imtalkinghere

Presidential Fudge

Worth noting. And hoping for something a little finer in the future:

In an interview with the Washington Post that hit the Internet Tuesday afternoon, President Obama sought to defend himself from the criticism he's faced from the left over the way the healthcare reform debate has ended up...

"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama told the Post. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

        ...

At the same time...  a candidate questionnaire sent out by Newsday, does show again that this really is a question of Obama trying to get cute with semantics.. Asked to keep each of his answers to 50 words or less, Obama's summary of his healthcare plan was, "I have pledged to sign a universal health bill into law by the end of my first term in office. My plan will ensure that all Americans have health care coverage through their employers, private health plans, the federal government or the states. For those without health insurance I will establish a new public insurance program."

Please don't spin me, Mr. President. I get that it's harder to deliver the transparency you touted than you thought, and that you can't immediately inspire civility across the board in a long-festering swamp... but, you must stay authentically true and plain-spoken - it's the one thing that really is in your control - or there's no hope for the kind of democratic change we need to bring our elected government back to even the beginnings of something approaching health.

Yes, we can...ALL be more straight-forward and clean.

Teddy

February 22, 1932 - August 25, 2009

So many individual reflections on Senator Kennedy are, by their details, painting a clear, consistent story about the excellent man he was. Yes, excellent – no matter  what  flaws and errors may have existed as well. Such is life. Such is especially true of large life. And large is a small word for Ted Kennedy.

When I was in college, my sister lived in Cambridge in a third-floor walk-up on a hill near Harvard. While visiting, I had to make a run to the post office, one of those grand old edifices,  with steps up to the main doors, lots of stone and ornate metal work, a series of service windows against the back wall. It was busy day at the P.O.,  maybe 2 or 3 people in line for each window. As I was concluding my business at the window, the interior space suddenly shifted, almost as if the floor had tilted. I turned my head to see that everyone who had been in line was now exiting the building or had left their place in line to peer out the front doors. I looked quizzically to the clerk, who explained, simply, “Kennedy.” 

Sure enough, Senator Ted Kennedy and a small entourage of male aides were walking up Massachusetts Avenue and were now in front of this building. As I exited the main doors, I paused to observe the others rushing down the steps to shake his hand. People were coming from across the street, too.  Kennedy welcomed every hand.

Two thoughts hit me. First, “So that’s what a really expensive suit looks like. Worth every penny.” And then: “Oh.  Charisma.  But more.”

In that one moment I “got” the palpable force of energy that creates capital-C Charisma. It’s not just good looks, though Kennedy was in peak condition that day.  It’s not just charm, though he had that, too.  It is a force field of energy that is wholly its own thing and exceedingly rare. It had reached from the city sidewalk right into the building and sucked the people out onto the street. I stood transfixed at the top of the steps and took it in, memorizing what I was seeing. People, who just moments before had been standing sleepily in line at that wall of windows, were now smiling broadly from a mere handshake and some eye contact. Amid all of this activity swirling around him, Kennedy  even took the time to look up to where I was standing, make eye contact, smile broadly, and wave. I smiled back. And then he moved on.

I had felt tired as I trudged down to the P.O., - I didn’t want to make the run, my sister had pressed me into service - but now I was enlivened. I ran up the hill to my sister’s apartment and bounded up all  three flights of steps to announce, “Guess who I just saw!” The force of his presence was so enormous that it had energized me into this easy sprint home. And it stayed with me for hours afterward.

In the years since, I have met and worked with many famous people, so I’ve been around a lot of charisma – plenty of good looks and charm and sex appeal and personal buzz - but very few of them had the “more” that I witnessed in Senator Kennedy. Today, I would call it Soul Energy. Reading so many lovely and striking personal reflections of this “lion” today, I keep thinking how well he spent that precious resource.

“And you know, he was never defeatist, he never was petty -- never...petty. He was never small. And in the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger, both his adversaries as well as his allies. Don't you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century, serving in the Senate, had so many of his (long pause) so many of his foes embrace him, because they know he made them bigger. He made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself.”             - Vice President Joe Biden

Certain patterns emerge. The almost unimaginable support and presence he lent to the surviving children of his brothers, while simultaneously seeing friends and colleagues through sickness and celebrations.  An incredible generosity, Far-reaching kindness. The rich laughter. He was humble. Friendly. Thoughtful.  An impeccable work ethic.  Sound judge of character. The voice, the voice, that essential voice. And “the Senate chamber, although crowded, will feel empty without him.” Well yes, that energy will be gone.  When you realize how many lives he touched and in what ways,  you recognize the extraordinary amount of soul energy it takes to reach so far and so deep and so high.

We all have notions that we want to believe. Today, I want to believe the one about how we are welcomed on the other side by our loved ones and ancestors. I really want to believe that Ted Kennedy crossed over to see so many Kennedy’s waiting there …with his three older brothers right in front, smiling those big grins and saying to their baby brother, “Well done, Teddy. Well done!”

As for those of us still here, we’ll have to decide what we want to weave in the energetic void he has left. Such a void is an invitation and can be a blessing, if we fill it artfully and well.

If…

Me No I Know

“Me no I know,” is how Eleni, the Greek’s immigrant mother, said, “I don’t know.”

It was just about a year ago that I embraced the "Me No I Know” spirit and took a year-long sabbatical from talking here. It was the whole sorry discourse surrounding the primaries and election what done me in.  So much immaturity. Gleeful mean-spiritedness.  Projection run amok. An apparent epidemic of arrested development. And a big wide world of tedious know-it-alls.

Some years ago, I went to a City Arts Commission meeting to speak on behalf of a friend who had done a public sculpture that had somehow come under attack as blatantly – nay, "obscenely!!"  - misogynistic. At the time I was coordinator for a college women’s studies program and taught an intensive in public art, so I had some street cred in this area, plus I thought the criticism was just plain strange. Off I went with an academic colleague to offer  support at a public hearing. As I sat in the last row watching the…circus parade…of complainants, I actually became disoriented by the craziness. These people – there were four in all, though they purported to represent “tens of thousands”- weren’t there to offer conscious, considered concerns about a serious piece of work. They were caught in some bizarre… thought form?… thought virus?… some contagious thing - and “acting out” as bit players plus diva in some deeply internal – and sad - psychological drama of their wild-eyed ring-leader.

Then, incredibly, my tenured colleague took her place at the mic and joined the parade. Not that she was on their side, she was arguing against them; but she was just making stuff up. PhD = rigor, discipline, intellectual honesty, right? Turns out not so much. The red light of the cable channel camera was winking at her and she commenced performing as if she was someone other than her true self, and stating "facts" which she was fabricating on the spot. Now I was utterly undone. What planet was I on? This is what happens to me when I am immersed in a thing that parades itself as other than it is – I go into an altered state. Such is the curse of being an empath. When my colleague returned to her seat next to me, there was no time for me to ask the obvious (WTF?!), because my name was called. I approached the mic in a cloud of slow-mo fog and...blithered... I think. I'm fairly certain I can never run for office because someone will find that tape and deploy it against me.  I had lost my mind along with the rest of them. I remember distinctly moving my head from left to right to make eye contact with each weary commissioner in an attempt to ground myself, to re-establish something like authentic connection in the room. I muttered something about how art gives rise to emotions but it's better to welcome contentious disagreement than to hide works away or diminish public art to such bland pabulum that no one feels a thing ... ending with, "But really, people, how do you do it - sitting here week after week listening to nut bags using you as an audience for their personal make-believe plays?!" - Okay. I didn't say that last part. Not exactly. I hope. I really don't remember.

That evening altered forever my understanding of democracy-in-action.

How much of what passes for citizen engagement is really personal psychology seeking a spotlight… an unheard inner need crying for attention? Based on personal observation, I would have to say well over 50%. Kinda scary – as we confront an historic array of systemic failures. Broken government. Failing education. Inadequate health care. Disastrous financial structures. Impending planetary catastrophe. You know, stuff like that. 

The thing is I love the conversation that is the essence of a functioning democracy. But in order for this conversation to be productive, the people who are able to come at it cleanly need to balance out those who can't by being excellent at it. And a year ago – for all the healthy enthusiasm I was seeing,  and my confidence that Barack Obama was going to be the next president, and that essential systemic changes were inevitable (if not soon enough for me) - I was, nonetheless, disturbed by the low level of discourse and asking myself a lot of questions. Can we improve the conversation? How large a proportion must we simply relegate to pointless yammer-yammer? And how do we provide adequate counterbalance to that? What will it take to mature America’s democracy? What’s the single most useful and effective contribution I can make as a citizen? How do I make that contribution without succumbing to the dreaded altered-state phenomenon?

Having no solid answers, I decided to embrace not knowing, shut up for a while, and just see if  answers might bubble up over time.

So that’s where I’ve been – in the land of Me No I Know.

But I’m baaaaaaaaack.

My fellow knuckleheads...

The most striking thing about (what I caught of) the pundit analysis of Senator Obama’s brilliant speech on race and religion is this: They all seemed blown away by the power of his thoughts and the honest courage in the way he shared them...

“This speech is probably the most monumental speech since Martin Luther King as it relates to matters of race…"  - Dr. Floyd Flake, Pastor of Allen AME Cathedral, a Clinton supporter, on Charlie Rose

"The rhetorical magic of the speech—what made it extraordinary—was that it was, at once, both unequivocal and healing. There were no weasel words, no Bushian platitudes or Clintonian verb-parsing…  It was a grand demonstration of the largely unfulfilled promise of Obama's candidacy: the possibility that, given his eloquence and intelligence, he will be able to create a new sense of national unity—not by smoothing over problems but by confronting them candidly and with civility." - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

"Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up." - Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University

“And so at 11 o’clock AM on a Tuesday a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults.” – Jon Stewart, Daily Show

... BUT it was this very fineness of Obama's talk that made them wonder how it would “play” to “regular Americans.” Regular Americans – you know them, they are what Clinton strategist Mark Penn refers to as “jugheads”. Or Pennsylvania “knuckleheads”, as someone in Philadelphia described them to Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

See, this is the commonly shared view of the ruling and mainstream media class – that elections are about who can herd the biggest bunch of idiots into the voting booths. You get those doggies moving with game-playing and manipulation and absurd spinning and fear…oh, never go short on the fear…and be sure to keep all ugliness going as long as humanly possible, without leaving fingerprints, of course.

Is this who we are?

Is this how we live up to our serious responsibilities as citizens in a democratic superpower nation?

Because the assumption is that we are a bunch of knee-jerk, over-emotional non-thinkers. 

Senator Obama bet another way yesterday. He spoke to America as if we could process sophisticated, nuanced, and plainly true words. As if we want to see, to understand, to grow. And heal. As if we want to take the good we've been given by America and show our gratitude by making it even better.

It is surely a test of us to see how We The Knuckleheads respond to that.

It is also a test of the Democratic Party – to see how its leaders line up to support Obama's deeply respectful approach to us... as if we are not just a bunch of jugheads.

Of course, I realize that all these most positive scenarios will require some hope.

Obama's 2002 Speech

Since it's being belittled this week, let's have a look at it:

October 2, 2002

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

"One Nation, Under Stress"

Quiet here of late. The truth is I've been so depressed about all things American, and a few other things as well, that I didn't want to spew that mooooood all over this space. But last night I was flipping through a magazine and came upon something that cheered me considerably:

Since 9/11, America has behaved like a battered spouse, says psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., in her powerful new book The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires our Brains and Reshapes our Behavior - And How We Can Reclaim our Courage (Sarah Crichton Books). We've been collectively traumatized and subsequently dominated by fear, she says, only to become demoralized, paralyzed, and separated from the values and passions that once guided us as a nation. Drawing from her work with trauma patients and her teachings at Harvard Medical School, Stout makes the case for applying the psychological model of trauma on the brain, body, and behavior to the nation as a whole. Seen in this light, the instigating events of 9/11 are just part of the problem. The rest comes from people with political purposes who are "motivated to keep your subliminal fear and your sense of dread at a simmering point." Fortunately, a nation, like an abused spouse, can break free and heal, Stout says. She details a plan to assess anxiety, identify the myths and realities of the threat, protect ourselves against fearmongers, and regain  hope.  "Our continued fear has had large scale social and political implications," she writes. "And healing from it is more than an individual health objective - it is a national mission. Striving to be calmer, more aware, and more rational is, arguably, a patriotic act." This is one of the year's most illuminating books.

"Cheered by this?" you say. Yes. Because we're well past time to be talking about what's really broken. And how it has been made worse by small, dangerously unwise, so-called leaders.

I sure hope the reviewer is right about illumination, because we're definitely overdue for light. Time to recognize and talk - and I mean serious talk  - about the core material at the heart of what really ails us. And specific steps we can take to self-correct.

Show me a viable presidential candidate who gets this and pledges commitment to concrete healing steps as a national mission, and I'm on board.

In the meantime, we should all be pressing media outlets to start a whole new order of conversation about what we "need" to do.

"Clinically Incapable"

Let us note that it was John Edwards who got it exactly right on the Scooter Libby commutation:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today."

Clinically Incapable - What a perfect title for the authoritative biography of George Bush! Clinically incapable of so many things. Except serving himself.

Obviously, the choice to commute instead of pardon was designed to continue obstructing  justice, one of the several charges for which Libby was found guilty. Commutation keeps his crony out of jail while allowing the farce of ongoing court proceedings which Bush and Gang can continue to use as their excuse for not answering legitimate questions. The pardon will come later.

Cynical. Self-Serving. Bastard.
Pretending he deliberated in service to justice.
Splitting the difference, my ass.
The guy is a study in perfect shamelessness.

How is it that I got this immediately,  others have recognized the same...

"[T]he real effect of Bush's actions is to prevent Libby from revealing the truth about Bush's -- and vice president Cheney's -- own actions in the leak. By commuting Libby's sentence, Bush protected himself and his vice president from potential criminal exposure for their actions in the CIA Leak. As such, Libby's commutation is nothing short of another obstruction of justice." - Marcy Wheeler

...some even predicted it ...

Libby trial book coauthor Jeff Lomonaco, in an op-ed he tried unsuccessfully to get published several weeks ago, predicted a commutation because "it would enable Bush and Cheney to continue the strategy they have successfully pursued in deterring journalists seeking their explanations with claims that they shouldn't comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Cheney would no longer have such a rationale for evading the press' questions - nor would Libby be able to claim the right against self-incrimination to resist testifying before Congress about the role that Cheney and Bush played in directing his conduct."   

h/t Froomkin

...but, so far, I'm not hearing the broadcast press put it out for conversation?

Talk about missing the forest. Talk about missing the trees. Talk about fiddling while the forest burns down around us.

Impeachment Is Nowhere Near Enough ... or, IT'S ABOUT US, STUPID!

For a while there, I was getting daily "Impeach Bush" email updates. I didn't ask to be on the list and when my requests to be removed were ignored, I added the source to my SPAM list.  It's not that I think George W. Bush doesn't qualify for impeachment. I'm with Chalmers Johnson in understanding that this President has "of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him 'to protect and defend the constitution'...(that) among the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these":

(T)he President and his top officials pressured the CIA to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify and American war of aggression

(After launching this invasion,) the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.. at Guantanimo Bay, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, permits the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within  days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries…where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-9/11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima-facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the Constitution.

These alone constitute more than adequate grounds for impeachment, while hardly scratching the surface.

Underlining mine. Yes, indeed, George W. Bush is a really, really inept and damaging President, probably the worst in our nation's history. His shocking disregard for the rule and spirit of law will be a central element in the story of his role in history...along with his poor critical-thinking skills,  his lack of actual leadership qualities, his unsound instincts (ignored months of 9/11 warnings, missed the import of the Katrina warnings  - something we actually have on tape, continually stokes fear and  negative instincts in the American people, etc.), his catastrophically bad decision-making, his deeply-flawed character judgments, and what appears to be his lifelong dishonesty at a cellular level. And that's just my short list.

So, it must be profoundly frustrating for pro-impeachment activists to deal with how difficult it has been to kindle their particular fire, even under people like me.

In Salon’s "Why Bush Hasn’t been Impeached" (subscription), Gary Kamiya cites multiple "factors -- the sacrosanct status of war, the public's complicity in an irrational demonstration of raw power...

“Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.

"…Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche…To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness – to come to terms with it, to understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that…to turn decisively against Bush…would be to turn against some part of (our)selves."

...(and) the loss of respect for law, logic, and memory -- (that) have created a situation in which it is widely accepted that Bush's lies about Iraq (are) not impeachable or even that scandalous, but merely a matter of policy."

To which I say, uh... yes ...and no.

First, I think Americans are understandably averse to launching the impeachment process at a time when it might distract us from our greater moral responsibility to clean up the hellish messes we've got going in Iraq and Afghanistan and in New Orleans and elsewhere at home.

I also think we have to understand that Newt Gingrich's merry band of Republicans diminished the seriousness of impeachment when they used it against Bill Clinton. (Read John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience - Most of those Republicans didn't even believe in it themselves! They were just following marching orders.)

But I think - I hope - that the major reason that even people like me are not focused on impeachment is because we realize - or at least sense - that George Bush's illegal behavior is as much symptom as cause. No president gets to do the kind of damage he has done in a system that works.   In other words, the problems we need to face are much, much bigger than George W. Bush.  As Al Gore said in a recent conversation (5.25.07) related to his new book, Assault on Reason -

"It's too easy...to simply blame President Bush and Vice President Cheney. We have free speech, a free press, a Congress, independent courts, checks and balances - we are all responsible for the decisions that are made in this country."

Yes, Bush is us. (And for those who say, "Hey, he ain't me!" I say, "Democracy isn't about I, it's a 'we' thing.") But he's showing us much more than our inclination to war or revenge. This is, after all, a presidency born of a breakdown in our most sacred collective act: voting for president.

American democracy is in the throes of systemic breakdown.

The level of our national discourse is a disgrace.

Voter turnout? We rank 139th out of 172 countries. Aren't you proud?

A large percentage of the news media - especially broadcast, where the vast majority of Americans get their information - fails us daily.

Our elected officials in Washington are so reliant on big bucks that they find it hard to think straight or do their jobs, as in providing serious oversight and demanding accountability.

We are not educating our children well.

Our health care has severe problems. We're 39th in infant mortality. Anybody got a good excuse for this?

How much more needs to go badly before people demand some serious across-the-board fixing?! Well, more than fixing, actually - more like  fast-track evolution.

Which brings me to my best possible spin on the current Bush presidency.

Years ago, I heard a parable that charmed me. It went like this:

An angel is told that s/he is being sent to be born as a human on earth. The angel, devastated at the notion of being unable to see God, makes this one request, "Please, please, if I have to be a human, grant me life where I never take my eyes off God for a second." Wish granted, the angel is born as God's greatest enemy on earth."

For the last six+ years- ever since that shameful metaphor in Florida -  I have been contemplating this version -

Just before birth, an immature soul makes one fervent request, "Pleeeze, pleeeze, pleeeze - I wanna be famous! Make me the most unforgettable President ever! I want to be unforgettable! " Wish granted, George W. Bush is born in a position to become the Worst USA President Ever... a wake-up call to the American people to begin treating their country with the respect and care it deserves...to start acting like grown-ups, not democracy's babies."

But of course, it's our choice.  American renaissance - taking the next evolutionary step in our  democracy, where people demand more power over multiple essential systems... or continuing downward spiral into powerlessness?

This is a test of us. Not George Bush.

 

RELIGARE: to reconnect, to re-link...perhaps re-weave

Over there on the sidebar is a section called RELIGARE. Today I added Matthew Fox's 95 Theses for the Third Millennium.

Matthew Fox nailed his 95 Theses, calling for a new Reformation...on the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, the same place Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in 1517. Dr. Fox was protesting Cardinal Ratzinger, the Chief Inquisitor of our time, getting himself elected pope.

"Getting himself elected" ... hmmmm... do I detect a pattern at work?

Fox is calling for necessary growth in the church, just as we need to effect the same for American democracy. It's worth reading them all, just for the spirit of this matter... but here are some of my personal favorites:

13. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing.

11. Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is.

40. The Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of working through participatory democracy. Hierarchies can interfere with the work of the Spirit.

45. "Joy is the human's noblest act." (Aquinas) Is our culture promoting joy?

61. Interconnectivity is not only a law of physics and nature, but forms the basis of community and compassion.

69. Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.

71. A church more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with the wrongs of injustice is itself sick.

72. Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.

73. Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor and a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God's creation.

81. Another test of right action is this: Is what I am doing beautiful or not?

84. The Dark Night of the Soul is a learning place of great depth. Stillness is required.

85. Not only is there a Dark Night of the Soul but also a Dark Night of Society and a Dark Night of our Species.

91. Three highways into the heart are silence, love, and grief.

95. True intelligence includes feeling, sensitivity, and beauty...

19:51

Required viewing: Charlie Rose conversation (5.14.2007) with three young Iraqi journalists. Well, let me clarify: Ali Fadhil planned to be a doctor. Zeyad Kasim was a dentist until it became too dangerous to show up at his clinic. Ayub Nuri graduated from teacher's college to be an elementary school teacher. Now, they all just work at getting at the truth of their own country. Give them 19:51 minutes of your time. Listen to the energy behind their words, look into their eyes - compare what you see there with the faces of Kristol and Perle and Cheney and Bush and Rice and...  and then tell me which group "gets it". Who is giving you the true picture?

Someone should give these guys a TV show. Put all three of them at a round table and let them conduct discussions with Perle and Kristol and...

PBS? LinkTV? Discovery TV?