Banging It Out!

A Bon Chat, Bon Rat (To a good cat, a good rat)

2012-02-20T07:56:00.003-08:00

It's getting serious folks, and weird. Defense secretary, Leon Panetta, disclosed that Israel is likely to attack Iran's nuclear facilities as early as April. (Isn't any such strike supposed to be a surprise?) For the U.S. to tell its enemy (Iran) that our friend (Israel) is about to cold-cop them strains the concept of friendship, (and enemy-hood). So, what just happened here?

We know the U.S. does not want Israel to stage a unilateral attack against Iran. Bad things could happen, including: 1. it could touch off a regional conflagration; 2. oil prices could spike to over $200 a barrel; 3. the tepid economic recovery the U.S. is experiencing would nosedive; 4. no one can know the full extent of Iran's retaliatory response.

Besides, for Iran's sheer size - it is larger than Iraq and Afghanistan, combined - and the way its nuclear facilities are dispersed from one end of the country to the other, there is serious doubt that an Israeli strike would be successful. More than likely, all we would get is a truckload of problems, and no solutions.

This is geopolitical bullying at its worst: Israel is 1/100th the size of Iran with 1/10th the population. Yet, it seeks to impose its will on the Iranian people. Iran is not compelled by any logic nor law or nature to take this.

When Israel took out Saddam's Osiri nuclear plant in Iraq, Saddam did nothing. Israel followed with an attack on Syria's nuclear; its President Assad made the same mistake. Both leaders refused to respond to Israel's naked aggression, presumably because they feared a fight they might lose. Saddam lost his nation, anyway. Likewise, Assad is on the ropes in Syria.

The French have a saying: "a bon chat (shah), bon rat (rah)" - to a good cat, a good rat. Or, as Sonny Corleone would say, "They hit us, so we hit 'em back." Israel and Iran should both take heed.

So, why is America telling on Israel, anyway? Some say it is part of a good-cop/bad-cop routine. Perhaps. Others suggest that by exposing Israel's intention, Israel might be less likely to take this risk.

The bottom line: America believes an Israeli strike will not only fracture the fragile sanctions regime President Obama seeks to fashion against Iran, but it will drag the U.S. into another disastrous war.

And what of the Israeli people? Do they want their leaders bombing Iran - a strike that could unleash the wrath of Iran's sophisticated missile system? Make no mistake: Iran is not a backward Muslim nation. Just last week, they launched a satellite into orbit around the Earth. That said, Israelis in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem must wonder that a strike on Iran might bring the skies down on their heads. A bon chat, bon rat.

"Gas Can" Newt

2012-02-13T04:42:00.000-08:00

In the wake of Gingrich's smashing primary victory in South Carolina, people have asked, "Why has Newt done so well?" It is South Carolina, folks - the birthplace of the Confederacy. They are still confederates.

Remember the last debate there, when Texas governor, Rick Perry, declared: "South Carolina is at war with the federal government!" The way the crowd cheered, you would have thought he fired on Fort Sumter.

So, when Newt went in spouting race-tinged buzz words like "food stamp president" and "Blacks want welfare checks, no paychecks," he was whistling "Dixie." Add this: For many South Carolinians, the news media is no better than "yankee carpetbaggers," anyway. Ever astute Newt just plugged in. He had already been going after the media - blasting Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and CNBC's Maria Bartoromo. Then, in South Carolina, he went especially hard with the near emasculation of Juan Williams and CNN's John King. And, again, the confederates screamed with delight.

Newt is the Republican field's Howard Stern. He is playing with house money and having a ball saying the most outrageous things. Want to go to the moon? Elect Newt; he's planning a colony there.

As we vote this primary season, we must wonder what America would be in for with the mercurial Newt at the helm: "Lost in Space," and Silvio Berlusconi Goes to Washington."

America's Great Cage and the Cause of Freedom

2012-02-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

There is a dichotomy in America that pits our much-ballyhooed "love of freedom" against our hatred of it. In the past, it was people of color - African-American slaves, Native Americans forced onto reservations, this split personality. Today, it is the families of America's prisoners.

For 250 years, this American nation imprisoned an entire race of people - called them "slaves", and determined that they had no rights. They proceeded to build a southern economy - the plantation system - upon the backs of these hapless men, women, and children. These southerners spoke of "God" and "honor" while they inflicted endless abuses upon their captives. They fortified this system of slavery with laws and institutions so that it would last.

When President Lincoln said that he would emancipate the slaves, his pronouncement had a visceral effect on the South. One southerner called Lincoln's plan "despicable." It would take the deaths of 600,000 men to convince the South to let its captives go.

Today, Americans talk of being a "forgiving people"; a people who believes in "second chances." These Americans are no more sincere than the men of the antebellum South who spoke of "honor" even as they castrated black men, raped black women, and sold black children.

Slavery was one big prison cell that stretched from Maryland to Texas. After it was dismantled, America revisited its zeal for imprisoning people with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Entire families and communities had their lives ripped away for no other reason than America had the power to do so. There was no guilt among the imprisoned Japanese-Americans. They were loyal, honorable American citizens. The guilt was founded in the DNA of people who felt empowered when they imprison.

One hundred and fifty years after slavery, America still boasts the most elaborate system of prisons on Earth. And for many Americans - even today - to speak of freeing someone from America's Great Cage is hateful.

Witness Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, now under fire for pardoning prisoners his last day in office. Incredulous Americans ask, "Why did he do it? What's wrong with him?" We should be incredulous at America's incredulity - this people who so claim to believe in forgiveness and second chances.

Proponents of victims' rights were the first to speak out against Barbour. (Their thirst for vengeance is legend.) When they want to accent their fear of released prisoners, they speak of a "chilling effect" - a scare tactic, similar to how slaveholders would stoke a nation's fears by offering up images of freed black men roaming the countryside.

These Americans think nothing of a prisoner spending another year, another five years, another ten years in prison. If you were to ask: "What of the child who longs to be taken fishing by her imprisoned granddad?" Victims' rights is likely to respond, "What about me?" They know nothing of prison, nor of the families of prisoners.

Be assured: Prison is a kicking. Prisoners are kicked, and kicked, and kicked. It is a figurative kicking, unlike slavery, which was a literal kicking. But it is a kicking all the same.

These parallels between prison and slavery are just. Slavery was about denying a people their freedom. Prison is about denying family theirs. Of course punishment is necessary when crimes are committed. But when that punishment drags on, and on, and on…

The institution of slavery in America was as sick as any human endeavor. There the slave master despised his slave so that he heaped endless indignities upon him. Yet, he seemed to love his slave so that he was ready to see the entire house burn down rather than let his slave go.

Prison is not slavery. But as long as indignities are heaped upon prisoners as though they are hated, yet they are kept endlessly as though they are loved, we must begin to wonder if the State knows the difference.

Cry Racism

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Racism as a force in America is over-rated, especially in these modern times. Most often, racists are viewed as "ignorant" and "fringe," which immediately limits their ability to effect change. Add to that, their visibility - flags go up the moment a racist enters a room. They are an easy target. Most Americans' stock rise just by standing across from them.

Now, Ron Paul, a prominent Republican presidential candidate, is being dogged by a racist newsletter he circulated in the 90's. He claims to have written none of the nasty rhetoric himself, though his signature appears on the newsletter, and he profited from its sales.

The question becomes: Is this a deal-breaker? Does such associations preclude Paul from serious consideration for the office of president of the United States? Many on both sides of the aisle say "Yes." I say, consider this: Ron Paul may be a racist; he is not a warmonger. While all of the other GOP candidates virtually promise a war with Iran, he alone says, "Don't be stupid." Neither is he a big spender. Of all the candidates - President Obama included - Paul appears to be the only one with the guts to tackle the national debt, vowing to trim a trillion from that 15 trillion-dollar monstrosity his first year in office.

Look at it this way: Racism is a kind of bad window dressing. It is not substantive in America anymore. It was years ago, when congress could legislate "Jim Crow" laws and the courts would uphold them. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized entire communities, and blacks could do little more than cower and pray. Those days are long gone. No racist legislation can get through congress now; no racist legislator would try. Today, all a racist can do in America is practice free speech. And each time he opens his mouth, his freedom and his power is further contracted.

We have a greater need to fear warmongers and big spenders - like twin vampires, they stand poised to bleed this nation dry. Warmongers are greater destroyers of nations than all the racists combined. Hitler's racism killed six million Jews. His warmongering killed 35 million others, besides.

Napoleon's racism barely merits a page in the history books. Yet, he was one of the greatest warmongers of all time. His militarism devastated the entire continent of Europe in the pursuit of a greater France. When he was finished, millions lay dead, and France was no greater than when Napoleon started.

Racism in America covers a wide spectrum. At one end are people like the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan; at the other end is each of us. We all harbor some form of racism, prejudice, bias, or simply fear of that which we do not understand.

Then there are those who claim to detest racism. They are posturers - no better than tin men. (Only a fool would be for racism). To say, "I hate racists", is the same as saying "I hat liars", or "I hate thieves." Who don't? All there is to do about those people is to keep an eye on them.

As for the worst of the racists among us: They are oddities, aberrant personalities that are more surprising when unearthed than scary. Our real fear should be of leaders who would send our children to kill and die for nothing.

A Statue for Smokin' Joe

2012-01-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

Former heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Frazier, is dead. And a clamor has risen in the African-American community for a statue in his honor.

"Hey, they put up one for Rocky. Why not for Joe?"

Maybe because they don't want to (and you can't make them.)

True, Rocky is a fictionalized Philadelphia fighter, portrayed wonderfully by Sylvester Stallone in the movies. Joe, on the other hand, was a real Philadelphia fighter - one of the greats of all time. Yet, the city of Philadelphia chose to honor the fake fighter because Hollywood made him look so good.

Ye members of Philly's African-American community, try this: Erect a statue of Joe, yourself. You can do it. And it doesn't have to be a wholly black effort. People across the breadth of Pennsylvania, and the breadth of the nation, loved Joe Frazier. Start the ball rolling, and watch how whites, Asians, Hispanics, and a kaleidoscope of communities kick in. But this time, the African-American community should kick in first.

Often, blacks feel that if they do it - if it is not done by whites - then it will not be as good; it will not be official. Nonsense. Quality of effort is what makes it good, and official. Do it.

Historically, blacks have felt powerless to effect change, and they became accustomed to this powerlessness. They began to look forward to it. Powerlessness seemed to empower them to do whatever they wanted, (which, in many instances, was nothing.) Go to a "brother" to kick in, and he might respond: "Ask the white man. He got all of the money. He just left me with enough to have fun."

Fun. It is over-rated, and the bane of the African-American community. In fact, never in the history of America has so many adults been so consumed with having fun. Is it any wonder the children have lost respect for their elders? Their elders are behaving too much like them.

It is time the African-American too full responsibility for his community. Time to kick in, and keep kicking in. How else will great communities like Detroit survive? How else will we break the bonds of dependence and powerlessness? What other way to usher in a new era, and a new ethic of effort of empowerment?

A statue for Smokin' Joe could be a beginning - a glimpse at the new African-American resolve.

Michelle's "Cougar" Moment

2012-01-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

This time, my favorite first lady of all time, has taken a wrong turn.

At a Toys-for-Tots event, a marine corpsman asked Michelle Obama to be his date at Marine Corp ball. She said, I'd love to..." (For a first lady who prides herself on serving up healthy dishes to America's youth, the serving up of herself to an anxious young corpsman is taking that bit a bit too far.)

With today's nouveau coupling of "cougars" (forty-something women) with twenty-something men, (and the rash of high school teachers who seduce their male charges), the first lady's flirtation with the young soldier further blurs the line.

It is one thing when female corpsman asks Justin Timberlake on a date, or a male corpsman asks some "hot" female rock star the same. It is quite another when our first lady includes herself in this awkward tribute to America's troops.

(Mrs. Obama, you are the most respectable woman in America. Act like it.)

Bob Schieffer, the aged CBS News anchor who brought us the story, thought it cute, and called the twenty-year-old marine a "courageous young man." We have different word for such shenanigans where I come from.

"Cute" and "courageous" is when a timid ten-year-old asks the first lady to his fifth-grade marshmallow roast. It becomes something else when a soldier "full of beans" asks the same.

Calling it "innocent" won't do, either. There is something about young men that, when it comes to a beautiful woman, there is no such thing as "innocent." This is why the line must be drawn with a steadfast marker.

If the date comes off, I'm sure the corpsman will be a gentleman and, of course, Michelle will be a lady. But the optics are all wrong: Picture the first lady, dressed to the nines, on the arm of a man who looks much like Barack - same complexion, same body type, but half Barack's age. Nothing is to be got from that but the appearance of impropriety.

It turns out that Michelle told the young man, "I'd love to...but you will have to ask my husband." No, Michelle, he does not have to ask Barack anything. No man should ever ask another man, "Can I take your wife out?" Any woman worth her salt can answer that question herself.

Marine corpsman Leeks did not show courage when he asked the first lady out. He showed disrespect to her, to her husband, and to the institution of marriage.

The first lady should have recognized this as a teachable moment, and been instructive. Instead, she succumbed to some odd vanity.

'Nuff said. Next time, just say "no."

The Height of Nuclear Hypocrisy

2011-12-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, the 22nd of November, "experts" at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. waxed eloquently upon why Iran must no be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Thy did not convince.

Iran faces an existential threat from the west; in particular, from the U.S., Israel, and the European Union. These nations are willing - even poised - to bomb Iran simply for wanted that which each of them has.

Iran is in a fix: It lies in the middle of the toughest neighborhood on Earth. No other nation is more beset by nuclear powers. There, in southwest Asia, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, and India have "the bomb". add to that, a nuclear-armed U.S. on Iran's western border (in Iraq), and on its eastern border (in Afghanistan). America's Fifth Fleet patrols the Persian Gulf, bottling up Iran's south. It is the equivalent of the U.S. - instead of having Canada and Mexico on its norther and southern borders - having Russia and China.

Enter oil into the equation. Iran has oil reserves as plentiful as any nation on Earth, (besides Saudi Arabia). When a nation possesses such treasure, it is its leadership's first responsibility to protect it. What better way to safeguard a nation's resources than with the ultimate watchdog - a nuclear deterrent?

Nothing secures America's treasures like its nuclear arsenal. The U.S. has a 650 billion dollar annual defense budget, more than the next 15 countries combined. Yet, for all of our conventional weapons - stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, high-tech drones - take away our nuclear capability, and Russia could defeat us in thirty minutes.

Consider this: North Korea has three or four nuclear weapons - that's all. And that is all the deterrent they need. Ever notice how there is never talk of the U.S. attacking North Korea? On the other hand, when Saddam Hussein's "supposed" nuclear program stalled, we attacked. Libya shelved its nuclear program; we attacked. Iran currently has no nuclear weapons. We talk of attack.

The first phase has already begun, with an attack on their economy. Trade is the lifeline of all nations. Even under the best of circumstances - where nations trade freely - most struggle today. In the midst of this global recession, the U.S. and its allies have imposed severe sanctions of Iran, in effect, telling other nations, "You cannot trade with them." Think bout what it would do to the American economy if someone convinced the nations of the world to not trade with us. The suffering would be enormous. Yet, we impose these conditions on the Iranian people to purposely create suffering. We want them to suffer because they do not follow our rules. Those rules sound like this: Our friends can have nuclear weapons, our enemies cannot.

Israel, our number one friend, has over 100 nuclear warheads - warheads American like to pretend does not exist. India, too, has an unauthorized nuclear arsenal. That is fine with us - so find that despite their having broken our nuclear rules, America has decided to help India advance their nuclear cause even further. But, Iran, who actually signed the same Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that Israel and India refused to sign, cannot think of having "the bomb". They very thought is hateful to us, and - we are made to believe - is hateful to the world.

Israel poses a conundrum: They spurned the international community and refused to sign the NPT so that they could become a nuclear power. Now, they want that same community to "get up in arms" over Iran for wanting to do the same.

Today, Iran sees the NPT for what it is - a farce, not worth the paper it is written on. So, they have decided (allegedly) that they will have a bomb, too. Suddenly, America screams "bloody murder", and calls for crippling sanctions. Some in America call for war.

Are we serious? Have we lost our minds? What amazes me most is how the rest of the world can line up behind such blatant hypocrisy.

Nuclear proliferation is a serious matter. It must be addressed by serious (i.e., fair-minded) people - people who recognized that unfair is dishonest, and dishonest is indefensible.

Iran has as much right (and reason) to have a nuclear weapon as any nation on Earth. (Nuclear weapons are not illegal). When one nation - the U.S., which as over 5,000 nukes - can say who can and who cannot have one, then that nation has achieved the height of hypocrisy, which is a low road that leads to nowhere.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Pipeline!

2011-12-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

Beware of the much-ballyhooed Keystone Pipeline, brainchild of the TransCanada Corp. It is a seven-billion dollar project that would stretch the guts of the oil industry clear across the US, from Canada to oil refineries in Houston, Texas. Don't let it happen.

Better to take that seven billion and turn it into refinery capacity on the U.S.-Canadian border. A northern refinery could process North Dakota's crude, as well as the billions of barrels in the oil sands of Canada. The alternative is an ugly mass of steel snaking through the heart of the nation, despoiling rivers, aquifers, delicate ecosystems, and some of the the most scenic vistas on Earth.

Look at the Alaskan pipeline. I has become an eyesore - a rusting, leaking hulk. Want another one straddling the middle of America? Pipelines are not progress. They are relics waiting to happen - so yesterday, (and so unfriendly.) There is no pipeline anywhere that improves the environment it passes through, nor pleases the people it passes by. Only the oil companies - the corporate giants who have no romance in them except it be hard currency - see beauty in such a coiling mass of regressive engineering.

The oil executive will throw dollars to the locals whose lives they despoil - dollars that will dissipate in the once clean air that now carries the stench of oil across a thousand miles. These are dollars their children and grandchildren will never see, vanished like the vistas they will only see in pictures.

Mr. Obama, reject the Keystone Pipeline; save America that unnecessary destruction. Then, build a refinery on North Dakota's far northern border. Let the only pipeline be the one that runs across Canada, and only a few miles across America to its newest refinery.

That Quintessential Soul

2011-12-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

African-Americans are often confused by President Obama. Perhaps it is because unlike the great majority of us, he is not a descendant of slaves.

That is what we need to keep in mind: Barack married Michelle. He put two black children in the White House who are descendants of slaves, along with a wife and mother-in-law who are like us. He did not have to marry Michelle. He could have chosen a woman of any other race. He did not. He is a black man who chose the African-American community.

There are some things about Barack that was not his choice. In many ways, he is a dispassionate - not by choice. I am sure, but simply by nature. This is perhaps out biggest concern - that he lacks the roiling emotions that are a hallmark of the black experience. We used to call it "soul". That word is dated now. You rarely hear "soul brother" or "soul sister" anymore, except in regard to someone out of the sixties and the seventies.

If we want, we could call Michelle a "soul sister", but we are hesitant to call Barack a "soul brother" because we do not quite believe it. He is more "soul cousin" then "brother", but still family.

The truth be known, a lot of would-be "soul brothers and sisters" are not all that anymore. We began to lose it in the eighties and the nineties. By the 00's, it was nearly all gone, except for the holdovers (like me) - old-timers, many of whom fought in America's second civil war, the one we simply call "The Struggle."

Today, we who are left, sift through the detritus of those heady times, when we linked arms and marked against the racial winds. We were a sight to behold.

So, do not blame Barack. Not only was he born a "cousin," but he is a product of a time that is ever hard-pressed to produced that quintessential soul.

No Referendums Allowed

2011-12-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, is out. He tried to give the citizens of Greece a voice in their future. His cohorts - the Germans, the French, the Americans, et al, were having none of that. They spoke in singular voice: "No." Papandreou stepped down; so did democracy.

It is not that Papandreou's name is synonymous with democracy, but like a flailing Samson reaching with his last breath to do the right thing, he tried to return to the Greeks what which was born in Greece. It did not work. (I suppose the Germans are not sentimental.)

Now, the new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, has his marching orders: No referendum allowed.

A referendum is a simply mechanism in democracies by which citizens of a state can vote for or against proposed legislation that affect their lives. In the present cast, the European Union - in particular, the Germans - offered a bailout package to the sinking Greek economy, one that called for severe austerity measures to be imposed upon the Greek people.

In all fairness, the bailout package appears to be the lesser of two evils. The alternative is a Greek debt default and a likely tumbling-over-a-cliff of the Greek nation, perhaps pulling other nations behind. From all indications, the Greek people were poised to vote the package down, anyway. No chance. The referendum was scuttled, as was Papandreou.

With that, Greece has become a second tier democracy, little better than regimes like Iran that we rail against. Such regimes, too, allow their people to vote, but only so long as those votes do not interfere with the power of the state.

Today, democracy, itself, is under siege by those who claim to hold it dear. At a time when we herald the Arab Spring - the casting off of autocratic regimes for the sake of citizens' rights, in Europe (and the sake of financial autocrats who feign to know what is best for everyone - no referendum allowed.

Greco-American Style "Belt-Tightening"

2011-11-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

The Europeans (i.e., The Germans) are trying to bail out the Greeks. It won't work. The Greeks will not meet their European partners halfway.

For this bailout to work, the Greeks must begin to practice that which innately they cannot stomach - the very utterance of the word to them is hateful. I will spell it: A-U-S-T-E-R-I-T-Y. It simply means, tighten your belt, fool.

The problem with these descendants of Aristotle is they thing they know it all. Americans are not much better. We, too, cringe at the mention of "belt-tightening." We figure there must be an easier way.

Not long ago, Whirlpool, the iconic American appliance-maker, pulled up stakes in Evansville, Indiana and moved their operations to Mexico. Over a thousand people in Evansville lost their jobs. The upside: Because Whirlpool can now build their product at a lower cost, they can sell it at a lower price. Add to that: Money saved on production now goes to research and development. Whirlpool refrigerators are not only less expensive, but according to customers, they are now better.

Zenith, too, has moved to Mexico. One customer said of the new Zenith televisions, "Now, I can buy two."

The lesson is simple: Jobs leave America because Americans want more money than their labor is actually worth.

Doesn't it seem obvious that if you will accept less salary, the product you make will cost less, which ultimately means your product will be more competitive on the global market?

People complain about China taking America jobs. Yet, those same people do not complain when they go into a store and find a pair of jeans for $35 that ten years ago $75.

The free enterprise system works. Americans seem to think that because it no longer works for them, it must be broken. It is not broken; we are. Our work ethic broken. We want more for less.

Many people excoriated NAFTA - that free-trade agreement signed in 1993 during the Clinton administration. Said it would cost American jobs. And so it did. But it also afforded Americans access to lower priced goods.

Americans could still be making those products. They simply do not want to. They do not believe it is worth their while to make televisions ans shoes and paper plates. But what is the alternative - stand around with your hands out (like the Greeks) and expect to be paid simply because you are better than everyone else? See how close that gets you to the American dream.

The Hand of Greatness

2011-11-17T06:55:00.000-08:00

Fate decides the greatness of presidents by the moments it thrusts upon them. In that way, Barack Obama has a chance to be mentioned among America's greats. He has already been blessed (or cursed) with the main ingredient: Mayhem on the existential level. Now all he must do is handle it.

Of the presidents considered among America's greatest, three stand out: Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. It was during Lincoln's presidency that we faced our greatest threat from within. Washington's greatness lies not within the parameters of his presidency, but in that he led the great struggle - the American Revolution - that led to the first presidency. His greatest contribution to the nation during his presidency, besides putting down the "Whiskey Rebellion" was that he helped define what a "president" would be.

Other presidents have come and gone, and we barely think of them - not because they were bland, but because their moments in history were bland. They could have been the smartest men on Earth; they could have been the most courageous. It doesn't matter. It they were not dealt "existential mayhem," they could never be called "great". (Oh, and they could not start mayhem.)

George W. Bush's finest moment came when he stood atop the pile of rubble that was "Ground Zero" and shouted, "We're Comin'!" Outside of that, his presidency, as Shakespeare would say, was "bound in shallows."

Obama has been dealt an extraordinary hand. He does not have a war, he has wars. He has a 14 trillion dollar debt (that may explode). He faces a resurgent China, a resurgent Iran, and a resurgent Putin. And he gazes across an abyss at the "Arab Spring" - not the implosion of one critical nation, but the likely implosion of an entire region wherein lies most of the "mother's milk" that powers the world. Add to that, a rancor in American politics not seen since the days of Lincoln.

Besides, Obama has come along at the outset of a technological revolution, and it becomes him. He grasps it. He did not create it. He simply happened at the time it happened. Now he navigates it with a deftness that is unparalleled on the world stage.

He is the envy of foes both foreign and domestic. He is at once imposing, then reserve. When he imposes himself, they call him a braggart. When he is reserved, they complain that he is weak and unbecoming an American president who must always be out front. It is okay. That is the breadth of the office. Apparently, he has a similar breadth.

In the face of great times, to speak of great men is droll commentary. Yet, in the end, we always speak of great men and women. They are what we imagine of ourselves if only we were dealt the "winning" hand.

Who Are They Kidding? We Like Steroids

2011-10-31T16:39:00.000-07:00

Isn't it interesting that the three top "alleged" steroid users in sports each bear the number "7" as a mark of his personal achievement? Barry Bonds won seven MVP trophies, Roger Clemens has seven Cy Young awards, and Lance Armstrong has seven Tour de France titles. Has "777" become the new mark of the beast?

Steroids are everywhere - from energy drinks to Viagra. We use them in our quest to get more out of life. But no one is so bent out of shape over them as are the purists in baseball. They have become obnoxious.

Much of their disdain is focused on Barry Bonds, the greatest slugger in a sport where sluggers are king. They think he has hit too many homeruns. Methinks their hue and cry is misplaced, especially when you consider that the shrinking dimensions of modern ballparks does as much to devalue homeruns as does anything else.

The other day, the Yankees' Alex Rodriquez popped a ball up and them slammed his bat down as he lowered his head and ran to first base. When he heard applause, he looked up in time to see his pop-up float over the short right field fence. Homerun!

Trying to reduce Bonds' career to steroids is like trying to reduce autumn to a rainy day. You miss the grandeur.

To have followed Bonds' career through his record-setting season - when he hit 73 homers - was to get a glimpse at the most disciplined hitter of our time. He would not swing the bat until he saw a pitch he liked. Such self-control is difficult, especially for sluggers who can't wait to crush the ball. But Barry would wait, and wait, and then, like lightning, he would strike. One pitch was all he needed. How so like the Mighty Casey of the "Mudville Nine."

Now, sportscaster, Bob Costas, has declared that the single-season record for homeruns belongs to Roger Maris who hit 61 in '61. Costas further declares that Hank Aaron's 755 is the career record for homeruns, not Bonds' 762.

I have one question to ask Mr. Costas: Just how many homeruns will you allow Mr. Bonds to have? Fifty-five for a season? Five hundred and fifty for his career? And while you are taking away his homeruns, how many of Bonds' MVPs can he keep? And while you are at that, how many of Roger Clemens' Cy Young are you allowing him to keep?

This is the skinny, Costas: You're a pipsqueak.

"9-9-9", "0-0-0", and "Four Year" Plans

2011-10-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Republicans are stuck with a bunch of candidates they do not want, the survivor of which still has a good chance of defeating Obama.

Romney was pro-choice before he was pro-life. They don't want him. Perry confuses them. Cain has never held an elective office in his life (and they call Obama "inexperienced").

Cain does, however, have the "9-9-9" Plan - (9% income tax, 9% sales tax, 9% corporate tax). Rick Newman of U.S. News and World Report says of the "9-9-9 Plan", "Sounds like a 2 for 1 pizza special." He adds, "but it has merit."

Rick Santorum, not to be outdone, seems to say: "If you think that has merit, you will shout 'Hallelujah' at my "0-0-0 Plan'." That's right, Santorum will not charge us anything. Neither will he give us any help. Need the police? Post your wife at the back door, and you man the front, ('cause the police ain't comin').

Since winning the Iowa Straw Poll, Michelle Bachmann has fallen off the Earth, and is stilling tumbling. (Cain appears poised to take over her spot atop the looney-meter.). Gingrich is a relic out of the GOP past, and Ron Paul is that relative they wish they could disown. Huntsman is the most sensible candidate they have, and we hear his name the least. That point, as well as any, sums up the Republican field.

On the other side you have President Obama. Some say he is not ready for the job. Who is? Remember George Bush's response when he took over the White House? "It's awesome!"

Of course, it is awesome. And no man is truly "ready" because no man has known such immense power and responsibility. Each one adapts as best he can.

Most people figure the key to a successful White House is hiring top aides. That's obvious. The obvious key: Treat your first four years like they are your last. Get things done instead of worrying about getting re-elected. I call it "Lincoln's Four-Year Plan." Leave it all on the floor.

Al Quaeda is a Bot Fly (and it is in our heads)

2011-10-17T15:18:00.000-07:00

America's precipitous decline began on 9-11 with the downing of the Twin Towers. That led to President Bush's declaration of war, which led to the spending of trillions. Ten years later, both wars and the subsequent spending goes on.

The other night, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly declared, (at least) "We defeated Al Quaeda."

"Defeated?" We are a nation of 300 million people, with the most well-fitted army on Earth. Backing our soldiers is advanced weaponry, the likes of which has never been rattled in the history of mankind. We pitted that war machine against a primitive army of 20,000 fighters - goatherders in sandals and head rags. Ten years later, those "goatherders" are still fighting.

Looking at our war-ravaged economy and at our thousands of dead and maimed soldiers, we must wonder, "Who is defeated?" In many ways, Osama bin Laden, even in so-called "defeat", has won.

Since 9-11, America has lived in more fear than at any other time since we were digging bomb shelters in our back yards and teaching our children to cower under their desks at school. Today, we trust no one. We fear diaper-wearing 90-year-old ladies. Defeated? We have defeated nothing.

America faces an existential threat - not from without, but from within. It is insidious, this thing that east at us, and tears at our very fiber. We call it "Al Quaeda." What is Al Quaeda, but our fear of life?

Al Quaeda has not been defeated; it cannot be defeated. It has always existed, in one form or another, and it always will. If it helps, you can call Al Quaeda "evil." But evil, I contend, is like energy: It can neither be created, nor destroyed.

Even the strongest lion pride must remain ever vigilant. Hyenas, drought, bot flies will forever nip at their tranquility. So, what? Do lions declare absolute war at an incursion? Do they decide that every hyena must die? Of course, they do not. They secure their perimeters, they patrol their territory, they accept the tenuity of life.

Al Quaeda is a bot fly. If Bush had realized this - if he had thought like a lion; if Obama would - we would not be in this fix. We would not have wasted trillions of dollars, lost thousands of lives, and squandered volumes of goodwill. We would still be like lions. Having taken our lumps, we could be stretching full-bodied on the plain, feet up, belly exposed, enjoying life at the top of the food chain.

It's Go Time - Let's Go Bare Knuckles

2011-09-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

They say President Obama's plan for fixing the economy is to spend our way out. That is not a plan; that's a "Hail Mary!"

Some say the national debt doesn't matter anyway. Of course, that is absurd. The only way debt doesn't matter is when you have no intention of paying it. In that case, your creditor will soon find you out, and the loans will stop, leaving you to subsist on your means. Try that for a while, and then tell me "Credit doesn't matter."

(Soon, our national debt will be at 17 trillion dollars. If interest rates go to 6%, we will be paying one trillion dollars a year on the interest alone.) Still think the debt doesn't matter?

The other day, an analyst said on CNN, "I wonder if we are seeing the end of this economy as we know it." Yes. Another said, "If Reagan was here..." No; "Hillary could..." No; "Mitt..." No.

Some wonder if anything can be done. Certainly. We could hang mirrors and achieve the illusion of returning to the way we were. Of course, that will not last long.

We could adjust the tax code so that more businesses and people keep more of their money. that might help individual businesses and people. But with a burgeoning population (over 300 million people), and burgeoning numbers of unemployed, homeless, and foodless people, can we so shrink government revenue and still call ourselves a "compassionate nation"?

Less is coming, folks, and we will have to settle for it - less salary, less food stamps, smaller unemployment checks. The days of America devouring 25% of the world's resources are over. We are less than 5% of the world's population. Imagine settling for 10% of its goods.

It is not as bad as it sounds. Imagine fashioning a work ethic again - where we harvest our own fields, change our own tires, and cook our own meals for our families. (Imagine closer-knit families). Instead of taking your children to Disney World, imagine taking them on nature walks. They will find those excursions infinitely more satisfying, and memorable. So will you.

It is time we got our hand dirty again, America; time to do some sweating. Let's stop the whining and go bare knuckles. We can row out of this storm.

Colonel Qadaffi's Cap

2011-09-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

There is something childlike and endearing about these Libyan rebels - the way the shoot willy-nilly and then scurry away. And how about the NATO who, like gods atop Mt. Olympus, looks down on them, hurling lightning bolts only when it appears their minions are in trouble.

Certainly, these rebels kill, and they die. But it is not like they mean to, except they mean to be free. And being ready to fight and die...well, they must wonder, "Shouldn't that be enough?"

No doubt, this helps to account for the lack of savagery in this conflict. It is though neither side has wanted to do great damage, but only enough to make the other side go away.

It is NATO who has brought the savagery to this fight, with their air strikes and Tomahawk missiles turning city sectors into flame and rubble. At those times, the rebels seemed to lower their guns, look up in awe, and like children at a fireworks display, cry out for more.

And then it was over: Victory, crystallized in the face of a fighter who had breached Qaddafi's compound. He came out wearing one of Qaddafi's caps. It was the "the Colonel's" cap he wore, the one the world had seen on the head of the strongman, himself, many times before. Now the newly-bedecked rebel, bathed in sunlight, stands before the battered compound smiling.

Looking at him reminds me of the day my son, Thomas, who was only nine, caught such a fish - it was half as long as he. Holding it as high as he could, he looked up the hill at me and smiled. Twenty years later, that same proud, full-of-the-moment smile is worn by a rebel half a world away.

For me, that rebel is the face of that motley bunch now - he who never, ever wanted to harm a single soul - who just wanted to be free.

Bless you, young man - you and that splendid cap. Bless you all.

America's "Punishment Regime"

2011-08-22T08:50:00.001-07:00

In the wake of the horrific shootings in Norway, where professed crusader, Anders Breivik, killed 77 people, there is renewed debate about crime and punishment in the world.

For all of the damage Breivik wrought, under Norwegian law he faces a maximum of only 21 years of prison. Americans are outraged. Predictably, they want more.

America, the self-proclaimed "Land of the Free," ironically locks up more people - over two million - and holds them longer than any other nation on Earth. We excoriate China and Iran for their penal abuses despite being more like them than we are our counterparts in the West. (When it comes to executions, China, Iran, and the U.S. constitute the Big Three.)

Helge Luras, a terrorism expert at the Norwegian Institute, speaks of America's "punishment regime," flatly stating: "We do not want to be like you." Tone-deaf to that indictment, Americans clamor for harsher and harsher punishment of peoples at home and abroad. And progressive nations like Norway shudder at the specter of Europe's medieval past reflected in America's eye.

What is wrong with us? Are we so consumed with hate that it drives us century after century to act out? Consider this: America is the race of people (Native Americans), enslave another race of people (African-Americans), and intern yet another race of its own people (Japanese-Americans). Across the breadth of this atomic age, we are the only nation to actually drop a nuclear device on our fellow human beings.

We are dangerously close to the edge when the likes of Breivik applauds America for what he perceived as our stand against the spread of mosques in the States. Eighty years before, it was Hitler who, in his manifesto, "Mein Kampf," praised America for the efficient way it dealt with its "Native American problem."

We fancy ourselves the pre-eminent world leader. But what are we showing the world - how to inflict pain and endless punishment? I would like to think we are better than that. History says we are not.

Afraid of the Dark

2011-08-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

They did it. Those gutless wonders in Washington raised the debt ceiling again, (for the 103rd time.) Let them tell it, they had no choice. They were staring into the abyss. (No stomach for that.) So, they raised "the ceiling" to save themselves from the dark.

There is only so much light in America's house. When that fake ceiling finally collapses, the dark will cascade upon us. Better we face that fact now. We are not as strong as we were yesterday, but at this rate we are stronger today than we will be tomorrow.

Evil Remains

2011-08-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

They sought out Hitler henchmen, Rudolf Hess's bones, and found them in a small cemetary in Germany. They dug him up, fired his remains, and then scattered his ashes upon the sea. Triumphant, they then declared, "There is less evil in the world today."

"No," I say, "there is not." Evil, like energy, cannot be destroyed. It simply changes form.

She's No Jeanne d'Arc, But...

2011-08-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

In Bristol Palin's new book, "Unafraid of Life: My Journey So Far", she recounts an episode that is eerily similar to date rape. There, she describes an overnighter she spent with friends when she was sixteen. During the evening, she drank alcohol for the first time, and passed out. The following morning, she learned that she lost her virginity to (her friend) Levi while she was unconscious the night before.

Bristol reveals this incident in her book, but seems reluctant to discuss it on her book tour. When pressed, she insists it was all her fault.

Taking responsibility for your actions is admirable, but here it is only a half measure. When it comes to date rape, one person taking full responsibility is contrary to what both parties on either side of the divide must accept.

Date rape most often occurs when the girl gets intoxicated (or drugged) - either willingly or otherwise - and has either lost consciousness or is so severely impaired that she does not know what she is doing, nor what is being done to her. It is complete when the boy takes advantage of the situation.

Whether Bristol and Levi's episode was an actual date rape, apparently only Levi knows.

What makes this even more compelling is that Bristol is now a spokesperson for an organization that just last year paid her $260,000 to speak abstinence to young people. For a person in her position, it is disingenuous to feign martyrdom in so depraved a matter as date rape where penance must be shared.

Despite her staggered start, Bristol Palin is an uncommon messenger. She is charming, brave, wonderfully human. She not only tells young people to abstain from sex, she declares that she too shall not have sex until she is married. She wants to show them how. In this age of willfulness, it is refreshing to see a beautiful young woman say to our desperate young people, "Follow me."

Is hers a voice in the wilderness? Perhaps. I'd like to thing of it as a voice out of the past calling us all forward to set a better example.

The Anti-Rapture

2011-07-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

May 21, 2011 came and went, and the world did not end. According to radio evangelist, Harold Camping, the end was supposed to begin at 6 PM, marked by a series of cataclysmic events, and the rapture, when 200 million faithful would ascend to heaven. That did not happen. Instead, we got jokes.

Of course, most sane people knew the world would not end - would not even begin to end. But you might be surprised at how many "sane" people hoped something would happen - not in their backyards, certainly, but on the other side of the world; perhaps on the other side of the country (as though the floods and tornadoes were not enough.)

These people hoped - not out of cruelty, nor out of schadenfreude (malicious glee), but out of a genuine hope that this world, this species called "man" would be shakened to a new consciousness of itself and what it is doing. It did not happen.

So, man's inhumanity against himself continues. As Sonny Corleone so famously put it: "They hit us, so we hit 'em back." Yes, Sonny, ad infinitum. And the ravaging goes on - the human rights abuses, war crimes, sexual assaults, missiles - missiles galore - retributions, and indifference. Nothing short of a cataclysm can end it, and even that is no certainty. Perhaps nothing less than the total destruction of the human species will end it, so that all remains is those simple earthlings we call "animals" - they who have shown they know how to co-exist for millions of years where we complex ones fail in a few thousand.

If man's rapture is seen as 200 million faithful ascending to heaven, Earth's rapture must be when all seven billion of us ascend at once, and forever. No other cataclysmic event necessary.

(Mr. Obama) You Kiss Babies Like You're Scared of Them

2011-07-04T09:27:00.001-07:00

We are disillusioned, Mr. Obama, and I think our condition is permanent.

Yet, you seem to have deluded yourself into this false security: Democrats will support you because you are all that stands between them a Republican.

Do not be confused. Democrats may not like Republicans, but they do not fear them. (At least, Republicans do not lie to them.) Democrats know what Republicans have, and Democrats survive when Republicans gain office. You, on the hand, promise "change" then give Democrats much of the same. In that case, the quality of their survival is diminished.

The political pundits think the economy will sink you; I think differently. The economy is bad, but the Republicans can do no better, especially with their obsession with Reagan era economics which was not nearly so great as they remember.

No, you will fall because you chose bombs when we chose you to be different.

When you killed those nine Afghan boys who were gathering firewood outside of their village, you crossed over into a region from whence you can never wholly return. A bit of remorse might have helped, but you had none. Instead, you showed up at a media event that very same night and "yukked it up" with the high muck-a-mucks.

You do not see that act as murder because you did not pull the trigger - you sent others to do it for you. And they flew so high, they did not see the killings, themselves; they only knew there was dying below. And it is they - our young men - who merit the pains of conscience. At times, their conscience overwhelms them; but not yours. We are starting to wonder if you have one.

Can you imagine, Mr. Obama, what it is like to lie in bed at night as bombs fall all around. Imagine the terrified looks on your daughters' faces when they run to your bedroom with their screams. That would be your worst nightmare. Yet, you wreak this reality on children in Tripoli, Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and you are immune to their cries.

With the money you have spent terrorizing civilian populations, you could have fed billions. You could be turning third world clinics into first-rate hospitals; desserts into oases. Instead, you ask for more bombs, and then go on a billion-dollar fundraising tour to insure four more years of your presidency.

We had hope you would be another Lincoln. Instead, you became the worst baby-kisser of all time.

Falling for the Maid

2011-06-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

What is it that makes the world's most powerful men fall for maids? History? That's part of it. Since the beginning, kings, presidents, and slavemasters have gone after the maid.

Then, there is biology: Women are attracted to powerful men, (just as lionesses are attracted to the strongest lion, and cows to the moose with the largest rack.)

Men, correspondingly, are attracted to women who look up to them. (They are not so much attracted to powerful women. Biologically, such women might be a turn-off.) In that way, the master and and the maid are often a better match than is the king and the queen.

And let's not forget physics: Men perform most effectively on women who are beneath them. That's gravity boys; mechanics that work throughout the universe.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and thousands like them watch their powerful wives traipse off to fundraisers and charity events - women's conference in Gabon - and then return home full of themselves. These men can have sex with these women, but more often than not, the men will have to wait.

All the while, the maid, in her plain dress, stays quietly by the hearth - fixes his supper, sweetens his coffee, and makes his bed. She attends to his most fundamental needs. She will take the time to listen to him as long as he wants to talk. She is there.

She is a natural woman. In the master's most primal moments, she is easiest to love.

Osama bin Laden: Vagabond, Villain, or Valiant?

2011-06-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Born in Saudi, bin Laden seems to have called "home" where he laid his hat.

In that way, bin Laden's attack on the World Trade Center was not so much an act of terror as it was an act of war - retaliation for Clinton's missile strike on that Sudanese pharmaceutical plant, and Clinton's later bombings of training sites in Afghanistan.

It is worth noting that before he took on the Americans, bin Laden took on the Soviets - the same ones Reagan had labelled "the Evil Empire." While Reagan talked at the formidable Russians, he would not fight them; he left that to bin Laden. Reagan did find time, however, to bomb Libya, a nation of barely five million people. In that particular strike, he killed a small child in Khadaffi's back yard. She was Khadaffi's daughter.

Meanwhile, the Russians were killing over a million Afghans and shipping Afghan children back to the the Soviet Union where they were systematically deprogrammed, and taught to think and act like Russian socialists. Bin Laden, along with the Afghan Mujahadeen, fought to stem this tide of mass kidnappings, and finally drove the Russians out of the Afghanistan.

Today, bin Laden is dead. According to a recent poll, many Americans believe he is burning in hell. If he is, then I suggest Ronald Reagan sits to the right of him, there for killing that innocent little girl. And I imagine Barack Obama shall sit on his left for his part in the murder of those nine Afghan boys who gathered firewood outside of their village.

Regardless of what we thing of him, bin Laden fought bravely for what he believed in. He had range. A millionaire born into the lap of luxury, he seemed just as at ease bedding down in a cave.

We admire David for taking on Goliath with a slingshot. Bin Laden took on two Goliaths with the equivalent of a slingshot.

I don't celebrate bin Laden - let his people do that. I simply warn my people against the petty way of belittling qualities and achievements in one man that we would hail in another.

The Unbroken Chain

2011-06-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

A wave is forming just as sure as the sun will rise. It will shape families and communities for generations to come. Many children will live in its path, and its wake.

They are sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren of men held in prison for far too long. These children are of that wave, now - swept up each time their fathers are flopped. "Flopped" is prison parlance for "You can't go home." For the children, "flopped" is

simply despair.

It has become a human rights issue in America - not the locking up of men, but the keeping of men for political and financial gain. (Even in China, long-maligned for its human rights abuses, is pointing the finger at the U.S., and challenging its record.) For, here in American, fellow Americans are being denied their freedom so that other men and women can have jobs. They are caged endlessly so that politicians can appear "tough on crime." They have even become and interstate commodity to be bought and sold like so much c

hattel. These poor Americans are kept in such straits because their fellow Americans do not care, and they, themselves cannot afford real attorneys who might negotiate their release.

These men are pebbles cast upon the waters; their children, the ripples those pebbles create. That those ripples shall become waves is as inevitable as the tides.

These children are bound to their fathers, and by extension, they are bound to the prison system. They know when their fathers have served their minimum sentences ordered by the courts. They know of the disciplined behavi

or that has allowed their fathers to fashion good prison records. They are aware when their fathers have abided by all R&GC recommendations - held jobs, completed educational and rehabilitation programs. If there was more the State could ask of their fathers, they know their fathers would do it. But the State has nothing more - except it has cruelty; except it makes these men stay imprisoned for no other reason than it does not feel like letting them go.

There is the pebble that strikes the water that starts the ripples - those ever-expan

ding concentric circles that touches one child after another - one classroom, one neighborhood - until its currents of bitterness and resentment, by degrees, reaches us all.

But there is an alternative wave, the one whose catalyst-pebble is a father returned to the fold. That wave begins with a smile. And there, too, its ever-expanding circles touch one child after another, until its ripples of joy infect entire schoolyards, and by degrees, travel in all directions to infect the world.

No link in this human chain can be broken. We are one, and shall sink or swim together. Those we would seek to drown will not go before their time; neither will they be left beh

ind. They will cling to this scow until we are all rightly scraping bottom.

There is life in prison - good life; life that has paid its debt, and now eagerly awaits a chance at redemption. Those who would smother that life - out of vengeance; out of might, though they be devoid of right - criminally wrong.

It is one thing to die, it is another to be buried alive. Many of these men cry out of their prison sarcophagi with cries that wake their children in the night. They are not the cries of men whose time of death has come. They are the cries of men with lives yet to live, and more than anyone, their children know the difference.

L'audace, L'audace, Toujours L'audace (Audacity, Audacity, and more Audacity)

2011-05-23T06:39:00.001-07:00

On May 1, 2011, President Obama got off a one-in-a-million shot and dropped the world's most wanted man. It was not a fluke; it was not luck. It was indicative of a president who has his mojo working.

We were forewarned when, during a conversation at the White House, Obama delivered a Miyagi-like strike against a fly that buzzed his interview. Followed, that surgical tri-secting of those Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. It, too, was a flawless, unprecedented "whacking" of people who had become the scourge of Mideast shipping. And, now , the strike on bin Laden - bold, gutsy, disciplined. Obama's got it but they want to make him share.

GOP strategist, Mary Matalin, sees it this way: "Obama used Bush policies to get Osama." (Considering Bush had eight years - working with his won policies - and still could not get bin Laden, does not say much for Bush nor his policies.) Some would even diminish this moment by playing the torture card, hoping that might make a bitter pill (Obama's ostensible brilliance) easier to swallow. Their claim: Obama used information elicited from Khalid Sheik Mohammed to get Osama. (That event - the waterboarding of KSM - occurred in 2003. Bush had seven years to disseminate the ill-gotten booty, and it still was not enough time for him to translate it into a win.)

The BBC summed it up best, stating: "Obama succeeded in doing in two years what Clinton and Bush failed to do in ten."

First the fly, then the pirates, and now Osama bin Laden. That, folks, is a hat trick - one unmatched in the annal of presidential audacity.

Mr. Obama Meets the Keystone Kops

2011-05-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Remember the Hatfields and the McCoys - America's famous feuding families? When you try to figure out America's bombing of Libya, if might help to look at it in this context: We have decided to back the McCoys because we know less about them than we do the Hatfields.

The Libyans are a tribal people. The tribes in the west support Khadaffi; those in the east do not, (and they never have.) The U.S. says Operation Odyssey Dawn is designed to protect civilians in western Libya from rebel forces in the west. (Then who will protect civilians in wester Libya from rebel forces in the east?) By the way, the U.S. is thinking about arming the rebels.

Arm? Have you seen the rebels with guns? They are like children with new toys. (One rebel actually carried a toy gun to the battle front!) You want to arm him?

NBC news correspondent, Richard Engel, reporting from rebel-held Benghazi, said this of the rebels: "They fired a missile backwards! Instead of firing it at Khadaffi forces, the rockey took off in the wrong direction, toward civilians in Benghazi." (What has Hillary gotten Obama into?). Engel went on to say: "Another group fired a mortar that was not properly anchored. It tipped over while discharging."

Obama's Libyan adventure appears ill-conceived. And trying to frame it as a humanitarian effort is woefully disingenuous. Rather than protecting Libyan civilians, the U.S. appears to be using Libyan civilians as a shield, behind which we carry out a vendetta against Khadaffi.

This war is not about Libyan civilians. If it were, the U.S. would not be talking about putting dangerous weapons into the hands of incompetent men who are likely to kill civilians on both sides of the line, and perhaps even kill themselves. The president is irresponsible to even think about it.

And why won't he speak in plain English? President Obama has sent 200 cruise missiles into Libyan territory and flown a thousand sorties, wreaking enormous damage. Yet, he will not call this a war. Rather, he calls it a "No-fly zone-plus" and a "kinetic military action." (When no one is looking, he calls it a "turd sandwich.")

Comedian John Stewart quipped, "Mr. President, don't you mean a 'bread-based feces containment operation'?"

You deserved that one, Mr. Obama, for the ridiculous way you use fancy words when "war" will do.

Sarah Palin makes more sense when she asks, "Is this a long-term squirmish?" Yes, she said that. And coming from "the Palm Writer," I don't mind. At least I know what she is trying to say. If only we could figure out what Mr. Obama is trying to do.

Rebels, Rights, Wrongs, and Romance

2011-04-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

On March 17, 10 of 15 nations on the United Nations Security Council voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. (Five nations abstained.) Two days later, the U.S. Navy was lobbing Tomahawk missiles into Libyan territory. Another war had begun.

Those voting in favor of Resolution 1973 say the fight between the rebels and government forces was unfair; the air-strikes would give the rebels a chance to advance.

Unfair? Funny that the UN never concerned itself with the unfair advantage American forces in Afghanistan have over Afghan rebels there. And how is it that the UN can tell Khadaffi that he cannot fight the rebels, but rebels can fight him? That is as unfair as it gets.

And since when were nations wrong to fight for their national sovereignty? A rebellion just ended in Sri Lanka where government forces overran rebel-held territories. Thousands of civilians died in that rebellion. There were no “No-fly zones.”

And where are the “No-fly zones” over Chechnya where Russian government forces have killed thousands of Chechan civilians and their rebel defenders? Where were the “No-fly zones” over Tibet?

Today, if you ask the allies, “Why Libya? Why not Sudan and Cote D’Ivoire; Chechnya and Yemen and Bahrain—all countries where civilians are being slaughtered by government forces—Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron will give this specious response; “Just because we cannot do right everywhere does not mean we cannot do right anywhere.”

Cute. But is what we are doing “Right”? Or is it just an excuse to bomb someone we don’t like?

The UN—the world body sectioning the “Operation Odyssey Dawn,” wonders. CNN reports that Ban-ki Moon, the UN’s secretary-general, is “nervous,” and “is not sure what is happening.” Russia, one of the five nations to abstain in the vote, is “angry,” and wants the bombing to “cease immediately.” And the Arab League, which initially asked for a no-fly zone, (and upon whom the UN based much of the legitimacy of its resolution) is having second thoughts. Not to worry, folks. The bombing will go on. (What would become of the out-gunned rebels if it did not?)

The Libyan rebels are out-gunned for a reason—all rebels are out-gunned. That is the nature of rebellions. Saying the fight between the rebels and the Libyan government should be more fair flies in the history of rebellions.

The Continentals were out-gunned against the British. The Confederates were out-gunned against the Union forces. What makes rebellions likely is not an equality of weapons so much as a balance between weapons and passion. (That is the romance of rebellions.) Sometimes passion wins out, as in the American Revolution. Sometimes weapons win out, as in America’s Civil War. Fortunately, not all rebellions are successful.

Of course, this Libyan rebellion will succeed because of the overwhelming force employed on behalf of the rebels. It will be a sterile victory, however. There will be no romance.

Western forces have co-opted this rebellion. It no longer belongs to the Libyan rebels. (They can’t fight anyway.) This will simply be a European victory over an Arab nation—coalition of advanced militaries defeating a 5^th-rate army, one that could barely defeat a rag-tag group of rebels.

So, don’t be so proud ye coalition of allies. You have not done so much, except to set honest rebellions back a thousand years.

Here's An Idea: Let's Use Their Idea

2011-04-19T07:41:00.001-07:00

President Obama is touting a plan to set aside $60 - 70 billion for a high-speed rail network. I think we should hold off on that.

High-speed rail is already being done, in Europe, for sure. Apparently, it works okay, but it is not revolutionary; it is not futuristic. we should be thinking bigger - looking to do what no other nation is doing, rather than investing in what amounts to an upgrade of Amtrak. (Where is the clamor for that?)

Besides, $70 billion might not sound like much to Mr. Obama, but to us lowly taxpayers, that's a lot of school books. Better we spent it on a new idea.

Lost in Space

2011-04-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

The other day, the U.S. went after Iran's leaders for "suppressing protests" in that country, announcing: "Iran must let its people protests freely without fear of reprisals."

A week later, facing a "Day of Rage" in Saudi Arabia, America's friend, the Saudi king, threatened to "cut off the finger" of any Saudi who dare lift a finger in protest. Funny how quickly the U.S. lost its tongue.

Ideally, the U.S. wants self-determination for the Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East; in reality, we don't. America prefers authoritarian rulers there. We don't care if they are kings, military dictators, or just plain despots, so long as they cater to our interests.

Interestingly, the most democratic of the Arab peoples appear to be the Palestinians. When they had what international observers deem a fair and democratic election, however, the U.S. rejected the results because the Palestinians had failed to elect the candidate America preferred.

Talk about being on the "wrong side of history": When it comes to the Arab Revolution, we're not even on the same plane.

Stop the Violence?

2011-03-18T16:25:00.001-07:00

History is our greatest teacher; it is perhaps our only true teacher. Yet, we seem to reject its indelible lessons. We look at the goings-on in Libya, and we are confused, mostly because we refuse to see through history's prism.

Libya's Muammar Khadaffi has been in power for the last forty years. Of course, he should leave. Forty years is too long for even a good dictator to rule. But if Khadaffi wants to hold onto power in Libya, history says there is nothing wrong with that. If he wants to hire mercenaries from other countries (in this case, Chad and Mali) to help him, history says there is nothing wrong with that. And if the rebellious Libyans want to enlist the help of a foreign power to help them - say England or the U.S. - history tells us there is nothing wrong with that, either.

King George III of England ruled the American colonies prior to the American Revolution. When the Americans rebelled against his rule, he hired Hessian mercenaries to help him subdue his colonial subjects. The colonials, in turn, enlisted the aid of France (and Spain and the Netherlands) to help them overthrow the king.

Khadaffi, like so many rulers before him, is fighting to hold onto power. He is within his rights. So, too, are we within our right to help the rebels if we wish. America goes lame, however, when its president gets on the world's biggest megaphone and declares to Khadaffi, "The violence must stop."

So far, Khadaffi has done nothing so horrific as what America's forces did on 3-2-11 when they bombed nine Afghan boys gathering firewood outside of their village. All of the boys were killed. America's General Petraeus, commander of all forces in Afghanistan, apologized, saying, "We thought they were insurgents."

If I come from a small town, like I come from, you would know that nine boys might be all of the boys (of that age group) that village had. And America says, "Sorry about that."

Over the past ten years, America has killed many thousands of men, women, and children - perhaps as many as all of the other nations of the world (excluding Sudan) combined.

Today, America is running guns into Mexico - some twisted ATF strategy ("Letting guns walk") - designed to fashion a trail to the narco-terrorists. All we have truly accomplished is to up the body count of innocents in Mexico.

We have a trigger happy army in Afghanistan lobbing bombs at anything that moves. We have another army in Iraq poised to do more of the same. American killer drones patrol the skies of four sovereign nations.

The other day, an American contractor in Pakistan killed two Pakistanis, shooting them both in the back. Obama declared the American should be granted diplomatic immunity, (though that American was no diplomat).

American wreaks violence on a scale Khadaffi can only dream about. When President Obama told Khadaffi, "The violence must stop," Khadaffi should have responded: "well stop."

History tells us that "stopping our own violence" may be the toughest task of all, especially when there is no on the block big enough to "make us."

His Cup Runneth Over

2011-03-07T17:10:00.000-08:00

Never in the history of the US presidency has one president had so much to do. Obama's cup runneth over.

Two weeks ago, Raymond Davis, an American embassy worker in Pakistan, killed two Pakistani men. The US asserts Davis is a diplomat and must be afforded "diplomatic immunity." A Pakistani on the street declared, "There's not that much immunity on Earth."

The Obama administration wants Davis released. The Pakistani people want him tried in a Pakistan court. The grief-stricken widow of one of the men has already committed suicide. Other members of that man's family threaten to do the same if the Pakistani government turns Davis over to the US.

The US is threatening to withhold foreign aid if Pakistan does not release Davis. The Pakistani people don't care. (They never see that money anyway.)

If Obama does not secure the release of Davis, the US loses face. If Pakistan releases the American, the people of Pakistan may rise up en masse and add another American-friendly regime to the list of those fit to topple.

Such a regime is Bahrain, a small island nation in the Persian Gulf. America's 5th Fleet is based there. There, also, a Sunni royal family has ruled the Shiite majority for the past 200 years. Today, the royals of Bahrain are facing sustained protests from the Bahrainian people. Secretary of State Clinton has urged the royals to "exercise restraint." Apparently, she did not "urge" them in Arabic, and they must not understand English. On February 16, in the middle of the night, while protestors slept in Central Square, government forces attacked from two directions. There was blood everywhere.

At first, the people there simply wanted reforms. After the Central Square killings, they want change. They want the king to become a figurehead - to replace his power with a constitutional democracy. The US does not want that. That would put the Shiite majority in power, which would amount to another feather in (Shiite) Iran's cap.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is frantic. Not only did they urge Mubarak to withstand the Egyptian protests - going so far as to offer him billions if the US withdrew their aid - they continue to exhort the royals of Bahrain to withstand their protestors, too. Seeing their fellow overlords on the brink must haunt the Saudi royals with visions of their own fat necks on the chopping block.

One consequence of the Egyptian revolution: The favors the US had come to expect from Egypt are over, many never to be revisited again. For instance: No longer can the (freed) Egyptian people be expected to help the Israeli government imprison the entire population of Gaza. That linch-pin in American-Israeli strategy is rightfully doomed.

Add to that: On Feb. 18, the Palestinians put forth a UN resolution condemning the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. The Obama administration had urged the Palestinians not to file the resolution; they did it anyway. That put America on the spot: Of 15 Security Council members, 14 voted in favor of the Palestinian resolution. The US, alone, voted to uphold that which the rest of the international community deemed illegal.

America is reeling. For the first time since 1979, Iran has sent warships up the Suez Canal.

Hezbollah has grasped the reins of power in Lebanon.

There are rallies against American-friendly governments in Djibouti, Yemen, Jordan, and Kuwait.

The one Middle East nation the US "blessed" with democracy (Iraq) is demanding an apology from the US and a billion dollars.

Mexico is on the verge of anarchy.

China is eating our lunch.

Social media has snatched the covers off of the world's leaders. (All of the emperors have no clothes!)

And this: America sits atop a 14 trillion dollar debt. (It may explode.)

Hail Caesar!

Prisons, Politics, and Prisons

2011-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

The Jackson Citizen Patriot, in Friday's editorial, seems to herald a demise of politics in the prison debate. It points to Governor Snyder's efforts to restructure Michigan's parole board as proof. Not so fast. (Taking politics out of the prison system is like taking the sweet out of honey.)

When it comes to the prison debate, it is all politics - whether it is decisions driven by budget concerns, public safety, or issues of human rights.

Politics, simply put, is the art of influencing and guiding governmental policy. There are good politics and bad politics, which should not be confused with honest politics and dishonest politics. Each has its niche - they can stand alone, or they can metastasize into one. For instance, dishonest politics can be good politics, but only in the short run. Regardless, there is never "no" politics when it comes to prisons.

Governor Snyder justifies downsizing the parole board by saying, "A smaller parole board makes sense because there are fewer inmates who are eligible for release." (According to recent CAPP statistics, there are 10015 inmates in Michigan's prisons who are eligible for release. Snyder makes it sound like - thanks to Granholm's parole boards - there are only hundreds.)

That, folks, is politics - the kind that misleads the public into thinking the government has exhausted a reservoir that truly has barely been tapped.

The Citizen Patriot then contrasts prisoner releases for purposes of cutting the budget to those based upon thoughtful policy, as though they cannot be one and the same. Of course, they can be. (Since when is cutting an over-sized budget not "thoughtful"?)

Michigan's parole process founders on a faulty premise, which helps to make it inherently unjust. First, it seems convinced that all inmates, once released, will commit the same crimes again. (The B&E will commit B&E's, the drug dealer will deal drugs, the murderer will murder.) So, they must only return prisoners to their communities whose crimes can be more easily absorbed.

All crimes are threat to public's sense of well being. If you assume that all criminals will repeat their offenses - and that is your basis for holding them as long as legally possible - then let no one go until you have squeezed every possible minute of out of all of them. Of course, that will not save a single community. (There are two million men in America's prisons. If you could execute them all today, 30 years from now, there would be two million men in America's prisons).

Certainly, there are inmates in Michigan's prison who are incorrigible. But the State must not pretend to not know who those men are as a precept for treating them all as if they were. Painting with such a broad brush punishes entire families out of unfounded prejudice.

The prison debate is a complex mix of rights, laws, and budgets. There are many victims: people who are directly (and indirectly) affected by crimes, school budgets that become victims of prison budgets, even criminals, themselves, who become victim when, after endless "flops", their parents and children languish in endless despair.

Politics are with us, for better or for worse. Within the prison debate, those politics must be good and honest. How else to insure lasting justice for all?

The WikiLeaks "Dump": Peoples' Boon, Governments' Bane

2011-02-07T07:27:00.000-08:00

Julian Assange and he crew at WikiLeaks has the "goods": on Russian prime ministers, Lockerbie bombers, American diplomats, and Saudi kings.

For instance: Noting that the rich in Saudi Arabia are the No. 1 financier of Al Quaeda, WikiLeaks reveals that the Saudi King wants America to "cut off the head of the snake" (Iran), as though Iran were Al Quaeda's chief benefactor. (Can't do their own "wet work", I suppose.) Multiply such tidbits as that by thousands, and you get a glimpse of WikiLeaks' offering to the world. For that, Assange has been hunted as though he were Dracula, and has been accused of everything from terrorism to treason. (America is quick to demand transperancy of other nations. When we have it thrust upon us, we cry "foul!")

Shortly after the WikiLeaks "dump", Assange was arrested on rape charges...again. Sweden had dismissed thosw same charges against Assange back in August 2010. Now, they have been conveniently revived (as a favor to the U.S.?). It reeks of more fodder for WikiLeaks.

Assange has exposed the world's leaders like they have never been exposed before. and Amercian news correspondents are besife themselves. (If only they were the least bit inscrutable.) Hypocrites to the core, they excoriate Assange - the good Americans that they are - even as they struggle to contain their giddiness at the mother lode of "scoops" he has laid at their feet.

This trove of information is not an attack on Americans (as it has been portrayed.) Neither is it an attack on the Saudis, the Chinese, nor the good citizens of the European Union. Rather, Assange has pulled back the curtain on the corrupt duplicitous officials of those nations; he has laid bare governments whose lies to their people are systemic, and deadly. In one fell swoop, Assange has provided the people of the world with what their governments dare not: the truth.

So far, none of the WikiLeaks intelligence is in dispute. Despite threats to "bring Assange to justice," according to Fox legal analyst, Judge Napolitano, "The publisher of truthful information is immune to prosecution."

America's Newt Gingrich, nonetheless, calls Assange's acts "treasonous." Treason? Assange is an Australian. Until Australia's prime minister declares him a traitor - which she has not - New casts his bucket down a dry well.

California's Senator Feinstein wants to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act. Passed in 1917, that law was considered by many judicial scholars to be unconstitutional then. Invoking so shadowy an act now would create a mess - casting a pall over newspapers and journalists who have already disseminated many of the "juicier" WikiLeaks tidbits out of pure fascination.

Rather than recoil from this intelligence bonanza, Americans should embrace it. The right of the people to know is the cornerstone of all working democracies. Feinstein and others would leave us dumb, and privy to only what they want us to know, (which is usually what suits their purposes).

But we are not children. We are taxpayers - we are bosses! Most of all, we are the parents who send our children to fight our governments' wars. We deserve the truth. Contrary to what our governments think of us, we can handle the truth. The question is, "Can they?"

The central element to all human relationships is trust. Assange's critics assert that "governments must have their secrets." I ask, "Why must they?" Secrets foster mistrust - not only between nations, but between peoples and their governments.

Maybe it is time for the world's leaders to try something new - like dealing above board for a change. You say you don't like WikiLeaks, then stop lying and cheating and stealing. You will put WikiLeaks out of business overnight.

Make Sense, Save Billions

2011-01-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

The prison debate in Michigan has become far too strained; it's turned to mush. Try this: If a prisoner does everything he is asked to do - abides by all R&GC recommendations, and serves his minimum too - send him home. It is time to stop the madness, this inhuman (and costly) effort to keep people locked up forever. The State can no longer afford it. Time to make sense.

There are over 10,000 men and women in Michigan's prisons who are parole-eligible; that is, they have served their minimum sentences set down by the courts. Yet, these people remain in prison at a cost to the State of over $30,000 per prisoner, per year. At the same time, Michigan wrestles with a budget deficit approaching two billion dollars.

Today, the State seeks ways to trim that deficit by cutting prison costs. Current strategies include lowing the quality of food on the prison menu, reducing health care access, and cutting back on educational opportunities for prisoners. Besides being ineffective, these strategies are wrong. Trying to find ways to scale back on food, health care, and education for prisoners is simply seeking ways to further neglect a captive population. Nothing positive is accomplished. For the nickels and dimes saved today, millions more will be spent tomorrow when those same hungry, sick, and uneducated prisoners are inevitably released back into their communities.

Cut a quarter of the prison population (parole-eligible prisoners), and automatically cut a quarter of staff (salaries), food costs, medical costs, energy costs, etc. With that single action, Michigan's prison budget would be slashed from its current 1.6 billion to 1.2 - a savings to the State of four billion dollars over the next ten years.

In the interim, Michigan will be left with a healthy prison system - not this bloated leech that sucks up monies meant to educate our children, and care for our elderly and our poor. Send parole-eligible prisoners home; educate the prisoners that remain. When they, too, eventually go home, their chances of success - based upon these positive reinforcements - will increase.

If this remedy sounds simplistic, that is because the solution to this problem is more simply than the complex brain-twister the powers in Lansing pretend that it is.

The parole board, too, must end its illogical aversion to paroling "violent offenders." A violent offender's minimum sentence is equally as legitimate as the minimum sentences ascribed to all other prisoners. The manslaughter convict should have as much hope of going home after serving his minimum as does the offender serving a 3 to 10 for home invasion. Saying a man sentenced to 15 to life must serve life makes as much sense as saying a man sentenced to 10 to 30 must serve 30.

Truly looking for answers? Try common sense. You will save time, money, and lives.

Heisman Hopeless

2011-01-26T08:40:00.000-08:00

Nothing captures the NCAA's Svengali-like hold over its athletes like Reggie Bush bowing to the whims of the Heisman muckity-mucks.

They took his trophy - dully earned on the football field - because of a supposed indiscretion committed off it. No crime was committed, just a rule broken - one laid down by men so satiated with greed they think "down is up." Reggie folded as though they were Caesars.

"Return your Heisman," they said to Bush, "You've been naughty."

Bush said, "Okay."

Reggie is a wimp; no heart. He was supposed to say to those phonies: "If you want it, come and get it. And you'd better bring your boys."

Casting Stones

2011-01-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

Have we become vampires? (We can't see ourselves!)

The U.S. has asked the U.N. to investigate N. Korea for war crimes after the North killed four S. Koreans in an artillery barrage. This request comes on the heels of a ten-year period during which the blood of 100,00 thousand people - many of them women and children - smear America's hands.

Did they remove all mirrors from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department when, tho their wonder, they cast no reflection? (We don't want to see ourselves!) How else to explain the inexplicable way we chastise others for sins we commit ten-fold?

In what now may be called "The Lockerbie Scandal" (courtesy of Wikileaks), Libya apparently twisted some arms in the U.K. to get Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Megrahi, a medical parole. Turns out, Megrahi is not as sick as they had claimed. At the least, he has outlived their predictions of "three months to live."

Now America accuses Libya of "using its commercial might to get its way." Are we serious - "using money to get your way"? That is the American way - at home, and abroad. Yet, we have the gall to accuse another country of dabbling in that which we have mastered.

Through our commercial might, alone, we convinced a motley group of nations - call them "The Coalition of the Swilling" - to wage war against a fellow nation (Iraq) that had done them no harm.

Dracula might be amused at this distaste for our own reflection. No ones else should be.

Time Mothers Did Some Old-Fashioned Mothering

2011-01-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

The other day, a five-year-old student's thumbs were duct-taped together to prevent her from sucking them. Apparently, the sucking sound had begun to annoy her teacher.

It turns out the child was "anxious," according to authorities who investigated the incident. The child had not seen her mother in over a year. That mother is a sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed in Afghanistan.

The media immediately jumped the "cruel" teacher: "Who would do such a terrible thing to a poor child whose mother heroically serves her country?"

Who is more "cruel" here - the teacher who duct-taped the child's thumbs, or the mother who abandoned the child?

Certainly, "abandoned" is a strong word, but let's not waste time. The problem is not one of "thumb-sucking." Thumb-sucking is a symptom. The problem is abandonment. The teacher clumsily addressed the symptom, further exacerbating the problem. With or without the duct tape, the child suffers the unutterable sting of abandonment. (The fear of abandonment may haunt this child long after the duct tape is forgotten.)

This nation must decide what is more integral to its existence: a well-adjusted American child, or the rights of an American "Mom" to strap on a rifle and go off in the other direction.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2010-12-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

Listening to President Obama discount President Karzai's anti-US comments was like listening to the Wizard of Oz tell Dorothy and her motley group of malcontents to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Obama was speaking at a NATO press conference, assuring America and its allies that Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, asked America to stay in Afghanistan for four more years. (Is this how Obama reneges on his pledge to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2011...by blaming Karzai?) He must think we are all stupid. He must think we have no televisions, no newspapers - that we cannot read and see and hear for ourselves what people around the world are saying.

Karzai asked America to "tone down your presence in Afghanistan." He asked America to stop your night raids on Afghan homes." He asked America to stop killing innocent Afghan civilians." He asked America to "leave."

We heard that. What we did not hear was the sound of Karzai's arm being twisted behind that "curtain" - perhaps part of a good cop - bad cop routine where America tells Karzai, "My dear, dear friend...if you don't watch your mouth, you will be the ones leaving, long before us."

Afghanistan is becoming an American farce acted out on the world stage. And it is our precious sons and daughters who are caught in the crossfire.

On the other side, there is the Taliban - sons of the Mujahideen, who fierce resistance to foreign occupation is legend. these men will fight forever. On the other side is the Afghan soldiers and police. Their loyalty to Karzai is tepid, at best; their loyalty to Obama's cause is non-existent. They are the ones most likely to shoot our sons in the back on their way to joining their Taliban brethren in his struggle against the invader.

"Four more years," Mr. Obama? You wish. At this rate, there will be only two more years of you, (six more of Karzai), and 1,000 more of the Afghan fighter.

Who Needs a Baby to Hold?

2010-12-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

A recent study found that people who bully others do less bullying after they have held a baby. On the same CNN show, "Parker-Spitzer", that asked about "American Exceptionalism", (see my previous post), the co-host asked their guests "Who needs a baby to hold?"

The same guest who could not zero in on the source of "American Exceptionalism", again went down swinging.

"Glenn Beck needs a baby to hold, and...oh, Bill O'Reilly." Another guest threw in Nancy Pelosi's name. Okay, all bad actors, I suppose. But, again, they miss the uprights. The question is not "Who is a bully?" Too many people fit that mold; perhaps we all do at some point in our lives, having bullied classmates, younger siblings, even small animals. The question is "Who?" I offer two entities: American needs a baby to hold. Who has been a bigger bully than the nation whose favorite boasts is: "We are taking nothing off the table."

We talk about our kids bullying in school when, on the world stage, we exude the notion that might makes right. (Bullies live by that principle.) America is the bully supreme.

And on whom do we beat? Like all bullies, we beat on the those smaller than ourselves. We bombed Iraq after it invaded our friend, Kuwait. We attached Grenada. We invaded Panama. We bombed Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and then bombed Iraq, again.

Funny that we did not bomb Russia after they invaded our friend, Georgia. Neither did we bomb China when they captured one of America's most sophisticated jets. That happened in 2000. We took "bombing" off the table then, and waited patiently while China took its own sweet time before sending our aircraft back to us in pieces.

Speaking of "Taking nothing off the table": Doesn't that sound illegal? Doesn't that suggest that we will do anything; even violate international law to get our way? Isn't that the same mantra the terrorists live by? Nothing is off the table. Isn't that whey we despise them so, because they might do anything?

President Obama has since modified that position, insisting that "torture is off the table." I doubt that it is. We may not torture within our formal framework, but we will outsource such work to places like Egypt, Poland, Bulgaria, and other "black sites" where people can get away with murder. (We torture when we buy torture).

Bullying is in our blood. We think it keeps us safe. Of course, it does not; it only keeps us busy.

Now two of the planet's great bullies have squared off on the world stage. (They need a baby bad). Dare w give each one to hold.

American Exceptionalism

2010-12-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

One night, Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer of CNN's Parker-Spitzer posed this question to their guests: "When you hear the words 'American Exceptionalism', what do you think of?"

To a man, and to a woman, each guest spoke of the American people – their resilience, their diversity. One guest spoke of America's freedoms – of speech, religion, etc. They all made good points, except...many nations on Earth have freedom of expression. And all of the world's peoples are resilient; many far more resilient than we, having to daily endure drought, famine, and pestilence.

As for diversity: The Congo, alone a nation of 60 million people, has over 200 distinct ethnic groups. And what about England, that cornerstone of Western civilization where the most common name for boys born in 2010 is Muhammad. Try that for diversity, America.

No, where the United States exceeds all nations in exceptionalism is in the land, itself. From "sea to shining sea," America has more grand vistas, more fertile farmland, and more square miles of habitable space than any other nation on earth.

One needs only to drive across this country - something i did in the 1983 - to see for himself the extent of America's bounty. It inspires. You certainly marvel at the Spirit of those early pioneers who pushed handcarts and Conestoga wagons over mountains and across rivers. But peoples have moved like that for millennia. Imagine the hardships the first Americans endured as they crossed Siberia and the treacherous land bridge that is now the Bering Straits to get here.

Once they made their way down into what would become the "continental US", they could not have known that they have discovered the "Goldilocks Zone." It is that special place between "too-cold Canada" and "too hot Mexico," uniquely separated from much of the world's madness by two great oceans. It is there they lit a fire and warmed it up for the rest of us - this land that is "just right."

Yes we are exceptional people, but only when we are humbly thanking God for this exceptional piece of ground.

Hu's On First?

2010-11-29T09:17:00.001-08:00

Watching President Obama and his pathetic attempts to work with the Republicans in congress reminds me of what Churchill said of Chamberlain, et al, prior to the start of World War II: "They had a choice between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor; they will have war."

If Obama were to body slam Boehner and put Mitch McConnell in a headlock, it would not be such a bad thing. The Chinese would take notice. Mostly, Americans would be heartened. We would think, "Yes, things are going to be all right."

Alas, that will not happen. Though bloodied in the mid-terms, Obama - ever the gentleman - has already come out with a hand extended in friendship, only to get his toes stomped. They will slam him into the turnbuckles next. (That's how the Republicans fight.)

The other day, Forbes magazine named President Obama the second-most powerful man on Earth. It may be the first time an American president has not held the top spot. That position, according to Forbes, goes to Chinese president, Hu Jintao, (pronounced "Who?"). Base on "what?" To be fair, he does command a billion intelligent and energetic people; (not to mention that he is Obama's banker.)

That aside, the United States still has a gross national product (GDP) four times that of China's. Our military budget dwarfs China's ten times over.

Forbes is being cute. They appear to be sizing up Obama based on his body language rather than the normal levers of power that govern such proclamations.

This is further evidence of Obama's dwindling stature: That a conservative magazine would squeeze an American president between a Chinese named "Hu" and a Saudi king.

Hey dude, ever heard of a drop kick?

Saving the Unpatriotic Penny

2010-11-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase, "A penny saved is a penny earned." Generations of Americans since have lived by that guiding principle. As children growing up in the 50's and 60's, we were taught religiously to save, save, save.

We saved our summer earnings so that we could buy new clothes for the school year. We saved throughout the fall so that we could buy gifts at Christmas. We saved all winter so that come spring we could buy that spanking new used car. and it worked. We never went into debt, and we got most of the things we dearly wanted.

Now America has ditched that discipline. "Spend," they say. "Buy, buy, buy." (It's "bye, bye," all right. we are throwing it all out the window).

The other day, CNBC's Kudlow asked Robert Reich, popular economist from the Clinton Administration, "How do we get out of this economic crisis?" Reich replied, "We must get people spending." In the absence of a Ben Franklin, this is what we are stuck with - quasi-gurus who think a penny saved is an unpatriotic penny selfishly sitting.

Isn't it strange that none of these experts ever talk about lowering prices to achieve economic stability? (The U.S. has lost its competitive edge because of the high costs of its goods, not because we don't spend enough money.) We can see for ourselves that much of America's goods are completely over-priced, including the exorbitant wages/per hour paid workers who do less and less each day. (And the less they do, the less they want to do. "Just pay me," they are beginning to say.)

Time to re-configure "Getting ahead." Instead of hiring one man at $25 an hour, hire two at $12.50, or better yet, three at $8.25. That way, an employer can produce three times the product at the same cost, which will allow him to sell his product at a third of the price, which will make for a three-fold increase in the number of people nationally and worldwide who are able to afford his goods.

On its face, this may look like a simple answer to a complex problem. But it could well be an answer made complex by pride to a problem made simply by necessity.

This isn't it a beauty contest, folks. This is life. The prize goes to those communities, and nations, who families survive.

Les Desagreable

2010-11-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

When "The View" guest, Bill O'Reilly, accused Muslims of killing American on 9-11, he inflamed such passions that co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg stormed off the set. Even as the dust of their exit still swirled in the air, Barbara Walters, grande dame of "The View", screamed to her audience, "What you have seen here should not have happened!" Days later, Howie Kurtz, host of "Reliable Sources", flatly stated, "Walking off in a huff doesn't solve anything."

Funny that we did not hear these admonitions when American diplomats walked out during Iranian president Ahmadinejad's recent speech to the United Nations in New York.

In fact, it has become customary for Americans to "walk off in a huff" whenever the likes of Chavez, Ahmadinejad, or any other leader disagreeable to American policy addresses a world body. American media figures even suggest proudly that we continue to do so.

What message do we send to America's youth and to young people worldwide with these recurrent pictures of petulance?

Time someone reminded our so-called "diplomats" of what the word diplomacy means. Time our leaders practice discipline and restraint rather than embrace rudeness at the first convenient moment. Time for adults everywhere to refrain from childish tantrums the instant other become disagreeable.

What Manner of Man Art Thou?

2010-11-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

On a night in July 2010, rebel soldiers entered a village in the northeastern region of the Congo and raped 250 women and young girls. When they finished, they slithered back in the jungle virtually unpunished.

Two months later, a UN delegation went to the village to investigate this incident of mass rapes. The village women told their horrible stories beneath a thatched roof. Nowhere in their pitiable accounts was there mention of dead village men, (nor of dead rebel soldiers). How can that be? How can there be a tale of 250 raped women, and not a corresponding tale of 250 dead men who had tried to protect them?

Where were the men of the village that terrible night? Did they jump under their beds, or did they flee into the night and hide in the bush?

These unsophisticated village men cannot be expected to protect their families from Ebola, or some other strange and powerful force they do not understand. But they must be men enough to protect their families from other men, or at least die trying.

We understand the rebel soldiers who committed those unspeakable acts - they are animals. What we do not understand is husbands and fathers who do not serve up their very lives to stop them.

What's Wrong with "Choice"...in America?

2010-10-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

The other day, President Obama stated: "Homosexuality is not a choice."

How does he know? Certainly, many homosexuals are born with a natural attraction to the same sex. But jut as many may simply be curious, and choose to experience homosexuality out of a sense of adventure, or rebellion; even disdain for the opposite sex.

If there is nothing wrong with homosexuality - as we say - then in a free society - as we profess to have - "choice" must be as viable a reason for doing something as anything else.

Halloween Sunset

2010-10-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

There before your golden ember
I could easily remember
Gloulish-faced trick-or-treaters dancing
Behind great bags and hopes a'prancing
On the eve of start November

Pumpkins sodden as they were
Original reasons now a blur
With faces carved in frightful laughter
Down from under the harvest gathered
To strew the way with garish mirth

Yet there in Mama's kitchen stands
A cook who's baking pies by hand
No trick could muscle such a treat
Of golden brown and spicy sweet
She's made it known her pumpkin's plans.

And long October's night in walking
Toward a town were bravely stalking
Three autumn youth forsook the rest
In hopes their bounty would be the best
The fear of silence would stoke the talking.

Afar a howl is suddenly heard
Against the other's limbs they gird
A rustle, scratch, and frantic beat
That trips the other's toes to feet
It's just the owl - October's bird.

A raucous laughter surely followed
The afore-felt stomach swiftly swallowed
By visions of werewolves suddenly loosed
And fresh wolfbane and slashing tooth
Three tales of stardom now drilled hollow.

Old Folks

2010-10-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

When I was a boy growing up in rural Newaygo county, I would visit old people. Sometimes, I would perform chores for them, after which I would sit and listen to them talk. When there were no chores, I simply sat and listened to them talk.

People would ask me why I spent so much time with so many different old people. I remember remarking once, "They're nice." Looking back, I repeat: "They were the nicest people I've ever met."

Bullying: Crime, or Rite of Passage?

2010-10-22T12:45:00.001-07:00

Have a bullying problem? What we could use is more real father. With more "real fathers" there would be less talk of bullying, and indeed, less bullying. (Real fathers are the answer to many ills.) Real fathers are an immediate and lasting source of confidence in a child. The bullied child is most often the least confident child, and therefore, most bully-able. The bully, too, lacks confidence.

But even more "real fathers" will not end bullying; neither, will made-for-TV productions like the recently got-up "Anti-Bullying" campaign whose motto is, "Love is Louder." Nice, cute - won't work.

Bullying is a fact of life. Animals use it in their struggles to perpetuate their species. We do the same thing. Boys will bully boys whom either stand in their way of mating, or whom, by bullying they will enhance their chances. Girls, too, bully girls whom they instinctively sense is a threat to their reproductive chances. In other words, children who bully often do not know why they do it, except that it feels natural.

Of course, we humans must always strive to elevate ourselves above our baser instincts. (try telling that to a child).

Bullying could simply be a right of passage that serves a purpose. Being bullied teaches a child to devise survival strategies, like avoidance, or negotiating with, and outsmarting bullies; it teaches children the need, and art, of forming alliances.

No one wants their child to be bullied. But, at some point, we all have been there. Sometimes, we were even bullied by our friends, by our spouse, by our own brothers and sisters. Hey, tall plants bully short plants. C'est la vie!

One Encounter at a Time

2010-10-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

Emotions are a dangerous thing. The always want to be satisfied. They only care about themselves.

Recently, Larry King hosted a show on CNN entitled, "Can Inmates Be Reformed?" The real question is, "Can they control their emotions?" Once that question is posed, however, then every man and woman on earth falls under similar suspicion.

Prison is about control. When men do not control their emotions, they commit crimes. When men can not exert self-control, the State assumes responsibility.

I am in prison because I did not control my anger. Other are here because they did not control their greeds, their lusts, their envies. Many more will follow...for the same damned reasons.

Now, when a man comes up for parole, they may ask him, "Are you reformed? Reformed? What the hell is that? A better question would be: "Have you achieved self-control?" Of course, the inmate will answer, "Yes." And though the words may sound hollow, they have significance - they convey a consciousness of the need to control their emotions. After that, it is a matter of proof.

In that way, we all become like the alcoholic who must prove his sobriety daily - free men and inmates, alike. We must prove every moment, and every day of our lives - one moment at a time, one day at a time, one encounter at a time - that we have discipline and self-control. We are reformed only when we are finally and absolutely convinced of the dangers inherent in our emotions, and our need to control them.

Don't Cry, Mr. Obama

2010-10-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Emotions can be a wonderful and dangerous thing. They feed our passions and it is our passions that get us into trouble. Witness Clinton with Lewinsky, Bush with Saddam—(he tried to kill my daddy), and Reagan with Iran-Contra.

Fortunately, for Obama, he has no such passions. The fact alone should keep his presidency relatively scandal free. Unfortunately, that fact, too, could doom his presidency to an uncommon sterility.

There was concern about all of those years Obama spent in Jeremiah Wright’s south side Chicago church, being exposed to “liberation theology” as Glenn Beck puts it. Not to worry. Obama is virtually unscathed by his years in Wright’s church. That was much more of a cultural experience—i.e., educational—than emotional and transformative.

Obama is unique in that way: he absorbs information like a sponge, but seems to remain unaffected by the clutter of its emotions. That is rare among African-Americans. For we are emotional lot—those emotions forged in the fires of slavery, and then banged repeatedly against the anvil that is Americas grand mosaic.

The other day, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, while addressing his fellow countrymen, began to cry over the state of his war-torn nation. I was touched. And I wondered, in the face of such fierce death and destruction—whether suffered or meted out—that more leaders don’t cry, even our own pragmatic and dispassionate Obama.

Then I thought, no. Obama may be Vulcan. And as we know from watching Star Trek’s unflappable Mr. Spock, a crying jag could kill him.

Bailouts...or Bust?

2010-09-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

President Obama has spent more money in his first 500 days in office than any other human being has spent in the history of money. The sums are not only staggering, they are staggering squared.

Some say he had no choice—the economy was crashing down around us. He had to bail out the banks, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the car companies and AIG…and, oh yeah, how about the 26 billion dollar bill he signed just the other day to bail out state governments that couldn't manage their budgets?

No bailout is good—they reek of rewards for bad business practices. Nonetheless, some of them must be a necessary evil, I suppose. The problem comes with a full embrace of the concept, as though what is wrong is also fair.

If there must be a bailout, to make it palatable, it should be accompanied by an excruciating pain for everyone, so that no one—not the government, not the recipient, not the average ”Joe”—can think of another bailout without experiencing severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea.

The problem with Obama’s bailouts is that they are painless; they offer no balance—no austerity on the other hand, no sacrifice. We are simply spending money, which sounds too much like fun.

What eats at Americans most about these bailouts is that they are not earned. That goes against our grain. Our work ethic may be dulled, but we still hold by this creed: Anybody can spend a buck. The real man is the one who earns it.

Pics from Woodland Park Day

2010-08-18T13:46:00.001-07:00

In Honor of Woodland Park

2010-08-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, August 7, 2010 Woodland Park, MI was designated an historical marker in the state of Michigan. In honor of his home town Larry wrote a song entitled, "Marching As One, Woodland Park." Congratulations to Woodland Park and all those who made her their home!

The old bowed tree in front of The Breeze

Where we tested our leap and our mettle

Sitting the tracks with the sun at our backs

Remembering the days, how they settled

Bid whist games when the rains came

The runs too muddy for sledding

Long, country days, we had it our way

And knew just where we were heading...

The back roads know of the heartaches

And promises written in the sand

They know of secrets that only time will tell

Of enchanted nights hand in hand

We praise above for these woods we love

Its moonlit nights on the beach

For the flowers that bloom in its April room

And memories that make us complete...

Marching as one
Woodland Park
Through a land called "Home"
Woodland Park
Through the woods of our birth
That sweet patch of Earth
Where we grew straight and strong

Singing our song
About the woods we would roam
Whether dusty dirt roads
Or blackberry lodes
It's where we belonged

Coming on strong
Thinking 'bout those we've known
All the people who've stayed
Or just came and played
They made this a home

Oh, the people we've known
How their spirits have flown
Come on back inside
This door's open wide
It's always your home

Marching as one
Through a land called "Home"
Through the good and the bad
The sound and the mad
What a place to belong

Marching as one
Through a land called "Home"
Through the good and the bad
The sound and the mad
What a place to belong..

Twitter This

2010-08-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

With all of the e-mails and facebook, the i-phones, i-pads, and i-pods, you would think we would have grown closer to one another. But we haven’t; we are further apart.

This great technology boom has been a bust in real terms. We are no better at running our businesses, at trading our goods, nor at employing our people.

We put fancy computers into our schools, but our children are no smarter. They learn how to “Search” and “Insert,” but they don’t learn how to read and write. They can twitter, but they can’t spell. We will spend $500 for a computer for each student when all they really need is a book, pencil, and a piece of paper…oh and some discipline. They need to learn how to sit still and listen.

Most of all, these technological wonders have not strengthened our relationship with the people who matter most in our lives. Moreover, I offer that we have weakened our relationships—undermined the very soul of all relationships: trust.

Instead of having faith in our last conversation before our children go off to school and our spouses go off to work, we seek the continuous assurance that text messages provide. We are more dependant than ever, and less free.

If I were in the world, I would ban all visitors from bringing cell phones into my home. If you came with one, you would have to check it at the door, or leave. As you leave, I would suggest that you would go home and turn the cell phone off. Then listen to the most unique and beautiful sound of all—the sound of your family.

Oil Upon the Waters

2010-07-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

We call ourselves “a nation of laws.” But our laws are weak and subject to the whims of those who wield power.

There is another set of laws, however—the laws of physics. They rule the very universe. They are the same laws from which we find that “oil and water do not mix.” Still, we pour oil upon the waters.
The Gulf region is blessed with sprawling beaches, scenic vistas, and abundant fisheries. It also has oil beneath its great waters. In fact, oil revenue accounts for well over a third of Louisiana’s economy. Tourism and fishing fairly round out the rest. Interestingly, fishing and tourism easily go hand-in-hand. Oil, on its best day, is incompatible with both. On its worst day, as we plainly see, it is a death sentence to the other two. Still, the Gulf coast people want that oil. Tell them oil is incompatible with fine beaches and abundant fisheries, and you breach one of their favorite laws—the one that says they can have their cake and eat it, too.

There are no innocents in this Gulf debacle, (except for the fishies.) We all have a part in this nightmare—Dems, Republicans, oil companies and us plain old everyday greedy Americans. Oil is big money. That’s how we like our money…big. When President Obama tried to levy a moratorium on off-shore drilling, the Gulf coast people screamed. They want their oil.

These people have played a willing game of Russian roulette. Now that the chamber has discharged, they look about as though they had no idea it was loaded. They had gone to the casino with the rent money, and lost. Now they want their money back. And they will get it.

Today it is fashionable to pity the people of the Gulf. Obama convinced BP to set aside $20 billion escrow account for them. Larry king held a telethon—raised $1.8 million for those “harmed by the spill.” How nice. People getting paid for the ocean they despoiled.

This $20 billion escrow account is obscene—a grab bag, the likes of which this world has never witnessed. As this piece goes to print, lawyers across America are filing into “How-to” seminars, and coming out touting their abilities to not only get at that money, but to follow up the “big-grab” with lawsuits if they don’t “grab” enough.

There is one group, “Hands Across The Sands”—people from all 50 states and 35 nations in hand-holding solidarity—hoping to stave off any further off shore drilling. Against the immense weight o greed in this country, they just as soon hope to hold back the tides.

A snapshot of what they are up against will crystallize in the moment the victim petitioners light into that $20 billion pot of gold. It will be a feeding frenzy. There will be blood.

Meanwhile, the oil continues to pour into the Gulf waters. On the 60^th day of the oil onslaught, the Louisiana legislature called for a day of prayer—one that will end the gusher and save their precious shores. (Now they think of their shores.)
Interestingly, they pray to God to stop the oil when conceivably it is the same God who all along had protected their shores from that same oil—burying it as he had millions of years ago beneath a mile of ocean and two miles of bedrock. It was the people of the Gulf who cheered on BP, spurred as they were by vision of plum jobs, big-spending oil workers, and lucrative contracts. They willed BP to be relentless, and so BP was, until it had punched a hole three miles down and struck black gold. Now they want God to re-seal the seabed.

Sorry, folks, it just ain’t that easy, now that you have a tiger by the tail.

The Naked Prey

2010-07-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

In the 60’s movie, “The Naked Prey” - set in colonial Africa - a Brit on safari shoots at something big swimming in the river. When asked what it was, he replies, “ I don’t know. But whatever it was it’s dead now.

Today, America conducts a drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan. These unmanned drones target people from high up in the sky and obliterate them with precision-guided missiles.

A month ago, the Obama administration announced that it had killed M. Mehsud, a top Taliban commander, in another such strike in the tribal areas. Followed the self-congratulatory pats on the back.

Now it turns out that Mehsud is not dead after all. Seems he was spotted the other day, alive and well, in those same tribal region .

So, who did we kill in that drone strike? Apparently, we do not know. All we know for certain is that whoever it was, he’s dead now.

Time to Condemn Slavery, And Those Who Loved It

2010-05-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

“No people have ever fought so valiantly for so wrong a cause.” --Ulysses S. Grant, upon accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox

Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonald, has declared April, “Confederate Appreciation Month.” Though he failed to mention slavery in his initial declaration, he hopes to honor those who died to defend it. Among Americans, there was a scant outcry.

America has always tried to look away whenever the south acted out. We continue that practice today, as though we pity them still, and wish to leave them dignity where there is none.

Slavery was a cancer. The confederacy’s very reason for being was to insure that cancer survived, and spread. All other efforts to make more of the Confederacy—to separate it from its purpose—are blatant attempts at deception, and exercises in denial. Whenever we seek to placate the South by catering to its precious Confederacy, we keep the cancer alive.

Now is the time for a resolution declaring the enslavement of African-Americans a Crime Against Humanity. Such a resolution is completely overdue.

Time to revive the spirit of the 60’s—not just the 1960’s, when African-Americans rose up to realize their finest hour—but even the 1860’s, when Abraham Lincoln threw down the gauntlet—issued the Emancipation Proclamation—and drove this nation to make a hard right turn.

Time to end all pretenses that the ante bellum South was anything more than a renegade province that waged a 200-year reign of terror against a defenseless and innocent people.

Time to admit that the confederacy was nothing more than a last ditch attempt to save slavery—to defend to the death the most vile system devised by man.

Time to condemn slavery once and for all, and to condemn those who loved it.

Just as Lincoln’s Proclamation ended all Southern hopes of England, or any other foreign power siding with the South, so a “Crimes” resolution will end all future attempts to glorify that which is officially an abomination.

Today, we can end all doubt as to where we, as a united nation, stand. No senator or representative will do it for us. If they would, then they would have done it 150 years ago, or some other time between then and now. Most have neither the will to brave those political winds, nor the vision to see what is an absolute and just imperative if this nation is to move forward as one.

You join me in offering this transformative resolution to the American People. Let Congress join us. We can do it. It is time.

The system of slavery inflicted upon the African-American people, primarily practiced in the southern states of America during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, shall henceforth and forever be declared a Crime Against Humanity.

All parties in support of said system, e.g., the Confederacy, et al, shall be deemed complicit in these crimes and unworthy of any and all further recognition except that recognition be wholly within the confines of its association with slavery, and the object of this resolution.

Signatories to this Resolution include:

Larry R. Carter, et al

Who Does He Think He Is?

2010-05-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

Karzai. That’s who. What does that mean? We are not sure.

Karzai is supposed to be America’s No. 1 partner in our fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sometimes, he is. Then there are other times, like when he recently invited Iran’s Ahmadinejad to Afghanistan. After receiving the “red carpet treatment”, Ahmadinejad delivered a fiery anti-American speech, with Karzai standing by his side. He followed up that visit by accusing America and its allies of rigging the last Afghan election—ironically, the same election that gave Karzai another four years in power.

Karzai then traveled to Kandahar, the province believed to be the Taliban stronghold—the same province against which American forces are planning a major offensive. There, he assured tribal leaders that no such operation will take place without their consent.

Then, the stunner of all: Karzai threatened that if American officials did not stop rigging elections and then bugging him about corruption, he might join the Taliban.

What’s going on with our “partner”? Perhaps he read Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue. Could be he is “going rogue,” himself.

Maybe Karzai is seeking to add iron to his Afghan bonafides. After all, when his fellow countrymen were facing down the great Russian army back in the 70’s, Karzai went missing. Does he fancy himself “facing down” the great American arm today?

Time for America to come home. Let Karzai be Karzai. Let him entertain his fantasies without another one of our precious sons dying for them.

I Need to be A Better Man

2010-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

During his press conference at the Master's on Monday, Tiger Woods looked out over the room full of media and said, "I need to be a better man."

It is something we all should say, if not every day, then at least once with sincerity.

Release the Crazies

2010-04-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

Today, some Republicans have become what many of the South’s confederates became after their defeat in the Civil War. They, too, could not accept defeat, and the changes defeat wrought. They turned to terrorism.

Led by one of the great cavalry officers of the Confederacy, Nathan Bedford Forrest, they donned masks and terrorized the most vulnerable of Americans—the former slaves.

These people who vandalize Democratic offices today and threaten the families of congressmen and senators are no less criminal than were Bedford’s hooded Klan. Just because they are not blowing up churches and killing little black girls does not exempt their acts from being called “terrorism.” Terrorists sow fear. That is precisely what these people hope to wreak upon those who have defeated them.

So, who is leading them today?—The likes of Neugebauer who screamed “baby killer” on the House floor, and Minority Leader Boehner who declared Congressman Driehaus “ a dead man” for voting in favor of the health-care bill.

Then there is Rush Limbaugh who, the day after the health-care bill passed, told his listeners, “It is your turn to do whatever it takes to defend your freedom and your country.”

These messages are cloaked in double entendre to mask culpability, much like the Klan were cloaked in white to mask their dark intentions. Yet, they are clearly martial, these missives, designed to rally—not the entire body politic, but enough “crazies” to get at the fabric that is the bedrock of this nation’s tranquility.

These people remind us that our history with terrorism did not begin in the deserts of Arabia. It was birthed in America—nourished by the refusal of the vanquished to accept the terms of defeat.

What Debt Ceiling? The Sky's the Limit

2010-04-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

Watching the U.S. economy, with its great deficits and diminishing work ethic, is like watching a huge heavenly body on a great collision course. Because of its immense girth it appears to move so slowly as to not be moving at all. (So unlike the small Greek economy that hurtles like a comet to it impact.) We move steadily, nonetheless, and much faster than we think. It is our growing debt that powers us I this fashion.

The alternative to this rush to destiny is to tighten our belts—pay our debts and live closer to our means. But that would propose “hard work”, and we like it easy.

That is why we created a debt ceiling in the first place—to give us some “playing room.” It also exists to remind us when to stop accumulating debt, and when to start paying it down. The problem with that: We raise the ceiling regularly, and more frequently all of the time. (Debt is like that. The more you achieve, the quicker you achieve more.) Republicans raised the debt ceiling four times under Bush. Obama has raised it in his first year—from twelve to the present thirteen trillion dollars.

Trillions. We must not know what “ceilings” mean. (Ceilings exist so that things don’t go through the roof!) For us, they exist to advance the illusion of fiscal responsibility without being responsible at all.

What is debt, anyway, but a promise to pay? Yet, I get the impression that we have no intention of paying down this mountain of debt. Rather I think we will build on it some more, and build, and marvel at it because it is there.

Sure, it will be like contemplating a voyage to another star system. We might consider such a trip—play with the numbers, (the light years and such), but we are not serious; we do not truly plan to go there. We only contemplate it out of amusement—because we know it exists “out there,” in a proximity to us, however inaccessible. But we are no more serious about mounting that expedition than we are about mounting this debt.

So, why not “raise the ceiling”—make that mountain all the more insurmountable? That way, we can look at it with even greater awe, and fantasize endlessly without fear of ever having to go there and pay that terrible price.

Where Eyes Cannot See, Hearts Cannot Feel

2010-03-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Four days after the earthquake, a Haitian woman woke up on the operating table to find her leg had been amputated. she looked up at the doctor and said, "I have no way to pay for this."

We have underestimated these people. Now, at least, I hope we can see.

Haiti is African-American - it is a true slice of Africa in the heart of the Americas. Call it "Africa-West," if you will, for that is what it is - not just in the way the women carry the bundles on their heads, a charming picture right out of Ghana or Mozambique - but that it mirrors the true dysfunctionality of the African nations, and in a lot of ways, their quaint and curious self-assurance.

Haiti was born a slave colony in 1691. After 100 years of French rule, the slaves revolted, and defeated Napoleon's army. In 1804, the victors established the independent state of Haiti. the only nation on Earth founded by slaves, it would take another 58 years before the US formally recognized Haiti in 1862.

Today we look at Haiti's devastated capital, Port-au-Prince, and are filled with incredible doubt: "Rebuild that?"

We can. We rebuilt Atlanta and Richmond after the Civil War. It was the US, with its Marshall Plan, that helped to rebuild the great cities of Europe after World War II - London and Berlin, Warsaw and Cologne. We rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Haiti's Leogene and Port-au-Prince can be rebuilt; they must be rebuilt. We should have done it long ago, except we could not see.

Missing "Dad"

2010-03-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

When I saw Tiger Woods standing there, apologizing to the world, I saw a man in need of his father. That's right. Tiger does not need apologies, he does not need rehab, and he does not Oprah. Tiger needs Big Earl.

Tiger Woods is all bollixed-up now. If his father was alive, this spectacle that has played out over the past three months - culminating in last week's pathetic apology - would never have happened. Tiger may have committed the same indiscretions, but when it all "hit the fan," Big Earl would have told Tiger: "Apologize to your wife, your children, and your mother. Then, get back on tour and kick some butt." That is what Tiger needed to hear, and that is exactly what Tiger would have done had his father been alive. But his father is dead, and instead of a strong male voice when he needed it most, Tiger has heard a lot of female whisperings.

More and more, we downplay the value of fathers in this society. (We do it at the country's peril.) And men become more confused. In their confusion, they feminize themselves. That is certainly a shame. When this "feminization" confuses our sons, it becomes a tragedy.

There is nothing wrong with men being sensitive. It signals that they are more alert. But let the women be female. (They are better at it.) Besides, there are enough real women in America. What this country needs is more real men.

Now Tiger has lost his balance, and his father is no longer there to get him "centered." It is nature's way that we are all fatherless soon. The question becomes: Have you been fathered - have you been guarded by a man that has always had your back? And when that father is gone, do you remember to "man up" like he "manned up" for you, literally from day one? Or is his voice drowned in the confusion?

Time to man up, Tiger. And you, President Obama - you appear to be missing your father, too

The Palm Writer

2010-03-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

I must be a closet Palin fan. I have always liked her conservative values - that good old time religion - but when she went to the crib notes written across her hand, that took it over the top.

There is a charm there - a play right out of my grade school past. Nothing fancy, nothing phony; just pure Palin trying to make ends meet.

It was a special moment in 21st century American politics. At a time when we are bombarded with, and overwhelmed by technology, she goes to the old standby - notes written across the palm of her hand. Brilliant! I'm coming out.

We Don't Even Have a Sword!

2010-02-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

An American army unit, while passing through an Afghan village, stopped to ask a local for help. After being peppered with a slew of questions about the Taliban, the poor villager cried out: “You have your tanks and planes. If you can’t defeat them with all of that, how do you expect us to help you? We don’t even have a sword!”

A sword. These are the people we bring our great army against- -a medieval lot of goat herders, cobblers, and metal smiths.

Now President Obama plans to escalate the war against these people. He tells America, “We will finish the job.”

No, Mr. President, you will finish nothing in Afghanistan. You have neither the power nor the moral authority.

This is what will happen: You will send the most advanced army on Earth against a poor and illiterate people. You will kill many of them- -men, women, and children- -and then you will leave. And the Afghan winds will blow over your tracks, and the Afghan rains will wash all trace of America away. All that will remain of America in Afghanistan will be what is told in the history books.

The Afghans will write their history. They will speak of the brief moment when the Russians interfered in their lives, and then again when the Americans interfered.

America’s story will be told on one page. No matter how many of our brave soldiers die there, no matter how we seek to glorify their sacrifices in our own books, they will merit only one page in the Book of Afghanistan. It will be a bloody page- -a tale of interference in the lives, the culture, and the history of the Afghan people.

"Radical" or Just Plain "Ready"?

2010-02-25T19:22:00.000-08:00

America is waging a war against people they pretend to not understand.

Recently, CNN featured this headline story: “What Turns Young Muslims Radical?” as though young Jews, Christians, and Hindus never turn “radical.”

Young men are the strong arm of all righteous (and un-righteous) movements. Just because they do not wait for formal declarations to go into action does not make them “radical.” They may simply see a cause bigger than themselves and feel compelled to be the first to lay their lives on the line.

When Kaiser Wilhelm was over-running Europe during World War I—even before America joined the war—young American men were traveling to Europe to fight the Germans. Before America’s Civil War, young Northerners called “Free-Soilers,” traveled to Kansas to fight (and sometimes kill) those who sought to extend slavery into the new territories.

Throughout history, young men of all faiths and nationalities have turned “radical” at the sight of perceived injustices against other human beings.

I myself as a young African-American, joined the front lines in the struggle against racism in America. My “militancy” crystallized in the late ‘60s when, at the age of 17, I fought in a race riot—up and down the halls of Baldwin High.

Where people care deeply, it is always their young men who rise up and show how much they care. This does not make anybody right or wrong; it only shows that we are all human.

Lincoln's Four Year Plan: Leave It All On The Floor

2010-02-25T19:16:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is fond of comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. If not outwardly, then certainly there is an inner gleam when he thinks of the lanky senator from Illinois who became president. But there is more to Lincoln than being tall and lanky, and having come from humble beginnings: When he got his chance, Lincoln left it all on the floor.

Lincoln’s election to the presidency brought the nation to the brink of destruction. South Carolina immediately seceded from the Union, followed in swift order by the rest of the states that would comprise the Confederacy. The Fuse lit for the most explosive four years in America’s history. Lincoln never blinked.

Braving the winds of a perpetual storm, he learned war on the fly, even as he fought for the nation’s very survival. In his four years, 600,000 Americans died.

By the end of those four years, Lincoln had lost a son in the White House- -11- -year-old Willie- - his wife had gone mad, and he was left a gaunt and emaciated figure of his former self. He left it all on the floor. He won the war, he preserved the Union for us all, and then he died.

Barack Obama does not have to die, neither must he lose a precious daughter; Michelle need not go mad. But he does need to leave it all on the floor.

Mr. Obama: Think not about a second term. Conduct this term you have like it is your only term. Be a Lincoln. Do this, and you will get a second term, whether you want it or not- -whether you have the strength left to stand, or not. Do this for your country. Whether you know it or not, this is what you signed on for: To be a Lincoln; to leave it all on the Floor

Tear Down That Wall!

2010-02-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

The other day, on CNN, I was adopting American parents place a gadget inot the hands of their newly-adopted Haitian child. The child - no older than four - soon became enmeshed in buttons, oblivious to the proud parents who stood over him.

A technological device is the last thing that child needs. (He's just a baby!) He has been through a great earthquake. His entire world came crashing down. He needs talking with, and walking with, and reading to.

There will be plenty of time for technology. There is a short window - those early years - during which a parent can build a special bond with his child. Those precious years must not be wasted forging an unholy bond between child and technology. Instead of allowing such a wall between ourselves and our children, we should be tearing it down.

Then, there was our president - the same day, on the same channel - standing behind two TelePrompTers as he addressed a grade school audience. (They are just babies!) If you can be human with them, who can you be human with?

On of the raps against President Obama is that he is emotionally detached. His inability to "feel the people's pain," as Clinton would put it, is exacerbated by his tendency to inject technology between him and the people.

Now, as a cost-cutting measure, he wants to put a freeze on executive staff pay. Are you serious? Freeze? With the kind of advice they have been giving him, he should be imposing a pay cut. (Do that we'll call it "even.")

The first thing his over-priced staff should have done was advise him against taking TelePrompTers into a school - any school. In fact, except for major speeches, get rid of the TeleprompTer altogether. Designed as aids, they have become barriers that mirror insecurity.

Technology. It is becoming less and less about people communicating with people, and more and more about technology, itself.

Time for someone with guts in this administration to stand up to our president and say, "Mr. Obama, tear down that wall!" And time for us to do the same.

Take a Hike!

2010-02-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Democrats are so proud of their "filibuster-proof" majority in the Senate that they will crawl on their bellies to appease it.

Enough already! With behavior like that, they don't deserve a 60 vote majority. Better that they had 56 or 57 seats in the Senate, instead. At least, then...perhaps, they would stand up like men rather than cow to the likes of Landrieu and Lieberman.

And speaking of Lieberman: It is time Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, stripped the closet Republican of his committee chairmanships and told him to "Take a hike!"

And while he is at it, tell "Louisiana" Landrieu and "Nebraska" Nelson - who held the Senate vote on health care hostage for their own sakes - to do the same. The Democrats would be better off without them. They would certainly smell a lot better.

(Larry wrote this piece before the election of Scott Brown(R) to the Senate and ending the so-called "filibuster-proof" 60 vote majority for the Democrats in the Senate).

Rally 'Round, America

2009-12-23T11:18:00.000-08:00

President Obama made his much-awaited speech on Afghanistan this past week. His purpose: To rally America around the war effort. He failed. Fancy words and false emotions are never good rallying points.

First, he invoked 9-11. That was a shameful attempt to stoke a nation’s anger, and this from a president who is fond of saying, “I prefer to look ahead.”

Haven’t we killed and died enough for 9-11? To avenge the deaths of 3,000 Americans, we have killed over 100,000 Iraqis and Afghanis, and lost another 5,000 Americans besides. Enough of 9-11. Build your memorial and move on. Certainly, no more human beings need die for its sake.

Second, Obama seeks to blur the lines between the Taliban and Al Quaeda, to mislead as many Americans as possible into thinking the Taliban are responsible for 9-11. The Taliban are no more responsible for 9-11 than are the Americans, or the Saudis.

The people who brought down the Twin Towers—90% of whom sere Saudis; none of whom were Afghanis—were trained in the U.S., boarded planes in the U.S., with the express purpose of using U.S. planes against the U.S. Most Americans know this. Yet, Obama seeks to convince even these Americans that it is the Taliban (and the 100 remaining Al Quaeda in Afghanistan) who threaten the U.S. The Saudi, Osama bin Laden, may have plotted the 9-11 attack in Afghanistan (while he was a guest of the Taliban), but that plot could just as easily have been hatched in an Algerian bath.

How does our president hope to convince Americans that the people of Afghanistan pose a threat to us? Most reasonable Americans can look at a map and see that Afghanistan is landlocked. It has neither an air force, nor a navy. Threaten us? It is easier to get to America from almost any other place on Earth than it is to get here from Afghanistan.

And with all of the government workers in this country—CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, Coast Guard, National Guard, air traffic control, Customs, local and stat police—if every one of them simply did the job they are paid to do, not one Afghan could get close to the U.S. without an invitation.

Then there is the matter of Obama’s offer to the Taliban: “Lay down your guns and renounce violence…” Are you serious? “Lay down your guns….” This from the president of a nation whose citizens’ right to bear arms is written into its constitution.

President Obama cannot tell his won citizens to “Lay down your guns…” Yet he goes to a foreign land and tells its citizens to “lay down” theirs. Does he believe Americans are so hypocritical as to rally ‘round that?

The Boys of Woodland Park

2009-12-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

It is normal for young men to rise up against foreign invaders; it is normal for young boys to want to start early.

When I was a boy, I attended a one-room school in Woodland Park, Michigan, a small African-American village at the northern edge of Newaygo County. During recess, we had our games: baseball, wrestling, fishing, and in the winter, we went into the swamps to beak ice.

But no game mattered to us like our war games. We were Marines, and we held ourselves to that unique discipline. We even had to each learn the Marine Corp battle hymn, and be ready to sing it.

It was the late 50’s and early 60’s, and the enemy invader was the Germans. They lurked behind every tree, and beneath every knoll. Many a day—with rock grenades and guns made of sticks—we bravely charged mortar batteries and machine-gun nests in defense of Woodland Park. It was our job. We took it seriously.

No one told us to do this—we formed our battalion instinctively, and waged war on the imaginary enemy with the zeal of Spartans.

Today when I look into the innocent faces of Afghan boys on the evening news, I see in them the Boys of Woodland Park—the same spirit, the same yearning to fulfill a primal destiny.

As we wage our 21^st century wars on these foreign soils, let us be wary of becoming the face of the eternal invader. For if it comes to that, the Boys of Afghanistan will dream of us. And, in their dreams, they will vanquish the invader. I know. I was one of them. It is their job.

He Doesn't Know His Own Strength

2009-11-24T15:52:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration is like the huge bodybuilder who is nonetheless convinced that he is small.

The other day, Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s closest advisors, told CNN’s Campbell Brown, “It is our job to speak truth to power.”

No, Ms. Jarrett, it is the little people’s job to “speak truth to power.” Truth is all the little people have. It is your job, as occupants of the White House, to project power. You have had close to a year in the White House, and apparently you haven’t figured this out.

(If) and when you do “figure it out,” you might want to tell your boss. He is the one standing in the mirror wondering why his arms are so skinny.

Peace: The Height of Idealism

2009-11-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

There is a reason why Americans are having a hard time reconciling with Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize: Pure selfishness.

More than any other American president, Barack Obama is an international. He hails from Indonesia and Pakistan and Kenya; from Hawaii, Kansas, and Chicago’s southside. He is a man of peace if for no other reason than he inspires more oppressed and disenfranchised peoples worldwide than all of the other nation’s leaders combined. It is those Americans who think only of themselves who will fail to appreciate this.

I, too, was surprised at Obama’s selection for the Nobel Peace Prize, not because of his “lack of achievement,” but surprised that a world body (like Norwegian Nobel committee) could actually see.

Idealism aside, Obama appealed to the most basic instinct in human beings—that of being social creatures. He said to us: “Let’s talk.” Nothing promotes peace like “talk”; and no president has been more willing to talk to “the despised” than has Obama.

When he said, “I will talk with Chavez; I will talk with Ahmadinejad,” in one fell swoop, he sent a message—not just to world leaders, but to human beings worldwide: “Talk to those with whom you disagree.” The message is peace.

Not that there is anything wrong with idealism. (The concept of “peace” is the height of idealism.) That Barack Obama graduated from on of the most prestigious universities in America does not matter to many of the world’s dispossessed. They do not see in him, “ A man from Harvard.” In Obama, they see another “dispossessed”—spawned from the soil of a quaint and dusty Third World village. His story is more than an American Dream. To them, it is the dream of billions worldwide.

More than anything, Barack Obama has piqued the imagination of children. From ghettos to “favelas”, from Maui to Mozambique, a half billion Third World children are thinking about being presidents. They are believing now. That is peace.

Blood Droplets on a Phony War

2009-11-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

“There comes a time…when spending the last vestige of life’s blood on the enemy is what the last vestige of life’s blood is meant for you.” -The King of Pearl

America has set November 7^th as the date for Afghanistan’s run-off election. The weather has turned bad, and the Taliban is threatening bombs. So why should the Afghan people go to the polls and risk life and limb again when no matter who wins—Karzai or Abdullah—it shall

be America who calls the shots?

In seeking to prop up a corrupt regime, America has no choice but to call for a run-off

election, (considering the low turn-out and massive fraud in the last election). But with conditions being worse than before—with winter setting in—why would we, or the Afghans, expect a different result?

Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, vows “The Taliban will fight to our last drop of blood…to defend our land.” That should be no surprise, either. For what is a man’s last drop of blood good for if not to defend what he holds most dear?

We call these men all sorts of bad names—terrorists, extremists, illegal combatants. But in the end, they are just men. They were born in Afghanistan, they lived their entire live there, and they expect to die there, comme il faut.

Only we are the misfits there: We were neither born there, nor have we lived there, and we don’t want to die there.

So, why are we there? National security? Chicken-sticks!! Most Taliban couldn’t find America if you gave them a map.

One of the Taliban’s chief claims to fame, however, is that they fight corruption; they challenge corrupt Afghan rule. Though their ways are draconian—they want their women at home and their men sober—they reject government that preys on its people through bribes and police shakedowns. They would never sleep with Karzai and his cabal; neither with corrupt, money-flinging Americans.

It is ironic that America would send its precious sons to fight men who truly combat what we only pretend to combat—corruption. Welcome to Obama’s war in Afghanistan.

Write the Way You Referee

2009-11-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

When people ask me, “How do you write?”, I tell them, “I write the way I referee.” That is, I call them like I see them. I can’t be right all of the time, but I can be fair. In the end, being treated fairly may be the best any of us can hope for.

They asked me, once, to referee a basketball game. I had never refereed before, but having played the game, I knew the rules. And for this particular game, I knew all of the players.

Funny how it all came over me the moment I took on the mantle of “referee.” I didn’t see the people any longer; I only saw the game. I called it like I saw it.

I write the same way. It doesn’t matter to me who is black or white; all that matters is who is right or wrong.

Of course, I am not always right, though I try to be. But being right is something we have less control over than being fair. At times, I may not be right, but I will stake my claim on being fair.

The Hamlet Presidency

2009-11-01T06:14:00.000-08:00

"And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought..." Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hamlet, for all of his good looks and intelligence, was known for being a waffler—someone who could not make the tough decision because he was too busy exploring both sides.

You might remember, it was Hamlet who asked, “To be, or not to be…”, perhaps the greatest question of them all. At one point in his soliloquy, he acknowledges, “And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with a pale cast of thought…”

Has our president become the Hamlet of our time? Has this become the Hamlet Presidency?

Recently, Republicans excoriated President Obama for wanting to have a chat with America’s school children. In particular, Obama wanted to ask each of them, “What can you do to help the president?” The far right went visceral, accusing Obama of seeking to brainwash the nation’s children, among other ridiculous charges.

To appease this noxious lot, Obama retracted his question—which was perfectly wonderful in how it summoned each child to a public duty—and replaced it with this banal call to self-service: “What are your goals, and how will you achieve them?”

That is only the latest example of our president buckling to pressure rather than overcoming it with steadfast decision-making from the start.

Earth's Unforgiving

2009-10-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

"The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mighty..." - Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Adel Basset al-Megrahi, convicted bomber of Pan Am Flight 103—the one that killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland—is free. The Scottish government, which prosecuted and imprisoned him, released him on humanitarian grounds. The man is dying of prostate cancer. Scotland sent him home to his 95-year-old mother to spend his final days. In summing up his decision to release Megrahi, Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, said, “…that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”

BBC News reports that British relatives of the Lockerbie victims are pleased with Scotland’s decision. “Americans,” on the other hand “are appalled.” President Obama, echoing the sentiments of his fellow Americans, called for further confinement for Megrahi, labeling his release “an outrage.”

Americans and their president are true to form. No other nation on Earth locks up more of its citizens than does the “Land of the Free.” America will deny its own children a good education for the chance to keep a man locked up. It will deprive its elderly of basic services to squeeze the last the last little bit of life out of its prisoners.

Hatred? That is part of it. It is money, too; and it is jobs. Corrections workers are fast replacing the auto worker (with his big salary and comparable lifestyle,) as the new “upscale” working class. The difference: America’s auto worker gave the world a great product. America’s corrections workers give the world nothing. ( A disturbing snapshot of what America’s economy has become.)

Today, a situation in Standish, Michigan, offers a glimpse of what is happening across America. As part of a cost-cutting move, the maximum security prison there is scheduled to close…but not so fast. To the locals of Standish, the thought of their precious prison closing is hateful, and they are determined to do something about it. Besides holding a prayer vigil, they—along with the Granholm administration—have gone so far as to lobby California for some of its prisoners to stock their facility for a $60 million fee.

Commenting on this desperate move, Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections said in the August 18 (2009) edition of USA Today: “We can’t incarcerate people to create jobs; that’s not what prisons are for. But that is what it has become.”

It is a shocking admission by a top government official—one the entire world heard at once. Yet, America continues to commit this blatant crime against its own citizens; a crime we would decry as a “human rights abuse” if some other nation was doing it. But because it is done in America, we look the other way.

This is what America’s prisoners and their families are up against—not just an official here and a group there, but legions of Americans—coast to coast—engaging in the interstate trade of human beings, quashing freedom for profit,, choosing vengeance over mercy as a prerogative of power.

Mercy. Kenny MacAskill’s words were a singular shot across America’s bow, reminding us that mercy offers hope for us all; for we are all sinners and in need of it.

Obama’s words, on the other hand, rang hollow. They only appeased a nation consumed with endless retribution.

Cash For Clunkers

2009-09-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

It may be one of the most ridiculous government-sponsored programs ever. What sets it apart—besides the government paying people to go into debt—is that so many people are thrilled about it.

“A new car for you!”

What is this, Oprah II?

Of course everyone wants a new car. But if you cannot afford a new car (on your own), then you do not need one.

Cash-for-Clunkers is a boon for people with money who yearn to buy a new car anyway. It is a bust for people who cannot—and never planned to –buy a new car. The latter end up helping the former, buy that which they, themselves, cannot afford. The cars they hope to afford—the used cars they traditionally waited for the “well-off” to discard—the government crushes.

The government calls if “getting less fuel-efficient cars off the road.” I call it, “waste”. Many of these “crushed cars” are solid vehicles, able to go another 80-100,000 miles. Here, “fuel-efficient” becomes a smokescreen behind which the government, tell “poor” taxpayers to “suck it up.” It is elitism: Make the poor help the wealthy get what they want, then, give the poor nothing in return.

Add this: Destroying good used cars, which are the staple of many working class communities, necessarily limits the choice of used cars on the market. Decreased inventory automatically raises the value (i.e. price) of the used cars left on the lot. So, not only do poor people get no help, but they end up paying more for what they need—a good used car.

It's Visceral...You Wouldn't Understand

2009-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

The one constant that underlies race relations in America is that the white man enslaved the black man, and neither can get over it.

Recently, Sgt. Crowley, a white officer with the Cambridge police, arrested a black man - a Harvard professor - in his own home. Followed a brouhaha, with claims and counter-claims.

We learned that Sgt. Crowley teaches a course on "racial profiling" at the Cambridge police academy. But for all of his fancy "sensitivity training" he could not understand the fundamental reaction a black man harbors when a white policeman enters his home, (which points up a fundamental flaw in Crowley's teachings.)

Twice, Crowley stated, "I don't understand why he wasn't glad that I was there."

One reason Sgt. Crowley "does not understand" is because Professor Gates' reaction was purely visceral - that is, it was not based on intellectual reasoning, which one might expect from a Harvard professor. Rather, it was elemental, spawned in a well so deep, it goes all the way back to the beginnings of slavery in America.

That well, apparently, does not run dry. Jim Crow replenishes it, as does the Gay Nineties - that American paradox, when more blacks were lynched during any other period of American history. Add the Civil Rights struggle - where images of police brutality against blacks - the dogs, the hoses - are seared into America's conscious.

The generation that absorbed those abuses have died away; and they will continue to die away. But the pain they suffered lives defiantly (and seemingly forever) within African-America, fed as it is by the contemporary images - fairly or unfairly - of beatings of the likes of Rodney King, and the shootings of innocents like Amadou Diallo.

There is no other relationship on Earth like the one that defines white and black America. Two powerful peoples who strengths hold us together; whose weaknesses hold us apart.

The Desparate Duo

2009-07-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Two lame duck governors of two debt-ridden states are going into business. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has the largest prison population in the country, (and the largest budget deficit.) Jennifer Granholm of Michigan has the highest unemployment rate—over 14%.

To help remedy their problems, Granholm is offering to house California prisoners in Michigan for a fee. (That’s right America human beings once more have become a commodity to be swapped and traded.) Theoretically, this proposal would save California money, while enabling Michigan to hire more prison guards, thus easing unemployment.

The rub: California is in such bad shape, it is now issuing billions of dollars in I.O.U.’s to its creditors. Not only is Michigan likely to receive an I.O.U. for its dubious services—housing prisoners; (is that all you got?)—but it will have to go to the back of the line to receive that.

"Blood Diamond"

2009-07-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the movie, “Blood Diamond”, a disturbing account of the diamond trade in West Africa. More compelling than the trade, itself, were the child soldiers of Sierra Leone—children forced to wage a war of devastating cruelty against their own people.

Interesting that two days earlier, in our own Detroit, young gunmen shot seven children in front of a public school.

Blood Diamond: On the face of it, Africa in all of its utter chaos. Beyond it, inner America and its own child soldiers, murdering and maiming on a similar scale.

We watch the movie and are appalled at the brutality of the child soldiers of Africa, like something out of the Dark Ages. But do we think our children are any better? They are the same children—the same senselessness, the same callous disregard for human life. The only difference: our children here in the States do it with less coercion.

"Back, Back, Back..."

2009-07-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is “in a war of words with Ahmadinejad.” So says the media. And the Republicans are loving it. Obama has finally lowered himself to their level.

“I strongly condemn your actions!” Obama declares to the Iranian president. The Republicans say, “Go on.”

“Outrageous!” Obama cries out. The Republicans nod, “you’re getting warmer.”

“Barbaric!”

“Now you’re sounding like a real American president.”

No, Mr. Obama is sounding like someone he did not want to sound like.

The Republicans accused Obama of being weak when he refused to get into a shouting match with the Iranians. Now that he has—and in so doing, succumbed to the will of the Republicans—they feel assured that he is weak.

The Republicans know how to get at Obama. Whether he realizes it or not, he is consistently responsive to their negative pressure. The Republicans are a backward-thinking lot. They are determined to pull our president back into the past. The surprise is that our president continues to take the bait.

"Perhaps..."

2009-07-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

North Korea’s Kim Jong II threatens to “wipe the U.S. from the face of the Earth.” Sounds amusing, even funny, at first.

Perhaps we should not take him so literally. Arrogance makes us do that—take things literally—because our strength (military, financial, etc.) is a literal matter. We are literally the most powerful nation on Earth. So, when someone makes such a threat as Kim’s, we prefer to take it literally because that makes it sound all the more ridiculous.

What if the danger Kim poses is figurative? Would we be so quick to laugh then?

9-11 proved our vulnerability and our fragility. Our psyche has been damaged by it, and by Iraq; and to an extent greater than we seem to realize, by Abu Ghraib. It is these types of blows that can change the face of a nation, and erode its confidence and its influence. Kim’s threat, when seen in this light, might not be as hollow as it first appeared. Certainly, no matter what Kim does, the U.S. could, literally, wipe North Korea off the map. But would we ever be the same?

Perhaps Kim has a coup in mind—something that won’t work, but that he thinks will work; something that will work, but not in the way, nor in the time that he has planned.

Perhaps we’d better stop thinking so literally, and star thinking figuratively—wondering if stopping a barge possibly loaded with millet for Myanmar is worth chancing being wiped off the face of the earth.

Perhaps we don’t believe we can be “wiped off the face of the earth.” Perhaps we’re not taking into account that our face could be so drastically altered that we won’t ever so readily want to show it again.

Poor Man’s Posse

2009-07-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

A stock of ballistic missiles is to today’s nations what the Colt .45 was to the Old West—“the Equalizer.” It is the poor man’s posse; his air force and artillery rolled into one.

The Germans engineered missile technology toward the end of World War II. And while it was too late to win the the war, its potential to wreak havoc terrified everyone.

Nothing is so frightening as the prospect of a missile—armed with Lord-knows-what—hurtling towards our homes. North Korea knows this, and it is that knowledge that drives their missile program. For them, it is a matter of survival. That they are a paranoid state is underscored. But perhaps we are all a bit paranoid, and if not, then perhaps we should be. Missile technology will proliferate, even if nuclear technology does not; (though I fear it will, too.) It is a matter of real (and imagined) threats that drive the development of both.

Today, America is bracing for a North Korean missile launch in the direction of Hawaii, likely around the Fourth of July. Secretary of Defense, Gates, has declared that the “U.S. is ready against North Korea strike.”

Before our paranoia starts to show, let us back p a bit and look at this in real terms: Look at the map, folks. North Korea is literally boxed in. China commands his northern and western borders: behind China, hulking Russia. South Korea straddles its southern border. And Japan, America’s main ally in the region, stretches across Korea’s entire eastern front.

To test-fire a missile, North Korea, basically, must fire it over Japan, and into the vast Pacific beyond. Of course, Japan doesn’t want missiles fired over its territory. That is reasonable. But what other option does North Korea have? They must test-fire their missiles. Why? Ask the U.S. why it must test-fire its missiles. Ask Russia and China and France the same question. Because test-firing missiles, is the only way to know if they work.

Why have missiles at all? Ask the aforementioned nations that same question. To a nation, they will respond, “National security.” So, the real question becomes, “Does North Korea have a ‘National security’ interest, too? Of course they do.

That we are pretending to fear a missile strike on Hawaii is as absurd as Sarah Palin claiming North Korea might try to strike Alaska. (What, to kill a moose?) Let’s be real. Any strike at American territory—anywhere—would virtually end North Korea’s existence as a sovereign state. They know this. If they were to strike American territory, (which they will not, unless America strikes them first,) it would be a real target—like L.A., New York, or Washington D.C. They do not yet have that capability.

There is, however, a narrow stretch of open water between Japan’s Hokkaido and Russia’s Sakhalin islands. It would go a long ways toward easing tensions in the region if North Korea simply advised all parties involved—China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S.—of the exact coordinates of their missile launch. They might still make a mistake, but at least we would know their intentions.

Hitler called it "Lebensraum"

2009-07-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Israel

is the only nation on Earth who can take land from its neighbor when it gets the urge to expand. No one else is allowed.

President Obama sees this, and on a world stage in Cairo, said to Israel: “No more settlements.” But already, the forces of irrationality are gathering against him. Friends of Israel in the U.S. House and Senate are saying, “The president has gone too far. He is asking too much of Israel.” One Israeli organization, Yesha Council, a settler lobby group, accuses the Obama administration of “political terrorism”. Others in Israel accuse Obama of seeking to overthrow the Netanyahu government. Are they all mad?

Nothing is so important to a man as his land—nothing except his family, itself, which without land, has no future. In the wild, animals stake out territory. Without territory, they know they cannot survive. When others intrude into that territory, they fight. It is a fight for survival.

So, how irrational is it to tell the Palestinians to, “be nice” while the Israelis steadily and systemically chip away at their small parcel of land? They are forbidden to fight back—which they must—and when they do, they are called “militants” and “Islamic extremists.”

Each one of us in America knows that if his neighbor decided that his yard was not big enough for his growing family and so began to extend his property into the neighbor’s yard, that neighbor would fight. That is the “nuts and bolts” of the settlement issue: Men taking the land of other men.

During Hitler’s rise to power, he called the German need to expand “Lebensraum” or living space. The Israelis call it “natural growth,” which is the exact same thing.

The Floodgates Will Close

2009-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

“The floodgates will close,” he said. It was the morning of May 26, 2009. And that was a prison guard reacting to a prisoner’s hopes that the climate had changed; that the floodgates will soon open for many Michigan prisoners to go home.

These “hopes” seemed to bring the guard’s temperature to a boil. He blurted out: “There’s a prisoner getting out on parole. When he gets out, he’s going to kill his brother. Then the floodgates will close.”

He spoke with a certitude that was chilling. He wasn’t finished. “Until then, I have stocked up on ammo, and dug a big hole in my back yard.”

Sociopathic designs aside, how could an employee of the state hope a prisoner of the state gets out and wreaks havoc on the state? Job security? Of course. But at what point does “job security” cross the line and become complicity in a heinous crime?

Then an officer is privy to such information—and speaks with certitude of its inevitability—must raise some concerns about him, and any other MDOC employee who may be involved—directly or indirectly—in the grisly prospect. Is it not his responsibility to help prevent such a deadly act rather than withhold information in order to perpetuate it?

This prison guard imagines his deliberate inaction will reverse the climate that demands prison reform in Michigan. And he is perfectly willing to be an accessory to fratricide to see it through.

"This is no Kassam"

2009-06-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

Under international law, a naval blockade is an act of war. Israel maintains a land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza. The Gazans respond by firing Kassam rockets into Israel.

The Kassam rocket—cartoonish in its simplicity—is a primitive (but scary) exaggeration of the rockets with which Americans celebrate Independence Day. Anywhere from 4-6 feet in length, it has a range of 30-50 miles. A direct hit can put a big hole in the average roof, or disable a car. After over 1,000 launches, they have actually killed a couple of people.

There is little use for coordinates when firing the Kassam. The Gazans simply position it in an orchard, point it toward the nearest Israeli town, and light the fuse.

The Israelis call the Kassam a “weapon of terror”. I suppose it is that. The Gazans call it “fighting back.”

Now Israel is contemplating air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. They have done it before—bombed the Osiris nuclear plant in Iraq, and again a site in Syria.

To give Israel pause, Iran has tested a surface-to-surface missile—one with a range of 1200 to 1500 miles. The test went well. Iran’s president, Ahmadinejad, declared to the Iranian people, “We hit the target.” U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, called it “a success.”

The BBC summed up it report by saying, "Iran sent a message to the world community." No, the message was straight to Israel. It simply said, "It's no Kassam."

Don't Look Now, But Your Face Is Swelling

2009-06-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush brought about the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis; he displaced four million more besides. In the end, they hanged Saddam Hussein and gave Bush $100 million to build a library.

That happens when one man is seen to win a war, and the other is deposed. Winners of wars, no matter how criminal they may be, are rarely called “criminals”, and are never prosecuted for the crimes. Only the losers are rounded up, tried and punished.

But for winners—those who lorded over places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo—history has its own store, replete with shelves full of crimes that never go away. There, the courts that legislate executions are silent. People do the talking; children learn of atrocities committed by their leaders. And the stigma of “war criminal” attaches itself unshakably to those who thought they had gotten away.

The other day, a group of college students cornered Condoleeza Rice and grilled her about the Bush administrations penchant for torture. Even as she struggled to defend herself, her face literally swelled—a sure sign her punishment had begun.

This past week, even as Afghanistan’s President Karzai sat in Washington D.C. with our Obama, American planes were raining bombs on Afghan civilians. According to Karzai, over 125 men, women, and children were killed. “This must stop!” he said to Obama. “Regrettable” is one of the words Obama sounded in response.

A man as careful as President Obama is always on guard against the appearance of impropriety. Yet, he commands these atrocities as though no one can see. Does he truly believe it is enough to say, “We had ‘actionable intelligence’ that there were militants in that hut.”? So you blow up a family of ten to kill two “possible” militants?

Any man—including our president—should spend 100 years in jail for each child he blows to bits; if not “in jail”, then certainly in hell. Those must be the stakes.

There is no law on Earth that can protect a man against the murder of a child…none. If this is the best our president can, then it is time he scrapped his AFPAK policy and come home (before he sorely wishes he had.)

One day, Barack Obama’s face will swell at the mention of his crimes, and he will plead futilely against the weight of history. Inevitably, his cries and his legacy will be drowned in his acts.

The Lemonade Stand

2009-06-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

People think the decisions President Obama must make are difficult. They are not nearly so difficult as he makes them. Part of the problem is his advisers—he has a slew of them, but they have little to show for their grand appointments besides big paychecks and more George Bush.

Bush was a lemon, and Obama wants to make lemonade. He takes Bush policies—on Afghanistan, wiretaps, abuse photos, military tribunals—and sprinkles them with sugar. He hopes to sell it as change; it is not. It is the same product Bush sold, only sweetened. These policies serve another purpose, however. For Obama, they are his first line of defense against Republican attacks. He uses Bush policies to protect he right flank, and to shield against the uncertainties of change.

People say, “It is not easy to change.” I say, “It is not that difficult, either.” Just do it. You want to close Guantanamo. Close it. And if you must, bring the detainees to the States. For those who say, “We don’t want terrorists in America,” remind them the terrorists are already here. They are ensconced in cities across this land—running crack houses, doing drive-by shootings, and stealing America blind.

Close Guantanamo. What to do with the inmates? Find nations willing to assume some of the responsibility—not because we pay them, but because they want to do their part. If no one steps forward, remember that, and then house the detainees here.

How? America is the greatest jailer on earth. Figure it out. We lock up 2,000,000 of our own people—more than any other nation. Now, suddenly, we forget how to lock up 240 more?

Set up a secure facility—a super-super max, if you will, then deal with them. If we haven’t the guts to house “terrorists,” then we shouldn’t pretend to wage a war against them—certainly not one where we take prisoners.

Besides, we talk about these Guantanamo detainees as though they were not human at all, but diseased vermin who will contaminate entire communities if brought to America. (Is it only American communities that they can contaminate, or are we willing to contaminate our allies, but not ourselves?)

Let’s be real. These men are human beings. Some are dangerous, but none more so than men already sitting in prisons from Maine to California. And it is not like the president is going to bring them to America and set them loose on the public. There are many safeguards within our prison system.

Time to make a new stand, Mr. Obama, out of the Bush shadow. And a bit of advice from an armchair advisor: Don’t try to please everybody; don’t try to please anybody. (Leave the “pleasing” to itself.) You will get more done, and you will do it better.

Not Quite Einstein's "Theory of Relativity"

2009-06-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

If “Knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind,” as Webster states, then pain is relative to what we have experienced, and to what we can imagine.

Such thoughts might cross a persons mind when he is about to have a tooth pulled without anesthetics. It happened to me.

After five days of excruciating (night) pain, I finally got the dentist’s call. He gave me the customary shot of Novocain, and ten minutes later, he went to work on my tooth.

He soon had to stop when it became apparent the anesthetic hadn’t taken. He gave me another shot; that didn’t take either. So he gave another and another, until he had given me six doses. The entire left side of my face should have felt like a bowling ball. Instead, except for the pain, it felt as normal as my right side.

Dentist and nurse were equally speechless. (Funny, how their looks of wonder, doubled my anxiety.) Finally, he said, “I can’t give you any more Novocain; neither can I stop pulling the tooth.” The nurse simply said, “Good luck.”

That is when I descended into a world of impossible pain. I suppose women know of it—they call it “childbirth.” But childbirth is worthy of such pain, and women prove it over and over by how they crave, then, exhilarate in the moment. This was pain on the far end of the spectrum. It produces nothing, but a glimpse of death.

We Don't Get It (We just dish it out)

2009-05-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

Central Asia is a tinderbox, and no nation in the region is as volatile as the nuclear-armed Pakistan. So, what does America do? America brings Pakistan the last thing Pakistan needs—money.

Of all places to pour money, America pours it on a country already afire—at a clip of six-million-dollars-a-day. Money. It is America’s answer to all peoples’ problems—money (and guns.) Yes, the guns follow the money, (or precede); it does not matter. Both are an offering desperate people cannot refuse.

What’s wrong with money? It complicates. And the last thing the people of Pakistan need is more complications. For one thing, money divides people (even more so than they are already divided), especially when it is free. The people who get the money are not just resented because they get it and others don’t. That they get it at all means they probably did ( or will do) something that the people who did not get it would not do.

Those who get the money in Pakistan were distrusted before. Now that they have taken money from “the Great Satan,” they are trusted even less.

We are raising the temperature in the hottest spot on Earth; we do it with our money and our guns. We can sure dish it out. We just don’t get it.

Punish Them All, Or Let Them All Go

2009-05-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration continues to struggle in its search for a coherent law enforcement policy. Case and point: Attorney General Eric Holder recently dropped all charges against Ted Stevens, (ranking crook, and former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.) Holder claims he does not have the evidence to continue the prosecution against the former senator.

How is that? The man had already been convicted, found guilty of corruption. He was awaiting sentencing at the time Holder dropped the charges. Not enough evidence to sentence? (Sentence him already!) Not enough evidence to sustain an appeal? If he is held to the same standard that two million other incarcerated Americans are held to, then that conviction would be rubber-stamped on appeal, and Stevens would serve out his sentence like everyone else.

Holder claims there was prosecutor misconduct in Stevens’ trial. So….? There is prosecutor misconduct everyday, in trials across this country. Is Holder prepared to start dropping many of those charges too? And while he’s at it, how about getting righteous over the ineffective assistance of counsel hundreds of thousands of indigent Americans receive daily in America’s courts?

Now Mr. Obama (and his attorney general) wants to forgive acts of torture committed by the Bush administration. He says, “We do not want to look back.” In that case, why ever mention “9-11” again? And why pursue “terrorists” across the mountains of Afghanistan for something that happened eight years ago?

Simply “looking forward,” Mr. President, is not an option. To prosecute any crime, you must do some “looking back.” But seeing that you are in a forgiving mood—willing to let Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the gang off the hook—how about relieving America’s overcrowded prisons of poor souls who committed their crimes 20, 30, and 40 years ago?

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t pursue Osama bin Laden for his past acts, then look the other way when the past acts of high-ranking Americans catch up with them.

One Obama official said: “The CIA agents (who committed those acts) are good men who were simply following orders.” So were Hitler’s henchmen. Another contends that those operatives cannot be prosecuted because the acts they committed “were not illegal at the time they committed them.” Wrong. Torture is never legal.

A word of advice, Mr. President: if it is good enough for the average citizen, then it should be good enough for everybody. When you tailor policy to conform to individuals, you inevitably stretch the law, (which is like stretching the truth.) It will break. Then, suddenly, you, too, will be under investigation. Don’t do it. Keep it simple. When they break the law—no matter who they are – punish them. Either that, or let them all go free.

They Are Afghans; We're not

2009-04-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has just signed a law giving Afghan husbands the right to rape their wives. At some point in early American history, husbands may have had a similar power over their wives, but no American president would have dared underline it.

This is a stark reminder of our inability to grasp the gulf between Afghan and American societies. Ye, we fight for Karzai’s government; we send our sons to die so that his government will survive. We are in over our heads.

Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan policy is just warmed-over Bush. Neither man understands these people, except they understand American imperialism, the weight of which, in their minds, trumps all indigenous cultures. Or, does it?

Interesting that Karzai would sign this decree at the same time our president was in Europe trying to convince European countries to help America prop up the Karzai regime. Of course, Mr. Obama did not use the name “Karzai,” nor “regime” in his European speeches. Rather, he focused on “Al Quaeda,” which, I suppose he thinks is scarier than Karzai. The Europeans aren’t so sure; neither are they stupid.

The Afghans are proud of who they are. They signed this decree in broad daylight. They want everyone to know that they are determined to remain uniquely Afghan.

Armed with Weapons that Wound Them...

2009-04-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

Retired Russian general, Pavel Grachev, calls the American fight in Afghanistan, “pointless.” He says that, like the Americans, when he was fighting the Mujahideen in Russia’s Afghanistan War, he thought he was doing what was necessary to keep Russia safe. It was only later, he says, that he realized how “pointless” it was.

To counter that stark assessment, the Obama Administration has come up with a lie, similar to the Bush Administration’s “Weapons of mass destruction” lie; the one Bush used to justify the war in Iraq. Obama’s lie: The Taliban pose a threat to the entire world. And just like the media cowed to Bush and refused to challenge him, this media—which is the same media; they kept their jobs—seems ready to roll over for Obama and collect their paychecks.

The first question to Obama should have been: “With what do the Taliban threaten the world?” They have neither a single airplane, nor a single ship, nor a single port; (Afghanistan is landlocked.) They have no long-range missiles, nor short-range missiles, yet we are to believe that they will destroy the world unless we send thousands of troops and billions of dollars to destroy them.

It could be a matter of pride: can’t be run off by a bunch of farmers. Imagine its biblical connotations: “nation of farmers and goat herders defeat superpower.” The likely conclusion would be that God is on their side. That would never do.

So, America assumes the role of liberator, and savior of mankind. In that drama, the people opposite us must be evil and bent on mankind’s destruction. Farmers? Goat herders? Destroyers of mankind? And with what will they destroy mankind—our own weapons of mass destruction?

In Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, ‘brigands” of Paris rise up and are summarily put down by the authorities. These “brigands” have no weapons to begin with; they have only their passions, and they come to fight “tooth and nail”. After being beat back, they surge again, this time “armed,” as Hugo writes, “with the weapons that wound them.”

This is the nature of the people we fight. They are poor, and except for some foreign fighters who have joined their cause, they are local. These “locals” are of Afghanistan; they are grounded there. They do not want to destroy the world. Anyone who tells you they do, is lying. These men only want to rule their own land, Afghanistan, like every other man on Earth wants to rule his.

Obama Commits Quid Pro Quo Faux Pas

2009-04-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

President Obama made a rookie mistake. He sent a letter to Russia’s President Medvedev suggesting that if Russia puts pressure on Iran to end its missile systems and nuclear program, the U.S. will consider abandoning its plans to put a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Wrong. That is a veiled threat, no matter how Obama tries to deny that it is not a friendly quid pro quo. Medvedev’s terse response: “The two should never have been combined.” He is right.

President Obama’s “friendly” message is skin to saying, “If you do not do what we say, we will do what you will not like.” Literally, and figuratively, that is “Bush,” (as in “Bush league”).

In a strange and unnecessary way, Obama is trying to use Bush in a “Good cop-Bad cop” scenario. Again, not good. And why is it that he hesitates to disentangle himself from Bush’s disastrous foreign policy initiatives?

For instance, he continues to send unmanned drones into Pakistan, chasing Taliban and killing innocent Pakistanis. Every time we send a “killer drone” into Pakistan, we further destabilize Pakistan; we compromise that country’s sovereignty and drive it and its population closer to the extremists.

During the Vietnam War, we ventured into Laos and Cambodia in the same way—on bombing runs to kill Viet Cong who had slipped across that border. Pakistan ain't Cambodia. Cambodia was an agrarian society. Pakistan is an agrarian society with nukes.

If we think we cannot win the Afghanistan war without going into Pakistan, then we cannot win that war, period. To continue to destabilize a nuclear-armed nation is a (war) game where everyone loses, (except the extremists).

It Can Happen, But...

2009-04-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

President Obama is trying to fix the economy by filling it up with money. Yes! (We like it like that.) Some are complaining - the rich who don't want the poor to get it, the poor who don't want the rich to get it, and the middle class who don't want either of them to get it.

Shut up! We're all getting it - because we're all Americans, and Americans are supposed to have it. It is all about the dream, baby - the American Dream - and the eternal possibility that it can happen.

Of course, it can happen. Almost anything "can happen" although most things happen in accordance with the laws of nature, and gravity, and mathematics - laws like, "zero multiplied by any number equals zero."

America seems to be playing a game with zeros, hoping that a "quark," or some such mythical variable "out there" will find its way "in here," and impose itself on our troubles and turn our zeros into dollars.

It's much like trying to exceed the speed of light. Einstein said it can't be done. The weight of the fuel necessary to propel an object faster than light is the very thing that holds it back. But Obama and his crew may have come up with something.

Ben Bernanke, Obama's man in the Fed, pumped two trillion dollars into America's economy. When one economist was asked, "Where does it come from?" he replied, "Thin air." Interesting.

Riddle this: How much does a trillion dollar bills weigh?
Answer: Nothing if it springs from thin air.

Imagine the potential propulsion inherent in a trillion dollars, then double it. Now imagine all of that fuel being weightless. This is the new science President Obama employs. It is beyond quantum physics. Not even Einstein could have imagined it.

We ordinary folks have never quite understood Einstein, anyway, with his Quantum Physics and Theories of Relativity. We just assumed he knew because his name is synonymous with "what we don't know." Now we home his work was a bit unfinished, and that our president has tapped into that quantum magic - the stuff that will propel us at light speed beyond the gravity that holds us back, and on to everlasting prosperity.

A quantum leap? You can call it that; and it can happen...but it won't.

Again with the Elephants?

2009-04-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

I got this toothache. It only hurts when I lay down. All day long, I'm fine. Come ten o'clock, I go to bed; it starts. It throbs all night long. It get up at five the following morning, and it stops.

Remember The Elephant Man? He couldn't lay down, lest he would die. (Something to do with is deformity that severely restricted his circulation.) Anyway, he slept sitting up.

Well, I thought maybe I can do it - sleeping sitting up...to avoid the pain. It might have worked. I didn't do it, though; didn't want to look foolish.

Isn't that something - how we fear looking foolish? Fear of embarrassment can be a great motivator.

Then we die. How foolish is that? We will be embarrassed in the end. (Death is embarrassing.) We're "found", usually in some awkward position. (Isn't dying bad enough? We have to be embarrassed, too?

The Elephant Man laid down, and died. Sitting up all night would not have killed me.

(Some of) This President's Men

2009-04-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, has just pumped two trillion dollars into America's economy, just by pushing a button. One economist described it as creating two trillion "out of thin air." How scary is that? When asked about the prospect of inflation after such an immense infusion of dollars, the economist said, "We should hope to get to the point that inflation is our concern." Scarier.

Meanwhile, the debate over the AIG bonuses rages on. Now we hear that Senate Banking chairman, Chris Dodd, added the clause that assured the AIG fat cats get their bonuses. He say he did it at the behest of Obama's Treasury department. Seems the administration hopes to avoid a lawsuit by the same "fat cats" it is bailing out. What?

A few weeks ago, Eric Holder, the new US Attorney General, called us a "nation of cowards." Now, when it comes time for him to stand up to the very people this country wants on a slab, he folds like a cheap tent to avoid a fight. Perhaps it was not his call. Perhaps, but he is the attorney general. Dealing with threats from corporate gluttons must be in his wheelhouse. "Sue us?" The attorney general should have said, "Make my day."

Then, there is the matter of the Council for Women and Girls, established by President Obama last week. It will be run by Valerie Jarrett, Obama'a senior adviser. It is pure politics. (What better way to solidify the female vote?).

If there is not an alternate Council for Boys, then there should be no council at all. There certainly should be no council that relies on gender discrimination for its charter.

Set up a Council for Children, Mr. President, and demand the most of that council, across the board. But don't play politics with the children. And never leave out my boys.