COMMENTARY by NATALIE M. ROSEN

2010-01-02T20:13:00.010-05:00

Linguistic Lullaby: I am listening to a Teaching Company tape entitled "The Story of Human Language." It is recorded by Dr. John McWhorter, a linguistic expert. To say he is brilliant does not do justice to his essence. If you have some free time and are interested I highly recommend it. I gathered from some online info about him that he is somewhat controversial in the African American community because of his Cosbyesque political views. Personally, I do not care where his politics lie. His lectures are a pleasure to hear. I was so impressed I sent the following email to the Manhattan Institute where he teaches:

Recently, I had the pleasant experience of viewing CD lectures from the Teaching Company entitled "The Story of Human Language" given by Dr. John McWhorter. I have not listened, admittedly, to it in its entirety but what I have listened to presents a stunning example of scholarly excellence. Dr. McWhorter's breadth of knowledge of language is astounding as is the silken expressive quality of his presentation. I am guilty of the crime of sometimes judging a person by the quality and the content of what they say and the grammatical preciseness of how they say it. Dr. McWhorter sets an example for all of us.

I looked Dr. McWhorter up and found some Wikipedia information on him. I must admit I was surprised that the Manhattan Institute where he teaches was characterized by it as a "conservative think tank." I will try not to hold that against him as I am an ardent Democrat and write opinion pieces www.natalierosen.blogspot.com from a moderately left wing point of view. Still, one should not, pigeonhole a person. If he is correct, well spoken and precise it should not matter where he sits on the political spectrum.

To me listening to Dr. McWhorter was like watching liquid silver poured into a glass. He is a fount of knowledge and I can only envy his brilliance and expressive linguistic abilities.

I hope one day our nation can reunite under the umbrella of intellectual achievement and recognize this country still holds its freedom of speech as one of its most important civil libertarian principles. Many have given their lives to defend a homeland that remains one of the freest on planet earth. I know this liberal is grateful for that!

Thanks to Dr. McWhorter for sharing his excellence with the Teaching Company who then makes it available to us.

2010-01-02T07:41:00.001-05:00

Thank you, Elroy

2010-01-01T10:37:00.005-05:00

Rush to Judgment: Rush Limbaugh is in the hospital with a possible heart attack. Can I wish Rush well as some liberals have said they do? I wish I were a better person. I wish I had the love and warmth that I had as a young left wing worker for all things peaceful and good. That was when I was 21. I am 61 now. I'm still left of center, my basic philosophy has remained in tact give or take a few divergences but I am not nice now. I do not have the love and warmth I once had. I'm jaded. I'm jaded by decades which saw ad infinitum war and a poisonously divided nation. I have felt the virulent tenor of the times which probably existed before the Civil War. No wonder we never forget that war. It divided us so.

My born-post-World-War-II life has basically known nothing but a nation at war in some foreign country or another far removed from me. We make war, we wage it, we invade hundreds of countries, destroy what infrastructure there is, set up hundreds of bases, kill/maim hundreds of thousands of people, stay for years and prop up the wretched of the earth costing trillions. How about if we provide health insurance to our people? Oh no, it's much too expensive as we end one war and go into another. Polticos promise the world and deliver little of what they promised. Barack Obama, that man who thrilled me back to those years of youthful hope, disappoints me again as he tries to kiss those who not only will not kiss him back, they spit in his face. He makes deals with the devil which have alienated his base and those of us who put him in power. A year later his approval rating is 47% down from a high of 67%.

I can show the love when something is achieved. But it is not. The right wing is amoral we all know that. Their opposition's life in their mind is as cheap as dirt. So my love dwindled and what's left is only embers of it. Thus, my dear Joan Walsh, a liberal commentator who wishes Rush Limbaugh well, I cannot because he so often wished liberals ill and hopes the president fails or worse. It would mean nothing if his viral words directed into his golden microphone did not spread a mutant infection and influence so many. They do and have helped fuel Republican intransigence and racist division in Washington and around the country. Rush Limbaugh more than any other toxic conservative commentator has resurrected the southern Confederate cause of whites and trumpets for glorious war this time against all things liberal, intellectual and humane.

No, I cannot be as good as you are, Joan Walsh. I do not wish Limbaugh well. I cannot turn the other cheek which has turned so much it's broken. I wish him the same he would wish for any liberal who was ill and has many times. I have no doubt because of his millions that big bag of gas will just keep rolling along. YEARS of being overweight, YEARS of drug addiction to Oxycontin and god knows what else, years of stress and angry hate toward anything liberal, years of smoking cigars and years of other probable nefarious activities have finally caught up with the biggest of all gasbags. I wish him no good and I admit it. In fact, a little suffering may go a long way so that we can say good how does it feel. Think of what a pickle you would be in, Rush, with no job, no home, no money and no health insurance. Maybe he could relate at least mentally to that. Then again knowing Rush Limbaugh he would not even think twice about it.

No, I do not wish Rush Limbaugh well.

2009-12-23T09:15:00.001-05:00

Another Cross of Gold: The similes and metaphors of the deception in this decade and its politics are astounding as a relative of mine illuminated to me. From the balloon boy, Tiger Woods, and the Salahis to Iraq and to heath care, the recipients of that deceit are we the people and the change that is needed is systemic and all encompassing. That our oligarchic form of government is failing us cannot be disputed. Howard Zinn, professor of history at Boston University, says change comes from the bottom up. I think, at times, he is delusional to think we the people have the power to perfect that kind of change. Change, if it comes at all, is incremental measured in inches one century at a time. Revolutions in histories past often replace one tyranny with another, the hope dies and the populous is left in stuporous resignation to their repetitive fate.

I feel the next generation will have to perform the wizardry needed to redo our bleak house. Indeed, Dicken’s “Bleak House” captures the futile essence of it all. My politically aware life has been spent fighting causes. We and like-minded allies fought on college campuses the murderous anti-Communist hysteria with its trumped-up enemies duping the powerless to do the corporate bidding trading in their lives and lives of a million innocents so that others could make bundles of cash. Again, in this time, we fight in Iraq for oil, revenge and pure greed while people burn along with our planet from the filthy oil that makes a few inordinately filthy rich. The list is infinite as we trade in the people’s lives so that insurance companies can make their crosses of gold.

We have reaped the history and policies we have sewn and still want to know why other nations hate us. It is not our freedom they hate but our invasive policies which make the few obscenely rich at the expense of the many while the policy-makers’ lives are sheltered behind closed doors which see no light or blood on the many battlefields. Health care is no exception to this rule.

Obama, who really held out some hope for me, seems to be, at least initially, succumbing to the weight of the corrupt blocks of stone that are placed on his shoulders attempting to crush him like the block of stones in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” used unjustly to kill the innocent. Maybe even my hero FDR could not have endured its fury. This is a different global age and the culture of corruption is everywhere. The vastness of it stretches far beyond the boundaries of this country. Our fate and corruption are tied to other nations’ corruption as the Kharzi Afghanistan regime we are propping up is exemplar supreme. The press who often exposes this corruption sometimes is in bed with it. So where can the people turn? I can only hope there are a few ethical ones left and they will continue as Anderson Cooper says “Keeping them Honest”.

Robert Frost: “The woods are lovely dark and deep but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.” I feel, though, my energy waning and my sleep approaching all too quickly and I see promises which we may never keep. I face the harsh reality that my generation cannot do it all and, soon, the battle will be left to the next generation to fight.

Still, one has to reflect on our history, how far we have come and the human rights we have achieved. It gives me hope while it makes me see the thoughts we could do it all in 1968 were born out of the naive innocence of youth. The fight for a more just and honest world will, as long as we are not catapulted from this planet, go on even when I have long vanished returning to the earth from whence it all began.

I hope for a better year. Although my expectations are dimmed the fight continues. Happy, healthy New Year and a better year for our nation!

2009-12-21T10:41:00.001-05:00

Not a Zero in Life: John Skoyles wrote a beautiful editorial (Boston Globe, Monday, December 21, 2009 link below) entitled “Pawing her way into my heart.” My heart ached and I cried at the end of it for the little bull dog runt-of-the-litter pup Mr. Skoyles embraced despite the blindness and other severe orthopedic disabilities with which the dog named Zero, was born. She could not see and barely walk but she tried and he stuck with her until the dog’s body couldn’t suffer anymore.

I could relate to orthopedic disability being a polio victim since age five. Now at 61, paralysis plus the cursed reality of aging, severely compounds my ability to do what I always wanted to since a child – dance, run, skate and ski. I marvel at the birds whose mighty wings catapult them to places about which I can only dream and envy my cats whose run is like a prance of lithe beauty with swift speed climbing trees and, best of all, they never seem to fall. How I wished and still do I could dance, run, skate, ski and most especially never fall.

The end of the article, though, touched me the most. John Skoyles says of his deformed and pain-plagued runt-of-the-litter bulldog named Zero“I could only think she never seemed meant for this world, and I recalled the hunchback’s words when he hugged the gargoyle along the ledge of the cathedral, ‘why was I not made of stone, like thee’?” I can relate to the harshness of life with its physical pain when one wishes, at times, to be even an inanimate object rather then face the pain a body not of one’s choosing can inflict.

Zero may have been the little pup’s name because of a white zero-like tuft of hair on her back. She was, however, anything but a zero in life despite the short one she lived.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/pawing_her_way_into_my_heart/

2009-12-19T20:29:00.004-05:00

A response to a blog about Santa -- The Health Care Sleigh Ride:

Yes, when Virginia grows up she will have a RUDE awakening. Things ain’t (pardon the colloquialism) what she was taught they were. One premise with which I take issue is that our country was founded upon great principles of freedom and equality. I do not think it was exactly so. Without the discussion of the inherent inequalities of slavery which the country had from its inception as a colony of Britain, the revolution was initially manifested because of a tax on tea. The initial spark was about money. The Bill of Rights ensuring our freedoms was an afterthought inserted as the first ten Amendments to the Constitution some ten years later when radicals within the revolutionary movement demanded something be written within it to guarantee a check on the power of government.

Moreover, our country was founded by men of privilege and class who changed the Constitution after the Declaration of Independence was written (which said people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) to people have a right to life, liberty and PROPERTY. That was an important change. It attached an importance of property that has remained to this day even within our attempts to create a more just nation. I do believe that that very concept of the importance of property and money made it possible for a corporation to be accorded the same rights as a person when in the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, during the presidency of Grover Cleveland, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the same legal rights and protections the Constitution grants to an individual. We all know what that did. Our entire government is controlled now by the corporation at the expense of the individual person’s rights simply because it has the wealth that the average person does not possess to essentially buy the government it wants.

Our present wholly watered down so called health care bill proves that point. The little guy of no pecuniary standing will ultimately have to pay huge amounts of money he cannot afford to the health care industries because Congress, the presidency and the political parties receive hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars from the insurance, health care and pharmaceutical industry and the bill without a public option will mandate coverage. The corporation and the state are now inextricably bound to each other and nearly impossible to untangle. The state is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporation.

Virginia will have to learn if she is not among the fortunate to have been born into wealth OR with the brains to acquire that wealth in this country she will be out of luck and even perhaps out on the street! Yes, Virginia there may be a Santa Claus for one day but the other 364 days belong to Wall Street.

2009-12-17T12:51:00.003-05:00

Maybe I'll offer one other excuse for the president. He just does NOT know how to govern. He does NOT know enough as to how to do that, how to wield power and how to threaten those who will NOT tow his former liberal line. I don't get it, I may never know.

2009-12-17T09:22:00.001-05:00

The Batty Beck: Glenn Beck presents, by far, the most insane and ridiculous inanity of any contemporary “news commentator” on the planet. He is, though, not the most frightening political phenomenon of our day. The most frightening phenomenon is that anyone with a brain could buy into his money gushing idiocy. He is no question capitalizing on the historically systemic white racism that exists in the country. One has only to look at signs so called “tea baggers” proudly carry at their events. This rancid racism has persisted in different forms for over 300 years and has not been completely eradicated even today. It shows its ugliness from Glenn Beck to Limbaugh and worse. The most frightening thing about it is that a nationalist fascist-like militarist movement is sitting as a cobra waiting for right moment to strike and unleash its venom intending toward, of course, a takeover of the power structure of the United States government.

I am hoping that this is not representative of most of the people in this country. There are many here who are much more intelligent than the cerebrally challenged and intellectually unsophisticated minions of Glenn Beck. I hope I am correct. Nothing less than the liberating fruits of the Enlightenment which took hundreds of years to cultivate are at stake. The Enlightenment, which our Founders knew, brought a science-denying violent barbarian from the darkness of irrationality and superstition into the sunlight of reason, truth and social advancement. This is in danger of subversion by right wing extremist movements which are the opposite of the very freedom and patriotism they claim to espouse.

I won't believe that will occur until I see it. I am seeing, though, disturbing images that say to me this nationalistic militarism hovers in the primitive arena of man’s limbic brain and within the muddy archeological muck of a distorted philosophical layer of some. I am hoping it lies deeply dormant and will not rise at the perfect moment to pose a threat overthrowing the ideational underpinning of our government as we know it.

Make no mistake, it is every bit as threatening as Islamic fundamentalism and maybe even more so because it occupies a place as a recessive gene within the chromosomal DNA of American politics. Now, it legitimizes itself in the tea bag and other right wing movements which Republican politicos are more than happy to milk for all the power and every penny they can.

Be afraid of that be very afraid!

2009-12-16T21:27:00.002-05:00

Glen Greenwald a historian's historian: Here is another analysis as Obama’s polls are falling like a rock among his base (including me). Glen Greenwald gave a FANTASTIC analysis and even appeared on David Shuster’s MSNBC this afternoon. This may be even more explanatory as to just what is going on or NOT going on in the Obama White House. It hurt me to read it but Greenwald is one of the best historians and news analysts I have ever read. I urge you to read the following and pass it on. If any change is to happen it must happen at the grass roots level and we should put Obama’s feet to the fire. He has, in my opinion, abrogated his responsibility and down right lied to us. He has betrayed his sacred trust as every other politician has done since the beginning of time. I THOUGHT he was different. Wrong again. Here is the link:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

A suggestion: If Barack Obama continues to be this disappointing and downright mendacious to his own base we have the right to run opposition in the Democratic primary in 2012. Obviously, we should not jump the gun but rather remain vigilent and never forget we have this option. If he continues as he has I would want to see someone truly progressive defeat him.

2009-12-16T16:48:00.003-05:00

The Powerless Power: I must be true to what I have thought for quite some time. There is SOMETHING missing in our president. He was beloved by the world and by me, initially, but he is NOT now what I thought he was. There is something that is vacant in him which I saw during Oprah’s Christmas interview. There is a coldness maybe some say aloofness but I am not so sure it is that. I believe it is something deeper. I perceive a controlled anger that, perhaps, if you can suffer some armchair psychology, has as its etiology his childhood and festers in him as a half black man whose father was absent. There is SOMETHING about him that is absent that a successful president should have but seems to be missing in him. He does not give me a sense of power or control that, for example, a Jack Kennedy or certainly LBJ and FDR had. He has charisma as the first African American president and he gives a wonderful speech but on an interpersonal level it appears to me he does not manifest the necessary ability to wield the immense power he has been given and is inherent in the presidency complemented most especially by a Democratic Congress.

I say, the white guy powers are steam rolling over him. Whether it’s the bank CEO’s three of whom including Blankfein of Goldman Sachs did not show up for the presidential meeting allegedly because of fog an apt metaphor or the generals in the ramp up of the war in Afghanistan which is slated to cost ultimately trillions not to mention the human cost in blood I believe he cannot stand up to power. At this ever so critical moment in history I am seeing a president who caves in the face of it. I am fearful. Today, Iran launched a test which could carry a nuclear warhead missile which could reach Israel and parts of Europe. This is a serious time and requires a president of IMMENSE power and the ability to use it presciently and masterfully as FDR knew how to do. I am NOT seeing that in this president.

I suspect the CEO’s left laughing when the President politely asked them to loan to small businesses. Oh sure, yes Mr. President, sure will, Mr. President, in a pig’s petuti, Mr. President. I think he cannot stand up to power especially white power and the white men know it. I truly think there is an issue with who he is and his blackness is a part of that. He’s trying like hell to fit into the white guys club by a pathological appeasement of a Republican foe who wants no part of him and kicks dirt in his face at every opportunity. Even African Americans are showing a disappointment in him as an article in, I think, Huffington Post today said.

Something is missing in Barack Obama and health care is merely a symptom and a reflection of it. Health care passed with a strong public option should have been successfully completed by now but the President waivers and equivocates to appease the conservatives. The conservatives should be appeasing US. I would like to see more Malcolm X in him than MLK. The ONLY way one fights power is by any means necessary and he simply is either too inexperienced or psychologically unable to do it. I believe he is less at ease with who he is than one might think but does a fantastic job of masking it and making us think the emperor is wearing clothes when it is clear he is not.

2009-12-15T07:04:00.004-05:00

As a Jew I am disgusted. As an American I am simply sick. How Joe Lieberman, a pious Jewish man, could have sold us the American people, out is beyond anything I can fathom. He sold us out on something even HE advocated for as little as three months ago and even more strongly when he ran for vice president. He has been for universal health care all his political career EXCEPT now when we need him the most. Why? The blogs say he is angry at the weak support which was accorded to him by Democrats in 2004 and even angrier at his loss in the Democratic primary to Lamont in 2006 when he decided to do an end run around his party, managed to bamboozle the Connecticut people and get elected as an Independent. Understandable BUT that is about HIM this is about us. This is about lives our lives not his. He will have health care but SO many of us will not.

With the prodding of Rahm Emanuel, the President's front man and a pious Jewish person himself, we the American people are getting the rawest deal we have ever gotten in American politics bar none. The president's leadership abilities to me, a huge supporter, are SERIOUSLY in question. I am sad, depressed, and demoralized that he has betrayed all of us who were behind a huge movement to get him elected. Once we did, one by one he betrayed us on many issues but this is the epitome of madness. We should all be devastated.

All those politicians' words who went on to the progressive talk shows who sounded so upbeat and so positive are empty promises they mean nothing. To have one man, Joe Lieberman, a religious man, derail and subvert the destinies nay the very LIVES of millions is beyond anything I can fathom or words I can use to voice my fury and emotional destruction. It is a sad day, a very sad day and an even sadder day for the American who needs health care so desperately but will not be able to afford it even now with a Senate of sixty votes. Some no many will die because of this. I am simply disgusted and ever so depressed. If THEY are not for us who will be and if not now when?

2009-12-12T14:06:00.006-05:00

If you get a chance to see it I suggest you view Bill Moyers "Pushing a People's Agenda" which included in the second half a discussion with Howard Zinn, a leftist professor of history at Boston University with whom I have been acquainted and who influenced me immeasurably in the late 1960's. They rebroadcast this discussion on PBS OR you can Google it and see it online.

Moreover, on the History Channel Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. (I think) there will a program entitled "The People Speak" and will include selections from Zinn's collection of voices of poets and writers from the American past performed by actors including Marissa Tomei, Matt Damon and many others. From the trailers I have viewed it appears it is extraordinarily inspirational as it reflects Zinn's view that social change is made from the bottom up by average people doing extraordinary things.

I wrote the following on the Moyers blog about this segment:

I am 61 and have known Howard Zinn nearly all of my adult life although he has not known me except in present day via email. I was a student at Boston Univ. in the late 60's and had the occasion to be involved in student protests and to have been fortunate to hear lectures of Prof. Zinn at that time protesting the Vietnam War.

I adored him and still do. I have read much of his "People's History" and his views of our government surely shed new light on some egregious, nefarious and destructive-to-human-life our government, in our name, has perpetrated. He opened up a world of thought to me which remained unknown certainly within the structure of a public school system which never told the flip side of the story. History nearly always is written by the victors and at that time the US, in my naive and innocent mind, was victorious (and good ... nay exceptional) in everything it did. So many told me that fact.

After hitting the steps of Boston Univ. in the late 60's, hearing Howard Zinn, Murray Levin, Edgar Bottome and others I swiftly did a cerebral about face concerning US history. Still, during the many years I have had to think about events, age brings a jaded cynicism as to just how much progressives can change a quagmire and how much can I do to affect that change within my lifetime. I began to question who is correct in their world view the left or the right. Perhaps, is it really somewhere in between.

I would love to have asked Prof. Zinn more questions. Does he really believe the basic nature of man is non violent? Does he really think no matter how non violent a society we could be there would not be another nation state somewhere at some time who would want to attack us? Negotiations with such a state would be fruitless and that if we did not strike first another country would.

Obama said that the United States has underwritten, like an insurance policy, the security of the world. Professor Zinn surely does not believe that. I suspect he believes quite the opposite. I would have liked Bill Moyers to have put some tougher questions to Professor Zinn the kind of questions we, who call ourselves progressives, have to answer when confronting the opposition every time we express an opinion.

Mr. Moyers came close when he talked about Palin as a populist and Prof. Zinn said yes she had some elements of that but she was militaristic. I wanted Moyers to follow up on that. I would like to know from Professor Zinn how threatening the populist tea bag movement, who loves Sarah Palin, is to the other populists or progressives of my ilk who would lock horns in mortal combat with Palin's populism if it came to that extreme.

How much civil disobedience is possible and how much will be tolerated? What if during the protests we meet up with various gun loving, god fearing, gay loathing populists who do not like our message and who would be stronger them or us?

There is a split, as I see it, in this country. Both the left AND the right hate what Washington is about and yet the left and the right hate each other possibly even more than they hate the nature of Washington DC itself.

2009-12-09T15:20:00.009-05:00

Does Death Exist? New Theory says No.: I urge you to read a very interesting article written by Robert Lanza, M.D. entitled Does Death Exist? New Theory says No. It has a rather unique perspective in that it refers to quantum physics and its hypothesis of parallel universes which transcend time and space. It also says that matter can neither be created nor destroyed negating the reality of death as our human minds know it. Yes, it is a bit esoterically obtuse but nonetheless fascinating to contemplate. It is done so in the world of physics all the time but most of us know little of that. Here is the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html

I have heard of parallel universes and watched a Science Channel documentary about quantum physics which dealt with the concept. I found this article endlessly interesting since, of course, being human I have thought about, been scared of and would do anything to avoid my own death. Except I know the time will come when one cannot, no matter how much tofu one eats, how many chips one avoids or how many miles on the treadmill one can run we will not be able to avoid the unavoidable or will we?

I believe, at some point I will cease to be. That is difficult for me to conceptualize. Is it possible that I will not hear or see what my brain sees and hears now? Worse is it possible I will not see ever again those I love, or another news broadcast or not know what happens in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine or know if the glaciers melt or if humans adequately adapt to global warming and even worse, will I not know ultimately if a Democrat will lose the White House? (Well, maybe I do not want to know that!) As much as it is inconceivable that I will probably not know the answer to some or all of those questions death will be something, I believe, I simply will not be able to avoid and that there is nothing else beyond it. Or is there?

When I was a student I took ancient history and stupidly, in my naïveté, thought those people did not apply to me. That was then and this is now. They, of course, apply to me because I will be like they and there is nothing I can do about it. It is life's conundrum. I envy my 19 year old cat who I am very sure has no idea she will, sooner rather than later, cease to be. Only Homo Sapiens is, sometimes unenviably, bestowed the understanding of that which is hard to understand – our own death. At the same time because we know that we also can appreciate its opposite – life, the beauty and wonder of it all the understanding of which seems to have been bestowed only upon us. So how can we just let it go? Maybe we do not have to.

This article, if I understand it correctly, is saying “death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world.” The article goes on to say “immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether" and death can never be because matter is neither created nor destroyed. It says, I think, that when we die we will also live too and that because of parallel universes what we experience now lives somewhere else in another dimension. This is a positive contemplation. There is hope my energy will never die.

Still, will I know that? That is the question, indeed. Personally, I suspect not although I am open to other scientific hypotheses. I say, as I always do, prove it. Until then I suspect this is all there is that I will be able to understand and we should appreciate the beauty, stop killing one another, and honor the life, for however long it is that some energy somewhere has bestowed it upon us. We can always hope, though, in some parallel universe we will experience existence in another form once again.

2009-12-07T08:41:00.006-05:00

A Minuet with the Minaret: Ross Duthart of The NYT wrote an opinion "Europe's Minaret Moment" (Link Below) to which I responded.

What a conundrum: to keep or not to keep minarets in Switzerland. Can't we all just get along? Apparently not. Mankind has been going at each other since he came down from the trees and probably even before then. It's one thing to fight over food, small swathes of territory or mates and it's quite another to fight over religion, cultural ideologies and power, with huge pieces of geography in play not to mention the possible threats of nuclear war or the acquisition of WMD's. The stakes are certainly higher than in Australopithecus Boise's day.

The events of 9/11 and George Bush's destabilization of the Middle East hardened Islamic resolve across the globe. It now walks hand-in-hand with the U.S.'s utterly failed economic con games and has catapulted not just the US but the entire globe into a threat which need not have existed IF the powers-that-be AFTER 9/11 played their hands right. They surely did not. They created a catastrophe initiated by Iraq helped in no small part by a stupid, unquestioning and derelict-in-its-duty media including the prestigious New York Times.

Islamic rebellion is now a global problem. Europe who needed the labor of immigrants and who wanted to purge themselves of guilt for their own sorry treatment of the "other" now reaps what they have sewn. The Europe that gave us the glorious Enlightenment is threatened and the US is leading the charge against the threat with more attacks through its Afghanistan surge. It has its own horrific Christian fundamentalism with which to contend as more and more of the power brokers seek to cozy up to their religious fanatical base. It is a poisonous brew.

One can only HOPE that more rational thought prevails in BOTH the Islamic and Judo-Christian world. I THOUGHT Obama would be the conduit to do just that. I thought he would give us hope by fundamentally changing US policy on a myriad of fronts. It appears in many ways he is mirroring his presidential predecessors. Admittedly, he was handed a can of rancid policy botulism. Still, he could do so much. Instead, he appears to be acting in the same old way listening to the same old folly of generals who are leading him and us into yet another abysmal trap to what end I have not the foggiest idea. I hope I am consummately wrong because the dance of the Minuet with the Minarets of Europe will pale in comparison to the threat of the all out war with its attendant nuclear peril the clash of cultures and civilizations could certainly bring!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07douthat.html?_r=1

2009-12-05T09:02:00.010-05:00

To Go or Not to Go to the Jersey Boys That is the Question: In response to Betsy Hart’s December 5, 2009 Metro West Daily News editorial about her dilemma in taking her children to see The Jersey Boys because of its profanity I have some thoughts.

I absolutely want to see The Jersey Boys. The vulgarity of it, however, is the part of the cultural shift beginning in the late 60's that bothers me. Nothing is verboten and when nothing is verboten most EVERYTHING is permissible including not only a profanity of language but a violence of behavior. Things I would not have dreamed to have said to my parents are said by some of my acquaintances' children today with no hesitation. Worse they get away with it. It's the culture the adults say. What can you do? Well, if I had a child I know what I would do if disrespectful language were said to me. I have no children so I cannot fathom whether I would take mine to see The Jersey Boys or not. But I do believe, as the cultural raconteur Steve Allen once said, vulgarians are at our gate and have been for a long time.

I always thought if I had had children my home would be a vulgarity free zone. I thought, too, I would have introduced them to life by reading, reading and more reading. I would have showed them the great masters of classic literature, listened to classical music and made frequent trips to science and art museums. It is easy when one has no children to think of the perfect scenario. Unfortunately, it does not always work out the way one wants and at some point in time children, I suppose, must emerge from the domestic cocoon.

Yes, I have used profanity and yes I love some of the utterly necessary changes in culture of the late sixties which took place so that people could finally breathe free and not feel oppressed, suppressed and repressed. It is the dialogue between people, the illiteracy and ignorance of so many that to me is disheartening. One can hear public vulgarity used by even children to each other, who, in times past, never would have said such things in private much less in public. These relaxed attitudes of speech are reflected in how people dress or lack of it, modesty or lack of that, the high rate of divorce, and sexual promiscuity which allows for the higher transmission of disease, unwanted pregnancy, mothers who are children themselves and a generally unpleasant so often violent milieu. It takes a toll on all of us and even extends to the marketplace. On Wall Street anything and everything CERTAINLY was permitted which introduced a gilded age the excesses of which led to unparalleled greed resulting in the near catastrophic collapse of a global economy, and an economic system which became unhinged with all of its attendant social pathology.

The human animal needs structure, it needs a stable and loving home and most of all it need limits. Would I want to go back to the fifties when SO much was denied, and so many were unhappy and even suicidal but could not talk about it? No, absolutely not. However, I do wish there were some way to put that part of the liberated genie which has created such vulgarity, excessive greed, and an extremely angry divided country, back into the bottle. As an adult though, I still, hope to see The Jersey Boys.

2009-12-01T18:04:00.009-05:00

The Audacity of Hope: I do not know as of 6:00 p.m. December 1, 2009 what Barack Obama is planning for Afghanistan. All signs point to a 35,000 or so troop escalation supposedly with caveats and boundaries for exit. I am worried. The President courts disaster and he courts a schism within his own party. Is he strong and right enough to hold us together? I do not know. Many Americans stand to die and many Afghans among the innocent will die as well. That is a given. In war many things can go wrong and often do. It is delusional to think otherwise.

There have been some decisions the President has made I clearly do not understand. This is one of them as it seems to go against what he stood for in the Senate. I am hoping he knows what he is doing and trusting he does. This one may be the most important decision of his presidency and, in fact, a second term could rise or fall on the success of it.

If one uses the yardstick of history in this particular country, Afghanistan, is probably the worst place besides Mt. Everest or Russia in winter to wage war. The conditions are brutal and our forces are stretched thin. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of other powers at other times. The stakes are high; as high as they have ever been. The die is cast. Our way of life, our economic life, and even our physical security depend on the success of this very risky venture. Quagmire is not an option.

Beyond knowing that there is not much I can do except harbor the audacity to hope that in the end it will have been worth it and those who live now, if they die, will not have died in vain.

2009-11-30T07:49:00.006-05:00

A New Psychological Malady: World Anxiety Disorder -- the Remedy? A Paradigm Shift: As if the world could not get any more precarious and anxiety ridden, follow closely the MSNBC news story "DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Dubai's main stock exchange dropped more than 7 percent and Abu Dhabi markets slid more than 8 percent on the first day of trading in the United Arab Emirates since officials went public that conglomerate Dubai World was struggling with its $60 billion in debts." This is completely worrisome for the entire globe. If that part of the world sneezes it makes me want to hide under the covers. It goes on to state: "The drop eclipsed the declines seen in world markets last week after Dubai officials on Wednesday announced that Dubai World, the emirate's chief investment and development engine for years, would seek a six-month delay in paying creditors. The news stoked fears that the conglomerate — and the emirate's — debt woes could be a symptom of broader financial instability elsewhere in a still fragile world economy."

This in tandem with a trillion other variables makes the Afghanistan decision loom in importance.

Moreover, in Uruguay a very left of center candidate won the election. His name is Mujica. Who cares about Uruguay? We should. It's in our own back yard and is another thermometer for where that part of the world with Venezuela (oil) and Cuba could lean ALTHOUGH Mujica seems like a different left wing variety as he claims to eschew the typical blabber of the left AND the right. He is very popular now. It can be a yardstick for how many South American countries will be vociferous and active against right wing dictatorships in that part of the world as we historically have just loved them.

We need, in my opinion, of course, a paradigm shift of values as a lot of handwriting is on a lot of walls. Our historical policies have often come back to seriously bite us as there are things we cannot control. We need to take note of the various canaries in various coal mines.

Again, Obama's greatest legacy, in my opinion, COULD be this paradigm shift of values taking great care as to the nature of the regimes across the world with whom we bed down.

2009-11-30T07:45:00.000-05:00

The cause of 9/11?: Some historians have said that US misadventures in the Middle East have sewn the seeds of destruction. For example, and there are many of them, the US rid Iran of Mosadeq, a democratically elected leader because he wanted to nationalize Iranian oil and the US put the Shah in as his replacement. He was hated and overthrown hence the Ayatola Khomnei and radical Islam a true adversary and threat.

There are many instances of the US propping up corrupt governments such as Pakistan's Musharaf because that part of the world has our and everyone else's life blood...oil. We have bobbed and weaved a curious pattern. Some have suggested that 9/11 was a reaction to that i.e. an anger simmering for decades. It is a precarious balance of power and without being directly involved in state department politics it is hard to assess the true realities. I simply, often, admittedly do not know.

I am now reassessing my own opinion. In one of my opinions I talk about a path not taken which is sometimes irremediable. I do not know if this country MUST do what I think the President is going to tell us it must. I do not now really know. The President is entrusted with the awesome task of protecting the country which means all of our lives. I want to hear, of course, what he says Tuesday night addressing this life and death policy issue. I would not want to stand in his shoes and have such dominion over who shall live and who shall not.

Perhaps, there is no other way of protecting this nation AND MOST IMPORTANTLY the nuclear arms of Pakistan. THAT is the true worry as I see it. If the Taliban were to take over Afghanistan again they could have access to Pakistan's nukes as Pakistan is utterly fragmented since Musharaf stepped down, Bhutto was assassinated and her husband Zadari took over but is steeped in legal trouble.

It's a mess, upon a mess upon a mess which is why General Colin Powell said if you break it (meaning Iraq) you own it. The invasion of Iraq has destabilized the entire region. I suspect the President wants to keep a lid on a potential Vesuvian eruption in Pakistan and also keep Afghanistan from harboring Al Qaeda training grounds once again.

Monday morning quarterbacking is easy but I do it anyway. If I had the power to turn back the clock I would never want Iraq invaded as they posed a buffer power which hated Iran. I would as we almost did get bin laden in Tora Bora...we had him and it was stopped. Why? My suspicion based on no known fact is that Iraq was Bush's baby and he wanted it at all costs. Why again? There are many theories but suffice it to say he did.

Right in the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan we rid it of the Taliban and had Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora. Then he hid in the torturous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That ball was dropped to invade Iraq. To say that was bad policy is an understatement but what to do when we have to play the ball where it lies is the hardest decision of all.

Sometimes, existentially, there truly is no way out.

2009-11-24T13:05:00.004-05:00

War -- the Exception to American Exceptionalism: This is a response I sent to a relative who has a blog. It was a blog in which she stated our values must change so national health care can be a reality and so money is not wasted on our huge military. It was a very good blog. I sent the following response to her. It is not as well written as I would have liked but it gets, I think, the point across.:

What you say has truth and validity. I THOUGHT I was getting that with our president. I thought I was getting VALUES, human values and not just platitudes or speeches well delivered. I THOUGHT I was getting health reform and that the public option was imperative; couldn’t be health care without it. That’s what I thought I was getting.

The word on the street is that our president is committing 36 thousand more troops to Afghanistan. No shock he said Afghanistan was so much more important than Iraq. It was. Emphasis on WAS. Will that be enough? No OF COURSE NOT.. so then it will be 20 more thousand troops, will that be enough of COURSE NOT then it’s 40 thousand more troops until he hands off to the next administration if he does not win 2012 (which he may, in fact, not win unless Republicans stay divided as we hope they do) an Afghanistan of probably well over 100,000 troops. Sound eerily Vietnamish familiar? You BETCHA it does. How much will this cost until it stops IF it stops? Answer: TRILLIONS. If you ask an “average” American what he/she would want more health care or WINNING war I am so certain that the popular answer would be WINNING war IF honesty prevailed.

This country LOVES to win war. They don’t like to lose war or sustain casualties or look at flag draped caskets or look at the slaughter of innocents from our bunker busting bombs but they LOVE WINNING WAR. As long as the powers that be (Obama included) tell them that war is winnable, a light at the tunnel can be seen and it is oh so necessary and cannot be done ANY other way … NO PROBLEM here’s more money for more troops and more war. Congress worries about being labeled unpatriotic don’tcha know. Face it despite the shining city on the hill BS that we are fed from birth, despite the bull pucky of American exceptionalism, the true reason we go to war is why? Because we like it!

How many wars since WWII have we been involved? When you know this you will know why a public option will NEVER pass. We love war MORE MUCH MORE than we love healing our sick and our poor. It’s really as simple as that. Values? What values? At the risk of vulgarity: Values other than the value of more war is a load of horse sh*% . Here are the numbers of wars our country has been in since WWII:

Second World War (1941-1945)
Korean War (1950-1953)
Lebanon crisis (1958)
Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)
Dominican Intervention (1965)
Vietnam War (1957-1975)
Operation Eagle Claw (1980)
Grenada Conflict (1983)
Beirut Confict (1982-1984)
Panama Invaison (1989)
Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)
Somolia: Operation Restore Hope (1992-1993)
Kosovo War (1996-1999)
Yugoslavia Conflict (1999)
War on Terrorism (2001–present)
War in Afghanistan (2001-present)
Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines (2002)
Liberia peacekeeping (2003)
Iraq War (2003-present)

The list prior to WWII is too huge to post here but you can go to the link below to find the answer to that. It MAY… I say MAY astound you. Change our values? What are you smoking?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080930181743AApFxbL

2009-11-23T13:38:00.002-05:00

I wrote to Neil Swidey in response to his article in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine entitled "Where's the poetry, Mr. President?"

I have VERY mixed emotions about Obama so far. The glow has gone out of his presidency, in my opinion. I do NOT like what I am seeing and I am sorely disappointed on many fronts. Time will tell as to how inspiring his presidency will be and how historians will view it. It is surely better than the alternative but, sadly, I think I will never see what I have always wanted to see and what my parents did see -- an FDR (flaws and all). Here is what I wrote.

Mr. Swidey: I agree with your article in the Sunday, Nov. 22 Globe Magazine. I have been an ardent Obama supporter. I have been moved to tears by some of his speeches especially the ones to which you refered. His win after Iowa made me become an ecstatic supporter and what I felt I wrote in a letter to the NYT which was printed.

Throughout the year, however, almost from his inauguration which held some disappointments such as the invitation to Rick Warren to speak, I have been feeling that something is missing. Something seems not quite right. Your article seemed to hit the proverbial nail on the head. The poetry has gone out of his speeches and a dull prose has taken its place. I worry that he is not what I thought he was. What happened? What went wrong? Why am I feeling this way? Since the inauguration my response when people ask my opinion about him is I simply do not know. People say he is so bright, people say he is so deliberative and yet he is doing things that the Barack Obama I knew and loved I thought he would never do.

I take issue with his economic team, I take issue with his possible escalation of war, I take issue with his anemic support of those who were his most ardent supporters. Moreover, I have not seen him run strongly with the public option ball. As a matter of fact he downright waffled on what he said was the most important aspect of health care. Where is the dynamism, where are the speeches that left me breathless? Where was the FDR for whom I yearned in contemporary time. I was thrilled and inspired when at Grant Park after his victory the earth seemed to move. It seemed a new America was born; an America I knew and an America I loved. It seemed the long dark Bush nightmare was over and we had America back again. And then, it stopped. The Wall Street economic team was chosen, transparency took a back seat, no accountability for the most egregious Bush illegal acts occurred. To the contrary holdovers from the Bush administration were selected for cabinet posts, hands reached out to Republicans who would not reach back. We heard birthers, death panels and the most vicious white racism with wingnuts carrying GUNS to where a president was speaking. It all went unaddressed by the man to whom those vicious slurs were addressed. Barack Obama seemed to go silent just when our liberal causes needed him to be the most vociferous. Where is he? I don't know.

Maybe he works behind the scenes, maybe there is more to it then my eye far away from Washington can see. The light that was Barack Obama for me has dimmed. You are right to ask where is the poetry? I would love to know if you find the answer to that. Globe Magazine article below.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/11/22/wheres_the_poetry_mr_president/

2009-11-21T17:05:00.003-05:00

Deja vu all over again: If you have not already done so I suggest viewing PBS Bill Moyers Journal and the LBJ tapes as LBJ agonizingly wrestles with the decision whether or not to send more troops to Vietnam. The similarities of Vietnam to Afghanistan are staggering complete with other powers losing in that murderous terrain long before we arrived on the scene. The generals and the Pentagon thinkers do their thinking, the grunts do the dirty work and come back in coffins. Usually it is NOT the policy makers whose sons end up horrifically disabled or dead.

It is, in my opinion, a question of CHANGING once and for all the national psyche from a nation which, in its geographical isolation, loves war and loves winning war to a country that will declare war and wage war ONLY when absolutely existentially necessary. Our country from afar sees war like a football game but does not want to see the blood and guts hanging out of its soldiers during war or experience what it means to lose a war and what it does to the national will.

Our country is falling apart at home. We simply cannot afford more war. We have no money and no more national will to fight it. Our soldiers we do have are whipped serving sometimes four and five tours of duty which is bone crushing. We do not even have enough troops if we were, God forbid, threatened anywhere else including at home. If President Obama will not pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and send NO more I believe we are among the doomed. We will be in a state of perpetual endless war forever. We can never sustain that.

The man who should have been president, John Kerry, was 100% correct. Terrorism should be fought as a police action with intelligence and particular strikes with special forces at the right time and right place but NOT with thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground 7000 miles away in an alien place with no end in sight. The Iraq War was nothing short of devastating to our military at best and illegal at worst. Yet again, the American people fail to learn history, fail to understand the polices that emanate from the leaders it elects who never have to bear the burden physically or monetarily.

We won OUR own revolution because the British could not keep up a force across the sea fighting a group who knew the terrain and had the WILL behind their existential cause. It matters whether a fighting force has conviction or not. A draft would mean drafting men (and now women too) in a country which would never countenance that. It will NEVER be done, over time, successfully with simply a volunteer army ... EVER.

I only wish Bill Moyers could have convinced LBJ, within whose administration he worked, of the folly that was Vietnam and now I hope someone shows this segment to President Obama so history does not eerily repeat itself all over again!

2009-11-15T08:42:00.008-05:00

Obama's Afghanistan Objective: In my opinion, the main US objective for Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with Hamid Karzai. I do not give a whit about the Karzai regime or ANY regime that the tyrannical, corrupt and opium driven Afghanistan power structure can invent. I do not care about turning a tradition, steeped in thousands of years of tribal warfare, into a Jeffersonian democracy. That is an impossible task. I do not care about oil, I do not care about a balance of fragmented Middle East power, and I do not even care about the inhumanities inflicted on the Afghans by their own people including 1/2 of their population, women. I do not care about these things not because I am inhumane but because this country simply CANNOT do it all.

What I DO care about is the safety and security of the American people and that is the ONLY thing about which I have ever cared. If Obama were president on 9/11 his main effort would have been devoted to striking those who struck us, getting Bin Laden, which he would probably have done, and wiping out bases from whence the attack was nurtured and honed. It would not have been war with Iraq.

It is impossible now because of the wasted time in Iraq to wipe out the tidal wave of Taliban in Afghanistan, ensure the stability of a corrupt Karzai regime or to eliminate the opium trade that sustains the Afghan economy. None of that is worth ONE more American life. What is worth life is keeping a laser-like eye on the wells from whence Bin Laden or those like him could spring to launch another attack. This is true NOT only for Afghanistan but it is true all over the world. Committing thousands more American troops to Afghanistan or anywhere else will do nothing but erode our military even more than it is today and risk subjecting our country to endless, intractable, and permanent war which could propel us to ruin.

We need to regroup, use what we have now in our technological and intelligence arsenal, invent NEW technologies, secure our borders and stay out of visual presence in the Muslim world. We need to wage a smart war, removed from Muslim populations by using technologies and intelligence which can, already do and, in the future, will keep us safe without returning to another Vietnamesque quagmire with all of its collateral damage inflicted on innocents.

This nation cannot afford more war -- not in troops, certainly not in treasure, and not in the hearts and minds of our OWN people much less in the hearts and minds of most of the Islamic world.

2009-11-14T08:28:00.016-05:00

Lost in the Wilderness: Concerning MDN November 14 editorial response "Letter: GOP not lost in the wilderness." I submit both parties are "lost in the wilderness." It is not an anti-Republican party nor an anti-Democratic party but an anti INCUMBENT party which is catching on. Independents, some Democrats and many Republicans loath the way Washington runs its sluggish digestive system. It gets little done and is reduced to constant tugs of war between the culture warriors and earmark warriors with the stalemate of the archaic tyrannical FILIBUSTER in their arsenal. The stew has been thick with argument and indolence. There MUST be a better way to collect and spend the people's money so it is not subject to the waste, fraud, abuse and stalemate that has been Congress's legacy for decades.

There must be STRICT meaningful campaign finance reform taking the corporate pigs out of the trough swallowing our money whole and buying the entire congress with few exceptions. I want to know how come the bank CEO'S who put us into this mess got bonuses, did swimmingly and are now vacationing on yachts in Tahiti doing, according to Golman's CEO, God's work? I want to know why the president put Goldman Sachs graduates Geithner, Summers, and others -- the penultimate foxes who ate our chickens -- guarding the next chicken coup. How did Geithner who did not pay his taxes get to lord over TRILLIONS of our tax dollars? How come necessary strict investment bank regulation is pilloried by some and shot with loopholes in favor of, naturally, the banks? Until the congressional pigs are not bought off and in bed with the corporate swine making babies, the American public will continue to swap economically one similar party for the other.

Moreover, why are some of the most middle class and vulnerable people DUPED into thinking the Republican Party is about them? It's NOT. It is about representing billionaires and its driving force includes mean, nearly all white, exclusionary, irrational religious fanatics who are taking it to the brink of demise. It is choked by social conservative mostly religious view points which have been a controlling albatross around a Republican party's neck exterminating moderates within that party who have credible conservative viewpoints, including church/state separation based on rational thought, fact and not a dizzying array of mythological fantasy.

Both parties need to rid themselves of those forces holding the rest of middle America, blue collar America and jobless America down, and truly create a government FOR the people not against them!

2009-11-12T14:13:00.001-05:00

I think I just fainted: Okay it's not marriage I know but still who would have thought the below link involving the Mormon church coming out (so to speak) against discrimination of homosexuals in employment and housing would ever happen? I had to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

Victor Hugo: "Nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5giJCBVPLX6vCUGeogYt0B5Wz7UNgD9BTL4EG0

2009-11-07T10:39:00.012-05:00

I wrote this in response to the November 7, 2009 Boston Globe editorial.

A Speech Impediment: I am an unequivocal Obama supporter. Having said that the editorial in the November 7, 2009 Globe "Obama's delayed empathy" had credence. I watched as the events of Ft. Hood unfolded and waited impatiently for the president's response and words of comfort about it. I, too, was disappointed at the president's slow-to-issue remarks and surprised as the Globe editorial noticed the same thing. The moment I waited for, as he stepped to the podium of the Tribal Nations Conference, I thought, fell extraordinarily short. I, too, could not believe how long it took the president to speak directly to the grave Ft. Hood events.

In his defense, perhaps, the president thought he did not want to short change those attending a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs by making an American military issue more important than their own. It has happened that the American government has done just that and worse to native Americans throughout its history.

However, he is our president and I too picked up on what I thought was this gaping flaw in the president's speech. Barack, we hardly know ye. At times it seems I don't know you at all.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/11/07/obamas_delayed_empathy/