Netanyahu, Perry, Trump and Palin
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/31/11
Did MSM really think that Donald Trump would go away because an elderly correspondent called him a “racist”? How did it work out back in June, 2009, when David Letterman called Sarah Palin a “slut”?
Donald Trump, interviewed by Neil Cavuto this week, had the same steam in his walk. He came across with ideas which are not coming up with the usually “establishment” candidates. They are powerful ideas and they are ideas which will be heard and taken seriously.
If anyone truly believes that Trump is a racist they share the moral complexity and density of a spider plant. It is a technique timeless to the demagogue, institutionalized in our time by Saul Alinsky. But his ideas will be considered because Trump, like Palin, now has folk status: the minions of Big Brother have tracked him down. Of course, he will be back stronger, bigger, better and more brash. He is writing a book on politics and people will listen because people always listen to Donald Trump – his is a mainstream American channel, like Oprah’s, like Letterman’s. And Trump has been endorsed by the two of the most popular religious leaders in America; Franklin Graham and Mike Huckabee. And that means to the America of big stormy stock cars and F 150s and .30-06’s. It means something to Sarah Palin’s America and Texas governor Rick Perry’s.
Which is saying something for a New Yorker. The only other I can think of who shares that true heartland karma is Rudy Giuliani, who was last married at Graceland, I believe. In fact, Trump and Palin might be considered, for lack of a better phrase, “Giuliani conservatives.” To recall, Palin was at a Yankee’s game with Giuliani when Letterman slandered her. It gave her a fresh future. This will give Trump one as well.
Trump will kick off the evening session at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference and strategy briefing this week. Get ready: Applause will come from this major group of social conservatives like that which came to Benjamin Netanyahu in his historic address to Congress.
Worth observing that there has been a regular occurrence of roaring this week with Netanyahu, interrupted 57 times in Congress, Palin who rolled with the thunder into the nation’s capital on a Harley, and Trump, reemerging on the Cavuto show. And wait till they get to hear Rick Perry. Market-wise, this accidental quaternity works well together are bringing something new; a power, a determination, perspective and enthusiasm that did not appear in politics in recent decades. It is a door that has opened – it was opened by Sarah Palin - that will not be closed.
Trump may be out of the running for president in 2012, but like Mitt Romney, Ross Perot and other corporate chiefs – include Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Mike Bloomberg and others – his positions and work and life experience should put him in the highest rank of candidate. He might make a nice running mate in this rising campaign which is delightfully outside the box and rapidly leaving the pale and watery behind.
Consider Perry/Trump ’12 or Palin/Trump ’12. There could not be a better salesman for the American spirit as it rises as if born again fearless and free into the new century.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Will Sarah Palin denial now turn to panic?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/26/11
The horror! The horror! Mr. Kurtz last words
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Sarah Palin might run for president in 2012. The Washington Post headline is “Palin signals she still has White House ambitions, stokes speculation with latest moves.” The NY Times reports today that “Signs Grow That Palin May Run.” From the NYTs:
Sarah Palin is fortifying her small staff of advisers, buying a house in Arizona — where associates have said she could base a national campaign — and reviving her schedule of public appearances. The moves are the most concrete signals yet that Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, is seriously weighing a Republican presidential bid.
A new Gallup survey out today, completed after decisions by Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, and Donald Trump not to run for president, shows Palin in second place, close behind leader Mitt Romney.
It may be that the MSM no longer reports news, but denies news. This was reported first by Real Clear Politics and repeated by Drudge. It has been said here from the beginning: It is now and always has been about Sarah Palin. On the Republican side, the rest is side meat.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Netanyahu speaks as America’s patriarch. Sarah Palin prepares to enter.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/25/11
The century ahead could be seen to have taken shape this past week with President Obama’s stunning claim – a wish really – that Israel repeal 50 years of history and return to its indefensible 1967 borders. It was followed by an address yesterday by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that shook the halls of Congress. Obama then, travelling in Europe, where he feels most comfortable, brought forth an op ed in The Times of London with England’s Prime Minister David Cameron, calling the “Arab Spring” a situation similar to the fall of the Soviet Union, and comparing themselves to be the modern day Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Possibly this helped Netanyahu. His speech was greeted with roaring applause and dozens of standing ovations. For the first time in my memory, and Israeli leader appeared as an authentic American patriarch; a strong and ancient Father Abraham here to speak – to intervene, perhaps – on our behalf.
This administration, which clearly takes its initiatives from Bono and pop culture mavens like Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats, should understand: We are not the world. We are Americans. We play football. They play soccer. In one way Cameron’s and Obama’s comparing the Arab uprisings to the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago is correct. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the cat died of natural causes and the mice declared a revolution to have occurred. The same might be said of the movements in the Arab desert today. In fact these movements are the final degeneration of states which flourished in marriages on harmony and contention hundreds of years ago but began to die around 1914, compartmentalized and crated today as new states with new ideas like The Boomtown Rats, but as writer Robert Christopher has quotes Japanese views on post-war Europe, they may merely be a bunch of restaurants.
America is a rising arc and today, it is clear, so is Israel. As we inherently feel England to be our ancestor, so we feel today about Israel in a way we have not felt before. Possibly because 9/11 has finally sunk in and we understand that we share a common enemy.
Two items related to that:
The Boston Globe reports the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston will vote on whether J Street, a fledging Jewish advocacy group that promotes vigorous US actions to help create a Palestinian state, should be stripped of its membership. J Street is widely expected to be allowed to remain one of the 42 organizations represented on the council. But the discussion over J Street’s membership — and whether the group is truly “pro-Israel’’ — reflects a passionate debate among American Jews over the meaning of the term.
And Sarah Palin: Because Palin understands that we are not the world. But we are Israel. And Real Clear Politics reports that the Palins have in hand a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut extolling Palin's governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, “where Alaska's most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin's prospective presidential campaign -- an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won't run.”
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/25/11
The century ahead could be seen to have taken shape this past week with President Obama’s stunning claim – a wish really – that Israel repeal 50 years of history and return to its indefensible 1967 borders. It was followed by an address yesterday by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that shook the halls of Congress. Obama then, travelling in Europe, where he feels most comfortable, brought forth an op ed in The Times of London with England’s Prime Minister David Cameron, calling the “Arab Spring” a situation similar to the fall of the Soviet Union, and comparing themselves to be the modern day Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Possibly this helped Netanyahu. His speech was greeted with roaring applause and dozens of standing ovations. For the first time in my memory, and Israeli leader appeared as an authentic American patriarch; a strong and ancient Father Abraham here to speak – to intervene, perhaps – on our behalf.
This administration, which clearly takes its initiatives from Bono and pop culture mavens like Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats, should understand: We are not the world. We are Americans. We play football. They play soccer. In one way Cameron’s and Obama’s comparing the Arab uprisings to the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago is correct. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the cat died of natural causes and the mice declared a revolution to have occurred. The same might be said of the movements in the Arab desert today. In fact these movements are the final degeneration of states which flourished in marriages on harmony and contention hundreds of years ago but began to die around 1914, compartmentalized and crated today as new states with new ideas like The Boomtown Rats, but as writer Robert Christopher has quotes Japanese views on post-war Europe, they may merely be a bunch of restaurants.
America is a rising arc and today, it is clear, so is Israel. As we inherently feel England to be our ancestor, so we feel today about Israel in a way we have not felt before. Possibly because 9/11 has finally sunk in and we understand that we share a common enemy.
Two items related to that:
The Boston Globe reports the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston will vote on whether J Street, a fledging Jewish advocacy group that promotes vigorous US actions to help create a Palestinian state, should be stripped of its membership. J Street is widely expected to be allowed to remain one of the 42 organizations represented on the council. But the discussion over J Street’s membership — and whether the group is truly “pro-Israel’’ — reflects a passionate debate among American Jews over the meaning of the term.
And Sarah Palin: Because Palin understands that we are not the world. But we are Israel. And Real Clear Politics reports that the Palins have in hand a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut extolling Palin's governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, “where Alaska's most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin's prospective presidential campaign -- an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won't run.”
Monday, May 23, 2011
Chief of Staff Bill Daley: Obama’s “man in the center"
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/23/11
As photography goes, this one brought the perfect moment. President Obama had ordered the SEALs to descend on the den of Osama bin Laden and kill him. 12 are framed waiting pensively in the War Room, waiting to hear the code phrase, “Geronimo E-KIA” indicating that bin Laden had been killed and the assault successful. And spontaneously and naturally composed by the moment, it was the perfect photograph.
It is always 12, as in Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” The full deck of the zodiac; six yin (three water, three earth), six yang (three air, three fire). But this photo, with the President dressed casually to right of “man in the center” was even more holistically balanced. To the right of “man in the center” - the “power” side, sat the three: Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama and the Air Force general running the show at the computer, which could almost be seen as Captain Kirk’s starship. To the left of “man in the center” are the advisors, including Hillary Clinton and the wise Robert C. Gates; the “spirit” force.
This illustrates the most primary of psychological relationships; three left, three right, with the Transcendent Seventh in the center. This is how a menorah presents the universe and the many Buddhas and Brahmas in the east do as well. In the Hindu, the right hand represents advancing karma, like the positive numbers in math (Vishnu). The left represents receding karma or the negative numbers (Shiva). The “man in the center” is not a man but Brahma, neither man nor woman, neither left nor right, neither one nor the other but all and none.
And in this historic photo, the key ‘three and three’ are balanced, sitting on each side, sloping downward; the world partial, in its parts, made whole by the “man in the center.” Only Brahma/”man in center” is fully awake, aware, fully dressed, the center of the six, like a Templar in action.
But in this picture, the Transcendent One, the Brahma mind, the “man in the center” is not President Obama like it is supposed to be. It is Bill Daley, the President’s Chief of Staff.
So what’s up with that?
Friday, May 20, 2011
Obama and the Nerd Conquest
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/20/11
The Washington Post reports that President Obama’s speech was greeted with apathy in the Arab world. There is a picture of a “rebel fighter” in Libya in dashing beret, Che whiskers and an AF-47. 15,000 have died in Libya alone in the “Arab Spring” – the phrase popularized by nerd American journalists like those who politely raise their hands at Obama press conferences. It was supposed to make Egypt the new Silicon Valley for hip young Muslims who use smart phones, not AK-47s. All conquests are attempts to make The Others like us. This one to make the random hordes of the Arab deserts more like nerd generation archetype Mark Zuckerberg.
The idea of this slaughter was brought to Obama by his National Security advisor Samantha Power. It can’t be all Power’s fault; the rush to invade – to make Islamabad a hip, Muslin, Mill Valley – pervaded the nerd press. But perhaps they had heard expressions like “Repression will fail . . . tyrants will fall” and America “cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights” before, from the Ayatollahs, from the Soviets, from the Americans.
So it comes as no surprise that the Obama administration has no use for Israel’s Jews. Jews are dense. You cannot abide the wise Dov Ber of Mezeritch in your cannon if you have Bono. Hannah Arendt and Lady Gaga do not flush. Jews have anchored Europe to the earth for two thousand years; they are the egg from which our universe hatched. The rising reichs of Europe were the first to recognize that certain deeply extroverted material progress in the world was deemed impossible by the presence of the introverted Jews. The Intelligentsia of Russia in the 1840s as well – the “new man” had no use for the Jew, who anchors the human race to the ancient and the cosmic. Losing the Jew is first necessity of virtually every “new man” movement. Likewise, the newly hatched Nerd Mind cannot abide such complexity; it floats aloft in a hundred balloons, a celebration of the unbearable lightness of being endlessly young.
But it would be egregious to refer to these people as anti-Semites because they support the Palestinians and dislike Jewish Israelis. Like movie director Lars Von Trier, who the Beautiful People threw out of Cannes yesterday for joking he was a Nazi, saying they were “disturbed” by his comments, they find Israeli Jews merely annoying. Anti-Semitism requires a certain heft of passion and dark character which is antithetical to nerd karma. Frankly, it requires manhood.
Every phase of the Euro/American imperial conquests has been the same: First we send the soldiers, then the priests, then the anthropologists and now at the end we send the nerds. Now there is nothing left to conquer. It is the last inning, when they send the fat kids in to play. The conquest is complete and the nerds are given the last stronghold: Jerusalem, the cosmic egg, the center of our humanity, the unconquerable.
by Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/20/11
The Washington Post reports that President Obama’s speech was greeted with apathy in the Arab world. There is a picture of a “rebel fighter” in Libya in dashing beret, Che whiskers and an AF-47. 15,000 have died in Libya alone in the “Arab Spring” – the phrase popularized by nerd American journalists like those who politely raise their hands at Obama press conferences. It was supposed to make Egypt the new Silicon Valley for hip young Muslims who use smart phones, not AK-47s. All conquests are attempts to make The Others like us. This one to make the random hordes of the Arab deserts more like nerd generation archetype Mark Zuckerberg.
The idea of this slaughter was brought to Obama by his National Security advisor Samantha Power. It can’t be all Power’s fault; the rush to invade – to make Islamabad a hip, Muslin, Mill Valley – pervaded the nerd press. But perhaps they had heard expressions like “Repression will fail . . . tyrants will fall” and America “cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights” before, from the Ayatollahs, from the Soviets, from the Americans.
So it comes as no surprise that the Obama administration has no use for Israel’s Jews. Jews are dense. You cannot abide the wise Dov Ber of Mezeritch in your cannon if you have Bono. Hannah Arendt and Lady Gaga do not flush. Jews have anchored Europe to the earth for two thousand years; they are the egg from which our universe hatched. The rising reichs of Europe were the first to recognize that certain deeply extroverted material progress in the world was deemed impossible by the presence of the introverted Jews. The Intelligentsia of Russia in the 1840s as well – the “new man” had no use for the Jew, who anchors the human race to the ancient and the cosmic. Losing the Jew is first necessity of virtually every “new man” movement. Likewise, the newly hatched Nerd Mind cannot abide such complexity; it floats aloft in a hundred balloons, a celebration of the unbearable lightness of being endlessly young.
But it would be egregious to refer to these people as anti-Semites because they support the Palestinians and dislike Jewish Israelis. Like movie director Lars Von Trier, who the Beautiful People threw out of Cannes yesterday for joking he was a Nazi, saying they were “disturbed” by his comments, they find Israeli Jews merely annoying. Anti-Semitism requires a certain heft of passion and dark character which is antithetical to nerd karma. Frankly, it requires manhood.
Every phase of the Euro/American imperial conquests has been the same: First we send the soldiers, then the priests, then the anthropologists and now at the end we send the nerds. Now there is nothing left to conquer. It is the last inning, when they send the fat kids in to play. The conquest is complete and the nerds are given the last stronghold: Jerusalem, the cosmic egg, the center of our humanity, the unconquerable.
YouTube: “Obama advisor calls for an invasion of Israel”
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/19/11
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” – William Butler Yeats, 1920
The Ayatollah is long dead, Saddam toppled, Osama bin Laden gunned down and Kaddafi on the run. But now Israel faces its greatest existential threat: America. In the end, Obama will be crowned caliph and conqueror of Israel. Those who for 90 years now have puzzled over the Irish wizard’s occult vision of the time of turning; the time when the falcon cannot hear the falconer and things fall apart, the time when golem “finds its way out of twenty centuries of stony sleep” and heads to Israel at the end of the world, look no further than Samantha Power’s conversation about Israel as a “thought experiment.” This conversation before she held her current post. That this woman – who has called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “monster” - has since become (from Wiki) Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council (whew!) is beyond imagination (YouTube the full conversation: - “Obama advisor calls for an invasion of Israel”):
“In the Palestine/Israeli situation there is an abundance of information and what we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in service of helping the situation. And “putting something on the line” might mean alienating a domestic constituency of [chuckles] tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing - or investing I think more than sacrificing - literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israeli’s military but actually investing in the new state of Palestine investing billions it would probably take also to support I think which will have to be a mammoth protection force. Not of the old Srebrenica kind or of the Rwanda kind but a meaningful military presence because it seems to me at this stage – and this is true of actual genocides as well and not just major human rights abuses which we are seeing there – but is that you have to go in as if you are serious . . . you have to put something on the line and unfortunately in position of a solution on unwilling parties . . . .”
Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Jewish Leadership political faction in Israel which desires to turn “the state for Jews into the Jewish state,” writes this week in the Israel newspaper Makor Rishon: “There is a strange factor common to the developing revolutions in the Arab world: They present no real alternative to the existing regime; no ayatollah in exile in Paris is waiting to take the reins of government in any particular country.”
No, beneath the “blank and pitiless” gaze of the nerd conquistadors – what Galbriath called the (global) “culture of contentment” of the Clinton era - and within the indecipherable and cryptic language of evasion, comes Yeat’s golem, “A shape with lion body and the head of a man”; Samantha Power in New York and Barack Obama in Washington.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/19/11
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” – William Butler Yeats, 1920
The Ayatollah is long dead, Saddam toppled, Osama bin Laden gunned down and Kaddafi on the run. But now Israel faces its greatest existential threat: America. In the end, Obama will be crowned caliph and conqueror of Israel. Those who for 90 years now have puzzled over the Irish wizard’s occult vision of the time of turning; the time when the falcon cannot hear the falconer and things fall apart, the time when golem “finds its way out of twenty centuries of stony sleep” and heads to Israel at the end of the world, look no further than Samantha Power’s conversation about Israel as a “thought experiment.” This conversation before she held her current post. That this woman – who has called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “monster” - has since become (from Wiki) Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council (whew!) is beyond imagination (YouTube the full conversation: - “Obama advisor calls for an invasion of Israel”):
“In the Palestine/Israeli situation there is an abundance of information and what we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in service of helping the situation. And “putting something on the line” might mean alienating a domestic constituency of [chuckles] tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing - or investing I think more than sacrificing - literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israeli’s military but actually investing in the new state of Palestine investing billions it would probably take also to support I think which will have to be a mammoth protection force. Not of the old Srebrenica kind or of the Rwanda kind but a meaningful military presence because it seems to me at this stage – and this is true of actual genocides as well and not just major human rights abuses which we are seeing there – but is that you have to go in as if you are serious . . . you have to put something on the line and unfortunately in position of a solution on unwilling parties . . . .”
Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Jewish Leadership political faction in Israel which desires to turn “the state for Jews into the Jewish state,” writes this week in the Israel newspaper Makor Rishon: “There is a strange factor common to the developing revolutions in the Arab world: They present no real alternative to the existing regime; no ayatollah in exile in Paris is waiting to take the reins of government in any particular country.”
No, beneath the “blank and pitiless” gaze of the nerd conquistadors – what Galbriath called the (global) “culture of contentment” of the Clinton era - and within the indecipherable and cryptic language of evasion, comes Yeat’s golem, “A shape with lion body and the head of a man”; Samantha Power in New York and Barack Obama in Washington.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Visualize Rick Perry
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/18/11
I’d like to see them do away with the New Hampshire primary. It no longer means much. Ours were once considered the heart of rugged independence; itinerant mountain brahmins making do in pickups held together with Bondo and houses built by the hands of husband and wife with wood cut and milled from their own land. I know more than a few like that up here today, but many who can change both a diaper and the engine of an F150 have moved to Alaska. Or Texas.
What happened is the roads got too good and the cars too pleasureable to ride in; air conditioned, four-wheel drive – you can listen to opera all the way from New Hampshire to the job in Boston. Today it is all about Iowa.
In a forecast for The Week, the NY Times’ Ross Douthat is quoted as saying that with Huckabee out, Tim Pawlenty, “has an excellent shot at a clean victory in Iowa.” That, of course, if Palin stays out. But one problem, says Amy Sullivan in TIME. Evangelicals and value voters “don’t know who he is,” Tim who? But they know who Sarah Palin is.
And in The Wall Street Journal this morning, “The stumbling start of Newt Gingrich and the withdrawals of Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump from the presidential race have boosted Mitt Romney's standing in the Republican nominating contest, while opening lanes for other candidates to jump in.”
But what about Iowa? How’s he going to do there? And as Iowa goes so goes South Carolina. And how’s that Romneycare thing working out with heartland voters?
Last year Sarah Palin said she would enter if no one else with Tea Party karma came forward. I thought she was talking about Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. Then Perry said the same thing. I thought he was talking about Sarah Palin.
Real Clear Politics reports that a presidential push for Perry is quietly gaining steam: “Gov. Rick Perry has insisted on multiple occasions that he has no interest in the presidency, but RCP has learned that political associates have begun to nose around quietly on Perry's behalf.”
And this phrase well sizes it up: “As many grass-roots Republicans remain in search of a conservative candidate with the pizazz to go toe-to-toe against President Obama, a man from deep in the heart of Texas who was tea party before the tea party was cool appears to be giving the presidential race some thought.”
Don’t underestimate the pizzazz thing. It is an absolute necessity in Hamiltonian populist politics. It has been since Lincoln, since Jackson, since Washington. And Mitt Romney has zero pizzazz. Same with Pawlenty, Daniels and what’s his name. When they pull out the Harleys and the electric guitars to show they’re not squares it makes it worse.
History naturally follows the contours and demographics of power; it goes where the people and the economy goes. It must. Otherwise it will bring neurosis, novelty candidates and kook presidents (or relatives of former presidents or people who look like former presidents), division, culture clash and even warfare. America has been heading west since the post-war period began and even since the beginning. That is the meaning of Ronald Reagan. Rick Perry is the next best step in this original American journey of natural statehood.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/18/11
I’d like to see them do away with the New Hampshire primary. It no longer means much. Ours were once considered the heart of rugged independence; itinerant mountain brahmins making do in pickups held together with Bondo and houses built by the hands of husband and wife with wood cut and milled from their own land. I know more than a few like that up here today, but many who can change both a diaper and the engine of an F150 have moved to Alaska. Or Texas.
What happened is the roads got too good and the cars too pleasureable to ride in; air conditioned, four-wheel drive – you can listen to opera all the way from New Hampshire to the job in Boston. Today it is all about Iowa.
In a forecast for The Week, the NY Times’ Ross Douthat is quoted as saying that with Huckabee out, Tim Pawlenty, “has an excellent shot at a clean victory in Iowa.” That, of course, if Palin stays out. But one problem, says Amy Sullivan in TIME. Evangelicals and value voters “don’t know who he is,” Tim who? But they know who Sarah Palin is.
And in The Wall Street Journal this morning, “The stumbling start of Newt Gingrich and the withdrawals of Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump from the presidential race have boosted Mitt Romney's standing in the Republican nominating contest, while opening lanes for other candidates to jump in.”
But what about Iowa? How’s he going to do there? And as Iowa goes so goes South Carolina. And how’s that Romneycare thing working out with heartland voters?
Last year Sarah Palin said she would enter if no one else with Tea Party karma came forward. I thought she was talking about Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. Then Perry said the same thing. I thought he was talking about Sarah Palin.
Real Clear Politics reports that a presidential push for Perry is quietly gaining steam: “Gov. Rick Perry has insisted on multiple occasions that he has no interest in the presidency, but RCP has learned that political associates have begun to nose around quietly on Perry's behalf.”
And this phrase well sizes it up: “As many grass-roots Republicans remain in search of a conservative candidate with the pizazz to go toe-to-toe against President Obama, a man from deep in the heart of Texas who was tea party before the tea party was cool appears to be giving the presidential race some thought.”
Don’t underestimate the pizzazz thing. It is an absolute necessity in Hamiltonian populist politics. It has been since Lincoln, since Jackson, since Washington. And Mitt Romney has zero pizzazz. Same with Pawlenty, Daniels and what’s his name. When they pull out the Harleys and the electric guitars to show they’re not squares it makes it worse.
History naturally follows the contours and demographics of power; it goes where the people and the economy goes. It must. Otherwise it will bring neurosis, novelty candidates and kook presidents (or relatives of former presidents or people who look like former presidents), division, culture clash and even warfare. America has been heading west since the post-war period began and even since the beginning. That is the meaning of Ronald Reagan. Rick Perry is the next best step in this original American journey of natural statehood.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Note to RAfi on the UN's declaration of a Palestinean state in Jerusalem
Yes – excellent. The history of the “western” world can be seen as an archetypal or cosmic manifestation of the two sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ismael, manifest in external time as Jesus and Mohammud and forming the 2000 year platonic month known as aeon Pisces. The determining myth of the past 500 years – the rise of capital and Protestantism – is Rabbi Loeb’s dream of Golem in Prague in the 1600s. Until then European Jews lived among themselves but manifested outward creating Europe out of barbarism through the Jerusalem-based churches. Jews were forbidden by torah to engage with gentiles in their external activities as they were narrow and profane. Rabbi Loeb’s myth brought a fork in the path: Jews began to enter in with gentiles on the path of Golem – the practice of capital and external and material expansion - and others entered on the path of God back to Israel. NY can be seen in this as the “shadow” path or the path of Golem (Golem’s final external destination in aeon Pisces), the reawakening of Israel as the opening of God-consciousness to be fulfilled by the restoration of Temple Mount and the “return of the King” – these myths might be symbolized in Tolkien’s “Rings” stories: death of golem/return of king (the symbol of Aragorn’s chest as “king” is a menorah). For the UN (NY’s global agency), whose ideology and purpose is purely material and whose vision has become totalitarian to declare a secular state in Jerusalem would fulfill William Butler Yeat’s vision of a “rough beast” (golem) coming to Jerusalem, indicating the end of the world.
Thanks, Rafi - Sorry for the confusion. It helps to understand the passing age as a construct with four 500 year parts which consist of sequentially, Orthodox, Islam, Catholic, Protestant. They might be understood as the four “personality types” of C.G. Jung or as “four elements” in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life – they are one and the same. Israel is the tree itself, the four elements external manifestations of the internal world. The rise of Protestantism 500 years ago represents “power” or the “thinking principle” isolated from feeling and intuition. Golem in the world starting in the 1600s represents this “shadow” and the true patriarch must flee back to Israel – it is the beginning of “the return.” The source of the four is Jerusalem – identified as an egg in this mystic picture linked below of William Blake. In the East the egg is Brahma the whole of rising and receding karma; time in all directions. In our world the egg is internal time/cosmic time/all time found at Temple Mount. For the UN to territorialize Jerusalem brings the end of time.
Does America hurt Israel?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/16/11
A young German acquaintance – a waiter – says without malicious intent that all the troubles in the world today are because of the union between Israel and America. It is the European waiters consensus, he says. Not a new story. When West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who singlehandedly spoke against the invasion of Iraq in the Senate, traveled overseas in 1955 as a young member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that while visiting Arab camps of refugees in Jerico, he “heard voices of deep animosity toward the United States, and the refugees voiced a fierce determination to return to Palestine.”
Does American might put to the defend of Israel help? Or does is simply make Israel the convenient scapegoat for America’s many sins?
The Western world – upon all its beauty and advantages – will always act as a “static anvil for the murderous hammer descending upon the Jews from above – be it the Nazi hammer, the Arab hammer or any other murderous, anti Jewish hammer,” writes Moshe Feiglin, political leader of Israel’s Jewish Leadership Movement, which calls for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.
The time when Israel will have to decide if we are willing to entrust our fate to the very same West that will always be happy to be rid of the "Israel Problem" is rapidly approaching, he writes. Israelis see themselves as an inseparable part of the Western world. It is difficult for them “to accept that the West, our cultural patron, will simply close its eyes with relief when six million Jews in Israel will once again be facing wholesale slaughter.”
“What invasion am I talking about? If we were not living in denial, the media would be abuzz about Samantha Power, head of the National Security Council, who advocates taking the funds that the US now invests in the IDF and investing them instead in the 'Palestinian' army. In no uncertain terms, she discusses a possible US invasion of Israel – to keep the peace, of course. When that goal is accomplished, Power advocates leaving us here to enjoy the loving kindness of the righteous souls in Ramallah.”
Feiglin has been called a Tea Party type in Israel by the New York Times and his commentary does suggest that of libertarian Ron Paul, who shows no sympathy for American military support of Israel: There is life after America, says Feiglin. Israelis do not need American aid. All they need is to return to their tried and true Jewish identity.
“It is urgent to cut the psychological ropes binding us to the West,” he writes. “We are not Americans. We are Israelis and we have an independent and strong faith and culture from which we draw our own existential legitimacy – not from the West.”
Yes – excellent. The history of the “western” world can be seen as an archetypal or cosmic manifestation of the two sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ismael, manifest in external time as Jesus and Mohammud and forming the 2000 year platonic month known as aeon Pisces. The determining myth of the past 500 years – the rise of capital and Protestantism – is Rabbi Loeb’s dream of Golem in Prague in the 1600s. Until then European Jews lived among themselves but manifested outward creating Europe out of barbarism through the Jerusalem-based churches. Jews were forbidden by torah to engage with gentiles in their external activities as they were narrow and profane. Rabbi Loeb’s myth brought a fork in the path: Jews began to enter in with gentiles on the path of Golem – the practice of capital and external and material expansion - and others entered on the path of God back to Israel. NY can be seen in this as the “shadow” path or the path of Golem (Golem’s final external destination in aeon Pisces), the reawakening of Israel as the opening of God-consciousness to be fulfilled by the restoration of Temple Mount and the “return of the King” – these myths might be symbolized in Tolkien’s “Rings” stories: death of golem/return of king (the symbol of Aragorn’s chest as “king” is a menorah). For the UN (NY’s global agency), whose ideology and purpose is purely material and whose vision has become totalitarian to declare a secular state in Jerusalem would fulfill William Butler Yeat’s vision of a “rough beast” (golem) coming to Jerusalem, indicating the end of the world.
Thanks, Rafi - Sorry for the confusion. It helps to understand the passing age as a construct with four 500 year parts which consist of sequentially, Orthodox, Islam, Catholic, Protestant. They might be understood as the four “personality types” of C.G. Jung or as “four elements” in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life – they are one and the same. Israel is the tree itself, the four elements external manifestations of the internal world. The rise of Protestantism 500 years ago represents “power” or the “thinking principle” isolated from feeling and intuition. Golem in the world starting in the 1600s represents this “shadow” and the true patriarch must flee back to Israel – it is the beginning of “the return.” The source of the four is Jerusalem – identified as an egg in this mystic picture linked below of William Blake. In the East the egg is Brahma the whole of rising and receding karma; time in all directions. In our world the egg is internal time/cosmic time/all time found at Temple Mount. For the UN to territorialize Jerusalem brings the end of time.
Does America hurt Israel?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/16/11
A young German acquaintance – a waiter – says without malicious intent that all the troubles in the world today are because of the union between Israel and America. It is the European waiters consensus, he says. Not a new story. When West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who singlehandedly spoke against the invasion of Iraq in the Senate, traveled overseas in 1955 as a young member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that while visiting Arab camps of refugees in Jerico, he “heard voices of deep animosity toward the United States, and the refugees voiced a fierce determination to return to Palestine.”
Does American might put to the defend of Israel help? Or does is simply make Israel the convenient scapegoat for America’s many sins?
The Western world – upon all its beauty and advantages – will always act as a “static anvil for the murderous hammer descending upon the Jews from above – be it the Nazi hammer, the Arab hammer or any other murderous, anti Jewish hammer,” writes Moshe Feiglin, political leader of Israel’s Jewish Leadership Movement, which calls for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.
The time when Israel will have to decide if we are willing to entrust our fate to the very same West that will always be happy to be rid of the "Israel Problem" is rapidly approaching, he writes. Israelis see themselves as an inseparable part of the Western world. It is difficult for them “to accept that the West, our cultural patron, will simply close its eyes with relief when six million Jews in Israel will once again be facing wholesale slaughter.”
“What invasion am I talking about? If we were not living in denial, the media would be abuzz about Samantha Power, head of the National Security Council, who advocates taking the funds that the US now invests in the IDF and investing them instead in the 'Palestinian' army. In no uncertain terms, she discusses a possible US invasion of Israel – to keep the peace, of course. When that goal is accomplished, Power advocates leaving us here to enjoy the loving kindness of the righteous souls in Ramallah.”
Feiglin has been called a Tea Party type in Israel by the New York Times and his commentary does suggest that of libertarian Ron Paul, who shows no sympathy for American military support of Israel: There is life after America, says Feiglin. Israelis do not need American aid. All they need is to return to their tried and true Jewish identity.
“It is urgent to cut the psychological ropes binding us to the West,” he writes. “We are not Americans. We are Israelis and we have an independent and strong faith and culture from which we draw our own existential legitimacy – not from the West.”
Does America hurt Israel?
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/16/11
A young German acquaintance – a waiter – says without malicious intent that all the troubles in the world today are because of the union between Israel and America. It is the European waiters consensus, he says. Not a new story. When West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who singlehandedly spoke against the invasion of Iraq in the Senate, traveled overseas in 1955 as a young member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that while visiting Arab camps of refugees in Jerico, he “heard voices of deep animosity toward the United States, and the refugees voiced a fierce determination to return to Palestine.”
Does American might put to the defend of Israel help? Or does is simply make Israel the convenient scapegoat for America’s many sins?
The Western world – upon all its beauty and advantages – will always act as a “static anvil for the murderous hammer descending upon the Jews from above – be it the Nazi hammer, the Arab hammer or any other murderous, anti Jewish hammer,” writes Moshe Feiglin, political leader of Israel’s Jewish Leadership Movement, which calls for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.
The time when Israel will have to decide if we are willing to entrust our fate to the very same West that will always be happy to be rid of the "Israel Problem" is rapidly approaching, he writes. Israelis see themselves as an inseparable part of the Western world. It is difficult for them “to accept that the West, our cultural patron, will simply close its eyes with relief when six million Jews in Israel will once again be facing wholesale slaughter.”
“What invasion am I talking about? If we were not living in denial, the media would be abuzz about Samantha Power, head of the National Security Council, who advocates taking the funds that the US now invests in the IDF and investing them instead in the 'Palestinian' army. In no uncertain terms, she discusses a possible US invasion of Israel – to keep the peace, of course. When that goal is accomplished, Power advocates leaving us here to enjoy the loving kindness of the righteous souls in Ramallah.”
Feiglin has been called a Tea Party type in Israel by the New York Times and his commentary does suggest that of libertarian Ron Paul, who shows no sympathy for American military support of Israel: There is life after America, says Feiglin. Israelis do not need American aid. All they need is to return to their tried and true Jewish identity.
“It is urgent to cut the psychological ropes binding us to the West,” he writes. “We are not Americans. We are Israelis and we have an independent and strong faith and culture from which we draw our own existential legitimacy – not from the West.”
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/16/11
A young German acquaintance – a waiter – says without malicious intent that all the troubles in the world today are because of the union between Israel and America. It is the European waiters consensus, he says. Not a new story. When West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who singlehandedly spoke against the invasion of Iraq in the Senate, traveled overseas in 1955 as a young member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that while visiting Arab camps of refugees in Jerico, he “heard voices of deep animosity toward the United States, and the refugees voiced a fierce determination to return to Palestine.”
Does American might put to the defend of Israel help? Or does is simply make Israel the convenient scapegoat for America’s many sins?
The Western world – upon all its beauty and advantages – will always act as a “static anvil for the murderous hammer descending upon the Jews from above – be it the Nazi hammer, the Arab hammer or any other murderous, anti Jewish hammer,” writes Moshe Feiglin, political leader of Israel’s Jewish Leadership Movement, which calls for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.
The time when Israel will have to decide if we are willing to entrust our fate to the very same West that will always be happy to be rid of the "Israel Problem" is rapidly approaching, he writes. Israelis see themselves as an inseparable part of the Western world. It is difficult for them “to accept that the West, our cultural patron, will simply close its eyes with relief when six million Jews in Israel will once again be facing wholesale slaughter.”
“What invasion am I talking about? If we were not living in denial, the media would be abuzz about Samantha Power, head of the National Security Council, who advocates taking the funds that the US now invests in the IDF and investing them instead in the 'Palestinian' army. In no uncertain terms, she discusses a possible US invasion of Israel – to keep the peace, of course. When that goal is accomplished, Power advocates leaving us here to enjoy the loving kindness of the righteous souls in Ramallah.”
Feiglin has been called a Tea Party type in Israel by the New York Times and his commentary does suggest that of libertarian Ron Paul, who shows no sympathy for American military support of Israel: There is life after America, says Feiglin. Israelis do not need American aid. All they need is to return to their tried and true Jewish identity.
“It is urgent to cut the psychological ropes binding us to the West,” he writes. “We are not Americans. We are Israelis and we have an independent and strong faith and culture from which we draw our own existential legitimacy – not from the West.”
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Men of Honor
By Bernie Quigley – for the Hill on 5/11/11
Like the old Politiboro-driven popular front of “violence inherent in the system!” polemic, the Republican punditry today are quickly dispatched to call the Obama victory a historic “Bush-Obama” drama. Who are these guys kidding? The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld adventure was a journey to the end of the night and an American disgrace that will never be forgotten. Our best warriors and men of honor of both parties like Senator Jim Webb, former NATO chief Wesley K. Clark and Colin Powell’s chief Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson brought the strongest dissent. It was a hoax from the beginning, said Wilkerson. The invasion of Iraq was “ . . . the wrong war,” said General Clark. This war will instead be remembered as beginning to go forth with some credibility when George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was thrown out of office and Robert C. Gates was brought forth to try and retrieve any remaining shreds of American character.
Before Gates, the Iraq invasion was so poorly orchestrated and morally inept that for the first time since 1865 it brought forth secession movements and nullification efforts that won’t go away and led the dynamic dissenter Ron Paul to the front of American politics.
I fully sympathized with the very human cry for vengeance after the tragic hurt of 9/11. But the sadness we felt - as great as any we had suffered in our history - was very soon thereafter manipulated by the Bush/Cheney government and there can be no greater betrayal of the human spirit than the manipulation of the human heart for political purposes.
It might be suggested that the Republicans today are so intent on getting a third Bush – and the former Florida governor appears to be even more unremarkable than the first two - back into the White House to forge the false legacy, or even worse; to keep the President’s Men of the pre-Gates period of torture, mayhem and moral abandon out of possible war crimes trials.
By Bernie Quigley – for the Hill on 5/11/11
Like the old Politiboro-driven popular front of “violence inherent in the system!” polemic, the Republican punditry today are quickly dispatched to call the Obama victory a historic “Bush-Obama” drama. Who are these guys kidding? The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld adventure was a journey to the end of the night and an American disgrace that will never be forgotten. Our best warriors and men of honor of both parties like Senator Jim Webb, former NATO chief Wesley K. Clark and Colin Powell’s chief Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson brought the strongest dissent. It was a hoax from the beginning, said Wilkerson. The invasion of Iraq was “ . . . the wrong war,” said General Clark. This war will instead be remembered as beginning to go forth with some credibility when George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was thrown out of office and Robert C. Gates was brought forth to try and retrieve any remaining shreds of American character.
Before Gates, the Iraq invasion was so poorly orchestrated and morally inept that for the first time since 1865 it brought forth secession movements and nullification efforts that won’t go away and led the dynamic dissenter Ron Paul to the front of American politics.
I fully sympathized with the very human cry for vengeance after the tragic hurt of 9/11. But the sadness we felt - as great as any we had suffered in our history - was very soon thereafter manipulated by the Bush/Cheney government and there can be no greater betrayal of the human spirit than the manipulation of the human heart for political purposes.
It might be suggested that the Republicans today are so intent on getting a third Bush – and the former Florida governor appears to be even more unremarkable than the first two - back into the White House to forge the false legacy, or even worse; to keep the President’s Men of the pre-Gates period of torture, mayhem and moral abandon out of possible war crimes trials.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
“Geronimo E-KIA”: Obama kills the lion (draft)
Things would have been different if back in April 1980 the helicopter hadn’t crashed; eight went into a desert sand storm to rescue 52 Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. One crashed and another had to turn back. Desert One was a dismal failure on the heels of Vietnam, telling the world that we, the Americans, could not do things well anymore. The helicopter wrecked in the desert became the symbol of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but it would have been different if the rescue attempt was successful. Carter would have been a great hero and America would have been renewed because all that matters in war is whether or not the spear hits the lion. Had he been successful there would have been no “morning in America” just ahead – no need for it, no Reykjavik Summit, and probably no Ronald Reagan. So there was a moment of anxiety when the one helicopter went down on Sunday on the way to the compound at Abbottabad. But this time it was different. This time the spear hit the lion.
President Obama is elegant and stylist; even likeable in a way that presidents have not been since JFK, but that can be considered to be a weakness and belonging to the poet’s corner and there is not much room for the poet in warfare – even Hemingway was only allowed to run alongside in a jeep. But if it is accompanied by bravery and intuition it brings a champion and amplifies his abilities. On Friday by demanding that the compound which held Osama bin Laden not be bombed but taken, Obama showed himself to be both brave and intuitive. And to be a leader worthy of the company of Dam Neck, Virginia’s Navy SEALS, a group of elite warriors formed in 1980 in the wake of the failed attempt to rescue the U.S. hostages from Iran.
Because what started then ended this week, and now as Osama bin Laden sinks to the bottom of the sea’s unconsciousness, the tide can begin to recede. Obama's speech in New York will be a great one not only because he is a great speaker, but it is the speech we have been waiting for and hoping for ten years. And until now it could not have been given because, to speak plainly, America and 9/11 had not been avenged. He won’t talk about that and it would be wrong to do so and he is a better man than that, but he has already done the deed that nature demanded to be done. And it can be time now to move on and to build again with endless thanks.
Things would have been different if back in April 1980 the helicopter hadn’t crashed; eight went into a desert sand storm to rescue 52 Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. One crashed and another had to turn back. Desert One was a dismal failure on the heels of Vietnam, telling the world that we, the Americans, could not do things well anymore. The helicopter wrecked in the desert became the symbol of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but it would have been different if the rescue attempt was successful. Carter would have been a great hero and America would have been renewed because all that matters in war is whether or not the spear hits the lion. Had he been successful there would have been no “morning in America” just ahead – no need for it, no Reykjavik Summit, and probably no Ronald Reagan. So there was a moment of anxiety when the one helicopter went down on Sunday on the way to the compound at Abbottabad. But this time it was different. This time the spear hit the lion.
President Obama is elegant and stylist; even likeable in a way that presidents have not been since JFK, but that can be considered to be a weakness and belonging to the poet’s corner and there is not much room for the poet in warfare – even Hemingway was only allowed to run alongside in a jeep. But if it is accompanied by bravery and intuition it brings a champion and amplifies his abilities. On Friday by demanding that the compound which held Osama bin Laden not be bombed but taken, Obama showed himself to be both brave and intuitive. And to be a leader worthy of the company of Dam Neck, Virginia’s Navy SEALS, a group of elite warriors formed in 1980 in the wake of the failed attempt to rescue the U.S. hostages from Iran.
Because what started then ended this week, and now as Osama bin Laden sinks to the bottom of the sea’s unconsciousness, the tide can begin to recede. Obama's speech in New York will be a great one not only because he is a great speaker, but it is the speech we have been waiting for and hoping for ten years. And until now it could not have been given because, to speak plainly, America and 9/11 had not been avenged. He won’t talk about that and it would be wrong to do so and he is a better man than that, but he has already done the deed that nature demanded to be done. And it can be time now to move on and to build again with endless thanks.
Monday, May 02, 2011
draft The Second Coming of Smiley Face: Eric Wilson’s “Against Happiness”
A well-known teaching hospital in New England has adopted “laughing yoga” as a therapy. In an article here in the papers the participants are pictured laughing together like crazy monkeys. They laugh when they see each other. They laugh holding hands in circles. They laugh lying down with their heads in a circle. They laugh all the time.
Dr. Madam Kataria of India, Laughing Club founder, says in an interview with of all people, John Cleese, that it helps you unwind the negative effects of stress and also it boosts your immune system.
But what is creepy about it up here is that they pass out buttons to you that are pretty much advanced models of the Smiley Face button that appeared unfortunately in the world in the 1970s to accompany the phrase, “Have a nice day.”
It seems a condition of and even a celebration of ennui; a way of saying: “ . . . I can go no further, but thanks for asking. Have a nice day.” If that is the issue there are time-honored antidotes; hockey, opera, cats, church, Jane Eyre, George Dickel or Maker’s Mark. But something else is afoot here; something about this simplification; something to this lack of complexity. I think Wiki describes Smiley accurately in his first incarnation: “ . . . said to have become a zombifying hollow sentiment, emblematic of Nixon-era America and the passing from the optimism of the Summer of Love into the more cynical decade that followed.”
Eric Wilson, a professor at Wake Forest University and author of the book “Against Happiness” says the creative mind in artist and politician lives instead in melancholy and understands the power of negative thinking. He writes in his blog, “Against Happiness” (http://againsthappiness.blogspot.com):
“It's quite possible that Abraham Lincoln's brilliance as a leader came from his chronic melancholy. While Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate states, was overly idealistic and quick to make decisions based on his optimism, Lincoln wasn't afraid to question long-standing assumptions, to deliberate over his many options, and to be sensitive to vagueness. Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy examines this connection between Lincoln's gloom and his creative leadership.”
There was something in the ‘70s that said the major events were over. It is the valley of wu chi; unmanifest karma in slow times, then as now. But as the Smiley button with a bullet hole in the head used in the promo of Alan Moore's fin de siecle "Watchmen" books suggests,unmitigated and detached joy has an unconscious aspect; something dark underneath; something’s not right . . . something is coming.
A well-known teaching hospital in New England has adopted “laughing yoga” as a therapy. In an article here in the papers the participants are pictured laughing together like crazy monkeys. They laugh when they see each other. They laugh holding hands in circles. They laugh lying down with their heads in a circle. They laugh all the time.
Dr. Madam Kataria of India, Laughing Club founder, says in an interview with of all people, John Cleese, that it helps you unwind the negative effects of stress and also it boosts your immune system.
But what is creepy about it up here is that they pass out buttons to you that are pretty much advanced models of the Smiley Face button that appeared unfortunately in the world in the 1970s to accompany the phrase, “Have a nice day.”
It seems a condition of and even a celebration of ennui; a way of saying: “ . . . I can go no further, but thanks for asking. Have a nice day.” If that is the issue there are time-honored antidotes; hockey, opera, cats, church, Jane Eyre, George Dickel or Maker’s Mark. But something else is afoot here; something about this simplification; something to this lack of complexity. I think Wiki describes Smiley accurately in his first incarnation: “ . . . said to have become a zombifying hollow sentiment, emblematic of Nixon-era America and the passing from the optimism of the Summer of Love into the more cynical decade that followed.”
Eric Wilson, a professor at Wake Forest University and author of the book “Against Happiness” says the creative mind in artist and politician lives instead in melancholy and understands the power of negative thinking. He writes in his blog, “Against Happiness” (http://againsthappiness.blogspot.com):
“It's quite possible that Abraham Lincoln's brilliance as a leader came from his chronic melancholy. While Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate states, was overly idealistic and quick to make decisions based on his optimism, Lincoln wasn't afraid to question long-standing assumptions, to deliberate over his many options, and to be sensitive to vagueness. Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy examines this connection between Lincoln's gloom and his creative leadership.”
There was something in the ‘70s that said the major events were over. It is the valley of wu chi; unmanifest karma in slow times, then as now. But as the Smiley button with a bullet hole in the head used in the promo of Alan Moore's fin de siecle "Watchmen" books suggests,unmitigated and detached joy has an unconscious aspect; something dark underneath; something’s not right . . . something is coming.
Bringing Osama to the Sea: The President must provide conclusive evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/2/11
The first reports of Osama bin Laden’s death told us that he was buried with 24 hours of his death and ”buried at sea” because “finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most terrorist would have been difficult.” So we would assume there would be physical evidence of the death if there is no body. That would presumably be photographic identification or DNA evidence. During the Vietnam War, the military on the ground was notoriously unreliable about physical evidence in combat.
Because if I have this right, “the sea” is at least 800 miles from the Abbottabad region of Pakistan where reports say bin Laden was killed. How did they get him from there to the sea? Did they drop him out of an airplane or travel by land convoy 800 miles with the six and a half foot corpse? Then other reports said the body was delivered to Afghanistan. Did they bring him to Afghanistan and then bring him to the sea? That would have been more than a thousand miles to haul the corpse.
Other reports said that he was or would be identified by DNA evidence. Results of the DNA tests should be available in the next few days, “the official” told Reuters. But then WCVB in Boston reported that “The death of a sister of Osama bin Laden at Massachusetts General Hospital allowed the United States to confirm bin Laden's death, ABC News reported.” So then it won’t take a few days like the Reuters report claimed? Did they or did they not know through DNA evidence that it was Osama bin Laden they had killed? Especially important since the corpse may have been disfigured in the shooting, so photo evidence would not be conclusive.
What’s it gonna be?
The President needs to clear this stuff up pronto because credibility in crisis is of vital journalistic importance. And precisely at these times you don’t want mischievous and false myth to awaken, like did we fake the moon landing, what really happened at Roswell, where are Biggie and Tupac, was Obama really born in the United States and is Osama bin Laden really dead? This kind of pesky misinformation and seditious and nihilistic propaganda can plague the tabloids for decades. Especially with a press and populous like Fox Mulder, that wants to believe.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/2/11
The first reports of Osama bin Laden’s death told us that he was buried with 24 hours of his death and ”buried at sea” because “finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most terrorist would have been difficult.” So we would assume there would be physical evidence of the death if there is no body. That would presumably be photographic identification or DNA evidence. During the Vietnam War, the military on the ground was notoriously unreliable about physical evidence in combat.
Because if I have this right, “the sea” is at least 800 miles from the Abbottabad region of Pakistan where reports say bin Laden was killed. How did they get him from there to the sea? Did they drop him out of an airplane or travel by land convoy 800 miles with the six and a half foot corpse? Then other reports said the body was delivered to Afghanistan. Did they bring him to Afghanistan and then bring him to the sea? That would have been more than a thousand miles to haul the corpse.
Other reports said that he was or would be identified by DNA evidence. Results of the DNA tests should be available in the next few days, “the official” told Reuters. But then WCVB in Boston reported that “The death of a sister of Osama bin Laden at Massachusetts General Hospital allowed the United States to confirm bin Laden's death, ABC News reported.” So then it won’t take a few days like the Reuters report claimed? Did they or did they not know through DNA evidence that it was Osama bin Laden they had killed? Especially important since the corpse may have been disfigured in the shooting, so photo evidence would not be conclusive.
What’s it gonna be?
The President needs to clear this stuff up pronto because credibility in crisis is of vital journalistic importance. And precisely at these times you don’t want mischievous and false myth to awaken, like did we fake the moon landing, what really happened at Roswell, where are Biggie and Tupac, was Obama really born in the United States and is Osama bin Laden really dead? This kind of pesky misinformation and seditious and nihilistic propaganda can plague the tabloids for decades. Especially with a press and populous like Fox Mulder, that wants to believe.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Dark Horse: Lew Lehrman for President
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/2/11
The New York Times lead political story this weekend says Republicans are pursuing a wider field for the 2012 race: “The wish list among Republicans is wide and varied. Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska, retains a devoted following. But activists also express a longing for others to step off the sidelines, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Budget Committee.”
How about Lewis Lehrman?
Lehrman is a smart-as-paint stalwart Reagan Republican and a man of honor to the nth degree. He achieved national political prominence in a 1982 campaign for Governor of New York, in which he ran a close race against Democrat Mario Cuomo.
And in a day when conservatives are divided between traditional Republicans and new directions, including Tea Party, “Constitutional conservatives” and libertarians like Ron Paul who wants to bring back the gold standard, Lehrman has feet in both camps. And much of that which the 40% of young conservatives today find attractive in libertarian Ron Paul can be found in Republican Lew Lehrman as well in a more comprehensive package.
Among the traditionalists, he is, as Wiki reports, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Project for the New American Century, as well as a Trustee to the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. But he was also a member of Reagan’s U.S. Gold Commission in 1981 with Congressman Ron Paul and coauthored the book, The Case for Gold, with Paul in 1982.
“Gold puts the money supply back in the hands of the people,” he told Fox’s Neil Cavuto, who called his debates with Cuomo “a Lincoln/Douglas moment.”
In 1983, when Lehrman founded Citizens for America he might have been a man ahead of his times, but time may have risen to meet his thinking today. He would be a sound choice for President in 2012 and is head and shoulders above some of those who have already entered the race. And a sound choice as well for Rick Perry’s vice president, or Chris Christie’s or Sarah Palin’s.
By Bernie Quigley
For The Hill on 5/2/11
The New York Times lead political story this weekend says Republicans are pursuing a wider field for the 2012 race: “The wish list among Republicans is wide and varied. Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska, retains a devoted following. But activists also express a longing for others to step off the sidelines, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Budget Committee.”
How about Lewis Lehrman?
Lehrman is a smart-as-paint stalwart Reagan Republican and a man of honor to the nth degree. He achieved national political prominence in a 1982 campaign for Governor of New York, in which he ran a close race against Democrat Mario Cuomo.
And in a day when conservatives are divided between traditional Republicans and new directions, including Tea Party, “Constitutional conservatives” and libertarians like Ron Paul who wants to bring back the gold standard, Lehrman has feet in both camps. And much of that which the 40% of young conservatives today find attractive in libertarian Ron Paul can be found in Republican Lew Lehrman as well in a more comprehensive package.
Among the traditionalists, he is, as Wiki reports, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Project for the New American Century, as well as a Trustee to the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. But he was also a member of Reagan’s U.S. Gold Commission in 1981 with Congressman Ron Paul and coauthored the book, The Case for Gold, with Paul in 1982.
“Gold puts the money supply back in the hands of the people,” he told Fox’s Neil Cavuto, who called his debates with Cuomo “a Lincoln/Douglas moment.”
In 1983, when Lehrman founded Citizens for America he might have been a man ahead of his times, but time may have risen to meet his thinking today. He would be a sound choice for President in 2012 and is head and shoulders above some of those who have already entered the race. And a sound choice as well for Rick Perry’s vice president, or Chris Christie’s or Sarah Palin’s.
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