6 February 2010: Dissent: The Lifeblood or Bloodshed of Democracy?

I love to talk politics. Conversations can be nothing but members of the choir encouraging each other, end in deadlocks, stalemate, or just hang there.

     If you’re a child of the Holocaust and your grandparents were brought over through Jewish charities or sponsors and then, as soon as they settled and worked their bones off to achieve prosperity, became philanthropic themselves, then it’s a reciprocal process: I pull up your bootstraps and then, when I’m down, you pull up mine.

     In the United States, if you collect unemployment, it’s money that’s withdrawn from paycheck deductions, one sort of insurance policy. When the government decides to kick in after your allotted time is up, it’s because they prefer you at home job hunting rather than out on the streets, like so many during this recession, victimized by foreclosures at the subprime level or other forms of ARM (adjustable-rate mortgages?) or termination of a job and its benefits, with vaporization of retirement benefits. Then there is illness requiring medication and doctor visits that further burden the people in the above categories.

      Given that fully one-sixth of the U.S. population (45 million) lack health-care coverage, the population involved probably exceeds that of those unemployed, at 10 percent of the working population, or 14.8 million as of January 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Unionofunemployed.com gives a far larger figure, 31 million, far closer to 10 percent of the population. I'm sure that number does not include those who have given up on job hunting. One web page opines that the critical 0.3 percent consists of those who have given up on job hunting The two categories, those without health-care insurance and those who are unemployed, frequently overlap. Many of those unemployed also lack health-care coverage.

     Arguably, all this justified the present administration’s futile prioritization of health-care reform over unemployment, in my opinion. Without health, people can do little else. With health, they can work, sometimes overtime.

     I still believe in health-care reform. I still hope that Congress will give life to it in some form or another. Given the political climate, single-payer or public option just won’t pass in Congress. But we can improve the present system. Republicans agree, for instance, that no one should be turned away from insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Those without pre-existing conditions who are simply indifferent because they are young and healthy will ultimately cost society more if, God forbid, they are slapped with something sudden and lethal or seriously chronic.

     On the subject of health-care reform, the top Republican priority is tort reform. Doctors tell me their malpractice insurance premiums can be as high as $80-some thousand a year. I think at such moments that they are very fortunate to be able to afford to pay them and stay in practice, especially now, when their incomes have descended so considerably. This I conclude from reading my insurance statements each time I visit a medical practitioner. I pay a bit, they are paid a bit, and then I am billed again for more by the insurance company, and that’s not counting the deductible I must pay first, at which time the doctors can charge me through the nose.

     I won’t go into detail, but even with health insurance I pay a lot out of pocket, even when I have fulfilled my two deductibles. Then there is a ceiling on my prescription allowance, so that my pharmacy in Canada knows me well.

     I still consider myself fortunate compared to a large percentage of the population here.

     I have published many blogs on this subject at Wordsunltd.com and shared two with the larger public at Opednews.com. One article was written in November, “We’re Not There Yet, But Health-Care Legislation Takes Giant Step Forward,” on November 11, which received a plethora (31) of rotten vegetables and one star for “interesting” (I didn’t put it there myself), and a second, published on December 9, “Health Care or Wealth Care: Another Deadline Looms,” that was totally ignored: not one comment or rating.

     One reader of one of my articles, I believe the first one, which is replete with Internet links to back up and expand on my assertions, responded with four-letter invectives and abuse of the very idea—her husband works hard for a living, and why should that money go to lazy people, unemployed and sitting in front of their TVs, collecting unemployment compensation and receiving free health care on her dollar?

     Well, we’re still corresponding via Oped’s email option. I expressed my admiration for someone so opposed to progressivism visiting the site and reading my article—understanding of the opposition is important before you hurl invectives at it. Point-counterpoint.

     Unfortunately there is a great deal of emotion involved in our communication, though she has obligingly eliminated the swear words from her communication after I advised her that they undermine the rest of her communication.

     Our bottom lines are diametrically opposed, I informed her, attempting the bootstrap reciprocity mentioned above. I even mentioned, assuming that she is a church-going Christian, that Jesus gave freely to the poor, feeding and curing them without hesitation. I did not claim him as a liberal for that reason. We can of course donate to private charities, but I just don’t think they have the means to care for 45 million adults without health care or employment (in most cases). Overhead consumes much of their funds, as does, unfortunately, some amount of corruption, even in the case of religious organizations.

     She emailed me details on Medicare and Medicaid, telling me that I am totally uninformed. I thanked her but told her I was basing my points on that very information.

     Since then she has accused me, and all “liberals” of being ignorant of reality and that we need to do lots more research to back up our assertions. I did not mention all the dissent among our ranks.

     I said that paying taxes was like paying rent for the privilege of inhabiting the most wonderful country in the world, one that took in my refugee forebears and permitted them to prosper without consideration of their ethnic roots, though Skull and Bones might not have admitted the second generation enrolled at Yale on scholarship or parental support. That doesn’t really matter. There are snobs all over the world.

     So this is where we are now. Her husband works like a dog while she presumably stays home and keeps house. I told her how fortunate she was compared to a large percentage of the population and that I work full-time and pay high taxes but begrudge only that large proportion spent on our military endeavors.

     Obama is working like a dog, too—he goes back to the oval office after dining with his family. I can relate to that, though I wolf down Lean Cuisine meals, not having the time to linger very long at the dinner table. I work day and night also.

     I don’t mind paying taxes because the president is doing all he can to clean up after Bush and all the money his administration has also targeted toward economic relief. Well, those on Wall Street are back in circ, pulling in record bonuses and, for the rest of us, even though thousands of jobs were lost last month, the unemployment rate descended by 0.3 percent. Foreclosures continue. In some places weasels are buying up these properties and auctioning them off with huge profits. Others can now afford such homes where they couldn’t before.

     But it’s a gradual, trickle-down process.

     My conservative correspondent might challenge the data or perhaps not even be able to relate to it, if she believes that I need to read the facts on Medicare and Medicaid. She told me to read up on things, but I sort of wondered whether she was the one who needed more information about the plight of the lower two classes at this point in time.

     I ended my latest missive with the point that we both are fortunate compared to a large percentage of the population, and God bless America. I groped for common ground.

     From that common ground we may slowly climb to more mutual understanding. I appreciate the challenge. Liberals are patriotic American citizens, too. We mean well when we assert that the welfare of others is our concern in addition to our own well being.

     In case this correspondent is some progressive giving me a hard time, so be it. I’d say that they’re sure convincing and well understand the opposition, which is praiseworthy, but there is no need to prove this to me, especially since the correspondence is one on one. Given the present nationwide exigencies, said progressive should find better things to do with his or her time.

QED.

(c)

30 January 2010: On a Cross of Gold: SCOTUS Strikes Again

I’m no William Jennings Bryant, but after being reminded of the SCOTUS coup of the government and how President Obama the other day put Congress up to bat in what might be democracy’s last inning, we are seeing the light at last. Our future is in the hands of our legislators. They must overturn the Supreme ruling and rescue us from the cesspool of postnationalism.

     Funny how the extreme right and left are both mocking the boundaries of nationalism as other countries are bonding in response: witness the newly created EU, the socialist alliance being forged in Latin America, and even the stirrings of cooperation among countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

     The ocean of greed is flooding the sands of freedom, too hydrated to absorb it and vomit  it back anymore. Like one of the Egyptian plagues, Neocon quicksand rides atop this ocean. Our highest judiciary, the nonpartisan, “totally objective” branch of our government, has been devoured by global-level greed.

*****

     And if you’re not drowning in this imagery of nausea yet, read this action page, "Corporations Are NOT the People", and add your support to escape for a moment.

*****

To grant rights to a large bunch of grapes equal to those of one grape seed is ludicrous. Can one ant battle the rest of the colony? Is it ok for one human being to dictate every inch of the lives of millions of others, no matter what they may think?

     Is it legal to outsource employment and leave our own population out in the streets or in tents? Rich countries like China and Saudi Arabia are buying businesses and private property here in large numbers while our deficit is wallowing in a swamp of debt owed for oil, tchatchkes of every description, and staple dry goods. Our economy in turn is kept alive with a huge deficit financed by these same countries. The ascent of BRIC as economic superpower is predicted by mid-century.

     Well, what's left? Just because the Bushes and bin Ladens were sitting around the same table at Carlyle Corporation the day of 9/11 and the latter were allowed into forbidden airspace a few days later, there was still some sense of sovereignty, some sense that globalization was a good thing and that America was part of a shrinking world community and shared cultures. On that day, as Germany said, “We were all Americans.”

     Now our own government is being outsourced!! Fixing the voting machines didn't work, so the next right-wing plan is to allow corporate behemoths all over the world to elect our government officials, from the president to the floorsweeper at the Smithsonian--soon you and I will have fewer rights than that floorsweeper now has.

     One of our votes will be considered of equal importance to the combined will of thousands of billionaires, only I will have one vote and each corporation will have thousands.

     Well, here's the next chapter of the melting-pot success story we call the USA.   A global melting pot of like-minded Neocons will rule us, a new kind of rainbow coalition. Noncitizens will be allowed to vote. So even if we sneak a few thousand "illegals" into the polls with ACORN's help, we'll be out-corrupted risibly. No offense to ACORN, fellow Democrats who almost received affordable health insurance and medical care so recently. No, Benedict Arnold was not born in Massachusetts but Connecticut, too close for comfort.

     The pendulum has swung  and in that process struck the heart of democracy, which is throbbing with horror. Our brave president has challenged Congress to swing back. The motto "In God we trust" has never held so much meaning as today.

     Sorry to pollute secularity for a moment, but I think it's time for all of us to pray fervently that this nation of, by, and for us, not just global Neocons, does not perish or suffer permanent subjugation and humiliation.

     Congress, you've never held so much power over the future as today.

     Believe me, I'm on my knees, to God and to those who are elected to represent our will, to save us from this next step away from freedom and liberty.

     The eagle is gagging. It doesn't want to be our national symbol anymore. The earth is quaking with the shock of all American patriots, living and dead.

     Give us back our country. Leave us our ground and send us not to hell.

(c)

29 January 2010: My Predictable Reactions to Bar’s SOTU

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on a truly inspiring speech.

     You even kept health care on the plate, but your priorities have shifted.

     People have suffered large upheavals because of the Recession, but they're dying at alarming rates because of lack of affordable health care.

     Without descending into diatribes, Governor O'Donnell, whom I consider dangerous, even remarked that you've taken on too much.

     I can't think of a president in history who's moved into such a perfect storm.

     Your problem is relegation. Your staff isn't up to carrying out your ideals, and $15 from me, a victim of the recession, won't help at all.

     There is a precedent for you to begin anew where you need to: Wasn't it Jimmy Carter who fired all of his staff and replaced them in an effort to improve his administration?

     You have no idea how important it is to maintain a Democratic administration and Congress at this point in history. Citizens of this country, in despair, have even shorter memories than prior in history. A Republican rebound seems possible, God forbid.

     It's relegating you need to master and the people you've entrusted with carrying out your priorities, and our priorities, more successfully.

     Moreover, you need a more unified situation in Congress, especially the Senate. That's a tough task. You need shrewder staff to interact with them more effectively--you need Lyndon Johnson, not that pitbull Rahm Emanuel.

***** 

All that said, I admire your guts in snubbing Chief Justice Roberts--there was no direct footage of this but he certainly looked aghast when the cameras resumed their focus and you had walked past him.

     I truly admire your request to Congress to override his decision to outsource our government to billionaire power grabbers throughout the world. I hope you gain some support in that area, quickly. I'm sure, as indirect as donations from overseas might become, God forbid, the right-wing Supreme Court is using lobbyists also.

     And you have the guts to put them in their place.

     And I have repeatedly listed your accomplishments in Progressive blogs, including my own wordsunltd.com--an area in which the Press hasn't been too helpful.

     I don't like the way Progressives have treated you. I have told them that they sure form a curious coalition with the right wing. So I may not be their favorite blogger at the moment. I probably never have been.

******

I'm used to espousing unpopular causes, like standing behind you and praying that you win a second term or, if you step aside, that another Democrat replaces you. It is ominous how you rarely project beyond 2012 in your publicized assertions. I hope to God that that slick dude who responded to your SOTU doesn't become president. He needs some experience before he tries. You got yanked out of the Senate too soon, I wrote recently. You need a group of "heavy dudes" to aid you, the likes of Lyndon Johnson and Teddy Kennedy and Chris Dodds and others who know/knew their way around Congress.

*****

I know, from your perspective, I have no idea what's really going on. If only you could activate some of those wonderful ideas you speak about and obviously believe in fervently. I haven't got $15 to spare at this point, but if money is what you think will be of help, then I hope that others respond appropriately to this plea.

     You need a unified Democratic Party. I've broken from the ranks and will continue to stand behind you. I have as much empathy as I am capable of, for someone in your position. I wish I could be of more help.

     History will admire you and view you far differently from the people today. Of that you can rest assured.

     I know you tried to preside over the entire nation, because most of us put you in office. 

     So it could be that this now-divided nation will prevent you from achieving goals that will benefit all of us.

***** 

I admire your spirit and courage and hope this experience doesn't destroy you. Statesmen are so rare, and you fall into that category. Their fellow citizens don't always appreciate them.

     I've even realized that the founding fathers were illegal aliens. They had no passports and in the process of seeking freedom for themselves devastated the lives of countless "people of color." I remain patriotic, however--I am the child of refugees from heinous discrimination and torture--worse than that suffered by African Americans, though probably not Native Americans. I take that one back. I don't know what the numbers are, but their holocaust was more protracted. They weren't just seized from their lives and loved ones and dumped into gas chambers or other forms of sheer hell. The issue for the Native Americans was territorialism, as well as racism.

     I'd better stop lecturing you. I have no Harvard Ph.D. Lincoln was self-educated. Maybe that's the way to go, or home schooling. God knows what. This country is certainly starved for education.

***** 

I admire you hugely. I just wish a lot of things. Were you dealing with a better educated public, I think you might have accomplished a lot more.

     Good luck in the years ahead. I'm just a writer/editor, no politician. 

     Just know that you have my support--I'm a relic from the late sixties and a furious activist since 1999, when the Chinese torture of Bill Clinton so horrified me that I began to write furiously and haven't stopped since then.

     God bless you and what you're trying to accomplish and God bless America.

Marta Steele

PS: Is it any coincidence that you delivered the SOTU on Mozart’s birthday? He certainly received a hard time in life for being so enlightened.

PPS: If my blogs stop appearing, it's because I'm fighting one fierce battle against virusers. I'm doing my best to fight back with the meager skills that I have. All donations to this effort will be greatly appreciated. Today's blog cost me $49. My warranty has expired.

(c) 

26 January 2010: Where Neocon Globalization Is Taking Us

I have just completed an awesome article by Robert Parry, posted by Mark Crispin Miller’s News from the Underground on January 25,  written by Parry on the 23^rd, “U.S. Democracy’s End of the Road.”

     Beginning with the paragraph “Especially after the Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to spend whatever they want to punish some politicians and reward others, it is hard to see a road back for American democracy.”

     In a few pages, Parry starts out from the “perfect storm” of last week: the SCOTUS decision favoring corporations as deciders, the demise of health-care legislation in its present form, and the defilement of Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat by a Republican clown, a double blow to his dream of nationalized health care.

     He then provides a brief history of the forces that led to this debacle for the Democratic Party and U.S. democracy—my only disagreement was his acceptance of the supposed 537 votes that handed Florida to the Bush campaign in 2000. He should read up on that, I told him, starting from the cite that disseminated his article.

     Here’s what “Severina” posted in response—briefly, that the Republicans’ clever strategizing is slowly digging their grave. By mid-century, at least one percent of this country will be in a pit so deep that none will be pulled out, making Haitians look fortunate (I apologize to anyone this may offend, but they may also appreciate the prophecy of their own ascendance).

     And I quote:

Awesome article, proving yet again that Democrats assume that when they step aside to avoid confrontation their motivation is patriotism and not getting mired in bipartisan disputes (though this gives rise instead to internal division). They assume the people will appreciate this gesture and rally behind them, but they don't. No one cares or remembers that Al Gore stepped aside and did not appeal the Dec. 12 Supreme Court decision or raise further controversy, motivated by a concern for the state of limbo that followed the November 2000 elections.

As far as Bush winning Florida by 537 votes in 2000, please consult MCM or any number of other election protection advocates for what really happened.

As awed as I am by the Republicans' combination of unscrupulous strategizing and manipulation of the people, they are leading us to a far worse destiny that will ultimately eliminate them from their throne of gold, too. While they jockey for power and pledge allegiance to the corporate "citizenry" that will now become the deciders, continuing to dumb down the U.S. population, our position as the world's lone superpower is already crumbling. The 21st century will be taken over by others: Brazil, Russia, China, and India, it is predicted by mid-century (BRIC), and our own country will have a Latino majority. 2100 will dawn upon a very different world. Where will the Neocons be positioned? as sycophants to the new world powers, some rich, some ruined, their WASP elitism a thing of the past, along with their white, Judeo-Christian domination.

Money will be the winner, as I predicted in a recent blog, in 2010 and 2012. The Obama election was a protest vote by an extremely hybrid coalition that hasn't held together.

Cry, the beloved country, the male-chauvinist culture that elevated whites to the pinnacle of world civilization, and so on.

The Republicans can't see the forest for the money trees. They won't realize how much they benefited from being Americans and lost by losing patriotism, until they're there and the new third world becomes white.

     Myself, I couldn’t go on living without my optimism, “following toe to heal my nose slowly,” wishing back those strong Democrats like Kennedy, united in purpose, had pushed the health-care legislation through Congress, skilled in shaping its decisions like clay, as LBJ once was.

     They could have accomplished what Obama couldn’t, because Kerry yanked him out of his brand-new seat in the Senate to become our bright star of the future too soon, before he had learned to work Congress the way that Sir George Solti used to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

     Not having gained the presidency himself—though the results of the 2004 election were “Floridized” in Ohio and the truth hangs disguised as rubbish as the country “moved on”—Kerry selected our next president instead and won.

     So desperate for hope and fresh leadership, we all jumped on the bandwagon. I shudder to think what the country would have done to a second President Clinton, really, the way Obama is being clobbered, with all of his fine accomplishments relegated to obscure spaces of the media.

     We needed one of those seasoned, bulldozer Dems to run against Robine and Badman. Obama would have made a great running mate, learning power lessons in that role.

     I have nothing but sympathy for him. He’s where he is because of us as well as Kerry. Collective common sense, especially in the path of a Neocon Humvee, flew off to the nearest triage, still gasping for breath as this silent Civil War erodes the greatest democracy in history. This time the Rebels are defeating the Union.

     As I said before, this became the inevitable but uninvited guest when Obama selected Abraham Lincoln as his role model.

     Lincoln, though he didn’t go to Harvard, was just as smart and at least as eloquent, but more experienced. He also used the military to quash his foes. Obama has deported our GIs and besides, snide, unscrupulous strategizing is far more potent than WMD in the present age.

     What optimism can I end with? Can we rewrite history and mythology altogether? We are making more progress in genetic altering, which might be part of the solution—sort of rewriting the future instead, if we can keep it, if there is one.

     I feel like such a relic already. How will future generations rewrite the tenets of western civilization? The demise of male chauvinism as a basic assumption is certainly no tragedy, if that is in the cards.

     Imagine a melting pot of the entire world, not just pockets of it, the U.S. a prime example. Imagine new realities and hope for something other than massive totalitarianism, that pot of gold of the Neocon rainbow.

     Is it possible to imagine peace in the flowering of globalization into new realities?

     I’ve navigated the “perfect storm” in autopilot. Drastic change, like earthquakes and cyclones, always comes at a huge cost.

     Carissimi, we are that currency.

     Carpe diem, quam minime credula postrero. Drastic change sometimes takes longer than an earthquake. There’s still time to dance and dream.

©

23 January 2010: The Age of Aquarius?

I must have told you about that Viennese family who moved to the green hills of Vermont, way up in the sticks, and stopped reading newspapers, listening to news media, the works. Is it possible now to escape so entirely, not to feel the earthquake in Haiti or any other ongoing tragedies, like Haiti? Or the unavoidable fact that the poorest countries in the world are populated by the darkest-skinned people? As are the poorest states in this country, or the one with the worst public school system, Washington, DC, our nation’s capital?

     Is there anywhere in this country more divided that the District, divided between those highest up in the government and the impoverished south side? True, there is a middle class, but it’s divided, too, between those who can score full-time government jobs and the rest of us, most of us who commute.

     I’m not complaining. I love living here, even though we can’t score one representative in Congress. This year Lieberman is leading the effort to change that, a measure he introduced right after the New Year, a patch of blue on his tainted voting record. I bid you adieu, my fellow Jew. Gun control abolition which we were supposed to trade for representation, has been partially diminished anyway, but no representative-at-large in Utah yet balances “Delegate” Norton’s elevation to voting on House legislation beyond the committee level.

     Bush 43 had the motto “Taxation without Representation” removed from the DC license plate of his executive limo. Strangely, President Obama hasn't restored it. Clinton used it on his limo, btw.

     What’s one more Democratic vote in the House of Representatives? Will it move mountains? Capitol Hill is the only mountain here, but there’s no hill, really, just a Hil in the Cabinet, having reached her summit, probably, that twentieth-century blond on the other side of campus from me in the late sixties, an SDS wannabe while she led the Young Republicans. As I remarked on Facebook this morning, I’m flabbergasted about the results of the Massachusetts special election.

     Of course nobody could replace the (benighted) Lion of the Senate, but why install a skunk? I have already said, with very sick humor, that poor Ted is probably experiencing compound seizures in his grave. What an insult. Not that the attorney general was exactly a prize package, but why was there no effort to replace a lion with at least a tiger or snow leopard?

     I already sulked that the Bay State already has health insurance, so why should they care about the rest of us?

     I’ve already read Bev Harris’s article on corruption at the level of the voting mechanisms, a violation she is famous for exposing all over the country. NOT in this case. NOT.

     This country’s first black senator, Brooke, was in office in the seventies when I lived there, as was Tip O’Neil. Ted was the other senator. The subtle and sinuous dumbing down of the populace had begun its subtle invasion, its silent infection, of our minds.

     Education had, after all, accomplished so much in the sixties, so much that even the success of the dumbing down can’t undo it.

     Even our poor, dumbed-down population realizes they need Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and Social Security. Pardon me if I sound elitist. I’m attacking the machinery, not its victims, younger Americans and by extension all of us, here and throughout the world. It’s contagious and, at the same time, paving the way for the death of western culture, something even former Supreme Court Justice Powell didn’t foresee and wouldn’t have wanted.

     Oh, what tangling webs we weave, Mr. Powell.

     You want Sarah Palin? When pressed, she does recognize the name George Washington.

     Our elections are boiling down to beauty contests. Governor O’Donnell is cute in a slick, totally undistinguished way, Brown was a beefcake model in the eighties, joining the ranks of Governor Schwarzenegger. But Christie of New Jersey is fat and Corzine far better looking. Why?

     Which brings us back to Massachusetts. Despite all the explanations offered by the press, I still don’t understand. How could Kerry let it happen? He’d be senior senator regardless.

     Where was Caroline when we needed her? Here was her real chance to step into Uncle Teddy’s shoes. I guess she preferred Mom’s designer ones.

     Has Blue been bought off? Has the Joker beaten Batman?

     Did you hear that both pharmaceutical and insurance companies backed the health-care bill and poured millions in to support it, according to a News from the Underground  post on January 21? That’s a reliable source.

     One more Democratic representative in the HR may not move mountains, but one more Republican in the Senate sure did.

     Nearly 75,000 Progs have signed a CREDO petition urging the option of reconciliation to allow a minimum of 51 Democrats to comprise a majority large enough to pass the legislation and rule out filibuster--legislation first attempted by another Teddy a century ago and even championed by Tricky Dick [the public option, no less!].

     The press is ignoring all that Bar. has scored in the last year, to the extent that this past January 20 was not celebrated. Bar., I lift my champagne glass to you! You may not be doing it as well as someone else might have, but you’re sure accomplishing a lot for the people backstage. Your hair is turning gray. You won’t speak eloquently beyond 2012, which scares me. Rome was neither built nor destroyed in a day.

     Now you’re the one who needs hope.

     Who’s really in charge? Beats me. Massachusetts couldn’t possibly be a bellwether the likes of New Jersey and Virginia, though the Bay State went their way.

     “Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear,” sang Buffalo Springfield way back when hope was still feathered. “The Times, They Are a’Changin’,” sang Bob Dylan back then, too.

     “Well, I’ll keep my eyes open [and my ears pealed],” as I’ve been told so many times, most of those times of no avail to me. We all keep our eyes open, some more than others, the blind often more than the sighted.

     I do smell a rat. “If you find it, let me know,” wrote John Donne centuries ago. “When it’s done, you have not done,” he also wrote, picked up by Lady Macbeth not too much later. “For I have more,” Donne’s poem continued. He did have more. Will we? In the good sense?

P.S.: Having kept my eyes open, at the end of this dawn-day of Aquarius, I am also trounced by the 5-4 Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited political campaign contributions at the corporate level, because corporations have the same rights in this country as citizens do. They are citizens, only we are limited to $2,300 contributions apiece, still. I don't get it. Now if corporations have the same rights that we do, which they don't, shouldn't we have the same rights as they do? Something's missing in this equation formulated more than a century ago. What rights logically accrue to individual citizens? You tell me. Strange that these two events devoured one miserable week in the life of democracy. We have a brilliant president in office who aspired to emulate Abe Lincoln. Voila, I smell a real civil war within our bounds and the winner will be . . . money!! Beyond that, we must wait to discover the details of this inevitability.

©

18 January 2010: The Day I Met MLK

I went to high school in the South, my senior year only, in a racist and anti-Semitic place that rejected the application of one of MLK’s children, which caused something of a scandal, the year before I enrolled.

     We girls wore powder-blue shirtwaists. The guys had to wear suits and ties.

     That year the school was obliged to integrate. The headmaster, a graduate of the Harvard School of Education, a stubby, red-faced, crew-cut, told us to maintain a mature attitude and “Any nigrahs that we accept will have to be real smart.”

     I sat there amid those WASPs in bewilderment. Was I hearing things or had I been thrown back in time to five to ten years earlier?

(I was, btw, in the midst of the integration crisis in South Boston that occurred less than a decade later, volunteering with Latino kids. I had to walk through black neighborhoods to get to them. One day I was  told by blacks to “get out of Nigger Town.” The kids came up to me and said “Yuck.” I just looked back at them, not knowing what to answer. “I’m just a teacher and a do-gooder,” I was thinking. No one hurt me.)

     Then, at the above southern school, I had to witness the degradation of the maintenance staff, all African Americans.

     There was a talent show once a week. In an unusual twist, a member of the staff was chosen to perform, the janitor. One could tell he did not relish this opportunity. He came in in his work clothes, sat down and played some gospel music on the piano, and sang. There was some awkward applause as he self-deprecatingly exited the room at a door right next to the piano. Back to the mop and bucket.

     And another day he came into a room to empty the trash. Some of us were sitting there after a class. One of the students, not even a southerner, said, “Have some of my Coke,” pointing to a half-empty soda bottle on top of one of the desks.

     The man ignored him. I just froze in helpless disgust.  

****  

     Not long after that, I was at the front of a department store after school, rummaging through some sweaters on sale. I heard some people come in, talking softly, and for some reason looked up. Familiar, I thought. Why? I stood there in my powder-blue shirtwaist, riveted, staring.

     The woman turned around and said “Hi” to my grinning, wide-eyed statue.

     As they walked off, I realized whom I’d seen. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King.

©

16 January 2010: Collision of a Nightmare with a Dream

     To begin to imagine the horror in Haiti, already such an unfortunate nation, is beyond my imagination and even the glimpses I have had of people whose below-poverty subsistences are beyond shattered.

     This devastation coincides with the weekend we celebrate the birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.--the death of thousands of blacks and concomitantly the lives and destinies of tens of thousands more.

     Haiti is the Africa of the western hemisphere. The United States rejects boatloads of would-be Haitian refugees but the world, even China, flies and boats to its aid in the face of this disaster. But, as I’ve said before, it is reprehensible and beyond belief that people live such sub-poverty lives all of the time, not just as the result of an earthquake.

     The real devastation in Mexico is not the drug wars, but the desperate money grab people die for and the poverty that generated that desperation and, of course, the huge demand in our country for the poison weed in the first place.

     And so, you see, the world ignores disasters that occur daily.

*****

     I wondered why on earth helicopters were not used to drop food and water and medicine to the victims in Haiti. I guess there would be food riots? But they could have landed people, via parachute, to help distribute the salvation. C-Span at 8 o’clock last night focused on military issues, including hearings on the Fort Bragg debacle as well as rescue in Haiti. When asked twice why helicopter rescue wasn’t used, Secretary Gates and one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff mumbled back incoherently. I don’t get it.

     All this money we can’t afford and troops we can’t spare donated, but not a bit of ingenuity that would have saved countless lives?

     MLK spent the last year of his life rallying for peace and an end to the Vietnam war and despairing rather than dreaming. Ten days before he died, he spoke of dead civilizations and how racism could become the force that would bring down ours:

     Thee decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynbee, was not caused by external invasions but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impinging upon them.

     Is there racism in the Bible? Lots of intermarriage in the Old Testament, something that the Children of Israel did not shun. Idol worshipers were the devils. There was certainly slavery.

     Creative response is something I’ve been harping on for the preceding several months.

     Response to the epochal disaster in Haiti is anything but creative. It is beginning to trickle in as paths are cut through the stacks of dead bodies and the other ruins—before, one hopes, the curse of cholera and other similar diseases compounds the agony.

     MLK’s actual birthday was Thursday, January 15. His present, or curse, was the descent into hell of people of his own race, a nation of victims sunk much farther below the poverty line than they already were.

*****

     The world is full of disasters of every description—some clothed in silk and diamonds, others generating air pollution as if it were diamonds, others struggling to survive every day and somehow “get through life” exhausted to the bone by back-breaking labor that generates enough of a pittance to assure day-to-day subsistence.

     Where does disaster not reside? Among those committed to responding to it? Responding to it in a way that excludes corruption?

     As I have written before and reiterate in the name of MLK, how can people treat health-care legislation that will save lives or unburden them to some extent as the untouchable evil an entire political party is united against? When all of a sudden they reply with concern about Medicare, I can only refer back to Bush’s efforts to divert the younger generations, those born after 1949 anyway, to investment in the stock market, to entrusting their futures to its vagaries.

     Luckily, Medicare survived that extremist invasion.

     Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid have survived for decades, and even an incursion on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was stalled by the conservative Supreme Court last year.

     Let’s see: financial security and health care are provided to senior citizens and handicapped people, some indigent children, some indigent adults, and full-time employees of the federal government.

     What’s to exclude the rest of us—those willing to work but unemployed because of the recession, those impoverished and put out on the street because of subprime mortgages and foreclosure?

     Congress and an uninformed electorate? Worry that insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers will rob us blind? But they’re already doing that. I took a pill this morning that costs more than $100. Now they’ll have to insure and medicate, for the most part, all of us.

     That’s the bottom line. That’s twenty-first-century ethics at its best.

     Has MLK had one minute’s peace in his grave?

     He’d say that disaster, hunger, thirst, poverty, and disenfranchisement are a constant, everyday disaster.

     So if the countries of the world can dig Haiti out of the ruins of this God-awful curse of an earthquake, they shouldn’t stop there, behaving as occasional angels.

     The press should continue focusing on this rescue process until it is complete, even if a lock of Michael Jackson’s hair sells for millions of dollars on eBay.

     Relief work on the ruins of New Orleans continues and some are still responding to that.

     But too many natural disasters are occurring and too many people failing to connect the dots.

     So if our own corruption and hypocrisy don’t bring down Western civilization, than Mother Nature will destroy an even larger realm.

     Meanwhile, we must adjust our priorities and keep realities at the level of the National Enquirer where they belong. So what if John Edwards doesn’t enter the priesthood or Brad and Angelina behave like every other overpublicized Hollywood couple?

     We must turn our lewd fascinations and fixations elsewhere.

     The world is still in our hands to save. Every unit of it.

10 January 2010: Avatar:  A Must-See If You Favor

 the U.S. Presence in Afghanistan

Yesterday I went to see a marvelous film, Crazy Heart. If you like Jeff Bridges, then you can just stare at him and admire the various angles and love the music that is superbly performed, even if it’s Country Western, a genre I usually shun.

     The love scenes are exquisitely tasteful, and the father-son scenes between “Bad” and four-year-old Buddy are heart-warming.

     The narrative makes it clear that some of the best musicians can’t even read music. But there is no way to figure out who does and who doesn’t. Another form of apparent genius that makes even the co-star, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, jealous, is “Bad”’s ability to pluck a few guitar strings on the front porch with a flask of hooch and presto, another hit song generates a tidal wave of moolah—well $75,000 for a half-burned-out 57-year old alcoholic has-been ain’t hay. His protégé gets the millions and throbs audience hearts the way “Bad” used to—Kris Kristofferson in real life.  

     What a man.

     Avatar I have only heard about from others who have seen it and I have also read critiques. It seems that it is a waste of time for most liberals, who come away from three hours of very skillful production convinced that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is pointless, just like the Russian presence there in the eighties and our presence in Vietnam in the seventies.

     But most liberals who see the film already know that. Some wax ecstatic over it--Rabbi Arthur Waskow, for instance, a leading activist in the national interfaith outreach movement, wrote many laudatory paragraphs about it.

     I would be happier if viewers of other persuasions went to see it, found it thought-provoking, as do the liberals, did some thinking, and then decided the liberals, most of them, are right (correct) after all, and joined the peace movement.

     But probably one conservative hawk went to view it and quickly spread the word that it’s one of those left-wing Kum Ba Yah antiwar things feeling sorry for the Taliban. Or maybe that one conservative, one of the smarter ones, just read a review of it and spread the word.

     But all is not lost. A whole lot of people in Hollywood are raking in a huge bundle and already thinking how next to dupe those crowds who don’t like to stay home on cold winter days and need the air conditioning in the too-hot summers. What should their rubbery, computer-generated humanoids act out next?

     It is, moreover, cheaper to hire super-stars to read roles back stage, right from scripts, rather than have to memorize their lines and act on sets from here to Siberia, bringing with them their temper tantrums, hooch, drugs, and insatiable sex drives.

     Movies that come out in the autumn or spring have to be better. I’d like to do a study to corroborate this. I mean, what else is playing now? Alvin and the Chipmunks? I’d rather stay home and wait for Crazy Heart to come out in dvd.

*****

Other than that, to get back to really changing things for the better rather than just pretending to or trying to, President Obama has finally asserted himself against those same conservatives, snatching the health-care legislation out of their diamond-studded, manicured, and massaged hands and locking himself into the oval office with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to hammer out the final bill and sign it into law before his State of the Union speech.

     That 3 a.m. call must have come, probably not from Hillary, to remind him that he is a liberal Democrat not really representative of the entire U.S. population—only those who have been screwed by those same filthy-rich, greedy swine, those conservatives.

     There are plenty of the former category, some of whom support the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and a few of whom oppose health-care legislation, those whose jobs and benefits have never been threatened and can still depend on retirement pensions and maybe even continued health and life insurance. They have just suffered mortgage foreclosures like so many others.

     Never mind that the amount of taxpayer money wasted on the Republican filibustering at the committee level, several committees actually, in both the House and Senate, would easily have financed universal healthcare for at least a year.

     We must make sure that freelancers don’t receive health benefits from their employers, after all, and that women with unwanted pregnancies go to quacks or former paramedics or immoral retired physicians to be scraped sans anesthesia or treated better at costs guaranteeing bankruptcy.

     Would those pro-lifers like to pay more taxes to support and educate children born out of wedlock and/or unwanted pregnancies to mothers who can’t afford to raise them properly because of drug addiction, among other cursed circumstances? Would they like to adopt them? Would they even like to walk throughout inner-city slums distributing boots with bootstraps?

     But I’m getting off message.

     The Senate is still on vacation—until the 18^th, so things will have to move quickly thereafter. But since it can’t compete with the season premier of the hit tv series Lost, the annual State of the Union address will be postponed, which will allow more time to gag Congress into passing the health-care legislation. Who knows what’s going on among Senators Nelson, Lieberman, and Baucus, sunning themselves in the Caribbean and chatting on their cell phones or Blackberries with three sweltering 24/7’s hunched over the broad oak presidential desk swilling coffee from a samovar that hasn’t been refilled in at least a day?

     Pity all those aides involved, also sweltering in mid-January, even amid closely guarded , roped off sites somewhere in the Caribbean.

     Or is anyone skiing? Do Democrats ski? Patrick is the last Kennedy holdout in the House of Representatives.

     The health care bill, because formation has been so protracted, will pass at the expense of other Democratic priorities. War money has already been allocated, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining months between now and November, minus further vacation time, are taken up by more filibustering at the committee level—anything to prevent meaningful environmental legislation to pass, even as the Polar Ice Cap will melt anytime now.

     These will be months spent placating right-leaning moderates, independents, not to mention Republicans, even Olympia Snowe. Whatever happened to her? Maine is among the bluest of blue states. How did she and Collins get elected in the first place? Because they’re women? So is Ann Coulter.

*****

Oh, I am off message altogether. How did I get to Ann Coulter?

     Pray for health-care legislation to pass that will benefit some of us and that the opposition doesn’t try to waste time undoing the legislation just passed. Obama did win by a landslide two Novembers ago, whatever the Progressives and Conservatives, an odd coalition indeed, are saying about him now. And once the legislation passes, pray that our president stands up again for the people who elected him and dismisses as way past hopeless that small minority who didn’t.

*****

And, by the way, to get onto the real message that stimulated this blog, what a waste of genius and creativity are productions like Avatar, drones and the research on even more advanced ways to decimate lives, all of the graduate-level scholarship in the humanities for the last ten years at least, billion-dollar space vehicles navigating the universe in search of monstrosities that will gobble up our entire reality in two seconds, research on cosmetic plastic surgery that will transform faces like Michael Jackson’s original one into Liz Taylor’s, nauseating prime-time tv gimmickry like Lost that holds so muc of the public captive, the manufacture of SUVs, new diseases invented by pharmaceutical giants to market to the public on disgusting commercials. . . . I could go on deconstructing the industries that may bring down our decaying, decadent western civilization one of these days, but the ultimate message is this:

     All creative efforts must be redirected toward invention of a real triumph over terrorism, something that has nothing to do with WMD, something that is as productive as terrorism is destructive, something like induced evolution but actually feasible given our present level of advancement, and so on. A cure for a new breed of cancer that is beyond cure.

     Together we can make a difference, Obama told us during his campaign. Brilliant [living] minds of western civilization, unite!

©

3 January 2010: Northwest Flight 253: Bandaids versus THE Cure

One of the Top Ten quotations of the preceding decade is surprisingly accurate despite its source. About midway through the period between 2000 and 2010, Donald Rumsfeld informed the press that from his perspective there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, nd unknown unknowns. Something like that.

     He was correct, but in a larger context—the future of Western civilization.

     Right now termites are munching away at our foundations. They are violent, but that is nothing new. They don’t negotiate, but that is also nothing new. They operate all over the world and feel free to enter new countries and settle in them without assimilating but instead intimidating. They are not a nation but a trans-nation, a genuine challenge posed by the twenty-first century to the survival of western civilization. They question our assumptions, the ground that we stand on: such givens as national borders and nationhood, and the taboo against using human beings as weapons.

     This is an elevated form of hostage taking. But a hostage can be freed, while a suicide bomber perishes.

     And what’s the difference between suicide bombers and dying for your country in war? humans, both innocent and guilty, both singly and en masse, functioning as weapons rather than simply using weapons separate from themselves.

     The terrorists have us on the defensive. They are the inventors. For each rock they throw that breaks something, we erect a wall, after the fact. Our intelligence agencies crack some of their schemes but not all of them. But more such bureaucracy is not the answer.

     The termites keep evolving faster than the terminators can devise new ways to eliminate them.

     I’m thinking specifically of the liquid explosive used last Christmas on Northwest Flight 253 that could not be detected by any of the surveillance devices developed to prevent terrorism from invading air travel, one of the underpinnings of globalization, one of the many. Terrorism, by the way, is a negative by-product of globalization, one of the many.

     So airlines and airports are stepping up levels of precaution and no doubt scientists are developing mechanisms to detect liquid explosives.

     And the cycle will continue as the termites multiply faster than the behemoth’s reconstructions and exterminations.

*****

Another gigantic scar that defiles western civilization is the systematic slaughter of Jews and other non-Aryans by the Nazis during World War II. But military engagement quickly defeated them. That’s all it took, along with the knowledge that what they were doing was dead wrong.

     We know that terrorism is dead wrong and work 24/7 to combat it, because conventional weaponry is worthless. Even nuclear weaponry is worthless because they are ubiquitous and we can’t destroy the world. Even the state-of-the-art drones won’t come close to solving the problem.

     We need something gigantic, in the figurative sense, and unprecedented, like induced evolution. Without the tendency toward violence as a means toward an end, the foundations of terrorism will disintegrate.

     I’ve said this before: we need transcendent creativity to leap us over this gigantic and  growing frog, this roaring termite.

     We don’t need to be preemptive but proactive: we need genius, not violence and greed.

*****

Nothing comes from nothing, the Stoics told us years ago, but we have learned since then  that unanticipated mutations can occur. We have to burrow through our layers of assumptions and givens and premises. We couldn’t win in Vietnam without the nuke, which would not have solved the problem at all.

     Here the nuke can’t even be considered.

     Many of the most towering figures in the history of western civilization never went to college, as I pointed out in my New Year’s blog.

     We need to convene the Kilgore Trouts [an inventive, totally unappreciated eccentric genius who appears in several of Kurt Vonnegut’s early novels] of the world, away from music, away from art, away from science fiction writing—all activities that can be put on hold without threatening the continuity of anything indispensable.

     We need to explore the mines of irrational genius. We need to distract the inventors of rocket gizmos and WMD and add them to our think tank, because their activities put on hold will not interfere with daily existence either.

     And together they must enable us to leap over the terrorist frog.

*****

If not the literal form of induced evolution I suggested in a blog back on August 15, then some sort of evolution is needed. By convening these eccentric creators and inventors, we are attempting to induce something. By engineering the successful leap, these eccentrics will materialize, out of the thin air of their imaginations, the needed next step, something new that will not violate what we cherish that already exists.

     As activists and Madison Avenue executives say, it must be sexy or it will be ignored.

     If induced evolution is sexy, maybe “they” are already working on it behind closed doors in some inner chamber of the CIA.

     If not, the assembly of eccentric and conventional creators is imperative. The number of times and ways we can react is limited. We must turn our thoughts toward THE ACT and hope it materializes soon enough.

©

1 January 2010: New Year Thoughts

If we have indeed completed the first decade of the twenty-first century, then there is much symmetry to note: as the decade began with a terrorist explosion as a harbinger of a dominant focus of these years, so it ended with a failed attempt at more mass murder. Vigilance was severely lacking in 2001, but present on that flight from Amsterdam to Detroit—arguably that of one man who saved so many others.

     I write “If we have indeed . . .”  because some argue that the twentieth century ended with 2000, not 1999. So more retrospectives on the preceding decade may appear as 2010 closes.

     Another point of symmetry is that Democrats were voted out in Election 2000 and, after eight years of hell, reelected in 2008. Both Democrats have been called our first black president—more literally true of Obama than Clinton.

     It was a decade pulled out of the hands of the middle class by the upper class, as the national debt sank from a surplus to a huge deficit. At the same time, the two lower classes were forced to finance the economic miasma engendered by the rich and rescue them. Friedman defeated Keynes—Summers and Bernanke and Geithner over two Nobel laureates many of us would have preferred, Stiglitz and Krugman. I guess there’s more Harvard among the first trio and absolutely none between the Nobel laureates.

     I won’t pursue the Ivy League issue any further, beyond my repetition of the fact that Abe Lincoln, to whom C-Span paid lengthy homage on New Year’s Eve, lacked any Ivy League credentials at all, as did George Washington, whom no college can claim as its alumnus. As a matter of fact, he was a 16-year-old “dropout.”

     Out of the other two carved on Mount Rushmore, Thomas Jefferson attended William & Mary, and only Teddy Roosevelt was a Harvard grad, as was his cousin FDR.

     From a study I read a few years ago and can’t quote, Bill Clinton had the highest IQ (180) and his successor, George Bush ’43, the lowest, at 91. His father scored ten points higher, at 101. Obama’s is extremely disappointing, ranging, according to reports, from 130 to 145 or higher.

     So the “genius” of the bunch, Bill Clinton, did rack up some impressive accomplishments during his tenure, like the budget surplus Bush 43 quickly shredded into the present catastrophe. From what history reveals, he tied JFK in the category of promiscuity, both Ivy Leaguers.

     (An aside: the highest IQ on record is held by Leonardo da Vinci, with Einstein occupying the relatively mediocre level of 160.)

     Lincoln’s IQ weighs in at 128, Washington’s at 138.

     We may therefore conclude that presidential greatness has not much to do with either IQ or school attended. Two out of the four greatest chief executives lacked any college credentials at all. That is to say, neither one would even be considered for that post today.

     In the last fifty years or so, IQs of Democratic presidents highly trumped those of their Republican counterparts. To be kind to the GOP, I won’t go into more detail.

     The IQs of the two presidents judged to be the most intellectual among the bunch are Garfield, IQ 141-52, and Nixon, at 155. I would have guessed Wilson or Jefferson.

     Admittedly, the school that boasts attendance by the most presidents is Harvard, at eight. Five went to Yale, and two to Princeton, to compare the scores of the Big Three status toppers.

*****

How did I diverge to this trivial topic, given that the highest IQ in the history of the western world is supposedly held by da Vinci, even though creativity cannot be measured by most standardized tests?

     Perhaps to prove the point that presidential qualifications range far and wide, with education and Ivy League seemingly not the most important and sometimes deceptive distractions, icing sweetened with saccharine, as in the case of the two Bush presidencies.

     I was wondering where we’d be now economically had Stiglitz and Krugman piloted our course out of the deep recession people wrongly blame on Obama, had the taxpayer bailout gone to the crooks at the bottom of the money ladder as opposed to those at the top (excuse my cynicism). At least it would have been returned to its source, the overtaxed majority of this country as opposed to those whose wealth is exported to  Switzerland and other more remote and exotic locations, those illegal tax shelters.

     More than that, alas, I cannot say, except that the alternative on the face of it would have been far more ethical. To me economics is such an inexact science. What scares me is that sometimes the PhDs and other experts seem to be trapped by this limitation also, one side arguing alternatives opposite to others’.

     On the face of it also, if two out of the four of those considered our greatest presidents never went to college, one entirely self-educated, might we say that life experience or political experience trumps education as a prerequisite for the highest office in the world?

     Another consideration is the venue in which the president governed. Among the Mount Rushmore quartet, two were founding fathers and the other two were wartime presidents. FDR took this country through World War II. Woodrow Wilson, also considered one of the best, presided during World War I.

     Nine of our past presidents had no military experience at all, including Clinton and Obama, but neither did Woodrow Wilson, FDR, nor the two Adamses.

     Eight other presidents in addition to our two greatest did not attend college: Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Zachardy Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, and Harry S Truman. Were Sarah Palin to become president, she'd be among those who attended the most institutes of higher education, as an undergraduate anyway.

     I have perused research on the ingredients for an ideal president and concluded that there are many. Some political scientists even elevate the question to the level of mathematics. But the formula may not even end there.

     Beyond the above ironies, please be aware that the IQ scores quoted, especially prior to the last half century or so, are only estimates, and sources differ as to IQs of all the presidents. But most put the two Bushes at the bottom of the heap. And the one with the lowest IQ made the biggest mess of things.

*****

Happy New Year!

©

25 December 2009: What Would Christmas Be Without a Blog?

Merry Christmas! Here's what I had to say on Facebook this morning at about 6:

     "What's on my mind? Christmas. Under the yule trees of all is a promise of a kind of peace many have lacked for so long. May Bar. roll up his sleeves and help finish the job post haste. People are dying. Opponents are abetting this. You'd think Congress was advocating some napalm in every pot. If the bill passes, will it last? Thinking ahead to the work ahead. More civil war. Merry Christmas, though. Take five."

     That's right. I'm already worried about the outcome of the next election. If there's a Republican sweep, will we have experienced a "short, happy life" of a valiant attempt at universal health care?

     Will the Dems be able to write in words that allow their bill a life longer than a few months?

     Consider social security, medicare, medicaid, the Voting Rights Act. What was it about them that ensured their logevity? Indispensability? A Democratic majority (I can't remember)? But that didn't last.

     It would be more than useful to get those legal wheels turning before 2014. Parts of it do go into effect sooner, I've read. No more doughnut hole for medicare--sorry, Bush 43.

     "Providing for the common welfare" is a priority of the preamble to the Constitution.

     We can always pray.

*****

Surely there's more to talk about on this joyous occasion than saving lives and/or improving them. Actually there isn't.

     2,009 years ago the Messiah came, even proclaiming His identity. He was marginalized, sort of like Martin Luther King, Jr. Ultimately his enemies killed him but not his mission, though we're still working on it.

     I have offered another interpretation in previous blogs: that God gave up trying to curb our need for material idols and served us up with a living, breathing one before shrugging His shoulders and checking out.

     Since then we have made a mockery of the religion He bequeathed us.

     Amazing wonders like Gothic cathedrals, erected as tributes, involved thousands of lives spent involuntarily [in most cases--these poor serfs weren't angels, though sainted] on nothing else than their construction--therefore, arguably, their value may be only marginal in the eyes of the Son of God, whose conception of beauty, whose vision we can hardly relate to, though we try.

     Have we achieved absolute perfection in His eyes? Miracles have occurred since He came to us, wonderful apparitions we will never forget.

     But the only real miracle we must pray for is that He doesn't abandon us also, in despair, if He hasn't already. There is so much to alienate and overburden even a Divine Being.

     We spend lots more time and money devising ways to destroy the world than improve it.

*****

We can hope for another miracle: passage of health-care legislation in this country un-marked-up enough to benefit at least part of the 45 million uninsured as well as the rest of us minus the top one percent, who don't need itand will fork out more taxes, but also be entitled to the same benefits as the rest of us.

     Some of those who remain uninsured are "Illegal" immigrants, so they will have to wing it. They have, I would imagine, youth and strength on their side and further, I believe, deeper religiosity than many of us.

     As I wrote in an earlier blog, the "left-wing conspiracy" that is triumphing is, to the east, Muslim and, in our midst along with rapidly spreading Muslim families, devout Catholicism. There are some left-wing Jews, notably Chomsky, though he favors a citizen draft.

     The rest of the population will affiliate according to their values and needs.

     What of the moderates (more or less, most of us)? Will we be forced to decide on a direction?

     The fittest of us will survive. I don't mean to blaspheme. Darwin's brilliant hierarchy of life evokes a religious amazement in me, a structuralist.

     I believe that if eternal life is not a product of religion, it can be invented by science.

*****

All Inferno has broken loose on the large webpage I write for, sending what I consider my best and most effective blogs there a few times a month. I'm sure the page will survive and am interested exactly how. The owner is among the fittest people I know. the page has accomplished a lot of good, mingling words of superstars with those of ordinary folks most democratically.

     In this case, the bounds of the First Amendment were compromised. Some extremist threats of violence were not eliminated from publication, though the ground rules for commentary forbid this. Where good accomplishments exceed negligence, even at the spiteful level if this is the case, then "stet," says this editor. A bit less editorial mischievousness is imperative, a bit less hybris. Nor should the owner dive into such a sacred act as civil disobedience just for the experience and to report it to his readers.

     I committed c.d. not long ago, and it is harrowing. I decided that no woman ever again would experience the abuse and harassment plaguing me for no other reason than that I was an attractive, single woman who enjoyed her space and had mostly outgrown a desperate need for frequent sex and a male escort. I loved my space and the freedom to write when I wanted to or go out to a movie without leaving a babysitter with my spouse to keep him out of mischief. Why worry? Since my frequent companionship was insufficient, I freed him to hitchhike the country, mired in an era long gone.

     Little did I know the limits of the freedom and the space I had so craved. I was yanked away from conscientious motherhood and evolving into my next era. True, the prodding led to my next job, but harassment escalated, along with the mythology that I am a genius. I think they needed a Type A workhorse to complete a very difficult project and flattered me into staying until it was done. After that, they showed this "genius" the door, though I didn't walk out so quickly. My daughter was about to enter one of the finest universities, also one of the most expensive, in the world. They had promised me they'd help with tuition all four years.

     I finally walked out, having fought to be fired rather than quit, so I had a bit of severance cash to move me into the next level, which turned out to be another full-time job: having a daughter on full scholarship--fighting for her right to health insurance, speak of the devil, and other forms of lower mathematics.

     My daughter got her M.A. in five years and is now an A.B.D. I am sure that her dissertation will help improve this poor old world in some way, unlike the one I anticipated completing, lots of fodder for scholars behind black wrought-iron bars and little else. I am living it instead, wanting its implications materialized rather than imprisoned within dust-catching volumes, sitting most of the time unused. But it's online at my site now, copyrighted, yours and mine but not theirs. They didn't know what to do with it.

     As for the c.d., I was forced to pay $500 to a criminal lawyer [and that's cheap, for which I thank him] --me a criminal? What a good girl I am became immediately apparent--I had to act it out on probation for six months, paying out of my own pocket to see a wonderful psychologist once a week. We chatted about everything except my harrowing experience and reaction to it. It was too nauseating and just about everything else was more interesting and more important, at least to me. Surveying the waiting room, I knew beyond a doubt that I was her easiest case. We had some great chats.

     The plea was, nonetheless, some form of insanity, for which I pop pills to this day. They are very feel-good, but I think I'd be smarter without them. I went off them for one month, able to bear the side effects harmlessly--being on that stuff for years hooks you. It was during that month that I conceived of the only way to save our rotten, stinking "civilization" from utter destruction--the Steele manifesto, whether or not you believe me.

     But the withdrawal was tough, so I went back to the orange plastic container with the pop top, since I no longer have to childproof my abode.

     Meanwhile, the offenders were for the most part eliminated from my life, which seems to be of such interest to them that I have no doubt that they still encircle me, claws fully extended, waiting to pounce. I keep receiving hints of this, convinced that day by day there is less likelihood of more scratching, or at least leaning against this assumption and freed now to focus more on the world around me and delving into my "genius" to cure it somehow.

     A real genius would have accomplished this long ago. Someone more effective than Jesus. I apologize to anyone I have offended with these words. I'm sure that Jesus was a transcendant genius.

*****

Is this Christmas or a Catholic confession from a lapsed eclectic?

     You no doubt stopped reading this paragraphs ago. Nonetheless, please accept this Christmas gift from someone decidedly not paranoid, whatever else is wrong with me.

     Please accept this gift of a part of my life I rarely discuss. But that state of constant nausea, that distortion of my civil rights and those of my fellow women everywhere, bears repeating.

     I like to think I would have starved myself in jail if I didn't have a daughter. But I also have a family and further work to do. No use starving myself when it won't do much good. I'd be fighting three thousand years of mostly sexual discrimination. I didn't give up per se, but hope in some cases that my words are mightier than the swords of senseless discrimination.

*****

Let us pray for an improvement curve and a miraculous continuation of our misguided, hopelessly idolatrous and violent civilization. Let science try my manifesto. I'm sure there are droves of others, but life is easier for me now that I've seen a way out of our cave. "If you're such a know-it-all, tell me how you'd improve things," people of other persuastions challenge me as I challenge them. At least I have an answer, whether or not science is up to implementing it or busier with other priorities.

     Would it embarrass you, dear reader, if I were to tell you that I care about our collective future? (pace Joan Baez, whom I worshiped back in the sixties.)

(c)

21 December: Snowbound: [Mental] Wheels in Fifth Gear

The solstice laughingly occurs for an instant sometime today--just one burp. Laughing because we bid crackling autumn adieu in pure white.

     The Beltway area is a mess, people having abandoned their cars in misery, the two surrounding states not knowing the difference between a snowplow and an elephant's ear. More or less, thus confining me to a region that plowed roads that could take me to the train, but no farther than the DC Metro and the confines of the District rather than the new job I was to begin in the suburbs of Virginia.

     Even the feds closed up shop, with so many commuters from the "burbs being so trapped.

     Plagued by insomnia one night when the snow was so high even the emergency crews stayed home though they know all about plowing, I envisioned reality so completely I almost checked out altogether for this reason: it became crystal-clear to me that the left-wing conspiracy is defeating the right wing conspiracy, which is the real reason why Mitch McConnell is staring back at the cameras like a dead man walking.

     The left wing consists of the rapid spread of adherents to Islam all over the world and the proliferation of "illegal" immigrants in this country, 40 million at the last count including the many legitimate U.S. citizens among them already crawling around and smiling at digital cameras adorably, in Spanish and soon English. And don't forget all us Progs.

     Or do they all crave the curving, newly blacktopped roads of the frequently treeless suburbs with remotes that open the heavy doors of their two-car garages?

     I say the Obama-Hillary duet says it all: twenty-first century man reducing Blue Eyes to giggles at times.

     Twenty-first-century woman will soon step into his shoes, someone like Sonya Sotomayor, a self-made woman, rather than Hillary, who will still occupy an important auxiliary role as the world evolves and the slave soon rules the master--where was that first predicted? The meek inheriting the Earth, except that they are anything but meek, even at the level of mopping floors.

     What will happen to us boomers who advocated equality for so long? Will we remain white collar professionals or be swept downstairs to the janitor's closet?

     My daughter will witness whatever comes next. I want only the best life for her, already at ease in the multicultural societies where she has attended school since ninth grade--she is now a Ph.D. candidate whose research has already involved the barrios of Rio de Janeiro, specifically indigent single mothers in their teens.

     I think that the Caucasian race and its stale civilization formed by dead white men is on its way out. The Absurdists believed the same thing many years ago--the staleness of the premises and assumptions that underlay our reality. You know already that it's human limitations rather than staleness, as I see it.

     In another hundred years we will all be mixtures of every racial group on earth. I doubt that we will learn how to abstract ideas or truly comprehend the real message of fifth-century Athens even then. Even if they manage to unearth the other 99 percent of lost evidence of what really went on back then.

     New realities will rule, new forms of thinking.

     Any of us allowed to revisit will marvel, wondering what has evolved, probably incapable of comprehending it. Will we be able to identify all the newness as advancement or retrogression? Will it matter?

     All of this will come about if our world exists at all, if everything we've ever known isn't gone forever, devoured by sea monsters and regurgitated unrecognizably, the Earth now 100 percent aquatic rather than the present high percentage.

     The white Judeo-Christians have obliterated themselves, offended God too profoundly, to endure.

     Humanity will adapt. My great grandchildren will be brown as Nicaraguan eyes. I wonder if any of my writings will survive for them to marvel at. I hope so.

     Once upon a time we were offered religions by God but lived so hypocritically that even Jesus stopped being able to absorb all of our sins.

     Once upon a time we were so stupid that we spent more energy on creating and updating WMD than on medical research and human rights--not even a Golden Mean balanced the ends of this spectrum, as the ancient Greeks urged and advocated.

     Once upon a time ignorance was bliss and erudition useless because it isolated rather than reached out, despite the ideals of the philosophies and religions studied. It existed behind high, wrought-iron fences, Ivory Towers thus pushed aside by Minarets. Those with one foot in each world were too few to make a difference, too obscured by the media to influence those they really needed to reach.

     Once upon a time we ignored all warnings about a silent or noisy Armageddon at the turn of the millennium.

     Will they learn from us if remnants of our culture survive? Or will they discard them, since ultimately they destroyed rather than built up civilization.

     The bottom line of western culture was reaching to our holsters rather than the ideals we professed.

*****

Will this sordid past sink into the depths of Hell or be forgiven? Perhaps a few of us will be admitted into Heaven and most of us occupy Limbo. Maybe we'll all burn for eternity.

     Or will we be saved by induced evolution, efforts diverted from the munitions factories?

     That's the only solace I can offer, an amalgam of lots of western ideation. I may become that crackpot that even others in Heaven will shun. But most likely my poor soul will be directed to Limbo with a "nice try" button pinned to my gray robe.

     Pray to Jesus' Father for forgiveness and hope that the world doesn't shake too hard from the laughter He offers in response. Maybe He'll send Jesus down to deliver one more stanzaic message to us (from James Joyce's "Ballad of the Joking Jesus":

          Good bye now, good bye; write down all I said,

          And tell Tom, Dick, and Harry I rose from the dead.

          What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly,

          And Olivet's breezy; good bye now, good bye.

     Rise up, evolve, know what you're doing as you celebrate Christmas and then the advent of 2010. As arrogant as we have been, by that much may we sink.

     Rise up and evolve.

©

9 December 2009: Health Care Again: Another Deadline Looms

Having decided I have nothing more to say, having determined what really needs to be done, induced evolution, I realized, after reading today’s news, that we can move in that direction by supporting whatever health-care legislation Congress can pass, for this simple reason:

     Obama’s was a protest victory rather than a mandate for Progressive action. Moderates, the true majority in this country, joined with liberal Republicans and all Democrats to elect Obama. I think the color of his skin had very little to do with it, though I do rejoice with the Afro-American population for this historic victory.

     I have read a summary of the legislative compromise in the Senate announced by Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is, by the way, antichoice.

     Here is today’s New York Times report on as much information as Reid divulged. Details are forthcoming.

     Having read also that House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, whom I met twice, disagreed with Obama to the point that the president protested and Conyers publicized it, I sent him this note (not all of it is quoted—I left out my views on troop escalation in Afghanistan), adding since I wrote the note that Senator Russ Feingold also objects to the present form of the legislation:

     “I think it is of CRITICAL AND CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE that we get behind any healthcare legislation we can before Election 2010, or there will be none at all, given O's ratings and the insecurity of the moderates--4 senators representing the majority of this country.

     “It's now or never, folks. People have a lot to gain from even the Senate compromise. We need to get behind it. Spin those wheels. If Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich withdraw their support at the ultimate decisive moment, then they will be joining their true opponents and really letting the people down.

     “United we stand. Don't let the people down. Since when has perfect legislation ever passed? We had some problems with Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it’s still there. We can’t kill problems, only fight against them.

     “The Christmas recess is approaching for Congress. Next comes January, when legislators begin to focus on their campaigns for reelection in November. The sooner the finished bill is served to the entire Congress, the sooner moderates can support it and then do other things to mollify their conservative constituents before the 2010 elections.”

     Further dissent among the Democrats will undoubtedly protract the debate beyond November 2010.

     To me it’s a fight between something or nothing. Look how much damage the Republicans did from 2000 to 2008 by maintaining as much unity as they did? They love our dissension.

     Again, moderates are the majority. Progressives backed Obama despite his intentions to continue the fight in Afghanistan.

     So let’s stand together. The lives of so many Americans are in our hands. Further delay will work against them as well as us.

     Go for it. Let’s hesitate no further.

©

6 December 2009: Outrageous Deconstruction

Having spent much of my life studying various aspects of Western civilization, and having moved down to DC allegedly to “fix things,” I find myself helplessly deconstructing many basic tenets of our Judeo-Christian society.

     (Regarding “fixing things,” I was newly arrived when Obama won and more recently submitted to the world my plan for overturning the destructive aberration of killing our own kind en masse and repeatedly despite the lessons of history. I’ve referred to my theory of “induced evolution” more than once since I composed the original blog, “15 August 2009: Steele Manifesto Continued.”

     The Judeo aspect: I have been reading First Kings, the Masoretic text, concentrating on Solomon, that paragon of excellence who ultimately descended into idol worship, having lived such an exemplary life until then, gifted with wisdom from God when God asked him what he wanted, building God’s first temple, acquiring untold amounts of wealth, dedicating astronomical sacrifices to Him, inhabiting a palace he also had built, unequaled in splendor.

     (First Kings 10.22: “So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.”)

     What challenges did the Queen of Sheba pose to him—she came away so impressed with his responses. The questions are enumerated in a document translated from both ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, parts of it dating back to the first or second century C.E., which refers to I Kings 10: 1-ff; RABASH; Yilquth Shimoni on Chronicles, section 1085; Talmud, Baba-Bathra 15.b; Midrash on the book of Proverbs (Midrash Mishle) known as Shoher Tov; Alpha-Beta of Ben-Sira (in manuscript form); Midrash Hagadol on the Book of Genesis, 25:6; Targum Sheni of Megillath Esther; Antiquities of Josephus; and Midrash Hahefetz, in the section known as Haftarah, according to Israeli scholar and translator David Ben-Abraham. Among the questions is that posed by the sphinx of ancient Thebes, which Oedipus alone could answer, much to the horror of what ensued and the harvest of Sigmund Freud, among others: “This thing, at first goes upon four. Then it goes upon two. At last, it goes upon three. . . .”

     Solomon was directly addressed by the Lord twice—would that be enough to keep anyone monotheistic?

     But his wisdom turned to women (distracted from his nice Egyptian wife) and his riches were ultimately squandered on the idols they worshiped, so that Solomon turned away from God, to whom he had earlier prayed: “For Thou didst set them apart from among all the peoples of the Earth to be thine inheritance” (First Kings 8:53). I wonder what inheritance means here, where I might expect legacy? [It probably means “legacy.”]

     God soon announces that if the Jews, to whom He had promised an eternal kingdom for obeying the Second Commandment, turn away from Him, “this house which I have hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight” (First Kings  9:6).

     David is the one who obeyed this commandment, the Bible reiterates through the words of God, and for his sake, once Solomon has dwindled into idolatry, and for Jerusalem’s sake, God saves one tribe for Solomon’s son Jeroboam (First Kings 11:14). The other ten tribes fall under the rein of Rehoboam, Solomon’s servant. These ten northern tribes, collectively known as the Israelites, ultimately became “the lost tribes.”

     The surviving groups were the Kohanim, the priests descended from Aaron, and the Levites, the others who inhabited the southern part, Judea, of the divided kingdom.

     All of the above raises an infinite number of questions. The Jews are so called because of their descent from Judah, the fourth of Jacob’s sons, forebear of David and ultimately the tribe from which Jesus is born.

     The name Jesus comes from the name Joshua, who leads the Jews into the promised land while Moses is forced to stay behind because he shattered the first set of Ten Commandments given to him on Mount Sinai by God.

     So another Joshua leads a good portion of the world to this day while God looks on from afar, from above.

     I say that God gave His kingdom to this Joshua, having given up on monotheism, having watched His chosen people descend into idolatry so many times.

     I consider this Joshua the personification of God, something tangible, because that is what the people wanted and still need. As I said before, we can’t really abstract, we Judeo-Christians, even at a time when God spoke to us repeatedly. So He became a true abstract by disappearing and being replaced by His son, despite the theology of the Trinity, among other theological writings that have defined our civilization since then.

     I say that the Jews ceased to be God’s inheritance after the fall of the Second Temple. And they have been punished ever since—even though they profess monotheism and have contributed to our culture far beyond their small surviving numbers.

     I think that the Western world is riddled with all sorts of idolatry, as I’ve said before.

*****

     My second act of iconoclasm is aimed against the founding fathers, those deified dead white men who framed our democracy after breaking away from England. All of those human rights they professed applied to white male property owners.

     The Native Americans were virtually eliminated and black Africans were sold into slavery by their own kind, but purchased by white men and not considered among the “men” who were supposedly created equal.

     Too late we have extended equal rights to those oppressed people as well as women, other non-whites, Latinos, and other minorities, though the latter are predicted to overtake the whites as the majority in this country by the middle of this century.

     Even as so many of us inveigh against the illegal immigrants from Mexico, we must realize that the founding fathers had no passports either and far less respect for those who already lived here than do the present “invaders.”

     We must realize that they were therefore racists. Our country arose out of shaky foundations, then, far short of the ideals we were taught in grade school that we activated, a light unto the world.

     To their credit, the founding fathers were highly educated, brilliant thinkers and their writings and anticipations were often right on the mark, amazingly prophetic and at the same time amazingly effective.

     But as the Old Testament is filled with warfare—even God’s favorite, David, was a warrior--so has U.S. history suffered from one war after the next.

     God has bequeathed most of us westerners to Jesus and refuses to speak to the small number of Jews who to this day profess monotheism. For them He is not only abstract but beyond all five of our senses, somewhat like the Greek gods who walked among the people Homer sings about but stepped back by the time Homer’s words were committed to papyrus. Wasn’t it the author of the Theogony himself, Hesiod, who laments in his Works and Days that the gods no longer walk among us? Don’t quote me on that—it’s been a while since I was immersed in the classics.

     The most tangible miracles occur through appearances of the Virgin Mary in various places west of Asia—God’s “wife,” a sanctified mortal.

     But “history,” both recorded and otherwise experienced, is riddled with remarkable events that we usually call coincidences, if not miracles. Most people have experienced them if not heard of them.

     For that I have no other explanation than divinity. There is a God—we are just not in a position to experience Him other than materially.

     This is a sign of our inadequacy to endure or to understand the phenomena that underlie our existence, except in terms of the God we so abuse. I could not begin to count how many times a day, throughout the western world, the Third Commandment is violated. I know I have written about this before.

     In other words, unless we evolve to a higher level, not necessarily to understand omnium rerum natura so much as to survive, our human limitations will destroy us before too long. Just like the national budget, our own priorities lean heavily toward warfare. We will not be able to progress to a point of a continuation of our species unless this assumption descends into the past tense.

     Science must focus entirely on instruments of peace, and quickly, for humankind to endure. Only a peace economy will perpetrate our species, only an induced evolution.

©

25 November 2009:  Random Thoughts and Some Thanksgiving “Cheer”

According to a revisionist historian on the Internet, the city of Jerusalem was captured by the Romans in the year A.D. 56, some twenty years earlier than most scholars believe. At that time, the Second Temple of Jerusalem was also destroyed.

     Notice how the Jewish Diaspora began so soon after the birth of Jesus.

     According to Wikianswers.com, “According to the Bible, this punishment was imposed upon the Jewish people for having disobeyed God and his commandments. More specifically, the rabbis attribute the destruction of the second Temple to causeless hatred between one Jew and another.”

     I postulate (warning: only open-minded people should read what follows) that Christ was God's gift to humans, especially to his incorrigible Chosen People--the ultimate idol. Then He abandoned us. No longer the Chosen People, we've had an awful time since then, with some pleasant interludes. Not that it was such a picnic before that.

*****

Method Politics:

A name for my “you have to have been there” trope found in last Sunday’s blog. It means that before any legislator in the U.S. COngress votes on any issue, he must visit the location(s) involved, live among the people, and become immersed in their circumstances.

     Where there is an extremely right-wing legislator who grew up in abject poverty, I don’t know what to say other than “I’m incredulous.” Is there such a person? Chances are that there is. But I would guess this sort of politician is rare. Am I wrong?

     According to Wikipedia, Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, “a small, impoverished African American community, which had no sewage system or paved roads.”

     But he’s a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, extremely conservative though.

     Google shows again and again that President Andrew Johnson was born into poverty, as was the president he first served under, Abraham Lincoln. Other than that, again and again, I find the quote “Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

*****

Thanksgiving Thoughts:

I’m down on the founding fathers for their hypocrisy, but I’ve already written about that. Some Native Americans observe this holiday, others don’t, I was told years ago when I phoned a reservation in New Jersey to ask.

     Thanksgiving more broadly celebrates harvest time and, even more generally, exhorts us to be thankful for what we have.

     It’s not my favorite holiday, just because of the feast it commemorates that was shared by Native Americans and the “illegal immigrants” from England who would soon rob them of their long-time homeland.

     I am grateful for what I have. We must be mindful of the recession that has displaced so many, adding to the numbers of the homeless and the poor.

     Right after this national holiday, President Obama will announce to his country his plan to send more troops to Afghanistan to end the war once and for all. But I don’t think this will happen. How many troops were sent into Vietnam? Fifty-eight thousand were killed. One website states that 500,000 were sent over there.

     Now the situation in Afghanistan is different. I am not expert enough to pronounce which war was more dire, but rest assured that, given the choice, I would have visited Vietnam in the seventies rather than Afghanistan today. In other words, my intuition tells me that this time around the battle is far more dangerous, the odds of winning less, and that 35,000 to 40,000 additional troops won’t make much of a difference. More young people will die than lready have on this latest project—that is certain.

     I consider the possibility of training the Afghans to fight this war--they know the terrain lots better and also how to navigate it. How to guard against treachery is another question. How to guard against civilian casualty is yet another. We were as guilty as Hamas when a few days ago we killed 1,000 Afghans to get one terrorist leader.

     So to pray for peace this Thanksgiving is a no-brainer, but to expect it anytime soon is quixotic.

     It is a time to be thankful that you have a bountiful table laden with good food to partake of; in this scenario I am assuming that all the others around the table are also solvent and surviving.

     In DC, for $2.10, it is possible to buy a full-course Thanksgiving dinner for one homeless person. What if all solvent adults at every Thanksgiving table in this country donated $2.05 to the homeless, to go directly to them through volunteers without a cent of overhead? Let’s set a ballpark figure of a third of the U.S. population, 100 million, or even 150 million. That would allow for a total of $300 some million. Forget that. People on Wall Street receive that in salary plus bonus annually, if not more often.

     Now if we tithed the top one percent as a Thanksgiving event, most of these people white Christians who go to church every Sunday and drop a dollar or two into the devotional dish, that would make a difference. But far sooner would they spend money to buy a pair of strapped boots for every impoverished citizen in this country.

     How shall I conclude? Be thankful for what you have and pray for better if you need it (not just want it) next year if not sooner.

©

20 November 2009: The Dobbsey Twins Debate Marta about Immigration

From November 14 until today, I have hopped off and on Change.org in reaction to a discussion that followed the announcement of Lou Dobbs’s sudden exit from his prime spot on CNN, much of which he spent raving and ranting against the “illegal aliens,” most of them from Mexico, daring to flee squalid poverty and seek a better life for themselves and their families. They don’t have the years it would take them to wait in line for citizenship. Yes, there are rotten apples among them, but who occasioned their plight but some even more rotten apples?

     Here’s the site of the debate, for those interested in its entirety.

     So my viewpoint is fairly clear. My remarks were directed at two conservatives, “Liquid” and “Rob.” I used my real name, so steamed that I released it after my initial, hurried response, not even considering an alias. When I first attended Quaker meeting in the eighties, I was told that one’s opinion bears little weight without a personal imprimatur.

     Here is my first brief, exasperated entry, dated November 14, 2009:

     If I were Dobbs's wife, witnessing such misery among my people and discrimination, I would have to leave him, and take the children with me. I would go nuts, whatever arguments he aimed at me. To go to a bit more extreme level, it's as if Hitler were married to a Jew.”

     This was my only comment that met with approval, from two readers. Here all three of us were wrong, according to a New York Times blog cited below. Many Latino citizens of this country oppose the immigration of their brethren. No specific numbers were given. So maybe Dobbs’s wife supports him.

     As far as this total discussion is concerned, the odds were against me. There is no way to convince a conservative of anything but more conservatism. Hillary Clinton is one exception, but her conversion occurred in law school, influenced heavily, no doubt, by her future husband, Bill Clinton. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon, is another example, a huge disappointment to Tricky Dick when he went liberal on him. I love Internet debating, though.

     I decompressed two days later (Nov. 16):

     "I don't know what your cultural background is, but I belong to an ethnic minority that has experienced intense persecution. I'm just projecting what it must be like to be wife to Lou Dobbs. I could never stay with anyone who actively worked to expel my people from a place they have sought for sustenance for their families, in the majority of cases. The entire staff of the building where I live is Latino and I have heard many of their stories. They are "legal" immigrants, though, but their families haven't emigrated--they can't afford to.”

     The response suggested that the immigrants were here “for profit.”

     And since when do the aspirations of a "legal" immigrant" differ so drastically from the "illegal" category? Were I an indigent Mexican suffering as are/were so many of the "illegals," I'd try the same thing, I'm sure--aspire to a better life rather than languishing in poverty under a government with a budget surplus that will not attend appropriately to its impoverished population [This issue, among many, was not addressed by the Dobbseys. What would they do under the same circumstances?]

     I am related by marriage to a daughter of Mexican migrant workers who immigrated here illegally before the recent massive numbers. Her mother was eight months pregnant with her.

     Since then the family settled in Texas and became "legal." Two of their many children have won full scholarships to Harvard. My cousin's wife has a successful career in academe

     My own background on both sides consists of refugees from persecution--most died, but some survived by migrating here or to Israel, Argentina, England, or Canada. Had more of them been able to survive through illegal immigration, I'd be nothing but grateful.

     I grew up around refugees from persecution. I think it would help your perspective to have "been there," if you haven't already.

     Other than that, you are going off message dwelling on Nazis [That’s where the conversation has drifted, including a debate over how many Jews were killed—one claim is a mere million.] I guess I'll check out. Lou Dobbs has taken up more than enough of my time already. I used to have some regard for him as an Election Integrity activist, but he didn't really do that much for the cause.

********

     I returned on the 19^th, after the above leave-taking:

     I couldn't help but return to add one more point I made on another thread of Change.org. Those of you unsympathetic to illegal immigration should hold a contest and rip off the poem that currently glorifies the Statue of Liberty. Surely we can't call ourselves the New Colossus [I was corrected, justifiably—that is the title of the poem referring to the statue. Emma Lazarus, the poet, refers to the U.S. as the “golden door.”]

     As far as economic problems caused by Latinos, they are dwarfed by the colossal funds wasted on war while there are so many "tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free" here as well as in Mexico and throughout the world. But the wars we are fighting are necessary, they told this Quaker.

     At that point I was likened to a “bleeding-heart liberal”—that was the nicest epithet hurled at me. Others were even more stereotyping and offensive. My reply (still the 19^th):

     Pointless debate? It's just now getting interesting. Bleeding heart liberal? Great idea that the”illegals” should take over their own destinies by educating themselves here and then returning to their own country. Why don't you oversee the process?

     Again, were I one of those immigrants, I'd keep trying to come here. Is that bleeding heart or simply the Darwinian imperative to survive and thrive?

     Let's not get into those particulars. I'm no Darwin scholar.

     Let me tell you a brief anecdote. I'm pressed for time. My brother and sister-in-law went to one of those chic resorts in Mexico and one day started to explore the environs. They quickly, quickly, came upon enclaves the likes of which they had never seen--the poverty so rank, so dire, so abject as they had never even imagined. My sister-in-law refused ever to return.

     I'm sure, were any of you born into those circumstances, you'd curse your existence and the tony resort around the corner, if you had the time to stop laboring for a few centavos a day. It is tough, under such circumstances, to do anything, let alone run away to seek a better life. It's like being born into a family of crack addicts in an inner-city slum. Go see the movie "Precious" to get some idea of what life is like in such dark corners of the world.

     I'd immigrate. I couldn't afford a passport. I'd somehow (don't ask) get the money to board one of those illegal buses that crosses the border into the deserts of Arizona. Sometimes the people within these buses die from the heat and lack of water.

     Not only is my heart bleeding. Again I say, you have to have been there.

     Off to work! Hay que trabajar!

     Earlier today [November 20]:

     Your very thoughtful comments are marred by name calling and stereotyping with which you conclude. How can I respect the opinions of a name caller?

     Think back to our origins for a moment. Where would this country be without the illegal immigrants who soon became slaveowners and took the land away from the Native Americans?

     So you're correct to be alarmed by the present influx of "illegal immigrants," according to that logic, correct? Scary, isn't it?

     It's just that I'm a citizen of the world as well as of this country. If the problems of other countries didn't concern us, why do we have military bases all over the world? Why did we occupy Iraq so violently and destructively?

     Surely Obama should discuss with the leadership of Mexico the deplorable conditions of its citizenry that is occasioning the negative results you point out. But to my knowledge this is not happening. Tragedy is what is bringing many immigrants to this country. Deplorable living circumstances.

     Our bottom lines differ, certainly. Mine is that the misfortunes of the world concern us. Yours is territorial and that they should help themselves. When those in power ignore the plight of the masses of impoverished and disenfranchised citizens, bad things can result, like revolution, as happened in France.

     The US government travels all around the world to address pressing issues as the reigning superpower of the world. So I'm not surprised about immigrants, legal or otherwise, coming here because the U.S. hasn't adequately addressed their problems.

     Ignoring such people will generate far worse consequences than those you specify in your response.

     I will not end this response with any stereotyping or name calling. That's just not appropriate to a debate over serious issues.

     "If you were running the country Marta, it would be a shell of its current state. Maybe one big happy commune." He added that I wasn’t even addressing the points he was making.

     How do you know? Good God, go to my blog, wordsunltd.com. I'm a patriot, extremely worried that all the wealth of this country is in the hands of very few people while the huge majority are struggling to various degrees. That's one of my themes. I'd say right now the US is a "shell" of what it should be. I don't have political aspirations anyway. So lose no sleep on that score, though I did go to school with Hillary. She was two years older.

     I don't know enough about you to say where this country would go in your capable hands. Do you?

     In terms of the majority of our exports, commodities, we already are a third-world country. I read that in a source you probably respect, the New York Times.

     Let's see what else you write; The issue of entitlement? I have that mentality. What's wrong with it? I've worked all my life to earn whatever pittance Social Security will give me.

     Their [the Mexicans’] country to take back? Probably. Same thing is happening in Israel, sort of. Liberia also? Former slaves taking back a piece of their native territory? Oh, what hell we Americans have put so many people through. But nowhere do I say that we are hated all over the world [as he misquoted me]. We aren't, especially now that Obama is in office.

     What's your solution. Deport them? All 40 million? That's an awful lots of airfare. We're building this huge stone wall to make things tougher than just crossing the Rio Grande out of sight of the border guards. When we deport them, another huge expense, they will return to their miserable, impoverished lives, because at least some of the government surplus is being lent to us. Is that ok?

     The UN is concerned with world poverty and illness. They do some good. Every time an innocent person suffers, it is wrong, dead wrong. The US and the rest of the world respond to tsunamis and other natural disasters. Such squalid poverty is a disaster. You should visit it sometime. Have you?

     I admit that the situation is dreadful. I agree with you. Something should be done. There are no easy solutions, are there? This thread is titled "nativism," by the way. I guess you agree with Lou. You're entitled to your opinion.

     Let me offer another anecdote. There's this old house turned into 7 condos. It's a beautiful house, but very high-maintenance. It is inhabited by women. When they need repairs, because they are women, they usually overpay for shoddy work and can't afford an advocate who can make any difference. Along comes this man from Guatemala, who does excellent work for them at half the price the monsters are charging. I don't know what his immigrant status is, and I don't have the "outsourcing" mentality per se, but if such immigrants raise standards and treat oppressed groups humanely, more power to them. The others will begin to compete and treat their customers with more respect.

     [Huge disagreement here about how the Latinos are lowering incomes and taking jobs away from Americans—I’m dead wrong in the above assertion, but the story is true.]

     We don't have to argue ad infinitum. [I was also told, patronizingly, that I can’t change the world]

     I exist as if I can change the world. You'll find that on my blog, too. I even have instructions on how to accomplish it and save the world [“induced evolution"]. If we don't pitch in and do our part, we won't have a part to pitch in, said Eleanor Roosevelt. I do what I can.

     Democracy is hard work. Without our hard work, it will disintegrate. So said John Adams [actually Tom Jefferson].

     If you want to drop out, fine. I don't think we'll agree either. I shudder to think that the eloquent words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written by other illegal immigrants, slaveowners who traded a few strings of beads with the Natives for priceless, huge tracts of land and fought back with firesticks and virtually annihilated them. Our founding fathers. Well, here we are anyway.

     I could go on forever. Please don't misquote me though.

     One of the twins injected a quote from Jefferson:

     "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

     Not close enough to the issue, I think to myself now. Too bad he couldn’t come up with anything better. When the Jefferson family reunion occurs, the attendees are biracial, I’ve been told. Jefferson slept with Sally Hemmings but would not allow her into the White House as his first lady.

     Oh, wait, two more quotes:

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Said Margaret Thatcher.

     This is my favorite:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury,  with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship,” said Alexander Tyler 1787.

     One hypothetical response: That’s how Bush 43 got into office, promising huge tax cuts for the top one percent. This promise he kept. There went the surplus to the record deficit.

     Another hypothetical response: Look how long the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties lasted. The people in control of this country now are working to repeat this sort of durability, trying to convert all of us into serfs.

     It will be the very few rich—-the few who have confiscated the money of the many, causing the current recession--against the very, very many poor. Between these two will be a vast military force. Will the military defect to the people they emerged from or support their sources of income? It’s up to them.

     Meanwhile, therefore, all the more reason for us “socialists” to keep fighting.

     I returned to Change.org this evening, still November 20. I found more responses, all to the above, that misquoted me and twisted my words around. Visit the link. It’s pretty funny when one of the twins comes out of the closet with his real politics at the end. Bush spent money like a liberal and the liberals forced him to vote for Bush. Etc.

     Is it true that the majority of Americans would agree with the Dobbsey twins and not me? Yes. Lots of them. They just don’t see the big picture, to my mind. That we inhabit not only this country but the world that surrounds it. Other countries receive refugees. Are those poor people who fled from Sudan illegal aliens?

     There is a wonderful, lengthy discussion of these issues, in response to a recent New York Times blog here. What I learned from reading it today (Nov. 21) is that somewhere around 40 million “illegals” and their offspring, U.S. citizens, now inhabit our country. Both the recession and stronger intervention by the federal government have greatly reduced the number of new immigrants.

     We are all human, rich and poor alike. Induced evolution is what is needed. See my previous blog if you haven’t already. Because we all must become better people for such atrocities as nativism and rank poverty to end.

     I once emailed Dobbs to suggest that we line up all those poor people, perhaps against the huge barrier we have erected along the Mexican border, and shoot them. I received no reply.

©

12 November 2009: Hibernation and the Human Condition

     In Mediterranean countries people take siestas at midday, when the weather is hottest.

     Many members of the animal kingdom sleep throughout winter, when the weather is coldest, day and night—a great idea.

     I would like to hibernate through January and February, waking up for the important holidays involved, including my daughter’s birthday two days away from MLK’s. I wonder if the human lifespan would increase with this habit added to our behavior. Imagine how many more people would have shown up in DC had the weather been better last January 20? There would have been no empty street in the entire district.

     I hate winter. Its metaphorical counterpart, old age, is also uncomfortable in many ways. But winter ends, while old age leads to death. Period. No more seasons to wade through.

     I also hate the lead-up to winter, after the leaves fall and the days become so short, losing 11 minutes of light each week.

     The only compensation offered by winter is that the amount of daylight increases. You can count backward, as my daughter does: the amount of light on December 1 equals that on January 10. By Groundhog’s Day winter is half over. There is as much light as shines in the beginning of November.

     Is June 21 actually the worst day of the year? I grimly watch the length of days decrease.

     That’s life in the temperate zones. I tried living in Los Angeles for two years, but that eternal summer was just not appropriate. I am used to change, weathering the good and bad, wringing the best out of both.

*****

     The Septuagint repeatedly describes the fight between the Hebrew God, I AM THAT I AM, and idolatry.

     OK, if I may elaborate a bit, Thomasina Aquinas of the putrid 21^st Century, the Children of Israel were simply not ready for abstraction yet. IATIA was far too distant, even though much closer to them than to us today.

     The Lord gave Moses a second chance after the first set of Tablets were destroyed in a fit of anger. But has God ever yielded in any other way to humankind?

     .WIth the rainbow after the flood in Noah's day? Will God not keep His promise? Look how anthropomorphic I am, unable to comprehend that level of abstraction. Evil peoples have come and gone, God's creatures. But when we destroy the work of His hands, not ours, maybe we've gone too far. But again, so literalist, dealing with the Unknowable in such concrete terms.

     Except that if Jesus was a compromise, then He did, in one example.

     And we cling to idolatry to this day. Do I have to explain that? Hollywood stars sculpted to perfection by plastic surgeons, beauticians, and all those other servants of decadence. And the list goes on. Maybe that’s why we’re antediluvian even with Christianity alive and well.

     Deep down inside, we’re pagans, only the ancient Greeks were ahead of us in many ways. They more or less invented abstraction and expressed it far better than anyone since then.

     Time for another flood, as I said before, unless science, the real miracle of miracles, can somehow head it off.

     But this time, when it floods, as I said before, there will be no Noah, no ark, no luxury liner, no dove, no Dove.

     Hideous monsters will evolve, far uglier than dinosaurs, and whatever follows will follow. Water is a good preserver, but will intelligent life reappear and if so, soon enough to study who we were and learn from our mistakes?

     The questions are endless and will evolve also, so that next time around there will be different issues and different beings.

     Maybe Adam should have eaten more apples. Or else God should have planted plain old trees.

     We’re just an experiment that didn’t work. We could not deal with abstraction, the real God.

*****

     Do I dare mention that Lou Dobbs has graduated to higher aspirations? No, not a colossal Evangelical church in Texas or L.A. I just read that he wants to run for president.

     Oy vey.

     At least maybe I’ll get some news at 7, when I usually dine in front of the telly.

     I can’t abstract either.

     Good night and good luck, humanity.

©

8 November 2009: HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act

The affordable Health Care Act, introduced into the House of Representatives by Congressman John D. DINGELL (D-MI), the longest-serving Member of Congress ever, passed in the House yesterday (Saturday!) by a vote of 220-215. Co-sponsors included House veterans Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Henry Waxman (D-CA).

     If you think that’s a slender margin, think again. According to today’s New York Times, a minimum of 218 votes were required for it to pass. That means that three votes made the difference.

     One of them came from a surprising source, a Louisiana Republican (Anh Cao, R-LA), concerned with the pathetic state of health care in New Orleans but also attracted to the prohibition of funding for abortions. This decision really throws a monkey wrench into partisan solidarity, doesn’t it?

     And another of the nays came from an equally surprising source, considering his alignment with 39 Blue Dogs and the other 176 Republicans, Dennis Kucinich, possibly the most liberal Member of Congress ever. I hate to compare him with Lieberman and his latest apostasy. A lot of the Blue Dogs represent Republic districts and fear they won’t be reelected next year if they didn’t please their constituents on this landmark legislation.

     Like many of us, and most of the choir I’m preaching to, Kucinich wanted single-payer health care that encompassed abortions. And the list doesn’t stop there, but those are two of the salient points.

     HR 3962 is 1,931 pages long on the Internet, double-spaced and in large, legible font—Times New Roman or Georgia, maybe. It will cost $1.1 trillion over ten years.

     The benefits of the bill far exceed the provisions offered by the Clinton legislation in 1993, according to the Times.

     According to the Times also, “Most employers would have to provide coverage or pay a tax penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll. The bill would significantly expand Medicaid and would offer subsidies to help moderate-income people buy insurance from private companies or from a government insurance plan. It would also set up a national insurance exchange where people could shop for coverage.”

     It would fill the “doughnut hole” in Medicare Option D, a space in that coverage that extracts a few thousand dollars from those covered before they resume Medicare coverage—“the amount you pay above $2,700 in drug costs and below $4,350 out of pocket,” according to Hubpages.com.

     There is a penalty for those who don’t sign up for any insurance—coverage is available to 96 percent of the population. A penalty for those who use emergency rooms for both routine and catastrophic health care. What of the others? I’ll have to read up on that, as Eisenhower used to tell the press. Illegal immigrants would not qualify, says Wikipedia. Perhaps also the billionaires? Now that would make sense. There will be an acute shortage of doctors, warns one Manhattan physician according to the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps enough to treat only billionaires?

     To briefly summarize the nearly 2,000 pages, according to Opencongress.org:

      “it seeks to expand health care coverage to the approximately 40 million Americans who are currently uninsured by lowering the cost of health care and making the system more efficient. To that end, it includes a new government-run insurance plan (a.k.a. a public option) to compete with the private companies, a requirement that all Americans have health insurance, a ban on denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition and, to pay for it all, a surtax on individuals with incomes above $500,000."

     A list of links to subjects of the bill appears at Thomas.loc.gov.

     Here’s what goes into effect immediately, according to :

     According to “ChuckL,” at Washingtonwatch.com, “The fact that the Constitution does NOT grant to congress the power to create or pass this legislation should have been the first and final point.” FDR had something to say about that and was working on a constitutional amendment, a bill of rights of all Americans for health care and basic other sustenance, including employment, housing, and food, when he died. (I can’t find a source on the Internet to verify this.) Eleanor’s amazing Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 embraces this in Article 25, Section 1: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services. . . .”

     Less than 24 hours after passage of the bill, and maybe even sooner, the Internet began to swell with irresistible offers of plans that are legit and can’t be beat.

     There’s so much more to say about this flawed yet inchoate step in the direction of tending to our “tired, poor, huddled masses” yearning for what every person is entitled to, according to the U.N. declaration. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, in the process of rebuilding Western Europe after World War II, the United States established universal health care in Germany, first of all countries. What a stunning gesture. Who left us out in the cold?

     I’ll end with a quote from John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee who I feared would not support the bill, right after it was passed. He certainly wanted more than what was called a diluted form of the public option. The press release is titled “House Health Care Bill Will Save Lives While Fight for Single Payer Continues”:

"Today, I joined my Democratic colleagues in support of the Affordable Healthcare for America Act. While the bill is far from perfect, I supported it because it will expand access to health insurance to 96 percent of Americans, end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, help our seniors by closing the prescription drug benefit donut hole, and increase competition and choice with a public insurance option.

“In the near term, these reforms will improve and save American lives while we continue to fight for single payer health care at the state and national levels. I will vote for this bill because the cost of inaction is too high. Each year, 44,000 people die because they do not have access to insurance. Without reform, this number will rise, Americans will be at greater risk of losing their coverage, and our business community will continue to fall behind international competitors as their future profits are drained by burdensome health care costs."

©

6 November 2009: The Future, Part 1

I work on the future. Not as an astronomer, astrologist, or even sci fi author. People are so immersed in the past and present. Is there some formula between them to see past them? Nietzsche spoke of their interdependence in Wir Philologen. One possibility, already anticipated in a previous blog, is the great flood we’re not even preparing for.

      Remember that film A.I., Artificial Intelligence, which showed Manhattan under water? It was screened right before 9/11. At that time, I called it prophetic (Words, UnLtd, August 2001). Now, even more so. Then, in the more recent blog, I pictured the miserable human race collectively drowned, and civilization now the legacy of those intelligent sea mammals, porpoises and whales. But yesterday I worried about the massive pollution that would infest the floodwaters. Would those hideous, gigantic squid and other monsters at the bottom of the sea absorb it all, like catfish? Wouldn’t that be handy? Or would they be destroyed? See the website "Giant Creatures under the Sea" for some 101-level information about these Hesiodic monsters (Aeschylus termed them pontiai t'agkalai, but my favorite word for "monster" immediate follows in this famous passage "Polla men ga" in his Libation Bearers, knodaloi, "monsters."

      According to "Giant Creatures," there is at least one species that would survive, I surmise:

     "Giant isopods are thought to be abundant in cold, deep waters of the Atlantic. It is the largest known isopod. They are important scavengers in the deep-sea benthic environment; they are at a depth of 170 m or 550 ft to 2,140 m or 7,020 ft, where pressures are high and temperatures are very low (down to about 4 °C). They grow to a length between 19 and 37 cm or 7.5 to 14.5 in, and reaching a maximum weight of approximately 1.7 kg or 3 lb in. Most other isopods range in size from 1-5 cm. Their large eyes are compound with nearly 4,000 facets, sessile and spaced far apart on the head and have two pairs of antennae."

     Then there is "the largest known anthropod on earth. When fully grown, it can reach a leg span of almost 4 m or13 ft. Its body size measures up to 37 cm or 15 inches and weighs up to 20 kg or 44 lb. The bottom of the Pacific Ocean around Japan at about 300 to 400 meters deep is the crab's natural habitat. It feeds on dead animals and shellfish and believed to have a life expectancy of up to 100 years. It has 8 legs and 2 feeding arms."

     And so, from my brief voyage to the bottom of the sea on that endless bounding main, the Internet, I discovered a few amazing creatures that would certainly eat all the human and animal detritus. Another is immune to high levels of heat and sulfur, so would have an easier time with the rest of the polluted entities filling up their domain the way Chevron-Texaco has invaded the Amazon Jungle—there are even a few cases of swine flu among the indigenous peoples there. Oh, how they must love us.

     There are polluted areas in the ocean already—something that surprised me.

     What if some folks in wetsuits and cages managed to survive that huge mess that used to be human civilization? There’d be no posterity to record it for. They’d run out of oxygen pretty quickly, their last memories devastating. What if they made it to the surface somehow, escaping the poisons and the knodaloi? There might be a dolphin rodeo. But some breeds of whale eat humans. It would be a contest between the benevolent porpoises and the surface-level knodaloi. And so on. Use your imagination and take it from there. The best entry wins. Mail it to martasteele@wordsunltd.com.

     So much for that bleak perspective on the future. Would the lively intellects of the whales and porpoises master this environment once the few remnants of humanity vanished? No Mt. Ararat, no dove, no Noah. The nightmarish knodaloi would probably survive, some of them, and inherit "the Earth," (the Water?), decidedly not meek followers of Jesus. There would be Hesiodic chaos. (Hesiod, among other ancients, believed that our universe began similarly). There would be evolution.

     And all this mess will all have been the fault of the greedy, corporate fatcats who obstruct green evolution, ignoring prophets like Al Gore, along with everything else that won’t bring in a huge profit, like the future. They should co-exist with the huge sea monsters, their alter egos. Sorry to insult the sea monsters.

     I plan to write more about the future--what will evolve or be invented that has never occurred to any of us. Not the Jetsons. Not A.I.

     My wheels will spin. I am silly. It is Friday after a long week of work.

     More anon.

(c)

23 October 2009: How Mark Twain Might Save the World: Princes and Paupers Must Trade Places to Restore the Middle Class

How many people have saved the world posthumously, or even an individual group of people? Jesus Christ? Mark Twain?

     It is my idea that those in Congress who oppose the public option and single payer health-care plans have simply never been "there," where they need to go. To the other side of the tracks.

     I wouldn't know how to carry this out, but the top 5 percent must trade places with the bottom 95 for six months at least. John McCain must face mortgage foreclosure and job loss and have to move in with indigent relatives.

     Mitch McConnell will have to become a coal miner.

     And give those trillions to the rest of us. Would the economy ever bounce back in less than a day as stampedes of people flooded stores and the Internet and purchased their material dreams. That's all it would take. A real recovery, not a government investment that is moving stats in a positive direction, while Wall Street recovers and a lucky few get jobs working on green infrastructure and architecture. Not a government extension of unemployment benefits for another six months.

     I am amazed by people like the Kennedys, Jay Rockefeller, and others born into opulence who are among the strongest advocates of health-care reform and other forms of humanitarian concern. It's not as if they've been there, at least for several generations. To them benevolence is more than a tax write-off.

     I also wonder what the median savings and assets of the Republicans in Congress are compared to those of the Democrats.

     As often as they go overseas to negotiate with foreign governments, Republicans should tour their own country: Appalachia, Native American reservations, inner cities. They should go into their homes, explore their assets and how they do or can't live on them. They should hear each story--not just of Joe the Plumber the supposed small businessman--but those whom people like him fired or deprived of benefits.

     Republican Members of Congress should visit the dwindling number of public hospital ERs and the makeshift clinics in Appalachia staffed by volunteers. They should explore neighborhoods everyone fears and talk with crack dealers and the customers who keep them rich and go into their homes and meet their children. They should search for homeless people hiding within boarded-up buildings, under cardboard lean-to’s, shivering on the concrete steps of high-rises and find out who they used to be—some grew up in homeless shelters, others in mansions. Fully 25 percent of homeless people are recent U.S. veterans.

     Republicans should take off their silk ties and don overalls from the Salvation Army consignment stores.

     They should become the people whose lives mean nothing to them while they debate hour after hour, well propped up by the opulent lobbies, well programmed.

     What a parody of the present such a future would be.

     The lobbyists would suffer from their own excesses.

     Former politicians would have to serve instead of being served and learn the hard way what it means to govern a democracy.

     Learn the hard way.

     There can’t be mansions without servants, skyscrapers without custodians or night guards.

     But a truly enlightened world should rotate such empty measures of worth, recognizing them for what they are—happenstance, like winning the lottery. Anecdotes abound about lifelong blue-collar workers striking it rich in this manner and losing their motivation, rotting in front of their newly purchased big screens.

     Life will become so much fuller, we will so grow in wisdom, to travel among lifestyles and learn that we are all the same, born, living, dying alike—the same fate waits for all.

     Such a radical shift might be the key to peace. Afghanistan’s economy depends on their cultivation of opium as much as ours does on the proliferation of war props and corporate behemoths.

     But ultimately neither economy is justifiable and both will be pulled down by opponents, until the next Tower of Babel is built and then toppled. Can we end vicious cycles? 

     Rags to riches, riches to rags will transcend the anecdotal media to reshape civilization. Dynamic mobility is a must.

     But who’s going to do it and how?

     Look into the mirror for your fellow humans, not portfolios, not financiers, not public polls. Look into the mirror for but one atom of humanity and know that the process of civilization involves all of us—our lives depend on others. We define each other.

     We must learn this and live it before we can come closer to peace.

©

24 October 2009: That 3 a.m. Phonecall to the White House and a Virtual Congress

When it's Saturday morning and I have nothing to say, I resort to comments I've written to online publications in the last week. The one that comes to mind is from October 23 in response to Rob Kall's October 22 article "A Time to Kill the Killers, A Time for Outrage", which inveighs against "the most horrific mass murderers and family destroyers in America of the last decades--health insurance companies.

     Here is how I responded:

      I've been thinking lately that someone has to phone Obama at 3 a.m. to remind him that he is a Democrat. I felt gratified yesterday when he acted like one, moving to reduce Wall St. salaries by 90 percent, a gesture to the progs. Why not the same move on insurance co. and pharmaceutical execs? As they argue that they need to charge huge amounts for prescriptions and those nauseating tv commercials, in the name of research, their paychecks need to be trimmed substantially for them to gain credibility. I have read of the possibility of antitrust action against them--there are few giants in each area.

      Another problem is that when it's time to implement the public option such as it is, another administration may be in charge and scrub the whole mission. We need regulations in force that will be as rooted as social security and medicare/medicaid.

     The minute Obama appointed Geithner instead of Stiglitz and Summers instead of Krugman, I felt betrayed by this most liberal voter in the Senate. Milton Friedman still reigns.

     He could have used more time in the Senate to line up a more solid block of pull, to strut around with a ten-gallon hat the way LBJ used to. Remember Ted Kennedy? They don't seem to in Washington. They've dispensed with him and ACORN, both of whom were caught doing what everyone else on the Beltway does.

     If we eliminated corruption, would there be a government left? Any of the 3 branches?

     The Dalai Lama was snubbed last week. What next can we expect?

     Hang in there, in the thick of all these sunshine patriots.

     Every day we manage to get through alive I find miraculous. There are two different countries coexisting here. We should let the Right Wing secede. Imagine what they would create.

     Then there was the last paragraph of Thomas Friedman's op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times:

     Where there is people power wedded to progressive ideas, there is hope--and American power can help. Where there is people power harnessed to bad ideas, there is danger. Where there is no people power and only bad ideas, there will be no happy endings.

     I need comment no further, though I did last week. I feel so sorry for these paid columnists who must fill space a few times a week or perish, though I wouldn't mind being paid as much as they are for my spontaneous reactions to world events.

     Maureen Dowd almost invariably provokes me--she uses reality as a punching bag and jabs it with witticisms drawn from a superior education. Here's my reaction to the latest generic Sunday Times wisecracks:

     Once Bar. gets over the idea that he's president of "all the people including Republicans," which he isn't, and just represents the interests he fought for during his campaign, the ones who worked so hard to get him elected, the whole country, including the Republicans, will be far better off. Other writings, including one of mine, "10 October 2009: Noblesse Oblige?" at www.wordsunltd.com, have extolled Bar.'s accomplishments so far. He even received a Nobel prize for Peace (there is not one for war).

     I know you are famous for poking holes in politicians--they set themselves up for that by grabbing for power--but perhaps a gentler critique might better reach him:

      I'm sure he reads "Opinion" every Sunday if not more often. Why not remind him that he's a Democrat and that the country is almost as divided as it was under Bush 43 and that his popularity rate is plunging because we Dems are still the majority and the pollsters are still, to my knowledge anyway, objective rather than partisan.

     He could use a crash seminar from powerhouses like Robert Byrd and John Conyers on how better to manipulate Congress. I wouldn't send him to Mitch McConnell, though. Teddy Kennedy's iconic championship of healthcare reform should be a huge poster in constant display. We owe something back for such steadfast statesmanship.

     Let's resort to some constructive criticism.

     Thus spake Severina last week. Let's hope for some good news. It's a long time in coming, and I'd hate to see Bar.'s ratings descend to those of his predecessor, God forbid.

     I almost forgot the title of this blog and my favorite new question whether our government could exist entirely cleansed of corruption. I then recalled my idea of a virtual Congress, which would allow our legislators to work from home, thereby eliminating at least one form of corruption, adultery, and who knows what else? Might this arrangement invite other forms to replace it? Probably. Virtual corruption, which takes many forms. Oh, well. Another week of history, viewed from so many angles, who knows what posterity will know?

©