Obama Dreami'n d'apres The Mamas and The Papas

drawing by marguerita

Stopped in to a church I passed along the way.
Well I got down on my knees
(got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray.
(I pretend to pray).
You know the preacher likes the cold.
(preacher likes the cold).
He knows I'm gonna stay.
(knows I'm gonna stay).
Obama dreamin'

(lyrics excerpt) ........ after a decade in which two true national catastrophes, a wasteful war and a near-ruinous financial collapse, were both in part byproducts of the ease with which our leaders bamboozled us, we can’t so easily move on.

This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20rich.html?emc=eta1

Now, as his first year in office draws to a close, the man who campaigned on the “fierce urgency of now” is confronting a painful reality: the not-so-fierce urgency of next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/weekinreview/20stolberg.html?emc=eta1

Gaia and The DeadlyCloud

drawings by marguerita- all rights reserved-(excerpts of a unpublished book What is Going to be Eh?- story and drawings by marguerita- 1976.
BEIJING — A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.
The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, cooking on dung or wood fires and coal-fired power plants, these plumes rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America.
But they are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India, say a team of more than a dozen scientists who have been studying the problem since 2002.
The report was issued on a day when Beijing’s own famously polluted skies were unusually clear.
.For those who breathe the toxic mix, the impact can be deadly.
“We used to think of this brown cloud as a regional problem, but now we realize its impact is much greater,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, who led the United Nations scientific panel. “When we see the smog one day and not the next, it just means it’s blown somewhere else.”
.U.N. Reports Pollution Threat in Asia - NYTimes.com

Wall Street and Etc:Quote Unquote | Red Is the New Black

drawing collage by marguerita
Mr. Greenspan said that he had found “a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”
He said that the current crisis had “turned out to be much broader than anything that I could have imagined.”
Mr. Greenspan said that a necessary condition for the crisis to end will be a stabilization in home prices but he said that was not likely to occur for “many months in the future.”
Mr. Greenspan, who headed the nation’s central bank for 18.5 years, said that he and others who believed lending institutions would do a good job of protecting their shareholders are in a “state of shocked disbelief.”Greenspan Faces Questioning on Financial Crisis - NYTimes.com


George Washington- supported plans to build a strong central government by funding the national debt, implementing an effective tax system, and creating a national bank. Washington avoided the temptation of war and began a decade of peace with Britain via the Jay Treaty in 1795; he used his prestige to get it ratified over intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. Although never officially joining the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. Washington's farewell address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against partisanship, sectionalism and involvement in foreign wars. His devotion to civic virtue made him an exemplary figure among early American politicians.^[7][8] Washington died in 1799, and in his funeral oration, Henry Lee said that of all Americans, he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."^[9] Washington has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Fish and Us: The Sea is being Emptied

There are no fish in the sea here anymore.”
Already, scientists say, the sea’s ecological balance has shifted as species lower on the food chain replace some above them
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/world/africa/14fishing.html?_r=1&oref=slogin