Light From The Ruins

First Light

2011-07-02T07:56:00.004-04:00

A walk through the trees along the river at first light carries the possibility of a restored clarity. Perhaps like the simplicity of standing before a judge and receiving a death sentence:

“On this day, at dawn,

you shall be hanged by the neck

until you are dead.”

Or as Bruce Cockburn’s lyrics put it ~

‘You can die on your sofa

safe inside your home

or die in a mess of flame and shrapnel

we all in our time go’

A knowledge that ought to produce gratitude for another day, one would think. Though on most, I confess, it does not shake me free from the ephemeral disquiet swirling around inside of me.

Today,

for a few rarified moments,

it did…

zjm

Father's Day

2011-06-19T08:54:00.004-04:00

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."

~Harmon Killebrew

Vision

2011-06-12T14:54:00.004-04:00

"Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed. "

— Dorothy Day

GO BRUINS!!!!

2011-06-01T15:19:00.002-04:00

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

2011-05-31T05:50:00.006-04:00

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people

to account for the curious attractiveness of others

Oscar Wilde

Beatification a conspiracy of disgrace: At best, a "Patron saint of looking the other way.’’

2011-05-01T17:20:00.007-04:00

In 1994, seven years before the clergy sexual abuse scandal exploded, Robert Costello sent a letter to Pope John Paul. “Dear Holy Father,’’ it began, “When I was a small boy of about 10 years old, I was sexually abused by our parish priest. The abuse lasted for over four years. At the time, what was happening to me was extremely frightening. I was very battered on the inside and very cold on the outside.’’

Costello was an altar boy at St. Theresa’s in West Roxbury, and a predator in a Roman collar named John Cotter routinely molested him. Cotter would follow him into the pool and put his hands down his swim trunks.

“On the inside, I was dead,’’ Costello wrote to the pope.

Costello felt a shame he could share with no one. He started stealing drinks from his grandfather’s liquor cabinet.

“I think it was the first time I really wanted to die,’’ he wrote to the pope. “I was both physically and mentally raped of everything I knew. My world was dark.’’

He urged the pope to confront the evil in his midst as surely as he spoke out about the evils of communism and totalitarianism.

“What I can’t understand is all of the silence by the Catholic Church,’’ he wrote to the man who was in charge of that church. “This priest admitted what he did. The Church knows he abused sexually, spiritually and mentally many children. He was transferred to another parish where he continued to sexually abuse children.’’

He begged the pope for an audience.

“By us sitting down together you could help the healing process for thousands of people. I would not take up much of your time and it would mean so much to countless others that the pastoral responsibilities of the Catholic Church were making a comeback.’’

Bob Costello never did hear back from the pope, and today in a ceremony in Rome that will put that little wedding in London to shame, the dead pope will be beatified, one step away from sainthood.

“You would think that the institutional church would have learned, would have been sensitive to the thousands and thousands of victims and survivors out there,’’ Bob Costello told me yesterday. “But by making John Paul a saint, and by rushing the process so blatantly, I think it’s pretty clear that the leaders of the church still don’t get it. They still think it’s all about them, not about the ordinary people, not about those who have suffered.’’

There is no doubt John Paul was a great man. He was also a flawed man who presided over a church that was guilty of one of the biggest institutional coverups of criminal activity in history. The pope being rushed to sainthood failed thousands of children and in doing so failed his church and his God.

Nine years before Bob Costello wrote that unanswered letter to the pope, a great priest and canon lawyer at the Vatican named Tom Doyle delivered to the pope a clarion call for action. Priests were raping children all over the world with impunity, Doyle’s report found, and the church risked losing its collected fortune and its collective soul unless the pope did something about it.

Like Bob Costello’s letter, Tom Doyle’s report was ignored.

“Hundreds of thousands of lives were ruined because this pope looked the other way, and now they are falling over themselves to make him a saint,’’ Father Doyle said. “It is self-serving, and it is counterproductive, more evidence that the people who run the church don’t understand that these very actions are driving people from the church. It mystifies me. And when I think of the survivors of sexual abuse, it saddens and angers me.’’

Barry Bonds, the greatest home run hitter of all time, is now considered a cheat who will probably be denied entry into the Hall of Fame. Pope John Paul II is now just one step from entering his church’s hall of fame.

“Major League Baseball has higher standards than the Vatican,’’ Father Doyle said. “And that’s not saying much for Major League Baseball.’’

Out in Western Massachusetts, another great priest named Jim Scahill was on the phone, talking about the lack of humility so evident in the Vatican’s rush to beatify John Paul. Scahill sat with and comforted dozens of victims of sexual abuse. He forced his bishop to defrock one abuser, and then exposed that bishop, Thomas Dupre, as an abuser, too.

Father Scahill was debating whether to talk about the beatification today during his homily at St. Michael’s Church in East Longmeadow.

“I think the kindest thing I could do is not mention it,’’ he said. “The rush to make this man a saint is abhorrent and arrogant. He did accomplish a lot as pope. But to beatify someone who didn’t protect children is a travesty, a continuation of the coverup that damaged the church so much. The money that is going to be spent on this is a disgrace. And in all their pomp and circumstance, the people who run the Vatican are revictimizing the survivors.’’

Some people want John Paul to be the patron saint of Poland.

Tom Doyle, the good priest who was ignored by the pope, has a better idea.

“John Paul,’’ he said, “should be the patron saint of looking the other way.’’

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com

Congruity

2011-04-06T09:59:00.004-04:00

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892

Presence

2011-04-02T12:19:00.003-04:00

Don't touch me!
Don't question me!
Don't speak to me!
Stay with me!

- Samuel Beckett

Borges

2011-04-02T11:38:00.002-04:00

"I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart,

I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat."
— Jorge Luis Borges

Saturday morning thought ...

2011-04-02T11:04:00.004-04:00

apostles creed on Baybayin

Astounding to me, yet no longer surprising, are the lengths to which we humans will go to step outside of the complex yet simple experience of being human ... by creating systems of belief and worship, always with the promise of a better life, a truer meaning of life, the change of our lives.

Into what?

We reduce wonder into measurable creeds that we can export, call people to, and most importantly, sell, turn into profit. Doesn't matter what shape or color of religion, philosophy, metaphysical science, provable or speculative.

At what price do we trade the mystery of watching an ant scale a blade of grass?

~ zjm

Perspective

2011-03-13T12:09:00.004-04:00

This Morning

by Raymond Carver

This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk -- determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a field strewn with rocks
where snow had drifted. Kept going
until I reached the bluff.
Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
the gulls wheeling over the white beach
far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
began to wander. I had to will
myself to see what I was seeing
and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what
mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
it crowded out the usual musings on
what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat
with my former wife. All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn't know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going.

Che Guevara's motorcycle companion, Alberto Granado, dies at 88

2011-03-06T07:44:00.005-05:00

Alberto Granado, close friend of Che Guevara. Photograph: Javier Galeano/AP

Argentinian Alberto Granado, who travelled with Ernesto "Che" Guevara on a journey of discovery across Latin America that was immortalised on-screen in The Motorcycle Diaries, has died in Cuba aged 88.

Their road trip awoke in Guevara a social consciousness and political convictions that would turn him into one of the iconic revolutionaries of the 20th century.

The two travellers both kept diaries, which were used as background for the 2004 movie, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. Granado was born on 8 August 1922 in Córdoba, Argentina, and befriended Guevara as a child. As young medical students, they witnessed deep poverty across the continent, particularly Chile, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela, and their stay at a Peruvian leper colony left a lasting impression on the pair.

They parted ways in Venezuela, where Granado stayed on to work at a clinic treating leprosy patients. Guevara continued on to Miami, then returned to Buenos Aires to finish his studies.

Guevara would later join Fidel and Raul Castro in toppling the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day in 1959.

Granado visited Cuba at Guevara's invitation in 1960 and moved to Havana the following year, teaching biochemistry at Havana University. He had lived in Cuba ever since.

In his biography of Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson wrote that Granado was "barely five feet tall and had a huge beaked nose, but he sported a barrel chest and a footballer's sturdy bowed legs; he also possessed a good sense of humor and a taste for wine, girls, literature and rugby".

According to Cuban television, Granado requested for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Guevara was captured and killed by soldiers in Bolivia in 1967 as he tried to foment revolution in the Andean nation.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

American 'King's Speech'

2011-03-05T10:10:00.004-05:00

How to get to CHANGE

2011-01-17T12:35:00.002-05:00

Ideas remain impractical when we have not grasped or been grasped by them. When we do not get an idea, we ask “how” to put it in practice, thereby trying to turn insights of the soul into actions of the ego. But when an insight or idea has sunk in, practice invisibly changes. The idea has opened the eye of the soul. By seeing differently, we do differently. The how is implicitly taken care of. How? disappears as the idea sinks in – as one reflects upon it rather than how to do something with it. This movement of grasping ideas is vertical and inward rather than horizontal or outward into the realm of doing something. The only legitimate How? in regard to these psychological insights is How can I grasp an idea?

James Hillman

Death Row

2011-01-13T08:33:00.005-05:00

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”

~ Alan Watts

2011-01-13T03:02:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

Light and Shadow

2011-01-12T12:37:00.003-05:00

The older I get, the simpler things become, and the harder they are to achieve.

We humans like to think of ourselves in a fine light, filled with goodness, high motives - think of ourselves as people we would like to have as friends. But the truth is far messier. For every ray of singular clarity and goodness, we possess multiple shadows of duplicity where we deny our willingness to sacrifice truth, and one another, for the sake of keeping our iconic image of ourselves, intact, and well placed on our inner shelf of religious devotion.

Marriage is that way. While we somewhat acknowledge that it takes two people, and their combined efforts, to construct all that is good in a marriage, we deny, regularly, that it takes two people, together, to deconstruct a relationship and bring about its demise. When a relationship begins to evolve to an end, at least one, if not both parties, refuse to relinquish their hold on self justification, choosing the role of martyr, over active player in the marriage.

'She did this'

'He did this'

'It is her fault'

'It is his fault'

'She will pay'

'He will pay'

Was it Mohandas Gandhi who said:

'An eye for an eye

and the whole world ends up blind'

I think so ...

We idolize the institution of marriage in this culture, insist, through religious tradition and cultural mythology, that the only marriage that is successful is one that lasts until one of the parties is dead.

Never mind the absence of passion, respect, trust, honesty on a day to day basis.

Sadly, in the end, we most often, blindly resolve the dissolution of our marriages by demonizing one party, and venerating the other. Persecutor and victim. And by clinging to these rigid understandings, children, the result of the best love between two people, are harmed, and we destroy the possibility of powerful love evolving into new forms of friendship and companionship, creating a sad and pathetic hell for all involved.

Is there a way out of these societal prescribed automated responses?

Maybe.

Maybe if we choose to see ourselves like the photo here.

Light illuminating the shadow that lives and breathes in each of us.

Embracing that light and shadow.

No victims, no bad guys.

Just well meaning humans trying to love.

Then maybe, just maybe,

we can learn to preserve love

and help it to be born anew.

Embracing the human

Leaving the inhuman behind.

zjm

First Sunday After Epiphany

2011-01-09T08:55:00.004-05:00

Meadow in Bloom | Pierre Bonnard | 1935

Tis the season of Epiphany,

the occasion to begin anew

to show

to make known

to reveal ~

The question is what?

What will we choose

to make so?

~zjm

Caractacus Potts Once Again

2011-01-03T11:55:00.006-05:00

My kids get me. At least the one's I am still raising ... Seven year old and three year old daughters. A couple of my older kids, not so sure anymore.

Late yesterday afternoon, as light fell and darkness filled the car on our way home from a hike and dinner, they started a conversation about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and who the dad was. My three year old said ... "Potts, he is the dad."

I spoke from the front seat ... "Good ol' Caractacus Potts ... he was the dad, the crazy inventor."

My seven year old then spoke ... "Just like my dad, the inventor of Love."

Moments like that ...

Caractacus Potts and the REAL world

2010-12-12T10:10:00.009-05:00

Most parents love to introduce their children, at one time or another to Caractacus Potts, the lovable and eccentric inventor at the center of Ian Fleming's story 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.'

A single father who daily cares for his young son and daughter, filling their minds and hearts with magic and dreams ~ placing before them a world of the possible.

But in the nasty real world, it quite another story.

Men like 'Potts' have little place in the heart of modern civilized society. They are thought of as impractical, delusional, irresponsible, unreliable men who do not really 'work' ~

After all, if there is not a predictable pay check at the end of the day ...

Mothers of children sired by the Caractacus Potts of this world most often wish, once the'Potts' have planted their seed, that they then would just go away, disappear, and passively allow their offspring be molded and shaped by the practical whims of the more reasonable people.

Quite sad really ~

Be a piss poor world without those among us committed to labor long and hard unrewarding hours until finally capturing passionate dreams, the true sustenance of life in this world gone mad

Purpose

2010-11-07T08:39:00.002-05:00

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

~Ray Bradbury

Reality

2010-11-07T08:32:00.002-05:00

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life

Simone Weil

J. D. Salinger Moves On

2010-01-28T16:22:00.004-05:00

Salinger made us believe that it was not only our right to challenge authority and convention, but also our duty ~ zjm

A Voice That Lives On

2010-01-28T06:32:00.005-05:00

"I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president - unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction."

Howard Zinn

Asshole of the Century

2010-01-27T16:05:00.005-05:00

By Thom Butler

Whether he's proclaiming himself the chaplain to the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan years, or he's yammering along with Jerry Falwell pontificating that God is judging the U.S. with Islamic Fundamentalists in airplanes because of Gays and Abortions (and then not having the guts or the honesty to admit it despite the videotape evidence), or insisting that God performed the miracle of Katrina by wiping away the sin and degradation of New Orleans, or now saying not one but TWO horrible things about Haiti... First that it is probably a "blessing in disguise" (a comment that rivals Barb Bush's comment about Katrina survivors in the AstroDome being "better off" for ugly, self-involved insensitivity) and secondly that the Haitians made a pact with the devil in order to get rid of the French and now they are suffering from God's judgement (I don't know if that's an attack on Haitians, the French, or both) it's the Pat Robertson Circus of Evil hitting the airwaves one more time!!!

If there ever was a reason to refuse to become a Christian, or to simply decide that in the present day context of the world it might be time to be a "post-Christian," this man and his unconscionable bullshit is it.

At one point in my life, many years ago, I was myself hoodwinked by this self-aggrandizing, self-satisfied, ugly excuse for a human being. I didn't know then about his familial ties to large banking interests and the personal greed he wallowed in while picking the pockets of the sick and the old, the innocent and the stupid. I was a Jesus Freak and a media fanatic and the two came together in all the cool things that were being done in "Christian MEdia" by Pat and his newly formed "Christian" Broadcasting Network.

But that was 40 years ago and I have learned much since (though certainly not enough). Pat Robertson has also proceeded further and further down the streets of evil and hate and stupidity that he has paved with other people's gold. I watch in awe and disgust at the video commentary (which I will not link to here because I will not add to his hit count) and it makes my blood boil.

If the vengeful, hateful, vindictive God that Pat Robertson believes in really does exist, then the logic of the greater universe must dictate that the real miracle reparation would be for that God to strike down (or at least mute) this evil, treacherous, deceitful and mean excuse for a human being.

To steal from Olberman (again)... Today - and always - Pat Robertson is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!!

Blog Update

2009-03-15T20:40:00.003-04:00

from Mt. Algonquin, New York State

Continuing my hiatus from blogging ... zjm

Forever Changed

2009-01-21T15:41:00.002-05:00

President of the United States

2009-01-20T17:48:00.002-05:00

How would you spend your last day before you became President?

2009-01-19T12:39:00.003-05:00

NBC News and news services

WASHINGTON - On the eve of his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama talked with wounded troops at a military hospital and then visited an emergency shelter for homeless teens, grabbing a paint roller to help give the walls a fresh coat of blue. He appealed to the nation he will soon lead to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. through service to others.

"As we honor that legacy, it's not a day just to pause and reflect — it's a day to act," Obama said on King's national holiday. "I ask the American people to turn today's efforts into an ongoing commitment to enriching the lives of others in their communities, their cities, and their country."

Large crowds thronged to the capital city on the eve of Obama's elevation to the presidency. "Tomorrow, we will come together as one people on the same Mall where Dr. King's dream echoes still," Obama said.

A day away from becoming the nation's 44th president, Obama visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center to talk with troops injured in battle.

Then he visited Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens in the District of Columbia, chatting with volunteers who were helping to repaint rooms and then pitching in himself.

Obama once was immersed in such work as a community organizer in Chicago.

Pausing to remember winds of change from another time...

2009-01-18T08:01:00.002-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Just like Lincoln, Obama takes the train to Washington

2009-01-17T13:49:00.002-05:00

Speaking in Philadelphia

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Speaking in Baltimore

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

No Torture: Justice Back in the Justice Department

2009-01-15T13:13:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

When Bush Is History

2009-01-13T08:35:00.006-05:00

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Not to kick the president on his way out the door, but he was wrong when he told White House reporters at a wistful, nostalgic news conference yesterday that "there is no such thing as short-term history." It's true that some presidencies look different after a few decades. But it's also true that presidential acts can have immediate consequences -- and that George W. Bush will leave office next week as a president whose eight years in office are widely seen as a nadir from which it will take years to recover.

"I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged," Bush said in perhaps his most spirited response of the session. "I disagree with this assessment that, you know, people view America in a dim light."

Has he been paying attention? Did he not notice that both President-elect Barack Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, felt the need to promise to restore America's honor and standing in the world? Or does Bush believe they were just joshin'?

Asked to identify the biggest mistake of his presidency, Bush gave a curious answer that had more to do with public relations than presidential decision making. He mentioned the "Mission Accomplished" banner that prematurely announced the end of major conflict in Iraq -- but not his decision to invade Iraq in the first place. He mentioned his failure to visit New Orleans at the height of the devastating, deadly flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina -- but not the decision to entrust the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the hapless and ineffective Michael Brown.

In Bush's mind, the revelation of shocking prisoner abuse by U.S. military guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was "a huge disappointment" -- but he doesn't take any responsibility, as commander in chief, for the atmosphere of lax training and supervision that allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib to happen. The failure by U.S. forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq qualifies only as "a significant disappointment" -- even though the administration's apocalyptic rhetoric about WMD was what sealed the deal for an invasion and occupation that never should have taken place.

In what may turn out to have been his last news conference as president, Bush spent surprisingly little time on his actual achievements. Yes, I said achievements. Bush was the first U.S. president to put real money and serious effort into a campaign against AIDS in Africa. Even if the administration wastes far too much on "abstinence only" programs of questionable effectiveness, the fact is that millions of people in Africa are being kept alive and relatively healthy with antiretroviral drugs that wouldn't have been available without Bush's funding and commitment. In sub-Saharan Africa, he made a difference.

Bush also tried his best to move his party away from small-minded xenophobia on the immigration issue. This doesn't really count as an achievement, since Bush never got a reasonable immigration bill passed. But short-term history has proved him right. Latino voters defected to the Democrats in such numbers that the Republican Party looks even more like a country club than when Bush took office, and that's saying something.

As his greatest achievement, Bush would cite the fact that there has been no terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- I won't use Bush's unfortunate term, "the homeland," which sounds vaguely Teutonic and evokes lederhosen -- since the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda atrocities. Here, though, he relies entirely on short-term history. His argument, in effect, is that since we've made it through seven years and four months without an attack, his administration's anti-terrorism methods must be both necessary and effective.

That must be a comforting thought for the president, but it's unjustified. That there has been no new attack does not justify waterboarding, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons or warrantless domestic surveillance. Bush believes these departures from American values and traditions were necessary, but from what we know so far, they look more like overkill -- an excess of cruelty and a disdain for the rule of law that have seriously damaged this nation's sense of itself.

What we know so far isn't enough. I understand Obama's reluctance to conduct criminal investigations of the Bush years -- and I realize that Bush might well pardon everybody in advance anyway. But it's important to convene an investigation and learn the truth, all of it, so that no president is tempted to take such liberties again. History, both short-term and long-term, will be grateful.

Finally, the voice of conscience and law: Obama to issue order to close Gitmo -

2009-01-12T16:04:00.003-05:00

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to issue an executive order his first week in office — and perhaps his first day — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to two presidential transition team advisers.

It's unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama said it would be "a challenge" to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there. Most have not been charged with a crime.

It's baptism by fire for Obama

2009-01-12T09:44:00.002-05:00

Lisa Van Dusen |Monday, 12 January, 2009

There must be mornings these days when Barack Obama looks out his window at the Hay Adams, across Lafayette Park to the White House, and thinks, "I should have gone to Disney World."

At a news conference at his transition headquarters Wednesday, where the president-elect unveiled his chief performance officer, the post-announcement Q&A started with an ironic, "Welcome to Washington," from a reporter. Obama responded with an equally ironic, "It's great to be here."

Obama's not entirely new to Washington, but being the change behemoth with the 82-per-cent approval rating draws a whole new kind of welcome wagon. Already, it was that kind of week.

It started with the withdrawal of Bill Richardson as Commerce secretary nominee over a grand jury investigation, segued into the public slamming of former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta as nominee for CIA director by fellow Democrats. Meanwhile, embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was all over everywhere on Capitol Hill without ever leaving home in the form of Roland Burris, his legally appointed senator and human shield.

Anyone who thought winning the toughest nomination campaign and then the toughest election campaign in memory would be the hard part, must be slapping themselves now. There's a very good reason why one of the symptoms of transitionitis is campaign nostalgia: Some days, pre-governing, like governing, truly sucks.

When you come down to earth after a successful election and thud into to the entrenched guerrilla warfare of a government town, there aren't too many days when that schedule blocked out in 15-minute increments stays intact past noon.

As tough as Chicago may be, Washington is arguably tougher in its own way because the stakes are so much higher and the currency of power gets traded in ways that aren't always obvious.

During the nomination and election campaigns, there was always the question of whether Obama, if he won, would be able to govern by the same rules that applied on the road and that generally prevailed from the top of his organization to the street-level volunteers whereby winning wasn't worth it if it meant resorting to old-style tactics.

If there was any doubt, last week proved that not only is he not in Kansas anymore, he's not even in Chicago.

Along with the Burris soap opera, the Panetta panning (the Obama team neglected to inform Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, incoming chairperson of the Senate intelligence committee, of the appointment, which may or may not have helped . . . likely not) and the Richardson implosion, there was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, another Democrat, saying, with a breathtaking dose of denial, "If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him . . . I do not work for Barack Obama." Maybe it's more like Dodge City.

By noon on Wednesday, it must have seemed like excellent timing for a chinwag with the four other living presidents at the White House; an opportunity to commiserate with an exclusive support group of fellow survivors.

The media avail that preceded the lunch may not have been the most awkward Oval Office photo op on record but it was right up there in the top five with Richard Nixon shaking hands with Elvis.

Jimmy Carter was hovering almost out of the shot, looking like he was being timed out, which maybe he was. Then the lights went out just as the president-elect was starting to talk. Thankfully, Bill Clinton broke the tension by observing, apropos of the first floor covering, "I just love that rug." Maybe it's more like a waking nightmare where you can hear late Ronald Reagan-era image guru Mike Deaver laughing from photo-op heaven.

By Thursday, the unveiling of his economic stimulus package held out the brief premise of a substantive diversion, until members of the Senate finance committee, again, notably the Democrats, started picking apart the tax cuts in the plan.

This happens in every transition and the only way to avoid a weekis horribilis would be to anticipate every possible exploitable downside or unintended consequence to every major appointment, policy announcement, family decision and public pronouncement, which is impossible in practice but ideal in theory.

Can you even aim for the level of preemptive paranoia required for a zero tolerance policy on unforced errors and still be the guy who eschews the old-style tactics?

Welcome to Washington, Mr. President-elect, where even when it's more like a big high school, hazing runs its course.

Best Actor, Mickey Rourke

2009-01-12T09:05:00.002-05:00

Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler from Golden Globe Awards on Vimeo.

Ray of Hope

2009-01-08T11:20:00.008-05:00

Mideast madness insanely complex
By LISA VAN DUSEN | Thursday, 8 January, 2009

While another bloody chapter in the most dysfunctional bilateral dynamic on Earth unfolds in Gaza, the only thing harder to fathom than what got us all here is what might get us all out.

Whatever did get us all here, it's definitely all of us and not just the Israelis and the Palestinians anymore, not that it ever really was.

If you're interested enough in the Middle East to have read this far, then you probably already know that Iran and Syria back the Hamas hold on the Gaza Strip that Israel is aiming to end and that the timing of this, toward the end of a tough Israeli election campaign and on the eve of a new U.S. administration, is crucial.

There are now so many proxies haunting the streets of Gaza, it's like the armed combat version of the truism that there's never just one other person in your bed.

For people who haven't had reason to wade into the peace processes come and gone and the conditions, concessions and withdrawals that sustained or undid them, the question of why these people are still killing each other can seem insanely complicated.

Even when you've been immersed in it for years, you come up with tricks to conceptualize it. My latest is a straight line on a 100-degree gradation with the zero point in the middle and 50 degrees on either side. The zero point in the middle represents the status quo, one end of the line represents peace, the other mutual annihilation.

The demarcations aren't national, ideological or religious, because each of those labels is found at every point in the scale and because those divisions have been blamed for so long that it can seem more useful to construct a bottom line based on everyone's bottom line.

The status quo-middle marks the position of those, including politicians elected and unelected, armed and unarmed, who feel no urgent need to change that status quo and who may even be doing everything in their power to maintain it, mostly out of fear of the alternative.

The 10-degree margin on the peace side of it includes the Bush administration, notwithstanding the deathbed blip of Annapolis, which absolutely nobody, including everyone sitting around the table in Annapolis, actually thought would work.

The mutual annihilation end represents everyone willing to die in the name of destroying the other side.

This includes most of Hamas, suicide bombers, the most radical of radical Israeli settlers and the assassins of peacemakers.

The opposite -- or peace -- end of the line represents people who believe in the possibility of a reality closer to what both Israelis and Palestinians would rather raise their children in.

Those final five degrees are where the ones who died for peace once lived (a smaller fringe, they don't usually self-identify ahead of time).

To people halfway between the status quo and dying for peace -- whose bottom line is that they are against anything that undermines a negotiated, peaceful solution -- the horror on the ground now is only part of what Barack Obama's new American administration will be working with Jan. 20.

And the one ray of hope there, the thing in this story that you could chart on a whole other graph, is that it never gets better without getting worse first.

A New Year Reminder: "Stop and hear the music"

2008-12-29T10:28:00.004-05:00

Joshua Bell Busks in the D.C. Metro - How Many People Notice?

By Vivien Schweitzer
09 Apr 2007

It may be difficult for classical music lovers to imagine Joshua Bell as just another street musician, but that's exactly what he was to the busy rush hour hordes pouring in and out of the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C.

An extensive article in The Washington Post's Sunday magazine yesterday documents an experiment carried out this past January 12, beginning at just before 8 a.m. — the middle of the morning rush hour. Bell performed six classical pieces, including the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2, for about 45 minutes as 1,097 commuters, most on their way to government jobs, passed by.

His performance was organized by the Post "as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"


Joshua Bell

Apparently not. Sixty-three people marched past the violinist without a glance while he was playing the Chaconne on his 1713 Stradivarius. The Post writes that, in the 45 minutes that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to listen for a minute or so, while 1,070 people hurried by without even appearing to notice.

When asked what he thought might occur during such an experiment, Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, said that, even assuming Bell wasn't recognized, out of 1,000 people there would be "35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening." He added that he thought a crowd would certainly gather and that Bell would make about $150.

As it turned out, Bell earned $32 and change. The Post quotes him as saying, "That's not so bad, considering. That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."

The event was pitched to Bell as a test of whether, in an unlikely setting, "ordinary people would recognize genius." Whether or not she recognized his genius, at least Brazil native Edna Souza, who has been shining shoes at L'Enfant Plaza for six years, recognized something unusual. She dislikes buskers — she says they are make too much noise and prevent her from talking with her customers, which isn't good for business.

But asked about Joshua Bell, she says while he was also "too loud," "he was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."

Still Fishing. Happy New Year ... Back in January!

2008-12-29T06:10:00.000-05:00

Israeli Military does away with more Palestinian enemies of the State

2008-12-28T09:56:00.003-05:00

A Short Break From Fishing

2008-12-27T11:11:00.011-05:00

I am sitting around my home this morning, celebrating the aftermath of a peaceful Christmas here in upstate New York. All is well here.

But on the other side of the Atlantic, all hell continues to break loose - as the Israeli military bombs the shit out of Gaza, killing over 200, and injuring well over 300 people - men, women, and children. Israeli officials claim they had no choice!

Rarely present in the mainstream conversation about international politics is condemnation of the Israeli policy of violence waged upon the Palestinian people - it is completely absent from American discourse. President-elect Obama, vacationing on a multi-million dollar estate in Hawaii is apparently too busy with other things to comment.

Mr. President, this does not require thought, deliberation, and consideration as how to respond - picture your Hawaii compound destroyed, your two precious daughter dead at your feet, and ask yourself whether you would remain silent! Is this the NEW moral leadership you promised? Is this silence on war crimes your idea of change?

Israel needs to be condemned by the international community. By all of us. With a policy of apartheid, at its most benign, and a policy of genocidal extinction at its most malignant, Israel continues to deny water rights and a homeland to the Palestinian people - the rightful owners of all of Israel - for without the efforts of the United States and the Allies after World War II, there would be no fictitious land of Israel existing on Palestinian land.

No fucking choice????????? Give me a fucking break!

As for the rest of us ... our hearts should weep with the grief of the death of our own children, and our anger and rage should follow in kind.

Happy New Year!

Zachary Marcus

PS - let these images burn into your soul this holiday season ...

American Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T08:47:00.001-05:00

"hope and faith are more powerful than bombs and bullets"

2008-11-29T09:35:00.004-05:00

Dalai Lama leads a better protest
By LISA VAN DUSEN

Saturday, 29 November, 2008

The carnage in Mumbai, no matter which group was responsible, was a bloody, unnecessary reminder of the lengths to which some non-state actors will go to try to force new political realities or destabilize existing ones.

One week earlier, elsewhere in India, there was an equally powerful example of how other non-state actors go about seeking change. In this case, instead of bombs and bullets they used the Internet, open dialogue and the basic tools of democracy to make a statement.

The Dalai Lama's open call for members of the Tibetan diaspora to meet Nov. 17-22 in Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based, produced three results.

The first was an endorsement of the 73-year-old spiritual leader's moderate, "Middle Way" approach to dealing with China, which invaded the region in 1951 and keeps a firm lock on what it now slyly calls the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

That included backing of the Dalai Lama's decision to pull his envoys out of negotiations with Beijing, a process that has produced nothing but talk and a lot of overwrought finger-pointing about the "Dalai clique" and the "evil intent" of the benign Buddhist leader by Chinese officials.

The second was a qualifier stating, for the first time, if the approach fails to produce meaningful autonomy the international Tibetan community will launch a full-blown independence movement.

The third was a promise that the Tibetan people remain totally committed to a non-violent struggle for freedom.

In response, the government of China, which has been emboldened in its anti-Tibet stance since the economic meltdown enhanced its economic leverage over the west, cancelled an EU-China trade summit in Lyon, France, because French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a date with the spiritual leader in Poland Dec. 6. The EU's trade deficit with China was $207 billion last year, an imbalance that was to be addressed in Lyon.

China's demonization of the Dalai Lama isn't swallowed outside its own controlled propaganda environment, but it has allowed the Chinese government to pay lip service to negotiations over Tibet's political status, cultural protections and human rights because no other country has had the leverage or the courage to force legitimacy on the process.

During the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, when world attention was focused on Tibet through the Olympic torch protests and China's crackdown in Lhasa, Western leaders were unwilling or unable to leverage anything but an agreement from China to resume talks, the last round of which failed Nov. 11.

What the Dharamsala meeting showed was Tibetan exiles worldwide are getting more, not less, organized largely thanks to an active online community that is thriving despite China's efforts.

For the United States, whose influence is make or break in such conflicts, Tibet has been one of the few issues on which political leaders from both the right and the left agree.

In their farewell meeting at the APEC summit in Peru, President George W. Bush urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to resume talks with the Dalai Lama which, in the current economic context, was actually a bold diplomatic move.

The next day in Dharamsala, Karma Chophel, speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, asked in his closing remarks to the exiles meeting that the Chinese government stop "making baseless allegations against His Holiness the Dalai Lama" because it "hurts the feelings the all those people who have respect and love for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his untiring work for world peace and universal responsibility."

Not exactly the talk of radicals.

As incoming president, Barack Obama may not have any more big-stick leverage with China but he may have an overriding interest in using softer persuasion with Beijing toward a legitimate process of establishing and protecting enough basic rights and freedoms in Tibet to counterbalance the process begun in Dharamsala.

It might also be a way to show the world that hope and faith are more powerful than bombs and bullets.

President Elect Obama's Thanksgiving Message

2008-11-29T09:30:00.000-05:00

Welcome to America, the only industrialized nation without universal health care

2008-11-23T12:46:00.003-05:00

It's situation critical
Sun, November 23, 2008 | Lisa Van Dusen | Sun Media

On the morning of last June 19, in the waiting room of the psychiatric ward of King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, Esmin Green slumped from her chair to the floor. She lay there for almost an hour, ignored by other patients and staff, before dying of causes still undetermined.

The hospital's closed circuit security cameras produced a video so disturbing (www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA29VwnZ4cE), that when it was released two weeks later it got worldwide attention.

Green was a 49-year-old mother of six. In the days before her death, she lost her job in a day care centre, then lost her apartment: One version of a story that will happen more and more as the economic meltdown trickles down every Main Street.

That the video of Green's death surfaced in the middle of the presidential campaign seemed like a cry for help from a system that works for fewer and fewer people at higher and higher costs.

The United States health care system is a spaghetti junction full of toll booths set up by private insurance companies that provide coverage for care in the form of HMOs (health maintenance organizations), PPOs (preferred provider organizations) and POS (point of service) programs. Most Americans (60%) get health coverage from these companies through their employers.

There are government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid for people without private insurance but roughly 15% of Americans remain uninsured. The ones who are insured interface with doctors and hospitals using a business lexicon of deductibles and co-payments and non-network treatment and paperwork unfathomable in both volume and content.

The system costs more per capita than any other on earth and represents a greater chunk of GDP (15%) than any other UN member except the Marshall Islands. The United States is the only wealthy industrialized nation that doesn't have universal health care.

When I moved to the U.S. in the early 1990s, I spent a lot of time explaining that the Canadian health care system wasn't a choice-less socialist nightmare of back-alley quacks and deadly wait times to people who couldn't believe universal health care could be so straightforward.

The most rattling culture shock then was getting used to a health care system that had the same creative accounting scandals, advertising schemes and class divides as any other business. The amount of money floating around it -- from liability insurance and personal injury attorneys to $500 bedpan suppliers to fly-by-night providers who post hand-scrawled ads on utility poles -- is staggering.

The horrors of the system chronicled in news accounts about people such as Green and by Michael Moore in the documentary Sicko happen every day and will be happening more and more a the economy worsens.

Money question

But Americans make decisions involving health coverage all the time that you never think of when it all comes down to one card in your wallet: Career choices, personal choices, where to live, what to do on a Saturday afternoon with your kids, whether to go to an emergency room.

The Canadian system has been strained in the past decade and we're a lot less self-righteous about it now, but when Canadians talk about the merits of changing it, the bottom line isn't so much the bottom line as a consensus on the value of fairness.

U.S. polls conducted before the economy dwarfed all other issues showed that most Americans share that view.

Fifteen years ago, when the Clintons tried to overhaul the U.S. health care system, resistance from the insurance lobby proved fatal.

Now, even the health insurers are admitting that change is needed (last week, two insurance lobby groups agreed to cover sick people as well as healthy ones, if they really have to) and that health care is becoming a huge economic problem.

New presidents can only focus on so many priorities and Barack Obama is a new president at a time when the things that need fixing seem outnumbered only by the obstacles to fixing them. But his reported choice of former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who wrote the book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, means this is a priority.

While the economy, energy, education and climate change need fixing, people aren't dying in classrooms or in gas stations because of a system that seems based on the very un-American idea that some lives are worth more than others.

Economy -- Of the People, By the People - President Elect Barack Obama's Weekly Address

2008-11-22T07:42:00.001-05:00

Cartoons of the Week

2008-11-22T07:39:00.002-05:00

"You have a new partner in the White House"

2008-11-18T13:39:00.001-05:00

More than 600 climate change leaders from across the country and around the world convened in Los Angeles today for the opening sessions of the Global Climate Summit, a 2-day event arranged by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to break gridlock on the issue ahead of next month's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland. Here are President Elect Obama's remarks:

On Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State

2008-11-18T13:17:00.001-05:00

Keeping us sane...

2008-11-18T13:10:00.001-05:00

60 Minutes interview with President Elect Obama, and our new First Lady, Michelle Obama

2008-11-17T06:15:00.007-05:00

Middle East factions await new president's first move

2008-11-16T07:53:00.004-05:00

Sunday, 16 November, 2008 | Lisa Van Dusen

Not long after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, former Finnish president and international peace negotiator Martti Ahtisaari, whose job demands that he choose his words carefully, described the failure of the international community to resolve the Middle East conflict as a "disgrace."

More optimistically, he added that "if the political will is there, we can solve anything," and that he hoped the new president-elect of the United States would use his first year in office to reach a permanent solution to the Israeli- Palestinian problem.

Having negotiated peace agreements in Northern Ireland (as a member of the troika that included former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell and Canadian General John de Chastelain), Kosovo, Indonesia and Namibia, among others, Ahtisaari, who got a bite of the Middle East on a UN fact-finding mission into a controversial siege of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, knows something about what's missing from a room when nothing works.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has spent the past 18 months as envoy for the Quartet on the Middle East (the group of four powers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- that oversees peace efforts) also said last week it was important that the Barack Obama administration "grips this issue from day one" and makes the Middle East an urgent priority.

That Day 1 exhortation holds a caution not to repeat the mistake of the past administration's hands-off approach.

There are three weeks between the inauguration on Jan. 20 and election day in Israel on Feb. 10. Elections on either side are always about the peace process, whether it's moribund, alive and well or on life support.

While Obama will be warned not to touch the tinderbox until after the vote or risk being accused of interference, players on both sides will be watching for a sign as to whether he'll be more like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton or something in between.

Polls show Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who took over the Kadima party when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned amid corruption allegations, in a dead heat with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud party, who has made a career of selling security over peace.

Both leaders have nuanced their positions in the past week, with Livni, who as chief Israeli negotiator supports the Annapolis process begun last year, hardening her line by warning Thursday that Israel doesn't need any "dramatic" interventions in the peace process from Obama when he takes office in January.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has softened his position that the Annapolis process should be shelved in favour of rebuilding the Palestinian economy, saying after meeting with Blair last week that he would continue peace talks with the Palestinians as well.

That was one day after Netanyahu's spokesperson said following a meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt that there would be "no point" in continuing with Annapolis.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, are still on board. At least Fatah, which controls the West Bank, is. Palestinian President and Fatah Leader Mahmoud Abbas said at Yasser Arafat's memorial service last week that he won't agree to a peace deal without a massive release of Palestinian prisoners even as Hamas was accusing Abbas of rounding up their own usual suspects in the West Bank to force them back to bilateral Palestinian talks in Cairo.

With everything else a president-elect has on his plate, it's easy to see how the Israel-Palestinian file can be a slippery slope to that sad pantheon of former presidents, prime ministers, envoys, negotiators and chairpersons who've come and gone while the same issues sit unresolved on the table.

What Obama brings to that table, aside from enormous leverage and possibly that political will Ahtisaari called for, is a mandate for change, a fresh pair of eyes and the common sense to see the craziness.

There's also a line from his campaign speech that works well for this puzzle: "The real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things again and expecting a different result."

President Elect Obama's Saturday Web/Radio Address

2008-11-15T12:08:00.000-05:00

'No communion for Obama voters' ... yet another of the endless reasons to abolish organized religion!

2008-11-14T07:04:00.007-05:00

AP - COLUMBIA, S.C. - A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

Risking their immortal soul
During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back. A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.

But bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers — and voters — should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from church teaching on abortion. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese. In their annual fall meeting, the nation's Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights.

According to national exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. In South Carolina, which McCain carried, voters in Greenville County — traditionally seen as among the state's most conservative areas — went 61 percent for the Republican, and 37 percent for Obama.

"It was not an attempt to make a partisan point," Newman said in a telephone interview Thursday. "In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same."

Conservative Catholics criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 for supporting abortion rights, with a few Catholic bishops saying Kerry should refrain from receiving Holy Communion because his views were contrary to church teachings.

Some say move is too extreme
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama's win. A Boston-based group that supports Catholic Democrats questioned the move, saying it was too extreme.

"Father Newman is off-base," said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. "He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. ... Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words."

A man who has attended St. Mary's for 18 years said he welcomed Newman's message and anticipated it would inspire further discussion at the church.

"I don't understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who's a pro-abortion candidate," said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. "You're talking about the murder of innocent beings."

Never was a muzzle needed more!

2008-11-14T05:51:00.000-05:00

The U.S. Constitution and the Last Days of George Bush

2008-11-14T05:46:00.001-05:00

There are worse ways to go ...

2008-11-11T17:10:00.004-05:00

Man's coffin kills wife on way to cemetery

A traffic accident hurls coffin against the back of woman's neck

PAULO, Brazil - Police say a woman has died on the way to a cemetery when a traffic accident hurled her husband's coffin against the back of her neck.

Police said 67-year-old Marciana Silva Barcelos was in the front passenger seat of the hearse when the accident occurred Monday in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Barcelos died instantly.

Her 76-year-old husband, Josi Silveira Coimbra, died Sunday of a heart attack while dancing at a party.

The driver of the hearse and Barcelos' son suffered minor injuries.

A footnote on ... America, "the ember of love" and 'California Proposition #8'

2008-11-11T16:52:00.005-05:00

Quote of the day goes to Thomas Eugene Butler:

No more...

I will not sit at a table
where others whom I love
are not welcome."

Read the rest of Thom's thoughts - Erase My Name... Or Write It As You Will

zjm

America, "the ember of love" and 'California Proposition #8'

2008-11-11T06:49:00.017-05:00

The following commentary by Keith Olbermann is the best thing I've heard or read on the so called social 'dilemma' of gay marriage, for it speaks to TRUE moral question of our lives: the willingness to love others as we wish to be loved.

But vital as Mr. Olbermann's piece is, it does not speak to the heart and soul of the problem of marriage confronting our society.

Marriage, historically, has been a religious ceremony that is subsequently sanctioned and recognized by the state. Period, end of story. But marriage has also, always, been a discriminatory proposition, as marriage rights and laws have not historically, nor are they today, applied to all of our citizens. If our civil authorities are going to recognize marriage in one segment of society, they must accept all, or they violate the heart and soul of the American constitution, which is at its core, 'equal rights and protection under the law.'

What we need in this country is a constitutional amendment (a fuller interpretation of said constitution) that bans civil and legal sanction of 'marriage,' and replaces it with a 'domestic partnership law' that guarantees equal rights and opportunity for any partnership of two people - whether they live together, have a religious ceremony of marriage, a civil ceremony of marriage, or none. This 'domestic partnership law' will guarantee that EVERYONE receives full and equal opportunity and protection under the law.

Under this new constitutional amendment, people of all faiths, orientations, and walks of life will also be free to also embrace any rite or ceremony they wish to (allowing them to preserve or start traditions they hold to be sacred) without comment, or sanction, from the civil authorities, including those persons who simply commit to share their lives together with passion and love (hell, even the animal rights activists, who insist animals are the same as people, can arrange a ceremony for their pets).

The biggest remaining obstacle to the fulfillment of the American Dream as a truly pluralistic society continues to reside in our stubborn refusal to abandon our mythology of being a 'Christian'/religious nation. But until we take the next evolutionary step of completely exorcising matters of 'marriage' (and God) from the law, we MUST welcome and celebrate the right of all of our citizens to marry!

It is no less than our fundamental patriotic duty.

Keith Olbermann's call to conscience offers us a way out of yet another hell we seem hell-bent on creating, and making the law of the land. PLEASE TAKE TIME TO WATCH THIS CLIP!

zjm

It Still Felt Good the Morning After

2008-11-09T08:26:00.003-05:00

By FRANK RICH | Published: November 9, 2008| New York Times

ON the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy.

Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

The most conspicuous clichés to fall, of course, were the twin suppositions that a decisive number of white Americans wouldn’t vote for a black presidential candidate — and that they were lying to pollsters about their rampant racism. But the polls were accurate. There was no “Bradley effect.” A higher percentage of white men voted for Obama than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton included.

Obama also won all four of those hunting-and-Hillary-loving Rust Belt states that became 2008’s obsession among slumming upper-middle-class white journalists: Pennsylvania and Michigan by double digits, as well as Ohio and even Indiana, which has gone Democratic only once (1964) since 1936. The solid Republican South, led by Virginia and North Carolina, started to turn blue as well. While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat.

And what about all those terrified Jews who reportedly abandoned their progressive heritage to buy into the smears libeling Obama as an Israel-hating terrorist? Obama drew a larger percentage of Jews nationally (78) than Kerry had (74) and — mazel tov, Sarah Silverman! — won Florida.

Let’s defend Hispanic-Americans, too, while we’re at it. In one of the more notorious observations of the campaign year, a Clinton pollster, Sergio Bendixen, told The New Yorker in January that “the Hispanic voter — and I want to say this very carefully — has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Let us say very carefully that a black presidential candidate won Latinos — the fastest-growing demographic in the electorate — 67 percent to 31 (up from Kerry’s 53-to-44 edge and Gore’s 62-to-35).

Young voters also triumphed over the condescension of the experts. “Are they going to show up?” Cokie Roberts of ABC News asked in February. “Probably not. They never have before. By the time November comes, they’ll be tired.” In fact they turned up in larger numbers than in 2004, and their disproportionate Democratic margin made a serious difference, as did their hard work on the ground. They’re not the ones who need Geritol.

The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”

The rave reviews for Palin were completely disingenuous. Anyone paying attention (with the possible exception of John McCain) could see she was woefully ill-equipped to serve half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. The conservatives Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy said so on MSNBC when they didn’t know their mikes were on. But, hey, she was a dazzling TV presence, the thinking went, so surely doltish Americans would rally around her anyway. “She killed!” cheered Noonan about the vice-presidential debate, revising her opinion upward and marveling at Palin’s gift for talking “over the heads of the media straight to the people.” Many talking heads thought she tied or beat Joe Biden.

The people, however, were reaching a less charitable conclusion and were well ahead of the Beltway curve in fleeing Palin. Only after polls confirmed that she was costing McCain votes did conventional wisdom in Washington finally change, demoting her from Republican savior to scapegoat overnight.

But Palin’s appeal wasn’t overestimated only because of her kitschy “American Idol” star quality. Her fierce embrace of the old Karl Rove wedge politics, the divisive pitting of the “real America” against the secular “other” America, was also regarded as a sure-fire winner. The second most persistent assumption by both pundits and the McCain campaign this year — after the likely triumph of racism — was that the culture war battlegrounds from 2000 and 2004 would remain intact.

This is true in exactly one instance: gay civil rights. Though Rove’s promised “permanent Republican majority” lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.

That lagging indicator aside, nearly every other result on Tuesday suggests that while the right wants to keep fighting the old boomer culture wars, no one else does. Three state initiatives restricting abortion failed. Bill Ayers proved a lame villain, scaring no one. Americans do not want to revisit Vietnam (including in Iraq). For all the attention paid by the news media and McCain-Palin to rancorous remembrances of things past, I sometimes wondered whether most Americans thought the Weather Underground was a reunion band and the Hanoi Hilton a chain hotel. Socialism, the evil empire and even Ronald Reagan may be half-forgotten blurs too.

If there were any doubts the 1960s are over, they were put to rest Tuesday night when our new first family won the hearts of the world as it emerged on that vast blue stage to join the celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. The bloody skirmishes that took place on that same spot during the Democratic convention 40 years ago — young vs. old, students vs. cops, white vs. black — seemed as remote as the moon. This is another America — hardly a perfect or prejudice-free America, but a union that can change and does, aspiring to perfection even if it can never achieve it.

Still, change may come slowly to the undying myths bequeathed to us by the Bush decade. “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” Obama is fond of saying. Neither does groupthink. We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

The post-Bush-Rove Republican Party is in the minority because it has driven away women, the young, suburbanites, black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, educated Americans, gay Americans and, increasingly, working-class Americans. Who’s left? The only states where the G.O.P. increased its percentage of the presidential vote relative to the Democrats were West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.

Morning in America

2008-11-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Eugene Robinson |Thursday, November 6, 2008 | Washington Post

I almost lost it Tuesday night when television cameras found the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the crowd at Chicago's Grant Park and I saw the tears streaming down his face. His brio and bluster were gone, replaced by what looked like awestruck humility and unrestrained joy. I remembered how young he was in 1968 when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., moments before King was assassinated and hours before America's cities were set on fire.

I almost lost it again when I spoke with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the bravest leaders of the civil rights crusade, and asked whether he had ever dreamed he would live to see this day. As Lewis looked for words beyond "unimaginable," I thought of the beating he received on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the scars his body still bears.

I did lose it, minutes before the television networks projected that Barack Obama would be the 44th president of the United States, when I called my parents in Orangeburg, S.C. I thought of the sacrifices they made and the struggles they endured so that my generation could climb higher. I felt so happy that they were here to savor this incredible moment.

I scraped myself back together, but then almost lost it again when I saw Obama standing there on the stage with his family -- wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, their outfits all color-coordinated in red and black. I thought of the mind-blowing imagery we will see when this young, beautiful black family becomes the nation's First Family.

Then, when Michelle's mother, brother and extended family came out, I thought about "the black family" as an institution -- how troubled it is, but also how resilient and how vital. And I found myself getting misty-eyed again when Barack and Michelle walked off the stage together, clinging to one another, partners about to embark on an adventure, full of possibility and peril, that will change this nation forever.

It's safe to say that I've never had such a deeply emotional reaction to a presidential election. I've found it hard to describe, though, just what it is that I'm feeling so strongly.

It's obvious that the power of this moment isn't something that only African Americans feel. When President Bush spoke about the election yesterday, he mentioned the important message that Americans will send to the world, and to themselves, when the Obama family moves into the White House.

For African Americans, though, this is personal.

I can't help but experience Obama's election as a gesture of recognition and acceptance -- which is patently absurd, if you think about it. The labor of black people made this great nation possible. Black people planted and tended the tobacco, indigo and cotton on which America's first great fortunes were built. Black people fought and died in every one of the nation's wars. Black people fought and died to secure our fundamental rights under the Constitution. We don't have to ask for anything from anybody.

Yet something changed on Tuesday when Americans -- white, black, Latino, Asian -- entrusted a black man with the power and responsibility of the presidency. I always meant it when I said the Pledge of Allegiance in school. I always meant it when I sang the national anthem at ball games and shot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. But now there's more meaning in my expressions of patriotism, because there's more meaning in the stirring ideals that the pledge and the anthem and the fireworks represent.

It's not that I would have felt less love of country if voters had chosen John McCain. And this reaction I'm trying to describe isn't really about Obama's policies. I'll disagree with some of his decisions, I'll consider some of his public statements mere double talk and I'll criticize his questionable appointments. My job will be to hold him accountable, just like any president, and I intend to do my job.

For me, the emotion of this moment has less to do with Obama than with the nation. Now I know how some people must have felt when they heard Ronald Reagan say "it's morning again in America." The new sunshine feels warm on my face.

President Elect Obama's First Press Conference

2008-11-07T18:02:00.000-05:00

Reflections on the election of Barack Obama by a seventy-six year old Presbyterian minister.

2008-11-06T11:26:00.005-05:00

My telephone rang just minutes after Barack Obama was elected the next President of the United States of America. On the line was my best Turkish friend, Ramazan Arkan from Antalya, Turkey. He called to congratulate me on the election of Barack Obama.

We talked for just a few minutes, exchanging thoughts on this extraordinary historical moment. Only after hanging up did the words I spoke to Ramazan really hit me ... “I am so proud to be an American.” I turned to my wife and said, “I can’t believe what I just said! I'm proud to be an American!”

I'm a loyal and patriotic American, but it had been 39 years since I'd spoken those words.

I lost my pride in America sometime during the mid-60’s when I faced the fact that my country was fighting a war in a foreign country that never invaded us, nor threatened our national security. During the following years, my country devastated a rural agricultural nation, killed more than one million of its peasant farmers and their families, all in the name of 'saving the world for Democracy.' The years have now rolled by, and today, while the same political forces govern Vietnam—a country that is still not democratic—Vietnam is now one of America's more important trading partners in Asia.

The United States has NEVER officially owned its actions in Vietnam, or apologized for embracing the foolish 'domino theory' that was responsible for inflicting massive suffering on human beings who were never our enemies, killing over 50,000 of American young men and women - then sending our troops home in disgrace, and institutionalizing a system of post-war veteran care that damned our wounded to become a permanent nomadic city of homeless wandering the streets of America.

Now we have turned the very same polices on the people of Iraq, and the brave troops of the United States military.

Last night, I took great pride in the collective political will of the American people to shake the foundations of history - electing Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States. I took great pride that the American people chose a new vision for America’s future, and a new role in the world by voting for a leader committed to manifest a spirit of humility, listen to, rather than lecture the nations of the world.

But my new-found hope for the future does not rest just in the election of one single man, political party, but in a nation that now embraces the judgment and political will to join with President Obama as he forges new alliances and blazes new trails, attempting to exercise American power within the 'letter AND spirit of our great American Constitution - providing leadership that reflects the old biblical adage "not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.”

This new historic opportunity now rests on our shoulders - all Americans - and begins with an old and new cry, heard from 'sea to shining sea' ...

I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!

Art Beals. Regional Liaison
Albania, Azerbaijan, Turkey & The Balkans,
Presbyterian Church (USA)

Obama: the World Celebrates!

2008-11-06T09:48:00.046-05:00

Obama's Historic Journey - Keith Olbermann

2008-11-05T22:21:00.000-05:00

'This land is your land, this land is our land'

2008-11-05T10:24:00.009-05:00

The world is a different place ... President Elect, Barack Obama from Grant Park in Chicago

2008-11-05T10:23:00.001-05:00

'Good Day, America'

2008-11-05T10:22:00.004-05:00

"Look at this. It's history."

2008-11-05T10:20:00.001-05:00

Thousands throng to hear the word

By LISA VAN DUSEN | Toronto Sun | November 5, 2008

CHICAGO -- Barack Obama came home to Chicago last night to deliver the most historic speech in a career of historic speeches, and to follow through on the second piece of his promise of hope and change.

"A new dawn of american leadership is at hand," Obama told the world across a crowd of 888 thousand in Chicago's Grant Park.

After a night that brought a decisive outcome to a campaign so fraught with intensity it riveted the world, Obama announced that, "Change has come to America."

Perhaps with an eye to the immeasurable expectations his candidacy has fueled, he cautioned, "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even on term but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there."

Obama will now become the first African-American president in the racially troubled history of this country after a Homeric 22-month campaign in which he slayed, with formidable calm, the most daunting dragons of American power politics, including the Clinton political machine, the Republican political machine and, most historically of all, any enduring belief that a black man can't be president.

In the streets of Chicago, as Obama was declared the winner of a grueling campaign against John McCain that was never going to be easy, the throngs of thousands in Grant Park erupted and the streets filled with the din of honking horns.

The festive atmosphere in Obama's hometown had built throughout the day as strangers in the Loop, along the Magnificent Mile, in stores and restaurants asked each other, "Did you vote yet?"

Yesterday afternoon, as people were still voting at the polling station across Michigan Ave., hundreds waited in the Indian Summer heat, the young people forming "Where are you from?" clusters.

"This is like the '60s!" said Pierre Paul Dorelien, 39, who took a train from his home in Montreal to Windsor Monday morning, then rented a car to drive the rest of the way.

Dorelien, a businessman born in Haiti, said when he told his 9-year old son he was driving to Chicago, the boy didn't ask why.

"He knew why I had to come. His only question was, 'Can I come with you?'"

Bess Greenberg, 29, a freelance photographer from Brooklyn, drove with her mother all day Monday.

"I had to be here. This man has changed the way young people view politics. I actually feel a greater sense of responsibility because of him."

In a testament to Obama's enormous and sometimes controversial popularity abroad, many of the people waiting were either foreigners living in the US or had come from abroad to be here for the speech.

Annette Behrens, 40, a German citizen living in the Chicago suburbs, was waiting outside Grant Park for Obama's speech with her three young daughters, "so they can see what politics can mean."

By dusk, thousands of people swarmed through the streets of downtown Chicago toward Grant Park on the city's lakefront as vendors hawked Obama T-shirts, masks and action figures.

Inside the park, after dark, tens of thousands of people stood together, necks craned, watching CNN on jumbotrons. Lighted windows in the skyscrapers lining the park added to the festive atmosphere, spelling out "USA" and "Vote 2008."

It was like a twilight zone version of a massive rock concertleft to get to 270 electoral votes.

As the results poured in and the night looked better and better for Obama, the crowd grew calmer, waiting to hear about what comes next from the once longshot candidate who'd be talking to the world last night from Chicago.

If the people themselves were part of that message, then the world would see itself in a crowd of every age, colour and economic background.

Frederikke Toemmergaard, 27, came all the way to Chicago instead, leaving her job in Denmark for 10 days to be a witness to history.

"We all wanted him to win so badly. Look at this. It's history."

Today is the day to rejoice! - final thoughts on election 08

2008-11-04T06:20:00.006-05:00

There are not many days where one vote has the power to do so much. Today, a vote for Barack Obama redresses the great sin of America's past, the great sin of the human family throughout history. But a vote for Barack Obama also allows us to chart a new and transforming course for our own lives, and all those who will come after us.

November 4th, 2008 will become a landmark for all people of the world - one we will look back on as a marker of the day we changed course and began to build a new and better world.

Not many people get a chance to live on such days as today ...

All the more reason to look back this morning at those who made this day possible.

Two days ago, during the roundtable discussion on 'This Week' on ABC, longtime democratic activist, Donna Brazile spoke of the key moment of this campaign - not as something that happened this year, but with a reference to the past ... to the 'Bloody Sunday' of the civil rights era. I was profoundly moved by her remarks and sent her a note saying just that. Later in the day, on this new 'Sunday' on the eve of a new era, I received what will always be, for me, THE quote of this presidential campaign:

"Without those brave men and women -- those four little girls and countless others knocking on Freedom's door, we would have waited longer and suffered more. Their blood was our redemption. Their bravery our inspiration. Their courage our motivation. Now it's time to vote and begin an era of reconciliation and change." - Donna Brazile

zjm

ps - Obama wins early vote in New Hampshire!

from the Boston Globe

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. - Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, where the tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement. Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain, and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns' ballots, but got no votes.

Dixville Notch's first voter, following tradition, was picked ahead of the midnight voting, and the rest of the town's 20 registered voters followed suit in today's first minutes.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin said the northern New Hampshire town is proud of its tradition, but added "the most important thing is that we exemplify a 100 percent vote."

With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location's get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. The towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.

Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation's earliest presidential primary and the central focus, however briefly, of the vote-watching nation's attention every four years.

New Hampshire law requires polls to open by 11 a.m., but that does not stop towns from opening earlier. It also allows towns to close their polls once all registered and eligible voters have cast ballots.

Hart's Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year President Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate its resident railroad workers, who had to get to work early.

The town got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back in 1996.

Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about halfway between the White Mountain National Forest and the Canadian border, started voting early in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon.

Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year.

Matthew Broderick: "Take the day off"

2008-11-03T15:59:00.000-05:00

Barack: "We have a lot of work to do"

2008-11-03T15:56:00.000-05:00

Bruce and Barack in Cleveland: 'Now is the time to stand...we're at the crossroads'

2008-11-03T15:22:00.003-05:00

One day to change the world ...

2008-11-03T13:52:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow ... the world is watching to see if we have the courage to change history!

2008-11-03T09:33:00.002-05:00

An Admirable Campaign Journey

2008-11-03T08:47:00.005-05:00

By David S. Broder | Sunday, November 2, 2008 | Washington, Post

When Barack Obama began his candidacy for the White House 20 months ago, most Americans knew next to nothing about the young senator from Illinois, barely two years into his first term in federal office.

After his performance in 2004, some Democratic activists had marked him as the best convention speaker since Ted Kennedy, Ann Richards or Mario Cuomo. Others had read his book "Dreams From My Father" and had declared him their finest literary talent since Ted Sorensen was ghostwriting for John F. Kennedy. Still others remarked on the fact that, unlike many of the party leaders in Washington, Obama had been prescient in his opposition to the U.S. attack on Iraq.

But no one knew much about his political skills or his ideology, and so he was generally underestimated as a threat to Hillary Clinton and the others who lined up to seek the 2008 prize.

What we have learned since then has been impressive. The most basic question about him -- or about anyone seeking the presidency -- is whether he has the capacity to lead the country and manage the government. Nothing in Obama's history -- lawyer, community organizer, state legislator and back-bench senator -- had demonstrated extraordinary skills. The proof had to come from the campaign itself.

As soon as I saw him on the small-town circuit in Iowa, where he began his pursuit of office, two things became clear.

First, he could generate votes by the force of his rhetoric and personality; he was not yet a celebrity, but he already had the capacity to convert strangers into friends.

And second, he had a cadre of people working for him who knew what they were doing. Though many of them were in their first presidential campaign, they were not amateurs. They understood their responsibilities and -- reflecting Obama's own self-discipline -- they went about their work with minimal waste of energy.

Somehow, this young senator had developed a battle plan for an awesomely intimidating and expensive process. Mitt Romney, with his Harvard Business School MBA, was no more efficient than Obama.

Of course, running a good campaign is not a guarantee of success as president. Jimmy Carter figured out brilliantly how to move from Plains, Ga., to the White House, a journey almost as implausible as Obama's, but he didn't know how to govern once he got there.

Obama has been Carteresque in the extravagance -- and vagueness -- of his promises to change Washington. But he is not afflicted with Carter's intellectual-moral contempt for other politicians, the trait that wrecked Carter's relationship with a Democratic Congress. On the contrary, Obama moves well among the political insiders, even while presenting an outsider's visage to the public.

What we have learned of Obama's programs puts him squarely in the liberal tradition of the party. Unlike Bill Clinton, he has not tried to spell out the ways in which he would propose to rewrite Democratic foreign or domestic policy. As a result, we can only guess what his real priorities -- in a time of severe budget constraints and a backlog of accumulated needs -- would be. One can imagine serious debates within an Obama administration and between his White House and Congress.

In what history may record as his singular achievement -- dealing with the classic American dilemma of race -- he had the largely unappreciated help of his opponent, John McCain, who simply ruled out covert racial appeals used by politicians of both parties in the past. But Obama himself demonstrated repeatedly how to bridge the racial divides that still remain, by emphasizing his calm good judgment and respect for others. As a symbol of that national maturity, he carries a powerful, positive message to the world.

Obama is not, any more than other politicians, a paragon. He reneged on his promise to use public funds for his general election campaign, driving a stake into the heart of the post-Watergate effort to reform the campaign finance system. He rejected McCain's invitation to hold joint town hall meetings -- opening the door to the kind of tawdry exchange of charges that we have seen. In both instances, he put his personal goals ahead of the public good -- a worrisome precedent.

But he has engendered widespread enthusiasm in a jaded and cynical public, especially among young people. And if he does not disillusion them in the years ahead, that would be a real gift to the nation.

A look back at this amazing race ...

2008-11-03T08:40:00.000-05:00

Wake up America! Let's Change History!

2008-11-03T07:08:00.002-05:00

On the ground in Chicago

2008-11-03T07:05:00.001-05:00

Chicago loves its Democratic native son

By LISA VAN DUSEN

CHICAGO -- If there were a classic B-movie about the giant purple blob of hope and change threatening to take over Washington in January, it might be called It Came From Chicago.

On a gorgeous Indian Summer Sunday, two days before Election Day, the Windy City isn't living up to its name at all. From down Lakeshore Drive, the glinting cityscape in its balmy haze looks a lot more benign than its early caricature of butcher's blood and wise guys.

In Hyde Park, the leafy, lefty enclave where the Obamas live and where Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, there are hardly any lawn signs because it is so sewn up both as a slice of the party's base and as the candidate's personal base.

'A MADHOUSE'

Jean Smith, 68, a home health care provider, said her biggest concern for tomorrow is turnout. "It'll be a madhouse. There's been a lot of early voting here but it's still going to be crazy."

With some experts predicting the highest voter turnout in a century and early voters already posting record numbers and record-long waits, the odds of the madhouse being national, not just local, could be pretty high.

At the Treasure Island supermarket, bookkeeper Nacole Tate, 36, has a hard time thinking of one McCain voter she knows. "Oh, yeah. I have an uncle who told us the other night he'd already voted for McCain and we couldn't believe it. He said he was worried about Obama taxing the rich. It didn't make much sense because this uncle never seemed too rich to us."

This is such a Democratic town that John McCain felt sure enough it wouldn't lose him any votes to run a fright ad in September decrying the "Corrupt Chicago political machine."

It's hard to imagine a Canadian candidate slamming an opponent's hometown, but Canadian campaigns are nowhere near as brutal and "the corrupt Calgary political machine" just doesn't have the same ring.

That old Chicago stereotype of Cook County math and, per the McCain ad, dubious political machinery may have been permanently overwritten by the culture of this campaign.

NO ZEN GARB

It's impossible to run a campaign as anything other than what it is because the operation is always part of the story and the Chicago-based brains behind the Obama operation weren't just sporting Zen garb.

They ran against traditional campaigning by eschewing it for something less reactive, more grassroots, less tactical and stunningly free of neurosis (and I say that as an utterly neurotic observer).

Studs Terkel, the great Chicago storyteller who died last Friday at 96, once famously said of his beloved adopted hometown, "Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It is the most theatrically corrupt."

It would seem impossible for anything that comes next to dwarf the unprecedented epic drama of the past two years. But if the sequel comes from Chicago, it may not live up to that old reputation, either.

2 DAYS: Let's get out the vote!

2008-11-02T11:08:00.000-05:00

Short of skinny legs, what's left to factor in?

2008-11-02T08:55:00.004-05:00

by Lisa Van Dusen | Sunday, 2 November 2008

CHICAGO -- In this last weekend before the U.S. election day, which will leave many of us who've been mainlining campaign news for the past year with a void that may have to be filled by online poker and Cheetos, you would think that all the questions that were going to be asked and answered had been asked and answered.

But the last three days are when, after 245 months of campaigning, many undecided voters decide and many decided voters decide whether to actuallyvote. So what happens now, in many ways, is the most important bit.

It is 72 hours before election day and Illinois, where Barack Obama is up by 24 points, is relatively quiet on the campaign front -- except for the dust from the carloads of volunteers zooming into neighbouring Indiana, which remains in a dead heat.

While the most hard-fought presidential election in anyone's memory is about to become the most hard-won presidential election in anyone's memory, Chicago, where Barack Obama got his political start and where his campaign is based, seems to be quietly bracing itself for the possibility that it could be the site of the next weekend White House, only without so much brush clearing.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, the Obama campaign is buying up ad time in John McCain's own yard partly because the state has slipped into margin-of-error range for McCain and partly because they can afford to remind him that they can afford to remind him.

In the past week, the national polls tightened up as they tend to near Election Day, though with the American electoral system, the state polls are more significant. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to be elected president and as of midday Saturday, RealClearPolitics was estimating Obama at 311 to McCain's 132, with 95 toss-up.

On the McCain/Palin tour, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is being touted more and more as something -- anything -- in 2012, even as Republicans outside the two-person maverick wing of the party keep raising alarms about her qualifications.

Joe the Plumber, who would be getting his own campaign plane if the election were another week away, was holding foreign policy briefings and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually is an elected politician, was mocking, as only a former Mr. World can, Barack Obama's "skinny legs" in an apparent effort to sway undecideds on an Obama disqualifier they hadn't heard.

(Obama should finally draw the line at this. "Terrorist pal," "socialist," "redistributionist-in-chief" were pretty low, but "skinny legs" is fightin' words. Maybe not to Arnie's face, but it's a point worth making.)

Because American presidential elections haven't always necessarily panned out as predicted ("Dewey Defeats Truman!", "Al Gore wins the State of Florida"), especially in recent memory, it would be crazy for the Republicans not to maintain a stance of "all bets are off" until the last minute and equally crazy for Democrats to argue.

After record early voting turnout in many states, this is now all about getting out the vote on election day, motivating the undecideds to decide and making sure all the votes are counted.

Which pits the mythology from the last two elections of the famously motivated Republican base that Sarah Palin has been shaking up against the newer but already established mythology of the primary-tested, web-driven, virally motivational and well-financed Obama ground game.

In those past two elections, the Republicans were so focused on the importance of the final three days that they actually broke it out strategically as a 72-hour push. This time, the focus will be on, among other thing, those undecided voters.

After so much time, so many debates, so many speeches and so many interviews, it's hard to fathom what deciding factor would be compelling enough to make up an unmade-up mind, unless leg-skinniness really is the sleeper issue nobody saw coming.

"This country needs a president who can restore its vigor at home and revive its image abroad."

2008-11-02T08:18:00.003-05:00

Our Opinion: Barack Obama for president

The State-Journal Register | Novemeber 2, 2008

ON SEPT. 12, 2001, the United States received messages of support and condolence from around the globe as this nation struggled to comprehend the previous day’s terrorist attacks. At home, we vowed to set aside our petty differences and unite as Americans.

Today we struggle to comprehend how this nation squandered the near universal good will expressed then. We wonder how the same population that vowed unity then has become so bitterly divided.

The disastrously planned invasion of Iraq earned us the enmity of much of the world and has divided us at home. The war on terror has scarred this country’s human rights record. Three years ago, we and the rest of the world watched helplessly as an inept federal government stumbled while thousands of people struggled to survive Hurricane Katrina’s wrath in New Orleans. Like an exclamation point at the end of the Bush administration, the economy now teeters on the brink of collapse.

We believe this country needs healing internally to end the class and cultural warfare that has reached levels today we never thought we’d see again after 9/11. The United States’ current international image as the world’s bully must be reformed if we hope to effect stability in regions that are now hotbeds of terrorism and nuclear adventurism. Economic recovery, as we see it, is dependent on those goals.

FOR THOSE critical efforts, we believe Barack Obama is the best choice as our next president.

Throughout a grueling primary campaign that began here at the Old State Capitol, Obama went from extreme underdog to the confident, self-assured candidate of the Democratic Party. His poise on the campaign trail since then is no surprise to us. We saw it in person four years ago when he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate and, later, when he met with The State Journal-Register editorial board again after winning his Senate seat. Thoughtful, engaging and intellectually nimble, Obama exuded a sense of quiet self-confidence rare among politicians.

But poise and eloquence alone, as Obama’s detractors have pointed out ad nauseum, don’t make a president, and neither do we rely solely on those qualities in endorsing Obama.

OBAMA'S ADVOCACY of diplomacy in dealing with countries that we now shun, like Iran, is a necessity in our quest to bring “rogue” nations into the global community. We think an Obama administration, which would represent a complete break from Bush policies of the last eight years, would make such diplomacy not only possible, but effective.

We find Obama’s health-care plan, which provides incentives for employers to provide insurance and will make it more difficult for insurance companies to decline coverage based on pre-existing conditions, to be vastly superior to John McCain’s proposed $5,000 tax credit.

While McCain has chided Obama throughout the campaign for opposing last year’s troop surge in Iraq, we side with Obama in noting that the Iraq war began in 2003, not 2007. Clinging to ill-defined notions of “victory” at this stage will only prolong what is already viewed as our occupation of Iraq. An Obama presidency would send a signal to Iraq that it is time to stop relying on America to maintain stability there.

We also think Obama’s personal story — born to a single mother, raised by grandparents, struggling with his own identity — put him in a position to be uniquely empathetic with many Americans of humble means who are now working to emulate his success story.

WE'D BE REMISS if we did not add here that we are profoundly disappointed in the tone McCain’s campaign embraced throughout this race. Hiring the very people who so thoroughly smeared him in South Carolina in 2000 did not serve McCain well. While sounding a call of bipartisan unity, McCain’s actions did otherwise, painting his opponent as an exotic and unknown figure to be feared and mistrusted. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was an insult to those who looked to McCain to restore strength and stability to the Republican party.

Those, however, are not the reasons for our endorsement of Obama. This country needs a president who can restore its vigor at home and revive its image abroad. Barack Obama should be that president.

Two questions for American voters: Isn't it important for the VP to know who they're talking to, and have something intelligent to say when talking?

2008-11-01T23:30:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama delivers closing remarks in radio address - send along, get the word out -

2008-11-01T23:25:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama speaks to 15,000 in Nevada: "3 days away from change in the United States of America"

2008-11-01T14:56:00.001-04:00

South Carolina Representative James Clyburn on early voting lines, Obama's chances, and History

2008-11-01T13:45:00.002-04:00

3 DAYS TO GO! Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore discuss voter turnout, suppression, and the fraud of McCain's health care plan

2008-11-01T08:50:00.005-04:00

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann: John Cleese - actor, comedian, poet

2008-11-01T08:27:00.001-04:00

Obama one-on-one with Brian Williams

2008-10-31T22:42:00.001-04:00

Barack Obama's closing ad - send out to everyone!

2008-10-31T15:33:00.002-04:00

What Barack Obama means to America - PLEASE SEND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

2008-10-31T15:12:00.004-04:00

Inspiration for the young

Hope and concern

Elder in awe

Obama thanks 25,000 supporters in Des Moines, Iowa!

2008-10-31T15:07:00.001-04:00

Halloween levity ... let's take time to laugh a bit -

2008-10-31T13:31:00.001-04:00

All we want to turn back Saturday night, is our clocks -

2008-10-31T13:13:00.002-04:00

4 DAYS - Let's keep working every second!

2008-10-31T11:10:00.004-04:00

Rachel Maddow on 'The State of the Race' and her interview with Barack Obama

2008-10-31T05:53:00.002-04:00

Barack Obama discusses the future of America with NBC's Brian Williams

2008-10-30T18:54:00.004-04:00

Former Republican National Convention Delegate from New Hampshire switches support from McCain to Obama!

2008-10-30T15:50:00.002-04:00

Bramante endorses Obama

By Brian Lawson, PolitickerNH.com Reporter | 10/30/08

A former co-chair of Mike Huckabee’s New Hampshire campaign has endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Fred Bramante announced on a conference call with reporters that he is backing Obama because he opposes John McCain’s plan to use school vouchers.

“I can’t live with that, I can’t be out there advocating for a candidate who I believe is going to have the center piece of his education plan an issue that I have opposed,” Bramante told reporters.

Bramante also said that he notified former Gov. Craig Benson about his decision last night.

“I had a conversation with Governor Benson, I wanted to give him a heads-up about what I was doing and he said, ‘Fred you’re putting the kids before the party and I applaud you for doing it,’” Bramante said.

Bramante stressed that he is not switching his party affiliation and still intends to vote for Republicans down-the-ballot.

“I don’t want anybody to take this that I’m becoming a Democrat that is not my intention,” Bramante said.

Bramante is also a former chairman of the state Board of Education and was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

BRIAN LAWSON is a PolitickerNH.com Reporter and can be reached via email at brian.lawson@politickernh.com.

'American Stories, American Solutions' - Barack Obama's closing message to the American people

2008-10-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

Bill Clinton stumps with Barack Obama in Florida

2008-10-30T11:26:00.002-04:00