From Kansas to Kenya, Barack Obama possess the ability to unite the world.

He garners an international gravitational pull, evidenced today with his speech in Berlin.

As Jon Stewart joked earlier this week, “Obama visited Bethlehem. The site of his birth.”

There are limitations, however, to his unifying nature, evidenced Wednesday in Israel. 

Obama fell back to the unconditional support of Israel, despite of the neutrality the U.S. should have in the Israeli-Palestinian squabble. The U.S. stance should be the establishment of a Palestinian state, accountability for Israel’s occupation of Gaza and their suspect military actions. Not the issue of Jeruselem as the capital of Israel. 

Obama took a harder line on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, when it shows sanctions and tough talk produces little substantive diplomacy.

The bottom line: Obama is the President of Dreamerica!

He can bring people together, and I shook that dude’s hand.

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One of my favorite things: The Beatles’ “White Album” on a perfectly sunny Duluth summer afternoon.

Lennon’s and McCartney’s “Revolution” lyrics:

“You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We’d all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We’d all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright [x3]

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We’re all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you’ll have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright [x3] 

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well you know
We’d all love to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright [x3]
Alright”

I’m very intrigued to see what will happen at September’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Will there be massive protests and/or destruction? I’ve heard the RNC has the protesters boxed into restricted areas 400 feet from the Xcel Center. They’ve issued permits with short time frames to speak out.

Impeccable timing

The political symmetry between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama couldn’t be timed better. They both agree a 16-month withdrawal is best for both sides, whiled Obama shakes his hand in Baghdad. The Iraqis see change possible with Obama, and its leaders have shifted from the pro-U.S./Bush occupation.

Meanwhile, John McCain is mixing up his geography — while riding on a golf cart in Maine. (Iraq and Pakistan don’t share a border. There is — uh-hum — Iran in between.) Another gaffe for the out-of-touch  McGramps.

McCain remains stubborn with the the right’s cliche of “conditions on the ground” as the reason for staying. I believe “conditions on the ground” should be what the leader of the country says (if it’s a sovereign country), and Maliki is telling the U.S. to get the hell out.

Satire box opened

The New Yorkers’ cover of Obama and his wife, Michelle, in terrorist garb in the White House has opened up a debate on satire, and it’s difficult pursuit of catching laughs directed at Obama.

Articles were written about how Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman and the like have struggled with the task.

On Monday, Stewart had this (My paraphrasing): “Did you wake up today not feeling right? That this Monday morning was off? Well, it’s because our hope is gone. That’s right. Obama is in the Middle East.”

That laugh is more directed at the public than Obama, showing how ludicrous we are to put superfluous hope in one man. We must understand what is levity, and what is legitimate.

A 16-month withdrawal from Iraq is legit.

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I can only stomach so much conservative rhetoric before cracking up.

Halfway through Condoleezza Rice’s cover story “The New American Realism” in Foreign Affairs, I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself; a quote, amid arduous banality, was simply too ironical.

“Democracy, it is said, cannot be imposed, particularly by a foreign power,” said the Secretary of State in her ill-titled article. (There is nothing new about the piece.)

After the weapons-of-mass-destruction reason was debunked, liberation and democracy were the No. 1 initiatives for the U.S., a foreign power imposing its beliefs.

I have a bumper sticker that reads, “Don’t believe anything until it has been officially denied.” I’d like to expand that phrase to include, “Don’t believe blatantly obvious assertions.” And Rice wrote many in Foreign Affairs.

“But if America doesn’t set the goal [of democracy], no one will.”

There were two words aptly chosen for Rice’s title — American Realism. (Read: Imperialist Ignorance.)

“We Americans engage in foreign policy because we have to, not because we want to, and this is a healthy disposition — it is a republic, not an empire.”

The words after the dash fall into the “don’t believe blatantly obvious assertions.” Rice’s State Department helped negotiate no-bid oil contracts in Iraq with western companies. That move is one an empire conducts.

“No cultural factor has yet been a stumbling block [to accepting democracy] — not German or Japanese ‘militarism,’ not ‘Asian values,’ not African ‘tribalism,’ not Latin America’s alleged fondness for caudillos, not the once-purported preferences of eastern Europeans for despotism.”

Yet, democracy is the foundation of American patriotism. It is OK for Americans to have a political system that becomes part of its cultural identity, but it’s not justified for other nations to do the same.

“[The U.S. allies] still want a confident and engaged United States, because there are few problems in the world that can be resolved without us.”

Foreign policy begins and ends with national interests, but we should draw the line between patriotism and blind nationalism.

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“Ain’t nothin’ new, but the rent is due, and we are here to collect.”

Carlos (right) took a symbolic stand against the racial-charged times of 1968. He stood with Tommie Smith in protest to the human rights situations while at the Mexico City Games. They were kicked out of the Olympics for their protest. In the 200 meters, Carlos finished third, while Smith won it.

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111

The number of countries that agreed in May to ban cluster bombs, which eject smaller munitions upon impact. The U.S. has used the weapon, which are banned by the Geneva Conventions, in the Iraq War. According to Dahr Jamail, an unembedded journalist who reported from Iraq, the U.S. has also used depleted uranium during attacks in Fallujah.

Jamail’s 2007 book, “Beyond the Green Zone,” is a tremendous read about the often untold Iraqi side of attacks, while embedded reporters ride around in Humvees under U.S. military protection and swallow the propaganda pills the U.S. government feeds. (Most front line war news comes from embedded reporters.)

I read Richard Engel’s 2004 book, “A Fist in the Hornet’s Nest,” and I thought that was an unfettered look into the tragedy of the Iraq war. Boy was I wrong. Engel, NBC News’ correspondent in Baghdad, did a nice job as an “embed,” but Engel talked to a fraction of the Iraqis that Jamail spoke with.

Jamail wrote, “The ‘embeds,’ as usual, had no idea what the Iraqis in the city thought about [attacks on Fallujah]. They never talked with any of the Iraqi doctors, medical workers, or families of the victims. Clustered together in the back of Stryker vehicle, peering out from under their black helmets, the embedded reporters saw the scene only from the perspective of the U.S. soldiers they relied on for their safety, Thus, they could not see what I was about to witness after they departed with the soldiers.

“As the patrol receded, spontaneous celebrations erupted, and crowds of residents flew into the street. Iraqi flags appeared everywhere. People began chanting and waved flags wildly. Members of both the Iraqi police and ICDC joined in the celebration, waving their guns in the air and giving the victory sign. A parade was quickly formed. Trucks with boys and men riding in the backs lined up, their horns blaring. Policemen who were there to guard the marines promptly turned into parade escorts, as well as participants.

“The ruckus began to inch down the street. An old Fallujan man riding in the back of a truck waving a tattered Iraqi flag yelled, ‘Today is the first day of the war against Americans! This is a victory for us over the Americans.”

Toward the beginning of the war, many Americans asked where were the stories of the soldiers’ good will on the behalf of the Iraqis. Today, I ask where are the stories about the Iraqis?

Jamail continues, “One 18-year-old [Iraqi] girl had been shot through the neck. She was making breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amid her muffled moaning. Flies dodged the working hands of doctors to return to the patches of her vomit that stained her black abaya.

“Her younger brother, a small child of 10 with a gunshot would in his head from a marine sniper, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life while family members cried behind him. ‘The Americans cut our electricity days ago, so we cannot vacuum the vomit from his throat,’ a furious doctor [told Jamail]. [The children] were both loaded into an ambulance and rushed toward Baghdad, only to die en route.”

I’ve only completed half of “Beyond the Green Zone,” but it’s one of the best books I’ve read in some time. There will be surely more from it at a later date.

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Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar showed tremendous foresight as they described Bill Clinton, the president elect, during their cable access show in 1992.

The duo were running down a list of Top 10 reasons they like Clinton.

One the list was Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Arkansas.

“What if he was from Intercourse, Pennsylvania?” Wayne asked. “What would he give the country then?”

Who knew Wayne and Garth would be such apt fortune tellers.

To quote the Wayne’s World tag line, “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hurl.”

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Why does “smart politics” consist of Democrats moving to the center, and Republicans moving to the right?

Yeah, votes. But neither move demonstrates principle. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that politicians had integrity.

John McCain, the once supposed maverick who worked both sides of the political aisle, has moved to the right on a slew of issues. Like a pimp in need of hoes. 

As Matt Taibbi points out in Rolling Stone, McCain has switched his opinion on two issues that once had his name on legislation with the other opinion. He has reversed course on immigration, Roe v. Wade, Bush’s tax cuts — and, in dizzying fashion, torture.

Meanwhile on the left …

Barack Obama now supports an “overhaul” to domestic spying legislation. (”Overhaul” is Republican code for another invasion of civil liberties.) Obama, who is often criticized for his most-liberal senator label, used to support a filibuster to the changes.

Now, Senator Russ Feingold, a seemingly true liberal, has to lead Obama’s ditched effort there.

Obama has tried to shield himself from the right’s tactics to associate him with Islam and – ostensibly — terrorism. At a recent event, his camp moved two Muslim women to try and shield the image of him speaking in front of them. And oops! He got busted. In additional reporting it was learned, he hasn’t campaigned in a mosque. I guess “hope” is only shared in churches and synagogues.

John Edwards had advice for Obama on how to beat McCain, ”By speaking from his heart — ’cause his heart’s in the right place — and not getting all tangled up in his head.”

TOOOOOOO late.

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“I wanna live a little before I die a lot.*”

* — patent pending.

Sota skies

I took these photos June 7 in Maple Grove.

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Lara Logan is difficult to look away from; she speaks truth about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

On The Daily Show this week, the CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent talked about the U.S. public’s complacency with the wars. She said she doesn’t follow American media, but she should have made an exception with Wednesday’s New York Times.

The newspaper showed the realities of war in a story about at least 51 dead in a blast in Baghdad.

“Bystanders climbed onto rooftops 20 to 30 yards away to gather flesh strewn by the force of the blast. Iraqi policemen stacked bodies several feet high in a pickup truck, but some fell out of the truckbed when they drove away. Others rushed to the street to drape the bodies with sheets.

“At the hospital morgue, victims were placed in two rooms: one for bodies that were recognizable and could be examined by relatives, and one for charred and unidentifiable remains.

“Outside the morgue, one man was stopped by three others who asked him if he had seen one of their relatives. ‘I’m sure he’s all right,’ the man said. After the three men rushed off, the man revealed that he had seen the body of their relatives cut in half by the blast. ‘I couldn’t tell them the truth,’ he explained.”

I’ve subscribed to the the Times for nearly two years, and this is the most graphic story I’ve read there.

Logan talked about how more American soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month. That was surprising and proved that that war is the forgotten one — but not by much. Americans hide from the truth about war. Gas prices are more telling about ill-fated feelings.

I don’t want to quote news stories, but the Times’ piece was especially pertinent with the talk of the war supposedly dissipating. It’s simply ebbed; secretion segregation is the reason.

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Obesity – it’s an epidemic. I get it, but lets not make it something that it isn’t.

It’s about choice. Yesterday, I watched an overweight 20-something woman in the grocery-store line buy frozen pizza after frozen pizza, snack pack after snack pack and 12-pack of pop after 12-pack of pop. I don’t care how great Black Cherry Coke tastes, it foolish to buy that crap.

Class, certainly, plays a legitimate role in unhealthy lifestyles. I’ve seen the produce options in the neighborhood Ma and Pa Shop on 4th Street. It’s nothing I’d want to ingest.

Genetics, obviously, have their part, too. It’s my reasoning for my lack of a six pack.

After I saw the grocery bill, I felt like I had chocked on one of the grapes I had just bought for SIX! dollars. So maybe, she was felt wiser with the two-dollar pizzas.

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