July 2008 archive

Amid skyrocketing oil, gasoline, coal, and electricity (coming to a neighborhood near you) prices, 2008 offers Americans quite serious and stark choices between knowledgeable, impassioned, and thoughtful candidates when it comes to finding paths toward a prosperous 21st century economy, on the one side, and Fossil-Fool candidates focused on tightening our shackles to the ever-more costly (pollution, financial, otherwise) and archaic oil-coal based energy system.

One of these choices comes in Oregon, where Speaker of the House Jeff Merkley against so-called “moderate” Republican Gordon Smith.  

Jeff was an easy choice for membership in the ranks of the Energy Smart Act Blue page. Join me after the fold for some indications as to why.

By now most every knows of the sad news, for the U.S. Military, of the 9 Americans Killed in the Afghan Attack, with 15 wounded as well as others at the firebase.

A more recent report can be found here, Afghanistan: ‘Hundreds’ attacked NATO base with their Story Highlights being:

**Afghanistan: Attack involved 400 to 500 militants. 9 American soldiers killed

**Attack was the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005

**NATO spokesman: “This was a larger scale attack than normal”

**Bomb kills 6 Afghan guards accompanying vehicle of U.S. private security firm

And many know the deaths of Afgans and Coalition forces occupying Afganistan, especially U.S. forces, has surpassed those in Iraq for several weeks now, even before the above attack.

From the wrong side of Culebra on San Antonio’s westside to inside Nuremberg walls.

A few years back I took a trip with some kinder to Deutschland. And there while doing due diligence watching o’ de flock of youngsters.  I took a stroll down to the square in front of the church.  I had wandered around and looked at the neato shops and liitle eateries on the inside of the great wall. Before that I had wandered the streets of Nuremburg, looking at the buildings that showed the obvious patches on the buildings with damage that the Allies had visited on the city and its people.

There in the square in front of the church was a group of small brown men.  There in some colorful feathered headdress the Mexican men stamped their feet and played on a flute tunes that belonged to the past or at least another mystical part of the ancient Mexico. Evoking some deep dark jungle and yet there amidst the old dark centuries old bricks that kept the German people inside from the outside, people were held captive by the spectacle, the noveltyof some short brown men from Vera Cruz reenacting an Aztec dance and ritual.

In fact he has rather explicitly asked that YOU save HIM.

When he asks for citizens to become involved in the political process, in his campaign, that is what he is asking you for.

Here is how our government works, and ….surprise!…. Obama knows this. Politicians are individual human beings, (surprise again!) individual human beings, even Obama, are not gods. We, each and every one of us, including Obama, are subject to temptation, failure of will in the face of adversity, and yes, corruption. Not dirty back room money under the table corruption, but corruption as a process, over time, that saps integrity and will.

Washington DC and the strange dances of culture, pressure, and politics there are literally MADE to corrupt. To put it cutely, they have a whole street there (named K) that exists for one reason, to corrupt public servants. There is the culture of the Senate, (need I say more Harry Reid?) there is the culture of The Villagers, the cocktail party culture…..and then their are the real bad guys!

And then there are your ‘friends,’ who just need a little favor, just need you to bend your principles a little bit just this once, to help them out. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Relentless and pervasive and designed to push every button of human weakness. This pressure has ‘corrupted’ nearly every politician that has gone to DC. This pressure is exactly why things are as they are, in our government that is allegedly by, for and of The People….but instead exists to serve the aims of the Powers That Be. The Powers That Be use that power to corrupt the system to serve their ends. Not yours, not mine.

And it works.

Obama’s FISA vote was as a result of these pressures. Who knows which one got to him…but one did.

That is why he needs YOU to save him.

This morning Marc Ash, Executive Director of Truthout.org, posted an open letter to Barack Obama. You can read the full letter at the Truthout site, but here is what I consider the salient parts of it.

Dear Senator Obama

Monday, 14 July 2008

by Marc Ash, t r u t h o u t

   Dear Senator Obama, I just slogged through a lecture by The New York Times about how it is the “far left” that is most offended by your vote to ratify retroactive immunity for the US telecommunications companies that provided aid and comfort to George W. Bush’s illegal program of domestic spying. Further, The Times implied, “mainstream Democrats” take a more mature and pragmatic view. The piece seemed to read like public relations material. But that’s silly – it was news, of course.

   In fairness, the political center moves around more than a set of goalposts on the White House lawn. So, the relevancy of the Times’s argument has a limited shelf life regardless. The real issue is twofold.

   Trust and the Law

   Let’s assume the time has come to limit the scope of your campaign signs to the word “Change.” The tag line “… we can believe in” has outlived its credibility. You may indeed change some things, but there won’t be much to believe in. It will pretty much be on a case-by-case basis from this point forward. The difference is trust. Before you had it, now you don’t.

   The problem is that what was at stake in the FISA legislation vote was more than a political ideal; it was the rule of law. You ratified an unconstitutional and egregious degradation of the Fourth Amendment. That won’t go away easily. The United States’s Constitution is not merely the security blanket for “civil liberties groups.” It is the birthright of all Americans. It is our national treasure.

   The thing that jumps out at me when I review the reader comments posted at the bottom of our article pages is the mounting outrage at what can only be described as lawlessness in our nation’s capitol. There is a growing consensus that the consent of the governed is lacking. That may not sound like a big thing, but I assure you it is. The alternative to the rule of law is the law of rule.

   The current commander in chief has established a function of monarchy in the oval office. Would you choose to undo that, or assume it? If the decision to ratify FISA was not your own inspiration, then at whose behest did you do so? And what next will they want? These are deep questions.

In fact he has rather explicitly asked that YOU save HIM.

Here is how our government works, and ….surprise!…. Obama knows this. Politicians are individual human beings, (surprise again!) individual human beings, even Obama, are not gods. We, each and every one of us, including Obama, are subject to temptation, failure of will in the face of adversity, and yes, corruption. Not dirty back room money under the table corruption, but corruption as a process, over time, that saps integrity and will.

Washington DC ad the strange dances of culture, pressure, and politics there are literally MADE to corrupt. To put it cutely, they have a whole street there (named K) that exists for one reason, to corrupt public servants. there is the culture of the Senate, (need I say more Harry Reid?) there is the culture of The Villagers, the cocktail party culture, and then their are the real bad guys!

And then there are your ‘friends,’ who just need a little favor, just need you to bend your principles a little bit just this once, to help them out. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Relentless and pervasive and designed to push every button of human weakness. This pressure has ‘corrupted’ nearly every politician that has gone to DC. This pressure is exactly why things are as they are, in our government that is allegedly by, for and of The People….but instead exists to serve the aims of the Powers That Be. The Powers That Be use that power to corrupt the system to serve their ends. Not yours, not mine.

And it works.

Obama’s FISA vote was as a result of these pressures. Who knows which one got to him…but one did.