Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Columnist Steven Greenhut writes:

Syndicated columnist Bob Novak, writing about the surprising number of conservatives who are backing Democrat Barack Obama rather than Republican John McCain for the presidency, captured their widespread sentiment when he quoted one "Obamacon" with impeccable GOP credentials: "The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of ‘Weekend at Bernie,’ handcuffed to a corpse." These Obama supporters hold no illusions about Obama’s liberalism, but they are so angry at the GOP, Novak writes, that they seek a "therapeutic electoral bloodbath."… [I]n a two-party system, when one party screws up royally, the voters reward the other party.’
(OC Register; emphasis added)

It’s actually quite affirming that some conservatives have decided to rebel against what the Bush administration and its abettors and enablers and are prepared, in the best traditions of democracy, to throw the rascals out.’

Because ‘conservative’ sure doesn’t mean what it used to. It doesn’t actually even mean ‘conservative’ anymore.

Read the rest of this entry »

THE SELKIE
Starbucks chose the motif of the mermaid, a beautiful and ancient motif about which there are many stories. In one of my books I tell the story about how just such a mermaid sickens and dries out when lured to land by a man who says he loves her. But, she cannot abide his way of living, nor what he requires of her… she cannot become as the man wishes just because he wishes it so.

She is harmed by being forced to live endlessly according to land-locked rules. The mermaid– often in the oldest stories, called ‘the selkie,’– has to return to the water in order to live. During her time on land, she gradually loses the sparkle to her flesh, loses her moistness. Her body is dried, weakened and her eyes gone near blind, …but one night, she hears the call of the old grandfather selkie calling her home. Somehow, she finds her way to the water again, and diving under the waves, is restored.

But not without sadness, to leave the man. And not without the man’s sadness to have lost his dream.

Here in the west where I live, there once were mom and pop coffee shops everywhere. They had magazine bars and great live music, and small delis, and armchairs and outdoor seating under umbrellas, and many kinds of tea and coffee. Some had short order. Some had bakeries attached out back. Mom and pop and whoever worked there knew not only everyone by name, but by ailment, by achievement, by current challenge each customer was happily or sadly facing. You know, asked after every soul who walked in.

The mom and pop joints were more like Cheers than like American Idol. There were regulars; the core group that was friendly and funny. Strangers were included, invited into the conversations with a, Hey buddy what do you think? There was much, much laughter.

Starbucks’ surveyors from r and d came Read the rest of this entry »

The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul

As a child, I was taken to Hoover dam,
one of the wonders of the world, they said,
and in a way it was, a testament to the workers
who risked their lives to build a concrete moat
complete with castlettes
to hold the Mother water back,
and all the life she once nourished,
and all that once laid increase into her womb.

I stood on the hydroelectric dam,
atop the concrete spillway.
I felt the machine-drone
of the deep turbines underneath
trying to say something to my foot bones
through my shoes,
something like, ‘I am mighty,
look to me. ‘

But I had already been naked in rivers
and crossed land over ice lakes in winter,
and been baptized in creeks,
and the dam could not say enough
to convince me,
for I knew the mightiness
belonged to open water…

__________
CODA

The painting, a watercolor by Buffalo Kaplinski, b. 1943, “Frisco, Colorado, Aspen Fall Patterns.” ©1995, 2008 All Rights Reserved

The poem excerpt “The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul,” ©1970, 2008, C.P. Estés, All Rights Reserved. From the book Pulse of the River, Colorado Writers Speak for the Endangered Cache La Poudre, editors: Wockner, Bass, Pritchett

You might remember my reports on the monk’s, nun’s and Burmese people’s protests in September of last year, how my contacts in Yangon (Rangoon) dried up within days as cpu’s were confiscated, cell phones smashed, communications wires cut, and various deeply good souls arrested, many children, men, women beaten, many murdered by Than Shwe’s evil orders. It was agony and remains so, not to know the fates of those specific contacts/blogger/photographers who were bravely and desperately funneling information and photos out of Burma to literally anyone who would receive them.

I pray for highly endangered bloggers and journalists and radio and broadcast press people everyday. But after such brutal crackdowns as the smug dictator Shwe’s in Burma, for instance, I dont know the storytellers’ whereabouts, if I should pray for them on earth, or perhaps they have been killed and are in heaven. So I pray for them wherever they might be, that they be given all mercy possible, that they be made invisible at just the right moments, that they somehow know we know; that they can be assured that their courage work did not fall on stones.

I would like a monument to The Unknown Bloggers of the World. I would. I am deadly serious. Those who risked their lives to tell the story. Those who gave their lives to tell the story before they were cut down.

Here is more on the hugely disturbing free-form arresting and harming of bloggers, a practice that despite public knowlege, continues without effective intervention… In this report from University of Washington, a reported 64 bloggers arrested for publishing their views in 2003, to a 192 bloggers reported arrested in 2007, the numbers only increase. It is poignant to note that ‘reported’ numbers does not include those who are maimed, disappeared, murdered. Nor does it include, as the article states, those arrested in place just like Burma where the government gives the evil eye to anyone who asks after the welfare of any citizen.

From BBC

…A University of Washington annual report….

More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.

Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report.

Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task.
Read the rest of this entry »

(Update Below in the CODA, re cause of death. An autopsy has been performed.) Tim Russert, died of an apparent heart attack at age 58. He passed away at his office. Author of Big Russ and Me, about his one of a kind father, Russert also has a son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College this week. His son hosts the XM radio show 60/20 Sports with James Carville.

Tim Russert was a lawyer, and a journalist who inherited the hosting of Meet the Press from the venerably David Brinkley. Mr. Russert was also Washington Bureau Chief for NBC news. He rose through the ranks beginning with being a counsel in New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s office, then took the position of cheif of staff to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from 1977 to 1982. In 1984 he was hired by NBC and in the 2000 national elections became somewhat known as an oracle, when he created a whiteboard calculating electoral votes and putting pretty clear bets on who would win based on garnering votes in normally overlooked states.

There has been much speculation in newspapers and blogs that Russert was good for booking interviews for VicePresident Cheney and others when they had a message to get out, and that he was also booking Democrats as well… but seemed to be tilting to whichever side was most in power in the moment. My personal opinion is it may have seemed that way, but Meet the Press was designed to be ‘an equal opportunity venue’ for many kinds of political voices.

Mr Russert was a frequent pundit in the most recent 2008 runs between Senators Clinton and Obama giving opinions that often took on the timber of sportscasting… for following college teams was one of his great loves in life

Mr. Russert’s wife is connected with Vanity Fair magazine. Maureen Orth, has been a special correspondent there since 1983.

One question will be who will replace Mr. Russert who has been a major doorway Read the rest of this entry »

The River Time Machine

Split bamboo was enough once,
no fancy graphite anything.
‘Whipping the water’ beautifully…
was not yet ‘a casting-arm arc’
plotted with computer precision

Away from clattering cities,
it was just one soul
standing in the water…

Where did the ability to swing the line
so gently left to right, come from?
How did pulling the rod tip back slow
find its knack in a man?

And now, where does letting loose the line
Find its way into men who have been trained
to leave no light showing
between any two moments of their days?

Yet, isn’t it clear that all the old knowing
can rush back into any over-civilized man…
just by him wading into wild water?

_____________
“The River Time Machine,” excerpt from La Pasionaria, Collected Poetry ©1970/2008, C.P. Estés

The blame game has already been going on, and is likely to become ugly and fierce as to who is causing maximum pollution and contributing towards visible changes in environment.

On the one side we have “developed” countries refusing to have a critical look at their reckless consumerism. While on the other are the “developing” countries wanting to mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle and thus putting an unbearable burden on the scarce resources on our planet earth.

All this has been been convincingly discussed in detail in the latest must-read article in The Economist. However, it does more finger-pointing towards China and India rather than suggesting ways how and what the “developed” nations should do towards sustainable living.

“Now that the American presidential race is down to two candidates who are both committed to cutting emissions, China and India, the world’s most populous nations, are seen by many as the world’s biggest climate-change problems. Russia’s economy is more profligate with energy, but China is widely believed to be the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and India is rapidly moving up.

“Their exploding emissions are America’s main excuse for failing to take action itself; and their intransigence exasperates those trying to negotiate a global agreement on climate-change mitigation to replace the Kyoto protocol. Meanwhile, both countries are awakening to the problems that climate change will cause them.”

More here…

It goes without saying that without equitable distribution of resources the world would be witnessing increasing migrations, poverty and terrorism in the coming years. One option has been shown by the Bush administration — survival of the fittest. The other revolves round urgent evolving of a consensus on such critical issues through serious deliberations by world leaders. The latter option may provide effective long and short term strategy so essential for world peace and harmony.

Meanwhile a study centre, described as the world’s first legal research centre into climate change, will be opened in Canberra at the Australian National University today by environment minister Peter Garrett. The centre would focus on issues such as the international legal regime for tackling climate change, after the Kyoto agreement runs out, climate litigation, and issues involving renewable energy, transport and forestry. More here…

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we Love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

Jalaluddin Rumi,
13th Century Islamic mystic and poet

The Brazilian government says this picture, taken from an airplane deep over the rain forest, is of a tribal group that has never had contact with the ‘outside world.”

Aside from most of us today who got whiplashed between trying to cover the left, right and middle Obama pundits and watching the Democratic delegates acting like they might be at a Condominium HomeOwners Board meeting what with all the face-making, voice raising, booing, cheering, having to be reminded to act like adult men and women… well

being surrounded by gigantic green things and having no contact with the ‘outside world’ is looking pretty good to me. No doubt some others too.

________
Coda
Just a note about the photo; maybe I am imagining it–it’s been a really long day and the pay is so high, as you know…lol– but when I put it up on my forensic program even tho its transmitted resolution is poor… isnt it kind of odd that most things in the picture appear to have no shadows? It is said the darker figure is a woman, and from the placement of her breasts on chest, she would be youngish. But, if the men have run for their bows, what is a woman doing just sort of standing there. It’s a mystery. Like most of today’s flash news was a bewilderment to a good many of us.

“Have you ever noticed
the leaves before they completely snap
out of their little valises …
they’re only just peeking out…
making a pale green mist in the air…
My grandmother used to say that mist
was the tree showing us,
for just a very few days once a year,
what oxygen really looks like.”

________________
CODA
The lovely painting is by David Parfitt who lives in Coleford near Bath. You can see more of his watercolors and oils here.

The Soldier’s Promise

Tiny Prayer

“New seed roots
most deeply
in the places
that are most empty.”

————
CODA
[The Soldier’s Promise] “Tiny Prayer”, excerpted from book The Faithful Gardener: AWise Tale About That Which Can Never Die by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, ©1996, All Rights Reserved, Harper Collins/ HarperSanFrancisco

St. Francis of Assisi, after a day of walking far and then even farther asking for alms, came through the forest at last to the giant rocks at the edge of a stream.

So may it be for you.
So may it be for me.
So may it be for all of us.
–cpe

Most every night, I stay up late-late, long after everyone else is sleeping. I fly over the internet, looking, looking, trying to find something beautiful or restorative to share with you here at TMV, so either you go to sleep with a beautiful idea or image, or wake up with one.

Tonight, finding something beautiful in this wide and groaning world, was easy. Because there is Jiang Xiaojuan, a young provincial policewoman.

Jiang is 29 years old and is the young mother of a little baby herself. Her child is under six months old, and is still being breastfed.

When the earthquake that killed over 50,000 people in China occurred, Jiang’s town was devastated. She put on her uniform and went out looking to help. She first found one weeping baby, and then another young infant… and took them to her breast.

She now is nursing five orphan infants whose mothers died in the earthquake. And she is nursing four other newborns whose mothers are homeless and traumatized… when a nursing mother is severely shocked, her milk flow, you might say, is shocked too and can stop flowing.

As a mother who nursed til her offspring was practically old enough to go to school, and as the mother of a grown daughter who while nursing her own child also gave her nourishing milk to my ailing elderly father (expressed, not nursed)… I feel certain we stand with many mothers worldwide who salute Jiang Xiaojuan profoundly.

It’s a mystery women don’t often speak of publicly, what it’s like to nourish another human being… or many… from one’s own blood and bones. It is, one of the greatest honors in the world.

I think, despite the restrictive and suspicious regime of China, it’s people like Jiang who really represent the true spirit of modern China, the compassionate soul.

Tonight, it was easy to find a beautiful story to tell you. I would that it were as easy on all other nights too.

_____
CODA
(And no, some of you guys, she only nurses babies. Real ones.)

Than Shwe, as four (4), count them, four huge ships are anchored off Burma, ships filled with relief medical supplies, a helicopter, food, tents, clothing for the poor suffering people of Burma, and YOU Than Shwe, whose names literally mean “million gold’ …refuse to allow the ships into port to land.

This, Than Shwe, is now three weeks after the entire planetary community has rushed to give aid to the people of Burma. You have said and continue to say, No. You have grabbed what shipments of goods you’ve allowed into the country, for yourself and your friends, with only pale distribution far from the center of the Irrawaddy devastation.

A lot of people worldwide see no great leader in you, but think there’s a infantile mewling tyrant inside the great dictator of Burma. It may be so, for when a person carries a profound sense of inferiority, they also give great effort to compensate by overdoing status symbols. I hear you have festooned your military jacket with unearned gold medals, Than Shwe.

There’s an old saying in the military, the real and honorable military, not your colonized kind, Than Shwe: the more gold hanging on the outside, the smaller the man feels himself to be on the inside.

Even our five-star generals and admirals, Than Shwe, do not wear their ceremonial military uniforms at every turn as you do. They know the difference between daily hard work and the garb to do it in, and the occasional all-out ceremonial dress-up.

Most importantly, they got their medals, bars and epaulets the hard way: they earned them– often by spilling their own blood. Not like you, who spill the blood of your own people, and then award yourself a grand medal for doing so.

There’s another story Than Shwe, one from my own heritage:

The greed-sotted Conquistadores who staged a vicious coup, plundering the Aztec nations, setting themselves up as a dictatorship and junta… they had exactly the same problem as you Than Shwe.

Their lust to festoon themselves with gold they had not earned, but killed innocent Aztecs for, made the braggart Conquistadores’ bodies very heavy. The Conquistadores literally clanked from all the gold they hung on all over themselves.

Gold, so heavy in fact, that when the native people turned on them in rebellions that took hundreds of years to come to resolution– in the favor of the people– that when the phony dictators ran from the Aztecs to bunker themselves in their stolen palaces, the gold-laden soldiers often fell into the many waterways and aqueducts Read the rest of this entry »

From my Magyar family, there is a story from my father’s brother,* a man who had the tribal title of ‘keeper of trees.’ The family story goes like this:

“Once in times older than the fog and younger than the sun, there were old guardian trees. These venerable trees had lived so long they’d seen everything that passed by on the road before them… and often more than once.

Thus, these trees, so situated, had become shrewd observers of human nature. They knew the language of creatures too. They knew the odd, wondrous, and treacherous ways of men as well.

Humans found being near such trees often calmed their minds, quieted the spinning-jinn within. Often enough, answers to long held questions seemed to flow from the magnitude of the old trees, right into the human heart.

Therefore, those who’d come to the groves in mourning, or having lost their ways, or simply being perplexed, often enough went away feeling deeply comforted, better directed, or with more clarity of mind.

Long ago, before legends ever existed, guardian trees were not just trees, but healing spirits who gave of their leaves and bark and roots so that human beings could be made well again… and for that reason too, the people loved them. And, the leafy giants loved the people right back.

But as the guardian trees grew older yet, their limbs and reaches also grew longer– and much heavier– causing the trees to cry out sometimes. The weight of their limbs put unbearable pressures upon their delicate junctures. The village people were alarmed to hear the trees crying…

They feared the trees’ arms might break and bring down the entire tree, and so, they carefully whittled crutches made of ground-wood, and gently pressed these under the trees’ great arms, helping the giant trees to remain strong despite whatever storms might rear up.

And, the trees grew even older… and older yet. More challenges came from bitter winds and wild weather, til the oldest trees carried far more scars than bark… some scars from deep woundings, some from horrible severances, and many scars from loving so hard the tree’s skin had come apart time and again, each time allowing more tree, more love, to be carried within.

No matter how old a tree became, no matter how fatefully struck or crowned… the great trees were still consulted for their wisdom, their ability to see far. And those who knew the old trees best, remained ever near them, protecting the guardian trees now, those giants who had spent long and long, reaching out their heavy limbs to shelter and protect others.”

So may it be for the Senator and those who love him so.

____________
* “The Faithful Gardener, A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die,” C.P. Estés, HarperSanfrancisco

If we opened the windows from our hearts and looked out, maybe we’d see something like this…

It’s early morning, we’ve just pulled away from the pier. We’ve got the old Evinrude gassed up and practically drowning the stern of this old boat…

But, right now, you’re rowing by hand, at least til we get past the weedy shallows. Those old oak oars warmed in the sun sure do clank in their locks…

and the shore birds are knocking themselves out singing like they’re auditioning for Carmen and the loons are crying, and the water striders are striding, and you are pulling those oars deep and smooth through this nearly gin-clear water.

And the smell of everything is so pure, it seems like it’s only the second day of Creation.

Oh! d’ja see that? My God, it was probably, what? a twenty pounder?

They say the walleyes and bass that live in this lake are older than the sky. You brought the minnows, right?

Good. No, you go ahead, I’ll just lie here eyes closed in this sweet God’s light. If you wouldnt mind, after you catch breakfast, lunch and dinner, just taking me over to the north side of the lake?

Well, you remember now don’t you? That’s where the water lilies grow. We could have flowers for the table, beautiful long rooted flowers that smell like lake water even after dark…

Today is Armed Forces Day, though surely it’s ‘Unarmed Forces’ Day… soldiers back from war, who ought be celebrated also… treated with decency to mend up psychic wounds they carry… ones who display injuries just as much in need of healing as a shattered arm, loss of hearing, a leg no longer all there. Same symptomatology in many Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder injuries: shattered; loss of; no longer there in the way one once was…

Borrowing an image from welding, PTSD can also be seen this way: One or more strong welds have come undone; not from weakness in the welds or in the metal, but from the angles the strong welds have been bent to… the tonnage of stress-weight placed on the those welds–- far more bow and weight than this ’strongest of metals known to humankind’ can sustain.

The word ’stress’ in this diagnosis, is not what we feel when driving in gridlocked traffic, nor when competing for a job, nor when we have ten kidlettes discharging candy in the back seat. PTSD stress means, among other things, the psyche has been injured in a sustained way by horrific experiences …so that deeply instinctive elements of psyche are overwhelmed or disabled ….as though they never existed, or have become unreliable for us to put full weight on, /or exist only in an unrelieved black set of memories and griefs.

Shaun Mullen, veteran, writes at Kiko’s House:

PTSD SCANDAL GETS WORSE
I went pretty deep the other day in “Exposed: A Silent Epidemic Is Killing Our Iraq & Afghan War Vets” I urge you to read both this article and accompanying think piece on the anatomy of PTSD if you care about the kind of homecoming the emotionally wounded veterans are receiving.
If the sense of anger and frustration I feel didn’t come through, then I wasn’t doing my job. But then neither is Dr. Norma Perez, physician in charge of PTSD program at a medical facility for veterans who told her staff to refrain from diagnosing the disorder because too many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

From a shocking article in the Washington Post:
” ‘Given we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,’ Norma Perez wrote in a March 20, 2008 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended they ‘consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder.’

“VA staff members ‘really don’t . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD,’ Perez wrote.”

In case you’re wondering, adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD. Adjustment disorder has a shorter duration, hence is ‘easier’ and cheaper to treat.

Might I add there is a special place in hell for doctors who violate the Hippocratic Oath to save not tortured souls, but money.

This stunning memo from Dr. Perez, seeming to aim to ‘fix’ diagnoses the way horse races are ‘fixed’ in order to keep money in ‘fixer’s’ own pocket, suggests PTSD diagnosis be ‘downgraded’ to “Adjustment Reaction.”

In my experience as a shrink these past three-plus decades, Adjustment Reaction is a diagnosis for a child suddenly changing schools and having a hard time. Adjustment Reaction is a diagnosis belonging to a person going through a garden-variety, uncontested divorce.

Adjustment Reaction is not a diagnosis for men and women who have been to war, and who suffered serious ongoing or sudden trauma. Perhaps most telling in this shell game of diagnoses, treatment for diagnosis of Adjustment Reaction is most often not covered by insurance.

This means, injured vets of this war, would be thrown down into the same trench dug for previous vets, wherein government whistles and pretends agent orange exposure, for instance, is a figment of imagination, instead of a serious incremental illness. This means vets would be encumbered to pay for much needed medical help, from their own meager funds. This means vets will be left on their own -–for life– to deal with catastrophic injuries suffered while in employ of their own government.

Can a person, any person, feign PTSD? Yes, of course. There are scammers of welfare, there are scammers for Social Security benefits, people who are actually fit but lazy. However, most are not scammers. Our soldiers didn’t just slip in an aisle of the grocery store and become disabled. They went to war, a fighting, shooting, deadly war. They managed to come home.

Not all vets with PTSD are invisible to us: those men you see wandering on the streets in their cammies after their war service, they were no scammers either. If anything, the military system A.W., after war, has scammed many of them out of righteous and timely effective treatments for their most serious war wounds long ago.

Some observers might say, Yes, but they’re drug addicts and alcoholics. I’d say, Yes, many are. Now.

Given their lack of a required and timely medical care upon return from deployments, in many ways, since these soldiers didn’t have best medicine, they’ve been primed to settle for the poorest.

Even now, after so long, were they offered good medicine, solid compassionate treatment, many street soldiers might not accept it. Daily i.v. drip of cheap anesthesia can seem enough. To their minds, others on the street often understand more and better than any cleaner, better-dressed, well-fed outsider.

Too, a most poignant feature of severe PTSD is prevalent in the men who wander: they no longer have consistent touch with a core self. They might try but then refuse help, because the spirit and soul of the soldier is in some way still on duty, back on the Mekong delta or outside of Baghdad, or still in some way, marching NPD, Night Perimeter Defense… to keep all of us and their buds safe from harm.

A fine welder does not throw broken welded metal onto the slag heap, and especially does not re-deploy it back into use, pretending OSHA made up its hazards and safety rules just for the heck of it. The rules about fatigued materials, even at the level of OSHA, are about preserving health and saving lives.

A fine welder repairs the welds that have come undone, often cleaning out most the old material and replacing it with new material that can and will hold well… there’s often a phase too, of ‘letting the metal rest’… but assuredly never again bending the strong metals under extreme pressures which are already well known to break the strongest welds.

The military arm of our government ought have no lesser standards, no less ethos.

President George Bush has made another comment from foreign soil (Egypt) that doesn’t specify who he’s criticizing but it’s again clear who he means: he says don’t blame Saudi Arabia for America’s oil problems, blame Congress (which just happens to be controlled by the opposition party):

US President George W. Bush said on Saturday that a hike in oil output by Saudi Arabia would not solve American energy problems.

“It’s not enough, it’s something but it doesn’t solve our problem,” Bush told reporters in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Bush said he was “pleased” with a Saudi decision taken on May 10 to increase its oil production by 300,000 barrels per day in response to customers, but said that he was “also realistic” about what the Americans should do.

“Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration. Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy and continue our strategy for the advancing of alternative energies as well as conservation,” he said.

Fair enough. And how could he open himself to criticism for that? It’s what comes next that could cause some ripples, although not as much as earlier in the week when he used the same rhetorical technique to swipe at Democratic Senator Barack Obama from Israel:

“One interesting thing about American politics these days is those who are screaming the loudest for increased production from Saudi Arabia are the very same people who are fighting the fiercest against domestic exploration, against the development of nuclear power and against expanding refining capacity.”

Who do “those” refer to? Bush often uses this rhetorical device (which Richard Nixon used quite frequently) of saying “there are those” without naming them.

What’s notable about Bush is that he is one of the few Presidents in American history who seemingly rejects the idea of the virtue of seriously working to build genuine bipartisan consensus on solving national problems. It’s almost as if he views bipartisan consensus and problem solving as weakness. It’s all divide and rule hot-button politics.

In fact, BOTH parties are to blame for not coming together over the years and putting aside differences and hammering out a short term plan and a long term strategy. Just insisting that ANWAR must be drilled doesn’t cut it.

Deng Coy Miel, Singapore