Oil Upon the Waters

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

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

“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?

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

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

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

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.