Something different for your weekend

February 27th, 2009

Just good stuff — can ya stand it??

Here I am again, in time for weekend reads; had a bit of a bug this week, but I’m feeling better now. Politics has been rushing ahead like a gusher from an overfilled dam these last few days, and I could only coast awhile before feeling like I’d better grab my paddle and get back into the current.

Here are links to some of the most recent developments:

“BY AUGUST 31, 2010, OUR COMBAT MISSION IN IRAQ WILL END”
“Our Mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi Government and its security forces… I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011″

GOVERNMENT TAKING UP TO 36% STAKE IN CITI

Pentagon To Allow Photos Of Returning War Dead

Holder Vows To End Raids On Medical Marijuana Clubs

To Pay for Health Care, Obama Looks to Taxes on Affluent

Obama Expected To Kill Hedge Fund Tax Break

Senate Confirms Solis as Labor Secretary

Tufts Prof. Merrigan tapped for No 2 USDA post
Sustainable and organic farmers are excited

… and last, but not least

Dobson Resigns As Chairman Of Focus On The Family

The Republicans are all spun up, of course — not only anxious that they don’t have the ball for any of this, but eager to help it all fail so they can get back in the game. Now we’re hearing about class war, again — the phrase went to sleep for a Bush’ian decade while we all took a side path to explore culture war; but it’s always been about class, hasn’t it?

The Have Not’s vs. the Fat Cats [The Dubs' Have and Have More's.]

You could say that Obama is a Socialist, if you want to … that he’s a Liberal, if you choose … that he’s pragmatic verging on deliberate, leading some to declare him a Moderate; or you might say he’s ambitious, biting off too much to chew and moving too quickly. But me, I think he’s the Energizer Bunny — moving ahead, undaunted; and I think its safe to say he won’t quit banging that little drum for a minimum of four years, or … if we catch the wave … more.

Speaking of waves, that was what I was reminded of as I watched the Congress leap up and down during this weeks speech. Here’s the link to my thoughts, in the weekly; I pretty much poured myself out on that topic. Obama’s no Superman and he’s no Messiah — but he’s certainly a champion for the paradigm shift … if you get my drift.

And that drift is the topic of the day — one of those departures where I throw in something a bit spiritual, a bit futuristic, to go along with the political op/ed’s. They’ll go down easy — one’s a Morford and another is by always clever/profound Steve Bhaerman, sometimes known as Swami Beyondananda. Two more intelligent political pieces round out four reads that will give you pleasure and encouragement this weekend.

The bonus material is, indeed, a departure — it’s a fictional piece of time travel I wrote late last year; a portion of it can be found in the Next World Stories. Think of it as SciFi — nothing written there will come to pass unless we choose it to; everything there can be moderated by our thoughts and actions, collectively, to bypass the angst and smooth out the wrinkles — or to manifest even more quickly if we can stand the shaking under our feet.

I’ve never been so aware that we are operating on a number of dimensions at the moment; we’re reviewing our options and the versions of our future nation are overlaid in our experience, close enough to touch, shimmering on our horizon. At this writing, there are two America’s; not the Edwards model — although that proved true enough and I still miss him — but an America that occupies a possible future and one that has added depth as a probable future.

Every moment each changes just a shade or two. We influence each, with our passion or our fear. That’s what co-creation is all about; and that requires our engagement not only in activism, but in thought, word and deed. Everything is fluid — and of what I envisioned at the end of the year, some has fallen away … some has shown up already … and some is still bubbling away on the back burner, waiting to boil.

So if you have time this weekend, read this little fiction — and then change it in your mind to make it look the way you think it should. Start thinking about what change might look like, given the variables of the day. How do YOU want it to look? Put your best vision out there! Stand in it and add your energy to its probability.

Jude

Obama vs. The Fear
Grin and be enthralled, or tremble and stuff dollar bills into your mattress?
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 27, 2009

Everyone I know is feeling a little bipolar right now. Everyone I know is going through the most unusual of psychological and socioeconomic fits, a bit unsure what to do and how to feel and exactly which emotional flush should be the one to modulate their equilibrium on a day-to-day basis.

The conundrum is obvious and compelling and, as always, deeply enhanced — if not wholly solved — by vodka.

It goes something like this: Do you allow yourself, even now, to feel any sort of ongoing, relieved, merciful joy that Barack Obama actually is sitting in the Big Chair in the White House? That this elegant, articulate, Zen-like man whose integrity is rock-solid and whose ideas, while certainly not in perfect alignment with every ultra-lefty vision on the planet (clean coal? Please), are astonishingly ambitious and brave, is leading this nation during one of the worst economic times in its short and paroxysmal history?

Or do you say whatever, sorry, no time for that. Everything’s plummeting and jobs are dying and (in my case, certainly) the industry you’ve worked for your entire career is gasping its last breath, and therefore, melancholy and dread and panic are the only truly appropriate responses, because I don’t care how great the guy is, any smile that might cross my face when I see him gets immediately wiped out as soon as I ponder my 401k?

It’s a bizarre choice indeed. The good news is, the Obamafied bliss is still out there, still swirling, still waiting to be supped like a fine digestif. At any given moment you can, if you so choose, pause in whatever it is you’re suffering from and hear that voice and see his visage or perhaps merely hear some pundit say the words “President Obama” out loud, and you can still enjoy that delicious chill, that little jolt that says, “Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?”

Hey, it sure beats doing your taxes.

You can even take it a tiny step further. You can, as I recently did, glance up at the screen during Obama’s congressional address and see not only a young, composed, African American president speaking to the populace in more thoughtful, articulate language than we’ve heard in a decade, but also note that he happens to be surrounded by a female Speaker of the House and a female Secretary of State and a smart, funny VP who, refreshingly, is not a sneering warmongering torture fanatic who enjoys sucking the blood from live baby sharks.

I mean, good Lord, what sort of astonishing snapshot is this? Two strong, powerful women and a deeply graceful black president? What country is this again?

(If, for some reason, you’re also feeling a bit masochistic, you can take these moments to imagine how it might be if John McCain were the president right now, and Sarah Palin was right there next to him, grinning and winking like a truck-stop Barbie, and just how violently unstable and sour and doomed you would feel. Fun!)

So then, the wistful Obama swoon? Still right there. Still accessible. Still agreeably valid. This is the good news.

But oh, the dark side loometh. By Obama’s own insistence that he be held accountable for it all, no one knows for sure if all of these spectacular, historic moves — the bailouts, the massive recovery program, the jobs, housing, overhauls in health care and education and etcetera — if any of it, will actually work.

It is, by every estimation, the biggest political and fiscal gamble in a generation, maybe five. It is dicey and dangerous and wildly progressive in scope and ambition, and you know this is true because many bitter, unloved Republicans are seething and whining and tearing into every Obama idea they can find, simply because said plans don’t do enough to fellate the wealthy and worship oil companies and ignore children.

Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama’s agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It’s actually more akin to FDR’s New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be “the greatest political drama in our lifetime.”

This, then, is our grand takeaway. If Obama can pull it off, if he can follow through with even half of these massive, historic overhauls, it will result in one of the most profound transformations and redefinitions of American ideals in history. And I gotta say, it’s damn nice to write that sentence and not be referring to warmongering and torture and God-sanctioned homophobia. What a thing.

But of course, the transformation is also a source of profound anxiety. Is it all too much? Is Obama too ambitious? Is he overreaching? Could it all backfire and implode and could the United States collapse entirely as we’re taken over by China and forced to work in cellblock sweatshops as giant shape-shifting robots rule the land? Mmm, apocalypse. It’s what’s for dinner.

Or maybe not. So far, all polls indicate that President Obama’s potent speech hit all the right notes and set the stage for the Grand Transformation. He has widespread support even among moderate conservatives, many of whom now appear to trust a Democratic president even more than they trust their beloved banks and megacorporations. Which is a bit like devout Catholics saying hey, you know what? The pope really is an insidious relic. That Buddha guy? He might be on to something.

This seems to be the bottom line, at least for now. We have, for the first time in just about forever, an enormously ambitious, confident, risk-taking president so full of grand and even borderline radical ideas they barely fit into a single generation, much less a single speech, and we have him at a time when we need, well, someone exactly like that.

That he just so happens to be tremendously intelligent, progressive, serene as an oak tree and utterly magnetizing? I guess you just call that a bonus. ++

The Shift Has Hit the Fan: Welcome to the Sane Asylum
Steve Bhaerman, Swami Beyonananda @ wakeuplaughing.com
February 26, 2009

Humanity has shifted its karma into surpassing gear and political climate change has come to America. Thanks to a grassroots up-wising, we the people huffed and puffed together in the same direction and the winds of change blew in a breath of fresh air. And we can all breathe easier.

The vote in November was more than a vote for a new President. It was a vote for a new precedent – to overgrow the “lowest common dominator” paradigm and take a step towards government of the people, by the people, for the people, where the government does our bidding, not the bidding of the highest bidder and where the Golden Rule can finally overrule the rule of gold. In the short term, the up-wising has been successful and the American Evolution has begun. The first big shots have been fired and we are on the road to recovering from an eight-year bout with Mad Cowboy Disease and Electile Dysfunction.

But now, if we want to heal the body politic of conditions like Deficit Inattention Disorder, Truth Decay and the deadliest one of all, an unchecked Military Industrial Complex, we must elect ourselves. Spiritually, it’s time to quiet our barking dogmas and evolve past the Ten Commandments to an even greater realization – the One Suggestion: “We are all in it together.” Once a critical mass of us chooses to live by this credo, we can avoid the critical massacre called Armageddon, create Disarmageddon instead, and achieve fulfillment as a species, Humanifest Destiny.

The End of the Age of Nefarious?

Every journey into the light is preceded by a dark passage, and our entry into the Age of Aquarius is no different. As predicted in the celebrated quatrain (”When the goon moves into Lincoln’s house and stupider aligns with Mars, then greed will guide the planet and fear obscure the stars …”), the Age of Nefarious delayed the start of the new millennium. But now the quatrain is heading down a new track and soular power is shining a light on the endarkened corridors of soulless power.

Just as the eight-year journey that took us from Whitewater to Blackwater was coming to an end, some overzealous Bush-bashers hurled footwear to give the departing regime one final boot. That was understandable, but unnecessary. Better we should keep our shoes on and use them to stand together at a time when healing wounds is more important than wounding heels. Besides, without Bush there could have been no Obama. His alarming actions awakened more people than Buddha and a body politic in a fear-induced coma miraculously regained consciousness.

And now there is a new President, Barack Hussein Obama. After eight years of insanity, we can proclaim to the world, “America has a President Hussein!”

So now, we must face another awesome truth. We are living in a world gone sane.

Welcome to the sane asylum.

Trickle Down Goes Belly Up

It’s a good thing our political fates are on the upswing, as our economy has taken a sharp downturn. The house of credit cards economy based on trickle down has gone belly up and we must face another, sadder truth. Individually and collectively, we’ve been suffering from Deficit Inattention Disorder and since we were unable to do the math, we must now do the aftermath. It’s a buy-o-logical fact. You cannot spend more than you have. Nature knows this. We can use no more energy than what we have in reserve. We cannot charge energy on our Ascended Master Card and repay it next lifetime.

So yes, the casino economy is coming down, but there is an upside to the meltdown. There is a great opportunity in the crisis. Consider this. When the dollar hits zero, we can pay off our entire $10 trillion national debt and hardly feel it!

Meanwhile, over the past eight years we have seen the fall of reptilian entities like Enronosaurus Wrecks and most recently a character named Madoff made off with billions. Our entire economic system has been revealed as an extraordinary ponzi scheme where ordinary people are left holding the empty bag.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. It’s the same old needy-greedy where our collective fear of not having enough — “scare city” — has empowered those privatizing privateers who are plundering our planet with their mining operations; that’s mine, that’s mine, that’s mine. This mining has overmined the planet and undermined humanity. Hence, the emergency we face right now.

So, what do we do? I am glad I asked that question. We must go beyond the fear-based state of emergency to a state of emergent seeing. That is where we emerge and see the genuine wealth that is all around us, the virtually infinite energy from Father Sun, the prolific nourishment Mother Earth brings us every season, the love we generate from our hearts and the inventiveness of our minds. With this realization, we have a one way ticket out of scare city and we enter a state of a-bun-dance. That is where we get up off our assets, move our buns, face the music and dance together. In using our resources to create good goods and greater goodness, we can weave a web of mass construction that will make us all interdependently wealthy.

So … how do we do this? How do we go from our habitual “every cell for itself” consciousness that has caused our current “mining disaster” to acting on the evolutionary truth that we are in reality “all cells in the body of humanity?” How do we shift from survival of the fittest to thrival of the fittingest?

First we must move from the fear-based Homeland Security to the love-based Heartland Security and realize our one true security is in the land of the heart. While the beliefs in our head fool us all the time, the love in our heart is foolproof. When we face up to love, we can face down the fear.

What this means in practical reality is that we must step across the “red-blue” political divide that has kept us separate and show our true colors as one purple people. Yes, we have all been wounded by polarizing politics, so let’s give ourselves a purple heart and take the next courageous step to cohere around our shared “heart core” values and become we, the purple.

I have a dream that the rednecks shall lie down with the blue necks and we tune out the polarizing mainstream media, which is sadly a brainwashing machine stuck on spin. More than ever, we need forums not againstums, dialogue instead of debate. When the body politic stops mass-debating and chooses to have healthy, pleasurable intercourse, we will finally create a healthy brainchild together.

This February, we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial and our friend Richard Lederer (the anagram master known as Riddler Reacher), tells us that when we scramble the letters in “Barack Hussein Obama,” we get “Abraham is back: One U.S.”

You don’t have to be a Barack-backer to see that instead of relying on leaders from above, the next evolutionary step is for us to become the leaders we have been waiting for. I am Lincoln. You are Lincoln. We are Lincoln. And by linkin’ together, we free ourselves from slavery to the divisive beliefs in our minds and form a more perfect union in the land of the heart.

Sure, these ideas may seem far-fetched, but we are nearer to fetching them than ever before. Remember, we are now living in a world gone sane. Change is ahead, change is afoot and everything is changing from head to foot. Like it or not, we are destined to have heaven on earth. Might as well get used to it. ++

Restore the Republic
Gary Hart, HuffPo
February 25, 2009

Last night President Obama awakened “a renewed spirit of national service.” The American Republic must now respond.

Almost 2500 years ago, Pericles, in his ageless funeral oration, praised men who were worthy of the city and declared those “useless” who took no interest in the well-being of Athens. Many of my generation consider John Kennedy’s call to “ask what you can do for your country” to have been the origin of the ideal of public service. Instead, the notion of dedication, participation, and service is as old as the Republic itself.

We consider ourselves a democracy, yet we salute the flag of a republic. No idea is more central to the concept of a republic than what used to be called civic virtue, but what today would be called “giving something back,” or public service. Founders of republics throughout the ages, including our own, firmly believed that without the involvement of citizens in the common good of their communities and their country the republic would not long survive. The modern republican theorist, Quentin Skinner, has put it this way: “performance of our public duties is indispensable to the maintenance of our own liberty.”

The ideal of service is particularly strong among young people, those who have yet to undertake the private duties of family, financial obligation, and wage earning. Thus, those who have sought to keep the ancient republican ideal alive in our own time have created and supported the Peace Corps, Vista, and more recently Americorps. And there are those like Alan Khazei and Michael Brown who have created organizations such as City Year to fill in the gaps when our government seems unconcerned with citizen engagement in the national interest.

Now, in a new time of national peril, rather than considering it a luxury, we need to see national service as a necessity for the rallying of the national community behind our common good and our common goals. No single step would revitalize our fearful national spirit more than a new era of civic republicanism. The single best vehicle to achieve this goal is the proposed Serve America Act sponsored by Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch. This is a genuinely bipartisan response to President Obama’s challenge to Americans of all ages to serve the national community.

Building on existing Americorps programs and the National Community Service Act, Serve America would substantially expand opportunities for all age groups, from young people to retired professionals, to provide a year or more of service in community education, health, environment, energy efficiency, and a host of other projects. Young people participating in Serve America would also qualify for financial support to pursue higher education.

Among those hardest hit by a shrinking job market are those just entering the work force. Rather than stay in their parents’ home, roam the mean streets, or suffer endless employment rejection, unemployed young people especially can join Serve America to improve their communities and build their own ladders out of economic recession. Creative opportunities such as this are exactly what Barack Obama’s standard of “responsibility” is all about.

At a time when so many public needs, from schools to parks, from soup kitchens to retirement homes, are unmet, Serve America is not a “make work” project. It is targeted toward real needs not currently being met by private enterprise or any level of government. The costs of Serve America are minuscule in an age of massive bank bailouts, industrial rescues, and mortgage underwriting.

Resistance to expanded public service programs can be expected from the ideologically sclerotic, those who occupy the negative ground between government as the problem and government as our enemy. These are clearly people unfamiliar with Pericles of even for that matter Thomas Jefferson.

To be a true republican is to recognize the role of civic virtue, participation in the public affairs of the community, and to be among the men and women of whom future generations of Americans will say, they were worthy of their city and their nation. ++

We Need Obama to Help Heal the American Soul
The economy may revive in a few years, but our spirit will lay in the metaphorical dumpster without an articulate vision of a new America.
Andrew Lam, New America Media
February 26, 2009.

Barack Obama signed into law the $787 billion stimulus package, giving the moribund U.S. economy a much-needed resuscitation (or so we all hope), and yet there is a larger crisis looming, one that existed long before our economy tanked and has it no guarantee of recovery. Call it the ailing of the American soul.

It’s perhaps fanciful to talk of soul and spirit, even as metaphors, at a time when our country is already shrouded under the dense haze of foreclosures and joblessness. But when a country loses its bearings and sense of direction, its soul, too, falters. If not quantifiable, it is at least discernible: in the form of collective insecurity and loss of confidence, and increasingly, through collective anger, cynicism and shame.

On a grander scale, Americans, I fear, have lost their sense of centrality, sliding irreversibly toward triviality on the world stage. “Americans have always needed to know the point of it all; that has been part of their peculiar national ‘innocence’ and residual Puritan sense of themselves as the new elect of God,” essayist Lance Morrow once noted. “They need to possess an idea of themselves, a myth of themselves, an explanation of themselves.”

Our malaise has its roots in several camps. Our former president began an unjust war in Iraq based on false data about WMDs, resulting in the deaths of so many American soldiers and Iraqi civilians — the latter we like to understand as “collateral damage” - and in the process he helped deplete us of our national treasures. At home, individualism, coupled with a hyper-consumerist lifestyle, has become an unsustainable American experiment, one that possibly has reached its dead end; and the resulting breakdown of family, and therefore family values, has become a national threat. Furthermore, our sense of insecurity is profound since 9/11, and coupled with a dire economy, it results in rising anti-immigrant sentiments and xenophobia; the battle over whether America will remain a nation of immigrants or a country of singular identity has intensified.

The economy may revive in a few years, and may, in fact, take a different form, but our spirit will lay in the metaphorical dumpster without an articulate vision of a new America. After all, money maybe the measurement of a country’s wealth, but the country’s health is measured by something far larger than economics.

President Barack Obama, perhaps more than any other president since Ronald Reagan, has the ability to correct this by giving the nation a sense of direction. The role of a president in time of crisis, to be sure, is far beyond being a good technocrat. While a good and capable president can deal with the nuts and bolt of the economy, only an inspiring and charismatic leader can deliver his people out of the wasteland.

A major ingredient of the cure lies in the area of “social capital.”

Political economist Francis Fukuyama, defined it as “an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals…. they must lead to cooperation in groups and therefore are related to traditional virtues like honesty, the keeping of commitments, reliable performance of duties, reciprocity, and the like. And Berkeley emeritus social science professor Franz Schurmann called it, “A human bonding where work and capital are linked in order to function.” A house can be built cheaply, for instance, when neighbors joined in to help. Hungry folks can be fed more efficiently if volunteers show up at local soup kitchen, and so on.

Or take the case of Henrietta Hughes, a woman who lived in a truck with her grown son. Hughes spoke to Obama at a recent town hall rally in Fort Meyers, Fla. asking for help. The president kissed her, but it was another woman, Chene Thompson, wife of Florida State Rep. Nick Thompson, who stepped up and offered her second home to the woman and her son, free of rent. (Cynics suggested that it was a plant, though no evidence emerged as such, and even if it is, so what?) That’s social capital, in a big, shiny way.

Obama himself said that the stimulus package is not “a panacea.” He is now moving in the right direction by calling for Americans to volunteer and share the burden. In a recent TV broadcast, the president urged Americans to play an active role in healing ourselves: “Prepare a care package for a soldier. Read to a child. Or fix up a local basketball court so the next generation can play and grow. Log on to USAService.org to find or create a project near you, then gather some friends and lace ‘em up.”"

Of course, social capital has always existed, in good times and bad. In immigrant communities, strong social networks are precisely what keep many from dire poverty, and in some cases, from certain catastrophe. Take the Vietnamese community. Long before the government managed to fully mobilize to deal with the Katrina disaster, an intricate social network - Vietnamese language media, Vietnamese-owned shopping malls, Vietnamese Buddhist temples and Christian churches, Vietnamese political organizations - were already providing information and shelter to tens of thousands fleeing Vietnamese from New Orleans and the surrounding region. As far as Dallas and Houston and Los Angeles, volunteers took strangers into their homes while others around the country gave money and sent care packages. Because of communal support, Vietnamese Americans were among the first ethnic groups to rebuild their lives in Louisiana.

Alas, that tight-knit, social infrastructure does not exist on a national scale, and that communal sense is only within ethnic and religious enclaves. How to replicate those ethno-specific social bonds and sense of collective responsibility for the entire country is the trillion-dollar question.

Yet it is a question that needs a good answer. America is now adrift and unmoored. Obama commands the rare thing call public trust and national (and international) good will. But he may risk squandering it if he doesn’t go full speed ahead and articulate a vision of Americans helping themselves and remaking their society. He needs to give equal weight to healing the soul of America as he does to mending America’s purse. And he needs to bring in the social dimension in the remaking of America.

He needs, in other words, to tell us that we all have a stake in committing to protect the wellbeing of our society. ++

bonus

2012 - Excerpts From The Political Waves Blog
Fictional posts by Judith Gayle| Political Waves

Calming Down
Jan 7, 2012

The International Counter-Terrorism Coalition reports a downturn in acts of terror, today. Oh, there’s violence in the world for sure, but it seems to have become localized in the last years as incidents of civil strife. America, once the primary target of the Mideast, is less in the crosshairs now that we have issued new military rules of protocol and engagement; early attacks on the less heavy-handed military model proved futile, given American superiority in training and weapons. Attacks began to diminish as soon as we withdrew troops from Iraq, and reduced boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

Since evidence of bin Laden’s death from kidney complications surfaced a few years ago, the little factions once umbrelled under the moniker ‘Al Qaeda’ have increasingly fought among themselves for supremacy, limiting their efficacy. They are as lethal as ever in producing random violence, but operate more like street gangs than international threats.

As well, the increased aggression between Saudi Arabia and Iran has turned their attention more toward the Sunni/Shi’ia struggle than reaping vengeance on the US for its old imperial model. Meanwhile, moderate Muslims, world-wide, have called for an end to violence and are actively policing their Mosques for extremist rhetoric. It seems the Muslim nations, left to their own devices, are having their own ‘evangelical’ purging; I’m just glad ours is over.

A police-intensive world-wide security organization, the ICTC has proved a borderless deterrent to what was once known as the ‘War on Terror.’ John Kerry, who twelve years ago proposed just that solution, was asked to comment. “What part of I told you so do you want to hear,” he said with a grin.

The Disenchanted
Feb 27, 2012

Announced today, a plan to bomb Obama’s Hawaiian-White House during the holidays was reportedly nipped in the bud by the ever-watchful FBI. The sheer number of plots and schemes to disrupt or destroy his presidency are too numerous to count; that all have failed speaks either to his dedicated team of Secret Service Agents or, as some whisper, the angel on his shoulder. As usual, the conspirators were white supremacists, young and stupid — this time from Idaho.

The secessionist movements inspired by Obama’s win in 2008 have provided and ongoing headaches for the administration. The Alaska Independence Party, made visible in the 2008 election by the First Dude’s (Todd Palin) membership, has grown in influence; they remain, at this writing, non-violent although their philosophy has roots in the Armageddon mythology, which creates an emotional undercurrent that keeps agents wary. While numerous ‘End Timers’ and survivalists trekked north in the early months of 2009, climate considerations sent most of them packing quick enough; they took bits of the movement back home with them. Separatists groups can now be found in 19 states.

South Carolina continues to have a strong separatist contingent, based more on race and culture war issues than apocalyptic vision. The ATF keeps a constant eye on these particular groups, who are occasionally charged with gun-running and hate crimes. Many paramilitary types migrated to this area when Blackwater was disbanded, and count themselves in this number.

While the administration does not want another Ruby Ridge or Waco on its books and has taken a laid back approach, the FBI has kept close tabs on the various skinhead movements that round out the picture; the clumsy and poorly executed assassination attempts come largely at the hands of this worrisome group. The President’s security team assures the public that they are prepared for more sophisticated attacks, as well.

On the whole, the questions of race in leadership that sucked the oxygen out of the last election cycle have proven moot in the last four years. The diversity of the Obama cabinet has given everyone a target to either disparage or cheer, irrespective of their ethnicity; the public has been much more interested in policy than DNA. At the welcomed end of a discouraging era, the expertise one brings to the table has finally taken precedence over what one looks like.

On local levels, the news is not so encouraging. Pockets of racial warfare continue to surface, much like the white vigilantism of New Orleans that hit the headlines in early 2009; ongoing today. The increased levels of poverty and need in these last years have illuminated the festering prejudices that have always marked this nation. The complicity of local police in most of these incidents has created a nation-wide standard for law enforcement; enforcing the standard, however, has been a hit and miss proposition.

Obama’s approval ratings remain in the high-60s, as they have continually except for the first long months of his tenure, during the emergency reconstruction of the tanked economy.

Build It and They Will Come
March 25, 2012

President Obama’s public works program of 2009/10 accomplished more than simply providing jobs for a few million people; it restored a sense of craftsmanship that had been missing in the building sector for decades.

As we all remember, the initial program fell short of its goals due to budgetary woes — the actual (and disasterous) economic numbers hidden from the public were revealed shortly after Obama took office, effectively pulling an e-brake on campaign promises and bringing the nation to a grinding halt.

The power of the Federal Reserve played out shortly before he took office, leaving no assistance to Obama’s financial team who were forced to scramble for funding; severe devaluation followed. The Fed’s ultimate abolishment thrilled Libertarians and sent a shot heard round the world to all powerful private banking institutions and financial power-mongers. The return to the gold standard represents actual assets rather than imaginary paper; we’re still struggling, but at least what we depend on is real, not imaginary, and currency is stable again.

With workers left to their own devices in those early months, briefly accepting government script tradable for food and services, craftsmanship returned to the workplace. The repair to America’s infrastructure seemed to strike a spark with those who had become disenchanted with the ‘cookie cutter’ era of power-building. The challenge of recycling materials and working toward quality and sustainability while paring down costs stirred creative juices; streamlined, innovative designs remained standard fare, even after Obama found some of the necessary funding by dismantling the Star Wars and Black Ops military programs, diverting those accounts.

Early problems with contractors who remained ’status quo’ in their production and thought-process gave way quickly to the second-tier selection of entrepreneurial firms that took their lead from the Green models, assisted by the hands-on approach from the Prez’s oversight teams. A whole new cross-section of artisans and Greening technicians have been inspired by the Great Build-Out; we are enjoying a bit of a Renaissance, of the pragmatic kind. This was summed up by a young construction worker in Minot, North Dakota, interviewed by local press at the completion of an innovative retrofit on a centuries old public works building, charged with supplying clean water to the area: “Who knew work could feel like fun.”

The construction and rehab of well-built, energy-efficient schools and public buildings alone justified the funds that Obama was able to throw into the pot in the first year; road and bridge repairs, overdue rebuilds, followed quickly. Early attempts to hijack available money by the road-building lobby sent up enough yellow flags with the fledgling Obama team to halt its initial implementation, thanks to environmental activists concerned not only with fairness in distribution but also with oil-specific projects.

The focus on public transportation in the second year boosted the economy, not only with new construction of trains, light-rail and commuter … a few designed to test the controversial and still cost-prohibitive maglev (magnetic levitation) technology … but by the public’s ability to travel.

The Middle Eastern infighting that occured in tandem with our military drawdawn, locked up oil production and complicated our ability to commute for jobs and goods. This put a paralyzing crimp in the American lifestyle, already humbled by debt and deflation, and caused the disappearance of some communities entirely while others were able to transition into productive centers of commerce and services. Early problems with auto conversions kept car sales slim through the end of the decade; Detroit, of course, didn’t stabilize until last year, when it brought out the first all-electric models to complete its inventory of affordable, bio-capable cars and trucks, and the ever popular [plug-in hybrid.]

The boom in green solutions has provided alternatives at a breakneck pace, proving once again that American innovation is alive and well. Implementation of the new Smart Grid to efficiently deliver energy is well begun; it’s projected to connect nation-wide before the end of the decade.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe we’ve come so far so quickly. Obama’s early productivity stunned those of us who had thought government dead at Bush’s hands; efficient, well-planned and timely projects have become, now, the norm. As the economy continues to rebuild, we can look forward to trimmed-down but efficient population centers and economic growth. And thanks to the good hearts of America’s craftsmen, they even have a bit of charm.

The Contenders
April 03, 2012

Another election season is upon us; political infighting has, gratefully, toned down since 2008. The American political/social center so profoundly changed during the first Obama term that Republican philosophical inertia has drawn only the seriously disenchanted and misfits to the Pub nominating race; even the elders, who drove much of the 2008 vote have moved on, either figuratively or literally.

The Republican frontrunners, left-over’s from the process in ‘08 — Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, running closely behind both the ever-annoying Sarah Palin and tenacious Mike Huckabee and their newly mobilized Fundamental Christians — can all be described as members of the Old Guard.

No one from the Reorganized Republican Party movement has thrown in their hat yet, although [Newt Gingrich] has tested the waters, playing to a moderation platform he adopted at the end of Bush’s last term; the majority of conservatives are still hunkered down in think-tanks and conservative institutes, attempting a reconstruction of the old capitalist model that gave them their glory days.

Not surprisingly, the Libertarian candidate is getting more of the Republican vote than expected, although he splits it with Palin, whose record in obstructing the Federal governments attempt to police the Alaska Secessionist movement gives her added punch with the Libertarians.

Now that 17 states allow gay marriage, and most others have solid movements in place to promote this civil right, social conservatism has been denied one of its Big Two topics in the ongoing, if flagging, culture war. Abortion continues to drive both the Catholic and Fundamentalist Christian vote, but improved sexual education and availability to reproductive services has seen the numbers of procedures plunging in the last few years; the exceptions for unplanned preganancy are still to be found in what we called the Red States, awhile back — the deep South and ‘cowboy’ states that border Canada in the Northwest and Central US. As always, what you don’t know CAN hurt you.

Obama’s reelection seems assured, at this point, given the declining numbers of those who consider themselves straight-ticket voters. Most citizens consider voting for Republican reemergence a form of slow suicide. The last years have given us a clear reflection of what competence can achieve, and brought a sense of national integrity back into style. It’s hard to argue with success.

The administrations openness to public opinion and willingness to assist local ‘commonwealth’ movements has brought balance back into communities; American citizens no longer feel that government is their enemy. Again, the service modality that Obama required of the young seems to have inspired civic responsibility from coast to coast; volunteerism is up, as is a thriving culture of political activism.

… And Justice For All
May 30, 2012

The newly-formed Department of Reconciliation has taken on its first project: opening diplomatic relations with the Lakota Nation and providing them a format in which to redress centuries of broken treaties and stolen property.

The Sioux, who received tax exemption from the SCOTUS in 1980, had refused compensation for their stolen lands, demanding their return instead. Their status as a sovereign nation has provided them little benefit in the last decades and severe poverty has limited their tribal development; historically, modern relations with this group has been difficult thanks to more than a century of neglect, deceit and lethargic leadership. A particularly proud people, the Lakota are affiliated with AIM (American Indian Movement) which has variously been described as terrorist’s or hero’s, depending on your point of view.

House Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, the newly appointed Interim Diplomatic Envoy to America’s indigenous peoples, welcomed representatives of the Sioux Nation to the Capital last week and encouraged them to maintain their dual citizenship, saying, “We are all part of the traditions of America; our mutual history must bring us together, not separate us.”

Grijalva, who worked tirelessly for ecological protections in the last decade, has a good reputation with Am-Ind’s of the Southwest. He has taken time from his Congressional duties to assist the Obama team in reconfiguring the old, archaic Bureau of Indian Affairs into the Office of Intranational Relationships, under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior. The Envoy will report directly to the President, who has interest in these matters.

Grijalva greeted the group with a few words in their own tongue, and applauded the Lakota Language Consortium’s push to preserve their native language and instruct their school children in a bilingual format. Topics under discussion were water and mineral rights, and return of tribal lands; no immediate breakthroughs were expected but the establishment of mutual respect may do much to refine the issues.

Reports indicate that a series of further meetings are scheduled, including one in July at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. There are rumors that Obama will try to attend — causing conservative accusations (and obvious hope, given their inability to enthuse their base during this election year) that slavery reparations are next.

Expected later in the year, the Department announced, were meetings with representatives from Haiti and Chile.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
June 22, 2012

New on the horizon today is the court’s acceptance of charges of ecoterrorism leveled against the Bush administration for obstruction in the fight against Global Warming; the international coalition that brought this legal action did not simply site those at the top — they also went after the various Lieutenants that implemented the Republican ideology so ruthlessly for eight long years. Recently released documents that indicate pay-off’s at top levels trail back to the Bush White House. Of particular interest to the American public are those who served in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. Questions of governmental immunity are being studied carefully, given the earlier legislation limiting the overuse of signing statements, standards by which pardons might be granted and oversight on unitary power.

As the environmentalists added up the damage to the nation in Obama’s first months, reports of over 60,000 newborns put at risk of neurological damage seemed to break the camels back, created a public outcry that demanded action. Toxic waste sites were ignored during the Bush years, as was reporting of the laundry lists of protections stripped or side-stepped during that administration. Responsibility for the economic and environmental disasters that were left in their wake, along with billions of dollars misspent or unaccounted for — money that might have been spent in the public good — will follow the Bushies until the last dog is hung.

Indeed, years late, legal challenges continue to mount against the Bush gang; Rumsfeld, of course, lost his defense against directing torture late last year. He is still awaiting sentence. He, and other of the Bush administration members, have been unable to travel out of the United States for fear of International arrest for war crimes; there was early question whether Obama’s signing on to the International Criminal Court in 2010 would retroactively include the former President and his staff, but those concerns were mostly put to bed by the wholesale profiteering charges leveled against the major players. One way or another, the piper will be paid.

Cheney, who [admitted his culpability] on illegal procedures in the last hours of the Bush regime, was saved from jurisprudence by leaving the planet in a box less than a year later; if he was mourned, it went largely unreported. He didn’t take his Halliburton profits with him, though, and his family was informed that their assets had been frozen until those books could be un-cooked — People vs. Halliburton is still in litigation.

Early estimates that Dubby’s Iraq war … the one he proposed the Iraqi’s themselves would pay for in oil shares … would shake out at a mere 2 trillion American bucks were optimistic; continued obligations to rebuild that nation, along with life-long health care to the tens of thousands of wounded service members have taken us to nearly double that amount, with no end in sight. International obligations, while not forgiven, have gone on hold until the economy can stabilize. Iraq, of course, has yet to take advantage of it’s vast oil wealth; the continuing Civil War there keeps that project in jeopardy.

The last of America’s combat troops exited in 2010 as the military budget gave out, leaving behind a devastated country and an embarrassingly large and badly-built Embassy. The only American soldiers on Iraqi soil at this point are those that accompany the international team of archeologists that are attempting to restore order to the destroyed digs and damaged treasures left behind by the Coalition of the Willing; even the jihadist’s have pledged their safety, in this goodwill gesture.

2009 saw a flood of information coming out of the archives indicating the details of Bush’s criminality; and although the White House itself showed no early interest in prosecuting, the Department of Justice has pursued several key issues on the behalf of the American public. Obama’s restoration of Rule of Law took the moral decisions out of government hands; laws were broken, justice awaits. Considering the continued ill-feeling from the international community, George W. Bush has not seen much forgiveness from the world he managed to bugger so thoroughly in these last years.

His library at Southern Methodist University in Texas, which was proposed as a think tank for liberty, saw construction at a snails pace in 2009/10 due to lack of private funding, and remains incomplete to this day. It’s reported that the former-First Lady spends most of her time in Dallas while Bush remains almost exclusively in Crawford. No formal separation has been announced, but it’s general knowledge that there is little but formality left in this marriage; Barney and Mrs. Beasley reside with Laura.

The Food Revolution
July 6, 2012

The Agra-explosion, practiced, at least in part, by some 58% of Americans as a 21st century version of the ‘victory garden,’ continues to grow by way of community gardening and ‘foodshed’ projects, permaculture institutes and produce cooperatives; back-to-earth groups flourish. Although the food riots of a few years back were brief, the warning was well taken by smaller communities accustomed to producing their own food; urbanites soon followed suit.

The number one best selling web-book today is “Grow With Us,” written by elderly sisters in Ohio who use their great-grandparents growing techniques to produce prolific yields. Greenies everywhere applaud the self-sufficiency skills espoused back in the hippy days by Mother Earth News and other back-to-nature periodicals; these ongoing e-publications continue to be very popular with residents in fast-growing green-belt communities, and can still be found in print versions.

Early fears that the nation would be forced to retreat into an agrarian culture proved a tad hysterical; but the mandatory four-day work week established early in ‘09 as an economic measure provided both time and need for such alternatives.

While a handful of national grocery conglomerates survive, local co-op’s and food centers thrive. Improved organic techniques along with natural pesticides have created not only a healthier nation, but one more connected with the source of their good.

In other Green news, a coalition of international environmental groups await a verdict in their suit against Monsanto for more than a decade of misrepresenting their bio-engineered seeds; still on the docket is the suit for cross-contaminating crops in struggling countries and the huge People vs. Monsanto law suit for the willful poisoning of the planet with PCB’s and other toxins.

The proof that these genetic time-bombs had contributed to the loss of bee populations brought public attention to the fight against Terminator Seeds. The enormous number of complainants against Monsanto sent a message to other conglomerates, who changed their protocols quickly. A good deal of progress has been made since food was declared a human right, and not a mere commodity.

Meanwhile, the USDA and FDA, nailed for the use of steroids and growth hormones in meat and dairy products which led to a slew of immune system ills still being decoded by the health community, have withstood their most recent internal audits and, once again, come out clean. Records found in the 2008 handover to the Obama administration sited the complicity of corporate giants like Wal-Mart, that swung their might against providers who chose to remain Green, nearly killing off the small entrepreneurial farms.

One up-side is that decrease in pollution and oversight of food production has authorities predicting a decrease in allergy-related issues in the coming decade.

Fever
August 9, 2012

The increased budget for scientific studies in these last years is turning out to be money well spent, but a little late. We’re always playing catch-up, due to the blind-eyed Bushian era. Climate change has encouraged the migration of many small critters and insects, worldwide, bringing longer transmission seasons of vector-borne disease to populations, both rural and urban, that lack immunity. This has been a larger problem in areas where there are no stable public health services to deal with the fallout.

The 2009 African epidemics of anthrax and cholera were exacerbated by unprecedented levels of rain, and ineffective government — the World Health Organization had projected that as a new norm, and it has proven so. The ramifications of climate change, including disease, starvation and natural disaster, have taken a toll on the world population; the Chinese earthquakes of 2010, and the rash of tsunami’s the year before had already drained international coffers, making rescue attempts less robust than hoped.

Still, progress continues to be made, and we have had encouraging reports in the last few months to tell us stabilization methods are working. Changes in the relief model, from large NGO’s to smaller, community-based organizations has helped to streamline assessment and delivery of goods and emergency services; thanks must be extended to the international policing efforts that have kept corruption minimal in third-world countries, and to oversight here at home that has effectively minimized cronyism. “Less is more,” has turned out to be truer than anyone thought; local, well-trained and funded groups can operate faster and more effectively in a disaster scenario than the giant air lifts of earlier decades.

Outbreaks of bird flu in China and India have remained local, thus far, but poultry continues to be carefully inspected in this nation, and flocking birds tracked and tested. Incidents of Mad Cow have all but halted since feed-lots were mandatorily policed, along with wide cattle testing. As well, the free-range movement has contributed to healthier, if pricy, options; more meat production is local now than has been available since the early 20th century.

In the US, an alarming increase in tick-related disease has the public in an uproar. The vaccine for tick/mosquito borne disease will become mandatory in the South and Midwest later in the month, and expand to the rest of the nation when supplies become available. The vaccine not only protects the victim but kills the host; years of successful use in bovine populations encouraged the CDC to promote rapid human studies. Already being used in Africa and Indonesia, no side effects from this long-needed vaccine are apparent at this writing.

This nation has managed to keep medical availability on an even keel, even during the economic collapse, thanks to early intervention by Health and Human Services Secretary Daschle and the increasingly cooperative American Medical Association, whose membership counts some 40+ % as members of the Hippo Rebellion. Those physicians who broke with Big Pharma and insurance-driven health models a few years back have put their (Hippocratic) oath to the test in providing quality care for patients with few resources, filling in short-term for the old Medicaid/Medicare programs, now called AFH — American Family Health. It has finally expanded to include all but those few who select a private, and increasingly expensive, carrier.

The service model, itself, seems to be contagious — for instance, statistics show an increase in medical students seeking a GP rather than a specialty, probably due to the success of Obama’s service requirements for college assistance. Many young people gravitated to service opportunities in the health arena, working as caregivers and assistants in their own communities while taking their initial studies on-line at home.

Early objections to this service modality by conservatives, who described it as forced labor, have largely been silenced by both the success of the program and the satisfaction of its participants.

Swallowing Their Own Tails
September 14, 2012

As you know, the surprise upset of the summer was Bobby Jindal’s nomination for Republican candidate; Huckabee and Palin split the Christianist vote, playing spoiler to one another’s ambitions. Jindal, an (East) Indian-American, is being touted as the Republican Obama. His win over his opponents has been credited to conservatives who no longer want to be branded with the Evangelical marker; it can’t possibly be for his governance in his home state.

A self-styled “reformer,” the Louisiana Governor set out almost immediately in ‘08 to make a national name for himself. He began a round of state visits to introduce himself as the first non-white to win Louisiana since the Reconstruction — he was absent from his duties so often that his own Senators referred to him as “that damned gadfly.” The racial chaos in his home state does not seem to have made him less popular there; perhaps because he’s done nothing to address it.

And speaking of reconstruction, Jindal served as a genuine thorn in the side of the groups that arrived for the Big Build-Out in New Orleans and the forgotten Gulf areas. Some say he planted his own ringers in the work force to sabotage progress, attempting to give Obama’s policies a black eye. For Bobby, conservative values still looks like obstruction to progress for the average citizen.

National numbers for this presidential race currently put Obama so far ahead of Jindal that only a Fundamentalist miracle will send him to Washington. The Evangelicals he might have counted on have split into camps based, again, on generations: the younger are not impressed with Jindal’s minimal environmental policies or his lethargic poverty programs. The older … well … they believe he Believes, but he’s still — you know — not “one of us.”

Bobby’s vivid Evangelical stories of laying on of hands and exorcism of demons has turned a few of their heads; still, for these national holdouts to whom race is an issue, in this contest it remains THE issue. One Southern gent told CNN, “It’s one thing for the Democrats to run a black — for us to do it just sticks in my craw!” Listening to some of these responses, you get the feeling they’ll be staying home on election eve and watching re-runs of In The Heat Of The Night.

Obama, by the way, is campaigning a few days a week; if he’s worried, he doesn’t show it. But then, when has he ever?

Water Babies
Oct 22, 2012

New numbers show that algae-based biofuel, nicknamed Glop, has taken the lead over other energy options; an infant technology last decade, Glop proved too costly to produce, but Mother Nature gave it a hand in recent years by permanently flooding many areas, rendering them unusable in traditional terms. The Glop-sters were able to increase both their harvesting sites and their production in these last years at an explosive clip.

The argument over bio-options came in early ‘09, when the corn being used as an alternative to oil became too dear a commodity to surrender. Alternatives from edible sources lost public approval quickly during the food riots of that year; farmers quickly found the food market even more profitable than the fuel industry, so it pulled back production for ethanol.

Algae, in all it’s gloppy glory, has no such limitation. It’s a perfect source for fuel, growing in brackish water, and now early kinks have been worked out, with improvements in solar technology stabilizing the water temperature concerns that limited initial production.

Another success story for Transition Green is the growing approval for the ‘green ocean solution,’ that takes advantage of ocean currents to provide for the electrical grid; the Great Lakes Energy Project has refined the technology and will be bringing a level of sustainable energy to much of the Northeast when it’s completed in 2014. Added to the solar efficiency that is beginning to allow citizens to sell their surplus, the outlook for optional energies looks bright this year.

The sunbelt states have progressed more quickly than colder climes, of course, but Obama’s early coalition with both Germany and Japan, who began their solar conversions in the early 21st century, gave a leg up to quick implementation of technology; photovoltaic cells and photoelectric panels are now both readily available and inexpensive. Both public assistance and incentive is available for those who cannot afford to reconfigure their energy use.

Retrofits, at this writing, are estimated at 38% of public buildings; private concerns come in more modestly, at 28%. A carrot for finding the sweat equity for conversion is the recent ruling that buildings meeting the Green Transition code can now offer a five-day work week to employees.

Reclaiming the Republic
November 1, 2012

Some of us remember President Obama’s early hope that he could work across the aisle to achieve a New Deal in this nation; bless him. Economic circumstances, of course, drove his early months much as they do today. The near bankruptcy of the treasury should have taken the wind out of partisan sails, but did not.

He was immediately successful in changing the tone in Washington and policing many of the inequities imposed by K Street demands, but Republican obstructionists, along with a handful of Blue Dog Democrats, made his first critical months more difficult and our recovery time lengthier.

Credit the American public, to whom emergency acted like accelerant, for hounding those who stood in the way of progress — activism, both on the ground and via the web, took a toll on those who impeded progress. Most who made the biggest waves did not survive the 2010 elections; and one of Senator Edward Kennedy’s last bills changed the rules of cloture, making filibuster a less general, more specific, congressional tool. We miss him.

Although Congress is the home to politics … and we all know about politicians … the change in how business is done on the House and Senate floor is encouraging. The congressional institution — one of the three pillars of the Republic, the others being the executive and the judiciary — has begun to take itself seriously, as watch dog for the commenwealth, its members as public servants and legislators.

When the seduction of pork and privilege disappeared along with fat budget numbers, the sense of emergency seemed to shake many of them awake at long last. The Ethics Committee responded to the Presidents strong recommendations to police itself slowly at first, but with increased enthusiasm; constituents at home demanded compliance. This last Congressional term has seen sweeping bipartisan legislation passed, including the popular anti-trust laws that regulate the reach of corporations and limit monopolies; this has earned them a new nickname — “the trust busters.” Their approval ratings are growing.

As well, Obama’s streamlined Department of Justice, reconfigured in ‘09 to realign with Constitutional directives, has increased its numbers to include personnel at newly established Federal Assistance satellite centers liberally scattered across the nation; the interpretation of Federal responsibility in protecting citizens against victimization by states, as originally intended in the Constitution, has promoted both more integrity in state legislation as well as civil responsibility on the part of the public. We’re beginning to trust government again; hard to believe, but true.

Obama continues to lead Jindal by a projected 30 points. Don’t forget to vote — as we’ve learned in this new century, it’s both a duty and a privilege … and this year, thanks to the Uniform Voting bill that eliminated the Diebold stranglehold and replaced it with a national database linking state e-voting centers, you won’t get a migraine waiting for results.

Give Peace a Chance
December 08, 2012

The long-awaited opening of the Peace Concourse at the site we called Ground Zero occurred this morning; originator of this popular project, Dennis Kucinich, cut the ribbons and pronounced his dream realized. The modest (by 20th century standards) but lovely new building will be home to the Department of Peace, and serve as an International Visitors Center as well.

The original intent for this building site, an ambitious new set of high-rise Towers, was buried in legal tangles throughout the last decade, and largely dissolved during the financial meltdown. The Peace Initiative of 2010 caught the imagination of school children, who sent their donations by the millions to claim the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack for such a purpose; philanthropists across the world assisted to complete the project.

President Obama was on hand to welcome the international group of celebrities and spiritual leaders that came to mark the occasion, including representation from both Israel and Palestine. His girls, Sasha and Malia, brought a group of DC school playmates to stand on stage. “This is why we come here, today,” Obama said, turning toward the children. “The possibility of a peaceful world is both our dream, and theirs. This is what we pass on to the future.”

The Department of Reconciliation will relocate to the top two floors. One wing will be dedicated to training Ambassadors to help eliminate domestic and international abuse; they will eventually serve to assist in the peace-seeking movement. Trainers are already standing by to provide the military with techniques in non-violent conflict resolution. The UN will maintain a satellite office at the Concourse, as well.

The ecumenical group, Spiritual Contract with America, will provide representatives of the many national religio/spiritual movements, both traditional and non-traditional, including Shintoists, Wiccans and Possibilitarianists; staff will be available to council groups in peace-making/keeping within their individual choice of belief system.

Although located far from the Capital, this government institution will closely orchestrate its activity with all other Departments, in that buttoned-down discipline known as the Obama model. Secretary Kucinich has already sent Peace Delegates across the globe to meet with foreign heads-of-state. He thanked the American public and the President for their support and vision in embracing what he called a ‘philosophical revolution.’

“Today we begin a change in the way we see ourselves,” said Kucinich. “We will transform our culture from one of competition and violence, and discover the way to prosperity and happiness through peace.” He received a standing ovation.

Talk of a National Day of Peace is building momentum; evidently, if you tell your kids about it, it’s a done deal. Can I get an Amen? ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.” ~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves