By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

With Mercury doing it’s regularly scheduled moonwalk, providing us an illusion of backwards motion, things seem to have slowed to a stroll. On various levels, we appear to have hit that sweet spot of indecision, glad to rest there awhile. In the best of retograde tradition, this can give us a time out, an opportunity to re-think. Decisions made during a retro are subject to revision, so its best to put them off for awhile longer, if possible. Sometimes it isn’t.

The heat is on. In northern Alaska and northwestern Canada, snow melted so rapidly that it caused serious — and unexpected — flooding. In India, where the temperature hit 120 this week, thousands of tankers have been secured to bring water to over 4,000 villages facing shortages. The death toll is closing in on two thousand, and the population is suffering dehydration and heat stroke, not to mention loss of animals and crops. This is occurring in Southern India, bordering Pakistan, but heat is already affecting the Himalayan foothills and quickly inching north toward more populous areas. Unhappily, meteorologists report that expected monsoon rains may be delayed by weather in the Pacific, exacerbating suffocating heat and drought conditions.

People are flocking to rivers and lakes in an attempt to cool themselves, although those of us accustomed to sanitation may consider that a perilous act in itself. HBO’s investigative news program, Vice, recently did a raw and disturbing piece on the human waste running through the streets of Mumbai, and the inability of millions of citizens to access safe drinking water. Fewer than half of India’s residents have indoor plumbing, and to say the waterways are fouled is an understatement, as dramatically illustrated here and here.

Flipping the coin, emergency services in Texas have been hard pressed to handle the rescue requests coming from 24 counties declared a disaster from severe storms, flooding, and tornadoes. Oklahoma has also had its share of flooding, although their death toll is not so dramatic; 20 of the 26 perished are from the Lone Star State, with an additional 13 missing.

Suffering moderate drought conditions prior to this wave of weather, which has dropped some 37 trillion gallons of water, lakes and streams are — barring additional weather emergency — not projected to return to normal until July. Considering this almost instantaneous turn-around, I rethought my desire to share some of the continual rainfall Missouri has suffered/enjoyed (depending on your point of view) with my California family and friends. You know: sometimes too much of a good thing, yadda.

Among those tragically lost in the extreme flooding was a Texas prom queen, on her way home from the dance. I found myself wondering if the locals knew they’d offered her up in sacrifice to their proud embrace of their Petroleum God, but then I ran across an article about the Texas governor signing a bill that prohibits cities and towns from banning hydraulic fracking. This technique was pioneered in Texas, by the way, with most of Texas crude coming from fracked wells. I expect them to stick with the JR Ewing mindset until the bitter end. The God of Oil remains well cared for.

Texas being Texas, the state we’re constantly warned not to mess with, the governor was reluctant to ask ‘big guv’mnt’ for a hand, even though the damage to Dallas-Fort Worth was extensive. They probably didn’t want to hear Obama declare, as he did when finally asked for assistance, that resources were available for response and that rebuilding would be a lengthy process, adding that the floods are a reminder that the nation needs to “toughen its response” to the disasters coming with climate change.

This is a concept no more welcome to conservative Texicans than those snotty un-American Advanced Placement History tests developed by elitist lefties to poison the minds of their children, but at least the Prez didn’t rub salt in the wound by mentioning the super El Niňo that promises even more mayhem. If you’re planning a vacation this year, you might want to check out this article posted on Kos. And because things can change on a dime, you might want to make it a series of long weekends or short trips.

The good news in all of this is that communities come together in a non-partisan fashion at times like this, responding with their humanity rather than their ideology, and whether we realize it or not, that lights up the planet. In Texas, volunteers are roaming through neighborhoods assessing damage and reporting debris, which in some cases towers over 20 feet high. People are still being evacuated from their homes, and community organizations are gathering resources to come to the aid of those in need.

In Nepal, where remote villages are still not accessible and helicopters are in short supply, OXFAM America — a well-respected charity group — has hired unemployed mountain guides and porters to help deliver relief. This is also a reminder that fall-out from natural disasters does not disappear over night, but requires weeks, months, even years of determined assistance from a concerned world.

In the political arena, little definitive happened this week, with Congress, happily, at recess. They will be called back early to deal with the Patriot Act on Sunday, although that too will occur under the retro, and will likely have that unsettled, unfinished quality we’ve come to expect — the kind that comes back later to nip your heels.

The 2016 election frenzy now includes more names on the Republican list of potential candidates, but no new ideas — except for blow-hard Donald Trump, who tells us he knows how to stop ISIS in their tracks, but won’t go into it. Trump and wee Lindsey Graham, who gets more bizarre by the moment, are still ‘leaning in,’ not quite ready to pronounce themselves serious contenders. Pataki and Santorum, on the other hand, now join more than 20 other conservatives trying to carve out a place for themselves in the Top Ten (the only ones that will be formally invited to debate).

Carly Fiorina — yes, the same Carly that called the Chinese unimaginative and Hillary Clinton unaccomplished — believes that environmentalists are responsible for a “man-made drought” in California. And Jeb, whose older brother even acknowledged climate change as a real problem with real consequences, thinks the science still isn’t in — but apparently the money is. This weekend, Jeb will be enjoying a golf and fly-fishing retreat fund-raiser with donors from the coal industry, at $7,500 a head.

On the left, Hillary is still mulling things over, Bernie is getting — better than first reported by Jon Stewart — a closer look and new response from a public that considers anything “old” or “socialist” a throw-away, and according to the Baltimore Sun, Maryland ex-Governor, Martin O’Malley, will be announcing today. All three are committed to action in terms of climate change. On the Republican side of the fence, none of them are. That tells the tale.

I’ve got news: money and power are NOT more important than survival! I write this under flash-flood alert, expecting another round of heavy thunderstorms this evening. Tornadic action has been spotted on the eastern edge of Oklahoma (tornado alley, the flight path of the Joplin disaster), the kind that can “develop in an instant.” There are no sirens out here in the country, no warning except through radio and television, although a few years back we had the volunteer fire truck come roaring through to warn against a possible touch-down (it did, just a half-mile away). With no shelters available, people are advised to get in basements or tubs, and, barring that, lie down in a ditch (the lowest point possible) with your head covered. I refuse that option. I don’t fancy meeting my Maker face down in the dirt.

To sweeten the pot, the Weather Channel just announced the opening of hurricane season. At a time when we must expect severe events, when extreme everything — weather, politics, religion, sports — pushes the envelope of our survival, we’re being given every possible option to realize what we’ve refused to acknowledge, to look our errors in the eye and re-think our options.

Weather has always been an inexact science, and predictions iffy. It has always been a cause of anxiety for those who are vulnerable and a topic of conversation for those, like Pea Patch residents, who are close to the earth and necessities of the season. Now, it turns on a dime, delivering the unexpected with a distressing level of frequency. Obama is right, we not only have to be better prepared for weather disasters, we need to be politically active to help prevent them.

I know you always want something to do on the other side of reading one of these articles, so please crank up your word processing program and write a letter to your climate change-denying Congressperson. You’ll find their address information here. All traditional warnings about being polite no longer factor into the conversation, from my point of view, so instead of being polite, kindly be as truthful as possible. Make your thoughts clear. Here is an example:

Dear Climate Denier

After years of reviewing all the information on climate change, and experiencing the extreme weather to which we are all now being subjected, I can only determine that your political stance on this topic is not just wrong but tragically wrong.

You are putting me, my family, my friends and the planet in jeopardy, day by day, while courting the wealthy people who continue to benefit from financial gain with no thought to tomorrow, happly reaping the rewards of corporate welfare today. I hold you directly responsible for what has NOT been done to protect us all from so severe a future.

And while we will not soon agree on this issue, we can probably agree that there are more people like me than like you; polls indicate well over 90 percent of citizens agree with over 98 perent of experts affirming climate emergency. I just want you to know that I know you’re playing politics for profit and I will no longer remain silent. I will do everything in my power as an American citizen to replace you with someone more responsible to this nation and the world.

Sincerely,

your friend and fellow American,

[signature]

You in? I hope you are. We need to do all there is to do, given the severity of the issue at hand. Government works from the bottom up, and your locally elected leaders think they can ignore you when you are silent. We need to raise a ruckus!

As always, love tells us that we are responsible to and for one another. And because things can turn on a dime — even the dire projections that inaction suggests in terms of climate change — let’s rethink our lethargy and raise our voices to make our position clear. That’s the loving thing right now, so write a love letter in defense of your planet (and me, I’ll wait until Mercury goes direct to put it in the mail).

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Here we are again, a three-day weekend at hand, little flags waving in cemeteries country-wide to remind us why we get that extra day to sleep in. I’ve read a few articles recently calling Memorial Day a time to relax, usually accompanied by a humdinger of a recipe to break up the hamburger/hot dog monotony at that first picnic of the season. We’ll nod our heads along with a bit of martial music this weekend, salute the last few members of the Greatest Generation while secretly wondering if it really was, and gratefully take that extra day of rest, along with a slice of watermelon.

Here in the Pea Patch, where the VFW still gathers the remaining vets from WWII and Vietnam to dress the graveyards, stores have filled an aisle or two with red-white-and-blue faux-bouquets to honor our beloved dead. Little plots of headstones — dotting the country landscape like convenience stores do urban neighborhoods — present a riot of color from flowers, real and silk. They’re hung with bird-feeders, alive with whirligigs and Mylar balloons, streamers dancing in the air. And so, once again, with eyes wide shut, we count the cost of our addiction to war without contemplating the cause.

As with many of our holidays, not everyone knows or cares why they’re being celebrated, which seems a grievous complaint against our educational system, not to mention our self-absorbed culture. Memorial Day, once known as Decoration Day, began as a day to honor the Civil War dead only three years after that war ended. It was deemed a federal holiday in Washington, D.C. in 1888 and declared a national holiday by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1971. On this holiday each year, a wreath is laid at the tomb of the unknown soldier and a speech is given commemorating the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for their country, because — well — because freedom isn’t free, doncha know.

Let me be candid: I get really tired of hearing that catch-phrase, celebrated in country music, recruiting videos and anything starring Carlos “Chuck” Norris. Adults know that every choice exacts a cost of some kind, and SHOULD know that those who defend freedom don’t always wear a military uniform. Sometimes they stand up to tear gas and riot gear, sometimes they tell the truth even when the information is unwelcomed.

Some defenders of liberty even have to give their up their own freedom, spending time in prison or in Russia or in an obscure foreign embassy. As became clear early in this new century, one man’s patriot is another’s traitor, especially as the First Amendment becomes less relevant with each trade-off for national security. At this rate, it won’t be worth the velum it’s inscribed on by mid-century.

As a stark reminder of Dubby’s little venture into “spreading freedom,” the Patriot Act is back on our plates, for renewal or revision. I suspect many readers would rather we revise this rogue legislation, which has cost us reputation, treasure, privacy, Constitutional rights and the high road in ethical behavior, all in the name of safety. The bill is set to expire, with an improbable non-partisan mix of legislators questioning the validity of the sweeping surveillance it put in place under Bush and Company. McConnell has threatened to keep members from leaving town if they don’t pass some kind of extension before Friday evening as the legislation will expire by the time Congress retuns from break. As I write, the situation remains up in the air.

An attempt to remedy the worst of the Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act was introduced to Congress late in 2013, as the nation became aware of the vast NSA surveillance. It included specifc limits on data collection. It was re-worked, backed by the Obama administration, and brought up again this year, with hopes that a bi-partisan vote would bring it to the floor for discussion. It has passed the House but seems to have little traction in the Senate. On this issue, interestingly, Boehner and McConnell are at odds. [UPDATE: The Freedom Act was voted down near midnight on Friday, putting the whole of the legislation in jeopardy. McConnell has scheduled another vote early on May 31 in an attempt to salvage it.]

Like a bout of PTSD, all that Patriot Act business has renewed our memories of ‘Shock ‘n Awe.’ And thanks to the fire and brimstone pushed by radical Islam in the Iraqi provinces — and an unexpected Bushism of the Jebby kind — the longest war in our history is being re-thought. When asked by a reporter whether, if he’d known then what he knows now, he would have gone to war with Saddam, Dubby’s little brother said, yeah, sure. This has brought BushWar II back to the forefront, and the Bush Family Business into focus. We used to think of Jeb as the smart Bush, the one Poppy burst into tears over when discussing the state of the nation. Little did we know. (I suspect we’ll have the same kind of vertigo next year around this time if we think of him as the moderate Republican candidate, by the way — he certainly is not!)

Almost immediately, Jeb began to back up, saying he misunderstood the question. It took several days and several different answers before he finally settled on, “No.” Jeb’s political DNA no doubt cowered at the possibility of insulting the troops, dissing his brother or annoying the base, especially when others like Cruz and Huck and Rubio have the evangelicals in their camp. It should come as no surprise — more like a dire warning with flashing lights and sirens — that both Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neo-cons who carefully orchestrated Dub’s run-up to war (entirely responsible for Cheney’s insistence that we would be met with flowers in Baghdad), are now consultants to Jeb’s campaign (not to mention most of George’s other advisors. Again, NOT a moderate, just a bit more housebroken than the rest of the candidates on the right).

The war itself has now come under new scrutiny, not that the majority of Americans (left, right and center) don’t consider it a failed military experiment that, essentially, destabilized the Middle East. Jonathan Chait, hardly a tree-hugging minion, wrote a piece for New York Magazine titled “Was the Iraq War a Crime or a Mistake? Yes.” In it, he not only stapled the error of the Iraq misadventure to the page of epic failures in our history books, but warned that thinking of it as an intelligence failure rather than opportunistic adventurism is a slippery slope. Will Pitt used more candid terms when he described it as ” … a deliberate smash-and-grab robbery, writ large.”

Yes, Jeb’s baggage is hard to bear, and heavier by the day. Earlier in the week, a young lady corned Bubba and told him his brother was responsible for creating ISIS. Clearly, given that the hasty deBathification of Iraq let loose a group of tough combat veterans who would better have been charmed than insulted, she has a point. Add that the news from Iraq is grim.

While ISIS has its weaknesses (like the Pubs, neither interest nor ability to govern stands first and foremost), it now counts Ramadi — capital of the Anbar province — as the newest addition to its ‘caliphate,’ putting Baghdad in the cross-hairs. The Pentagon, State Department and Administration have downplayed the loss, calling it a temporary setback and insisting that Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) will take back the territory eventually, with our help of course. Yet it wasn’t that long ago that Mosul hit the skids in a similar fashion, falling into the radical’s hands. Its liberation is now considered out of the question.

In Iraq, the Achilles Heel within the ISF is the same as it’s always been: warfare in the Middle East is religious, dividing loyalties, and the political culture has only shape-shifted to the Western model on the surface. It has been, and is still, thick with corruption and tribal nepotism, religious bias simmering just under the skin. When the ISF cut and ran, leaving Ramadi to the conquerors, it was not the first time such an exodus had occurred. Had we understood that first sentence fully in 2003, the region might still be stable, the war might never have been fought and millions — including 4,000 dead Americans, with hundreds of thousands wounded and maimed — would have been spared the Bush Doctrine.

As it is, there is no good win in Iraq now that the genie is out of the bottle, and most of us know that — not even the military industrial complex, still busy making money hand over fist, is bothering to hide its cynicism. In the end, this is Iraq’s war to lose, with Iran picking up the pieces. It’s inevitable.

But what of America and her dependence on big oil, on corporate dominance, on militarism and resources not her own? What of America with her brash romance with drama and tragedy and horror, fighting an internal battle with the distancing techniques we’ve put in place to keep sorrow and outrage at bay? What of the children raised on violence and surrounded by gunplay? Is the cerebral cooling of the blood that we’ve embraced a way to diminish future war or simply to ignore its consequences?

When Ramadi fell, leading to the expected brutal purge of unbelievers and threat to historical treasures, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, keeping a low profile, downplayed its loss as “not symbolic in any way.” This infuriated at least one mother, that of Marc Lee, a Navy Seal who died in Ramadi in 2006. She wrote an angry, impassioned letter to Dempsey, which read in part:

You, sir, owe an apology to the families whose loved ones’ blood was shed in Ramadi. Ramadi matters to us and is very symbolic to us. You need to apologize to our troops whose bodies were blown to pieces from IEDs and bullet holes leaving parts and pieces behind, Ramadi matters to them…

You and this administration have minimized that Ramadi could fall, now you are minimizing that it is falling, but you, Sir, WILL NOT minimize the sacrifice my son Marc Lee made or any of our brave warriors!

On Memorial Day, she — and others like her — will not just visit gravesites to deliver faux-flowers; they will march and growl and call for more blood in an effort to soothe their pain. Simple grief and contemplation are much too cerebral for such a day. The wounds are too fresh, the senses too raw among the warrior class. This is the same emotion that keeps the death penalty alive, the same outrage that finds no harm in killing ‘thugs’ in Ferguson. It’s our most primitive response: desire for vengeance.

While this mother has every right to throw her full support behind the “us or them” philosophy that got us all into this jam, perpetuating the attack/defend consciousness that simply MUST come to an end if we are to survive, I worry about how very intellectual all this has become in the chattering class. How cut and dried death is to those of us who witness, but do not fight. How easy it seems to fight a war now, not with boots on the ground, but with drones in the sky sent from a continent away.

This kind of cool analysis simply MUST NOT BE the energy signal of a new Aquarian Age, a technological disconnect from the shadow side of our grief, our anger, our pain. Water finds the path of least resistance, and so does human consciousness. We must not allow brutality and churlishness — cultural, political, military — to take us down this dark path when we have intent to lift ourselves up into the Light. There is too much at stake to devolve into a country intent on vengeance, looping endlessly in wars that have numbed our senses and turned our hearts cold.

On this Memorial Day, remember someone who fought for their country. Honor them, alive or dead. I am not ‘military minded,’ as it were, and I cannot but view the bright untested patriotism of the young who enlist, fight and die as expendable pawns for our geopolitical adventurism as tragic reality, but — like those who tithe to dishonest religious organizations, for instance — the dishonor is not theirs, but belongs squarely on the shoulders of those who use them so badly.

For many, the military is a stepping stone out of poor circumstances, a place to experience pride, camaraderie and discipline. If we have not taught them a higher octave of honor than nationalism, it is not their fault, it is ours. And so, for them — many of whom I know — I will honor those who serve. On the last day of this long weekend, then, I will fly the American flag in honor of the dreams of her children and their higher aspirations. I will fly the Stars and Bars in honor of what this nation can be, and I pray will be, one fine day to come.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Things are seldom as they seem, especially if we’re skimming the surface of any event to decide its meaning. That’s where astrology comes in. Mars declared war on structure (Saturn) this week, first with a 7.3 aftershock in Nepal — toppling fragile buildings and causing more death — and days later, personifying chaos in the Amtrak wreckage. In the case of Nepal, a first quake in late April — taking more than 8,000 lives, causing major damage to infrastructure, and reducing ancient historical sites to rubble — didn’t rupture all the way to the surface, which created potential for additional quakes to relieve growing pressure. We know this because satellites are now able to assess movement and project patterns, targeting vulnerable areas.

Due to hundreds of expected aftershocks, citizens have been terrified of remaining inside structurally compromised buildings, and thousands have stayed out on the streets. Because of the difficult mountainous terrain, relief efforts have been hit and miss for many, as helicopters fly into isolated areas to deliver supplies. A Marine Corps ‘copter carrying six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers was reported missing in the first wave of rescue effort and found crashed in a densely wooded area on Friday. In yet more tragedy, there were no survivors.

Death seems to have gained the upper hand in Nepal — along with areas in Tibet in April, and in India this week — and yet, defying all reason, a 101-year-old man was rescued, having survived being buried in the rubble for an entire week. So did a four-month old baby boy, dug out of his family’s collapsed home after almost two full days. No matter how dire the situation, life always finds a way, and you can take that to the bank.

Speaking of banks, NGO’s (charities) are begging for continued humanitarian aid, with Nepal’s Prime Minister urging additional “courage and patience” from international contributors. It has become a truism that with so many emergencies at hand, underfunded rescue efforts across the globe remain a constant worry. Remember the Christmas Tsunami of 2004? Hurricane Katrina in 2005? These initial shocking events came one after the next, prompting this nation to open their hearts, and their piggy banks, to help out.

We were still pretty innocent of what was coming, at that point. That was the Good Old Days before everyone caught on to the steady erosion of consumer protections bought by ALEC and cohorts, long before we realized the result of disastrous deregulation in the financial district, and just prior to the fiscal calamity that decades of voodoo economics trickled into. That was also before ‘disaster fatigue’ took over. Sadly, the requests for help come so often these days, we have to flip a coin to decide who is most needy. Still, the act of gifting is a metaphysical signal to the universe that you have enough to spare, which opens the energy of increase. We get by, so they say, with a little help from our friends, even if we never met them before. If you wish to contribute to Nepal’s on-going rescue effort, to help them dig out, here’s information about responsible donation in the area.

Regarding the Amtrak disaster outside of Philadelphia, Eric did his usual masterful job of decoding the astrology (and pointing out everyone’s favorite trickster, Mercury) in the subscription piece this week, and it appears that much of this situation can be traced to human error. Other factors contributed, however — some very political — and it’s worth taking a look at those because once again, structure, structure, infrastructure, oh my!

Since its inception in the 1970s as a federally-funded, for-profit corporation, Amtrak has been subject to the whims of infighting politicians, those on the left vying with the rail industry for money to fund their pet projects, those on the right slashing funds for any enterprise they consider ‘big government’. Not for the first time, experts are pointing out danger from a crumbling transportation infrastructure and spotty funding. Despite little or no effort to modernize the national rail system, ridership steadily increases, year by year. Like our for-profit postal service, Amtrak is the unfortunate step-child fed on scraps by a conservative party that wants none of it.

In 2008, following a major wreck attributed to human error, Congress mandated a rail safety system known as Positive Train Control (PTC), which, when put in place, would automatically monitor train speeds, critical distances between trains, and possible collisions. This week, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a statement saying that if PTC had been installed on that section of track in Philadelphia, the accident could not have occurred. Turns out PTC had recently been added to the section, but not fully tested or activated, one of those so-close-and-yet-so-far things that haunt survivors.

Although Amtrak 188 hit the corner that spelled disaster going twice the speed limit, analysis shows that the train speed increased in just the last few moments before the derailment at Frankford Junction, coming distressingly close to an oil tanker train, the kind that carries crude oil, known as ‘bomb trains.’ Things could have been so much worse!

First responders to these ever-increasing oil tanker emergencies, by the way, are the nation’s firefighters, and despite new federal safety measures, some 65 percent of firefighter groups say they have no specialized training in responding to this kind of hazardous material, especially highly toxic shale from the Bakken fields. They have asked for additional training, more information concerning the nature of the shipment, and of course, adequate funding to provide both. They needn’t hold their breath.

Indeed, Amtrak would commiserate in kind. On the day of the derailment, and within hours of the incident, Pubs on the House Appropriations Committee voted along party lines to cut Amtrak funding to less than half of what Obama had requested, from $1.14 billion to $251 million dollars.

Democrats on the panel attempted to raise the ante, but they were admonished by Idaho Pub, Mike Simpson, not to “… use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you.” Yes, he said it, on record, for those with ears to hear. And the next day, Paul Ryan, House Ways & Means Chairman, assured FOX News viewers that Amtrak had been properly funded to implement the safety system mandate. Only it wasn’t.

The mandate required that PTC be fully functional in all passenger and freight trains by the end of 2015, but as with all things seemingly related to the good of the public, these things grind slowly. Funding has been inadequate to finish the job, resulting in delays that turned deadly in the very same section of Pennsylvania track that took the lives of 79 people in 1943. Ryan could hardly have missed that fact, since his old buddy (and my Boss Hog Senator) Roy Blunt put forth a bill only weeks ago requiring an extension of the PTC deadline to 2020.

But Gawd forbid we get off the Austerity Express anytime soon! Ryan warned again that there will be a tendency to ‘politicize’ rail-funding using this tragedy in a bleeding-heart lefty effort to spend more. Things like funding actual needs never seem to penetrate to Mr. Ryan’s heart-chakra, and his attitude seems to get worse with every article written about him. According to Think Progress, “Asked whether he thought rebuilding America’s infrastructure should be a priority, Ryan noted that the Highway Trust Fund goes bankrupt later this month but that he would not back tax increases for infrastructure improvement as “’we can do better by saving more money [and] being more efficient.’”

The Highway Trust Fund? Holy crap! Get out yer roller skates, kids — we may have to maneuver around all those pot holes with some fancy footwork! Now, to some of us — me, for instance — the Appropriations Committee voting against adequate money to fund Amtrak on the very afternoon of its worst derailment in more than 70 years seems just one more wink and nod at the plutocracy that doesn’t care if the nation has become an accident waiting to happen, that the trains run on time or even — so it seems — if they run at all. Insult to injury, John Boehner lost patience with a reporter who asked about the Dems’ accusation that funding cuts contributed to this incident by calling the question “stupid.”

“They started this yesterday: ‘It’s all about funding, it’s all about funding.’ Well, obviously it’s not about funding, the train was going twice the speed limit. Adequate funds were there, no money has been cut from rail safety and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak. It’s hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here.”

Chuck Schumer, on point to replace Dem leader Harry Reid next year, called this response a denial of reality, to my mind typical of all we’ve come to expect of both John Boehner and the Republican Party. Dems may or may not want to upset their corporate overlords by tilting progressive, but they don’t insult my intelligence by pretending things aren’t so!

Even Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who doesn’t appear to have all that many brain cells to rub together, pleaded with his party to stop behaving stupidly. And Rick Perry — who makes Dubya look brainy — has suggested that his state stop acting like paranoid children over the Pentagon’s war games in Texas, that they quit “being insane.” RICK PERRY managed to say something from the reality-sphere, bless his bony head! Yet John Boehner can’t imagine that people look at a sub-standard transportation system, improperly funded by self-absorbed politicians who seem totally committed to sending every dime in our coffers up the chain to the one percent who own them, and get upset? Which question is stupid, again?

This topic of infrastructure has been niggling at me for quite awhile, and came bubbling up like a bad case of agita when I read that the new 6.4 billion dollar eastern tower of the San Francisco Bay Bridge has indications of failed “anchor rod failure,” which is just about as serious as it sounds. And this is not new business. In 2013, 32 similar rods failed and were repaired at a cost of $45 million. This is shocking, not to menton chronic, ineptitude!

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve traveled over that bridge in my lifetime, but not once — never — did I think it unsafe or unsound. Even during the Loma Prieta earthquake (6.9) in 1989, only one fifty-foot section of the bridge was damaged. It’s hard to think of it as anything other than rock solid, but apparently it’s not, and WTF! Even if we managed to muster the time, money and interest in doing critical repairs, why is it that — much like the still-flawed levees in New Orleans — we can’t seem to kick the corporate bottom-line out of the way to do right by the public trust?

But that doesn’t mean we CAN’T turn out extraordinary work, forward-thinking projects and top-of-the-heap infrastructure repair if we choose! There are great ideas out there, the public is behind such a massive project, and the world demands it — but WE, the People don’t demand it. Rachel Maddow told us this week that it’s almost as if the political system in this nation is designed to fail our infrastructure. Gathering the political will to make this happen will take a movement, the kind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are suggesting.

Rachel and I are on the same page, regarding the shameful lapse in caring for the nation’s infrastructure, and certainly holding Congress culpable for this latest train accident, conductor error notwithstanding. As Rachel attests in this rant on upgrading trains and dragging our heels on entering a modern world, “trains in Spain travel an average of 154 miles per hour and those in Japan top out at over 200, Amtrak’s average speed is a sluggish 65 miles per hour.”

Evidently, Mr. Boehner, we no longer live in that exceptional fantasy world of yours! The good news? Just about everybody knows it but you. Over on the left, we’re talking about policy. On your side of the fence, you’re still spinning fantasy.

We’re digging out of the rubble left behind by Bush’s Folly and the Great Recession, by decline in infrastructure and government systems and obsolete ways of doing things. We’re digging out from a glut of disinformation, the bizarre fog of unreality and the overt attempt to take the nation and the world back into ages past. And even though it seems impossible to clear the debris no matter how hard we shovel, each problem carries its solution within it, ours to find.

As one who has always looked for, and found, the pony in the horse-shit, here’s my advice: first thing, you’ve got to call it like it is. Second? Look around to see who needs a helping hand, and offer it. Next? Pick up that shovel and put your back into it!

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

With Mother’s Day at our threshold, I’ve scanned my notes on the week’s activity, the various politicians mucking up the works with their disparate versions of reality, and find myself echoing the line that Maggie — the little girl character that played Peter Pan’s daughter in Robin Williams’s film, Hook — threw back at her captor as she was being rescued: “You need a mother very, very badly!”

It comes as no shock that Earth Day, April 22, comes just as the Sun enters Taurus, warmed by the love of the Goddess, its signature rooted deeply in the soil and the pregnant promise of spring. Mother’s Day follows on its heels with that same kind of solid, ever-patient, nurturing energy. Gaia is the intelligence-entity of this planetary body, and we are hers much as each of us is a product of our earthly incarnational-mother this time around. Edgar Cayce said mother/child was THE bonding relationship of our lifetime — for good or ill, present or not present — and no doubt the most complex.

But, that said, the act of mothering is not necessarily about gender. It’s about care-giving, sometimes called care-taking or, even more simply, caring. Taking care of, in the best way possible. Taking care, in dealing with all the mental, emotional (and, quite often) environmental details. Giving care as in providing something essential to the good of the ones receiving. That’s not gender specific activity, nor does it necessarily refer to children. Some of the best mothers I know aren’t women, and some of the most impressive nurturers never conceived a child. As Robert Heinlein put it, “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”

Supposing that’s true, many of the political leaders of the world appear to be foundlings. Netanyahu evidently needs a mother pretty badly, someone to grab his ear and twist it hard. He finally formed a coalition government, squeaking in just under the wire that would have forced him from office. Shortly before a midnight deadline, he partnered with the nationalist Jewish Home party, hard-liners that oppose peace with Palestinians and intend to increase West Bank settlement construction.

The possibility of peace talks resuming anytime soon — or warming American relations, for that matter — seem dim. To some, that secures the traditional patriarchy of the Israeli stronghold in the Mideast. To others, who understand what a flawed and basically weak coalition this is, that means Bibi will go down in history as desperate and belligerent, while infighting makes his nation’s politics even more chaotic.

Bibi represents the tough-love, take-no-prisoners Daddy State, similar to what our conservatives represent: think George W’s “You’re either with us or against us” mentality. As counterweight, liberalism is referred to as the Mommy State — sometimes the Nanny State — which supposedly coddles its ne’er-do-wells, and is associated with Socialism. Libertards, as the rabble-right likes to call lefties, are credited with embracing the Marxist approach, which gives “to each, according to their need,” ostensibly from the community pot. This is known, with a sneer of contempt, as “redistribution.” Because Americans have gotten lazy, and depend on brief explanations and sound bites, this constitutes a flawed and narrow definition, without much substance.

Let’s try another set of sound bites. Socialism, in this country, is defined as a half-step away from Communism, the dreaded “better dead than Red” of the 1950s, marketed with a shadow of fangs and claws from historical figures like Mao and Stalin and Fidel, all authoritarian dictators. Naturally, the conservatives in charge of pushing this disinformation move the needle into the extreme zone, scaring the children. But socialism and communism are essentially only economic systems in opposition to capitalism (and enough said, from the conservative point of view — the sheer horror of it all!).

We need to acknowledge that socialism is part and parcel of the American system, reflecting FDR’s vision for a restoration of constitutional promise with his New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society push to end poverty and racism. I dislike the term “level playing field,” a catch-phrase used too often these days, but it describes FDR’s desire to restore liberty to the individual, stolen by commerce and denied by elitist corruption and influence. Socialism seeks a middle-ground, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution.” It promotes personal freedoms, religion included, while depending upon public ownership and cooperatives over privatization and plutocracy — and restoring that balance is the challenge of the hour.

While we can’t convince Elizabeth Warren to throw herself against our current cultural barbed-wire, we do have someone with an impressive voice seeking a change in the national conversation, and therefore, national consciousness. Senator Bernie Sanders, newly announced presidential candidate from the left, promoted his Democratic Socialist bona fides on Sunday pundit television last weekend by defending the highly effective Scandinavian democracy model. George Stephanopoulos grinned and said, “I can hear the Republican attack ad right now. He wants America to look more like Scandinavia,” to which Bernie responded, “That’s right, what’s wrong with that?”

Not afraid to speak up, this week Bernie wrote an op-ed urging the government to break up big banks, using his growing public megaphone to inform citizens that the banks that were ‘too big to fail’ when the economy crashed in late 2007 are now 80 percent larger than they were then. 80 PERCENT! Bernie says if they’re too big to fail, then they’re too big to exist.

If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, do you know what he would say? He would say break ’em up. And he would be right. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.

A bill that I’ve written would require financial regulators within one year to identify and break-up huge financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley so that they can never again cause another financial crisis like the one that happened in 2008.

Never fear, citizen. This isn’t fantasy, this is populism with a bullet. Once you get past the smokescreen of the culture war topics (racism, sexism, abortion) and the PowerPoint presentations of the lobbying class (factory farms, big pharma, corporate welfare), Sanders speaks to the concerns of the average American — right AND left — who hasn’t seen a raise in income since the 1970s. Perhaps it’s possible to make it clear to a corporately-dominated nation that reasonable checks and balances on the capitalism model create a stable economy for the socialist strategy required to rebuild the failing middle class.

As examples, look at what Utah, with religious roots in communalism, has done with its homeless population. Look at the successful placement of homeless vets in New Orleans. Is there any doubt that these people would be considered disposable, even criminalized, under a purely oligarchic system? That without the compassionate — and eminently practical — intervention of the determined and visionary, they would wither and die?

And although Hillary (former FLOTUS and national Mommy, Nancy Reagan notwithstanding) is beginning to “fashion a progressive agenda,” as lefty New York major de Blasio announced this week, Bernie’s got her beat on most counts. Not that he has either the backing or the visibility to win this race, I’d assume, especially not with Hil projecting a couple of billion to keep the race going. But he DOES have the agenda to shift the conversation soundly to the left, especially since six presidential debates were scheduled this week by the Dems. Perhaps destined to never reside in the Oval, Sanders — seems to me — is the most powerful voice in this race to date.

This is Goddess energy we’re talking about. Can you hear it when it’s spoken? Can you feel it when it vibrates? We discuss the polarity issues between political philosophies endlessly, but it is the compassion issue that resonates with those on the left, and a growing number on the right, who have an awakened awareness of not just commonality with others but a sense of duty, even privilege, to nurture the larger community and not leave anyone behind.

That may be called Nanny, called give-away, called liberalism, but essentially, much like core Christianity, it’s actually a kind of conservatism, turned on its head by those who have captured “the flag,” and constantly challenged. Taking responsibility to protect what we have with sound stewardship, making way for what’s new by improving the traditional values of common good and shared liberty, kindness and empathy VOID of financial gain? What’s wrong with that, Bernie Sanders would ask? So would I.

Caring about one another is what we learn, if we’re lucky, at our mother’s knee, or, if we learned the opposite, it’s something we must take responsibility for nurturing within ourselves, refusing to pass along learned dysfunction, mindlessly. Taking care of someone or something that needs our attention is not a burden but an opportunity to get out of ourselves, widen our vision and enlarge our heart. Caring for one another is precisely why we came.

So it’s soon Mother’s Day, a day of recollection for some of us, remembrance and appreciation for all of us — and a time to look around to see what Goddess has in mind for us, as we try to come to balance. Our poster child for Goddess energy this week is our neighbor to the North, Alberta Canada.

Heartiest congratulations to Alberta for breaking a 44-year hold of conservative leadership to elect the New Democratic Party. The win, considered a long shot, was met with cyber-celebration including several pictures of pigs flying and a couple of succinct tweets, such as “Imagine if a political party made up of Chris Hayes, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren swept into power in Texas and Mississippi,” and another that said, “The last time I was this excited to see an empire fall there were Ewoks dancing!”

What prompts this glee? Alberta is known as the Texas of Canada, exploited by the Big Oil concerns long-favored among the Tories, a prime hub for exporting tar sands. Some 78 percent of Canada’s oil comes out of Alberta, much of it tar sands, and the province’s newly elected premier from the liberal New Democratic Party (NDP), Rachel Notley, is a foe of the XL Pipeline. On Tuesday, voters approved forcing the gas and oil industries to pay their fair share of taxes and royalties, phasing out coal and cutting back pipeline projects. And — sea change on the Hill — Notley has pledged to cut all money used to lobby Congress for the pipeline. Happy Mother’s Day, Gaia!

This is a major blow to the oil industry, even if there is question about the ability of this newly elected party to effect change. Nonetheless, this changing of the guard must bring attention to the situation and quite possibly reverse the blanket acceptance of tar sands — its extraction always considered a problematic operation — as a viable resource. Could little Alberta be the place where things begin to shift? Could the New Democratic Party be the David to Big Oil’s Goliath? Thank you, Alberta, for hitting the target.

What we nurture, what we care for, must be reflected in our value system. It’s incumbent upon us, in this time of social and political upheaval, to review what we DO find valuable, what we DO want to conserve and tend for future generations. Like it or not, we are responsible for the future. While others appear to have all the power, we play a vital part in the creation of tomorrow.

All of us have mothers, some of us are mothers and, without exception, we are all capable of mothering some creative project into existence. As we nurture and create, we mother. We tend and care for, simultaneously, our personal dreams and responsibilities; the outgrown agenda of our inner child, that occasionally peeks out from behind the shadows, asking for attention and healing; the shape of our tomorrows, and those of our world. For all that, Mother’s Day is a day for reflection on what we value and how.

And while we will, hopefully, find just the right thing to do for our own mother or her memory, let’s also note that the original Mother’s Day had its roots in a day of remembrance for the 650,000 souls lost in the Civil War, with mothers of the North and South coming together over the unspeakable loss of so many beloved sons. The original Mother’s Day was, essentially, a protest against the uselessness of war, the childishness of pride and ambition, and the tragedy of unnecessary death. We can honor our mother no more powerfully today than to continue that enlightened work, seeking an end to the mentality of warfare. In this, as in everything, may love lead the way.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Once again, it’s been a week of tit and tat, point and counterpoint, our cultural divides apparent in the halls of justice and on the streets, our emotions flowing from sorrow to anger and back again. Seems like we move from challenge to challenge without time to consider our shifting attitudes, but if we step back a bit, the picture of our growth becomes a bit clearer — and much more impressive.

We’ve hit a turning point in recapturing realism, even as proponents of the old mythologies bite and claw to regain their stronghold. Freddie Gray’s death has been ruled a homicide, for instance.

Yes, it took Baltimore burning, and 22 charred patrol cars, to get a grip on the fact that we can no longer tolerate another unarmed black man being killed by police without consequence.

It took viral video of the mother of a young protester, descending on him like an unexpected storm, to turn the nation’s ’tisk tisk’ mentality away from the destruction of rioting ‘thugs,’ and toward examination of her fear and concern over his safety from the police presence, some quite obviously past the point of reason. As Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Charlie Rose last evening, while some may propose this woman for “Mother of the Year,” others only see how completely prior generations have failed the disenfranchised youth who faced off against the cops in the streets of Baltimore.

It’s taken astounding confrontation with mainstream media to press the point that things must change, here and here, offering a surprisingly candid view of the racial violence at hand and the tone-deaf response. It took the President finally having a no-nonsense moment about the chronically tolerated structures behind racial disparity. And it took the previous deaths of Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Walter Scott and hundreds, even thousands, more like them to get our attention.

We’re being challenged to grow. We’re being challenged to feel. We’re being asked to see our cultural diversity as strength, not weakness. We’re being asked to find our commonalities, rather than our differences. And while many of us are meeting that bar with grit and determination, others are being pulled toward it, kicking and screaming.

We can see that conflict in the Supreme Court, for instance. In some of the lamest pretense for intellectual discussion I’ve heard lately, the Supremes, hearing oral arguments on same-sex marriage, questioned whether or not this is the ‘right time’ to force states into compliance, given how quickly public opinion has shifted on this topic. This seems to me a riff on the parental notion that tolerance and/or acceptance of civil rights on gender issues is “just a phase” the nation is going through, no doubt fostered by the certainty on the right that allowing same-sex marriage to go forward is a grievous mistake and Biblical offense of gigantic proportions.

The Federalist argument that approval should remain a province of the state falls flat for those of us interested in establishing that “level playing field” Mr. Obama and Ms. Warren speak of so often. Essentially, the handful of states unwilling to accept same-sex marriage as a civil right are the same ones that always throw a monkey wrench. They’re the same ones that put Mr. Lincoln on high alert in centuries past, that resisted mixed-race marriage, that refused integration of public schools — and not so very long ago. Waiting for them to voluntarily allow their LGBT citizens marriage equality is the equivalent of waiting for Godot.

This ruling is meant to be definitive, finally settling the legalities of a problem that has had us stymied for a couple of decades, and sure fodder to stoke the fires of culture war. Granted, the issue is older than that by centuries but remember, we only came to terms with our gay brothers and sisters because the AIDS crisis forced us into awareness.

Prior to that, in most of the country this demographic existed under cover, “in the closet” and reluctant to make waves. To be sure, the average citizen was encouraged not to look. Safer to think that our wonky old great-aunt and her life-long roommate were just eccentric, than suppose anything ‘perverse’ happened in their household. Best to think of cousin Henry as a confirmed bachelor that no woman would have than one of those sissy-guys, seldom invited to reunions and NEVER asked to baby-sit. We were ALL in the closet, weren’t we?

Upright (up-tight) jurist Sam Alito seemed to be fishing for some way to split the difference on mandating same-sex marriage this week, rather than go all in, which signals the weakness of the defense. Indeed, there is little actual defense than can be offered against allowing those who love one another to legalize their commitment, unless one delves into the mythology surrounding this issue. Most of these arguments are provided by the evangelicals in their ardor to prevent America from suffering the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Biblical tale in which the family patriarch threw his virgin daughter to the lust-filled Sodomites rather than surrender his angelic visitor. And — seriously — you’d think evangelical women would get a clue right there, wouldn’t you?

Indeed, it is the gender role of women that has come under close scrutiny in this sea-change known as marriage equality. And leave it to the redoubtable Justice Ginsberg to spell it out in no uncertain terms. When one member of such a legal arrangement is defined as subservient based on gender, then how can that possibly work with two people of the same sexual persuasion? Hence, when traditional definitions no longer apply, it’s time for a new definition — and a new tradition.

Josh, the oldest of the Dugger children (the “19 Kids & Counting” reality-show family that practices “quiverful” living in order to populate the world with true believers) has taken on the fight against gay marriage as a form of discrimination against his faith. So, to cut to the chase, he’s outraged that his ability to discriminate against others is being discriminated against? Yes, exactly. Everything that threatens his traditional (cultish and regressive) definition of family is an attack on his faith. He’s joined by most of the radical-right churches — and the politicians who curry their favor — in his belief that Christianity is under attack by secularism, a notion the founders would have batted down like a pesky fly, given their experience of religious oppression and desire for secular, egalitarian government.

Yet, after years of being manipulated by the Christocratic arm of the political spectrum, it’s no longer possible for the public to ignore fundamental Christianity’s thumb on the scale of equality. A deserved backlash may eventually become the fulfilling prophecy of those Christians whining about persecution. Thanks to the dust-up that Indiana Governor Mike Pence moderated with his failed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the spotlight has turned to examine how the evangelical movement negatively impacts the whole of national politics.

Forever fussing about assaults to his Christian (superiority) exceptionalism, Mike Huckabee has announced this week that “We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.” Ted Cruz, speaking to the faithful, informs that “There is a liberal fascism that is dedicated to going after believing Christians who follow the biblical teaching on marriage!” One amicus brief filed by a number of conservative lawyers and professors, revealing its fundamentalist underpinnings, makes so little sense it wouldn’t make it across the desk of a 7th grade debate teacher. It posits that there is a link between same-sex marriage and abortion, with some 900,000 “unborn” projected to die as a result of such a ruling over the next thirty years.

As pointed out by Daily Beast contributor Candida Moss, understanding this far-fetched abortion argument requires in-depth knowledge of the Armageddon dialogues and their black/white, good/evil absolutes, while Bob Cesca offers a fine history lesson, patiently deconstructing the possibility of being both liberal and fascist at the same time. It would be helpful to the real world if those passionately opposed to same-sex marriage had an actual defense to offer, along with examples of victimization that involved real people and not simply a perceived assault on religious dogma. It would at least make the angst and struggle and money spent in an effort to limit these marriages credible.

And Mammon, being served regularly both privately and from the pulpit, seems to have pulled the old switcheroo! Mike Huckabee and others who pander to the religious base have taken exception to the many powerful corporations who have recently perceived discrimination against gays as dangerous to their bottom line (profit margin). Business concerns seemed to quickly mobilize against gay-bashing in Illinois a few weeks back, breaking traditon and tearing down one of those counted-upon walls linking the business class with the religious.

While some, like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, have announced that business is not the boss of them — well, we know how this goes, don’t we? Of course I’d rather see this church/state backlash take form from a point of principle, but I’ll take what I can get. If the money boys see religious pandering as a losing investment, then — God Bless America! — the needle has begun to move from the bias of the elders to the clear-eyed acceptance of gender equality among the youngsters. There’s no fighting it. It’s here to stay.

I received a change.org petition about a gay teacher at a Catholic high school in Omaha, Nebraska (deep in the heartland, let me remind you) who lost his job when he announced his engagement to his boyfriend. He was not surprised to be fired, but he did not expect what happened next.

The kids at the school counted him among their favorites, and they rallied against the administration’s decision, wearing T-shirts that read “I support Mr. Eledge,” along with the Human Rights Campaign logo on the front. And, very much to the point of their religious education, the back quoted Jesus from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Student Darya Kaboli-Nejad, interviewed by a local television reporter, put it this way:  “We can’t force a change, but we can inspire a change.”

The decision to legalize gay marriage at the federal level, expected in June, seems all but certain. The arguments against are incomprehensible, and like it or not, this issue has finally taken its rightful place as a matter of civil liberty. The change was inspired awhile ago, with 38 states having already received the memo. Those who hold out only serve to marginalize themselves, yet again.

So here we are, waiting to see what the court decides, but this time it doesn’t seem to be so big a deal. Those of us who think we’re forever stuck in dysfunction and chaos need to look very carefully at how things are beginning to shift. Years of baby steps eventually move the needle, bringing what appears to be sudden change, none of which could have arrived without months, even years, of advocacy that smoothed the way for progress.

I suppose that those who have so little confidence in their own marriage practice that they must deny others the same privilege will continue to fight tooth and nail, but it’s too late now. Love wins in this matter of marriage, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.

And eventually, perhaps not so long from now, the white and privileged citizens of this nation will understand that loving one another, as they are loved, includes even those who have been marginalized, disenfranchised and victimized by systemic disinterest and disregard, projected from subconscious guilt and fear. The promise of this nation cannot be realized until we’ve moved the needle to include us all.

By the way, Happy Beltane and May Day to all! Go here to read about how American activism gave the world an eight-hour work day, and how that victory is universally celebrated while we ignore it. Renewing the rights of the working class needs to move to the top of our national To Do List.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

This is a week in which we’ve seen encouraging progress on important issues: the withdrawal of the Comcast/Time Warner merger after receiving heavy scrutiny from the FCC; the approval of our first black female Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, after over five months of stonewalling; the Supremes smacking down voting rights discrimination in North Carolina.

The passage of the Human Trafficking bill came with less enthusiastic applause from the left. Held up due to questions of abortion for trafficking victims, the Dems relented when a secondary funding stream was established that was not subject to Hyde Amendment restrictions (monies collected from fines, not taxes). Let’s call this one a draw, but a win, at least in terms of allowing a vote for Lynch.

Despite these advances, this has been a tough week for Obama, who went public with the death of two hostages killed during a drone strike on an al Qaeda compound. This was a CIA black-op in Pakistan, successful in targeting ‘bad guys’ but with insufficient intelligence about the ‘good ones’ being held in the encampment. Obama held a briefing, apologizing to the families of the hostages, one American, one Italian, but with no mention of the deaths of two other Americans-gone-rogue — al Qaeda operatives — killed by U.S. military in January, one in this operation.

This has drawn attention back to our use of drones crossing international borders in search of terrorists, once more spotlighting our everlasting gobstopper of a WOT (war on terror). While it seems a chilling process, it takes a collection of these reports in order to get our attention, and even more disheartening, a collective public outcry to impact the policy. Add another chalk mark on the wall then, for public debate about drones (rather than boots on the ground), which despite being at question ethically, have become a recruitment tool for Islamic radicals. And that doesn’t begin to account for the national shame of ‘collateral damage,’ arguably in the thousands.

While Obama announced that he took full responsibility for the deaths of these innocents, he has also taken personal responsibility for an argument that has erupted between him and the Progressive Caucus, including many Dems who fall into the moderate camp. They have endured what Senator Sherrod Brown called an “unprecedented” “full-court press” from the administration to wave through fast track legislation on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP). This has caused a donnybrook between that champion of progressive fiscal policy, Elizabeth Warren, and the Prez. And as it turns out, it’s highly personal.

A bit of background: the TPP is a pending trade agreement, five years in the making, between nearly a dozen Asian Pacific nations, including Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and Australia. Obama is dedicated to achieving this agreement, nailing down the rules that keep Chinese dominance at bay while protecting intellectual property, among other things, but there are serious questions about how this will play out in our brave new 21st century. Unfortunately, negotiations have been accomplished far from public scrutiny and with the help of corporate lobbyists and Wall Street savants.

Here’s Katrina vanden Heuvel of “The Nation” to define that process:

The TPP is a classic expression of the way the rules are fixed to benefit the few and not the many. It has been negotiated in secret, but 500 corporations and banks sit on advisory committees with access to various chapters. The lead negotiator, Michael Froman, was a protégé of former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and followed him from Treasury to Citibank, the bank whose excesses helped blow up the economy before it had to be bailed out. Although corporations are wired in, the American people are locked out of the TPP negotiations. And, as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said, “Members of Congress and their staff have an easier time accessing national security documents than proposed trade deals, but if I were negotiating this deal I suppose I wouldn’t want people to see it either.”

Corporations have their fingers in this pie because of their inclusion on U.S. Trade Representative advisory panels. Corporate reps number about 500, while another hundred slots are set aside for (less fiscally influential) representatives of organized labor, environmental and other groups that have interest in global economic affairs. All are pledged to secrecy.

About two years ago we began to hear murmurs about these negotiations, at about the same time that income inequality became apparent as a defining political issue. We know how this works: these big issues hide in plain sight until enough people take notice to bloom into full-fledged public awareness. One of the first to give a warning shout was Florida Rep, Alan Grayson, who pursued the secretive negotiation documents after examining a leaked document in 2012 that put liberals on alert.

Grayson is a fearless progressive, a plain-spoken man who was primaried and beaten by a Bagger in 2010 but returned to the House in 2012. After examining documents of the TPP draft, he fired the first warning shot about the trade deal that got my attention. Said Grayson, in 2013:

“What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it. It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.” […]

“Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Coming up to speed, the negotiations have matured over the ensuing months, but information about the resulting deal is still scarce as hen’s teeth. A fast track option would give Obama authority to make the deal without congressional discussion or amendment, requiring only an up/down vote. One would think this to be unpopular with Pubs, but evidently not. As long as corporate needs are being served, to hell with their commitment to oversight.

Dems, on the other hand, are taking fits, as illustrated by Harry Reid’s comment on the topic: “Not only no, but hell no.” Ditto Nancy Pelosi, but in more elegant lady-terms, demurring on the “disappointing” bill — known as Trade Promotion Authority — proposed by two Pubs (Ryan and Hatch) and Oregon Dem, Ron Wyden, while “looking for a path to yes.” But it was Elizabeth Warren who defined the progressive position.

“Before we sign on to rush through a deal like that – no amendments, no delays, no ability to block a bad bill – the American people should get to see what’s in it,” said the senator. Privy to the particulars, the Dems question if the trade deal will, in fact, provide increase in economic objectives that boost the economy and provide jobs, as advertised, or instead exacerbate income inequality.

No longer trusting the plutocracy, the left “want obligations written into the law that trading partners must live up to, not just objectives.” Warren suggested that Obama seemed to be deliberately hiding the facts from the public, adding, “If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.”

Obama expressed his frustration with the process of herding the rowdy Dems into his corner on this project, having asked them to trust him and his record for middle-class advocacy. It was at that point that he called dissenters wrong on the facts, saying “I would not be putting this forward if I was not absolutely certain that this was gonna be good for American workers.” We got a taste of that Leo temperament of his when he added, “When people say that this trade deal is bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I take that personally. My entire presidency has been about helping working families.”

OK. Now, pardon me if I stop a moment to ponder the emotion behind those words. I’m not a starry-eyed Obama supporter. Neither am I painting this administration with a “dark and dismal” brush, or one wearing a “happy face” either — I just want to know what changed, what Obama sees that I don’t and why he says Elizabeth Warren doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I’d like to hear Obama’s actual argument for it, not the rhetoric that gets repeated over and over, reported by the talking heads. And while we’re at it, I’d like to know what other coercive secrets lie behind the TPP curtain.

I know what establishment politics is about, but those words — “I take that personally,” –hit a different chord than, say, when George W. defended his positions by calling himself “the Decider,” or when Rummy held forth on the “known unknowns” or even when Big Bill attempted to re-write the definition of sex by rethinking what “is” is. Obama’s statement feels very real to me. He seems to feel as though he’s putting his reputation on the line with this agreement, which on its face looks too flawed for a progressive to support.

Politics is the process by which the people we hire, by vote, bring balance to our financial, cultural and international relations. Their efforts design the world we inhabit today and will live in tomorrow. Obama is taking his vision for America personally, and — as he’s changed that view on trade from the one he campaigned on long ago — he must have a reason to be pounding the pulpit so strongly. Some would say we’ve already seen that presidential turnabout, i.e., betrayal, in troops sent here or there, drone strikes and matters of national security, but that feels different to me. Being shoved around by the complexity of the military-industrial complex as elected-savior of the world has a different flavor, entirely.

Me, I’m taking these politics personally as well. I believe that we no longer live in that insular world where we can do without one another, globally, nor do I think the politics of this age have much in common with those Bill Clinton wrestled when he gave us a trade agreement that has proven so detrimental. Trade agreements are a necessity, as are allies in a dangerously fractured civilization, and by and large, when we look back, we will note that Barack Obama has changed the trajectory of this nation and the way we do business on a global stage. But what my progressive leaders say reflects my portion of this process. While Obama steers the ship of state on a different course, my job — and yours — is to keep him honest.

What we really need now is a lot of sunshine, showing up in politics and culture and business, as well as in our relationships, our work experience, our inner dialogue. We need clarity, and if we look at what is — not dwell on what was or what might be — we can catch glimmers of the essential facts that describe us. Offering a helping hand, the universe seems to be demanding truth as well, creating glitches and gaffes that pull back the curtains and reveal reality, even if some of us choose to look away. There must be other shoes to fall in this matter of trade, and as we all live with the result of NAFTA, Obama is going to have to pony up some proof that TPP has more to offer than “more of the same.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is only one of many groups advocating against this treaty, their interest primarily environmental. With 40 percent of the world’s economy at stake, and many undeveloped areas at risk, the NRDC point to leaked documents that propose giving multinational companies the right to sue the federal government if environmental laws impede their profits. And polluters would press their claims in trade tribunals, behind closed doors and far from public scrutiny. “The Nation” piece, above, details examples.

You can sign their petition against the fast track agreement here, although this legislation is moving through committee quickly due to GOP approval. If you are seriously interested in making your voice heard, contact your legislators (here) and let them know how you feel about fast tracking an agreement constructed in secret, influenced by corporations and bankers. Let them know you want sunshine on this process and the details of the agreement itself. If you are interested in other activist opportunities, Google “TPP Fast Track activism.”

Politics can’t get much more personal than jobs and bank accounts and growing inequality, than assaults to our mutual environment. Those reading this, living the result of political decisions of the past, can surely attest. As Joe Biden would tell us, the TPP is a BFD. It’s time to take this VERY personally.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“I’m baaaack!”  —Hillary Clinton, with a grin

Even as the echoes of the Uranus/Pluto energies begin to fade, the urge to act remains strong, but how, and to what end, rather like a pin-ball in play, bouncing, bouncing, making a clatter but not yet at rest. It’s probably best not to be too rash in considering our options.

This week a 22-year old Illinois man came to Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival, taped a protest note that read “Tax the one percent” to his hand and shot himself dead on Capital grounds. A Florida mailman gathered up individual letters to each of Washington’s congress critters protesting corruption, and ignoring restricted airspace, flew his little one-man gyrocopter onto the Capital lawn. He described his action as civil disobedience “in pursuit of honest government that represents the people.” (He was white, there were cameras. We didn’t shoot him.)

On the Hill, approval of Loretta Lynch, candidate for Eric Holder’s replacement as U.S. Attorney General, has been stalled for 161 days. The White House is miffed and supporters have begun a hunger strike (to which I’d add they obviously underestimate the concern of those they seek to sway). Mitch McConnell has told the Dems that Lynch’s vote will be held up until the human trafficking bill — tabled by Dems due to a clause that refuses to allow funding to trafficking victims seeking abortion services — is approved. Yet another hostage situation in the halls of Congress, one that Obama hotly scolded Pubs about in his press conference with the Italian president on Friday.

Another big piece of legislation up in the air is the fast-track on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, passed through committee and fashioned into a bill, splitting the Democrats between those who are business-friendly and those who are progressive. Elizabeth Warren — who is NOT going to run for president, so the progressives should stop wasting energy and resources trying to woo her, and get on with business — and Bernie Sanders are championing the defeat of any fast-track legislation, while demanding a transparent look at all that’s being arranged behind the scenes.

Obama spoke to that question at the press conference as well, referencing China and our need to keep the ‘level playing field’ for America, but that means for American corporations, not the American public. Obama said, essentially, “Trust me, you know I’ve worked for the people since you elected me and I will continue to protect you.” But he is an establishment president, boxed into a fiscal reality that has been solidified over the last forty years, aided by — sad to say — Democratic President Bill Clinton with his nod to NAFTA, which resulted in millions of jobs disappearing overseas and increased American corporate plunder. The TPP appears to be even worse — or better, I guess, if you are a corporate CEO who is charged by law to put profit first and all else aside.

The TPP is too big to ignore and too important to dismiss because we’re ‘too busy.’ This is a battle finally begun (five-years awaited, negotiated in secrecy) and we’ll hear more about it, which is a very good thing since — face it — too many Americans have a limited knowledge of politics, even after having become aware that some knowledge of how these things work is critical to a less dangerous future. Time to pay attention.

But I need a break, so this week, just for ducks, let’s skip the hard stuff of plutocracy, policy and thwarted legislation, and take a look at the stable of presidential hopefuls who have already begun the tedious race for big money and popularity, pre-election and largely, pre-interest from the public. I’m a tad wary with this topic. I do NOT want to get stuck in this non-sense (two words) for the next 18 or so months because, essentially, it means very little. Paul Krugman made that point in an Alternet piece that points out the vast differences between the party philosophies, now that the right has become unyieldingly big business and anti-government, while lefty populism continues to grow in passion and commitment.

Yes, Hillary’s back as we knew she would be, just as we knew the glaciers would melt and Obama would be soundly ignored for all eight years. But this will not be a race between personalities, although they’re diverse enough on the right to fill the obligatory (you guessed it) clown car, bozo noses flashing in the sun and big shoes flopping.

No, 2016 will be a race about political policy, despite the sex of the lefty frontrunner. It would be a fine thing if we could include a third party, like the Green (with its stellar exploratory candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, among others), but this continues to be a fledgling movement, garnering less than one percent of the presidential vote. We’re stuck with the two we know best, warts and all (and the cure would come with a healthy dose of campaign finance reform for starters, then an inoculation of populist oversight and effective regulation, along with a commitment to accountability).

Traditionally, we like our presidential nominees to pass muster in central casting — at least the 20th century version — which is one of the reasons St. Ronnie the Reagan remains perpetually beloved, even as his tenure tore at the fabric of populist democracy established by FDR and gave permission for the racism, elitism and corporatism we see surrounding us today. We don’t want our candidates to be too young, too old, too fat or too thin, too radical or too wimpy, and God help them if they’re not white or male.

Enter the 2016 wannabes: a compendium of all of that and more. So early in the dance it’s hard to get any traction on the silliness between now and then, but for the record, here’s where we are today.

Of those who have formally announced, Ted Cruz continues to use all his dog-whistles to call in the faithful, and it will be difficult to shake their confidence in him, since no one else has his religious bona fides (except perhaps Huckabee, who USA Today says will announce on Friday night). For the majority of Republicans, Ted is a truly wonderful human being but much too radical to be elected president. This assumes ANY Republican is electable as president, given their relationships with the Latino, black, female and younger demographics.

Rand Paul announced last week with his father carefully hidden in the back row among his supporters, not to steal Rand’s thunder, I would assume. His rambling speech was less than artful, and now he’s proven himself touchy, rude and sexist in early exchanges with women reporters, although he’s acknowledged his temper and pleads that he’s equally rude to man and woman alike. Rushing to his defense (no pun), shock-jock Limbaugh called Rand’s barking at Savannah Guthrie just an example of the candidate standing up for himself, inadvertently giving the Dems something to trounce him about. Not that they need an excuse, given Rand’s inconsistencies. The Tea Party likes this current streak of Libertarianism, which fits nicely into the Federalist position of states rights and “Don’t Tread On Me” civil liberties, but they’ll never ever EVER go for isolationism. The military industrial complex is one entire leg of fiscal stability in the U.S. at this point. Nobody on the right is interested in chopping off that leg.

Marco Rubio has announced, making himself out to be the hope for tomorrow. This line from his speech, “Yesterday is over, and we are never going back,” an overt hit at Hillary’s age, is belied by the tired ideas that keep his proposed policies mired in the past. Rubio is attractive and charismatic, and will perhaps find stronger purchase in the future, but right now he’s not going too far, too fast. He is considered unproven in a party that values its pecking order, and while touted as a Republican man of color (he’s Cuban), it’s best to remember in a party mostly supported by old white people, he’s a MAN OF COLOR.

While he has yet to commit, ditto that for Indian-American Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, whose approval numbers are so slim at home (around 24 percent) he’s hinted at asking Duck Dynasty’s deeply and disturbingly fundamentalist patriarch, Phil Robertson, to join him as vice presidential candidate. Once promoted as the face of young Republicanism, Jindal keeps shifting farther right, which is fine for the base but not for party prospects. Well to remember that while in college, he practiced exorcism on his roommates as a tenet of his faith: good with Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, but pretty much a deal-breaker with mainstream America.

Newly verbal this week, Chris Christi is smug and belligerent, bigger than life (also no pun) and the kind of take-no-prisoners politician that ran Tammany Hall back in the early days of this country. He doesn’t take no for an answer and insults those who don’t agree with him. Yet to announce his candidacy, he’s declared that if he does, he will beat Hillary, will not tolerate marijuana use in those states that have legislated for it and will make major changes to Social Security. Big talk from a man whose numbers are tanking at home and whom the religious-right wouldn’t touch on a bet.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker led the early pack of hopefuls, his ego helping him rise to the top like a hot air balloon. Walker has made a name for himself by killing off unions, culminating in a recent vote that rendered his state “right to work” (which means the right not to pay union dues and then wonder too late what happened to all your worker protections). A recent survey indicates that his stronghold demographic — political independents — now disapprove his job at home by a 24-point margin, and he’s lost a big chunk of party support since October. Like Rick Perry, his answers to political questions were not up to snuff. I think of Walker as someone like George W., not the sharpest tool in the shed but canny and well connected. That is likely not enough to get the nod this time around.

Rick Perry, enhanced by thick-rimmed dweeb glasses to make him seem less dim, is in New Hampshire with the other wannabes this weekend to schmooze the electorate. Rick called Hillary a “pig in a poke,” linking him as ideological kin to the Pub county supervisor in Milwaukee, whose mouth had already made her a public figure for nicknaming Hillary “Ovary.” Brace yourself for much much more of this, since Clinton IS the threat they’re facing, and sexism is the easiest brass ring to grab as the calliope plays.

Hearken back with me now to those 2012 news bulletins regarding Hillary’s pant suits. Resolve to push past this inanity, not wallow in it. Promise to examine, support or critique her policies against a progressive template. I suspect some on the right have evolved enough to keep their yaps shut even if they’re thinking sexist thoughts, but certainly not all. Some of the theatrics are fun, if not taken to heart. Pushing aside the pig and ovary comments, this week her stop at Chipotle for lunch was portrayed by FOX News as an overt nod to the Hispanic vote. Perhaps this week she’ll pick up Chinese takeout and put everyone into tailspin.

So far, Hillary has done a pretty good job of embracing progressive concerns, although some of it seems a direct turnabout, as Dem. Gov. Martin O’Malley, as yet undeclared, has accused. She may be good on environmental issues now, but in her last gig as Secretary of State, she acted as an encouraging voice for international fracking. She has talked about amending the Constitution to rid us of Citizens United, but she’s also projected her campaign to cost some 2.5 BILLION (with a B!) dollars, so I suppose one would have to follow the other, eh?

She’s depending on smaller donors this time around, and mimicking Obama’s use of social media, but there seems little doubt she’s already lined up her billionaires. The charity that she and her husband and daughter run hasn’t given up on foreign contributions as yet, and likely won’t. They will have to establish an unscalable wall between money for the poor and any hint of pay-for-play. And of course, there’s Big Dog Bill. What to do with Bill.

Since she is likely the Dem candidate, and the first woman president, Hillary could benefit from a liberal tune up. If she’s going to turn out those voters who could lift her boat in 2016, she needs to get a sense of how passionately they want progressive change. Warren isn’t running, but it’s apparent that Bernie Sanders is, and that will put the right questions on the floor in debate. Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chaffee, a popular Independent ex-governor, along with O’Malley from Maryland, seems anxious to climb on board. Add hawkish Jim Webb from Virginia, and we still don’t know about Joe Biden. That’s a quorum, then, and a platform for some of the more important issues to get a public airing.

Although there are no sure bets on the right, and Jeb is considered far and away too moderate to suit primary voters, it seems reasonable that he will find his way to the nomination. Of the proposed candidates, Jeb is the most house-broken politician. However, his embrace of immigration reform is a black spot on his resume, and he has a lot of private baggage, including fishy business deals over the years, a Hispanic family, and his older brother, once the Decider, now a painter. Despite those hiccups, Jeb is conservative to the bone, although a party set to ‘primary’ old faithful John McCain for not supporting a right-wing agenda may not appreciate that. I loathe the idea of a Clinton/Bush dynasty campaign, but there seems no avoidance, given the dearth of likely challengers. Frankly, I don’t think it’s much of a contest, and much less about personalities than policy and money.

The choice, I believe, will be stark enough that there will be little doubt about what’s being voted for. WHO turns out to vote will again be the issue, I think. The country is by and large more liberal than conservative, and it has looked on the Pubs’ obstruction with a good deal of trepidation. Although the party hits the right cultural notes, many of their own aged and aging party members may have trouble accepting attempts to change Medicare, Social Security, and even that highly effective Democratic project known as Obamacare.

Doug Sosnik, adviser to Big Bill Clinton back in the day, wrote a Politico article titled “Groucho Marx’s Republican Party: Why the GOP is in more trouble than you think.” In it, Sosnik elaborates on this Groucho quote: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

Right now, the GOP’s biggest problem is that the country isn’t looking for the kind of change that their party is offering. The Tea Party-inspired insurgent wing of the GOP is so consumed with completing its political takeover that it’s either unable or unwilling to do what it takes to appeal to the group of voters Republicans need to take back the White House.

All the talk of Clinton’s inevitability in 2008 has soured the pundits on using that word, but I will. Unless something monumental happens, Hillary is inevitable as our first woman president. With many months to go, we would do well to push her as far to the left as possible, knowing that she will default back to moderate when the time is right.

So this is that moment when the left can get traction on how it expects its leadership to behave. This is that period when the political expectation is larger than mere rhetoric. The whole nation will be discussing the issues we care the most about. And seriously, dearhearts? That IS change we can believe in. We’ve come a long way, baby, from the dark, if hopeful days of 2008, and that’s a very good thing.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Some things don’t change quickly, some things do. What seldom changes is humankind’s aversion to pain, to discomfort, which is a real shame since that’s the one short-cut, the single take-no-prisoners corridor through chaos and out the other side of lingering dysfunction. What seldom changes at all is the process by which we assess risk.

In the simplest possible terms, we don’t change quickly because we’d have to think outside of the box, perhaps risking all those things we’d stuffed inside it, and that frightens us enormously. I read today that Lowes Home Improvement will no longer sell bee-killing pesticides known as neonicotinoids — but that won’t start until 2019, as alternatives can be developed. Let’s hope that all the bees don’t die in the next four years, then, along with half our crops. We’re not so good at the kind of in-the-moment improv needed to face reality squarely, obviously, or we’d yank the rip-cord on all things climate change and let the deniers go pound salt.

Although it doesn’t necessarily follow, thinking outside of the box appears to be throwing the box under the bus to those depending on its walls to keep them secure, and scares the bejesus out of the natives. That changes slowly, but it does change. Take the Pope, for instance. This is a man who selected a very tight box for himself and yet he’s managed to push out the walls to such a degree that a lot of traditional Catholics are pissed at him.

Even in South America, where he practiced a very populist form of Jesuit ministry for the poor and disenfranchised, a number of his followers have protested his embrace of markedly non-conservative activity. Francis is a man following his conscience, living as simple a life as he’s allowed and practicing tolerance and inclusion wherever he can. And no one can doubt his courage, going after the Mafia during Easter Week, accepting evolution as a possible form of God-activity, and calling the Koran a book of valid spiritual teaching, Islam a religion of peace earlier this year.

This coming week, at the Summit of the Americas in Panama, Obama will likely meet face-to-face with Raul Castro, seemingly poised on announcing the removal of Cuba from the list of terrorist-sponsoring states, if not lifting sanctions entirely. Perhaps a bit too soon for the conservative public, and still a toss-up as Obama continues to consult his advisers, these measures are in the works as Cuba attends the Summit for the first time since its inception in the early 1990s. And give the devil his due, this project would not be so far along without the urging of Pope Francis, who acted as middleman between the two governments.

It would seem the little man born of Italian immigrants in Buenos Aries, and the half-African half-American kid born in Hawaii, share an ethical core. Which is not to say that Pope Frank is changing the face of the church into a liberal entity. He hasn’t come out for gay marriage, married priests, women priests or birth control, nor will he and keep his job. Despite his personal acceptance of diverse characters, his official position on gay ambassadors, for instance, remains stonewall (despite, or perhaps because of allegations of overt Vatican gay culture).

But his open mind and think-outside-the-box manner have charmed not just non-Catholics in this country but disenchanted Catholics who have left the church behind. He’s a man of the people and his teaching on poverty and justice, along with a fiery rebuke of renegade capitalism, hasn’t won him any fans on the far-right. He’s hardly the darling of the tradition-steeped, deeply incestuous and politicized church, the one that is still at war with the Reformation. His own Bishops are deeply divided, especially in this country.

Within the uneasy alliance with evangelicals, those who counted on backing from the Catholic hierarchy, like Sara Palin, have questioned his bona fides with Gawd Almighty.

Some among his own have complained that he’s less progressive than ‘radical,’ perhaps sent from the Devil as a liberalizing influence to destroy the church. It’s been whispered that he’s an anti-Pope, like the black guy in the Oval Office is an anti-president: neither of them fit to serve. In fact, FOX News calls him the “Barack Obama of the Vatican.” The walls of that long established patriarchal box hold tight, in some quarters.

In discussing the outreach to normalize Cuban relations, Obama told a group of listeners, “Engagement is a more powerful force than isolation. I believe that we can move past some of the old debates that so often define the region, and move forward.” Read between the lines of this situation and you’ll find the Obama Doctrine, as we have learned to recognize it: reach out a hand for a diplomatic partner and see what happens.

This is is the same open hand that Francis is offering, an attempt to define similarities rather than differences. The different world views — with both the President of the United States, and the 266th Catholic Pope — are real enough but the spirit of their conversation asks for respect rather than derision, collaboration and win/win rather than zero sum. Somewhat odd bedfellows, they are both sons, although in different ways, of liberation theology.

You will remember ‘liberation theology’ as the buzzwords that came along with candidate Obama’s churching history under the tutelage of the Reverend Wright in Chicago, creating a rift between the two (mentored and mentor) that, at last report, remains unhealed. Francis seems to have experienced his own liberation epiphany after very public failure within the ranks of the church, as outlined in this excellent Rolling Stone piece from last year.

Both of these men have more than passing acquaintance with oppression, poverty and diversity. That this philosophy is identified with Marxist thought is enough to land these two world leaders under the ‘pinko’ umbrella that conservatives save for the real troublemakers. Rush Limbaugh considers Pope Frank a “pure Marxist” of course, and the Kenyan a “pure Islamist.” You’ll forgive me, I trust, if I mention that I consider Rush a pure idiot, and someone whose bust does NOT deserve a place in the Missouri statehouse beside the likes of Mark Twain and even feisty old Harry Truman.

The Pope will visit the U.S. later this year, facing covert hostility from within his ranks and the conservative press, but I expect him to be warmly received by the American public. He will address a joint session of Congress, and I have hopes that he will do that of which we’ve seen him capable: speak truth to power. It might move few conservative hearts, but I bet it will move the needle on America’s perception of conservative politics.

The most important realization I can think of, in terms of rehabbing ethical behavior as an American standard, is exposure of the stiff-necked, punishing and self-serving philosophy dished up to the American public as politically-packaged Old Time Religion. The walls of that selective little box need busting down in the worst way.

There is every indication that those walls of stilted regressivism are shakier than the many Republican candidates think, but it’s the walls we’ve got, right? Gotta keep them high until we can replace them with something that keeps us — and all our stuff, and our ability to get it and keep it — safe. Unthinkable to risk more, even if the box is the devil we know and chaos reigns inside.

Or maybe not. Maybe we can speed that up.

I read an article awhile back about Jon Stewart’s brain. Don’t worry, it’s fine — in fact, it’s better than fine, according to a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital who cited him as an example of someone who thinks outside the box. Tracking brain changes in improvisational rappers and jazz musicians, she suggests that the differences between learned comedy routines and those realized in the moment would also show up on a brain scan as highly creative thinking. She says, of Stewart:

“I recently saw him in person, Jon Stewart. He is just brilliant at being in the moment and putting together separate ideas — he would take things that had occurred earlier in the night and then weave them together with other things that were happening in the moment. And you knew it couldn’t have been prepared in advance.”

“Quick-witted would be the layman way to put it; he’ll be interviewing someone on The Daily Show, and he’s just very quick, very quick at making these unexpected connections. But the term we would use for that is divergent thinking — that is, making novel connections between things that other people don’t put together, and finding the humor in that. You could also think of it as just “thinking outside the box.””

We need to start recognizing what thinking outside the box looks and sounds like. It happens in the moment, it happens when we really LISTEN. It comes bubbling up from our ability to connect dots and keep focus, it’s creative and imaginative. It takes in the whole picture, not just what we want to know but what there IS to know.

This is a necessary skill to acquire, my dears. None of us are pure left or right, male or female, good or bad. We are, each of us, an amalgam of everything we’ve ever done or seen, all we’ve felt and imagined. We all live in boxes of our own making but not all of us are stuck.

Barack Obama is an establishment president, business-friendly and too moderate to impress some on the left, but he seems determined to put a progressive stamp on his last months in office. He’s not a people-person, so much as an academician given to asking questions of everyone in the room, soliciting opinions to get a complete picture. Then, and only then, does he make up his mind. From what I’ve seen, once he does, there’s nothing wimpy about this Leo. He has a reputation for being quick-witted and open to productive ideas and creative solutions. He lives in a very tight box, but he’s been dedicated to projecting outside of its structured restraints to change the face of American power, and it seems to me he’s been amazingly successful for a Kenyan.

Pope Francis is a people-person, more at home with one-on-one conversations than as the formal face of the church. He has suggested that he may retire before his tenure is done, but until he does, he will make the powerful uncomfortable and the victimized welcome in his church. He may not punch his way out of the tight walls he’s chosen for himself, but he’s made enough holes in them already to invite some in who will change the intent of the institution long before the leadership does. Sometimes the smaller picture — washing a prisoner’s feet, kissing the bambini, eschewing the trappings of a Prince of Rome for the garments of a servant — provides an experience of love far superior to notions of divine authority and church dogma.

We all live in some kind of box, some kind of structured system that we’ve accepted as true. Perhaps the walls are less rigid than we think, perhaps the space far more limited than need be. Perhaps a bit of practice at connecting dots, finding commonality and keeping an open heart will grow the space we inhabit to include us all.

One last comment, today, something I’d like to share. I don’t know about you, but I’m rarely surprised by much. I can almost always find a place in my extensive system of mental file-folders to tuck information and occurrences. But this week, something changed. I’ve had two dreams now, one after another, that are 3D paradigm-breakers.

Last evening, when my son mentioned that he’d had weird dreams the night before, I told him I’d had a disturbing one. I don’t have nightmares, not since I was a kid with repeaters that disappeared when I finally recognized them as incarnational, but occasionally I’ll have one that leaves me disquieted upon waking. I had one night before last, leaving me with questions about reality. I just didn’t know where to put it.

Then, last night, there it was again — a different set of circumstances resulting in exactly the same ah-ha! moment — surprising me, and asking me to push past the walls of old thinking and realize how multi-dimensional I am, you are, we are. The thought is not new, nor is even a multi-dimensional experience, but the uniqueness of this realization is so different that I can’t quite yet describe it. All I can say is that we’re bigger than we think. We’re braver, too.

We’re changing because we have to. Others have done some of our heavy lifting for us, made it possible to follow. Some of the most gentle and reasonable of the voices urging us forward have already proven that compassion and cooperation lift us faster and higher than unnamed fears can frighten us into downward spiral.

We have the option of continuing to be frightened and helpless, defensive and hostile, or changing the way we fit into this little box of ours. The walls are falling. Push a little, see what happens.