"Missed me..." (No, that was a direct hit)

If the world could throw a collective shoe at any one man on Earth, it would be George W. Bush as he walks out the door. Funny how the world works: When one man has the guts to do what the world would, that man is thrown in jail.

As Bush...has a bigger child ever wandered the White House? His response to the "shoe-throwing" was a childlike - not the ducking; the ducking is instinctual. Any creature on Earth, seeing an object fly toward its head will duck. We learned that playing dodge ball, if nowhere else. No, it is the insipid smile as he ducks like a child who, once out of immediate danger, taunts his assailants: "You missed me...missed me again."

Later, Bush compared the "shoe-throwing" to getting "the finger." No, Mr. Bush - even in America, getting a shoe thrown at you is worse than getting "the finger." In Iraq, showing a person the bottom of your shoe is an insult; throwing the shoe is akin to someone spitting in your face, only worse. and then, he called you "a dog." The only thing worse than being called a "dog" in Iraq is being called a "shoe."

Now, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the man who threw the shoe at our president, is a celebrity, if not a hero. and try as the Bush administration might to spin this as "simply one Iraqi trying to get attention," it will not work.

This "one" Iraqi had access to our president for a reason: He is skilled; he is trusted. al-Zeidi chose to use the window that skill and trust afforded him to show the world that millions of Iraqis truly thing of the self-proclaimed "liberator", George Bush. As he threw his shoes at Bush, he cried out, "This is a gift from the the Iraqi people; this is a farewell gift, you dog!"

Today, al-Zeidi is cooling his heels in an Iraqi jail cell. He has apologized to Nouri al-Maliki, the president of Iraq, (but not to Bush). It doesn't matter. The die has been cast - it is not about al-Zeidi anymore; it is about what happened to an American president. Long after the players are gone and the stage has turned to dust, al-Zeidi's shoes will be flying, and Bush will be forever ducking. A more fitting finale to Bush's Iraq policy could not be drawn in fiction.

Still, Bush's childlike inability to realize how deeply he has been insulted troubles us. That was not a game show contestant dodging a shoe; that was our president. Never in the history of this country has a US president suffered such public dishonor. What an ignoble end.

And to America's everlasting chagrin, that moment will reverberate throughout the halls of history.

Miracle on the Hudson

They are calling it "The Miracle on the Hudson." It happened when a plane carrying 155 passengers suffered a midair collision, forcing it down into the river. All aboard survived.

The pilot has since been proclaimed "a hero." To preserve his "hero" status, they are blaming the birds. That's right; the birds did it.

The pilot's story - which is the story - is that a flock of birds flew into the plane's engines, taking both engines out. If the birds could talk, they would tell you the pilot flew into them causing massive casualties.

Hey, the birds have air traffic control, too. (Have you ever seen two flocks of birds fly into each other?) They've been using these same air lanes for a million years. Then, along we come in the last hundred years, or so, and call them "culprits" for getting in our way.

Yes, Brian Williams of NBC News, called the birds "suspected culprits." That is what we need, you know - culprits. Culprits produce victims. There can be no heroes without potential victims. And that is what we need most of all - heroes.

Ask BBC news correspondent, Matthew Price. While covering this story, he described America as "...a country that so loves a hero." (Is that how the world sees us? Has Price been listening to the birds?). And if that is what we are, does it not suggest - from a foreigner's perspective - that we might twist a story or two to achieve that noble objective?

Back to the birds: Do you think they have heroes too? A couple of eight-pound birds taking out a ten-ton plane must be like a foot soldier stopping a tank. "Miracle on the Hudson"? Perhaps the birds are calling it the same thing.

Israeli Good, Palestinian Bad

The vaunted Israeli army has its quarry cornered on all sides. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.

At last count, over 900 Gazans were dead. If Iran were killing people on such a scale, America would dispatch an armada. But, alas, the dead, after all, are Palestinians, and these - our friends who are delivering the blows - are Israelis. Israelis good, Palestinians bad. That is the message we send; that is the paradigm wherein the U.S. formulates its Middle East policy. Business as usual? I'm afraid so.

Is it any wonder America's leaders across the board condone Israel's actions? They provide a mirror image of our own brutal treatment of Native Americans - taking their lands, restricting them to reservations, dictating what they could and could not have, and slaughtering them when they fought back.

We treated South Africa's apartheid regime with a similar favor. In fact, official U.S. policy was to not criticize the apartheid regime, but to applaud its stability. America did, however, criticize Nelson Mandela for inviting Mohammar Qaddafi to South Africa once Mandela became president of that country. Mandela responded that Qaddafi had stood shoulder to shoulder with blacks under apartheid when America was looking the other way. Today, 14 or 15 U.N. members have voted to end the killing in Gaza. Only America abstained, which, in effect, was a vote to continue the slaughter. Business as usual.

On his most recent visit to Israel, then-Senator Barack Obama said this of Hamas rocket-fire into Israel: "If someone were lobbing missiles into the home where my daughters slept, I would do all in my power to stop them." Ehud Barack, Israel's defense minister, stood directly behind Obama as he uttered those words. Later, he would quote Obama as Israeli shells rained down on Palestinian homes in Gaza.

Barack Obama says he want to change the way business is done in Washington. He is yet to make this statement: "If my daughters were forced to live in a concentration camp and denied medical care, food, and the basic freedoms to which all humans are entitled, then I would do all in my power to end that degradation at once." Until Barack Obama can make that statement as well, he can not be an honest broker in the Middle East. And the slaughter of innocents will continue.

Business as usual.

What's Up Doc?

(a better late than never post)

Rush Limbaugh said of John McCain's antics at the recent Tennessee debate: He looked like Yosemite Sam after the dynamite failed to go off." Let's take that observation a step further: If McCain is Yosemite Sam - and the shoe fits - then Barack Obama must be Bugs Bunny. For who, of all cartoon characters, is cooler than Bugs. (And who, of all the presidential candidates has been as cool as Barack?)

In the simplest terms, this analogy captures the soul of these two campaigns - one man, desperate and cantankerous, and willing to try anything to win; the other uncannily self-assured, and in that way, reasurring, even in a time of financial crisis. Even so, the wiry Obama, just the other day, sent out this stern warning to McCain, and to the others, lest they take his mild-mannered demeanor for a weakness: "We will not throw the first punch, but we will throw the last."

And what does Bugs say when the dynamite does go off?
"Of course you know, this means war."

It Burns...

There is a reason why insiders write "tell-all" books once they are on the outside: The truth - it burns in them. That explains why so many people who serve presidents faithfully, upon their release, write books that contradict the times they lived as loyalists. Expected to toe an absolute line, every word out of their mouths is pro-administration, whether they believe those words or not. Then, they are set free.

Though they may have sounded like robots before, these people have always been human; they just could not prove it. Protocol superseded their humanity. Still, the fire burned - it will always burn until they do what they must do.

Governor Palin is about to be offered millions to tell the story of her failed vice presidential bid. Condoleeza Rice will soon be dong a "tell-all" of her own.

Let them; let them tell it all. And let us think differently of these people - they who must "tell" let they die on fire. Let us view these desperate souls in their better light, and not call them "traitors" like before, but call them "freed people."

Save the Past, Imperil the Future

Nature abhors a vacuum: An old axiom, but apropos to the current financial crisis, and the hand-wringing that has become the national response. the question du jour - "do we bail out the auto companies?" Most normal people say, "No." The rest - most of those who speak for the normal people (i.e. Congress) - say, "Yes, we have no choice. If the auto companies fail, 2.5 million jobs nationwide will follow." Sounds like the same old fear-mongers to me; like those who tried to scare America into invading Iraq. Now they seek to make us fear the natural cycle of change.

America's car companies have been badly mismanaged and are in need of restructuring. This restructuring need not be base upon senators and representatives dictating to companies who stay and who go, but rather on a tried and true system - Chapter 11, a basic tool of the Bankruptcy Code. Chapter 11 automatically governs corporate reorganization. Here, there is no need for fat-cats on Capitol Hill playing god - deciding who sinks and who swims. (How amazingly pretentious, and transparent they are, like children playing a board game.)

Besides, the U.S. doesn't need a Big Three. Perhaps it is time for a Big Two...or a Big One, along with three or four new companies competing to produce cars designed for the future. What's wrong with that?

Let the vacuum happen naturally, and just as naturally, let true entrepreneurs fill that vacuum. There is money enough and smarts enough in this great country to fill any vacuum. So what if current suppliers go under? New suppliers will rise up, just as new automakers will rise up to replace the old.

Would we save the dinosaurs at the risk of imperiling the evolution of mammals? Likewise, are we to save GM at the risk of imperiling the development of truly 21st century machines?

This country does not owe the Big Three; neither does it owe current autoworkers. We are all employees, and are all subject to the same laws of change.

Dumbing Down Two Raggedy Wars

Bush's war on terror has been a disaster. We lost 3,000 Americans on 911. In the ensuing War of Retaliation, we lost another 5,000 Americans, and have brought on the death of over 100,000 Iraqis and Afghans, most of whom were innocent civilians. Still, Al Quaeda exists in places it never did before the war - most notably Iraq - and they continue to carry out attacks on targets worldwide.

Some point to no further attacks on American soil as a sign of success. No, that is merely a sign of due diligence. If Bush had applied due diligence before 911, then 911 never would have happened. (The signs were there - the warnings were ignored).

Now, the Bush administration has signed an accord with Iraq for a withdrawal (based on a timeline) - what this administration has sneered at all along as a "date of surrender." They can call it what they will; I will simply call it "inevitable." We must leave Iraq. We must also leave Afghanistan.

President-elect Obama is suggesting that he will escalate the struggle in Afghanistan, "to get Al Quaeda." If he does, then he will show that he has bought into Bush's failed rhetoric.

We have punished Al Quaeda for 911, and we have punished the Taliban for harboring Al Quaeda. If America's leaders think now that they must "wipe them all out," then they are sadly mistaken. They just as soon wipe out the very hills and mountains of Afghanistan than to wipe out all of their young lions. The Russians tried with 150,000 troops, and then left with their tails between their legs. Obama with his 50,000 will do the same.