There's a lot of populist rhetoric going on these days. There's a lot of smoke being blown about who has "regular guy/gal" credentials and who is and elitist. It reminds me that populism and a genuine relationship with people is little more than a political football in America, at least at the national level. When Barack Obama speaks of bitterness and frustration in the small towns of America, and its inner cities, he's painting a picture of an environment in which government has drifted away from the "common" person and toward the corporate establishment.

Is Barack Obama a populist? I don't think so. Is Hillary Clinton? C'mon. John McCain? Should I dignify this with an answer?

That brings me to Mahatma Gandhi.

I have met Sen Obama, well before the Iowa caucuses, (fleetingly I admit, only for about 15 seconds or so, but have a photo and an autograph to prove it!) and was impressed by his message. I would not consider myself, an Obama maniac or an Obamacrat, but just an average guy who is willing to trust Obama with my future, because he is the closest of all candidates to reflect my values, beliefs and hopes.

Many many people have given their precious time and money (a lot more that I have), in the belief that Obama will take the country in a new and positive direction. Sen Obama has promised to do so if elected and I  don't take him at "his word", but truly believe him.

However, I have, to put it mildly, have been disappointed by him the past two days. (Before you flame me as a "concern troll", please check my prior diaries and comments). He has basically disappeared from sight and has allowed the opposition to try to define him. I would have expected him to hit the airwaves and and meet the press to try to get his message across and show the nation that he is unfazed by the temporary setback.

The Wall Street Journal's Bob Davis, reporting on an interview with John McCain focused on his economic platform, does a nice job highlighting multiple inconsistencies -- not to say an overall incoherence -- without any explicit diss. Repeatedly, Davis presents McCain's claims against an understated backdrop of inconvenient truths.

Welcome to tonight's Top Comments! :)

11 days ago I read a comment in that night’s Top Comments diary in which the author despaired of being able to ‘lift the discourse’ here on the Daily Kos. To the author’s credit, giving up was not an option, and diary recommendations were denied to all candidate diaries.

Optimist that I am, I wrote a very long comment in response, in which I said it was absolutely in our power to raise the level of discourse here. My response came very late in the life of the diary, so it did not get a great deal of readership. Several friends recommended that I post it as a diary in its own right, so here it is, below.

First he plagiarizes Deval Patrick, now it turns out that Obama has stolen an idea from Gandhi.

Of course Obama in an attempt to be clever did not steal the line verbatim.

Obama has been saying

"We are the change we have been waiting for"

whereas Gandhi said:

"We need to be the change we wish to see in the world"

This changeup on the original line tripped up Charles Krauthammer who thought it was all "rhetorical nonsense"...but the cultists got the desired message!

Tricky...next thing you know he might start plagiarizing Martin Luther King or something.

/end snark

My grandfather was not overtly young and idealistic when he first got the chance to hear Gandhi speak but he was almost boyishly "gushy" about it. He stood there- one in a crowd of diverse people. As a south Indian Brahmin from a very wealthy family, he experienced something truly alien. People of both genders, of all castes and creeds, of all classes and religions stood there together. Even some Britishers! He described the sensation as "heady, uplifting and euphoric". I asked about what Gandhi had to say.

"No idea." he replied.

"Was his message too lofty or something?" I asked.

"No. I couldn't hear a word he said." He shrugged. "But standing there with people of all ages, young, old, poor, rich...everyone...I felt that I was part of something larger than just myself. It was the first time I felt more like an INDIAN than I did a Tamilian Brahmin."

It would be a tough choice, but Gandhiji would weigh the factors, and decide that women are still more enslaved by society and human ignorance more than by race today.
   He would think: The world will be a better place with a woman as a leader of the world's most powerful and influential nation.  It is just a fact that the world will benefit more today with a woman being a leader of the United States than an African-American man...If there was an African-American woman candidate though....hmmm....

In New Delhi, India, a few months after India got her independence.

The New York Times reports today that Israel is pressing Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians in order to restore the international border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt:

There were small clashes throughout the day, with short episodes of rock-throwing. Egyptians fired guns into the air and aimed water cannons above the heads of the those in the crowd to keep them back. The new breaches in the wall were large enough for cars and trucks to drive through, and some Egyptian guards then retreated.

Egypt is under pressure from Israel and the United States to restore the international border and regulate it, but does not want to use excessive force against the Gazans, whom the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, has insisted are starving under the pressure of Israeli restrictions on imports and travel.

Meanwhile, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Arun has been forced to resign from the Nonviolence Institute he founded because he dared criticize Israeli militarism.  Details on the flip.

When John Edwards warns of BUSH and his rush to war, whether with Iraq, Iran, Syria, or whoever...this is the key, "you can't even give him the first step in that authority because he cannot be trusted."

You can trust Gravity.
You can trust Balance.
You can trust the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
You can trust Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication.

Figures (and math principles) don't lie. Figureheads do--it's their nature. It's the nature of their consciousness--it's their operating nature at this snap-shot in time---until the 3.0 Version upgrade.

The Version 1.0 Principle used by Figureheads: ME, ME, ME, I'm Special.

Then came the Version 2.0 Principle: We, We, Us, Ours, We're special.

Remember..."You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created." --Einstein.

It is too easy to feel as if our actions don't matter, as the political landscape in this country continues down a terrible path. We are still in Iraq, though 70% of Americans want to get out. Congress has agreed to a spying amendment (FISA), a terrible free-trade agreement with Peru, and another bad Attorney General (Mukasey). Democrats apologize for condemnations of Bush's behavior. But by inches, hopefully, change will come.

Here is the famous line from Mahatma Gandhi about the pattern of victory over one's opposition:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." (hat tip to groupnewsblog.net for the reminder of the quote and for today's innoculation of hopefulness.

It is Sunday Morning, and the house is relatively quiet.  Leaves on the Current (my spouse) is away baby sitting her sister’s three boys so sister and b-i-l could have a romantic evening.  Millenium of Music is playing on my XM-radio, with a program of chant.  I sip a cup of coffee, and reflect upon yesterday, a day during which, for some reason, I chose to reread a large number of threads on the diaries I have written in the past 9 months.

I cannot argue that the use of the time was productive in any normal sense of that word, but it was responsible for my becoming very reflective as the day wore on into evening, and perhaps accounts for why I turned off the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner while Biden was still speaking.   Because I think I have made up my mind about the presidential candidates

I am going to remain neutral.  Were I to commit I would feel an obligation to make that person the focus of whatever political efforts I were able to expend.  And after more than a year of paying attention, NONE of them appeals to me sufficiently for me to make such a commitment.  That is where I start this posting.

Gore is an international tribune, leading an international movement on climate change.  The next President of the United States will be a loser, who will in effect be a janitor, cleaning up the BushCo mess.  The Fox Fake News will howl every day about how badly the cleanup is hurting bussness (the rich buddies).  This next 4 years will be exhausting, and just like Bill Clinton didn't get ANY CREDIT for balancing the budget, the next prez will get no credit for cleaning up this mess.
 

"Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God."

  -- Mark 10:14

The cesspool of vitriolic evil that comes from the lunacy of the radically unhinged -- those who so often tout the importance of "family values" yet staunchly fail to promote or defend anything remotely resembling an actual "value" -- has come alive, foaming at the mouth and conducting focused attacks upon two young children and their family. The curtain has been pulled away, and the creature behind it revealed for what it truly is: an un-evolved cretin, wearing a fleshy mask of humanity in an effort to blend in with the rest of the human race, but screeching an ungodly hypocrisy that is no longer hidden behind by a veil of illusion.

These are the same people who support an illegal war. These are the same people who forsake the freedoms our forefathers fought to provide this nation over 200 years ago. These are the same people who call themselves Christians and Patriots while undermining the fundamental teachings of Christ and subverting our Constitution.

They call themselves "conservatives." They call themselves Republicans...

Where is George McGinley?

He of the hunger strike to raise awareness, consciousness and conscience against the war in Iraq and the putative war in Iran is missing.

Yesterday was a brutally hot and humid day in DC.  In the early evening a hard rain swept though the district.

Just after eight I left my downtown office, and after my nightly swing past the White House to see if the almightly had seen fit to blast it to kingdom come, I rode up Independence Avenue past Capitol Hill on the House side.

George wasn't in his usual (for the past 10 days) place.

More after the fold ...

For three nights running I've pedaled past a thin man wrapped in a blanket on the steps of the Cannon house office building.  The light of the Capitol, yes that Capitol, illuminated his gaunt face.  Bearded and tanned in the ghostly light.

He appeared to be sleeping.  Perhaps he was in deep meditation.  No movement.  Not even the rise and fall of breath.  A blue and red tattoo, an intricate medieval cross, spread from temple to temple across his lower forehead.  Two signs stradled his half prone body.

End the War in Iraq and Please Don't Bomb Iran.

Was he dead?

Please follow me over the fold to find out ...

"Gandhi was a middle-aged man when he first asked his wife Kasturba to teach him to use the spinning wheel. Once he had mastered the wheel, he practiced spinning every day for the rest of his life. Home-spinning became a symbol for independence and self-reliance throughout India under his encouragement and direction."
(http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/3/98.03.05.x.html)

Gandhi would spin for an hour each day, usually producing a hundred yards of thread, and helped develop a simple spinning wheel (charkha) that allowed many to do the same. He believed that spinning was the foundation of non-violence.   This type of practical labor may have to be the core of any sustainable ecological action.

We need a solar swadeshi, an ecological practice on a daily basis that allows us to live within our solar income. Gandhi used the charkha, the spinning wheel. What would be an ecological charkha, a solar charkha?

We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?

That, my fellow Democrats, is our frontrunner for our party’s nomination for President of the United States, Sen. Hillary Clinton.  Sen. Clinton made that statement in presenting her plan for health care reform which, like that of former Sen. John Edwards, would compel all Americans to enroll in a health insurance program.  Citizens would have an option of many private insurance options, or a public option similar to Medicare.  Tax credits would ensure that no American is forced to pay more than a certain percentage of their income on health insurance.