And not in any particular odor (yes, some it stinks)

Obama is the new POTUS, and at least for awhile, the POTUS is the new cool. America is (mostly) happy. I think it is time to have some fun.

I have often been called a cynic, and am just as often asked why I am so damned skeptical. Let’s just start with these, to set the record straight.

NOTE: I used a Webster’s for almost all of this erudite research. Other sources noted as required.

Cynic: “Doglike”; a person who acts out of selfishness. I think it was Oscar Wilde who defined a cynic as “someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” This is not me. I know the cost of nothing because I have no money. I know the value of everything because I have so little of anything.

Skeptic: “Thoughtful; curious”. This is much higher on my list of endeavors. I think it helps to tone down my malice aforethought.

However, I have also been called a curmudgeon: This comes from the French, meaning “evil heart”. In today’s parlance, the definitions are” avaricious; churlish; miser; cantankerous”. I like the cantankerous part: it warms my evil heart. But to drive home my points, I must exhibit tenacity: to hold fast; adhesive; sticky; retentiveness. This may well explain why many of you so often implore me to “give it up”. I would say I am sorry, but you would all know I couldn’t mean it and it is not at all curmudgeonly.

On to the vocabulary business. Let’s begin with:

Bail-out. In earlier times, this phrase was meant to describe the act of bailing water OUT of a sinking boat. As applied to AIG, Chrysler, GM. Citibank, et.al. it seems to have become pouring more water back INTO the sinking boat. I think this is called an adverse action which has an inverse effect. And people who are in the money business were supposed to have gotten their feet wet long enough ago to know the better. But it will probably take a lengthy and expensive trial to determine who is actually at fault, and then a very large crane to raise the long-sunken boat, much like we pulled the Airbus 360 out of the Hudson.

Transparency: A recent and popular favorite if you are an Obamite (does obamite have a number in the periodic table of elements?). I know that transparency means that you are supposed to be able to see through the veil of secrecy and obfuscation afforded by government lackeys and bankers and lobbyists, but it is simply the wrong word. Let me just remind you that the plastic wrap you put over a dish of leftovers is transparent as well. It seals the packaged substances, keeps out fresh air and lets you put them away in the cold and dark of the fridge. But, even though you can see what’s in the package, you can’t touch the contents, it remains largely out of sight, can easily be forgotten and can grow moldy and of no further use. (Sounds to me, skeptic that I am, like some Senators I could name). The dictionary says that when something is “transparent”, it has been “uncloaked”. And, being so uncloaked, it becomes obvious: in the way as to be easy to see or understand; plain; evident. I would be very happy if the Obama gang would stop offering me transparent views and uncloak a few things, to make them easier to see, make them more plain and much more evident. If no one has noticed, the first $350B of the TARP program was so “transparent” that it completely disappeared behind a cloak of Bush-Cheney-Paulson-Bernanke smoke. Obvious also means to meet a certain criteria, and withstand or prevent obfuscation. I guess we missed that one. And I am not being cynical…I am being thoughtful.

Now here is a word that can open a delightful can of entomological worms: Perseverance. In its noblest of forms, this word means to continue on a given course in spite of difficulties and setbacks. The new Pres just loves this one. And so do the jubilant masses. However, in the midst of perseverance is “severe”, and I, in my thoughtfulness, don’t believe that most Americans grasp, in any realistic fashion, how severe matters are, economically, culturally and societally. And then the emotional cascade begins to form like this:

Despite the efforts to imbue (to soak; wet; to fill (the mind); permeate),

People will become disillusioned ( disenchanted, dismayed)

Because so much of the rhetoric and the slowness of the efforts will cause wide-spread dismay (removed from power; subdue; defeated)

And they will be unable to sustain (to uphold; keep in existence; prolong)

Because their enthusiasm and momentum will soon abate (to beat down; pull down; put an end to; to deject; lessen; diminish)

Because they have become dismayed (subdued, defeated).

All of which means they will have lost the fortitude to persevere. Well, crap. This is not what the forecast says.

Why the glum outlook, you may ask? Well, my thoughtful skepticism has moved me to uncloak the obvious, to peek behind the curtain of double-speak and to stop looking at the lack of transparency in the bail-out scenario, and to identify the absurd (clearly untrue; inconsistent with reason; contradicts obvious truth) influences which seem to dominate our day to day reasoning.

We are bombarded and assaulted by broken down ideologies and paradigms which promote apathy (from the Gr: to suffer; 1. lack of emotion;2.lack of interest; listless condition;indifference), which in turn results in an atrophy (to waste away; fail to grow, from the Gr: “To nourish”, hence, insufficient nourishment),and eventually societal entropy (available energy diminishes in a closed system, or a loss of energy available for useful work in a system undergoing change)[www.thefreedictionary.com/entropy]

Put simply, everything goes to hell and nobody gives a rat’s ass.

HOWEVER, once you have set out to identify these absurdities in our culture (and perhaps to measure your life by them, as I have begun doing), you can learn to be alert, responsive, reactionary and as vocally and openly objectionable as those who spew them. But first you must learn to be aware of the temptation to accept the temporal (transitory, temporary) nature of your daily intake of (largely useless) information and then resist the temptation to gravitate toward the immediately mind-numbing (atrophy causing) nature of the sensational (vague without reference to specific stimulus; external stimulation; sensation of happiness). Let me give you a few examples of what to watch out for:

The “bail-out” isn’t. There will be no miracle cure and pain will be in the offing. Any other understanding of the depth of situation is absurd.

Transparency isn’t transparent. It is merely an illusion of transparency designed to give you the sensation of happiness (see above). To believe that is to believe in the absurd.

Joe Biden says Americans should “work harder”. This is an insensitive and self-aggrandizing statement that befits an idiot looking for re-election. My friend Barbara has suggested that if he had said “greater participation”, it would have sounded better. As it stands, it is absurd. He should have asked us to persevere.

One prominent right-wing radio talker has called for the Obama administration “to fail”. This stretches the definition of absurdity to obscenely inappropriate behavior. No one needs this much sensationalism.

A Wall Street executive has just remodeled his office in an amount in excess of $1M. Citibank has just taken delivery a multi-million dollar private jet, manufactured in France. These are both absurd and obscene.

Nancy Pelosi has said that she has broken through the “marble ceiling” of Washington. No she hasn’t: if she had, her head would have broken open and she would understand more about America and its problems than she s does about being re-elected. Absurd.

Senate and House Republicans, after already having been given much more in tax-cuts in the “bail-out” than is warranted, are asking for even more. These cuts will go to the top fractional percentile of the populace who control a disproportionately large share of the national wealth. Go back and re-read the definition of absurd.

I could go on, but the “absurdity identifier framework” I have vocabularized (?) here can be applied to evaluate almost any news story or lightning bolt of information that comes your way. If you begin with the candid assumption that most news is both temporal and sensational to begin with (it sells), then you must first ask yourself if what you have just heard/read/seen will perpetuate (make lasting; enduring forever, indefinitely) an ideology or a paradigm that will cause apathy, atrophy and entropy, and then attempt to make a determination about why this person or organization was moved to say/broadcast/publish it (I think publishit should be a word). Examples:

John Boehner has said that the clause in the proposed “bail-out’ bill, which allocated health care money to help with unwanted pregnancies and family planning is simply millions of dollars for “contraceptives”. Absurd. He is perpetrating a baby-momma stereotype and wants to be re-elected by his religious right-wing constituents.

The right wing has suggested that re-funding the Pell Grants would be a waste of money. Absurd. Pell Grants make college education possible for the most unlikely of candidates from low-income families, like, say that of Barack Obama?

There are no “shovel-ready” projects. Absurd. How quickly did we re-build the collapsed bridge on I-35 in Minneapolis? I think the Republicans were about to have a convention, there.

I learned a new word this week, and “uncloaked” a new perspective on the non-transparency of another. Adventitious means accidental; extrinsic; not inherent. I am struck that most of the sensational (and therefore usually temporal) “news” that I get is adventitious. It comes from and is perpetuated by some one or some thing extraneous to the issue at hand. It usually serves to distract and disperse perseverance. It propagates eventual apathy, dismays and disillusions.

Anything said by Dana Perino: absurd. The jury is still out on the new guy.

A party-crashing Republican, at an Obama celebration party Barbara and I attended last Saturday, bowled me over. As the other guests around the room made toasts to the new administration and expressed optimism about the future, post-W, this man took the time to offer up a lengthy statement of praise for John McCain, because he had “served his country so well”. This was not only absurd; it was in extremely poor taste. If I had had a rope and tree…but that would have been absurd as well.

This leads me to the word most closely allied with Transparency: accountability. I fear this is more cloak and swagger. Accountability is wholly dependent upon those who do the accounting, and we all know that ‘Figures lie and liars figure”: Think ENRON. As the great bail-out debate rages on, and transparency is seen not be, all I can say is that what you think you see may not be what you will eventually get, and it most certainly will not be what you thought you paid for.

Please do not ask me why I offered no definitions for ideology or paradigm: I was just too apathetic to look them up.

Please remember: I am not being cynical here, just skeptically thoughtful. Isn’t that absurd?

The lecture I referred to in that blog, on mid-first millennia history, revolving mostly around misunderstandings about the cooperation of Muslims and Jews during that time, was in fact presented by Mr. Roy Casagranda, an Assistant Professor of Government at Austin Community College, here in Texas. Barbara forwarded the blog entry along to him, and he was kind enough to respond, in true “professorial” style, with a variety of comments and corrections. I re-print them for you here. At the end I will make several feeble attempts at explanation, clarification, justification and other forms of excuses for my (almost) inexcusable behavior:

I caught a couple of typos. I made the corrections in brackets below.

Europe ({i}n both beneficial and despicable ways), through it{’}s deft manipulation of money and power, and was then pushed further along after the

Aramco was the Arabian American Oil Company until 1988 (today it is called Saudi Aramco). Nothing to do with Farsi.

Shah is spelled with an ‘h’ not a ‘w’.

The US never lifted a hand to stop the Holocaust. We refused to accept escaping Jews from Nazi occupied Europe, unless they had technical skills that we wanted. IBM sold Hitler the census data containing all the information on who had Jewish ancestry, including hundreds of thousands of Christians who had no Jewish identity. And throughout the massive bombing campaign that reduced nearly every single city in Europe to rubble (Prague, Rome, Heidelberg, and Paris were more or less preserved) not once did a bomb fall on a concentration camp, on a death camp, nor upon the railroads leading to them. The US might have wanted to fight WWII, but not to save the Jews.

The time period at the bottom is off. Islam came about in 610 AD. The Arabs began conquering an empire in 633 AD. That amicability lasted even through the Crusades to the Contemporary Period. It fell apart a bit when the Mamluk seized Egypt, it was brought back a bit when the Crusaders joined the Arabs in the Battle of Ayn Jalut when the Mongols were defeated for the first time in 1260 AD (first battle to ever have a cannon by the way). The intolerance that we see today did not really start to implant itself (with one major exception Egypt from 1250 to 1517) until after the British, Italians, Spanish, and French carved up the Middle East between 1830 and 1920. The real event that caused Islamic intolerance and religious strife was the creation of Israel and then the subsequent perception that Israel was Europe and the US’s new Crusade.

The last sentence seems to use Arab as a term for Muslim. Remember that Arabs are Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.

My turn:
First of all, I finished writing this diatribe at two in the morning. That there were only two immediately noticeable typos is a miracle. I do take exception to the business of using an apostrophe with the word “its”. The jury is still out on the when, if and maybe about when that can and should be used. My apologies to the Shaw: I was thinking of him mostly in terms of “oh.pshah”, anyway, for all the good he did the people of Iran. And you can spell Aramco (Ameriramocomobilxon?) however you see fit. The English-Arab translation still means, “I have most of your money and you don’t”. And the line about Farsi was just a thrown in for cynicism: most of what has happened since the formation of this venture has been farcical. Get it?

On a more serious note, I certainly stand corrected on the historical data: that is why Prof. Casagranda is a professor and I’m not. However (and I say this because if he saw it this way, then perhaps you did, too) I never meant to imply that the U.S. went into or vowed to fight/win WWII for the sake of or because of the Jews and the Holocaust. Sadly, that was probably an ugly and impossible-to-ignore aftermath of that war. The U.S. overlooked much, as did many other countries and races, until the horror had become unspeakable. The U.S. did, however, enter the European theatre as much to buck up Great Britain, and France and to no doubt worry about the future of mid-east oil, especially after Hitler went after North Africa. I still tend to believe that most of the western world, after being on a binge-like spree of militarism after the war, and led by the “great victor” the U.S., was prompted to settle the European Jewish survivors where they are today, for most of the reasons I stated in the original blog. Hence, my conclusion that that Bill Moyers was (and is) wrong, and that the conflict today is not between the Jews and the Canaanites of the books of the Old Testament.

Whether I can prove it or not, I still contend that after WWII, most of the western world, even after the Crusades were long over, still felt it could do with the eastern world pretty much what it willed. That is why you have the British provincial regionalization of Iraq, the Shaw of Iran and the western financial institutions thinking they had the Saudis in their back pocket. That was, of course before, Japan brought us the Toyota, the Chinese grew to several billion people and learned how to copy anything and bubble-wrap it, and the Saudis leaned how to spell OPEC.

Professor Casagranda’s last correction points out probably the most serious error in the entire piece: being an Arab does not automatically mean you are Muslim. Arabs can be Muslim, Jewish or Christian. But in my own defense (and I do sincerely apologize for that blunder), I went back and watched the Moyers’ piece again, and at the end of his commentary he made the same mistake. So although I am indeed guilty, I am in good company!

Update: That initial blog posting was done over a week ago, and the blatant atrocities in Gaza continued. Here are a few more recent observations from Prof. Casagranda:

Day 22

Death Toll 1,203
Wounded 5,400

I have included the Gaza, Texas map with locations bombed by Israel. Eastern Gaza City south of the Jabaliya concentration camp has really gotten a lot of attention from Israel.

Israeli suggestions of a ceasefire are merely a rouse. They will do it unilaterally without solving any of the underlying problems such as the 18 month long siege of Gaza. So Hamas will have no choice but to fight back. That will then allow Israel to say, “Oh my G-d, look at those terrorists.” Then they will strike back and continue the massacre.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Roy Casagranda wrote:
Death toll 1,159 and 5,200 wounded.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/13/catastrophically_misguidedincomprehensible_policy_renowned_jewish_playwright

On a personal note the talk with the Jewish American Zionists has probably already fizzled. An email was sent today by one of the key Zionists that basically shut the door. I have not completely given up and so we will likely meet again next week, but it seems that there is nowhere to go.

Hamas was democratically elected. Was isolated and blockaded by Israel with US support. Offered to enter into a coalition with Fateh, which it did not need to do. Stopped firing rockets into Israel for four months, until Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in November. Israel will not recognize Hamas.

Arab Summit: Mahmoud Abbas could not go to the Arab Summit in Doha, Qatar, because he did not get permission from Israel in time, but Hamas made it.

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:33 PM, Roy Casagranda wrote:
Below are two links to my lecture on Saturday the 10th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udqczt149iI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRcaQcqE5w0

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Roy Casagranda wrote:
Day 21
1105 Dead. 5,100 wounded.

I have included a map to give people an idea of how big the Gaza Strip is. Austin has a 1,000,000 people. Gaza has 1,500,000.

My own thoughts run like this:

One: I am hearing today that the Israelis are pulling out (conditionally) from Gaza, completely coincidentally with the inauguration of Barack Obama. They seem to feel that with G.W. Bush and Condi “I am a shill for the MSM” Rice out of the picture, they have no idea what kind of support or cooperation they will get from the U.S., as their ugly and despicable behavior continues. I find this course of action to be a bald and two-faced cowardly and (pardon the expression) “niggardly” manner of politics which is most inexcusable and reprehensible. I hate to sound crude, but on Jan. 20, Washington D.C. had ten balls and the Israelis seem to have none. If they do not feel that they can get approval to play with their (our) F-16’s, they won’t play at all.

Two: Mr. Engel, of MSNBC.TV, just reported that nearly as soon as the Israeli aggression stopped in Gaza, and the troops withdrew, work began immediately to clean up and re-open the supply tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. Aside from the mention that this will enable Hamas to “re-arm” (firecrackers and smoke bombs?), the report stated that Egyptian vendors and merchants night profit from this endeavor. I think Bart Simpson would simply say ,“Doh”. It sound to me like good old-fashioned capitalism (war profiteering?) which remains a mainstay of American economic policy. Once again, it is OK if we do it, but if someone else does, it is a crime.

Thanks to Prof. Casagranda for whipping me into shape with the corrections. But I still reserve the right to be disgusted, indignant and ashamed of the entire affair. Not to mention much aggrieved by the deaths of those civilians who never fired a rocket at anyone.

Most alarmingly, the world is now into the third week of mutually escalated and uniformly deplorable genocide in the Gaza strip (or what is left of it). This deadly and insidious game of, “I’ll see your two rockets and raise you a 100 tons of TNT” has reached, exceeded and then exceeded again, all humanely unimaginable levels of wanton death and destruction. The pundits, the correspondents (who can maybe get in and maybe back out), the politicians, the war strategists and the “world leaders” argue, debate, disdain and abstain when it comes to making or offering as any lasting solutions, fruitful ideas or enduring truce proposals. Many on both sides of the conflict are hardened and re-hardened to obdurate positions on the death of the other, and just as many throw up their hands in an act of exasperation and a mental resoluteness about the needless carnage, claiming “historical” precedent, and therefore hopelessness. . I have not heard so many lame-brained excuses for disgusting behavior in my adult life.

Although I referred to this situation “neo” in the title, there is nothing neo about how the world is viewing this hideous conflagration. And “retro” is only a wishful way in which to dismiss the problem and I double-dare you to find anything visionary about any of it.

I just finished watching Bill Moyers (You-Tube, on Salon) speak eloquently (as he always does) about the historical and biblical underpinnings of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. He quoted the Old Testament, and remarked that the words of Moses, which once stressed, “Thou shalt not kill” had been replaced by the use of phrases designed and selected to create an unseemly enmity between Jews and Caananites. And with all due respect to Mr. Moyers, he has missed a few historical and cultural links, and so have the rest of us. In our Neo-Retrovision of today, we have taken convenient, easy and gap-laden thought paths to understanding the causes beneath what has been taking place.

I have come to this conclusion only after being recently re-educated and also being inadvertently alerted to a revised viewpoint by an unlikely informant. If I had not just been to a lecture that refreshed my memory about early Islamic behavior and then seen Newt Gingrich on “Meet the Press”, I wouldn’t be writing this now. Please do not ask me how I got from early Mohammed to Gingrich. Beats me.

During the middle portion of the first millennium A.D., during the rise and growth of Islam, there was considerable dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. They were (and prompted as much by the Islamists as anyone), to be respectful to and knowledgeable about one another’s respective religious beliefs. According to the history I know, there was at least as much reverence for the “prophet” Jesus as there was for Mohammed and a good deal of Muslim respect (ala Mohammed and his followers) for the history and traditions of Judaism. There was some degree of peace and fraternalism (harmony) during this time, but not many people seem to know this (I went to a “Christian” theological seminary, and most, if not all, of these details were glossed over). Then, on the morning of 9/11 (the ’09 one, not THAT one) I heard Mr. Gingrich sum up the general attitude about the Arab-Israeli conflict by stating, repeatedly, that after nearly every contemporary discussion of the quandary, the uniform response by the Arab world is . “Fine, Let’s just wipe Israel off the map.” Somehow, none of the “conventional wisdom” elements fit together any more. Alas, the mid-east conflict and America’s “war on terror” are close ideological cousins, both afflicted by and with a lack of information and historical perspective. This gives most of us a myopic lens through which to view the world as we think we know it today.

Sometime between the time the Roman Emperor declared Christianity the religion of the realm (the world), the time of the crusades and prior to the 20th century, the Hebrew religion had become eclipsed by Christianity and largely unknown and misunderstood Islamic culture of the middle east. The Catholic Church (I’ll make some people angry, here) came to dominate Europe (n both beneficial and despicable ways), through its’ deft manipulation of money and power, and was then pushed further along after the Protestant reformation. Christianity of course spread to the New World, where “freedom of religion” became an abused freedom to create and propagate right-wing, sectarianism. Morally obtuse groups who have managed to insert God in to the pledge of allegiance and conveniently and almost completely obliterate the original intentions of the founding fathers (that being to keep this from being Christian nation, at all costs). Apparently the costs were ultimately too much for anyone to bear and today Pat Robertson has his own TV show and Bill Graham has been the unofficial protestant pope of the United States for most of the last century. Judaism, on the other hand, settled into a small minority position amongst the religions of the world and existed largely unnoticed, un-nurtured and not of much concern to the world population, in general.

Meanwhile, Islam flourished in the middle-eastern portion of the world, despite the bloody and futile efforts during the Crusades to stamp it out. The Christians regarded the Muslim worshippers as “infidels”, and the Muslims thought likewise of those “Jesus people”. For some period after the end of the crusades, Christianity and Islam settled into a peaceful co-existence, but one nonetheless tainted by mutual suspicion.

Here is what I think happened, and why “neo-retrovision” might be one stilted way in which to look at the mess we have today.

First of all, over some period of time, and I think in large part due to both Catholic and Protestant Christian arrogance, the western world assumed an undeserved and unwarranted superiority in their vision over the other religions of the world, and not just to the exclusiveness of Islam. Why else would Christian churches (and especially those from the US) spend as much energy and money to send missionaries around the world to make converts? (Have you ever read about the Spaniards and the Aztecs, the Spaniards and the Mayans? The Spaniards and the native peoples of the American southwest and California? The priest has long been seen as the soldier of pacification. And for George W, Bush and most Republicans, at least in this century, the terms “Democracy” and “Christianity” have been inter-changeable.). The Crusades set a precedent for all of this. The rapid simultaneous spread of self-granted piety, mixed with financial gain and political power, caused Christianity to rampage it’s way through the Western world and believe itself to be a supreme way of life and thought. It is odd how Christians morphed from turning the other cheek to “My God is better than your God”.

Let me back up and remind you that during this time, while Christians were wont to ignore Muslims, Judaism grew less influential, less noticeable, less visible and easy to ignore.

But also during the years following the crusades, Muslims were having an understandably difficult time forgetting that they had been regarded as savages and infidels, that their one true prophet had been repeatedly maligned, and their homelands ravaged, raped and robbed of the their treasures and their history. An enmity against the western, “Christian” world was apparent, inevitable and growing. Both of these great world forces of faith had become irreversibly hostile and bigoted toward one another…and almost without any significant input from the Jews themselves. The two most optimistic and formerly peace-imbued faiths of the known world had come to hate and despise one another.

The two large sacks, each containing one of the two largest sets of religious tenets in the world, had been picked up and shaken violently, then dumped out on the plane of human existence. In so doing, the essential messages of harmony had been exchanged for violent discord.

Then along came (not necessarily in order of appearance): U.S. Manifest Destiny(Imperialism), oil, Hitler, oil, The Holocaust, oil, WWII, oil, 1948 and the Exodus, The United Nations, oil, Aramco, Israel, modern politics, world-wide monetary expansionism, oil, modern warfare technology, oil and post-war, oil-burdened guilt. And of course, the re-emergence of Judaism as a focal point for world views and fundamental religious intolerance. It seems that everyone needs some one or some thing to dislike. Intensely.

Yes. I know this is humongously overly simplistic: so is right-wing, findamentalist Christian thought and sectarian Islamic hate rhetoric. Get over it.

Once the United States got the complete hang of the notion that it (mysteriously) had the God-given, politically democratic and financial might and right to rule the world, it almost simultaneously realized that this dominance was not possible without oil. Then it was realized that the world’s greatest reserves of oil were in places like Saudi Arabia. Nothing so geographically inconvenient like that had ever stopped the U.S. before, and would not have, either, except that centuries of abject treatment of Muslims had made them suspicious and wary, and Hitler had declared that all Jews (no matter how inconsequential) were the scourge of the earth. While that psychopathic ideologic perversion gripped much of Europe, the U.S identified two apparent realities: First, the U.S. could not (if it were indeed as sanctimonious as it claimed) let the Jews of the world be exterminated, and second, the U.S. could never lay claim to all of that oil in Saudi Arabia if Hitler got control of the world, with or without Jews. Clearly this could not be allowed to go on.

To make a long story short, the U.S. rallied and won the world war, Hitler ( and Mussolini and the those unscrupulous Japanese) were defeated (until we needed Italian silk suits and Toyotas), the war was ended, the United Nations was formed and the Jews who had escaped the Nazis and the camps were given the state of Israel. Israel was seen as the West’s foot in the door to middle east oil, Aramco was formed to blend the English language and farsi and progress was on the march. Somehow, however, everyone missed the inevitable trouble that would be caused by arbitrarily placing the State of Israel smack in the middle of Palestine. Oops.

I know I am leaving out the intermediate and ongoing wars between Israel and it’s neighbors, the Shaw of Iran and his overthrow, the wars in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan and SDI and Osama Bin Laden and the Bushes and the Saudis and 9/11, but there is only so much I can write about in one article.

The State of Israel, however, by default, and as a result of all of this, became the step-child and surrogate bully (adopted their own version of Imperialism) for the U.S. in the middle east. In subsequent years, the Israelis have benefitted (?), year after year, from generous monetary support and a steady supply of the best armaments and weaponry the west could ill-afford to give it. As a consequence, virtually all of the enmity between Christians and Muslims was transferred to an enmity between Jews and Muslims, which was all complicated and exacerbated by plunking the Jews down in land appropriated from the Palestinians without so much as a “Thank you very much”. Sadly, the arrogance of eminent domain and entitlement (an American tradition:Imperialism) has been completely absorbed and put into play by the Jewish state. When those counterproductive ideologies from the Muslims and now the comtemporary Jewish state are combined, you have the Gaza strip. Viola’! Meanwhile. Americans really, really wish that gasoline would stay at around $1.50/gal and there is a new kid of the block named “Opec”. Oh boy.

So I think we have this largely wrong. The Muslims are justifiable angry (to a certain extent) because the Christians have been trying to shoot their camels, urinate in their couscous, appropriate their land and swipe their olive oil and oil for as far back as anyone can remember, and their extremist elements have taken up the arms available to them from the modern world, in protest. The Israelis have been given (and happily, it seems, taken up) the mantle of non-Christian, un-Christ-like, Christian omnipresence and chosen to impose themselves on the Palestinians, using western firepower. In their extremism, they are acting like southern Baptists with shotguns. And almost everyone (including the right reverend Bill Moyers) and chosen to blame it all on Deuteronomy. Hogwash.

This Neo-Retrovision is wrong in its perception and reasoning. When I was a trainer/teacher, I used to talk to my students about the meaning of the word “rapport”. It comes from a Greek word meaning to “re-establish harmony”. Not in a very long while have I felt the need to communicate this message so clearly as I do right now. Our glimpse back at history, circa 350—500 A.D., tell us that there was sufficiently amicable relations between two major groups of monotheists for peaceful coexistence (harmony), and war and oil, oil and war, racism, bigotry an shallow thinking have disrupted it and transferred the animosity from culture to culture with deleterious results. The world is doing a poor job, just now of “re-establishing harmony”.

The Muslims need to reign in their extremists and go back and re-read the portions of the Koran that instruct them to be merciful, peaceful understanding and (pardon the expression)’ Christlike”. The Israelis need to stop acting like Missouri Synod Lutherans with a Torah chip on their shoulders and stop being the de- facto surrogate bullies for the unfounded hatred of Islam borne by Americans. And the Americans need to stop putting them in that position and giving them F-16 fighter-bombers. In what other country I the world could you have a lobbying group like AIPAC? In the end, I think we must fault, at least in part, ferocious, pious American Christian anti-Muslim sentiments for fostering Israeli aggression.

I have concluded (you can think as you want to) that this no longer has so much to do with biblical wars and rumors of wars (I used to think that), but rather much more with modern idolatries, a lust for oil and absurdly inappropriate moral high grounds which have, in turn, been also inappropriately purloined by Arabs, Christians and Jews alike. Allah, God and Yahweh must all be chagrined.

I got this from the “Free Dictionary”, on-line:

Acronym/Definition SAMAH: Stichting Alleenstaande Minderjarige Asielzoekers Humanitas (Dutch)

It is also the name of a mid-east hookah restaurant and lounge in the Wrigleyville area of Chicago.

I have NO IDEA what the Dutch phrase means, and I doubt the Israelis do either.

And I have never been to the restaurant in Chicago and doubt any Israelis have either.

Neither explains why the Israelis are intent upon bombing the hell out of the Gaza strip or why the US delegate to the United Nations abstained from voting on a resolution to stop the genocide/fratricide/homocide/infanticide going on there.

I don’t care which “cide” you are on, this is just plain wrong. .

For a very long time now, I have lamented, railed against, screamed about and been oftentimes completely incensed by the (almost impossible to ignore) fact that the United States of America has been and is being run by gray-haired, old men, in expensive suits (Barack Obama excepted, although I hear the gray hair thing is already started.). Bill Clinton and George W, Bush, our two most recent top dogs, didn’t start out their tenures with gray hair, but would you look at them now! Wow!

A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?

As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).

The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).

However…

(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)

Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.

I think it all began

Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.

Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…

Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.

I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx

Then we got this:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/

Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).

I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)

And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.

I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.

I never read The New Republic, and would never had seen this, if it were not for David Brooks in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02brooks.html?th&emc=th

“The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a559152f-70db-4183-8a8e-ed818ce6df7c

Happy New Year(s).

With no television, I cannot watch Christ Matthews yell and spit at his guests or Rachel Maddow crucify Rick Warren (again). The shortage of political firewood (Blago is asleep, Obama is in Hawaii) since Sarah Palin went away makes it tough, because no one wants to hear about the mundane realties of urban hunger or listen to another “expert” tell us why our economic conundrum sucks. But life must go on. And one more re-hash about why some Wall Street CEO thinks he deserves his multi-million dollar bonus and I will vomit. But anyway…

The economy: Today (12/28) the NYT had a new op ed from Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) in which he quotes and defends his use of the phrase:”niggling nabobs”. He essentially concludes that if you listen to all of the experts, you will, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that “nobody knows nuthin’ “. In the same newspaper, Thomas Friedman speaks up (Op-Ed Columnist: Win, Win, Win, Win, Win … ) and while I think he makes some good points about the (needed) gas tax hikes, I have heard dissenting remarks from others who think he has got much of it wrong. You decide. All I know is I don’t “know nuthin’ “ except that somebody ran off with all the money.

I got this in an email from NOWAR (http://ThirdCoastActivist.org) this afternoon:

Hello, all. Over the weekend Israel has killed over 300 Palestinians and wounded at least 900 more with F-16 jets and Apache helicopters supplied by the United States. Anger at this assault has ignited spontaneous demonstrations in many cities, including Austin, where a protest called by UT’s Palestine Solidarity Committee will take place at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 29 in front of the State Capital (11th and Congress). To read more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the complicity of the United States, and the broader historical context visit http://electronicintifada.net

The home pages of MSNBC.com and the BBC have been covering this firestorm and violence all day as well.

I am baffled about who to blame and why. Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister say the whole thing is the fault of Hamas for pitching rockets over the walls into Israel after breaking a truce. Hamas says it should be expected, since Israel won’t allow humanitarian food stuffs and medical supplies into Gaza. So Israel retaliates against the rockets with several hundred tons of bombs and kills at least 300 people right out of the box. The word “overkill” comes to mind.

However, I think this is all an environmental problem. Or rather a problem of environmental disruption. Perhaps we keep forgetting to remember that Palestinians and Israelis were both once nomadic desert warriors. They shared the sand, the sun, camels and brutality. Their morality was determined largely by desert survival. As the centuries progressed, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and (eventually) arrogant Protestant democracy got mixed in there and now these two camps live in artificial walled cities. They still hate one another for a thousand thousand wrong and bigoted, short-sighted reasons and religious tenets, but their environments have been altered to maximize the terror they can inflict upon one another. They are now walled-in and have much better and more lethal weapons to use against each other (perhaps if they were forced to hack one another to bits with scimitars and hurl camel dung back and forth at each other things would slow down). There is nothing new in their brutality: they brought it with them from the desert. They are just much more efficient in how they can go about slaughtering one another in this new environment. It is very much akin to the economic “experts” Krugman decries: “Nobody knows nuthin”.” And nobody wants to be confused by the facts. Pardon my use of the phrase, but when it comes to the use of logic, it appears that both sides can only say, “God forbid”.

The Mid-east has high-powered explosives; Wall Street has loan default/debit/credit swaps covered by a TARP. In either case, the result is dead bodies and rubble.

ThinkProgress.org is having great fun (as are the readers) with the fact that it looks like the Bush “libery” will be a “white elephant”. It seems that many of the restrictive directives that Bush has issued will prevent many of the materials that should be in a presidential library from actually being there, making it largely an empty building. But that is to be expected as we endure the attempts by the administration to make “valedictory” (say what?) speeches and to rush to artificially create W’s “legacy”. You can read about the legacy efforts anywhere you might care to look, but I can create only this one dominant image:

A legacy, something that one leaves behind, trailing after him/her following their time in the leadership limelight, should be at least somewhat noble and awe inspiring. But when I close my eyes, all I see is W leaving a stall in the men’s room, with a long “trail” of toilet paper, dangling from the back of his pants, following him down the hall. And he has made it clear he has no intention of looking back. So be it.

The related not-very-new news today was that both Condi Rice and Laura Bush gave separate TV interviews and defended the Bush leadership record. Condi gave him an A+ (she must be smoking crack) and Laura Bush said , “history will tell”. It sure will. So be it. And I hope he will be “it” soon, so can all tag him and run away. There is sad irony in the fact that at the end of W’s “reign” his two most prominent Sunday morning apologists are two women, both devoid of a sense of the real world and devoted to perpetrating lies.

“Hi. My name is Dick Cheney, and I’m here to help you”. That is written on the toilet paper. The stuff legacies are made of.

We are but three days from a new year. In the absence of a television, I am rummaging through my CD collection for entertainment. I have just heard singer/songwriter Steve Goodman go on with great eloquence about the fact that, no matter how bad or gruesome or awful that which has gone before us has been, every year on Jan 1 we get the chance to begin anew. And country singer Gretchen Wilson just warbled that she was “one Bud wiser than I was a minute ago.” Perhaps in three days we will all acknowledge Steve’s admonishment to begin anew and be like Gretchen, “one Bud Wiser”.

I don’t know if that will keep any bombs from bursting over head in Gaza, make our economic experts any smarter or keep money out of he hands of some Wall Street tycoon. , but it might be a start. It would certainly be better than “nobody knows nuthin” and “one Bud wiser” would be better than none. Of course, things could get worse, but “God forbid”.

Happy New Year.