view because I respect it and because our world and our very lives depend upon making decisions which will save both. What those decisions should be is, perhaps, more in the hands of luck than cogent policy. I do not know. What I do know is we must make the right decisions. Whatever decisions are made western civilization which brought us through the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment and modern times depends upon it. My friend stated -- disguising some of the more colorful words:

"I'm with your cousin on this one -- 9/11 wasn't the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Afghanistan isn't Vietnam. We have every right and obligation to be fighting the Taliban after 9/11, and I hope our troops are pounding the living s*&^ out of them -- the bloodier for them the better. You, I, Rachel Maddow and probably everyone we know are all dead meat if those Nazi bas*&^% take over the world."

It is a difficult opinion for me to take because I am, at heart, a peace-loving person but I continuously ask what if he and others who share his opinion are right. I have come out vociferously against orthodox and fundamentalist religion everywhere. It is uncompromising, extreme and most of all deadly. Survival is the first law of nature. What polices would be best to ensure our survival, for me, is often guess work. The noxious decisions of yesteryear we cannot change and sometimes we do not realize what we, in fact, do have. We shop, go to the supermarket, go to CVS, have prescriptions filled, medical care (albeit sometimes problematic) and enough food and water. We play our CD's, DVDs, go to the movies and to rock concerts, travel freely with our friends while taking most of it for granted. We turn on a television with 600 channels and think everyone does. Everyone does not. Many if not most around the world live without even the basic necessities of life and whose live at the whim of tyranny.

We in the west are a technologically advanced civilization who have the ability to discuss opinion -- however controversial -- freely BUT it exists at the whim of man and can be taken away in an instant. I am glad better minds than I possess are entrusted with our security. As another cousin said to me before he died "You better HOPE we win. The alternative is unthinkable!"

Why Tevya and I Could Never Be Policymakers: I equate myself with Tevya which is why I could never be and never have been a policymaker. He is forever weighing arguments -- on the one hand, on the other hand, etc. He tries to see different facets of an argument. I do the same. If one offers me a cogent well-thought out rationale I can change my mind on a dime. At least Tevya, it seemed, could actually MAKE a decision but, alas, I often cannot. I am STUCK in the mire of ideas.

My cousin today emailed me a response to my reasons for wanting the US out of Afghanistan. He made some very good points and they are:

"What seems wrong (to me, of course) is Rachel Maddow saying we need to train and support but not have any war dead, plus she offers no alternative to what the President is already doing. I don't feel that my scenario is off the mark and that is what scares me. I can imagine something far worse that 9/11 happening if we did pull out, wherein we would have a body count in the millions instead of 3,000. If Al Qaeda were seen as successful in kicking us out, not only would Pakistan fall, but so would Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, the Emirates....I don't see any Arab states left standing. All those recruits to bin Laden with so many axes to grind against so many corrupt governments!"

Thankfully, I will never have to make those life and death decisions. I could not. I admit to my frailties. The one positive thing I, perhaps, can say about my efforts is that they are well though ABOUT. Often, though, I can lose my balance and be pushed off my podium too much like a fiddler on the roof.

"The Fiddler": Yet again Maureen Dowd proves her journalistic excellence. Who can say it better than she? No one can. Her Sunday, July 18, 2010 NYT editorial "Rome Fiddles, We Burn" is EXCELLENT. It speaks about the shameful depths to which the Catholic Church has sunk by electing the Neanderthal uber extremist Benedict as pope. He has, through his shameful inaction first as Cardinal Ratzinger and now as Benedict, with such effrontery, looked the other way when priests committed the egregious sins of child rape. He has helped perpetuate this crime within the church. Even worse, equating that sin with the ordination of women -- something which could help release this church from its dastardly milieu -- is nothing short of astoundingly sick. Her last paragraph which quotes The New Republic Garry Wills says it all:

"In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”

It is the essence of this preposterous crime against children by priests which has run rampant, probably for centuries, in this most institutionally depraved Church. The best Rome can come up with now is putting the cardinal sin of child rape on par with the ordination of women? Who could postulate such an outrageous statement? Answer: Only an all male institution where they hold all the power could.

I paste the link to Dowd's editorial below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18dowd.html?hp

Is that what you really want?: The Newsweek headline "Rethinking Afghanistan" (link below) is interesting. After Rachel Maddow's trip to Afghanistan many who are worth anything intellectually (even the conservative George Will) are seeming to come to her conclusion. She was brilliant the other night summing up her trip to Afghanistan essentially saying: A NOBLE army attempting to do an impossible and ignoble task not worthy of one more -- not ONE MORE -- American life. I say here here. How long have I said that? It took awhile but A LONG time. The lefties seem to get our useless mind numbing wars right every time. They are agreeing with Michael Steele (as I did as well) that he was NOT wrong when he said it was Obama's war. It is. Yet ANOTHER reason for my disappointment. I'll just add it to my list which does NOT mean -- DOES NOT MEAN -- I want a Republican in office. Perish the thought. I simply want to get what I THOUGHT I bought. It is a right in tort law and it is my right as a citizen who voted on principle.

When will the American public get it? When will they elect people who really give a damn about human life? When will we elect leaders who do NOT commit American blood on foreign soil to die in UNDECLARED wars, for unworthy causes, in godforsaken countries in perpetuity? We are talking about the lives of young people who often have children. These soldiers are dying well before their time or suffering the most egregious injuries only to return to a life sometimes of meaningless depression, post traumatic stress, and even committing suicide in larger numbers than ever before. How long and what will it take for our leaders to STOP?

So much for my positive blogs. I say to HELL with my positive blogs as if I had any anyway. Not to see life as it really is by sugar coating it in pastry syrup is NOT for me. If those of you who cannot take it or do not like it I say isn't it wonderful the computer comes equipped with a Delete key. Use it if you are so inclined. I have become hardened to it but know that your children and your grandchildren, if you have them, will be possibly included as cannon fodder for the next great American fiasco. Is that what you really want?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Positivity Did Not Last Long: I direct your attention to this important article by Simon Johnson, British American economist. He currently is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is, as I see it, EXACTLY correct about appointing the well qualified Elizabeth Warren to head the Financial Protection Bureau. I LOVE Elizabeth Warren and I loath Treasury Secretary Timothy Pay No Taxes Arm of Wall Street and Goldman Sachs Geithner. Warren SHOULD get the job hands down. Obama will lose his base at least the part of his base who understands how important this job is and how wonderful she would be for it. She has the American people's back when few in Treasury do.

I agree with Simon Johnson in his article "Treasury Makes a Mistake ...". He says it exactly as I would except that while he says this would be the straw that broke the camel's back, my camel's back was broken by the leak. Not choosing Warren would simply add to the spinal fracture. Read this article if you have time. It is not long and it is exactly correct. If you care about our country's economic security and YOUR economic security may I suggest sending an email to the White House in support of Elizabeth Warren as head of the Financial Protection Bureau? Its link is: http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Then hit the "Contact" drop down.

Simon Johnson's article below is well worth reading!

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/07/16/treasury-makes-a-mistake-claiming-they-are-not-blocking-elizabeth-warren/

Staying Positive: In my attempt to follow some of my friends/relatives' suggestions about trying to be positive, I came across this article on MSNBC. It is entitled Neuropsychology: Shift Your Brain Shift Your Mind by Dr. Rick Hanson. You may be interested in this too. Within the article he has a link called "Just One Thing" for more on his views.

I have seen some of what he suggests on PBS which has shown a number of other lectures entitled "Change Your Brain Change your Life" by Dr. Daniel Amen (yes, his name is REALLY Amen!).

Often I do not buy into much pop psychology or new agey philosophies but I suspect this is not that. Perhaps there is science behind it. Oh well, there is nothing to lose by reading some of it. :-) I can always return to my dour self!! :(

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-hanson-phd/neuropsychology-shift-you_b_648185.html

Ain't ain't in the dictionary--A FUN POST!: A relative and a friend of mine, too, told me perhaps I should "lighten up." My relative also wrote about poor grammar and syntax in our nation. So I added this to her blog. It's the best I can do at humor in these often serious times.

I am a stickler for proper syntax, grammar and speech. The mode of expression I think I loath more than any other is the so called “Valley Girl” speak. The word “like” is thrown into a sentence more than salt and pepper are thrown into spaghetti sauce. “Like it was totally this or that.” “I said to her like blah blah blah blah.” It’s HORRIBLE! What is that a substitute for? Perhaps like is used instead of a pause or “Uh or UM” I’d rather one be silent than use the word “like.” That being said, English is a difficult language. To me, it makes sense but to some it makes no sense. How often does one (yes “one” instead of “you”) hear “I coulda went” instead of “I could have gone” or “Him and me went to the store” instead of He and I went to the store OR me and Lassie went to the vet. Proper grammar always puts the other person first and the sentence writer or speaker second so it SHOULD be Lassie and I went to the vet. There is, too, little knowledge of cases i.e. the difference between the subjective and objective case. I gave the gift to HIM and NOT to he. “Him” is the objective case and pronouns usually take the objective case. “I” is always the subjective case. “I go to the store” Mari and I went out to eat. ME is the objective case often the object of a preposition. He gave the present to ME.

The grammatical, syntactic and punctuation fracturers of the English language in writing or speech, to me, are like fingernails on a black board. It is blatant, annoying and says something about the speaker or the writer. I pick up on it instantly. How have our schools erred SO badly (not bad but badly as it answers the adverbial question how)? When using verbs of feeling such as I feel bad about something, the correct word is “bad.” If one says I feel badly then it means that their sense of touch is out of whack!

Axed is OUTRAGEOUS to say instead of asked. When someone says that I want to take out an ax and say SEE THIS IS WHAT AN AX IS. You can cut down a tree with it. It is NOT the verb to ASK!

If I were interviewing someone for a job how WELL (not good) they speak in addition to the content of what they say would be the two most important yardsticks I would use when deciding to hire them. Perhaps, I might even say that the correct grammatical phraseology they use would be the first thing I notice.

Interview someone on the street and ask them to say something in multiple sentences. I am often AMAZED at what grammatically poor English they use and how little people know. It, I think, tells one something about the nature of our culture and it AIN’T — oops — it ISN’T good!

Oh yes, and they stopped the leak .... for now! :)

The Leak, Lies and War: Off the top of my head because I cannot believe what I hear and I have no time to perfect a well written blog:

First lie: Oh sure Bristol Palin broke it to mommy just today...right...believe that and she'll tell you another one. And if you think that Levi Johnston was doing it all in the name of loving his absolute love Bristol I have another one to tell you. The answer to this whole scenario is DOUGH, ray, me and MORE DOUGH. Levi sees dollar signs glistening before his eyes ... he hit the jackpot. Palin sees Johnson silenced. Keep your mouth shut, you will get plenty of dough for the kid and it will look better and sound better to my base....That's MY take.

Second lie: The leak: MY take: They stopped the new cap because there are MORE leaks and they KNOW it...it's all been baloney. The dispersant is a metaphor for the fact that they just tell you what they THINK you want to hear to cover the disaster up. My guess: They stopped because there are more leaks. What are the odds that it's just gushing from one spot? NIL and I am not an engineer just a person with 1/2 a brain. This will not fly. My bet is they KNOW there are more leaks and they face the threat of a HUGE blow out at the bottom. If that happens....Good night Irene. They KNOW it could so they are going slow...OH sure...tell me another one.

Third lie: The Wars: They lie and lie and lie and lie and lie INCLUDING our government. I am NOT a fool and NOT duped easily. I've been around too long as when LBJ said there is light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam...RIGHT another lie. Wanna hear another one? Afghanistan is working? OH SURE. This is all they can do is lie to cover up their rancid policies which get us killed."The game is rigged," as George Carlin said. " It's a club and guess what? YOU AIN'T IN IT!!"

If I'm wrong on any of it I will apologize. I suspect I am not but I have been wrong before.

X Rated: Here is a UTube link below of the late George Carlin which Glen Greenwald embedded in his post. Carlin, of course, is saying things PERFECTLY in his own inimitable style. It's one of my favorite political diatribes from him and is about three minutes long. WARNING: He does NOT, if you know him, mince words. If you do not like a little bit of profane language do not listen but the guy got the nature of everything about our political beast completely correct and I personally am glad he used the phraseology he did.

This country is absolutely clueless sitting on its hands dumb struck, drinking a beer and watching HDTV, and soon to vote in the worst of the worst Republicans often teabaggers or Conservadems who DUPE their constituency. Many, if not most, simply do NOT care. Worse in emergencies it is every man for himself. There is NO help or impotent help as you can clearly see from Katrina and now the Gulf spill. Pass it on to those whom you know would appreciate George Carlin. I paste Glen's blog but to get Carlin you have to scroll down to the picture of him and click on it.

For my bedtime reading I began to read a little of Noam Chomsky's "Failed States." mmmm "Failed States" plus George Carlin ... no WONDER I can't sleep but hey it's reality and you cannot put your head under the covers and pretend it does not exist because when you do that you play into the hands of those who have rigged the game. If you can't click on it either cut and paste the link into your browser or Google "George Carlin The American Dream" and you will get it.

Oh yes, we were in the flood yesterday when we were in Cambridge at the Kendall Theater where we saw only 1/2 of the film "Winter's Bone" as the electricity was cut because of the storm flash flooding the cities. It is just another thing that reinforces global warming and if you cannot see the global warming horror then you are like the creationists believing a fantasy. Our catastrophic weather in the past decades is saying something. If you don't think so STICK AROUND it will be proven to you over and over again, if not to you then to your grandchildren if you have them. Wake up America before it's too late. Unfortunately, I suspect it already is.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

To Believe or Not to Believe that is the question: I subscribe to a Jewish newspaper. There is within it a section for questions. Here is a question and response from a Rebbetszin which is the wife of usually an orthodox rabbi. Why she is an the authority on issues I have NO idea but, I suppose, some think her as wise as her husband may be. Does she have academic credentials is anyone's guess. I had, naturally, a response to her response. The question and answer is as follows:

Question: My son recently took a class at high school on philosophy that made him question his belief in G-d. He now declares himself an atheist, much to my dismay, after raising him to be an observant Jew. I know that directly challenging him is exactly what he wants because he’s rebelling, so I don’t want to do that. Is there any way I can talk to him about honoring the Jewish tradition without causing a huge argument?

Rebbetszin's Answer: Don’t do it. Everyone has questions about G-d and has struggled with it, at least at one time or another.
If you have raised him as an observant Jew, then he has received the background and foundation that will stand him in good stead as he goes through the normal soul searching and questioning. Encourage him to read theological works written by other observant Jews who discuss the subject.

I took issue with her answer and sent the following to her:

Dear Rebbetzin: In my opinion your response to the woman who was upset about her son "coming out'" as an atheist fell short. It reminded me of parents, when their children come out as homosexual, telling them to read a book about sex between men and women and if the parents gave a solid heterosexual upbringing to the child they should not worry. I think your answer evaded the issue.

When an older child questions and then states that he/she is an atheist reading "theological works by observant Jews" as you suggest begs the entire question nor will the fact that the woman raised her son as an observant Jew address the issue either. In truth, in my opinion, NOTHING written by a theological scholar Jewish or otherwise will convince a non-believer that a god exists. Why? Because nothing anyone can say offers proof of that fact and usually contains personal observations such as the grandiosity of life and that there must be a "creator" for the created. Still, that those writers may believe that offers no proof to the non-believer because there is NO proof.

The substance of Judaism or for that matter ALL god-based belief systems have as their fundamental pinnacle FAITH and that is all they have. Faith and nothing but faith if one has a belief, will be the only explanation that child will find. I think you avoided the question like some parents avoid their children's questions about sex because they themselves find it UNCOMFORTABLE to talk about it.

I think you, as a believer, find that subject uncomfortable so you trivialize it by saying go read a Jewish theological book. There are, of course, many evolutionary biological texts based upon solid evidence which support Darwinian facts to explain the origin of life on earth and, indeed, the universe.

The value of Jewish tradition cannot be argued. It can be honed and rationally reinforced but an atheist, in my opinion, will find little persuasion or consolation in religious texts, modern or otherwise by great Jewish or other theologians which will persuade an atheist to believe in a god because there simply aren't any since FAITH is the operative religious word. Either one has faith and believes or one does not OR one can find co-existence with both religion and science -- two UTTERLY DIFFERENT entities -- living together side by side, decidedly separate, but in peace. Just my opinion.

www.natalierosen.blogspot.com

Defeat from the Hands of Victory: I taped the Today Show. I both saw and heard Rachel Maddow reporting from Afghanistan. She did a WONDERFUL job. She tells it like it is and I do not have to worry that she is giving some kind of soft soap sugarcoated for-American-eyes-only report. She presented a frank and honest account. While she rightly gave great awestruck accolades to our American can-do troops she was forthright in saying that they are only 20% of what REALLY needs to be done in Afghanistan. The REAL challenge is establishing an Afghan government in Kabul linking Kandahar to it. THAT is the rub and that is EXACTLY why our mission there courts either eternal, expensive war or failure. The Afghan people must govern themselves and it is a HUGE tribal oriented, lawless and geographically difficult land. Once American troops are gone will the Afghan people be able to govern? Can they turn off the saturated endemic corruption which has as its life giving arterial sustenance the lucrative opium trade and unite diverse tribal peoples into one? I have my sincere doubts.

The time for establishing an Afghan government George Bush, one of the worst presidents in US history, let slide. We had kicked the Taliban in their posterior right after the 9/11 attacks and in late 2001 even had Bin Laden and Mullah Omar cornered in the forbidding tribal area of Tora Bora. We let them go and turned our attention to fighting nearly 2000 miles away in Iraq, a land which did NOTHING to us and we now know had NO WMD. It is, indeed, a shame and, in my opinion, even treasonous that George Bush did NOT give the order to kill or capture the 9/11 mastermind murderers when we could have and when he was asked to give that order by our special forces in the region. Only George Bush, the utter incompetent nincompoop president, could snatch defeat from the hands of victory. Victory now may forever elude us.

I both saw and heard Rachel Maddow reporting from Afghanistan. She did a WONDERFUL job. She tells it like it is and I do not have to worry that she is giving some kind of soft soap sugarcoated for-American-eyes-only report. She presented a frank and honest account. While she rightly gave great awestruck accolades to our American can-do troops she was forthright in saying that they are only 20% of what REALLY needs to be done in Afghanistan. The REAL challenge is establishing an Afghan government in Kabul linking Kandahar to it. THAT is the rub and that is EXACTLY why our mission there courts either eternal, expensive war or failure. The Afghan people must govern themselves and it is a HUGE tribal oriented, lawless and geographically difficult land. Once American troops are gone will the Afghan people be able to govern? Can they turn off the saturated endemic corruption which has as its life giving arterial sustenance the lucrative opium trade and unite diverse tribal peoples into one? I have my sincere doubts.

The time for establishing an Afghan government George Bush, one of the worst presidents in US history, let slide. We had kicked the Taliban in their posterior right after the 9/11 attacks and in late 2001 even had Bin Laden and Mullah Omar cornered in the forbidding tribal area of Tora Bora. We let them go and turned our attention to fighting nearly 2000 miles away in Iraq, a land which did NOTHING to us and we now know had NO WMD. It is, indeed, a shame and, in my opinion, even treasonous that George Bush did NOT give the order to kill or capture the 9/11 mastermind murderers when we could have and when he was asked to give that order by our special forces in the region. Only George Bush, the utter incompetent president, could snatch defeat from the hands of victory. Victory now may forever elude us as our cost in precious lives rises in concert with the price in our dollars going down the corruption hole.

This COULD have been avoided ten years ago and we could have declared victory and left with constant vigilance by covert action and special ops but instead this is the legacy George Bush has left us. Now indeed it is Obama's war truly in a few short years few will remember George Bush even existed but his life has been a cruel blow to so many. It is beyond me how anyone would want to sign up for this mission impossible. That is the true miracle that anyone even wants to try. If our world lasts a thousand years it would not surprise me if one could return somehow to Afghanistan one would find the same thing one encounters now -- nothingness. As Alice in Alice in Wonderland says: "It would be so nice if something made sense for a change." So far it does not.

He Who is Without Sin: The link below from CNN is about the imminent stoning of an Iranian woman who will be buried alive vertically up to her neck when stones will be thrown not large enough to kill her immediately but of a size that can inflict severe pain she will surely initially feel. After enough of them are thrown she will, of course, die. Her crime: adultery!

The Medieval-like treatment and punishment of women in the Islamic world is an abomination of the highest order. THIS staggers and confounds me as a progressive. One will hear little outrage from the world, the UN and certainly little to NONE from the Arab/Islamic world which should be rising in indignation at the barbarity of this act. Many on the left in the west, too, will remain silent. People should be screaming in the streets against this innocent Iranian woman's cruel and unusual punishment with its attendant inane torturous death for the most trivial offense.

Let Israel, though, trying to defend its very existence, commit a crime that includes the killing or maiming of those who are innocent and some who are NOT so innocent one hears screams ring around the planet. I do not understand it. Do I think Israel is always right in its course of conduct? NO, of course not but this kind of barbarity most especially levied on women of the Middle East (with the EXCEPTION of Israel) is addressed with anemic world protest.

Medieval draconian principles of punishment, torture, suicide bombings, and the brutal unequal treatment of Arab/Islamic women are a fact of life in the Islamic world. No one can say that is not true. One's eyes do not lie. If we are to condemn our own country and Israel, too, for actions that may include the killing of innocents then we can do NO LESS for the absolute SLAUGHTER in the Islamic world of its own innocents as well as the brutal oppression and suppression of its women. To turn one's head, as my left wing compatriots often do, is nothing less than hypocrisy of a crime against humanity. I surely say he who is without sin cast the first stone!


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/07/05/iran.stoning/?hpt=T1&fbid=st5YEsiUWfP

Crying: FABULOUS editorial in the Huffington Post by Robert Kuttner. Kuttner says it ALL. Every single thing he wrote in this I have said at various times probably NOT as eloquently. I have, I think, never read an opinion that sums up the Obama presidency so far that is as well written as this and as, in my opinion, completely correct. Unlike, as he says MOST progressives are, I personally am NOT an optimist as those who know me understand.

I would like to take this editorial and hand it to Obama personally not that it would matter very much to him! Prediction: Obama is a one term president unless he changes his stripes and WE the people will suffer all the more for it while he will go off enjoy the millions from his book and the exorbitant fees for the speeches he gives. Where will the people's money come from? Not even the unemployment line. Good luck, America as China rises. Boy did we as progressives get this one WRONG! Read, the link and as Kutner says watch this accident in slow motion. As a progressive I will just sit here and cry!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/my-private-obama_b_635289.htm

Rethink Afghanistan: The short video below commands us on the 4th of July to THINK really THINK what our nation's wars against our terrorist enemies have done and continue to do. We, generally, as a people, do not understand just what dropping bombs on human being's heads REALLY means as we march patriotically down streets carrying flags and lighting fireworks. This country has been spared by its geographical good luck. As our enemies are patient and become more sophisticated someday for us, our children OR our children's children, I fear, our geographical isolation will mean nothing as it did not on 9/11. I fear our enemies ultimately will acquire the unthinkable weapons and not fail to use them.

Most of us sip our coffee in the morning and think not one second about what it is like for an innocent mother to be cradling the body of her dead young child, limbless, faceless and lifeless as an American drone does NOT SEE what it has done. War is about THAT and these wars are NOT keeping us safe. They are endangering us more as the enemy is a patient one who has NOTHING to lose by inscribing on the hearts of his children generation after generation a hatred of Americans for killing their INNOCENTS on their soil. It is what, after all the 9/11 bombers said was the rationale for what they did. That can be debated. What cannot be debated is the longer we are waging perpetual war the more our sons and daughters we commit to the grave, the more we expend HUGE costs and the more we will lose our country to unaffordable constant war sapping our will, our strength and breaking our bank so that we CANNOT afford to send people to school, provide affordable health care for the sick, fix our crumbling infrastructure or alter our warming climate. Ironically perpetual war WILL leave our country defenseless against nature and other men. The leak in the Gulf is a metaphor for those forces which man himself cannot stop.

This war is NOT winnable and it will be forever UNLESS we simply STOP IT by protesting it or supporting candidates that will PULL the funding plug. We must say NO MORE. NO MORE killing, NO more dying, NO more expenditures for wars without end. We have lost more Americans than we did on 9/11. Both economically and militarily we are looking into the abyss. STOP it by fighting terrorism with PRUDENT vigilance and not eternal war. STOP it before it is too late! The video is linked below.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=410258247434

Skin Deep: When I see a Frank Rich column I KNOW it's got to be good. He never disappoints me and this is no exception. Link below to his NYT article "Fourth of July 1776, 1964, 2010."

The US is a mixed bag. It's one half good and the other half .... well let's say LESS sometimes MUCH LESS than perfect. I am glad Niki Haley, the Indian-American former Sikh overcame the stupid and, it seems, salaciously false attacks on her character to win the S. Carolina gubernatorial primary BUT I do not like her politics. Lipstick on a conservative is still a conservative and the Republican party has become since Nixon ushered in his "southern strategy" and the so called "moral majority" the party which has a few tokens of color to send its message heretofore carried by the white Dixicrat haters.

The message, I believe, is still the same they just dress it up in a skirt, and give her skin a bit of a hue but not much changes. It is still the party of white power using code words like "activist" to mean they are against government giving the little guy, especially if he is black or Hispanic, a helping hand to ensure equality or "smaller government" to mean smaller just where the minority poor are concerned. Big corporate business, though, takes a BIG government helping hand no problem there. Exclusionary race, big corporate money and religious extremism are still the base of the Republican party and most of the old south. All one has to do is look beneath the surface to see the same old politics of exclusion and white Protestant male power!

The old south with its "conservative" politics of race and gender does NOT die an easy death. It's still in good condition and will live to see, I'm afraid, many more days. For the Democratic party it is obvious it is an eternal and vigilant struggle against the forces that dress a candidate up so they look good but are about policies which keep the monied power of mostly white men in the hands of a very few. In many parts of the nation the pretty picture is only skin deep!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04rich.html?hp

Thoughts on the Late Senator Robert Byrd: A relative of mine wrote in a segment of her blog called “Kudos and Catcalls” of the mixed nature of Senator Robert Byrd. She iterated what was true that Senator Byrd, a man from West Virginia, was, indeed, long ago, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was, at one time, a Dixicrat segregationist and thus I have mixed emotions when I eulogize the man as well. The heinous KKK is everything my relative said and for Byrd to have joined it is the abomination she says it is. I am reminded of the Catholic Pope Benedict who has been excused from being a Hitler Youth because the entire social milieu during the Nazi period dictated that he sign-up. Too bad he was not a righteous Gentile.

Too bad Robert Byrd did not morph sooner into what he became AFTER 1965 as he surely morphed into a totally different man. I am reminded, too, of an apologetic George Wallace who said he was absolutely wrong to do what he did opposing integration and spewing his segregation now and segregation forever trash. Later he had a black man as his political right hand man (pardon the pun) to show for it.

The damage ALL of these people have done when they took up the mantle of the extremist racist right cannot be denied or undone. At least, though, in the 2000 votes Senator Byrd cast he voted AGAINST the Iraq War and even came into the Senate in a wheelchair to vote for the health care bill. He in an interview said if he had had it to do over he would have voted FOR the Civil Rights bill. This has to be judged commendable as does his gift for great oratory and his abiding love for our Constitution which he knew verbatim.

I am ALSO reminded of the “to err is human to forgive divine” quote IF the person is truly repentant. Byrd joined the Klan in 1949 a year after I was born. The south was segregated from drinking fountains to restaurants, from schools to voting booths, Jim Crow laws and literacy tests prevailed. We, I think, sometimes forget how difficult it is to change the social order. Even today the sentiment that gave life to slavery and all its attendant evils is still with us as those of us who are politically savvy well know.

It is easy for us to glow in our moral purity but as the Holocaust memorial in Israel of the Righteous Gentiles in Yad Vashem extols and praises those people who were the EXCEPTION to immorality because it truly, then, was the exception and not the rule. When I look deep into my soul am I able to say IF I were gentile in Germany at that time would my name be among those special few. The true answer is I don’t REALLY know. It took exceptional bravery and I am not very brave.

Some orthodox rabbis have said they may not like what the reform Jew does but they HOPE and, indeed, pray the Reform Jew will have a change of heart. They leave room that a person can change and morph into something different and, as they see it, better. On Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, all vows are null and void, the slate is wiped clean and we begin anew and TRY to do better.

It is somewhat how I feel about Senator Byrd. He did what he did when he did it so many years ago but the preponderance of his life in the Senate was, I think, an attempt to right that wrong. I ALWAYS like that some rabbis leave room for a person to change his mind and start over. A man, I think, should be judged by the sum total of his life and not by one part no matter how objectionable. After all, who of us is philosophical perfection in all phases of our life? I see Robert Byrd, in the end, as a righteous Gentile who, as his dear friend Teddy Kennedy said of his own brother Robert Kennedy, “… saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.” I will give a kudos to Senator Robert Byrd rather than a catcall.

Boehner the Boozer: The July 1, NYT article by Gail Collins "The Most Unhappy Fellow" talked about the enigmatic interview of minority leader from Ohio, John Boehner. I saw the interview of Boehner. I couldn't put my finger on it then but the man barely answered the questions, rambled and defined the greatest near collapse of the economy since the Great Depression as an ant. In addition, he got the issue of the Gulf leak totally screwy. He seemed lethargic, sleepy and mumbled as his words rather slurred aimlessly into one another. It was hard to understand what he was saying. Then again that is not so unusual from members of Congress especially Republicans so I dismissed it business as usual. But REALLY what was awry with Boehner? I thought maybe he was not feeling well. Then I read Gail Collins's article this a.m. in the Times (Link below). She explained my subliminal wondering to a tee – inebriation -- Boehner was possibly DRUNK. The reporter states it is known he is quite the drinker, starts early at 5:00 p.m. and does not work very hard except at fund raising. Now THAT is astounding isn't it? I say that in jest!

How many from both sides in Congress keep the bars humming? I only know Washington from what I read in my papers but I don't think I have to go too far out on a limb to think that the bars in Washington depend mightily on Congress for their life. Why? To be a Congressman/woman means one has a mountain of very complex minutia to sift through and at least pretend to understand. The subject matter and its attendant legalize is often boring, you have a bazillion requests and a dose of angry opposition from your constituency as well. Importantly, too, is that one is often away from home and family. The media focus on ESPECIALLY the leaders, even IF they are in the minority, is intense. Ohio’s John Boehner the tan man and his perpetual year round tan, neatly coiffed hair piece seems to indicate, to me, some attempt to, in vanity, hide something -- maybe his age, baldness or bags under his eyes. I do not think those bags under his eyes come from burning the midnight oil studying the issues intensely but rather they come from, perhaps, downing too many Chivas Regal shots at local Washington pubs.

Great, it's not hard to figure out WHY the Republicans are SO utterly out of touch awful. With Republican leaders like Boehner this country is, indeed, in a quicksand soup! Ohioans, CAN'T YOU DO BETTER THAN BOEHNER the Boozer? Try a Democrat. Even though they too can tip a few at LEAST the country might just get something accomplished to cure our potentially fatal disease malady malaise it cannot do with the uncompromising intractable opposition from the Republican Party of filibuster obstruction and No!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/opinion/01collins.html

The Reality in Three Minutes: I URGE you to either click on this story by McClatchy one of the BEST news gathering organizations and one of the most ethical and even handed. Or go to McClatchy on Google and you will get it. Link below.

The video will tell you all you need to know in three minutes about just what the corporate swill is all about. It is why I am a TRUE liberal who is in favor of truth, justice and the American way. This is what your governments for decades have perpetrated on an unknowing unsuspecting public. It is WHY YOU MUST be aware and involved and NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. Teabaggers are NOT the way. They are used by the corporations and DUPED utterly DUPED by them using everything from race to fear and hand it off to the politically unaware who carry their signs and think they know. They DON'T.

It's all a game and most of you are NOT in it. Take back your country YES, but put it in the hands of honest, ethical people who LOVE this country and would NOT do it in for a billion bucks. The few have been blessed by administrations who care about them and do NOT care about the average person. They care about people lining their pockets who vote according to THEIR own pocketbooks and would just as soon move to Dubai as stay here. WAKE UP and KNOW who REALLY is at fault and it is not people who tried to buy a house but the fault is at the FEET of the men who were behind the curtain manipulating everything from Wall Street directly to the White House to the Congress to the Courts. They BOUGHT it all and NOW look at where we are. We are in the primordial soup. All we have is our vote. Vote for those who REALLY care about your interests NOT about Wall Street and certainly not about the military industrial complex which has a vested interest in perpetual war. I include our present powerful as well.

Watch this you may just learn something if you do not already know it.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/29/96779/goldman-admits-it-had-bigger-role.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=3917760#Comments_Container

Stare Decided: What a horrible position Solicitor General Elena Kagan is in or, in fact, ANYONE would be in who is vying for a Supreme Court position. She is damned if she does in some instances and in other instances she is damned if she doesn't.

How nice it would be not to hear the stupid words stare decisis (the thing having been decided stands.) That phrase which Justice Roberts used SO often surely did not apply to the case of Citizen's United. I guess he LIED. Sure, they are all for a NON activist court as long as the issues are not about issues, corporations or people they care about. Clearly Republicans care about corporations before the average citizen who does not possess great wealth and therefore power. It is too bad Solicitor General Kagan cannot come out and unequivocally say that Citizen's United was indeed an ACTIVIST decision and say I probably would vote against something like that if it comes before the Court again. The importance of reversing a decision like that will, of course, NOT come from Kagan. It will come from whomever takes the seat given up by a justice from the activist right and who the president is who may decide who that utterly important justice will be.

Too bad she cannot be honest and say there are a set of principles I favor. I favor human beings over corporations or I favor the environment over corporate polluters, or habeus corpus over indefinite detention without benefit of trial etc. Then we would get the truth which most of us already know. It is also too bad she cannot say that the Constitution is an interpretive document and changes over time. We are not STUCK in the 18th century one HOPES. Moreover, there are situations which call for a strong executive and other situations which call for a division of power. It all depends on your point of view and the specifics of the case.

Ms. Kagan is so obviously MORE than qualified for this position. Her resume reads like a who's who in great American academic scholars. So what's wrong with that I might ask since part of the country has a case of agida over academics? Thank God SOME in this country can THINK more profoundly about issues than about Lady Gaga or Tiger Woods!

The Third Depression's psychotropic remedy: Paul Krugman's NYT article "The Third Depression" (See Link below) is, as Dr. Krugman always is, incredibly prescient. His predictions over time are usually proven correct. If Paul Krugman knows what he is talking about it is hard to understand that political leaders of some depth and insight do not at least read what he has to say and if they want to avoid further catastrophe, in fact, DO what he says. I simply do not get it.

Why oh why Barack Obama chose to stick with the advice on the economy of the very people who brought us to the economic abyss I will never know. I, too, will never know why, as the handwriting seems to be on the wall and unemployment benefits dumped, he does not ditch his economic team for new batting champs. I vote for Team Krugman.

Surely, in this country of 300 million people we can do two things: (1) plug the leak in the Gulf and (2) enact policies which will turn the economy around. Mr. Obama, Paul Krugman has your back and you do not even seem to know it! Please, Sir, listen to him. It may save your presidency and our nation from entering another quagmire and the hellish quicksand depths of yet another LONG Depression!

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html

A Minute and One Half: I never fail to read excellence when Frank Rich writes it in the NYT. Perfect editorial. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27rich.html?hp

When everyone was ruminating and hand wringing as to how a general with McChrystal's savvy could be so stupid as to utter the things he did to a seemingly lowly newspaper like "Rolling Stone" (the ONLY paper which is able to tell it like it is and get the scoops -- economic debacle, the Interior Dept. Gulf leak idiocy or McChrystal interview -- correct) I thought there is a method to McChrystal's madness.

He did it for a reason maybe two, three or more. It surely did gather attention, showed the insanity of this war and PERHAPS just perhaps got McChrystal off the hook for a policy which he KNEW this country nor any other can win in the no-win Afghanistan. He won't be blamed but will be able to do a lot of I told you so's.

My worry is that the attention span of the American public is about a minute and a half. Once McChrystal is gone and Petraeus in, Afghanistan will be forgotten again UNLESS American casualties rise horrifically. (Truly, even one more life after NINE years is too much.)

9/11 should have been met with the force it did when it happened and the ability then to capture the perpetrators like Bin Laden and Mullah Omar when we absolutely could have done so in Tora Bora. We didn't so Bush could begin another insanity called Iraq. How we get ourselves into the WORST of predicaments I will never know. NOW we have two insanities to monitor -- Iraq which is NO paradise, the hot war in Afghanistan and, oh yes, make that three do not forget the nuclear equipped Pakistan. WE ARE STUCK, like the pelicans in the Gulf, we cannot move and the fact that we cannot move seals our own sorry fate.

That is what happens when a country elects INCOMPETENT leaders. The price is heavy in blood and treasure. That is the ONLY thing we DO know. God save us, bless General Petraeus and hope, unlike recently when he fainted during his testimony before Congress, he keeps WELL hydrated!

An email to Rachel Maddow. Saw your Friday show. I did love the rendition of what Obama has achieved. We need that BUT we also still need laser focus on the things on which he disappoints his base -- war, civil liberties, imprisonment without trial, Guantanamo and rendition not to mention what you did the public option on health care. There are many other things. The president CAN forge the policy and I do not buy the oh he's not that powerful argument.

Please see Glenn Greenwald's email to me. I passed it along and posted it on my blog. I believe too McChrystal knew EXACTLY what he was saying and did it for the troops to change this policy of insanity first by Bush and now incredulously enough by Obama. I read Glenn Greenwald every day. There are FEW times I disagree with him. Occasionally it does happen I disagree especially with respect to Israel but more often than not we are in the same corner. I value his comments and think they are ESSENTIAL.

I was hoping even though I knew it would be unlikely that Glenn would be offered the 10:00 MSNBC spot after Rachel. Larry O'Donnel got it. Larry is good but he is NOT Glenn. Probably O'Donnel is a bit more mainstream. It's too bad we NEED Glen's articulate and excellently formed opinion!

As you know I more than value your opinion. You and Keith are necessary to my sanity!

“We’re losing this thing”: I get sent many emails. This one below is from Glenn Greenwald, a WONDERFUL writer who posts for Salon.com. He is excellent and has a few words to say about McChrystal, Afghanistan and the never ending war. I suggest you click on it and listen. Here's the link: http://webmail.aol.com/32131-111/aol-1/en-us/Suite.aspx#. This war MUST stop. It MUST to save our blood, innocent's blood and OUR treasure. Even McChrystal KNEW it is lost which I think is why he said what he said. It probably came out of desperation. Well, he DID get his thoughts out in the Rolling Stone Article. You should read that too (here's the link to Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/).

We have spent BILLIONS upon BILLIONS to a trillion on never ending wars. I propose a draft to get people to care when it is their own son/daughters having to fight perpetual wars! Better still END the wars and keep a volunteer force fighting implementing ONLY surgical strikes, which are deemed absolutely necessary. These can be very effective and kill INFINITELY fewer in addition to the use of special ops. There is no question we need to defend against those who would want to hurt and destroy us BUT minimal and PRUDENT strikes have always been the answer. Ground forces in Iraq, the surge there, Afghanistan and the surge there have been FAILURES. Just because NBC news shows you an improvement here or there does NOT mean that the wars worked. They did not. Watch films made by those who do NOT have a commercial interest in war if you really want to get the truth!

Silly Me: Add to my last opinion which included a list things the President USED to support but no longer does the civil libertarian priorities of habeus corpus. Glen Greenwald brilliant reporter for Salon.com (See link below) writes that this egregious Bushian-like offense has been given a significant extension by the Obama White House and states:

"Even in the context of America's wretched civil liberties abuses over the last decade, the case of Mohamed Hassan Odaini stands out. He was 17 years old in 2001 when his father sent him from Yemen to study at a religious university in Raiwand, Pakistan, and when a campus house in which he was staying there was raided by Pakistani authorities in early 2002, he was turned over to the U.S. and shipped to Guantanamo, where he has remained without charges for the last eight years (he's now 26). A federal court this month granted his habeas petition for release, finding that the evidence "overwhelmingly supports Odaini's contention that he is unlawfully detained." Worse, the court described the multiple times over the years -- beginning in 2002 and occurring as recently as 2009 -- when the U.S. Government itself concluded that Odaini was guilty of nothing, was mistakenly detained, and should be released (see here for the court's description of that history).

Despite that, the Obama administration has refused to release him for the past 16 months, and fought vehemently in this habeas proceeding to keep him imprisoned. As the court put it, the Obama DOJ argued "vehemently" that there was evidence that Odaini was part of Al Qaeda. In fact, the Obama administration knew this was false. This Washington Post article this weekend quotes an "administration official" as saying: "The bottom line is: We don't have anything on this kid." But after Obama decreed in January that no Yemeni detainees would be released -- even completely innocent ones, and even though the Yemeni government wants their innocent prisoners returned -- Obama DOJ lawyers basically lied to the court by claiming there was substantial evidence to prove that Odaini was part of Al Qaeda even though they know that is false. In other words, the Obama administration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last 8 years, since he's 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong.

It really is hard to imagine many things worse, more criminal, than imprisoning people for years whom you know are innocent, while fighting in court to keep them imprisoned. But that's exactly what the Obama administration is doing. Every day that Odiani is kept in a cage is a serious crime. Just imagine what has happened to his life by being shipped off to Guantanamo for 8 years, starting in 2002 during that camp's darkest days, with absolutely no justification. ..."



If you care about our country's DNA then you should care about this. We are not what we SHOULD be without the Bill of Rights. If we give this up what have we become? I THOUGHT when we elected Barack Obama we were returning to our genetic roots. Silly me. I actually believe what some politicians say!

For Glen Greenwald's entire article(s) with links see link below:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

Shattered McCrystal: The paragraph quoting Rolling Stone Magazine's article "The Runaway General" (link below) sums up a great deal of Obama's Afghanistan strategy and even his presidency:

"Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a "bleeding ulcer." In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it's precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multi-generational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn't want."

The things the President says he does not want like meaningless inadequate off shore ecologically catastrophic oil drilling, an expanded Vietnamesque Middle East war and its consequential civilian collateral damage death he gives a thumbs up. The things he said he DOES want like a public option health care, civil libertarian priorities like habeus corpus, support for Main Street against Wall Street with wholly revamped regulatory economic policy he, so far, folds. Mr. Obama stirs the pot of a soup he made. Can YOU figure him out? I'm STUMPED!

As for McCrystal's motives for what he said and Obama's response to it, the president is damned if he fires him and damned if he doesn't. The psychological etiology of McCrystal's verbal fire only he knows. Was his goal to embarrass the administration, voice dismay for its war strategy thereby hurting the US war effort or to get himself off the hook for its failure? I need to crawl into McCrystal's brain to figure that one out. One thing is clear he succeeded in doing most all of those things and both his military career and Obama's policy(ies), so far, are shattered glass.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390

Something or nothing: I have written much through the Obama campaign and during his first year as president. I was feverishly but enthusiastically writing. The emphasis was on the word enthusiasm and I felt it.

I have been stopped dead in my tracks. I write occasionally when the mood overcomes but as I sit here this morning and read the news I have become UNMOTIVATED. I was part of Obama's base and now I sit here with no enthusiasm. I'm STUCK. I'm stuck in a country that is STUCK right along with me. The oil monstrosity is a metaphor for a stuck nation. The problems are huge with their etiology in administrations past but the country has an extraordinarily short memory and our country's ills too immense for anyone to contemplate radical solutions. The country is poised in 2010 to possibly overturn Democratic majorities to do more of what – more of the same?

What this country can do VERY well is bomb the enemy de jour even if that nation is not really our enemy. Who cares? Show them how strong we CAN be. We are a can do nation after all – aren’t we? Heck some even want to nuke the oil leak. That’ll show it! Who cares about radiation from a nuke. We can take anything. While we are at it, let’s begin another risky drill but this time in the Arctic. I can hardly wait to view the fun and see how BP, of all companies, will drill thousands of miles down in rough seas, temperatures of below zero with 50 mph winds and drill it horizontally to boot! Wow what a blast (pardon the pun.)

Have we gone nationally mad? Tearing down is easy, building up oh so difficult and we, I believe, have lost our will. I diagnose this case as a case of severe national depression. We as a country and those in power are lost and do not know what to do. Worse we are utterly divided as to how to do anything. It is sad. Franklin and even Teddy Roosevelt may not have always done the right thing but they did SOME thing. A few of the electorate kicked and screamed but even they, it appeared, wanted the best for the nation and supported it despite disagreement. With the 24/7 news media talking heads talking at each other not with each other and rabid radio talk, it seems we cannot do even that now.

Either we raise our arms in hapless surrender, ineffective compromise, or we get out our "Don't Tread on Me" silly flag and threaten gun-toting nationalist revolution while dragging out old Jeffersonian quotes of a revolution every 20 years as if an eighteenth century Jefferson could envision a twenty first century nation of 300 million with many diverse and competing national and international interests.

Okay so someone begins this revolution then what? What will they build then? Who will they help -- NOTHING and NOBODY. We are in quick sand and we cannot get out. I understand the feeling. I feel it myself. It is a sad thing to watch, because this country usually at times of peril elects leadership with the ability to dig us out.
Mr. Obama, if you do not have the enthusiasm of your base what and who do you have -- Nothing and nobody. Nothing and not something is the operative word of the day!

View from a Room: A friend of mine sent me an email in response to my waxing morose about the fact that those things I thought were so important in the Sixties had gone and the hope I placed in Barack Obama emanating from those times has not been realized. He said to me, in essence, the Sixties were not all that great because his wife who went to Berkeley during those turbulent years told him so as did another friend who went to the University of Michigan. So I suppose that must be proof positive that the Sixties were not so wonderful and had no impact. He said I should not pine away for something that is gone and will never be again but rather I should concentrate on good works in the present.

I thought about that for awhile and decided I would take issue with him. While I agree one should not get stuck in the past and do good works in the present, I believe the Sixties was a time that had a crucially important historical impact on the present. Every historical period has an impact upon those who come after it. History is a continuum, after all, of human behavior and events. World War I had a direct impact on World War II and World War II had an impact on the generations that separated these events.

In truth, the Sixties have never been over but simply morphed over time much like rock formations which in the past were one thing but in the present evolve into something else. The liberalization of the culture as we know it today is an outgrowth of the Sixties. There are many examples of how important that era was:

The fact I can go anywhere dressed in most anything I like without fear I will be ostracized for dressing “incorrectly” is liberating. Human rights gained much of its impetus from the reality of the Sixties. Rights for blacks, the disabled, women, homosexuals, and others came out of the Sixties. The environmental movement may, if progressives get the chance, save the planet, also came out of the Sixties. The anti-war movement, the end of Vietnam and the elimination of the draft were part of the response to protests of the Sixties. The fact that Sarah Palin was on the vice-presidential slot on a major party ticket is due to the women's movement of the Sixties but she would probably like to ignore that fact. The House of Representatives has many women elected to it. Our Secretary of State is a woman as was George Bush's Secretary of State. Women are Supreme Court justices and in other high offices all due in part to the impact of the Sixties.

Marriages that were abusive and women who bore the brunt of that abuse are treated differently now. They can get help instead of keeping silent thinking they were some sort of societal anomaly that the 1950’s suggested they were. The cookie cutter society that imprisoned many was shattered and, to me, happily so. If in previous eras a girl had become pregnant she went to a home for unwed mothers. That sounds RIDICULOUS now but it was true and I can point to one that existed in Boston at that time. Movies such as “Blue Denim” or “A Summer Place” depicted the utter shame of an unwed pregnancy; the kind of shame which should have been reserved for the most egregious antisocial act. What about the male who impregnated her? No home for unwed fathers? He got a get out of jail free card.

Thankfully, in my opinion, abortion was legalized at least for now. It saved full term human beings i.e. women’s lives. The pill, too, liberated behavior. Of course, the fact that homosexuals finally could feel like they were not pariahs saved lives as well. The Gay Liberation Front had its beginnings in the late Sixties. Many who were renown in Hollywood or politics were mortally afraid their sexuality would be exposed and were subject to blackmail and other threats.

Importantly, blacks owe representation in every sector of society because of the giants of the black power movement and its demands promulgated especially in the late Sixties. The laws against miscegenation fell. The Jim Crow laws fell. De jure segregation fell. If one looks at TV or movies from the 1950's and early sixties one barely sees a black person and if one does they are almost invariably servants of whites. That changed.

There has been no draft since Vietnam. The Sixties, for one of the first times outside of the Civil War draft riots, allowed some to question power and question their country's life and death policies.

Yes, there were drawbacks of the Sixties such as a loosening of the sexual mores and its excesses which had some negative consequences as did drugs. No era is perfect. Moreover, and, in my opinion, worst of all, the radicals of the Sixties created a backlash in the form of Nixon’s Moral Majority, Farwellian uncompromising and extreme right wing religious fanaticism, antiintellectualism and, today, the cerebrally challenged teabaggers representing a most divided nation.

I, though, loved the Sixties for its political statements and because it set me free. Am I thankful for the Sixties? YOU BETCHA. But I can change a little bit of my analysis of it and the disappointment I feel because Barack Obama has not been all I thought he would be … yet. There has been much written on the Sixties such as former radical Todd Gitlin’s excellent book "The Sixties: Days of Hope Days of Rage." Or read as stated in my prior blog Michael Tomasky’s "Against Despair: How our misreading of history harms progressivism today." http://democracyjournal.org/article2.php?ID=6760&limit=0&limit2=1500&page=1 In

MY own final analysis: it all depends on one's perspective and the view from the room where one sits.

Righting My Despair: My cousin sent me this article written by Micheal Tomasky entitled "Against Despair" for the magazine Democracy a Journal of Ideas. Some are concerned about my despair of things political and perhaps are waiting until I commit Hara Kari. I surely will not but it is hard to hide my sadness. This article is an attempt to right a liberal's spirit and explain where liberals like I have misjudged events and also misjudged those heroes of our particular history. It is worth reading because it puts things in perspective by illuminating, I think, a truer reality.

Still, I was a college student in the late 1960's at one of the most radical universities with the exception of perhaps Berkeley in California. My university was, in fact, sometimes called the Berkeley of the East. I cannot help but look at politics through that oft distorted lens and wish longingly for an era that cannot be but I nonetheless want once again. Maybe I want that because it was the happiest time on this earth for me bar none. It was a time when all things humane seemed possible and a time when my view of life from the numb often stupid 1950's was turned happily upside down. It was a new time, it was a revolutionary time and I thought it was correct. It is hard to face a reality that perhaps never was or was different than I thought and would not last as long as I thought it would. Reality when one's dreams are altered significantly is very hard to admit.

This is a wonderful article especially for those of you who fall into the progressive category and walk around sad as I do wondering how things went so askew. Maybe things were not exactly as I thought they once were. The link below may help to answer why they probably were not.


http://democracyjournal.org/article2.php?ID=6760&limit=0&limit2=1500&page=1

Okay Strike That: Strike the sentence about secession in my last opinion. It was an emotional shoot from the hip feeling and, of course, not thought out well. This spill has made me so upset (as if I needed more of that) that irrationality takes over. I am though, adamantly progressive, and for decidedly more progressive academically oriented politics!

An American Tragedy: After the president's anemic speech on the Gulf spill, the 20 billion dollar escrow fund BP is putting aside for the disaster's victims helps my mood -- a little. BP CEO Tony Hayward's testimony before Congress was laughable if it were not so pathetic and the disaster not so serious.

I cannot rev myself up to comment on this fatal catastrophe again but its importance demands I must. My heart is broken for the people, the birds, the animals, and now the largest fatality, a whale, yes, a whale that huge gorgeous mammal is no competition for the damn, filthy, poisonous oil covering the deep. Damn Tony Hayward, damn BP, and yes, damn the administration for giving a thumbs up to off coastal deep water drilling without clear oversight and independent expert certainty that a spill, if it were to happen 3000 feet deep, could be contained. Damn Salazar for not overhauling effectively the Department of the Interior as he promised. He knew, as many did, that MMS, the part of Interior responsible for issuing the permit was, from the Bush years, deeply saturated with corporate and even criminal corruption. It gave BP a pass to drill dangerously deeper than ever before with no oversight. Damn them all. There is nowhere for us to turn. The Republican party is, I can assure you, infinitely worse.

The blow out of the rig and filth washing up on the beaches of so far five states are metaphors for the putrefaction of our political process. So many in our electorate are downright stupidly ignorant and do not care. Our system is a pitiful giant unable to walk as the lumbering Senate takes its sweet time avoiding the passing a comprehensive energy bill. It is like pulling teeth. These right wingnut morons cannot see the forest through the proverbial trees. Someday, sooner than we think, there will not be any trees through which to see.

Sometimes I wish secession had occurred one hundred plus years ago. The backwardness of the red states and even some in blue is an albatross around the neck of academic excellence and progressive politics which should be a natural outgrowth in a 21st technologically advanced century in the most powerful nation on earth. No matter how many times whether the corporations -- with government acquiescence -- commit egregious acts of corporate rape of the economy, corporate rape of health care or corporate rape of our environment they simply get away with it. They get away with, literally, murder and no one but no one can stop them not even Barack Obama, the former most liberal member of the Senate. I do not know what happened to the Barack Obama I THOUGHT I knew. It is an American tragedy.

I am hoping this is not the beginning of the end of our now utterly vulnerable nation. You should know because politics is bought and sold by the corporately corrupt that God forbid if disaster strikes again, it will be every man for himself. It will be a Darwinian odyssey. WE are NOT in this together as the Gulf spill and Katrina before it elucidated so well. If anything more catastrophic happens you are and we all will be desperately on our own!

The President's Speech STUNK. One gets the feeling that no matter WHAT he says NOTHING will change! This is what happens (me included) when you elect a president in which the job is over his head like the moron Bush and now Obama while smart and even brilliant does not know WHAT he is doing and worse has surrounded himself with people who are corporate lackeys! Disappointed does not BEGIN to state how I feel at the moment UNLESS something can turn around and FAST!

[Written stream of conscious] Interesting article in the LA times (link below) by Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger "Foreign Flagging of Offshore Rigs Skirts US Safety Rules":

Call me crazy but isn't it a dangerous thing to do given our terrorist climate to have foreign construction of an oil rig ESPECIALLY in the Pacific Islands i.e. the impoverished Marshall Islands and in South Korea (Next to N. Korea!)? The further something is to US construction by a US company or on US land then the more easily one could get in to subvert it. Please tell me I'm being paranoid!! Has anyone thought of one person or a few outside the country being able to subvert a process like this?

I DON'T LIKE it. It has NOTHING to do with Obama whom I supported and worked for although I was totally against his allowing DEEP off shore drilling in the first place. Honestly, this is like an attack on our country. It's almost like 9/11 and maybe possibly worse in that if one looks at how many states already it is impacting including Florida the oil leak is HUGE. IF this rotten oil goes up the loop then lets say we in even New England Cape Cod COULD conceivably be affected. I am starting to get worried. Beyond that I am devastated for my countrymen in LA, Alabama, MI and Florida where my relatives live and the unbelievable nauseating horror to the animals not to mention the ruination of the Gulf ecosystem. This is an UNSPEAKABLE crime which is never ending and I am not even sure this rig they are building to cap it will do the job. God forbid what if the blow out explodes again and it does the same thing?

This is simply utterly CATASTROPHIC and it goes back to this damn construction of EVERYTHING known to our country overseas. HORRIBLE. EVERYTHING I buy is cheap crap made in China or some other god forsaken place. I HATE IT. I TOTALLY hate it and I consider myself at the liberal end of the political spectrum. Our ENTIRE country and the way we do business has GOT to be brought back to our own people so we can see, inspect and know who the hell has control of what. I just bought a pair of earrings from simple gold studs ... MADE IN CHINA naturally ... the backs fell off in about 14 seconds and I've lost the earrings. I buy a shirt it looks cheap and needs ironing every second, buy a cover for my bed and it frays in a month. My point: there is NO US quality control except by business which wants to get away cheap and manufactures everything in countries which pay for cheap labor and no benefits. Corporations do not care about us. ESPECIALLY after 9/11 it is criminal that this country has little control over what comes into this country or how it is made and can be subverted with ease.

I am angry at how this country does business now ESPECIALLY as far as manufacturing is concerned. NAFTA and GATT have proven to be simply horrible and unfair for the US worker. It has driven US corporations out with no taxes to pay in foreign lands. It is risky as well especially in this dangerous age.

We need American goods, made on American soil with American workers so we can supervise who is making them, supervise the construction of things and have control over who/what comes in and goes out and REFORM NAFTA AND GATT. This Gulf leak is simply UNFORGIVABLE and everything is tied in to everything else! Our economics, climate change, horrific oil leak, a Congress bought off and ad infinitum hearings that go nowhere! People need to go to jail and FAST for this unspeakable thing! Here is the article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-inspection-20100615,0,3043517,full.story

Dismayed, Disgusted and Demoralized: The following link is to Rolling Stone Magazine Tim Dickenson's article entitled "The Spill, The Scandal and the President." It is worth reading the entire article despite its length. It is easy to see why I am dismayed, disgusted and demoralized. It will put the monumental Gulf oil spill catastrophe into perspective and it will give you a better idea why on planet earth the president gave a thumbs up to off shore drilling, a policy he opposed during his campaign.

It is a story of the consequences of placing your IMPORTANT ideals on the chopping block of compromise to be sold to the highest bidder in hopes of getting something else. In this case an all systems go sign was given by the administration to BP, a corporation which was littered more times than any other drilling company, with citations, fines and penalties for numerous spills and oversights which cost human lives in exchange for, convenience, greed and profit. This time eleven men's lives and our entire Gulf coast, and even possibly beyond, is being sacrificed allegedly so the president could court votes to pass a climate bill with money, of course, in the mix. It is ironic, indeed, that this deal with the devil is responsible for the greatest environmental cataclysm that this country in its history has ever seen. It is the Chernobyl of our time. Its effects will be felt for decades and beyond even, perhaps, forever.

I URGE you to read it and to express your disgust to your representatives in Washington along with your STRONG opposition to further off shore drilling. If you truly care about your life, your children's lives, your country's life AND the life of the planet, its animals and its ecosystems it is the least you can do.

The link to the mind numbing story is the following: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0

The All Pervasive Chorus of Anti-Semitism--A Response to Boston Globe's Joan Vennocchi. Please See Joan Vennocchi's 6/10/10 editorial (link below) "Will Beck and Limbaugh be next?": I am an ardent supporter of Israel. I also loved Helen Thomas and think that her career spanning decades and cracking the glass ceilings should not be overlooked. Still, to me, her clearly anti-Semitic statement will tragically obviate much of what she has done and it will be the last statement for which this woman of nearly 90 years will be remembered. That is sad. I truly liked her irreverence toward power.

I was one among a chorus, even though, I consider myself liberal, of those whose blood pressure soared at her comment. I wrote many opinions calling for her immediate dismissal. Did I feel a little bad? Yes I did. It is hard for me to journalistically kick the sentiments of a ninety year old woman especially when she has contributed so much.

Joan Vennocchi says one surely can criticize Israeli policy without being an anti Semite. I do not think that is generally true. I remember Martin Luther King's comment "Scratch an anti Zionist and you will find an anti-Semite." I think he was presciently correct. Criticism of the Jewish state, for me, falls into a different category than does criticism of any other nation state and is why I often give Israel a pass on its behavior. The Holocaust, over 60 years ago, and the killing of the innocent six million is the prime ingredient for the establishment of the Jewish state. If there were no Holocaust there would be no State of Israel. It is really that simple. One CANNOT nor SHOULD one critically divorce this fact from assessment of its actions.

When people threaten the existence of this state and say they want Jews eradicated from the face of the earth or pushed into the sea as Hamas and other Islamic choruses have sung or that they even more disgustingly want Jews to return to the ovens of Auschwitz from whence they came as was implicit in the Thomas statement, then these vitriolic statements and criticisms of the State of Israel cannot be rent from the stitching of anti-Semitism of which the Holocaust is an integral part.

In the Jewish mind and in my mind the essence of the State of Israel is a Darwinian evolutionary struggle for survival of the Jew. Anti-Semitism spans THOUSANDS of years and is the longest hatred known to man. It exists on the left and on the right as the examples of Thomas, Beck and Limbaugh Vennocchi mentions reflect so nicely. Israel is DIFFERENT from all other states and those who criticize Israeli policy or think that the US should switch sides have the same motivation, I believe, that Helen Thomas did. She added after she said they should get out of Israel and go back to Poland or Germany "or they can go to America or anywhere else.” In truth the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust were not wanted anywhere else INCLUDING in America and Helen Thomas probably knew that. She MEANT, I believe, that they should return to the ovens of Auschwitz in Poland and liquidation in all of Europe from Britain on the west to the Soviet Union on the east and from the death camps everywhere in between from whence the "lucky" ones who survived fled.

The State of Israel is UNIQUE because its rationale for its existence is the human monstrosity of the Holocaust. Its actions are based on its own defense and survival. If you are not Jewish you cannot understand our eternal struggle. Ms. Vennocchi objectively states that criticizing Israel does not mean one is anti-Semitic. I submit, underneath it all, in MOST cases, to me, it clearly does!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/10/will_beck_and_limbaugh_be_next/

The INCREDULOUS Jeff Jacoby -- Better lives WITH OIL?: Jeff, your column today "Oil Fuels Better Lives" (June 9, 2010)(Link below) proclaiming the virtues of oil like it was the Salk Vaccine is so utterly preposterous, so infinitely stupid, so blood pressure soaringly insane that I simply could not believe what I was reading. Perhaps it is because the arguments against drill baby drill and big oil are so utterly OBVIOUS -- climate change and all -- if they came down and hit you on your head they could not be any plainer.

To see what oil has done to us as a nation, how its rancid puke spewing out of everything from MILLIONS of our automobiles and smoke stacks poisoning EVEN our soup bowls should be enough as should seeing innocent wildlife painted in gobs of DEEP smothering oil struggling to take their last breath. I would LOVE to give you the money to go down to the Louisiana Gulf and to a stay in one place for a month and BREATH deeply as deeply as you can. Then pick up the oil from the beaches, and feel its softness. Then wade into the Gulf sea and take a swim. You can always shower later IF there is clean water. Compound this spill by thousands for over a hundred years all over the globe and you get some idea of the rancid effects this disgusting vomit fossil fuel has on humans, animals, the air we breath, the water we drink and the planet we depend on for life and the only one we know of to call home.

So I want you to go down there and breath the odoriferous air -- dispersant and all-- and just keep breathing -- DEEPLY. Oh yes, bring your kids and/or grandkids with you. Then I want someone to study your blood and follow you every day for as long as you live which probably because of this toxic soup won't be long. Breath it in WELL and let's start the clock to see what kind of cancer, liver disease, kidney disease, blood or lung disease and god knows whatever else disease you will get. And oh yes bring your kids along with you so they can study them too to see what kind of oil induced disease cuts their life short as well. So you advocate for these big oil murderers all so you can live a life of such ease. You may live a life of relative ease but after breathing that swill I guarantee it will be SHORT.

What a lousy deal with the devil you have waged and all so you can sit on your comfortable couch, watch your 3D HDTV, drive your expensive car, and ride in your plush boat so you can have such an easy life I don't know how anyone could resist. As long as we all have gas masks we should make out swimmingly.

Honestly, Jeff, sometimes, I would love to know from under what rock or from what primordial soup did you emerge!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/09/oil_fuels_better_lives/

Doubting Thomas: This week I watched two EXCELLENT and unique Time/Life documentaries one the birth of the Nazi state and the second about the details surrounding the development of the Auschwitz extermination camp, a mere 60 plus years ago. I see again and again why I think the way I do. That the Jewish people for millennia have survived to create a prosperous, beautiful, technologically advanced state is nothing short of miraculous.

Despite those who call for us to rid ourselves of the Holocaust rationale for Israel I say they SHOULD view what I have viewed and read all I have read about the two thousand year fate of the Jewish people. Moreover, they should go there to see reality for themselves. There is NO question in my mind the Holocaust was and is the single most important rationale for the emergence of the State of Israel and the reason to defend it at all costs. That Hamas and its allies will NOT leave this tiny nation and people alone is testament to the cruelty, inhumanity and dogged determination of Israel's enemies.

Anti-Semitism is alive and well. I was utterly SHOCKED, since I happen to love Helen Thomas, a dogged 90 year old White House journalist, when she made one of the most egregious statements I have ever heard a journalist make suggesting angrily that the Jews leave Israel and return to Germany and Poland. I will NOT give her a pass for this one because of her age!

In one nanosecond she spit in the face of the victims of the Holocaust. It took someone of her age to reflect the sick sentiments of anti-Semitism which span generations. What she said was tantamount to relegating the rest of Jews who sought sanctuary in Israel to return to the ovens of Auschwitz in Poland and the liquidation in Germany once again. This cruel and insensitive remark is the VERY reason the Jewish people MUST act in our own self interest.

If Helen Thomas's feelings were unique I would say chalk it up to a ninety year old woman's battered mind but they are NOT unique and she does NOT have a battered mind. Many share her feelings and THAT is why the State of Israel must defend itself by any means necessary to ensure its survival that it remain an oasis for a people who have known the UNTHINKABLE and UNFORGIVABLE results of comments like hers!

"Broken Promises":While I was surfing the web looking for ideas which adequately convey my reasons for being so disgruntled and unhappy with the Obama presidency, I came across a blog I link below. Barack Obama was a man, initially, I loved and for whom I harbored mountains of hope. For some time now, I have been very critical of a president I THOUGHT I adored. I was willing to overlook the plethora of compromised policy and chalk it up to the Herculean difficulty of political negotiation, the art of compromise and Congressional intractability.

Then the Louisiana spill occurred, and my feelings of love and pride in him were thrown completely overboard. Not only has he reneged to environmentalists by flip flopping on off shore drilling failing so IMPORTANTLY to even secure that first-of-its-kind drilling with proper oversight and regulation, not only did he fail to totally overthrow the Bush administration’s monumentally corrupt Department of Interior placing an oil crony Salazar as its head, not only did he renege on substantial economic reform which would rein in derivatives and too-big-to-fail banks putting the greediest of foxes in charge of the proverbial chicken coup, not only did he renege on the vital public option basis for health care reform, but he also MOST importantly has reneged on his commitment to Fourth Amendment fundamentals of due process. He has turned his back on his base and, most egregiously, he has reneged on the very FOUNDATION of a Democratic government. He has thrown overboard the life jacket of a democracy and its very reason d’être spilling the life blood of the republic thereby weakening it. He continues the Republican tradition of putting in place a secret oligarchy (corporate control of government) which pays lip service to liberal ideas but in practice does quite the opposite. Obama is Bush dressed in a new suit. In other words he lied and continues to do so.

It is INCONCEIVABLE to me how I could read a president so wrongly. Then again, I have surely been wrong before on big issues. I profusely say mea culpa when I make those errors and I suspect I have made a big one on what I thought a Barack Obama presidency would look like. I do NOT like what I have seen so far beginning with the invitation of the religious right wing fundamentalist Rick Warren from the Saddleback Church to speak at Obama's MOST historic inauguration. Rick Warren's invitation was a STRONG metaphor from the very beginning of the Obama administration for the kind of presidency Barack Obama would reflect. He would COMPLETELY turn his back on his base.

The oil spill broke this camel's back. BP Oil is in the business of oil drilling no matter where it exists because it is a corporation designed to do one thing -- make money. No one drills because they love drilling. They drill to make a buck. I absolve BP of the major responsibility for this catastrophe of epic proportions and place it at the feet of our president who when he gave thumbs up to off shore drilling (and continues to issue permits for it) committed the worst, most long lasting and devastating crime against our country, its humanity, the people of Louisiana, other states and even possibly the world.

I came across the following article written by Lou Ralls. I know nothing about Mr. Ralls or his blog and I do not agree with all he says most especially his thoughts on resignation but I know certain sentiments with which I do agree and which I enumerated above. He says pertinently to me the following at the beginning of his blog:


"We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory.”

The link for the entire blog is:

http://pumasunleashed.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/when-will-obama-resign-or-will-he-wait-to-get-thrown-out-of-office/