Obama: A Tree Grows in Delhi

Sapling planted by Barack Obama at Ghandhi Memorial in New Delhi

On January 20th, 2015, Pres. Obama planted a peepal fig tree in New Delhi, India. Now, a month later, the local Indian media are blasting officials "for letting it die." The very popular native fig tree, Ficus religiosa,  dropped all its leaves shortly after its planting and is now a tall, lonely, spindly single stalk. But local horticulturists insist is not dead at all but is setting new buds which will start to bloom soon.

The tree is also known as the Bo Tree, under which the Buddha sat and became a supremely enlightened teacher. It has special leaves which have a long extended drip tip. The tree is considered sacred by followers of Buddhism. Interestingly, the tree's leaves move continuously even when there is no perceptible wind blowing! The phenomenon is explained due to the quite long stalks on the leaves, but the faithful attribute the movement of the leaves in dead calm air to "devas" or "gods" that reside in the leaves. Some Americans are said to believe that the strange leaf movement is signaling "the end of days," or even a new Watch Tower emphatic claim!

Republicans and others are already shouting and spouting jaundiced nonsense suggesting President Obama may have dropped his leaves. The perennial bile-spewing, failed Pol., Rudy Giuliani, has even claimed that because of President Obama's more intellectual public call for reason instead of waving his arms and shouting firebrand rhetoric, the President "doesn't love America."

Could it be that Obama stuffed a handful of the leaves into his coat pocket to bring back to some of his detractors? The leaves are used in traditional medicine and are especially useful for those suffering from jaundice ... like Speaker John Boehner whose dark yellowish jaundiced facial coloration actually may not be from daily visits to a tanning salon after all! And the Peepal leaf also helps control the excessive amount of urine released during jaundice. Imagine seeing Mr. Boehner with a normal healthy looking pink glow! Imagine Boehner, Giuliani and their ilk not continually peeing on their own boots! Obama is patiently and calmly watching all this and may be handing out the metaphoric leaves soon.

The trees can grow to almost 100 feet in height.

Footnote: In March, 2000, President Bill Clinton and Daughter Chelsea participated in a tree planting in the same Gandhi Memorial Park. Clinton's tree is reportedly tall, sturdy and still growing.

Herd Denial of the Conservative Crisis

Republicans have tightened the blinders they are wearing to keep the realty of their government-crippling intransigence from spooking their whole herd of mulish diehards milling around under their own huge bell jar.

And, unsurprisingly, the old guard conservative commentators like George Will have dusted off their standard boiler plate copy to lay the government's woes at the feet of those whiny "liberal scolds."

A few days ago on NPR's 'Morning Edition' when asked about the Republicans 'short-circuiting' of the government with their refusal to even vote on funding the government and extending the debt ceiling while demanding the dismantling of Obamacare, Mr. Will loftily opined that all of this legislation demonstrates the “bruising, untidy, utterly Democratic” process of changing laws.

In his explanation of that reasoning he said:

“How does this short-circuit the system? “I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’ as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.”

Whoa! He suggests that a law providing affordable health care, for the first time in our country's history for millions more Americans should somehow be as easily be changed as the racist Civil War slave-capturing legislation of 1850?

The law was, indeed, a compromise between Southern slave owners and the short lived Free Soil Party made up of Whigs and Democrats who basically wanted to avoid dealing with the moral problems implicit in owning slaves. The law demanded that all runaway slaves were to be captured and returned to their masters.

Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. Condemned by true abolitionists, the law was a NIMBY attempt in part to control Northern as well as Western migration of slaves who could just, kinda, maybe become a unified force to eventually be dealt with.

Mr. Will is but one of many strongly biased in their purist Conservative and intellectual realities regarding our Government, and most everything else. They sneer and blame  'Democrat scolds' who would dare stand up for what they believe.

It is more than clear that Mr. Will should encounter his own "sunburst of insight' and move on to the reality of the acidic erosion taking place within his beloved GOP and focus his attentions upon the toxic Tea Party clot who have kidnapped the Speaker of The Republican House and taken our government hostage with their clueless intransigence.

Unlike the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, today's Tea Party scolds are the ones wreaking historic havoc upon our nation in a manner which which no fair or reasonable American will see as simply the  “bruising, untidy, utterly Democratic” process of changing laws.

It is time for an immediate earsplitting "Reality scold" throughout the House and Senate before we crash into what George Will eloquently once described as:

"A nation said to be picnicking on the slope of a volcano, with molten anger bubbling just below its thin and brittle crust ..."

US Debt Ceiling: A Quick Refresher Course

I posted this article in June, 2009. The spending and debt figures were taken from the Congressional Budget Office. It occurs to me that this article, even more valid two years after it was written, should be required reading for voters as well as the ignorant, deluded, greedy fabulists in Washington who are flirting with fiscal disaster for our Nation. Mitch McConnell, Mr. Cantor, Mr. Boehner and their ilk all voted without even a murmur of concern not once, but eight times during the Bush administration to raise the debt ceiling. Other seemingly forgotten hard facts are even more galling.

So, hit the Cliffs notes below. There will be a test August second, 2011.

As soon as Barack Obama's hand left the Lincoln bible after taking his oath of office as President of the United States of America, the race was on within the tattered ranks of the Republican party to see who could scream "tax and spend" the loudest.

The same conservatives who uttered not a dissenting word during the past eight years of Republican "spend and spend" now sputter forth about their perceived perilous excesses of President Obama.

It is time for a review of some hard facts and numbers.

Mr. Obama has calmly and deliberately taken charge, faced with inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat of a global financial meltdown, and a laundry list of national and international challenges. And all the while he is pressing ahead and funding promised new programs and change. His Republican detractors, ranting about the national debt, seem to have forgotten George W. Bush's early months as president.

Mr. Bush inherited a federal budget that had been balanced for three consecutive years with a surplus of $236 billion, the largest surplus in American history. Even sweeter, we were running an on-budget surplus no longer diverting surplus from the Social Security Trust Fund to fund other government programs. This conservative largess, of course, came from the previous Democratic administration.

When Mr. Bush took office, the national debt was $5.727 trillion. By September 2008, the national debt had soared to more than $9.849 trillion, an almost 72 percent increase during Mr. Bush’s two terms. And those are the debt figures before the basically unregulated, free-for-all banking and financial system received Mr. Bush's $700 billion Wall Street bailout money.

Hastening things along, Mssrs Bush and Cheney, with the approval of their GOP leadership, doled out billions from the inherited surplus in the form of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Any extra surplus cushion in the budget was quickly depleted as Mr. Bush rushed to invade Iraq which had no participation in the 9-11 attack on the USA, and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The costs of Iraq and Afghanistan were also kept on a different set of books or the US debt figures at the end of eight years of the GOP under Bush would have been even more shocking.

And as President Obama walked into the Oval office, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Bush were closing the deal on their mansion in a Dallas, Texas gated community, leaving the biggest increase in the national debt under any president in U.S history as a going away present to the American people.

Mr. Bush must have erased the collective memory of his record national debt from the minds of the Republican party. With stern faces they attempt daily to paint the accumulated national debt as President Obama's dangerous "socialist" agenda to send America to the poorhouse. Well, we have already been sent there, and Barack Obama did not do the sending.

Here's a quick review:

• Shortly after taking office, President Bush spoke to the the Republican Congressional Retreat in Williamsburg and blithely declared that his budget would “pay down the national debt."

• President Bush raised the national debt limit eight times during his administration with no uproar or opposition from the GOP.

• On July 30, 2008 President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a quiet little provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion.

• One week before leaving office, Bush asked Congress for the remaining $350 billion of the GOP $700 billion Wall Street Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP bailout package.

• That same last week, Bush signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 raising the national debt ceiling for the eighth time to $12.104 trillion to accommodate the $11.3 trillion all time record debt he left the incoming administration.
  

• George W. Bush's $11.3 trillion record debt comes to more than $37,000 each for every man, woman and child in the United States. And it will get worse because of what it is costing to clean up after him while still moving ahead on badly needed changes like national health care to rein in its current out of control cost.
  

I find it both bewildering and angering when Republican conservatives lambaste President Obama for the present state of indebtedness on America's balance sheet as if it was all his fault, not Bush and Party spending like drunken sailors. As if the previous eight years never happened.

Mr. Boehner, Mr. Steele, Mr. Cantor and the rest of the GOP spokespersons du Jour should all be given special pocket calculators with a built in factor of $11.3 trillion that is automatically deducted from any figures they use to attack the Obama administration.

The factor could have a new four letter mathematical name, the DEBT factor, a word that also works perfectly to describe the Bush presidential legacy.



Graphic with apologies to Cliffs Notes

Obama's Change and the Bush Mess : Have We Forgotten to Remember?

The montage of photos above is not a cheap humorous poke at George W. Bush. It is, instead, a montage of reminders of who ran this country into the ground for eight years as our president leaving a Gordian mess for someone else to deal with.

How could we so quickly forget those almost daily blunders, gaffes, petulance and national disgraces we endured? George W. Bush has all but disappeared inside his tony gated community in Dallas. The mess he is responsible for has not disappeared and blame for it should not be craftily assigned to the new occupant of the White House.

It seems to be human nature for us to want to forget times that were embarrassing, damaging and disappointing. And after the Bush legacy turned out to be a jaundiced irresponsible house of cards, it seems easier for many to develop near hysterical rage at the mess itself rather than at those responsible for it.

Bush's historic damage could be a national rallying point, like the ruins of the twin towers, pulling us together to work for national change with patience, sacrifice and understanding. instead the damage itself has turned into a cheap political blame game. A kick-me sign for the angry and deluded.

Eight years of Bush, Cheney, and the cynical political puppetry of Karl Rove succeeded in driving a deep polarizing wedge into the heart of this country. Bush projected to the entire world an "our way or the highway" tough guy attitude. Great sound bites, but his "way" made a mockery of truth, reason, and the law.

Sadly, that "join the posse and let's go shoot up the bad guys" invitation was simple and appealing to lots of Americans. And it still is to a certain group. Suddenly it seemed, we were off to round up and hang Saddam Hussein before you could say "there ain't no weapons of mass destruction."

Unfortunately, the Bush folks with their "shock and awe" invasion had not gotten around to figuring out how to pay for that war. They later decided the US would use its big credit card, expecting the Chinese and other foreign buyers to buy our debt to pay for it. Mission accomplished ... again.

At the end of the eight year commute from Crawford, Texas to Washington D.C. huge piles of lifeless post-Bush toxic fat cat Wall Street gambling debt began smell and grow. Leaders of the party that happily allowed it to happen began to deny they caused the problem and that somehow it was all the new administration's fault for recklessly spending so much money and trying to "do too much."

The funereal visage of Republican minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, sternly casting the blame on the new president is pure Republican looking glass politics. Obama and and his political HAZMAT team hit the ground his first day in office trying to deal with with a sea of red ink and the fiscal flotsam swirling around in it. A grave potential for another great depression loomed. Welcome to the Oval Office.

But those who sanctioned their party's role in letting Wall Street bring our nation to the brink of a major depression immediately began loudly blaming the new leadership for all the problems. That kind of old, cheap political role-reversal tactic should make concerned Americans very angry. But chaos, loss of income, and an almost adolescent expectation of some sort of instant fix makes many reassign blame somewhere, anywhere.

A large majority was eager to welcome the new "Change We Can Believe In." But before the outgoing tenants could leave town, eight years of hidden party trash and dirty Wall Street linen that had been stuffed out of sight burst the seams of the White House for all to see. It was important to the outgoing leadership that the new tenant somehow be blamed for the irresponsible, out of control problems.

Kentucky Senator McConnell and the unified "No" vote chorus he conducts began immediately to try to fix the new horse race. Using latent and not so latent racism present in so many of their party, as well as so-called independents they began a steady attack on the messenger, Barack Obama. Easier to blame the black president whom so many already refuse to accept as "their president" for not having cleaned up everything his first year in office than to pitch in and help with the clean-up. Just say no.

Americans who had been unconcerned about buying things with money they did not have, and who gleefully expensive bought houses for nothing down like there was no tomorrow were now suddenly losing homes, jobs, savings. Suddenly they are all upset and concerned about the economy and want someone to blame. Memories of eight years of suffering Bush and Cheney abuses have drifted to the edges of today's short memory span, it seems.

The new guy, and all his highly intelligent advisers are telling Americans how tough things are with no sugar coating. Obama explains, in detail, the depth of the problems and calls for tough change. Instead of using vapid four word sound bites that sound so good, Obama tackled the unexpected problems he inherited head on, while also repairing America's tattered international image. The harsh reality of it all seems to many to be "change they don't want to believe in." Everything is now grim and uncertain.

Those in a blind state of denial include many of Obama's own majority party Democrats who, much like Senator McConnell, want to ignore reality so they can fight for their narrow political interests just like the elephant was not in the room.

Playing a blame game will not haul us out of the huge mess we are in. Taking a minute to reflect on the montage of photos above might, however, help us remember where a majority of this mess came from and why a majority voted for change. But change rather than sound bites requires a lot more of Americans. Health care for all Americans has been shoved aside for more than 70 years because it requires dedicated support and buy-in. Genuine Republican support in drafting a National Heath Insurance plan could have made that a reality. But it was easier to vote no and play like we are on an all expense paid weekend in Oz. But the curtain has been pulled back.

President Obama clearly believes that a positive American spirit will ultimately prevail. A majority of Americans clearly still want the change they voted for and should not let a small but loud populist uproar from pontificating short-sighted dour losers drown out reason and resolve.

The natural instinct has always been for progressive and truly involved Americans to pitch in and be part of a solution to tough problems. Throwing blind tantrums and brewing up more anger at feel good tea-parties is good only to fill the endless dead space of side-show cable TV.


Photo montage by Larry Ray