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Today has been a good day for serious contemplation. Obama standing up to do an almost perfect imitation of a president. The Dalai Lama standing up to do an almost perfect incarnation of a non-president. Even with the severe handicap of the inability to rely on the information available about almost everything, these seem to be shining lights on what is so, what has been so since before I was born, but was just hidden by the smog of conditioning for my whole life.

Were it not for capitalism, for the greed of the few forever subjugating the many, I would devoutly wish for globalization, the new world order, the one world order, because it more closely conforms with truth, the truth of Planet Earth. It has the potential for solving the problems of mankind from time immemorial, but instead we're looking down the barrel of the same old gun. Without well-defined nations, what mechanism do we have to enforce decent economic conditions for the people? If plutocrats can just choose to use the hungriest from wherever they are found, nothing keeps us all from slavery. Nothing.

The Dalai Lama stood up and told his people he wants no part of their struggle for their freedom, that he doesn't like blood and death and tribulation, so they should just be meek while he continues to be ignored in his wishes for Tibetan autonomy, and revered for his adamantine nonviolence and transcendental patience. We can all just hope the Chinese intermarry with the surviving Tibetans and someday there will be no more suffering on this account... I guess.

He never has had an ounce of statesmanship in his body, while a goddam American politician picked this very day to stand up to show he's got the potential for a couple hundred pounds of it. I had to watch the video of his speech over again. He erred in not insuring the sound quality for that speech. It was well that he delivered it in a very reserved manner, but the venue was too sedate rather than tastefully not a rock concert. We could have used that enhancement of affect to help drive home the uniqueness and elegance and beauty of the moment. Despite the glaring gratuitous lick for Israel, capped with another glaring gratuitous swipe at radical Islam, and rather too much vehemence against his pastor's ultimately righteous inflammatory speech, Obama stood up for decency and for adult administration of our nation. It actually did remind me just a little of JFK, and I'd thought Caroline was overstating it when she endorsed him. Maybe not. Maybe not.

This speech left his rivals in the dust. Of that is there any doubt? I think you might still only doubt it because it had to be delivered almost sotto voce lest Hillary or McWarmonger let fly with their sarcasm about his eloquence again, helping the entire country to miss heroically crucial points that already have been so long past due. So, yes, despite the too consequential nods to political expediency, I am left with a noticeable glow of hope that he will in fact grow into the job, that we can elect him and be unified in the long effort to repair and improve our entirely too imperfect union.

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While having myself a little smoking on the porch break and looking around for the link to Caroline's endorsement, I found an improved version of Obama's speech, so I replaced the version I'd posted below with a better one. It, I think, is worth listening to again, especially if you were left unclear on it the first time. Or, for those who prefer to read this stuff, the link to that is above and right here.

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So, okay, it wasn't as subdued as it seemed on the CNN feed, but that is the version most heard. It was, however, enough to scare the snot out of the right wing trolls. So desperate are they for Hillary, they're out spamming every comment thread on Obama from the last year with their smear sites' URLs already. So maybe I can be content that the point was not missed.

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While contemplating the Dalai Lama's unsuitability as a head of state in the wider world today it managed to come home to me how my country has never been the force for good in the world we've all been conditioned to believe. Yes we fought and beat fascism in WWII, but we immediately turned on our communist allies and dug in for the long economic starvation of their flourishing state. It's all, all, been about opening the globe to capitalist domination... to global feudalism. We worse than do not need Buddhist One and Politician One fighting public perception with words ruinous to whole populations, and it is so odd now to find myself losing hope for His Holiness and gaining just a flicker for Barack Obama.

We need so desperately leaders whose attention is not on the great popularity contest of public life on earth. We need men and women determined to make a better world, not determined to please enough backers to stay in office, not so married to shaming bad guys into freeing the oppressed because you have withstood every insult to life and decency they have slung with monumental equanimity, not so terrified of American military might they cannot act on the world stage in the best interests of everyone except the fascist fucks controlling it.

The silver lining to this economic crisis, this ultimate looting of the public's wealth, the global public's wealth, the one about which Aaron Russo fought so manfully to warn us before he died, if we manage to avert WWIII coming on its heels, is that it will turn nations to the business of domestic recovery, of rising from the ashes, and it could even mean getting the attention to doing it cleanly. But that is really only the hope that there has to be a point beyond which the war criminals will not go, that they have enough humanity left to just now sit back and count their loot for a generation or so. There is nothing in place anywhere to enforce this. It would all be merely at their whim. And that is patently not good enough.

Look at * and Fudd and Rice and Gates and McCain and Lieberman and Pelosi and Reid -- et al. -- all red-facedly and/or outright drunkenly squeaking the spin and the buzzwords and the lies and the excuses for this heinous progression of deadly -- genocidal -- profit taking! It won't ever stop if we don't outright turn all our attention to what is mandatory to the global emergencies their kind have caused and perpetuate despite the certainty it will bring on a mass extinction event.

Go click the peace symbol at the top of my sidebar!

That is the kind of determination we must use, despite our homelessness, starvation, fear for our families and lives, despite any impediment, despite every impediment. Don't have the audacity of hope Obama will come in and wipe this all away. Even if they let him live, he will only be able, and willing, to go so far for our benefit. The fact that he is showing that he indeed has the kind of discernment and judgment to make good decisions does not mean he will be willing to get killed to save us from these guys. He's shown already that he's not. He may be facing the distinct possibility of assassination to make this run, but these fiends have proven they have the audacity of bottomless greed and they will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to get their way for as long as there is a public this pacific, this hypnotized, this terrified of discomfort.

The only way it stops is when they are shown the consequences of continuing are unacceptable. It does not take rioting. It only takes them seeing the unequivocal evidence of outrageous numbers against them, and that stops them.

So, yep, Obama is the best one in the running for the job. I have no particle of a doubt left about it, and probably most of the people who visit here don't either, but we absolutely cannot let this lull us into the fantasy this is going to turn it around. The whole premise of the United States in the world, and at home, is rotten. There is only so much he can do. We really must insist.

And, founding fathers fanatic that I am, when I say "we", I do not mean only Americans. I mean humanity. We are all the same one, and we really must insist.