Falling for the Maid

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?

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

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)

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

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

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

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.