Health Care -- A Glass Half Full/Empty: If this country can find a way to ruin things it surely will. I am a glass half empty person. I have a malady called by me Patriapessimistic phobia. (Patria is the Latin word for country.) The way I see it, since the end of WWII our immersion into nearly everything has been more often a disaster than not. Why should health care or anything else be an exception?

Yes, we have a good health care bill (not the best of course, not the best which COULD save the most money but, okay, a semi-good bill which could help.) If there is a way this country can find to ruin something even semi-good I bet it will. If this passes I will get rip roaring inebriated. Since I am not a drinker and probably would get sick you can see I am betting this country kicks itself in its posterior once again.

If you think I'm bad on this topic of health care I won't ruin anyone's day talking about US foreign policy or our economic catastrophe because this blog needs to stay on topic.

Suffice it to say, post World War II we have been on the losing side of most everything. Even Obama with his anemic administration is one of the biggest disappointments I have experienced so far since when he ran initially I caved in and hopped on gleefully to the Obama wagon only now to have one foot off. Well, today, (and just today) I'm leaving the glass half full and letting myself have the audacity of hope! Here's hoping ... but while I'm seeing the glass half full today I know a thirst for water is just around the corner.

Go Goshay: Ms. Goshay's October 27, 2009 editorial in the MDN entitled "Between Dissent and Hatred" link at the bottom, is WONDERFUL. I appreciate when one writes well, succinctly and most importantly correctly on issues. Her editorial was one of the best I have ever read in the Metro West News. She touched every base on this issue.

I have had many of my letters printed and spend hours trying to compose my thoughts in a grammatically precise fashion making sure I am syntactically correct. It is MOST distressing to me to take time to fashion a coherent opinion only to have the mildest comments eviscerated by mostly those on the right who take hatred to a new level. It is astounding to me how mean, often vulgar and insensitive so many are. Some have been so bad that I decided not to write any more only to reverse my once adamant position because I simply cannot suffer right wing politics in silence.

The subject matter on which Ms. Goshay wrote was SO precise and her thoughts so on point that I secretly wished I had written it myself. The insults that our president has suffered, often, I believe, racist in nature, are astounding. Even the most benign thing the president does is harshly reprimanded by some often by stating blatant untruths. It is true that I was often vociferously angry at George W. Bush and still am BUT the issues were more than his taking more vacation than any other president especially in a time of war but included much well deserved criticism of a war he did not need to wage that has taken more lives than were taken on 9/11, lasted longer than World War II, AND a policy that was based on fabrications to boot.

If Obama had been guilty of even one half the number of things George Bush was he would have been pilloried, impeached and, I believe, convicted handily. Thank you, Ms. Goshay, for your wonderful editorial. I hope to be reading more of what you write and often

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/x566154462/Goshay-Between-dissent-and-hatred

The Road Not Taken

There are times in everyone's life when a road was not taken or a turn was missed. One looks back and thinks, well, maybe I can do such and such and this will make it better but in reality a certain road not taken or a certain turn missed will permanently affect one's life. It cannot be changed and one either has to live with the consequences or, well, I don't know what.

The US is in such a bind in Afghanistan. The road not taken was the Bush administration's EGREGIOUS lack of focus on the real problem after 9/11 which, of course, was NOT Iraq but getting Bin Laden whom we almost killed in Tora Bora near the Afghan/Pakistan border to try then to ensure Af-Pak (a nuclear armed Pakistan) security. I believe the order NOT to kill Bin Laden came from the highest echelons of the Bush White House despite the fact that, as testimony indicates, the US had Bin Laden in its cross-hairs. Bush/Cheney chose not to get Bin Laden for a reason. Killing Bin Laden would have made Bush's coveted Iraq War unnecessary. So this treasonous and poisonous policy brings us to our present moment as that administration did what it did and now WE, certainly not the cerebrally inept George W. Bush, have to live with its consequences. The US death toll in Afghanistan mounts and there is a reemergence of an insurgency in Iraq which our invasion of it produced.

Iraq and Afghanistan are LOST. Face it, they are LOST because the road was not taken to secure Afghanistan FIRST and not to throw blood, money and time into an Iraq war based on lies. It is amazing how this nation of 300,000,000 consistently elects incompetents to do the most important job -- to protect 300 million people of this nation.

Now, what to do? Good luck, President Obama, no matter WHAT you do failure is at the end of this road because the country MISSED a vital turn eight years ago!

Check out the Sunday Ideas Section K of the Globe. Link below: The Heading: "Islam's Darwin Problem In the Muslim world, creationism is on the rise." Link below.

This article makes STEAM blow out of my ears. If there is anything that is my STRONGEST held belief it is academic excellence and the progression of science. There are some things that are simply SCIENTIFIC FACT that cannot be denied like the earth is round, like it orbits the sun, like gravity exists, like DNA exists and like DNA EVOLUTIONARILY MORPHS OVER TIME. It is NOT hypothetical supposition but it is FACT that humans like all other mammals changed over time and evolved out of Africa from APES our closest DNA mammalian relative. There is NO doubt about it. It is FACT.

This is exactly why orthodox, fundamentalist religions of ANY stripe are an anathema to me because they DENY fundamental truths of science if it does not fit into their fairy tale totally impossible to prove myths of sky gods, angels, and Red Sea splits or life beginning a mere 5000 years ago. If you deny the truth of science then mankind cannot progress in his quest to understand our beginnings and in his efforts against disease to ensure his OWN survival. That is what it is about ... SURVIVAL. This is exactly why the ideas of the west are light years, with all of the west's frailties, better than any other place on earth. The west MUST prevail because any other possibility is out of the question and will mean the demise of homo sapiens which DID, as proven, evolve over 100,000 years ago. The evidence for that mounts every day.

This article makes the top of my head blow off. I wonder if it does to anyone else!!!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/25/in_the_muslim_world_creationism_is_on_the_rise/

Say it ain't so: I, a Boston Red Sox fan from birth, watched the Yankee/Angels championship games off and on growling every time those damn Yankees made a great play or hit in the clutch. I watched as Johnny Damon stood in left field, made great outfield plays and know he can be counted on for his solid hitting. I know this because once Damon was a part of the Red Sox miracle 2004 World Series win when children visited their parents’ graves to tell their dearly departed that the Red Sox FINALLY won the World Series! My father waited all of his life for it but to no avail.

I notice Johnny Damon’s former Red Sox long locks are shorn into a Steinbrenner fascist like cut. Could this be the same Johnny Damon who was part of the self proclaimed “Idiots” who miraculously broke the Babe Ruth curse, won the greatest play off game ever against the hated Yankees by impossibly sweeping the last four games and miraculously went on to win the 2004 World Series? Was this the same Johnny Damon who hit two home runs (including a grand slam), to lead the Red Sox to that victory over the Yankees? In the World Series he also hit a home run as Boston swept the St. Louis Cardinals. No it cannot be he can it? With his compadres Varitek, Nixon, Millar and others they made up the band of “idiots” whom Red Sox Nation adored … NO worshiped. On December 20, 2005, Damon signed a 4 year, $52 million contract with the New York Yankees as the Red Sox refused to compete with the all-about-the-money pinstripes.

So what’s my point? The nation here in Boston was furious at Damon. How could he betray us? We LOVED him so and could not understand why love did not trump all. We as humans yearn for things to be not ALWAYS about the money. Alas, I am afraid money is what it is all about. It’s true in sports, finance, health care and politics. It’s true in nearly everything. It’s almost never about love or the little guy who makes the big guy run. Money is the bottom line and I suspect we who help them make that money wish so often it were sometimes just about us!

Beauty through the noise: I found a video with an Eva Cassidy song entitled "You Take My Breath Away" put on Utube by mnnorthcountrygirl1. Ms. Cassidy died from cancer at a very young age. She was a wonderful song writer more of whose talent we had not enough time to enjoy.

With the din and the cacophony of so many different strongly held opinions (mine included), as the person posting the Utube says, "it will give you a taste of the beauty to be found during even the harshest of seasons." I think that is a metaphor for the times we have been cast into for decades.

The song is gorgeous and makes one, I think, stop to listen to the music, appreciate the life we have been born into and try to still our anger, give pause and think about what we say, how we say it and what we can do to make it better. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxQT5awPnsQ

This is a stream of conscious not well written but some thought I had when I first woke up to see some news. Through the fogginess of post sleep I post the following:

This story simply makes me completely not understand about people in the west going to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train. Maybe some are Muslims in Europe but some are not and a few from the US are not Muslim. I don't know I am changing my opinion slightly. Maybe the drone attacks are really seriously cutting into them and this will in fact be a never ending war extending into infinity if this country should last that long certainly beyond our lives. Maybe it truly is east against west.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33375399/ns/world_news-washington_post/

I wrote a post just off the top of my head to respond to this nuttiness. Who can ever understand why some here would go to terrorist camps and to train with them?:

People will take a good thing like the freedom one has in the US and the west and go and seek out something that will create horrors, discord, killing and ANYTHING but freedom. I do NOT get it. People will do things that will end up killing them and us for nothing absolutely nothing. Are they insane? What do they think will happen? They will become all powerful and there will be Nirvana on earth? No there never will be Nirvana on earth.

Life is so short. You must take the best of what we have here in the US and in the west and run with it and make it work the best you can. It won't be perfect but it will be a heck of a lot better than the radicalism left OR right that they are seeking. It's just plain crazy. I simply do not understand it.

Franklin said we have a Republic if you can keep it. He knew how humans have behaved over millennia. This is the last best hope of mankind to work within a peaceful. free system and avoid chaos and death. Why would someone give this up or not try to work within it for tyranny, and constant war? I have no idea!


I am 61 today.....my hope and idealism are fading fast...or maybe they already faded. God I used to be SO hopeful and so inspired...waaht happened?

Exceptional Editorial: Kudos to Neal Gabler for his October 13, 2009 op ed "One nation, under illusion." (See following link for Gabler's editorial http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/13-1). It was brilliantly thought out and beautifully written. The sooner this nation expels its ridiculous notion of American exceptionalism the sooner, perhaps, our nation can really do the exceptional and stop its perpetual wars levied against innocents, provide health care to all its citizens and afford to do other humanitarian things such as help advance educational excellence. All these things truly make a nation great.

This country has a lot to learn from other advanced nations. We think we are exceptional? As our income gap becomes wider, as Wall Street criminals get away with all the fraud they have perpetrated, our health deteriorates because of insurance scams and lack of affordability, as our soldiers die in wars without end and our planet melts, think again!

I emailed the writer of an editorial on the series "Mad Men" and David Letterman in Sunday's Globe entitled "Letterman demonstrates 'Mad Men' isn't history." Link to her article below and my short response below that.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/10/11/why_david_letterman_is_just_another_one_of_the_mad_men/


Dear Ms. Weiss: I loved your editorial on the series "Mad Men" and the realities of the David Lettermen sexual saga. There are so many sagas involving the rich and famous much too numerous to mention. I have been immersed in "Mad Men" since I am a lover of the 1960's -- pre 1963 and post. I experienced both those tumultuous and contradicting eras. The late 60's was the happiest time of my life bar none but I have politically changed and re-changed and changed again since that controversial period. A discussion, however, I once had at that time with my seventyish aunt (long since deceased), who loved talking about current events with me, lingers. When we talked about the "sexual revolution" of the late 60's which loosened up sexual morality so dramatically she said: "Ah, we had the same thing going on in my day but we just did not talk about it."

I am riveted by "Mad Men" because I think about the early sixties and am thankful for the changes which ensued later. My aunt was perhaps right though. It seems often things have not changed all that much because in 2009 we are STILL talking about it and talking about it and talking and talking .... which brings a reminder of another conversation I had with a rather radical student friend of mine in the LATE 1960's. The discussion was entitled: "Do your gonads rule your head or does your head rule your gonads?" I took the position that your head rules your gonads and that we had control over our biological impulses. He said I was consummately wrong and that gonads trump all. I suspect he was correct. We are STILL talking about it and, in fact, are doing it whether by societal proscription or not. I suspect it has been so since the symbolic Adam shared his tent with Eve and I think we always will. Both my aunt and my friend were right. Our gonads do rule and it is nothing new.

The Noble Obama and the Nobel Prize: Obama has an 80% approval rating in Europe. They like his calm and rational intellectual style. We should be thankful since half of the US is anti-intellectual and has the collective intelligence of an incurious 13 year old with an attention span of about 12 minutes. It is why this country has the highest gun violence of any in the industrialized world. Part of this country not only is anti-intellectual but combines that low intellectual sophistication with a love of guns and a belligerence unmatched in modern western culture. It spells out a horribly violent society where VA Tech killings happen with stunning frequency. We are, or at least half of us are, a very violent and stupid nation where little attention is paid to those who win a spelling bee much less to those who are able to write a grammatically correct sentence.

Many who obtain higher education here leave because they do not think the astounding divisions and hatred they encounter would make for a safe place to establish their career. It is to our detriment that we have such a cerebrally diminished and explosive society. I did not grow up thinking this country was anti-intellectual. I grew up thinking it was unbelievably wonderful that I could challenge anything. I was incredulous when my black friend said she could never be secretary of our high school class because she was not white. It took years in college before I learned she was right. She, in that era, would not have been allowed to become secretary of our high school class because she simply did not look like the rest of us. I was too naive then to know what I learned after my college experience, how, indeed, correct she was.

It is Obama's refreshing intellectual refinement, his intelligent curiosity and his rejecting of unilateral cowboy diplomacy so characteristic of the Bush years that the Europeans welcome. In addition, they welcome him as the first half African American president of a country whose founding was enmeshed with the submission of an entire people because they were born with dark skin. For all these reasons it is why I think he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Admittedly, the President’s accomplishments of peace after only nine months in office are thin but it is the essence of his potential and America’s change for the better that, I think, the Europeans laud. They need this country NOT as it was for the past eight years but as it can be for the ensuing years. Europeans know Europe's fate is linked to our own and they hope President Obama can help ensure it.

I posted on a UK web site called The Independent UK about an interview conducted with Gore Vidal. He was asked about his views on many things some of which I agree and others I do not. The interviewer asked Vidal if he thought, although Vidal is in a weakened state at age 84 and in a wheelchair, if he would live another 8 years. Here is the link to the Gore Vidal interview. I think he has always been a fascinating personality. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gore-vidals-united-states-of-fury-1798601.html. My comments are as follows:

I have loved Gore Vidal ever since I saw his debate with William Buckley in the late 1960's in which Buckley's feathers became riled when Vidal called him a fascist. I loved seeing Buckley's feathers aflutter. Still, I do not always agree with Gore Vidal. I agree with his assessment about the nature of US imperialism but I do not agree that every single thing the US does is motivationally in error.

I most especially do NOT understand how he could become romantic about the essence of Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist who blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 (one day before Hitler's birthday.) Maybe I just do not have the cerebral capacity to understand Vidal's infatuation with McVeigh. McVeigh was, in my opinion, a beast who was a member in good standing of the violent extremist racist right wing. I thought Gore hated the right.

David Koresh, of Waco fame and McVeigh's raison de guerre, was asked to come out of his lair by the FBI and wouldn't after many hours of standoff so the FBI used force hoping Koresh would give himself up. If one does not do as the FBI asks then I believe one must face the consequences. Unfortunately there were children in the Koresh compound and it exploded in flames as Koresh's huge cache of ammunition was struck by FBI fire reducing the dwelling to ashes. Koresh was a right wing religious extremist and most probably a pedophile. This is supposedly why McVeigh blew up a federal building killing children and other innocents? Me thinks Gore's homosexuality, which he denies homosexuality even exists though he has admitted to hundreds of encounters with men, is aroused by McVeigh. I cannot think of one other reason that could account for Vidal waxing sentimental over this murderer. Vidal is enigmatic on that point. He reminded me of Truman Capote's infatuation in his novel "In Cold Blood" with the Clutter family murderer, Perry Smith.

I believe the left, of which I consider myself a part, errs when it thinks the world is filled with tabula razas just waiting to become good. Government is about the management of power and some states manage it better than others. I believe there are situations when war, which should be avoided when possible, is a sad necessity at times and fascism in Europe during the 1930's and 40's was such a time. Whatever this country's faults, and I agree lack of an educated populous in the US is one of them as Vidal suggests, all of its wars were not in error. Japan was an imperialist power, Germany certainly was an imperialist power as was Italy and even the somewhat neutral Franco's Spain. If the US did not act the Axis powers would have certainly obliged. What is Vidal thinking?

Still, I love Gore Vidal and envy his absorbent intellect. I wish I possessed a corner of it. I do hope he lives another eight years and another eight after that.

I sent this in response to a negative article in Salon.com by Mike Madden posted as follows (www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/10/07/olbermann/). It was about Olbermann's Special Comment on health care last evening. Olbermann delivered, in my opinion, a wonderful comment. If you did not hear it google Keith Olbermann and listen. It is well worth it.

Olbermann's Genius: I LOVED Olbermann's special comment last night. Going into an explanation of details of the health care bill and why we need it would NOT have captivated an audience but his recent personal experience did. Making the real subject about death, a fact to which everyone can relate, surely made its point emotionally relevant. I was glued and even cried at the end.

Americans LOVE personal experiences and hate the complex minutiae of listening to the nitty gritty of the health care bill. He said some of the things Salon's Olberman crtic Mike Madden mentioned as well but Olbermann made it personal. Nothing wrong with that. It does not have to be the end of his explanation of health care but it was a fabulously delivered speech as only Olbermann can craft. He made the enemy clear and the need for a public option absolute. He knows (and all of especially the choir know) that what we really need is single payer. That won't fly but what is being offered may.

Everybody's got to be a critic. I do not see Salon on the tube doing better. Olbermann and a popular MSNBC show are iterating what needs to be said. Maybe he picked up a viewer or two or three or four hundred whose mind he changed. That's good enough for me. Olbermann is genius. I'm glad he is a progressive genius on our side. The choir says praise the Lord!!

I sent this to Glen Greenwald from Salon.com. He is a brilliant political commentator and one with whom I agree most of the time. This time, though, I did not agree with parts of what he said. I related that to him and posted it on my blog appending the link to his site below.

Mr. Greenwald: I Saw you on CNN’s Dylan Ratigan and read your post on Salon.com. Your commentary, as always, is excellent. Still, you, the political left and I diverge on Israel. I am NOT anti-Israeli. I think Israel faces threats no one can understand without living there. You are correct Iran has not bombed anyone BUT it has been involved in arming regimes which are hostile to Israel and which support the spread of world wide Islamic fundamentalism. IF they could I firmly believe Iran, along with other forces, would eradicate the Jewish state.

I am a generation very closely related to the years of the Holocaust. I missed it – thankfully -- by a very little. I was born in the year Israel was founded. I believe most who are Jews cannot be unmindful of our history no matter how removed from the Holocaust one gets. Benign reticence for the Jewish people spelled our near doom. We are unlike, I believe, now any other people on earth. Israel and Jews will do what Israel and Jews must do to reinforce our existence as Malcolm X said about HIS people "by any means necessary." We have paid a high price -- TOO high a price -- to let our destiny depend on the wishy washy sentiments of others all over the globe. It cannot be so ever again.

Furthermore, I do believe there is a cultural difference between much of the Arab world and the Jewish state. As the US Supreme Court said about another matter “I know it when I see it.” Likewise, I know an advanced, free civilization when I see it. Israel is such a country.

Iran, despite doing nothing to hurt anyone YET, will, I believe, when and IF it can, eradicate the Jewish state as it has promised to do many many times. You may say words are merely words but, I believe, words mean something. They did in Hitlerian Germany just before the Holocaust and, I believe, they do now. I agree with you, however, there must never be a George W. Bush preemptive war based on nothing again. That does not mean that nothing should ever be done. Something must be done with respect to Iran's attempt at securing a nuclear arsenal in that dangerous part of the world and I thought the President’s call on that was quite correct.

I am assuming you are Jewish and wonder if it ever gives you pause to laud a religious tyrannical state which you know would destroy Israel and our people if it could or support one who even SAYS it would. If you are a Jew, I submit, you will be a Jew to them no matter how understanding your thoughts may be. You will be, I believe, a Jew first, last and always whether you want to admit it or not.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/29/iran/

Awesome Days: On the Jewish calendar at this time of year are marked serious moments called the Days of Awe. It is between the New Year, usually in September, of Rosh Hashanah, and, a week later, during the holiest day of the year for Jews, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, in which the individual can evaluate his or her life and repent its wrongs. It marks a plea, nay a plaintive wail, which asks forgiveness so that one may be able to make right those wrongs which have been committed. All vows between creation and oneself become null and void so that we can try to begin again, wipe the slate clean and start anew. It is, in its solemnity, a beautiful time, whether one is religious or not, to look closely at one’s self and ask, with the utmost sincerity, have I been the best that I can be as a human being and, if not, can I do better.

I think most of the major faiths provide that avenue to a much flawed humanity. It is important, I think, for all people who know that the egregious behavior they may have committed or hurtful things they may have said during the year can be rethought, reevaluated, ultimately changed and forgiven by something bigger than ourselves. It enables us to get a fresh start and begin again to improve on, in this year, what we think, say and do. It is hoped, too, because of our earnest commitment we will, as the Jewish prayers ask, be sealed in the book of life to enjoy yet one more year and see the magical universe yet one more time.

A Happy New Year to all my Jewish brethren, a happy and healthy year to those who are not, and most certainly a fervent hope for our country to remain secure and free.

Dowd Does it Again: Yet again, Maureen Dowd, New York Times editorialist, brings her brilliant mind and translates her thoughts into creative writing often showing her mastery of literary masterpieces to create one of her own. I wholeheartedly agree with her editorial -- link below. The intellect and wit of Steve Allen, cerebral raconteur of the 1950's and 60's, wrote a book called "Vulgarians at the Gate" which illuminated the coarse crudity to which American culture had sunk. That fact is reflected in every arena, whether sport, music, radio, online blogs and now in the halls of Congress by Congressman Wilson, confederate flag waiver supreme as he rudely called the president a liar in a joint session of Congress, an act which had never occurred in a joint session before.

I believe in evolution but I also believe in devolution as a culture and a country reverse the the evolutionary assent toward perfection to a descent into verbal anarchy and cultural chaos. Mr. Wilson should be more than rebuked. He should be sent home by the voters of South Carolina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16dowd.html?ref=opinion

STUMPED: The posting is what is appearing on the Huffington post blogs. I will admit to having some misgivings about our president. I always have BUT publicly I do not write about them. This is, I think, the first blog I wax critical because I am dismayed and perplexed. I STILL do not know who Barack Obama is.

I cut and pasted if ANYONE cares or anyone reads these things. I think this is SERIOUS stuff. I am SO dismayed I think my head is spinning the speed of light. I have NO idea what is going on with him and what he is about. Either he doesn't care and just is in there for a laugh or it is just impossible to get anything done. I suspect he still thinks he's at Harvard Law Review and wants to make nice with the opposition OR he think or wants to be like Jesus and pull everyone together. There is time for Jesus but Washington is not IT. With the House, the Senate and the White House in Dem. control it staggers my mind to read these.

1. You are being very kind and polite to call the president naive, since, c'mon, you know that the man just isn't that naive; if he were really trying for reform, his proposal would have some sharp regulatory teeth which it doesn't. The speech is for show just like last week's health speech; they make it look like he cares and that he's trying, but we won't have even a public option and we won't have WS reform. I think he knows exactly what he's doing.

2. Then do you think that this president is UTTERLY duplicitous and that everything he told us is a sham that he said things simply to get elected and says things now he knows his base wants to hear but he has NO intention of forcing the issue?

My reply: Then what is this guy we put into office? What the hell is he? My whole family LOVED him and I osmotically believed what they were saying. I thought they say this guy is brilliant and more than that he is ethical beyond belief. So am I in Alice in Wonderland where up is down and down is up? I feel like I am going totally crazy with this guy? Who is he? What does he REALLY think? Does he care at all?

So far he is simply NOT what I thought he would be. Sometimes talks a good game but behind the scenes it is NOT what he has been about. He is IMPOTENT and ineffective and his adversaries he is trying to pull along and they kick him. I want to say Mr. President you are NOT Jesus Christ. You need to kick some posteriors. What is up with him? Your post makes me shake my head. Who is right you or my family? I just do NOT know. STUMPED!!

3. Obama has betrayed us on healthcare and Wall Street reform. He will not be getting my vote when reelection time comes, and I will not vote to reelcet my democratic representative. I will vote third party or sit at home. If it cost the Deomcrats the election, perhaps they will finally learn that they have to keep their promises.


4. I think it WILL cost the Democrats the forthcoming elections, both 2010 and 2012. For a while I've felt deep down that BO is a one-termer. Wonder what he'll do after that? I see he's been lunching with Bill Clinton. Maybe he's getting a few pointers on life after the presidency? In any case, no change to health, no change to Wall Street, no c hange to war. An impotent president isolated and pushed into irrelevance by his opponents. Quite a sad thing to watch.


5. I'm afraid Obama, while well-intentioned, just doesn't have the backbone to fix or even instigate the numerous fixes we need, be they in health care or on Wall Street.
We elected a guy who wants to be class president. Alas, the times call for far something different. The first ominous clues were in the choosing of his economic team. Maybe, like his hero Lincoln, Obama will evolve and grow. But frankly, the challenges can't wait.
We need a genuine progressiv­e/populist third party. Perhaps our system won't allow for something like that. Or maybe, things will get so bad, society--the voters--will demand nothing less.
One can hope.

7. This has been our problem since Bill Clinton's term ended- no real leadership. Mr. Gore is showing his real colors, global warming is critical but he totally sold out for the money. John Kerry is well, John Kerry. Obama was pushed into the limelight far to early because no one else is stepping up. Hillary, my vote went to her, would have been a much better choice. I'm afraid, like with Carter, we're going to suffer for a long time when his one term is up. The speeches are fantastic it's the follow-up that's very weak.Heard an economist today say that all Obama's financial "reforms" will do is white wash the cracks. He gives good rhetoric but can't deliver on transformational change which means he will be merely a transitional President. The question is a transitional President to what? Given the ignorance of large swaths of the public, a corrupt and complicit 4th Estate and a political class motivated by their own self-interest and cynicism the most likely outcome is that of total corporate fascism. 200 + years in the experiment of self-governance would seem to be drawing to a close.

I have sent a sample of these blogs to the White House. They NEED to wake up before it is too late!

This letter to the Globe is in response to a letter to the editor by a Gifford Weber in the September 12, 2009 issue of the Boston Globe. The respondent criticized Kennedy most for his "public flaying" of Supreme Court rejected nominee Robert Bork and thought that took a back seat to even the Chappaquiddick episode. I thought otherwise.

It is inconceivable to me how Gifford A. Weber (letter to the editor September 12, 2009) thinks that the main reason one should not forgive Senator Kennedy is because he zealously tried to block the admission of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Logically, if Mr. Weber is to be believed, one should criticize the late senator for the barring of Justice Bork from a place on the Supreme Court more than, he says, Senator Kenndy's lapses at Chappaquiddick where a young woman died. I have made peace with the Senator's private life missteps. He more than atoned for them.

The barring of Justice Bork from the Supreme Court, in my opinion, was one of Senator Kennedy's best efforts. Robert Bork was a right wing extremist and would have rewritten settled law. He would have been an activist right wing judge something conservatives supposedly loath except when its decided in their direction. In my opinion, Justice Souter was a solid justice. He was a happy surprise to those of us who care about human rights and progressive causes and see the Constitution as a flexible not static document subject to interpretation. One can hardly blame Justice Souter for, as Mr. Weber puts it, the "poisonous atmosphere" in Washington. I suggest Mr. Weber look to his own right wing for that.

I wrote this in response to Washington Post editorialist Colbert I King. His article "A Dangerous Kind of Hate" concentrates on worrisome hate filled attacks actually calling for not only Obama's failure but chillingly his death. His article appears at the link below and my response is below that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091103274_2.html?sid=ST2009091103433

A Paliative Remedy for Hate: Mr. King, I read your article "A Dangerous Kind of Hate" and had chills running down my spine. I worry about our president every single day. It may be a few on the lunatic fringe who are the most vociferously poisonous but I worry about the Republican mainstream climbing in bed with the white nationalist cause.

I never like to compare histories because truly history is different depending on the perspective and the times but the echo of 1930's Germany keeps clanging in my brain. Race hatred and economic catastrophes are the toxic brew out of which weak democratic governments fail and sometimes implode.

I worry about our president and wish so sincerely that he take a more strength infused path, bypassing those who will hate him no matter how many hands he extends, and concentrate on the party and people who elected him and those who love him.

As a Jew I have learned the lesson that if one cowers in fear or continually HOPES one's enemies will extend their hand that hope is often dashed as all hands pull away and backs are turned. Intelligence coupled with STRENGTH is the only palliative remedy to stop these race-bating haters from gaining power. Our president needs more than prayers, he needs to present STRONG leadership and he needs our verbal offense which provides him a STRONG DEfense! Our power crazed opponents do NOT want to compromise with him. They not only want him to fail, but, indeed, some, horrifically unthinkable, want him dead. We live in dangerous times.

NO WE CANNOT: A case which is being revisited by the Supreme Court and which will, if decided for the corporation, have a huge influence on our lives and not, in my opinion, for the better. As Bill Moyers on his site says: "The case, Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission has grown from a limited question about [the showing of] a political documentary [funded by an anti Hillary Clinton corporation] to a broad challenge to the government's right to restrict corporations from spending money to support or oppose political candidates." This is about putting the free speech of a corporation on par with the First Amendment free speech of a person.

The person in this country, historically, has had to suffer at the hands of the omnipotent corporations because, as individuals, a singular person does NOT have the resources available to him with which to fund opposition. The issue of corporate person-hood has waxed and waned over time. Today we know our representatives in Washington are smothered by corporation PAC money in every sphere from health care to oil. Corporations have undue influence on our bodies and, often, our lives. Now they want to usurp one of a person’s few remaining reserved elements of political power – the free speech of the First Amendment-- as a rationale and excuse to control the whole Washington enchilada.

Mr. Abrams and the ACLU (an entity I usually adore), are arguing before the Supreme Court the corporate side of the equation that this is a free speech First Amendment issue and that the corporation’s free speech should be equal to that of a person. It is, I submit, NOT a person and should NOT be subject to the same free speech rights. Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General of the United States is arguing that point.

What ordinary human being can compete with the money that the corporation has at its disposal? The corporation behind the film against the candidacy of Hillary Clinton took Mr. Abrams and the ACLU for all they were worth to find yet another way to legally insinuate itself into Washington politics. A decision for the corporation will free up the corporation to do and say anything it pleases with as much cash as it can muster.

I believe, this is NOT what our Founders meant by free speech. They meant that right to be reserved for real, live, breathing people to espouse anything anywhere no matter how odious. They did not mean for the corporation with its billions of loot to have the right to do the same and easily override the individual’s impact on policy.

The corporation should NOT be considered a human being. It has no feelings, it has no sense of fair play, it cannot get sick and it cannot die BUT we can. The corporation if the Supreme Court decides in its favor will have unlimited capital to advance its agenda.

This important case is about FAIRNESS. It is not fair to make MY opinion any less valuable than another’s. By endowing the CORPORATION with person-hood with respect to the free speech issue, the Supreme Court will put it on the same footing as everyone else. The corporation is NOT like everyone else. This case is about nothing less than the undue influence of MONEY in politics which is what the corporation has at its disposal to influence who occupies the seats of federal power. How can an individual compete with that? If the Supreme Court rules FOR the corporation in this case, the president's new mantra may as well become NO WE CANNOT no matter WHAT we do!

This opinion was prompted by an email I received from the Wiesenthal Center about an article which they saw in alJezeera Magazine entitled "Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel" See link below.

Jane Fonda and the Left's Error -- Its Case Against Israel: An article appeared in alJezeera Magazine entitled Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel. The article states in pertinent part “… a letter [sent by Fonda and other artists] aimed at festival officials claims that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.” Fonda, therefore, joined a growing list of artists boycotting the festival.

Of course, no one mentions that the Jewish State emerged out of the 1948 UN mandate made because of Europe’s problem of left over suffering Jewish refugees of the Holocaust with its attendant wholesale slaughter of the six million. Nor does it mention that Jews had, for millennia, been a part of that land. Jane Fonda has gone back to being a jerk, as she joins this bleating segment of the herd without, yet again, thinking through her actions. Further, the Jewish artists who come out against Israel are shooting themselves in their own foot.

Some on the left and I part ways when it comes to Israel. I cannot, hard as I may try, understand how they would want to defend those who want to destroy the tiny state by force or by a ONE-state solution which also threatens the Jewish state AND by extension the Jewish people period. It is unacceptable.

A comparison of cultures makes crystal clear that the tyranny existing in the Arab world is staggering. Women are whipped, beaten and sometimes killed for the most minor "offenses." They are flogged because they wear pants, threatened or tortured if they go to school. They are stoned, sometimes to death, if God forbid they sleep with someone before marriage or with another other than their husband or even if they deny their husband sex. Homosexuals are killed or tortured in many of those lands in the most bestial ways. The atrocities abound as they do in Gaza itself and even between their own people. Women are treated horrifically in nearly every Arab country and Persian one as well. I cannot be blind to what my eyes see. Israel for all of its faults (and it is not without them) is an infinitely freer state. It fights to survive every single day as Jews have done throughout centuries.

Moreover, I hear nary a sound from segments of the left against the plethora of attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists collectively against hundreds of thousands of innocents. We must bring REALITY back to planet earth and state what really IS as your eyes see it while not abandoning the many other humane and principled issues about which the left is concerned.

Israel is more advanced, freer and more democratic than any state in that mentally unhinged neck of the woods! I am not afraid to criticize Israel at times when it is not perfect but I do not know of a perfect place on earth. Do you?


See link below sent by the Wiesenthal Center: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Jane_Fonda_Joins_Boycott_of_Toronto_Film_Festival_.html