Obama: It's Complicated ,High Noon versus Habeas Corpus

drawing by marguerita

By the time Pakistani soldiers lifted the cordon around Osama bin Laden's house in the garrison town of Abbottabad, triggering a media stampede, the most obvious traces of its infamous resident had been effaced.

The American soldiers who had swept in aboard four helicopters on Sunday night had scoured the three-storey building, taking away computer hard disks and a trove of documents – as well as Bin Laden's bloodied body, which was later buried at sea.

The following day, Pakistani intelligence – angered at not having been informed of the raid, and embarrassed that it took place under their noses – made a second sweep. Tractors carted away furniture and other belongings. But it was impossible to erase every trace of the drama that ended the manhunt.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-death-raid

Obama,US,U&Me,Healthcare status quo:Years of Wrangling Lies ......the

When the health care law makes it to the Supreme Court, the justices will ask, with varying degrees of concern, this age-old question: How do we define the limits, because limits there must be, on this federal power? - Jason Mazzone

drawings by marguerita
The central question before the courts has not been whether
the health care market substantially affects interstate commerce,
a point largely accepted by all sides.
Rather, the issue has been a semantic one:
determining whether the act of not obtaining insurance is best defined as activity or,
as Virginia's solicitor general,
E. Duncan Getchell Jr., has argued in the Richmond case, "inactivity" that is beyond Congress's reach.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=714320&f=19&p=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/opinion/17mazzone.html?hpw

P.S Hippocrates was a Greek physician born in 460 BC on the island of Cos, Greece. He became known as the founder of medicine and was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body. He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. He rejected the views of his time that considered illness to be caused by superstitions and by possession of evil spirits and disfavor of the gods.

Hippocrates held the belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts.

He accurately described disease symptoms and was the first physician to accurately describe the symptoms of pneumonia, as well as epilepsy in children. He believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness. He noted that there were individual differences in the severity of disease symptoms and that some individuals were better able to cope with their disease and illness than others. He was also the first physician that held the belief that thoughts, ideas, and feelings come from the brain and not the heart as others of him time believed.

Hippocrates traveled throughout Greece practicing his medicine. He founded a medical school on the island of Cos, Greece and began teaching his ideas. He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physicians to follow. This Oath is taken by physicians today as they begin their medical practice. He died in 377 BC. Today Hippocrates is known as the "Father of Medicine".

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/early/2010/11/30/jama.2010.1797.abstract

Sisifsobama: Quo Vadis ?

drawing by marguerita

Or as Coburn put it last Thursday on the Senate floor, criticizing his colleagues for celebrating the tax cut deal, last week's bargain could easily become another example of how "both parties have laid a trap for future generations by our inaction, our laziness, our arrogance, and a crass desire for power." That's extreme language. And we need more of it.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=713729&f=28&sub=Columnist&p=2

Obama :I want to inspire a renewal of morality in politics. I will work as hard as I can, as long as I can, on your behalf.”

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Every presidency is the subject of competing caricatures.

But almost a year into his first term, there’s something particularly elusive about Barack Obama’s political identity.

He’s a bipartisan bridge-builder — unless he’s a polarizing ideologue. He’s a crypto-Marxist radical —

except when he’s a pawn of corporate interests.

He’s a post-American utopian — or else he’s a willing tool of the national security state.

ttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/opinion/26douthat.html?em

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all#ixzz0aru029JW

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

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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

Obama:I Dollar,Therefore I Exist ,d'apres Descartes

drawing/collage by marguerita

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflicts in our lifetimes,” Mr. Obama said, addressing the paradox of receiving an award for peace as commander in chief of a nation that is escalating the war in Afghanistan as it continues to fight in Iraq."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/world/europe/11prexy.html?pagewanted=2&_r=

1&ref=global-home

"I Think, therefore I exist"- Rene Descartes

Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.

Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)

Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.

Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/781932/posts

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/descartes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes

Obama:""This campaign was about building relationships among people that last beyond election day,"????

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"Barack represents a thousand different answers to what young people were looking for," he says. "

Who he is, his background, the issues he's worked on, his vision, his style." Riemer and other strategists developed a campaign climate that kept volunteers coming back.

 Field organizers around the country built comfy offices that became rec centers for young people.To veteran activists used to running campaigns on a shoestring,

 Obama for America's volunteer-driven strategy wasn't rocket science, but it was breaking news to the establishment.

 "We didn't all drop what we were doing and change our lives just because we liked Obama. We wanted to move the country forward."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091123/mendez_berry

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/citigroup-bank-of-america_n_341949.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/the-lost-generation/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05collins.html?_r=1

Main Entry: ¹hoard 

Pronunciation: \ˈhȯrd\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English hord, from Old English; akin to Gothic huzd treasure, Old English hȳdan to hide

Date: before 12th century

: a supply or fund stored up and often hidden away

Obama:I'm Singing in the Rain

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With two wars and G.M. in bankruptcy proceedings, shouldn’t the president be glued to the grindstone, emulating W.’s gravity when he sacrificed golf in 2003 as the Iraq insurgency spread?

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” the former president explained later. “I think, you know, playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Actually, what sends the wrong signal is going to war with a phony justification, inadequate troop levels, insufficient armor, an inept Defense secretary and an inability to admit for years, deadly ones, that you needed counterinsurgency experts.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/opinion/10dowd.html?_r=1

Obama:Where the Yes I Can Obama?

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Epidemiologists are still puzzled by the virus, its origins and its modes of transmission.

What is involved here is an extreme case of government-condoned "moral hazard" offering outrageous compensation to the super-rich for screwing up royally. 

Where is the socially conscious Obama we voted for?

 E-mail him and ask.

Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig

.

Obama & the BOinMischief Diversion

drawing,collage by marguerita
The question will of course be rhetorical, since Bo, whose raison d’être is to be furry and sweet, has significantly fewer performance expectations than his master.
But it will by no means be idle, at least not to the psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and kissy-face dog owners who for centuries have pondered the mysteries of canine consciousness.
What, they ask, does a creature that lives to chew shoes and chase tennis balls really know about himself and his surroundings?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/fashion/16firstdog.html?_r=1&hpw

Berlusphony & Ze Queen :Twist and Shout: More about the G String Summit

drawing by marguerita Signum Temporis

Gaffe-prone Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has done it again - leaving the Queen distinctly unamused at the official G20 photocall.And he nearly took US President Barack Obama down with him.TV footage shows the traditionally family photo with Her Majesty and the world's leaders at Buckingham Palace including Mr Berlusconi and Mr Obama.

At the end of the event the Italian prime minister can be heard shouting: 'Mr Obama!'

Mr Obama can be heard replying: 'Mr Berlusconi!' - in a softer voice.

But the damage has already been done.

The Queen, on hearing Mr Berlusconi's strident tones, turned - seemingly to Mr Obama - and exclaimed about Mr Berlusconi:

'What is it? Why does he have to shout!'

She is not renowned for public displays of affection. Which made the Queen's decision to put a friendly arm around Michelle Obama's waist at a Buckingham Palace G20 reception - prompting the U.S. President's wife to return the gesture - so utterly astonishing.

Finding herself next to Mrs Obama, the Queen remarked on their height difference. As she did so, her hand edged towards the small of Mrs Obama's back. Mrs Obama responded - and even rubbed the Queen's shoulder - before both women moved gently apart after about ten seconds.

The sight of the Queen publicly hugging another woman astonished other guests. An onlooker said: 'It was a pretty simultaneous gesture. We couldn't believe what we were seeing.'

Within minutes the footage was posted on Italy's YouTube site as well as that of national newspapers including La Repubblica and

E la regina rimprovera Silvio «Perché deve urlare così?» - Corriere della Sera

It now appears, however, that it may have been the Queen who made the initial move. In any case, it was the first time that anyone can remember in her long public life that she has put her arm around another woman.

One's new best friend: The Queen, Michelle and the new touchy-feely protocol | Mail Online

'Why does he have to shout?': Berlusconi annoys the Queen at G20 photoshoot - and nearly takes Obama down with him | Mail Online

Note:The origin of the term "G-string" is obscure.
Since the 19th century the term geestring referred to the string which held the loincloth of American Indians ^[1]and later referred to the narrow loincloth itself. William Safire in his Ode on a G-String quoted the usage of the word "G-string" for loincloth by Harper's Magazine 15 years after Beadle's and suggested that the magazine confused the word with the musical term G-string (i.e., the string for the G note). Safire also mentions the opinion of linguist Robert Hendrickson that G (or gee) stands for groin, which was a taboo word at these times. ^[2]

n music, the term note has two primary meanings: 1) a sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound; and 2) a pitched sound itself. Notes are the "atoms" of much Western music: discretizations of musical phenomena that facilitate performance, comprehension, and analysis (Nattiez 1990, p.81n9).

The term "note" can be used in both generic and specific senses: one might say either "the piece Happy Birthday to You begins with two notes having the same pitch," or "the piece begins with two repetitions of the same note." In the former case, one uses "note" to refer to a specific musical event; in the latter, one uses the term to refer to a class of events sharing the same pitch.

ObamaNation:Passion of the Moment

collage by marguerita -d'apres Titian
Hot is the word for this .It was "interesting," said Gertrude Stein of the Civil War, although she was far more intrigued by General Grant than Abraham Lincoln, whom she virtually ignored. She's the only one, so it seems, especially now with the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, duly touted by committees, books and celebration, having arrived just a few weeks after President Barack Obama's historic inauguration, during which he took the oath of office using Lincoln's burgundy velvet Bible. But then Lincoln has been for a very long time enshrined as a legend, albeit a complex one, whose fate was sealed by the martyrdom that gave him to the ages, or angels, depending on how one recalls Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's tender benediction.
Devotional ardor radiates from monumental church paintings. In a gallery of female nudes with skin so incandescent as to barely need lighting, eroticism floats like a scent. For the first time in European art we see paint itself used as an impassioned material, the instrument of fervid hands and inflamed personalities.

Obama and "Le Stimulus è mobile"

collage by marguerita

If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.Many will ask whether Mr. Obama can actually pull off the deficit reduction he promises. Can he actually reduce the red ink from $1.75 trillion this year to less than a third as much in 2013? Yes, he can
.Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues.Op-Ed Columnist - Climate of Change - NYTimes.com

"La donna è mobile" ("Woman is fickle") is the cynical Duke of Mantua's canzone from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto (1851). The inherent irony, of course, is that it is the callous playboy Duke himself who is mobile. Its reprise in the last act is chilling, as Rigoletto realizes from the sound of the Duke's lively voice coming from within the tavern (offstage), that the body in the sack over which he has grimly triumphed is not that of the Duke after all: Rigoletto had paid Sparafucile, an assassin, to kill the Duke but Sparafucile deceived him by killing Gilda, Rigoletto's daughter, instead. The aria is famous as a showcase for tenors. It has been recorded by Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Juan Diego Flórez, Jussi Björling, Vitas and hundreds of others. Before this song's first public performance (in Venice), it was rehearsed under very tight secrecy: a necessary precaution, because it proved to be very catchy and within a day or two after its first public performance every gondolier in Venice was singing it.

The almost comical-sounding theme of La donna è mobile is introduced immediately, and runs as illustrated (transposed from the original key of B major). The theme is repeated several times in the approximately two minutes it takes to perform the aria, but with the important -- and obvious -- omission of the last measure. This has the effect of driving the music forward as it creates the impression of being incomplete and unresolved, which it is, having left off not on the tonic or dominant but on the submediant. Once the Duke has finished singing, however, the theme is once again repeated; but this time including the last, and conclusive, measure and finally resolving to the tonic.

Obama & OPM

photo and collage by marguerita(excerpts of unpublished book)

For Brandeis, regulation was not supposed to be a restraint on innovation or the entrepreneurial spirit, but rather a check on unbridled greed.He believed in a free market, but one in which the government enforced rules of fair competition so that the most talented could succeed.Louis D. Brandeis

SOME things never change. When President Obama spoke last week of “shameful” bonuses for bankers and the financial community’s “irresponsibility,” he echoed charges leveled nearly a century ago by Louis D. Brandeis. Brandeis, a commercial lawyer, leading reformer and future Supreme Court justice, described a dangerous combination of avarice, lack of accountability and poor oversight in “Other People’s Money, and How the Bankers Use It,” one of the best-known exposés of the Progressive era.Published in 1914, the book was based on the revelations of the House of Representatives’ Pujo Committee about the predatory practices of J. P. Morgan and other big bankers. “Other People’s Money” influenced both Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom agenda and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It also offers valuable lessons for today.Op-Ed Contributor - The Value of 'Other People's Money' - NYTimes.com

Obama,Global Crisis and factoring in the “image”

drawing by margueritaWell, as they said at Boucheron; where the precious stone-bedecked fine jewellery collection inspired by the Folies Bergères was on display, and where a store in Azerbaijan is essentially supported by a single customer, “it only takes one”.
They were genuinely surprised – not offended or chastising about the idea of a profession where the amount of money spent on a single garment is equivalent to many people’s yearly salaries, but taken aback, as though they had simply assumed that of course, given the current state of the global economy, such extravagance would have retreated quietly from the public eye. And since the day the shows opened was a) only a few days after the famed Obama bump failed to save the president’s favourite tailor, Hart Schaffner Marx, from declaring Chapter 11, b) the same day that companies from Caterpillar to Corus announced what amounted to 76,000 job cuts and c) the rulers of the universe at Davos acknowledged that last year they had had no idea how bad things would get, you can understand why.
FT.com / Weekend / Style - Couture is spared from the crisis

Hillary:I hang suspended Until I know .....

drawing by marguerita
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is clearly itching to hit the road. But to where?Curiosity Rises Over Clinton's Itinerary - NYTimes.com
She:
Oh why do the leaves
Of the Mulberry tree
Whisper differently now
And why is the nightingale singing
At noon on the Mulberry bow
For some most mysterious reason
This isn't the garden I know
No it's paradise now
That was only a garden
A moment ago

He:
Take my hand
I'm a stranger in paradise
All lost in a wonderland
A stranger in paradise
If I stand starry-eyed
That's a danger in paradise
For mortals who stand beside
An angel like you

I saw your face
And I ascended
Out of the commonplace
Into the rare
Somewhere in space
I hang suspended
Until I know
There's a chance that you care

Won't you answer the fervent prayer
Of a stranger in paradise
Don't send me in dark despair
From all that I hunger for
But open your angel's arms
To the stranger in paradise
And tell him
That he need be
A stranger no more

She:
I saw your face
And I ascended
Out of the commonplace
Into the rare

Both:
Somewhere in space
I hang suspended

She:
Until I know

He:
Till the moment I know

She:
There's a chance that you care

He:
There's a chance that you care

She:
Won't you answer the fervent prayer
Of a stranger in paradise

He:
Don't send me in dark despair
From all that I hunger for

Both:
But open your angel's arms
To the stranger in paradise
And tell me that I may be
A stranger no more.

Obama and The Enigma

drawing by marguerita
But it was not to be...
I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning.Like anyone who pays attention to business and financial news, I am in a state of high economic anxiety. Like everyone of good will, I hoped that President Obama’s Inaugural Address would offer some reassurance, that it would suggest that the new administration has this thing covered.
In response to an unprecedented economic crisis — or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression — Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious:
he spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests. Op-Ed Columnist - Stuck in the Muddle - NYTimes.com

Obama:Secret Prisons and Detention Camps Closed

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Even as he reversed the most disputed counterterrorism policies of the Bush years, Mr. Obama postponed for at least six months difficult decisions on the details. He ordered a cabinet-level review of the most challenging questions his administration faces — what to do with dangerous prisoners who cannot be tried in American courts; whether some interrogation methods should remain secret to keep Al Qaeda from training to resist them; and how the United States can make sure prisoners transferred to other countries will not be tortured.Obama Orders Secret Prisons and Detention Camps Closed - NYTimes.com

Obama and Hill: Sometimes, good things come to those who don’t wait (forever).

drawing by marguerita (first published in the poignant frog- May 22.2008)
There will be a press conference tomorrow morning declaring the whole thing official, in which the former warring enemies will smile for the cameras and say kind things.

As he read the ads in the weekly newspaper, Mr. Obama, a Chicago young President -elect,, wondered about : people who thought they had shared a meaningful exchange with a stranger (on a bus, in a supermarket, at a stoplight), but could not muster the courage to speak at that moment. What drove them to engage in these improbable long-shot attempts to find that person again?

“These little blurbs are delightfully futile and kind of sad — but so hopeful,” . He was inspired .

There, he and Hillary made eye contact, but they did not speak.

“We did the look-at-you, look-away dance,” Hillary recalled. Those looks continued throughout time, and Mr. Obama said, made him feel “gurgly inside.”

“This is Obama’s band; he gets to call the tunes,” said Charlie Cook, publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“Obama picked Clinton because, after standing next to her in countless debates and having competed against her, he saw her as a very strong, tough, formidable person and wanted her on his team,” Cook said.Bloomberg.com: Politics

Bush's leftovers for Obama

drawing collage by marguerita

Wasp venom is far more than just stuff that hurts; it's a multi-step micro-assault with a twofold aim:

• As an offensive weapon, the goal is to paralyze insects for easier transport back to the nest.
• As a defensive weapon, the venom delivers enough pain to convince larger animals to leave well enough alone.

Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power.
The list of abuses that President-elect Barack Obama must address is long.It will require smart legal thinking by the new administration.Editorial - The Price of Our Good Name - NYTimes.com