Eternal War and other things: Since I purchased Tom Engelhardt's book "The Amercan Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" I have been receiving TomDisptach which is a well written blog of many different authors who write things about our nation's eternal wars, energy gluttonous activity, greed, the ultimate end of oil and many other realities of which one who has a vested interest in this nation should be aware.

It is an excellent web site if you are interested in these vital issues for you, your children if you have them and your children's children. The post of his web site is TomDispatch.com. The articles which were sent to me are below. Do NOT be a member of the mindless know nothings many in our culture who remain ignorant of national policy are. They are condemning this nation and your children to eternal war and to a possible early death as we drink the world's oil like a chocolate soda thinking there is an endless supply. There isn't.

Wikipedia gives a brief biographical sketch of Tom Englehardt:

Tom Engelhardt is the creator of the Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation.

Tom Engelhardt graduated from Yale University and obtained a Master's Degree in Asian Studies from Harvard University where he was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. He has written numerous articles and several books including The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD has an offer today that shouldn’t be missed. The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, the new book of one of this site’s most popular regular contributors, Michael Klare, has just been published. Once again, on issues that couldn’t be more crucial to us (and to the planet), he is -- as has been true ever since he pioneered the concept of “resource wars” in the 1990s -- ahead of the curve.

Think about this for a second and if it doesn’t stagger you, I don’t know what to say: the U.S. military consumes as much oil every day as the entire nation of Sweden.

Or take a guess on this question of the week: How much did it cost Mobil and its partners to build the world’s largest oil-drilling platform, a 1.2 million-ton monster that sits in 300 feet of water in “Iceberg Alley” in the Canadian North Atlantic and is armored with 16 protective “teeth” designed to absorb the impact of those approaching bergs? The answer: $5 billion for the Hibernia platform, which is now producing 135,000 barrels of deep sea oil per day.

If you wanted, you could spend your time turning Michael Klare’s new book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, into an energy and resources version of Believe It Or Not that would stagger your friends. Klare has a way of landing us on a strange new planet called Earth, one stripped to its disappearing resources and filled with insatiable greed. It’s always a bracing experience, even when, as he assures us in his new book, the rush to the planet’s Iceberg Alleys to provide energy for the U.S. military and the rest of us fuel guzzlers may be the last "race" of its kind we are likely to undertake. Tom

A Tough-Oil World
Why Twenty-First Century Oil Will Break the Bank -- and the Planet
By Michael T. Klare

Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been -- except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war, and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump. But the principal cause of higher prices -- a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry -- cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

In energy terms, we are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped. This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum -- “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.


Visit our sister sites:
The Nation Institute
Nation Books
The Investigative Fund
Recent Posts
2 days ago...
Tomgram: Engelhardt, War as the President's Private Preserve

Tomgram: Ann Jones, Playing the Game in Afghanistan

Tomgram: Eyal Press, Chilling Dissent on Wall Street

Tomgram: Stephan Salisbury, Weaponizing the Body Politic
Recent Highlights

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Uncle Sam, Global Gangster

Tomgram: Ari Berman, The Politics of the Super Rich

Consider supporting TomDispatch by making a donation.
116 East 16th Street 8th Floor | New York, NY 10003 US

"Game Change," the HBO docudrama about the 2008 McCain/Palin presidential campaign, was excellent. The acting, in my opinion, was flawless. Since I am a political junkie and followed the McCain and Obama campaigns closely nothing that was illuminated came as a surprise to me BUT to see it played out gave a dimension that I never could have gotten unless I was closely working within the campaign, in this case, on the Republican side (a highly unlikely prospect.)

The production brought life to all the pages and pages of newspaper and other descriptions of the McCain campaign's minutiae I have read. At times I forgot that Julianne Moore was acting the part of Palin, the intellectually incompetent, inexperienced, grossly unqualified vice-presidential pick one heart-beat-away from an older medically compromised McCain. Moore brought much realism to the part. The same can be said for Ed Harris as John McCain and Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager. All actors were brilliant.

For me, an ardent Democrat, it simply illuminates why I am one and how grateful I am that Obama won the 2008 campaign. It also illuminates why elections matter. What pabulum is fed to the media who feeds it to us is NOT, in truth, necessarily what happens behind the political scenes and the lack of veracity about it makes it all the more important to choose wisely those who would determine your life and death fate. Yes, elections matter but a sharp intellect of those who seek the high echelons of power through those elections, perhaps, matters even more!

Fukushima in Retrospect: The year anniversary of the devastating tsunami in Japan has arrived and it is no cause for celebration. Looking at my posts when the tsunami disaster and the Fukushima nuclear power explosions were occurring, I most humbly say, I was spot on correct. I STILL believe the information, horrific and apocalyptic, is mostly not being conveyed to an ignorant world. The amount of radiation leakage and its effects I believe are hidden and are STILL a significant reality.

It will take years to know the increase in cancer rate deaths of tech workers and cleanup personnel. Some believe it could be significant. Much of Japan's food supply and plant life is contaminated. It is a waiting game to see its conclusive effects over time. The larger question is how will it affect all of us? The power of government and the news media reveal little about it now. There is food contamination found even in Washington State and in California. Foods shipped east and winds which transport contamination particles from deadly Cesium and other lethal elements make it a factor. How much of a danger it poses to us in the long run no one yet knows. My personal opinion is it poses a consequential threat but because cancer takes so long to develop we may never know its direct correlation. My hunch will always say it is a direct one.

Since the American memory and attention span is measured in minutes, the story goes mostly unnoticed and under-reported. Even tsunami debris is from Japan washing up on our shores and more will. Heads here, as usual, are in the sand as attention MUST be but never is paid for more than a 48 hour news cycle -- and that's being generous. The fate of the nuclear power industry is at stake. Money in this country and the politics that are appended to it are all too often in our Citizens United culture the reason information is squashed.

I post a link to the MSNBC article here. I suggest reading it and demand that the nuclear power plants we do have are inspected, brought up to date and the ones we are thinking of building never are. The cumulative effects of radiation are known. The hour of nuclear madness has arrived and did so with the first explosion of a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in August, 1945. No amount of radiation is safe as the great Helen Caldicott stated. I quote from an article about her below and which in its entirety can be found here.

Helen Caldicott, the Australia-born American physician and anti-nuclear activist of the late 1970s and early 1980s, was a practitioner of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, U.S. A leading critic of nuclear technology and armament industries, she tried to raise the world's conscience through her almost solitary protest writings and TV and radio appearances against the dangers of nuclear technology for the environment. In the light of Fukushima (2011), Chernobyl (1986) and Three Mile Island (1979) nuclear accidents (all of which happened after 1978) and the great concern they generated in the world during the last four decades, Caldicott’s 1978 book Nuclear Madness assumes prophetic significance.

Enlightened Faith: On March 2, 2012 the Metro West Daily News printed an article entitled “Islamic Center in Wayland hosted talk on Founding Fathers.” It discussed the lecture given by Rev. Gary Kowalski, a graduate of Harvard College, the Harvard Divinity School and minister at the First Parish Church in Sudbury. I attended that discussion.

Rev. Kowalski gave an extraordinarily informative and riveting lecture on the connection between our Founding Fathers, their acceptance (or rejection) of faith and its place within the founding constitutional document of the American republic. He understood the historical etiology of the Founders’ experience and its relation to the constitutionally-constructed mandate of the church/state separation clause. He did not say that the Founders had no religion but he DID say that the Founders’ religion was a personal one wrapped in the cocoon of self separate from the political sphere except that the state could not interfere with any man’s freedom to believe (or not) as he chooses. That foundational edict is significantly different from government requiring specific religious mandates to which every person must subscribe.

The Founders, as he said and I know, were men of the Enlightenment who, while not eschewing the belief in a supreme Creator, wrapped that religious belief in their own sphere which was NOT a part of the larger governing body politic. Some Founders had religious doubts, some were not Christian, some were Deists, some loved science and were uncannily prescient about it. Most knew the lethal difficulty religious belief presented to a nation that fused it with the state. They saw and understood the wars it engendered in the European experience the embers of which branded fear and scars upon their consciousness. There would be in our nation’s founding document NO religious litmus test for citizenship or for the acquiescence of power.

Our Founders, I believe, would wax aghast at the religious nearly Puritanical irrational frenzy creating a new Scarlet Letter for those, in present time, who do not subscribe to one particular faith. The Republican Party has now become, to the detriment of this nation which usually rejects extremism, a party constructed mainly of right wing extremists where religious subscription, particularly Christian, is mandatory doctrine for entrance into this political club. Our Founders did not mean this to be so. Many would be dismayed at how anti-science, anti intellectual and supremely ruinous the country has become because of issues of faith. They would, though, not be surprised at the toxicity religious belief can engender and knew the discord it could sow.

Religion, uncompromising and extreme, is destroying the very fabric of church/state separation from which this nation was stitched. Rev. Kowalski's book is a scholarly examination of the nature of what our Founders believed and what they envisioned for a new nation. Our Founders did not want to pound religious doctrinal faith into the republic’s sinew but to extricate religious doctrine from the marrow of its governing bones. Rev. Kowolski’s book Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America's Founding Fathers is an excellent read.

Why Primary Voting Matters:

Ohio primary results: This is why it mattered if Democrats voted in the primary. Can you imagine? The president in the all important Ohio running with NO opposition in a primary garnered more votes than any Republican. May this continue!! Keep urging your fellow Democrats and anyone else in other states to get out to vote in the primary despite the president being unopposed. ;-)


Barack Obama 547,588 votes

Mitt Romney 456,513 37.9%
Rick Santorum 446,225 37.1%
Newt Gingrich 175,554 14.6%
Ron Paul 111,238 9.2%

Robotic Romney -- Liar-In-Chief: Well I predicted a slight error. I thought Santorum at the end would squeak out an Ohio win BUT I was not wrong by much. Santorum may as well have won as Romney wins Ohio by 1% point. This was a state he was predicted to take significantly. He has HUGE problems now that it was a squeaker win for him. Okay, good let's see him work for it.

My God, America, what Obama has in his small pinkie finger the robo candidate Romney does not have in his entire body. He is a DISGUSTING candidate, -- utterly AWFUL, robotic and the worst of the liars on the Republican slate bar none and THAT is going some. He lies despite having TAPE -- TAPE I say -- showing otherwise for the health care mandate, he was ALL for it and for it federally as well. The tapes are there, the evidence is there. He would be a candidate for LIAR-IN-CHIEF! UGH. A worse Republican field I have never in my decades of life seen. Simply horrible! It COULD -- I say could -- be a brokered convention. I don't think so but it's possible.

As Obama/Biden email sent to me (and probably to you too but it's worth repeating:

We now know for certain that, no matter who the Republican nominee is, we're not only up against the same economic policies that helped create the worst economic crisis in our lifetime.

We're also up against a set of rigid social policies that would take us back almost a century.

What we've seen over the past few days is nothing short of terrifying. We're facing an all-out-attack on women's health care, and now is the time to pitch in and fight it!

The leading Republican candidates for president embraced a bill that would allow any employer to deny any employee coverage for contraception -- or any other medical service they personally object to.

And when one young woman spoke up about that bill's very real health risks, she was crudely and viciously attacked by their allies. Not a single one of the leading Republican candidates stood up for her.

There are 450 other state bills where this one came from.

This issue isn't going anywhere.

So if you want to make sure our next president isn't someone who wants to take us back to the Dark Ages and actually thinks a woman's access to health care is debatable, then it's time to take action and help build the campaign that's fighting back.

Obama 2012, Democratic House, and Democratic hold the Senate!

Rush Away from Rush: Here are companies with a conscience. They have suspended their advertising with Clear Channel's Rush Limbaugh. They are:

Quicken Loans, Pro Flowers, Carbonite, Citrix, Go To Meeting, Legal Zoom, Sleep Number and Sleep Train.

If you need anything that these companies have to offer DO buy from them. There may be others which boycott the gas bag and if so add them to this list. To the contrary, companies which do not care and decide to stick with this immoral piece of trash then pull your patronage from them.

We hit where it hurts. MONEY is Limbaugh's Kryptonite. Hit him and hit him hard. Show no mercy as he would show none to you. It is a miracle he even made his limp apology to Ms. Fluke. To quote a Yiddish word: Ms. Fluke is a MENCH i.e. a good person; Limbaugh is NOT!

To my Jewish Compatriots--Escape from Hasidism: Here is a link to an article from Salon.com below. It is about a formerly Hasidic ultra orthodox woman who escaped the tyranny of the Satmar Hasidic sect. She wrote a book entitled: Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.

It is an excellent article. Perhaps when I have time I will read the book. As I have said frequently I do not criticize religion. Believe what you want. I DO, though, criticize ALL religion that is fundamentalist and extreme whose rules are made by men, for men and are about men even if those rules mean the subjugation, submission and brutality of women which even some women within the sect tolerate simply to get along.

It is shameful no matter what it is Hasidic Judaism, wingnut Protestant Fundamentalism or Islamic Fundamentalist. It is all bad and in many cases means the mental crushing of women if not in body then certainly in spirit.

Impeach Chief Federal Judge Richard Cebull: Richard Cebull is Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the 9th District of Montana. Last week he sent an email to several of his friends that was so racially disgusting and so inappropriately injudicious for a sitting Chief Justice to even think of sending it boggles the mind. It went viral on the Internet as one might expect. I refuse to print the contents of the email in my opinion piece because it is so offensive to me. If one wants to see what he said simply search for his name and the racially disparaging email he sent to his buddies about our president and the president’s mother. You will, of course, easily find it.

I first heard it on the constant stream of news I have on during the day. I was so infuriated that I called the Montana 9th District Court where he sits. I was unable to get through as I am sure others felt as passionate as I. However, I got through to another justice and left my opinion with his secretary to convey to Chief Justice Cebull.

The email Justice Cebull sent was so loathsome it calls into question his ability to serve on the court with temperate equanimity and fairness. He has written an apology to the president but, in my opinion, his apology is not enough. It rings hollow. Chief Justice Cebull of the United States District Court of the 9th District of Montana should resign or face impeachment, conviction and removal from this federal court. What he did was unbecoming of a Chief Justice of the US Federal District Court, unforgivable and worse dangerous because it feeds into the racist disgusting politics of the Republican Party and its Tea Party appendage. Our president must be saddened to hear the vitriol and racist comments, as he yet again receives another. He has received more racially tinged caustic and threatening remarks than any other sitting president in the nation's history.

This judge contributed to this verbal violence against our president as if he committed an act of violence against the president himself. No forgiveness is possible and no apology is sufficient. The Chief Justice should be impeached and made an example of what will happen IF you do not watch what threatening racist comments you say to a sitting president especially if you hold high office. Attack the president politically fine, for policy issues sure, BUT NOT because of his race. It is dangerous , demeaning, insulting and unconscionable. I hold these Republican men of power accountable for the compromise their words pose to national security. The words are an act of terrorism, unforgivable, and unbecoming a United States District Court chief justice or any justice. Chief Justice Cebull should be punished by the loss of his prestigious position because of them!

Dialing for Dollars: A phone scam perpetrated on our troops by BBG Communications is SICKENING. BOYCOTT BBG Communications. DO NOT USE THEM. Use anything but them. They tell NBC Today show that they are not responsible for the humongous fees for 2 minutes of calling time they charge our troops to call home and tell them that a German company is responsible. Another corrupt corporation passing the buck yet again. Just what we who think corporations are often SICKENING making big bucks off war. This is yet another example. Maybe they will think twice about their unconscionable practices when we ALL boycott them. USE anything else but BBG Communications.

These companies are IMMORAL UNETHICAL snakes who would steal their mother's eyeballs for a buck. BE VIGILANT. Do NOT let them do this to our troops and hit them where they feel it the most in their bank accounts!

Destroyer of Worlds: In response to the headline "Senators Offer License To Strike Iran Nuclear Program" story here: I Quote from Robert Oppenheimer physicist and director of the Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear bomb for the US and used it on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 1945. He said:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita... "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Republican Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The Republican PRIMARIES continue even after Romney's win yesterday. The Republicans will still be at each other's throats. It is indeed a long way between now and November. The president delivered a speech yesterday that was reminiscent of the power that he showed in 2008 and why many of us were smitten by his charismatic aura. I am STILL smitten when I hear him speak like that. I wish in 2010 he sold most especially his health care act to a nation that was staggered by the Bush bail outs of too-big-to-fail banks and to our devastating detriment colored the map red everywhere, took their racist anger out on President Obama, stepped on their own toes and voted in the most obstructive Congress and state governments since the Civil War.

I am writing this while Romney is in the limelight. It cannot be overstated how unappealing he is. We MUST NOT and CANNOT take anything for granted. I do not care what anyone's reservations may be about the president. One must keep in mind that Republicans are banking (pardon the pun) on the fact that the ones who vote for them will not think through what they do. They will not remember it was the Republican politics over decades of do nothing government which wants one to sink or swim and live or die on their own in an anything goes Wall Street of unregulated economic fraud gone wild that nearly killed this nation and the world.

If they had had their way in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt would not have been elected and Republican Hoover politics would have prevailed. That would mean that you, your parents, your children and their children never would have had Social Security, Medicare nor other safety net programs that grew out of it. THINK and tell your friends who have a thought to vote Republican, what kind of life the elderly, the sick, the poor and the disabled without Social Security, Medicare, etc. would have now. Most would be dead well before their time and it could happen to you.

Those programs arose because there was a desperate need of a population that was crushed by a Depression so deep no capitalist, no banker, no megga rich could extricate this country from that black hole. FAST FORWARD to present time. Things are not that different. Barack Obama does not want human beings to live or die on their own because of forces that are beyond any one person’s control. THIS is what we risk by those who think voting Republican is a good idea. Those programs protect EVERYONE because NO ONE is immune from economic whims and the difficulties of life.

NO, Republicans are wolves in sheep's clothing RUDELY calling our president a snob because he wants others to have an educated chance at life. A Republican insulted a beloved assassinated president Kennedy, an ardent Catholic, who, as our Founders did, wanted religion OUT of the state. It is why they inserted the separation clause. Religion woven into the state kills and most especially this country's brand of southern Baptist fundamentalist insanity not only kills but does so especially by killing people of color submerged once again to a white tyranny so vile and so evil their efforts could be met with oppositional violence yet again.

All Republicans who are vying for the presidency want to dismember those programs that keep people alive. They will NOT tell you that but that is what they are about. And it is NO accident that the supporters behind them at the podium are almost entirely white. They want this black man out of the presidency no matter how they decimate American society to do it. It is why the opposition to him was so virulent. It was hijacked by an entire party which was appealing to that mantra over decades.

Romney, if elected, will change permanently the nature of the Supreme Court as well, the nature of Social Security and Medicare and will yet again make it possible for insurance companies to NOT cover you if you have a preexisting condition. This is deadly for all of us. Their foreign policy, too, will be even MORE bellicose based on lies than it had been under Bush. Our president is trying to carefully manage policies he inherited geared to the most explosive neighborhood on the map -- the Middle East.

Our president in his DNA wants to insert institutional change so that what happened to us in 2008 does not have short memory and wants also NO repeat of September 11. We MUST remember who the culprits were that brought us those devastating events -- the oligarchy of too-big-to-fail banks, the real estate market fraud and the rating agencies who threw our nation into the Greatest Recession which almost led to a second Great Depression and a Bush floundering administration that before September 11 IGNORED the warnings on a President Bush's desk telling him of an imminent bin Laden attack. Bush went fishing!

Go out and organize but most of all VOTE. Vote for our president and vote Democratic because we ARE our brother's keeper. Be a part of the Obama miracle again. The cause is the same except because of him our country is coming back and bin Laden is dead! Nothing less than your life and those lives you hold dear are in the balance.

NEVER give up, do NOT be duped, vote for the reelection of the president and spread the word to all you know and tell them what is at stake.

Oil Speculation--Treason by Any Other Name: Headline in McClatchy News: "Federal judge weighs whether to let regulators rein in oil speculators." The story is here.

I have been thinking about this since pumping my gasoline has become pecuniary torture. I'd rather be water boarded. The price at the pump is obviously staggering. The answer to the judge's contemplation as to whether oil speculation should be regulated is a resounding YES. It should be heavily regulated if not OUTLAWED entirely.

Any product which is the life blood of a nation and even the world should NOT be played with like a child's toy for personal riches. Oil (until we dump it as a source for energy) is necessary for life. It is, in truth, more important than any other object of speculation. Oil gives one the ability to conduct one's life, to move, to have health care, and to have goods transported. Everything on planet earth that man depends on depends on for its transmission oil. The heat that heats our homes depends upon oil as does our food, clothing and shelter. The necessities of life depend upon oil.

Speculators -- like the Koch Brothers -- on the oil market drive up prices and play with it to the detriment of everyone else except the corporate speculators of this life blood. They become millionaires and billionaires. Economies rise and fall on the price of oil. People live or die because of the price of oil. The fact that Republicans in particular think that they can defeat this president by making it a torturous experience for Americans to fill up their tank is unconscionable. That this judge, nominated by this president, has to think twice about implementing what is already in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 passed by Congress is unimaginable.

Anything that has influence over whether a culture or a nation lives or dies should NOT be the subject of Wall Street speculation. Treason by any other name is still treason!

A Different Spin of the Record "Bomb Iran": Wikileaks emails indicate Stratfor, a global intelligence company, allegedly discovered Israel already destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities described here puts a different spin on bombing Iran doesn't it? Why would it not surprise me that Israel already acted and did so covertly so much so that it did not cross the radar screen of most? It is amazing if true. I'll give kudos to the Jewish state. I LOVE it when Jews thumb their nose at the world and say Jews will take care of Jewish problems. In the final analysis they know from a 20th century perspective which presented the ultimate existential challenge and near elimination of them that showed they can depend on no one but themselves for protection.

Israelis are smart and utterly capable. Yes, I am a pro Israel lefty because I believe the proof before my eyes of cultures that are progressive. As a Jewish woman raised in a Jewish household I never felt women's power compromised. It simply was that my mother ruled the roost -- GOOD. In Israel they make better use of the entirety of their population and women make up at least 1/2 of it.

The Islamic world had better measure up and fast because no matter how much they scream "death to America and death to Israel" they will not prevail. I know where I as a woman would choose to live. My love for Israel is second only to my love for my own country, the US, because my eyes see what they see and what I see in Israel OR the US for a woman and for other minority groups is significantly more advanced, more progressive, less religiously ideological and, in my mind, that means I am able to make a qualitative assessment and that is that those cultures are a better place in which to live!

Life’s Lottery—The Good Fortune and Opinion of the Oscars: The Day after the night of Oscars many wax critical of the yearly extravaganza. We cannot believe we stayed up for it and need a pot of coffee to overcome our sleep deprivation from it. Much that follows are the superficial criticisms – laughter at the flops, scorn at or admiration of someone’s body/dress, anger at the unnecessary waste of time, and disappointment with some who won it. Later, we walk out our door and forget most of it until it appears on our TV screen once again next year.

In what room, though, in our cerebral hemisphere does criticism of The Oscars sit? Maybe it sits in the hall of envy. Who would not envy the talent and plethora of good fortune that many in the Oscar audience enjoy? Most are multi millionaires who win life’s lottery of a nomination and an even more selected few win the film's highest award itself. It translates into their ode to immortality and phenomenal fortune. Life is, indeed, easier if one is as gifted and wealthy as they. The money made from those gifts makes the vicissitudes of life most of us encounter significantly easier to bear. When Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep’s fashion mogul character in the Devil Wears Prada) is asked by her lowly secretary: “What if I don’t want this? “Oh,” Miranda says, don’t be silly – EVERYONE wants this. Everyone wants to be us.” There is some truth to that.

In our era when so many are homeless, jobless and struggling those selected few in the Oscar audience can make one covetous of their good fortune. Some say it is a bell curve. Those on one side of that curve have little; there is a big middle of average where most of us sit, but the cream of the crop lives on a small part of that curve whose luck resides within the DNA of their talent and at the mercy of fate. Some draw life's short straw or have life or the politics of it hand them an Occupy Wall Street 99% rock and that can make one sad and jealous.

Congratulations to those who won. I thought most deserved it. I wish there were a double best actress award to present an Oscar to Viola Davis too for her poignant role in “The Help,” a film about the plight of domestic workers in the Jim Crow era of the south. The best picture film, The Artist, may be good even great but I wanted “The Help” to win. There are some in black studies who criticize that film. I do not. At least that rancid part of our nation's history commanded attention that time might dictate memory forgets. Like the Holocaust and the Jews of Europe, the American Holocaust against the black man, must never be forgotten. Anything we can do not to forget it is a good thing!

In the end though, I admit it. Yes, Miranda, I would like to be you!

Loving: If one wants to see how difficult it was in this nation which prided itself on its so called "freedom" for two people who loved each other -- one black and one white -- to marry one should view this excellent documentary on HBO about the 1967 Supreme Court landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia which overturned the miscegenation laws of this country. It is eye opening, emotionally poignant and true.

A simple thing like loving a person of another race and marrying them could be and was illegal in nearly all of the states in this nation in the 20th century. It was, indeed, a felony in many states in the south. It truly is shocking. Watch and see how far we have come but what an indelible stain on our national conscience the struggle of the Lovings was. They simply wanted to be left alone but could not be until 1967 when the Supreme Court of the United States in a unanimous decision reversed all the laws against miscegenation in the nation.

How sickening it is as Republicans today have organized a party of mainly whites who try to convince us of American exceptionalism. Perhaps, they mean exceptionally racist. Moreover, how comparable it is to homosexuals in this country who simply want to be able to do what is taken for granted by other citizens of this land and that is to marry. Loving v. Virginia established that marriage is a civil right and cannot be taken away because of race. Some day, I hope, laws against homosexual marriage will be overturned by the US Supreme Court. The selection of Supreme Court justices is one important reason why a Democrat must be kept in the presidency. This president, if re-elected, may have at least two Supreme Court picks which could turn a court with extremist rightwing political views into a decidedly more progressive and historic court bending the arc of freedom toward justice once again. I thirst for it.

We as a nation still have a long way to go in our struggle for civil rights. Click here to see the documentary on UTUBE or search on HBO TV for it. The documentary was shot often in black and white and is actual film footage during its occurrence in the late 50's, early 60's up to and including the Loving decision in 1967. It is very moving and ironic that the individuals bringing the case all the way to the US Supreme Court were, in Dickensian fashion, named Loving. They truly were just that.

Enlightened Facts: A Letter to Rev. Gary Kowalski*: I had the pleasure last evening of attending a lecture/discussion at the Islamic Center of Wayland featuring Unitarian Universalist Reverend Gary Kowalski. A short impressive biography of him can be found here. He spoke on his book entitled "Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America's Founding Fathers." A poignant take-away from the lecture by me was the astounding intellect and prescience of our Founding Fathers. I knew they were smart, perhaps, very smart men but I did not know how extraordinarily smart men of phenomenal vision they, in fact, were.

They were men hewn out of the Enlightenment who put religious belief in the cocoon of one's personal sphere. That is they kept relgion from entanglement with the state since they knew the danger from Europe's many wars over it. That the Republican Party in particular, in our age at this time has sought to rope and hog tie one segment of a very gullible and ignorant part of our public is, to me, sad for all of us, indeed. It was, I believe, and as I think Rev. Kowalski believes too not our Founders' intent to use a religious litmus test, specifically a Christian litmus test, as a mandate for the presidency. I post my email to him below.

Dear Dr. Kowalski: I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture/discussion at the Islamic Center last evening. I searched your name on Amazon to see the other books you have written. There are, indeed, many. Of particular interest to me, as one who sees an oxymoron in the coupling of science and belief, is entitled Science and the Search for God. I personally am a fan of the Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" school of thought. I think religion -- all religion -- has no place in the company of science and vice versa. The more apt analogy to this is science is to god as climate change is to the devil. I hope I have the time to download your book as I have a pile of 1/2-read others I must finish.

There were many more things I would have loved to discuss with you. For example, what if the Founders could magically return to see the truths science has discovered i.e. all of the archeological, biological, understanding of physics, the mathematical determination of the age of our earth by radiological decay, bacteria's evolutionarily changing organisms confounding medicine's attempt in the use of antibiotics to cure infection, the archeological discoveries of ancient creatures whose age we are able to date and the germ understanding of disease. How would those truths have affected our Founders' thought? Would they have been more religious or less? Personally I think -- although I know this is conjecture and we cannot ever know -- most would be even less religious than most were.

Our knowledge of all scientific fact is not supposition or conjecture. Certain principles are rock solid fact the study of which has been duplicated by hundreds of scientists over time. If we prove something and then it is duplicated over and over and over again by scientists who all come to the same conclusion we fairly, I think, can see it as credible truth. Science is always, though, open to change if the evidence dictates but the emphasis is on evidence.

DNA is truth, evolution is truth, bacteria/viruses cause illness, the earth rotates around the sun, the age of the earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old, the fact that the universe is much larger than we thought, etc. are indisputable basic truths of science. There is disagreement as to certain things within those truths but the basic truths we now know are indisputable fact.

There has been no one absolutely no one who has shown proof that a supreme being exists and all of the gobbledygook that goes along with the various belief systems is man-made myth. Nothing or very little whether in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or anything else is based on fact. There is little fact but some of it can show us how better to treat our fellow beings. The rest of it, in my opinion, is unproven nonsense. The fact that 1/2 of our political order in this country holds the Bible as truth and inerrant truth at that, is its own psychotic insanity out of touch with proven reality and makes the strict separation of church and state all the more imperative. We who love academic analysis, science and the progressive thought it advances are held hostage by those who regress our nation and who would catapult us into a new inhumane Dark Age.

I believe religion -- all religion -- kills more than it saves, retards man more than it advances him and is simply man's way of explaining easily that which he does not know and most of all that which he fears -- illness, death and loss. The many who gain prominence like the Billy/Franklin Grahams, Pat Robinsons, Jimmy Swaggarts of the world capitalize (emphasis on capital) on just those fears. It's a great gig if one can get it as religion makes them very very very rich! Just my opinion.

I LOVED the lecture/discussion and could have stayed another three hours! Thank you for an enjoyable evening.

*NB: List of Rev. Kowalski's books is here

Dozens killed in Iraq--This is what I mean (short opinion): Here is the link to the reporting above:

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/23/10483416-dozens-killed-as-at-least-14-bombs-rock-iraq-over-2-hour-period?threadId=3352871&commentId=62737004#c62737004

This is what I mean when I have discussed US foreign policy and why the "preemptive" Iraq War was SO disastrous: I quickly off the cuff posted the following opinion in part on an MSNBC blog:

Organized uncompromising and extreme religion kills. This is why the Iraq War and America for a host of irrational reasons -- including Neocon delusion -- inserting its footprint into Iraq to remove the dictator Hussein was the greatest most costly mistake in US history. THIS is the violence we have wrought. Religious fanaticism and intractability is often inbred in a culture and now violent upheaval is in nearly every Middle East state.

One cannot mold people into democracies which have immovable dissenting rigid uncompromising religious ideological disputes over centuries sometimes millenia. A dictator is needed at times to promote stability as much as I personally abhor that. Democracy is not for everyone. We have our own intractable Congress and to me a faction of Republicans sounds like the religious fanatics of the Middle East which will not compromise under any circumstance.

Not ONLY did the US destabilized Iraq it destabilized an entire region -- a tinderbox of horrific violence has followed in nearly every state with Pakistan in real time possessing 100 nukes. There are nukes in other nations in that neck of the woods as we know. All it takes is one flash point to insert the unspeakable outcome. If one wants to know what the explosion of a nuclear device looks like search Hiroshima on Utube for a rational view.

I know lets invade Iran to promote democracy -- NOT. Just what we need an insertion of more US forces in Iran twice the size of Iraq. Are they kidding us?? It is NUTS just plain NUTS.

How the FCC Can Take the Money Out of Politics by Professor Juan Cole. Juan Cole has yet again written what I think is a brilliant article on the insane money bought campaigns and the toxicity of the Citizen United decision. I post it here for your reading pleasure!

Worries: Lately I've been positive about our President’s re-election because the Republican slate is SO severely (to use Romney’s own word) awful and even hilarious. They are better than Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus unless you contemplate a win by them then it becomes bone chilling. I think that Romney will win the Republican nomination as he seems to be pulling ahead in Michigan. These are some of the things about which I worry.

Gas prices: Obviously, they are bad and, perhaps, will get worse. This, of course, is NOT our president’s fault. It has to do with more complex matters – something the Republican brain cannot seem to understand – such as Middle East political explosive dismemberment (in part the Iraq War gift) and market speculators in oil allowed to drive up prices through the roof by the money maniacs of Wall Street. They know that they will get tremendous returns if they short the oil market and, as a side benefit, drive up gas prices to hurt the president. We understand that the Know Nothings will blame the president because, well, they know NOTHING!

My other worry, among many, is Romney's pick for VP. It will probably be Rubio so he can take Florida in the general. I may be in error but I worry about this possibility. If his VP pick is not Rubio than Gov. McDonnell of VA whose ambitions know no end could be the more-than-horrific Romney choice. Many do not much love him in Virginia as they do not much love Republicans like Walker in Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Scott of Florida who must, of course, govern when they are in office. When Republicans govern the people economically lose. It does not stop the electorate from again and again voting them into office as they become bamboozled by their moronic social issues agenda and flimsy but feel good patriotism. They elect uber religious governors who add millions to the unemployment roles by laying-off state workers.

Moreover, McDonnell is the governor who will probably soon sign the vaginal probe anti choice legislation tantamount to the rape of women by the state so they can torment them by forcing them to view their fetus not only by ultrasound but by the more invasive and sometimes dangerous vaginal probe! It is draconian legislation at its worst but McDonnell is set to sign it for Virginia.

McDonnell is the worst of the worst right wingnut fanatic radical Republicans but is a prototype of extremist Republican Party politics of this era. He is anti women, anti choice and a religious wingnut crusader who cares nothing for the middle class unemployed, the poor and the sick but he does care about a woman’s uterus. He attended Pat Robinson's religious wingnut college—need I say more. It’s not Harvard!

This is how Republicans “govern.” Not only are they Know Nothings but they are DO nothings as well except to impose the tyranny of the big government, they say they loathe, not for economic repair but for the so called social issues of abortion, your contraception choice and the selection of a partner with whom to spend your life. They would regress this nation to a different century hurting millions.

The 2010 Republican electoral horror is the greatest impediment to the 2012 re-election of the president and to the return of the House to Democrats. Analysis can give clarity but ACTION to reverse the malevolent Republican extremist turn to the fringe right is imperative. We who advocate for progressive causes, acceptance of human diversity, who love science, intellectual and human advancement MUST push forward to get the vote out for Democrats who across the nation represent our point of view.

A last note: The “conservatives” have the Supreme Court in their cross-hairs. It is soon poised to overturn civil rights legislation which has been stare decisis i.e. settled law for decades. They will stop, if Republicans get a significant majority on the court, the advancement of civil rights, the pillar upon which our nation stands, for other minorities as well. Those cross-hairs could be directed at you and directed at me. I know that and it is why I write so furiously!

Time is of the essence. Work to re-elect the president and once again turn the House blue in November. Nothing short of our republic and YOUR rights are at stake.