For years, Instant Karma ran through my head as one atrocity after another was revealed about the Bush administration. I'm not usingthe idea of karma here as a Buddhist belief or any particular personal philosophy; I think it is simply a kind of hope that "right" will prevail or perhaps a "what goes around" balance that keeps us honest. But with the latest piece in the long intricate puzzle that is the cover up of all high crimes and misdemeanors, that interior anthem faded, replaced by the sounds of dark resignation or occasionally drowned out by the external broadcasts of smooth, soothing plastic elevator music reassuring us that we were America, home of the brave and righteous.

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Today a CIA drone bombed the house of a Taliban official's in-laws in Pakistan (the 29th drone attack this year). He may or may not have been there but three children and one woman (possibly his wife) were killed. [Added: Initial reports were that he (Baitullah Mehsud) was definitely not killed. If he was, that is good in that it will at least justify the attack to many Pakistanis (and he was a murderous thug). But there have been many drone attacks launched against him before, only resulting in the deaths of civilians. That is one problem with remote control killing- the downside doesn't seem so steep from such a distance.] All this will do, as it has in the past, is turn more Muslims against us. If this is how we'll continue to prosecute the war on terror, whose side are we on? This attack will likely spawn more unrest in Pakistan. In Viet Nam the word was escalation (through troop increases). We are escalating our WOT, as we did in Iraq, by creating more and more enemies through our military actions.

How are drone attacks not assassinations or murder (unsuccessful or not)? What is the difference between someone pulling a trigger on a Somalian "rebel" from right behind them or from a control room in Florida (and don't answer 5,000 miles, smart-ass)? I realize that there is argument now about CIA and/or military assassination squads, which was not so much a surprise as was the fact that Congress was left out of the loop. Bush allegedly rescinded President Ford's loosely defined assassination ban, but that hardly seems to matter considering the Bush administration's demolition of limitations on executive and military actions. (And when did the CIA become our military lead?) At the very least, it will surely at some point, encourage others to do likewise. What will we say then? What will our conflicts look like then?

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A very good post earlier today questioned the value of strident and loud-mouthed pontificating from pundits on both left and right, arguing that uncivility, emotionalism and name calling only leads to the different sides simply shouting over each other and overshadows real debate.

I don't completely disagree but think that too often valid criticism from the left is unfairly dismissed as the left version of Limbaugh just because it is blunt and doesn't pull its punches. When Al Franken writes a book entitled Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (an excellent book with many criticisms that have been borne out) he is using Limbaugh's own m.o. to skewer him. The self-petarded Limbaugh is presented here in the form of satire. Satire is a tool as is Limbaugh who often attempts to use it himself. But it's a blunt instrument in Limbaugh's shaky pill-popping hand.  

Limbaugh is a large man who routinely says things like this (from today's radio show): "Barack Obama has one thing in common with God. Do you know what it is? God doesn't have a birth certificate either." Ergo, Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. End of story. And then there are things like Limbaugh's travel to a known foreign haven that traffics in child prostitution with illegal prescriptions of Viagra!

Oops, have I gone too far? Yes, yes I have. Not because these things are not true and not because Rush Limbaugh isn't really a big fat idiot (he is a big fat idiot). But, the point is- who cares? 

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The Chinese seem to do it better than any. They can take everything from  iTunes  to $300 Callaway golf clubs tear it down, meticulously copy it and manufacture it on the fly. The only problem is that, as remarkable as their copycat factories are, they produce an inferior product. But that is the objective- free patents, trademarks and copyrights, added to cheap materials and labor, produce a cheap product that can be sold on ebay at amazing bargain-basement prices! However, the Callalway driver doesn't drive anything like the real Callaway because the metal core has been changed. It looks perfect from the outside; a beautiful Callaway driver, but it is not a Callaway. Outside it looks good; inside it is mush.

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First, we know that some bullets do have magical properties, and the magic bullet known as TARP...

-wait... a thousand pardons- I failed to mention that I meant this Warren Report from the Congressional Oversight Panel chaired by Elizabeth Warren analyzing the economic recovery plans, six months in. No doubt, I will still be called a conspiracy kook (when I'm just a regular kook) by those who seem to believe in men, particularly Wall Street men appointed to police the Wall Street mess, not government accountability. But this report, clearly, as Mike Whitney shows, rejects the whole direction of the bailout based on history and expert economic opinion and theory. It also lays out some of what the government is doing ($4 trillion thrown at the "Street" already) that does not make A1 or get aired in pieces like this CNN report (compare the reporting on these two).

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...and no more "good money after bad" TARP funds.

Hey kids,

I wonder if Britney Spears was in the Oval Office today breathlessly singing “Happy Birthday …Mister Pereseede-ehnt...” WTF happened today? What happened was not just the passage of one more stoopid in–the-name-of-all-that-is-scary anti-terrist bill to let some FBI geezer troll MySpace.

Today’s “yes we can” rifle through your underwear drawer vote is what is known as a tipping point. Bookmark this day as the point when any hope for change was popped like the gas-filled balloon it was. Now don’t go all Obama on me because it’s not really about him or Hillary or McCaint. 

In my view, this is mainly about losing control of our government and, so, losing ultimate safeguards of our freedoms. It was a last chance for Congress to reassert its intended dominance over the Executive and allow the Court freedom to decide if and when the MIC corporate elite and imperial presidency is committing crimes and infringing civil liberties. And it is about losing more privacy rights, too. Technology is power, and it will soon enable a very real TIA. How do you really feel about marijuana use or our imperial wars or even our government? Maybe you might want to rethink IMing your friends about these "ideas" a lot (it’s called a chilling effect and perpetuates itself).

But this was a tipping point in the fight to maintain the checks and balances that protect us from a government-run public instead of a publicly-run government.

Am I alarmist? Shrill? Am I a Chicken Little far-left radical rock-the-boat loser? Hey, if it’s not about Obama, it sure the hell ain’t about me. What is it really about? Do you care? Is Paris Hilton that hot? Are WOW and YouTube the ultimate opiate? I think you do care, but if you don’t know exactly what your government is doing, turn off your TeeVee boxes and innertube games and do some unbiased research and decide for yourself.

PS Before you turn off the tubes, check out this unsolved mystery from Woodstock: Little Help From My Friends translated.

Disclaimer: It's just a title (referring to the smear of black separatism that will be made). I do think Obama will take the nomination and hope to God he wins, but I recognize that this is a political campaign that entails the frenzied unpacking of baggage and inevitably focuses on dirty laundry. Note: I do not think Obama espouses a separatist or any other radical ideology and I’m not a Clinton troll or a concern troll just out to rain on the parade. But it is still raining.

Today, he gave The Speech on race that some believed would transcend and heal divisions. It was an excellent speech, especially when he spoke of the hurt that lay behind our divisions over race and the need to understand others’ POV (note: I could not watch his speech live and have only watched clips and read the transcript). Senator Obama provides great analysis and is inspiring when he speaks but outdid himself today when framing the issue of race. He is a remarkable speaker, but, in the end, this was a political speech attempting damage control of a political problem. But, it must be asked: if this poignant speech about this salient issue was so important and needed, why was it only given now, to cover some tawdry political accusations? Is race really the overwhelming problem in America right now to the detriment of other pressing issues, or is it just the most pressing political problem? Race is always an issue, but if Obama were not a presidential candidate would it be the crisis implied by this speech? As a meta-discourse on race relations, it was superb. As a political gambit, it fell short.

The premise of Obama’s story is that he is in a unique position to inspire the country to transcend race problems and partisan politics because he was raised in the different worlds long divided in America. Obama’s story is arguably the centerpiece of his campaign. But if it is presented as his core, he will continue to have to answer questions about his past. He grew up in a white household and went on to excel at Harvard. He then moved to Chicago’s South Side, put down roots in the AA community there and worked as a community activist. He joined Trinity, which under Wright preached the tenets of James Cone’s black liberation theology derived from the Black Power movement of the Black Panthers in the '60s. One reason this issue is charged is that BLT integrates religion and politics. Wright became Obama’s mentor and it strains belief to think that Obama totally opposed the sometimes radical tenets of the church he enthusiastically joined all those years ago.

After a lofty and moving introduction, Obama eloquently made the case for evolving past the racial divisions of the recent past. He repeats the bromide that problems in America belong to all of us and will take all of us to solve, but he does it with a reality-based comprehensive straightforwardness. He is perhaps the best in this country at speaking to these issues. But politically, he is playing duck and cover. His attempt to cast aside the issue prompting this speech was lacking. his answers over the last week have produced a kind of hemming and hawing, “I never heard any of that or, if I did, I rejected it as that old school anger or, if I was part of that movement, we need to rise above our racial divisions now.” He admitted today that he had heard those sermons and he condemned the statements forcefully, but limited his disassociation strictly to the statements. That means other questions will keep popping up.

He stood by Wright but no one expects him to denounce the Reverend as a man or as his friend. It's a sidestep.He has stopped short of giving the whole story and that will always feed suspicion (sort of like not releasing income tax returns). The problem here is the convenient redefining of the views of his church and spiritual adviser as strictly religious or communal and diminishing the political values tied up in it. In a long speech about race and his ties to Wright and Trinity, he doesn’t even mention black liberation theology, afro-centric Christianity or the creed of the church except to portray the church as a typical AA Baptist church. Is it?

A mention of seeing “racial tensions bubble to the surface” before S.C. pointed to Clinton and one of Obama’s aims in this speech became clearer when he said, in reference to Ferraro, “it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.” Really? Besides equating Ferrraro’s comment with Wright’s theology, that’s certainly redefining the issue. He all but ignored race as a political question in the campaign other than to decry the media labeling him “too black” or “not black enough” or scouring “every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization…” though it is race as a political question that gives rise to this speech. And he let stand the accusations of a race-baiting strategy by the Clinton campaign when it is that staining of them as race-baiting that has been the divisive issue in the primary race. The turn in Obama’s political fortunes and momentum came after NH as he convinced Democrats that HRC was using his race against him, and despite the fact that he spoke cautiously and didn’t personally accuse anyone, that was the campaign he benefited from.

Obama mentioned Ferraro’s little political comments a couple of times insinuating they were racist (an accepted fact now) and equivalent to Wright’s decades of sermons preaching a philosophy. And she conveniently plays into the concept of an old timer, has-been method of race struggle. He seems to be saying, 'Bill and Hillary and Gerry come from a different time and when they talk race, it’s angry and offensive and an attack, but when I talk race, it’s raw and honest and transcendent and post-racial. And you must excuse the Reverend because he’s caught in that ‘60s DFH paradigm, too. But he’s a black man who experienced racial inequity, so it’s excusable for him to preach inequity.' Of course, generational differences and redefinitions always need to be explored, but pitting old against young is as misguided as using race as a wedge.

I don’t think the Trinity church is racist in any way, but without doubt, many will believe it is. the silent majority lives. Trinity's foundational ideology is, or at least was, radical and Obama’s association with it will have to be addressed head on at some point. The RW machine will keep asking questions like: "If a white supremacist organization (and many are Christian) preached the same tenets of separatism, would anyone hesitate to condemn it?" It matters not whether it is the Christian Right or any of the talking heads asking the question. How can it be answered? Politics is perception. He gave a beautiful speech today but exhortations to “move beyond" race will not put these questions to rest.

Excuse the indulgence. I posted a Ferlinghetti poem a couple of weeks ago and RobertinBeirut has sent me the original Khalil Gibran poem that inspired Ferlinghetti’s poem. I failed to note Ferlinghetti’s credit to Gibran in my original post. They make an interesting comparison.

Khalil Gibran:

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bull as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Khalil Gibran
The garden of the Prophet (1934)

 

Ferlinghetti:

Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Pity the Nation- after Khalil Gibran.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti 2007

A poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti read on Democracy Now! (Pity the Nation):

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,

and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,

and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice,

except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero

and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own

and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money

and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

I imagine that any movement to establish a federal shield law will have to overcome the obstacle of this sham protection of a source (who was not a whistleblower but was a possible bad actor in the situation). She claimed that she felt Libby’s waiver was coerced in spite of the fact that he and his lawyers communicated to her and her lawyers that it was not. Miller is implying that she couldn't accept his release because someone higher up was instructing his actions. I guess none of the hundreds of stories she has written using government sources carried info that higher ups wanted out.

In the wake of the whole tragedy in N.O. is the age-old question: are all Americans truly entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?