Laozi and Henry Kissinger

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 7/6/11

Henry Kissinger’s new book, “On China,” explains what might be seen as a modern telling of China’s fourteenth-century epic novel, “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” the three kingdoms being Mao’s China, the Soviet Union and the United States. Nixon’s Nobel-Peace Prize winning National Security Advisor focuses on President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972. What I found to be of particular interest is how the diplomatic relationship developed between China and the United States. Ambassador George Kennan had proposed that the Soviet Union would not survive if it could not expand and would fall apart internally. A U.S./China diplomatic friendship would fence the Soviets in and sure enough, less than 20 years later the Soviet Union fell apart.

But something – someone – is missing from Kissinger’s book. Laozi, Taoist sage and author of the “Daodejing.”

Rightfully so, as Tao played no role in Mao’s revolution nor does it in today’s China. I began to worry about China’s future, because China without Tao is like Israel without torah or India without the Bhagavad Gita. Kennan’s observation could just as easily be made about American capitalism and the “Beijing model”; without expansion, they would fall apart. And China has survived these six thousand years on the Tao – the Path – the path of receding power or the way of return.

Liu Junning, an independent scholar in Beijing, suggests today in a Wall Street Journal essay titled “The Ancient Roots of Chinese Liberalism” that Beijing’s power path without Laozi is brittle. Last week Chinese Communist Party’s 90th anniversary, Hu Jintao said “Success in China hinges on the party.” Liu Junning writes:

That view is to be expected from the party secretary. Perhaps more surprising is the extent to which outside observers have come to believe it, too. These foreigners—academics and journalists prominent among them—look to the "Beijing model" or the "Beijing consensus" as a desirable alternative to Western-style economic liberalism.

The Washington consensus counted on free trade and open capital flows, plus deregulation, the rule of law, and the pre-eminence of the private sector to spur development. China at first glance appears to have achieved 9% annual growth rates or better for years by challenging that rule book. Visiting dignitaries and columnists see gleaming skyscrapers, straight roads, booming industries and upwardly mobile citizens.

This view fundamentally misunderstands the country's growth progress. China has indeed made great strides since 1978's "Reform and Opening" in alleviating poverty, opening up to the world, and making slow steps down the road of legal reform. Yet on closer inspection, the most significant transformations from the perspective of boosting prosperity have involved loosening of control over the people, not some alchemy of power and Marxism.

The Beijing model has the "virtue" of allowing the government to act quickly and decisively, writes Liu Junning. But when Beijing makes mistakes, the result historically has been a Cultural Revolution or a Great Leap Forward.

What we now call Western-style liberalism has featured in China's own culture for millennia, he writes. We first see it with philosopher Laozi, the founder of Taoism, in the sixth century B.C. Laozi articulated a political philosophy that has come to be known as wuwei, or inaction. "Rule a big country as you would fry a small fish," he said. That is, don't stir too much. "The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become," he wrote in his magnum opus, the "Daodejing."

“cruel, racist and counterproductive”

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 7/5/11

A better definition of totalitarianism might be the desire by any means necessary to get people you don’t know and don’t like to do what you want them to do. That would be the NYTs virtually always in how it writes about the South, that would be Hillary in Catholic Italy at the head of the gay parade – actually that would be Hillary everywhere where “universal values” – meaning hers – are demanded: Every land is Hillaryland. This would be the Phil Specter “wall of sound” syndrome which has cast the shadow these past 60 years: Our music is louder and we will play it everywhere and relentlessly and we will wear you down. And then we will send in the soldiers and the hillbilly preachers and the ambassadors and anthropologists and at the end of the world we will send in Hillary. And that would be Michele Bachmann in her strong support for DOMA, unconstitutional by any standard. It has always been a problem in an America without walls; in the Don Draper post-war creation where America is everywhere you can see, everything you can imagine; an America where everybody walks in everyone else’s garden.

Regarding DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, enacted September 21, 1996 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, whereby the federal government defines what marriage is and who may marry, either in Provincetown or Peoria, Rick Perry has a better idea. In his book “Fed Up!” he writes, “We are a diverse people - incapable of being governed from a faraway capital by people who do not share our values. Recognizing this fact is critical to the preservation of a free state. Federalism enables us to live united as a nation, with a federal government that is focused on our national security and that has specific enumerated powers, while we live in states with like-minded people who share our values and beliefs. Crucial to understanding federalism in modern-day America is the concept of mobility, or “the ability to vote with your feet.” If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas. If you don’t like medicinal marijuana and gay marriage, don’t move to California.”

Politicians today like to use the work “evolved.” They say President Obama is “evolving” on gay marriage, meaning it was not expedient to support it last time but it may be this time. It may even be “evolved” to throw Joe Biden off the ticket and quickly replace him with New York governor Andrew Cuomo because he signed gay marriage into law recently, the New York Post reports.

But when Jean Cretien, who was then prime minister of Canada, brought it up during the war on Iraq, it seemed to be about more than the right of gay people in Quebec to be free. It was about George W. Bush. It was about what would really piss them off in Texas and gay marriage seemed just the ticket.

Because there is now and always has been antipathy between the cerebral cold places and the heart-driven warm places, here, there and everywhere. Thus today when the NYT describes the “do-it-yourself anti-immigrant schemes” of Nikki Haley’s South Carolina, Nathan Deal’s Georgia and Robert Bentley’s Alabama, the language is identical to that which drove New York to invade the South in 1860: “cruel, racist and counterproductive.” What is new is that today Arizona, Utah and Indiana share in their wrath. The “South” is growing. Or maybe the North is retreating.

Sarah Palin on Iran’s nuke program. Will Obama “toughen up”?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/30/11

Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington Prince Turki al-Faisal warns senior NATO military officials that the existence of nuclear weapons in Iran "would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”

"We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don't. It's as simple as that," he said. "If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit."

There is only one way President Barack Obama can distinguish his tenure from Jimmy Carter’s and win reelection in 2012. Take out Iran’s bomb making capacity.

AFP reports that Iran secretly tested ‘nuclear-capable missiles’: Iran has carried out secret tests of ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in breach of UN resolutions, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday. . . . Hague's comments came a day after Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they had fired 14 missiles in an exercise, one of them a medium-range weapon capable of striking Israel or US targets in the Gulf.

But will Obama, in Sarah Palin’s phrase, “toughen up”? It is the right thing to do but of course it would be murderously immoral to so now for apparent political expediency. But then that has not stopped them before (“Arab Spring,” Libya?).

Nevertheless, it is work that needs to be done and if Obama doesn’t do it President Sarah Palin will. Her political intelligence and instincts are the best. She speaks clearly on this issue and did so when all others were silent. In December, 2010 she wrote in an op-ed piece:

Iran continues to defy the international community in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Arab leaders in the region rightly fear a nuclear-armed Iran. We suspected this before, but now we know for sure because of leaked diplomatic cables.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program" . . . . Officials from Jordan said the Iranian nuclear program should be stopped by any means necessary. Officials from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt saw Iran as evil, an "existential threat" and a sponsor of terrorism. If Iran isn't stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons, it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race in which these countries would seek their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

Some have said the Israelis should undertake military action on their own if they are convinced the Iranian program is approaching the point of no return. But Iran's nuclear weapons program is not just Israel's problem; it is the world's problem. I agree with the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who said recently that the West must be willing to use force "if necessary" if that is the only alternative.

“100 million Canadians”

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/29/11

I wrote my editor friend in New York daily ten years ago that I was watching Canada being born – the Creation Myth being the first game led by Hayley Wickenheiser in the Canadian women’s to win gold against America in the Winter Olympics of 2002, with an even better night to follow when the men beat the Americans. From then on there has been a lot of downhill skiing for the U.S. But things keep looking up for Canada. Housing and economy are booming. Canadian banking is the envy of the world and the Canadian dollar is at parity with the American. There is more to Canada today in foreign eyes than just good hockey, good manners, good government and Tim Hortons. There is oil.

But are there enough Canadians to manage the upswing in good fortune?

“Canada should be a country of 100 million people,” University of Toronto scholar Irvin Studin writes in Global Brief, a journal of world affairs in the 21st century. “It has been said before. Apocryphally, by Winston Churchill himself; more recently, by the countless immigrants, newcomers and visitors to the country who are able, it must be observed, to see in Canada what incumbent Canadians oftentimes do not: that Canada could be a proper world power – a country of global consequence – if only… “

Canada’s first francophone prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was likely tapping into this hypothetical when, in the early 20th century, he declared that the century would be Canada’s, writes Studin. That optimistic impression of the Great White North has endured in certain quarters: at the end of the Cold War certain Chinese measures of ‘comprehensive national power’ rated Canada as among the seven most powerful countries in the world. And in a 2007 speech in Calgary, Tony Blair easily declared that “Canada will become one of the most powerful nations in the world.”

At 34 million, Canadians largely fancy themselves citizens either of a ‘small’ or, at most, a ‘middle’ or ‘principled’ power.

“To this notion of ‘smallness,’ the outsider . . . retorts: ‘What smallness? Canada could be a country of 100 million. Its territory is huge – second only to that of the Russians; it has hyper-abundant natural resources; it is rich in indigenous fresh water and food sources; it has (natural) borders to protect it (and, since 1871, no ‘natural’ enemies); it has stable governance; and, to be sure, it is exceedingly underpopulated; that is, strategically speaking, it is well below carrying capacity.’”

A Canada of 100 million, “ . . . through the force of new domestic structures, coupled with growing international impact (and prestige), undergoes an evolution of the national geist – one arguably appropriate for this new, more complicated, more international century.”

Our family’s most memorable experiences involved camping above Lake Superior in the Canadian wilderness when the children were young. The feeling that there was no one above you and nothing but forest and stars to the Arctic Circle and well beyond added to the serenity. It must be disconcerting now knowing that someone is there. Russians. Americans. Others. All are heading north.

Getting Canada to 100 million would be a project, but necessity may find a way because progress brings its own momentum. It is a force of nature. It cannot be stopped, and like decline, it cannot be avoided.

World meets Jessica Mah (“The spaceship has landed”)

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/27/11

Say what you like about Whitey and Catherine, but they went in the right direction, to southern California. And in the end they made a handsome couple in that excellent and iconic courtroom drawing, their final portrait together; Whitey Bulger with that distinguished beard, like a South Boston white trash Lawrence Ferlingetti, his handsome mistress framed slightly behind and to his creative left side. The west is the best, and the best final destination for those of us who like Whitey’s family and mine and Tip O’Neill’s and five generation of Kennedys lived virtually on the same block since we arrived from Ireland these last 150 years.

Whitey’s epic journey may well be the last for the Southie Irish and all of Europe’s “huddled masses” who made the Atlantic crossing. It might even mark the end of Europe as long-term economic forecasters have been suggesting; the final death cough of life as we learned it in Europe: 500 years, described by Jacques Barzun from “Dawn to Decadence” with Whitey and Catherine at the very end sunning in Santa Monica.

Because as the Pacific rises all the energy and karma shifts to the west. It is the dark side of Mike Mansfield’s “Pacific Century” – dark for Europe; so far from the action and passion in Singapore and Hong Kong and Mumbai; Europe, surrounded and infiltrated now with enemies of a thousand years, but good of course for Singapore, Hong Kong and Mumbai. And very good for America as well because America is a Pacific country too.

The European transit may only have been prelude and the real awakening and action just ahead. Those like Whitey and Catherine who made it west have made two great journeys; one from Europe to Boston, another from the northeast to California. In each, interfering ancient memory recedes by a quantum beat and the ability to awaken to new thinking flowers.

When the Irish families came to Southie, they came for a purpose, to work in the factories of southern Massachusetts and a new world marked by naked capitalism and unbounded enthusiasm. They were free from their ancient bonds and boundaries and able, if they had the guts, to follow Horace Greeley’s command in 1865, “Go west, young man.”

But today another slogan marks the day: the phrase Apple entrepreneur Steve Jobs used to describe his new building in Cupertino, CA: “The spaceship has landed.”

There is thinking subtle and perhaps sublime in this statement, reflecting back even to Walt Whitman’s 1869 commentary on American vision soaring across the continents, “to Sirius and Jupiter” then returning. And at the return “the true Son of God shall come singing his songs” to begin a new era.

The building is a monolith, a symbol which should mark the rising age. It is a perfect circle, flat on the ground, which reminded one southern California scientist of Stonehenge and suggested “Anthropos”; the “first Human Being” - the awakening of an era of original consciousness. Our American generations will begin again here and Jobs’ magic mirrors like iPad and iCloud will be their talismans.

To watch this century rise Google “Jessica Mah Meets World,” web site for Jessica Mah, founder and CEO at inDinero.com, “the fastest growing way for businesses to track their money online.” She is 20 years old. The unbound and uninhibited enthusiasm and creativity of Jessica and friends – she has been lining up classmates to be on her boards of directors for varying enterprises since fourth grade – brings to mind the first days of the American trasit, the first days of every awakening, days when it is suddenly possible to see more clearly ahead than to see behind.

Rick Perry because . . .

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/23/11

WSJ editor James Freeman writes yesterday: “A Republican campaign veteran tells us that Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided to run for President, though the official word from Team Perry is still a definite maybe.”

From The Hill on Dec. 9, 2008 (five months before Tea Party began):

“Could be that we are all destined to be born again as Americans in Texas. Could be that something will happen in Texas to make us different kinds of individuals in the world and a different kind of country. Something from which there will be no turning back. Could be that destiny awaits us in Texas . . .

“Conservatives are reaching a fork in the road; a split between the small government trend which took its initiative with Ronald Reagan, and more traditional conservatives like H.W. Bush with sensibilities formed in the Northeast . . .

“[There] is the fork in the road for conservatives and each trail now has a premise and a tradition. Soon each will have its own leader. The moderate, Eastern conservatives like Colin Powell and Peggy Noonan will call for Jeb or somebody just like him with hopes of following in the tradition of Father George. But a new path is growing here . . . . The natural leader for this new direction is Rick Perry, Governor of Texas.

“Here he is with [then South Carolina Governor] Sanford in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed: As governors and citizens, we've grown increasingly concerned over the past weeks as Washington has thrown bailout after bailout at the national economy with little to show for it . . . In the process, the federal government is not only burying future generations under mountains of debt. It is also taking our country in a very dangerous direction -- toward a ‘bailout mentality’ where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions. We're asking other governors from both sides of the political aisle to join with us in opposing further federal bailout intervention for three reasons. First, we're crossing the Rubicon with regard to debt.

“Americans phoned and emailed into Congress ten to one in opposition to the Wall Street bailout first proposed by Hank Paulson. Neither party in power spoke to that group. Sanford and Perry do and if this is an awakening constituency, we too will have crossed a river; the Mississippi, like Davy Crockett, on his way to the Alamo . . . “

Let’s hear from General Petraeus

for The Hill on 6/23/11

When we went to war at the beginning we were fully unprepared. We went from peace to war overnight. Our army under Tommy Frank and administration with Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush had no hands on experience and Congress was made up of peace time people concerned with housekeeping issues. Not until Secretary Robert Gates came to position did a steady hand come to policy in the Middle East conflicts. But General David Petraeus also brought stability and success to a mess he did not create. At his confirmation hearing today to become the next CIA director he should speak plainly about his assessment of the situation as we enter the post-Gates period.

Because President Obama can no longer be trusted on this issue. Drawing down 30,000 troops in opposition to the voice of his military advisers appears to politicize the situation to fit not the needs of the troops on the ground in harm’s way and our allies and friends abroad, but the upcoming presidential election. The wisdom of his recent Libya incursion is questionable as well.

I opposed the invasion from the first day because it was misguided, advanced by those who had never served in war but did in political influence groups, and because the Congress, including leading members then like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden acted out of weakness and expediency. But to leave too soon is as wrong and dangerous as it was to go into the wrong war in the wrong way.

Every historic period ends with a military general and a philosopher politician. Rightly so, as a military officer on the ticket symbolizes the first and foremost job of a president; to lead the armed forces. In our history, Jefferson/Washington, Lincoln/Grant, Roosevelt/Eisenhower. There is no reason why our time should be any different. It has been said that General Petraeus would like to seek the presidency and he could well be chosen as vice president in 2012 or 2016.

It has been ten years since 9/11 and we are ready now to listen to mature and honorable voices be they Dennis Kuchinich’s or Wesley Clark’s or Jim Webb’s. Americans tend to trust Gates and Petraeus, likely more than they do Congress or the press or the president today. Let’s hear what Petraeus has to say.

Jon Huntsman Jr. is our own Dr. Carlisle Cullen

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/212/11

When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper advises. So for a minute there watching the clip of the most elegant and handsome Jon Huntsman, Jr. it was like that de ja vu thing all over again which Yogi Berra talked about. I thought I was back in the movie theater with my 13-year old daughter watching “Twilight.” Out of the mystery and danger; out of chaos, blood lust and barbarism, comes the handsome, young, dependable and strong father figure, Dr. Carlisle Cullen, who brings us back to order. A stunning figure, Huntsman/Cullen, but not really one of us. One who was one of us, but evolved beyond his bestial nature to a higher form; a celestial one, but one who was led back to us by compassion; back to us mere mortals who are still driven by the beast, come to us now to help us along, to guide us, to cure us. That is Carlisle, the Cullen patriarch, and that could well describe Joseph Smith, who led a small group out of the utter moral and spiritual confusion of 1830s Vermont, to a structured new enlightenment in the desert of Utah. And now, Huntsman comes out of exile and brings it back to us.

Huntsman is picture perfect and could well play Dr. Carlisle Cullen, father of the “good” vampires in the “Twilight” saga, and maybe for the first time in the post-war saga we can say that populism has failed us and has failed the world. Huntsman/Cullen is not “one of us.” He is better than us. And now, here because we need him, because if we continue along the populist path we will not only fail – we have already failed; no, this time we will fall apart. But maybe Jon Huntsman, Jr. can save us.

It is serendipitous that the movie version of the fourth and final book in the “Twilight” series, “Breaking Dawn,” which sold 1.3 million in the first 24 hours, will be released on November 18, 2011, when the campaign is in full swing. Because the connection between Jon Huntsman, Jr. and Dr. Carlisle Cullen in looks and personality can be mesmerizing.

The books and movies were at first met with denial. Possibly because the vampires in this series are not bad, they are good and they are better than the humans. They are angels or “gods” and have risen to a greater nature than that of the everyday pudknockers of Forks, Washington. And these books appeared as a dream in the heart of a Mormon novelist, Stephanie Meyer, who learned to write, she said, to get it all down. They are not “Mormon books” and work ethic, discipline, a moral life and compassionate commitment, a commitment to becoming better are not exclusively moral values. But they are Cullen values and they are the values of Jon Huntsman, Jr.
In the four books a mythic marriage takes place. It is an American creation myth incorporating Native American heart with Mormon moral order. It bring in myth the return of the “white queen” – the chess figure on the cover of the last book; that is, it brings the white queen, Bella, to victory over the red queen, who’s name happens to be Victoria. This begins the historic cycle of the English-speaking people described by mythologist Robert Graves back to its beginning, and in that regard, it is an American “creation myth.”
It should be interesting. Maybe that is why they don’t like Mormons. They are intelligent, they are compassionate and they are better than us who have not yet conquered the beast.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry adds TSA bill to special session

- from Tenth Amendment Center

Texas Gov. Rick Perry presented legislation for consideration this week in the ongoing Eighty-Second Texas Legislature, First Called Session that would ban intrusive TSA pat-downs.

"We applaud Gov. Perry for presenting this legislation," Tenth Amendment Center communications director Mike Maharrey said. "James Madison said states are duty bound to interpose when the federal government overreaches its constitutional limits. Nobody can argue that requiring citizens to get groped by a badged agent in order to get on an airplane doesn't step way over the line."

The bill passed the Texas House unanimously in the general session in May and was poised to pass the Senate when a letter from U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy threatening to shut down air travel in the Lone Star State scared Texas Senators into backing down.

"It's an opportunity for redemption. Now its time for the Texas legislature to do its job and get this bill passed," Maharrey said.

Lord Stanley returns to the center of the universe

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/20/11

Those who took a course in journalism 30 years ago may recall the famous headline, “Hub man dies in Chicago fire.” It is how the populist press in Boston referred to the great Chicago fire. The fire itself was inconsequential. The big story was that a Boston man died in it.

Because Boston was “the Hub” and the Boston Bruins today is sometimes referred to as “the Hub of Hockey.” Actually the phrase was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “the hub of the solar system” modified to “the hub of the universe.” Because the universe is not peace then but conflict and countervailing forces.

It was the height of arrogance unless of course the assessment was correct and Boston is the hub of the universe. Black Elk said the “center of the world” is wherever you are so maybe it works like that.

But this explains the symbol on the chest of the Boston Bruins who won the Stanley Cup last week and brought it back to Boston for the first time since 1972. It is an eight-spoked wheel, known in the study of the I Ching as a bagua. Viewers of “Lost” know it to mark the four corners of the universe or the totality of human consciousness; four, then four again in shadow, and then in the center – the hub – where the “B” is, resides the Creator.

For someone who grew up here it is interesting because the “land of the free,” the Constitution, Jefferson and Adams then were awaiting abstractions. Real life consisted of a fight on the ice between French and Irish working people. It became institutionalized in the game and now the great kids from Dartmouth, UNH and U Vermont who play fight to honor the tradition.

As they should. It is everything. It is freedom, it is being, it is the creation. A fight on ice between Montreal and Boston in Montreal on St. Patrick’s Day,1955, caused a riot with $100,000 damages, 37 injuries and 100 arrests. But it also brought about a new cultural movement and reformulated Quebec to a more Jeffersonian vision of cultural autonomy.

There is a beast in the heart of Canada today and it brings the gift of life. It is the most sacred and vital part of Canada. It comes from Boston and the Bruins flamboyant trickster coach Don Cherry brought it to Canada. Without it, Canada would not gel; it would fall apart. Without the kind of hockey Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver (and Pittsburg and the Broad Street Bullies) play together, Canada would be Vermont.

So I was not disappointed to see the Vancouver fans riot in the streets after St. Timmie snatched victory from the strange red twins of Vancouver and brought the cup back to Boston. Vancouver is booming; the average price of a house is around 900 thousand. It is called the Paris of the west. The sight of turbans and beards on Sikh members of the RCMP at the anthem indicate a strong, authentic and creative multiculturalism. But it is new to the world and new to North America.

Vancouver is said now to hate Boston even more than Maurice (“The Rocket”) Richard and the Montreal Canadiens did back in the Fifties. This is good. It will form them to what they will be and what they will not be. It will make them whole as it did Quebec. It will make them strong, it will make them free and it will make them Canadian.

Rick Perry, Ron Paul and the “flatliners"

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/17/11

Ron Paul said on Fox News Thursday that Texas Governor Rick Perry “doesn’t identify with the people who are disenchanted with the status quo.” But a Texas Lyceum statewide poll conducted a few weeks ago showed Paul ahead of Perry by only an inch, Paul at 10% and Perry at 9%. And Paul has been campaigning constantly now for almost four years while Perry hasn’t even entered the race yet.

Paul is a different man today than when he ran as a quixotic anti-war outsider in 2008. He is part of the establishment; proud and smug at the grownups table after all those years. Today he quips knowing asides about Sarah Palin to the other black suits . . . not one of us, don’t cha know. Today he does interviews with the quintessentially mainstream Al Hunt on Bloomberg TV. Gone are the days when only outsider libertarian and tiny apocalyptic political journals listened. Days when he hoped to shock on Fox by quoting utopian socialist Upton Sinclair: "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” - suggesting of course the last Republican administration. I didn’t hear that in the Hunt interview.

The Wall street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, on Rick Perry’s New York visit this week: “Say this—if the Texas governor gets in, you won't see another debate like last Tuesday's GOP flatliner in New Hampshire.”

Paul is no longer the “rooky pest.” He is now one of the flatliners.

Paul was a charming maverick during the war in Iraq, the kind we used to sprout regularly up here in New Hampshire; seemingly touched by the Lord and out of touch with the world. He brought old ideas like the gold standard and Austrian economics into the conversation and they are good ideas. Thanks for sharing. But Perry brings management abilities like those of no other governor and certainly well beyond anything a gadfly like Paul could manage. As Henninger correctly put it, Perry brings to America at large, “Texas, Texas and the Tenth Amendment.” That would be the Texas where up to 40% of new jobs materialize and where California companies are fleeing to.

Tenth Amendment is the stuff and substance of the Tea Party. And economic competition between the states and regions which Perry pioneers is in fact a Petri dish for Hayek and the Austrian economists

And while Paul was till preaching to the few, Rick Perry was thinking of the many. On Dec. 2, 2008, well before the phrase Tea Party was born, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “As governors and citizens, we've grown increasingly concerned over the past weeks as Washington has thrown bailout after bailout at the national economy with little to show for it . . . In the process, the federal government is not only burying future generations under mountains of debt. It is also taking our country in a very dangerous direction -- toward a "bailout mentality" where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions.”

Perry speaks as a governor to other governors like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, South Carolina’s Nikki Perry, Virginia’s Bob McDonnell, Butch Other of Idaho and others who are revolutionizing governance on a primary Constitutional level. It is a door that has opened that will not be closed.

Paul will always have a useful role. He will be to this rising political sensibility much as Ralph Nader was to the receding cycle of liberalism of the past 40 years. And like Nader, his place will ultimately be on the margins.

Weiner and the end of liberalism

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/15/11

One of the more curious aspects of the Weiner situation – it might be called the Weiner phenomenon – is that it went on for so long and the messages got stranger and stranger. This morning’s Drudge headline: “New pictures show teen Weiner cross dressing and ’oiled up’ . . . .” He seemed to want to get caught. There is desperation to his behavior like that of the Soviets at the end of empire or Kim Jong-il threatening the entire outside world with wilder and crazier schemes when he is virtually alone and crated in isolation. My thought was that Weiner is not a stupid guy. He isn’t really perverted in any conventional sense. He is simply acting out political action and behavior to offend; oppositional behavior to offend the “Bible Belt” which he sees, probably correctly, as the rising wellspring of conservative cultural and economic vision in North America. Like the wacky Kim Jong-il, Weiner, so very distant from the center of the circle; so far from the master’s voice, acts out an inchoate end game. Possibly we are seeing the desperate end of western liberalism.

“It’s New York City. This isn’t Bible Belt tolerance; that’s not a New York thing,” Robert Liff, a New York Democratic political operative told McClatchy newspapers. “We’re a live-and-let-live city.”

It’s those gnarly red necks out there in the Bible Belt; cooking hot dogs on their Webber grills, doing cannonballs in their suburban swimming pools, going to church. Going hunting. Having children.

Worth suggesting the end of liberalism because that seems to be going on in Canada. In the recent election conservative Stephen Harper won again after serving since 2004. For once, Canada did not follow America’s cue and send up a pseudo-Obama. The Liberal Party won the fewest seats in their history and party leader Michael Ignatieff was defeated in his riding.

What is significant here is that Michael Ignatieff, a retired Harvard professor and liberal writer, won only 34 seats. It has been said that in Canada, the old liberalism – Roosevelt, Obama, Weiner-style liberalism – is dead.

My guess is that we are seeing something of the same happening here with the rise in influence of people like Ron Paul, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Ted Kennedy, not only the Senate champion of liberal thinking, but the bearer of a family vision of liberalism which has dominated America and the west since 1960, has been dead now almost two years. Looking back to Jefferson, to Victoria and Eisenhower, an “avatar” or archetypal quality of leadership can be observed: When the archetypal leader dies the movement dies with him and the country quickly moves on. Just as the heartland moved to the rustic, two-fisted populist Andrew Jackson of Tennessee’s frontier just three years after the historic revolutionary Jefferson’s death.

The Sarah Palin show trial (Sarah Palin/Nikki Haley ’12)

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/11/11

From Washington Post coverage of Sarah Palin’s email cashe: “Palin, who since coined the phrase ‘Mama Grizzlies’ to warmly describe female conservatives, wrote an impassioned e-mail to an aide in March 2008 about criticism of female politicians: “ ‘they’ said the same thing throughout my career — ‘too young’, ‘pregnant’, ‘kids’ . . . ‘She won’t be able to do it’ . . . This coming from good ol’ boys who don’t like change . . . And so far along in my career we’ve proved them wrong at each turn.””

The good ol’ boys who don’t like change brought their women with them when they went after Palin in 2008. They also went after South Carolina’s new governor Nikki Haley with even more despicable attempts, reviving old South strategies used effectively during Jim Crow. What was telling in both these cases that women in the press stood to the side when Haley was under attack and in Palin’s case, actively initiated scrorn and contempt.

But there is a spider woman quality that lurks behind these women: Haley has since been on the cover of Newsweek and is commonly mentioned now as a vice president candidate in 2012. And South Carolina’s legislature, considered one of the worse in the country, is feeling her scourge. While those who lashed out at Palin or attempted to sandbag her (not “one of us” – she uses a Garfield calendar and reads C.S. Lewis, has children, shoots bears and eats them) like those who tapped the Egyptian crypts are followed by bad luck: Chrales Hanson and Katie Couric after deceptive, dishonest, garden path interviews are retired to the reading room after decent interval; after the giggles, Letterman found himself in a heap of trouble, and after the NYT’s, in one of the most bizarre and propagandistic pieces of front-page reporting in the history of the written word, claimed she was responsible for a mad killer’s shooting in Arizona, the editor was sent back to the trenches.

The Washington Post’s initial coverage of the Palin emails, which hordes of reporters are filing through in an unprecedented action obviously looking to publically embarrass the VP candidate of 2008. One investigative reporter reported that she once said, “Sheesh” and is this time strangely fair and eventhe NYTs and Wa Post issued open calls to readers asking them to “investigate” emails fro mher tenure as governor of Alaska.

But headlines and leads are remarkably even-handed: “A cache of e-mails released Friday add vivid new color and fresh details to the complicated public portrait of Sarah Palin, who displayed many of the same strengths, and shortcomings, as Alaska governor that she would later bring to the national political stage.”

From McClatchy Newspapers: “Emails released yesterday from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaska’s governor show a double-fisted Blackberry user fully comfortable with handling nearly every aspect of state government from her private and state email accounts.”

Prediction: This will bring an Ollie North moment. In July 1987, Oliver North, a Marine colonel, was called to testify before televised hearings of a joint Congressional committee that was investigating Iran-Contra. Cards of support which came in were left in piles on the desk. The show trial attempts flipped and Col. North became an overnight national folk hero.

Is Romney sincere in his Tea Party pitch?
By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/7/11

I’d say so.

“I’m going to insist that Washington respect the Constitution,” he told an audience up here in New Hampshire last week. He said he would “return responsibility and authority to the states for dozens of government programs – and that begins with a complete repeal of Obamacare.”

Many who claim Tea Party status have already forgotten that was/is what it is all about: Constitutional government and state sovereignty as outlined in the Tenth Amendment. But Romney was listening to Tea Party ideas as governor of Massachusetts several years before the phrase Tea Party even appeared.

And he was first to use the phrase “one size does not fit all” in opposition to federal government long before it became popular with others.

Romney inherently understands state sovereignty as it is outlined in the Constitution. He didn’t have to “re-learn” it as so many others have done. Even when gay marriage arose as a political position in Massachusetts, he used a states’ rights defense. In a speech to the Federalist Society, he said that judges should not be able to trump state legislation and that Massachusetts already has statutes governing marriage. In contrast, Michelle Bachman, pride of the Tea Party, proposed a federal solution.

His claim that when elected President he would immediately grant a waiver on Obamacare to every state is clever and offers a path to easing into a solution without chaos.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney showed that he would learn from new ideas and that he understood the contours of change on a historic scale. He was among the first of “establishment” conservatives to support the Tea Party movement and with Sarah Palin, came forth without hesitation to support beleaguered Tea Party favorite Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

Dems find courage, conviction and common sense in Dennis Kucinich

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/6/11

Kucinich’s anti-war Resolution might be the moment on which the Democrats can regroup and even begin again. Last Wednesday, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made the following statement after his resolution, H. Con. Res. 51, to end the war in Libya was pulled from the Floor calendar and postponed:
“I am disappointed that the President and leadership feel the need to buy even more time to shore up support for the War in Libya. It’s not surprising that some are now wondering if a preliminary vote count on my resolution came out in favor of defending the Constitution.”

Been a long time coming. A turning seemed to be ahead five years ago when Marcos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos and a commentator at The Hill, talked of a new generation rising in the Democratic party with former governor, now Virginia senator, Mark Warner and Virginia Senator Jim Webb. But conservatives stole the agrarian fire.

Problem was the Clintons, said Kos. “ . . . the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad,” he wrote in the Washington Post on May 7, 2006.

Will these Clinton-era Democrats never go away, asked Kos on his famous blog?

Apparently not. One appears now to be Secretary of State. And I don’t see that Obama has brought the cure to awaken a new liberal strategy and culture. He is an adult. He completes the Kennedy age. But he seems a one night stand and like the Clintons, a parlor liberal, more suited to the blithe sensibilities of the summer crowd at Martha’s Vineyard than to Sarah Palin’s mighty bunch of farmers, fishermen, veterans, bikers, preachers, red necks, guys named Darryl and Ted Nugent.

And this: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. – Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Kucinich’s anti-war resolution on Libya is a repudiation of the current Democratic leadership and direction.

During the war on Iraq, Moulitsas was a big supporter of Howard Dean’s anti-war position. I felt was a mistake: It went to the marginal in a time of crisis. But Moulitsas once mentioned that he first supported Clark. General Wesley Clark had the better ideas about the invasion of Iraq.

Clark was right again this spring in regard to Libya as well. And like Kucinich, he went again in opposition to the main thrust the Democratic leadership would take. Libya didn’t meet the test for U.S. intervention, Clark wrote in the Washington Post on March 11, 2011.

“. . . as Moammar Gaddafi looks vulnerable and Libya descends into violence,” wrote Clark, “familiar voices are shouting, once again: ‘Quick, intervene, do something!’ It could be a low-cost win for democracy in the region. But before we aid the Libyan rebels or establish a no-fly zone, let's review what we've learned about intervening since we pulled out of Vietnam.”

With the impending irrelevance of both Anthony “Sticky Fingers” Weiner (Google it) and John Edwards, north and south aspects of Clinton/Obama-era salon liberalism may be descending. Clinton/Obama seems today the party of the very rich and fashionable, and this is what has brought wind to the sails of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.
Kucinich brings the opportunity to start from scratch, back home with the people.

Dennis Kucinich on 20-years of war

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 5/26/11

War changes people. After the Mexican War, contention between the urban, industrializing northeast and the rustics of the heartland was no longer metaphysical. It began to take form as physical contention. After the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, war which had been brewing – in Churchill’s estimation – since the Boer wars began to bring blood to the streets and it wouldn’t stop flowing until Yalta. It began in 1914 but America wasn’t fully ready to fight until Pearl Harbor, 1941. And as Ulysses S. Grant said about earlier conflict: If you didn’t serve you would be left out. We have been at war for ten years now and those pundits, politicians and salon diplomats most reluctant to go at first lead the way here at the end against Kaddafi. Last to serve, they end up at the front of the parade when the war is over. 'Twas ever thus in war. My uncles and cousins and grand uncles and great grand uncles, participants in peace and war from Cemetery Ridge to Khe Sahn, had a name for them: “flag wavers.”
This war will change us as well. In my opinion it will psychologically empower the heartland as the Mexican War did, because that is where most of the soldiers and veterans live. It already has.
Some of different opinion and culture, have been honorable throughout: Virginia Senator Jim Webb, General Wesley Clark, Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, the late Robert C. Byrd, senator from West Virginia, and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson come first to mind. But the unique, creative and possibly most singular and different individual in a compliant and appeasing Congress, Dennis Kucinich, representative from Ohio, belongs to the “honorable throughout” group as well and it is worth listening to what he has to say about “Permanent War and the National Security State.”
Because it is more than ten years. It started more than 20 years ago when then President George W. Bush climbed the mountain then turned around, going after Saddam Hussein in 1990, then leaving him standing, like the noble Duke of York, who was neither up nor down.
From Rep. Kucinich’s press release:
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a leading advocate for peace, today offered a broad critique of the National Defense Authorization Act which continues disastrous policies in Libya, and allows for permanent, global war and reauthorizes harmful provisions of the Patriot Act.
“I am offering an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill which would defund the war in Libya.
“The war is unconstitutional. The President did not come to this Congress, he went to the U.N. Security Council, he went to a number of international bodies, but he didn't come to the United States Congress. Last week, the President did not observe the tolling of the War Powers Act, so he's in violation of the statute.
“The action over in Libya has already exceeded the U.N. mandate; it's in violation of the U.N. mandate and there have been violations of international law.
“What are we doing there? Why does anyone think we can afford it? Why aren't we trying to find a path to peace so we aren’t called upon to spend more money there? These are questions we have to be asking; that's why Congress needs to say we're not going to spend more money there.”

Proposed New York agenda for Texas Governor Rick Perry

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/3/11

From the NY Daily News: “Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who's been tinkering with the idea of a run for the White House, will be the keynote speaker at the New York Republican County Committee’s Annual Lincoln Dinner on June 14, 2011.”
Gov. Perry’s attendance at the New York County Republican Dinner proves that New York is still the center of the universe, for politics and otherwise, said state GOP Chairman Ed Cox, who will also speak.

But is New York City still the center of the universe? The great papers are gone, the Yankees have been beaten by Boston twice in the World Series, and when the stocks crashed in 2007 the bell broke on Wall Street. The legendary investor Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, said it was all over for New York and London, which had been booming with investor money since the 1980s. You don’t need Wall Street to invest nowadays. All you need is one of those nerd machines; smart phones or something. Rogers moved to Singapore.

Wasn’t always like that. Once was New York City boomed in letters and cash flow, and the most prominent among us – Willa Cather, Truman Capote and editors like Esquire’s Harold T.P, Hayes and Harper’s Willie Morris – were from the heartland. The idea then was that the South and the heartland and places like Texas had something that was part of us and we were only partial without them.

Even Imus – and I hope you talk to Imus when you are up here – said not long ago when NYTs columnist Frank Rich quit to write a column for New York Magazine; “New York Magazine? I haven’t read that since Clay Felker [of Missouri] was editor.”
It is all going on now in places in the middle where all the farms and commodities are, says Rogers, which is practically everywhere between New York City and Los Angeles. He advises his clients to trade in the Macerates for John Deeres and to buy farmland.

The shift of population, economy and influence to the southwest and west, has made us New Yorkers pouty. What role will we have in the Texas Century we wonder? Will 150 years of northern scorn have a price? I hope y’all not gonna hold a grudge. Because the question all Americans have to ask today is: Can France exist without Paris, China without Beijing, Italy without Rome, and America without New York City?

But there is still much timeless and some good new stuff here so here is a proposed agenda: A measure of any major western city today is the quality of its Chinatown and New York’s is the greatest. Lunch there or maybe meet Judge Andrew Napolitano at Fanelli’s Café between Mercer and Greene. I think the Judge works nearby. Then walk up to the Strand Bookstore, with 18 miles of new, used and rare books, and go left over to Chelsea to the new Rubin Museum of Art which features art from the Himalayas. I hear it’s terrific. Meet Donald Trump at the White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas died drinking on Hudson Street in the West Village. I’m sure he will take you someplace nice for dinner.

Anthony Weiner’s problem
By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 6/2/11

Anthony Weiner’s problem is that he is no longer a good fit for New York. It might be New York’s problem.

One absolutely Aquarian mystery arose in New York City in the real time of “Mad Men” which was about when Weiner was born - the sudden appearance of Jews with long whiskers and black overcoats riding yellow school buses to the diamond district.
When the orthodox Jews arrived from Russia, New Yorkers did not relate to torah as a guide. In the time of “Mad Men,” Israel was a secular state, a socialist state, led by kibbutznik Golda Meir, born in Ukraine but raised in Milwaukee.

But the return of religious, orthodox Jews to New York and Israel is one of the most important events in the post-war period and potentially in the history of faith. New York’s secular Jews like everyone else there then would have a difficult time relating to a sacred state – a state guided by God’s truths as prescribed by torah, and not necessarily John Locke’s or Karl Marx’s.

Caroline Glick, a prominent Israeli columnist, writes that President Obama’s “ . . . icy glares at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office last Friday, his address before the AIPAC conference on Sunday, and his subsequent press briefings have all made clear that he is not sympathetically inclined toward Israel, nor does he consider Israel an ally worth defending.” Why are American Jewish leaders defending Obama, she asks?

One plausible explanation, she writes, is that “Jewish leaders are concerned that their fellow American Jews are more attached to their identity as Democrats than they are to their identity as Jews.”

That is, more attached to Obama or Bill Clinton (who married Weiner, a Jew) than to the path of torah.

As I write about Israel rising today as a sacred state, I regularly receive mail from American Jews with anti-Semetic caricatures of orthodox Jewry and the followers of Dov Ber of Lubavitch.

Weiner has been a strong supporter of Israel, but his neurosis suggests a state of crisis of identity, and it is one that virtually all of my Woodstock Age Jewish friends are experiencing.

American democracy is a secular world (conquering) vision. Israeli today and likely increasing into the future, is rising to be a torah-based state.

They certainly cannot understand it to be a better state, a state of “higher law.” But in the end, the democratic, globalist vision which is the New York state of mind of recent times, and the sacred torah-based state rising today in Israel are incompatible.

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.

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.

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.”

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

“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.

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.

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.