Politics is Power. A look at the trajectory of politics in America since Yalta shows a rise of the Power Principle manifest primarily in the Republican Party; Eisenhower and Reagan on a trajectory which is likely to continue. True Democrats like Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, interspersed regularly with levity and playfulness; the yin dancing through the yang, but always in yang’s house. Some, including myself see Obama as the new JFK; some say the new Lincoln. I have a friend who says Obama is the Chosen One – the Aquarian - and will lead a movement to last 2,000 years. But in the perspective of recent history, the most likely scenario is a happy one-term affair, like the breathing space between Watergate and Reagan, a time when the Republican Party was seen as dead in the water, as it is seen today. But Watergate was the best thing to happen to the Republicans. It allowed them to dump the trash and rebuilt within a decade, to dominate the political scene for the next 25 years.

Obama can awaken the new century, but he needs to build a fully original party; one which leaves history behind entirely. And for that he needs Al Gore.

A recent article in the Washington Post says top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been privately getting together to converge the two teams. It claims there are growing reports that the only way to repair the rift between the two parties is for Obama to pick a top Clinton surrogate as his VP nominee:

"There’s a gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names (Ohio Gov. Ted) Strickland, (Indiana Sen. Even) Bayh, and (retired Gen.) Wes Clark almost constantly, and it’s no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."

In making his decision, Obama might consider the importance of the historic moment. As he has been called a transitional candidate, so we are today in a transitional awakening – a springpoint of historical dimensions.

Hillary is in Jungian terms a doppelganger - that is, she is a Shadow agent of a "positive" charge and the positive charge in this element is Bill Clinton. The Shadow is always "'anti-Power' Power"; - it takes its thrill in opposition whereas the original (Bill) opposed as well but with its own organic light: those who liked Bill liked him because he brought a unique new perspective to the world which had the secondary aspect of pissing people off who were not of his winning team - those who like Hillary like her merely because she pisses people off. Although she suggests the original force of her husband, she does not possess it herself; - she possesses its Shadow. Like Madame Mao. Like Yoko Ono. Hillary and her supporters are part of the "collective Shadow" of the Democratic Party - and Bill now manifests that Shadow. Lying and deception are part of the Shadow's "truth" and its aspiring artfulness. The Shadow is not necessarily evil in itself, it is the trailing end of a powerful force. Nixon was the Shadow of Eisenhower; Boy George is the Shadow of Reagan. Hillary is the Shadow of Bill. In politics, it always ends badly with the Shadow. See, George Clooney in Michael Clayton:

"I am Shiva, the god of Death."

The Clintons this week revealed their tax returns and claimed $108 million over the past eight years, gleaned primarily from speaking engagements where the faithful dole it out and Bill Clinton commands up to $250,00 per speech.  What is remarkable about their returns is that they claimed only $10.2 million in charitable deductions over eight years. But it turns out that small amount was in fact dolled out to their own charity: They gave the money to themselves. And further, they gave none of it out until last year when Senator Clinton declared her Presidency.

NYT's article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/...

In this election cycle we are seeing the end of things and the beginning of things. As Ted Ford, an economist and a California Democrat running for office in Sacramento put it:

The phenomenon of the year is a clear old vs. new divide cleaving the electorate. The Clintons and their lies will be totally repudiated in the end, as will the Bush lies. Both groups are corrupt and finished. This year will see a shredding of old ways, a complete break from the past. Perhaps this is the true new beginning of the millennium -- same as World War I ended the 19th century in 1914. People under 35 care nothing of Bush or Clinton style politics.

Time this week presents a perspective from Joe Klein titled Is Al Gore the Answer?. Three things: A. It looks today like Obama has it; B. It looks like Elvis will not (cannot) leave the building so maybe Obama doesn’t have it; C. It looks like one of those times in history when the Trickster is at hand and anything can (will) happen. In this environment Klein brings in a more or less classic scenario: A brokered convention in which a third individual appealing to all to some degree is bought in and in this case that could be (should be) Al Gore.

From Sam Stein at The Huffington Post:

MSNBC is reporting that on the campaign trail today in Charlotte, North Carolina, the former president said a general election matchup between his wife, Sen. Clinton, and Sen. John McCain would be between "two people who love this country" without "all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

Bill Clinton has applied propaganda strategies like we have not seen since the Jim Crow days, implying that Obama would be unfit to be President of the United States through innuendo, mnemonic slander and word and theme association, because he is black.

Understandably, it has been a bad week for the Clintons. The country as a whole has been through a major cultural turning due to a speech given by Barack Obama that will be remembered through the ages. Until now Obama was compared to Jack Kennedy. Now he is being compared to Lincoln. Can’t be good when the comments coming out of the mouths of Clinton apparatchiks call to mind Paulie Walnuts.

Bill Clinton and his Decepticons are now actually running plaintiff wife Hillary for Vice President on an Obama ticket. They can feel it is up for them and Obama will eventually take it. So the chant this week of Unstoppable is to pitch them – Hillary and Obama - as an undeniable unit; bringing them together and bringing Hillary (and Bill, don’t cha know) on a new last chance strategy; a graded 12 year ride – Hillary as VP in ’08, and President in ’12 and ‘16.

Issues of time lag were written about best perhaps by Kafka, who came from the darkest place and lived in the shadow of the castle. Kafka’s characters want to bring back the ancient time – the torturer in the short story In the Penal Colony, Wilhelm II and George Bush – when time has passed them by. France, living in its own shadow, has a tendency. It finally gets onto the rising Ronald Reagan era – building big, useless Airbus planes that nobody wants and electing Sarko – just as the Reagan Era has fallen into twilight.

But Kafka would find a true home in Kosovo. The region is vortex to Europe’s Four Grandfathers: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Islam. And ancestral Jews as well. And they all hate each other. But I blame the trouble today on Frank Zappa. He trumped Muhammad, the Black Madonna and even Joseph Stalin’s dark charm in the region’s hinterland.

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

Shortly before he disappeared into the night, Wesley Clark demanded that the beginnings of the war on Iraq be dug up and found and publicly explored and explained before they got buried too deep. It is a good idea. Let’s have televised exploratory hearings. Let them be vast and let them last years and let them begin now.

It is an important idea, and now that the Government has admitted to torture, let’s also begin as well hearings and investigations into these and possibly other American war crimes. Not to get all judgmental, but for myself, I’d like to see something a little less touchy-feely than the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Something more widespread. Something more akin to the McCarthy Hearings. Or better still, something like France’s war crime trials of the storied Vichy Swine which took TIME’s Man of the Year in 1931, Pierre Laval, and left him vomiting before a firing squad in 1945.

In her excellent response to the President’s State of the Union speech last night, Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Governor of Kansas, made reference to the new generation. Sebelius referred to Tom Brokaw’s "greatest generation" but made the case that the "greatest generation" is not behind us but ahead of us.

We are at that classic 60-year shift between the third and fourth post-war generation; a time, say historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, when the country falls apart and reformulates – saved by the bell – by the fourth and last post-war generation which begins the world again.

This week we saw the awakening of the new political generation when Caroline Kennedy and her Uncle Ted endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Richard Cohen's column in today's WaPost should become a classic journalism school staple of journalistic malfeasance. It is what academics call mnemonic slander. (Mnemonic slander would be to say in a business or academic circle "Did somebody say he is sleeping with  . . . ?" He probably in not and there is no specific slander, but the poison has been injected and the thought is associated from then on as a shadow which attaches itself to the person.)

Kid, to run a crew like that you have to be completely rotten. Ben Wade, 3:10 to Yuma

Although it is obvious that the machine-counted votes in the heavily-populated industrial regions of the state will yield results different than those of more independent-minded voters here in northern NH where they are counted by hand, Dennis Kucinich’s call for a recount in New Hampshire should nevertheless be heeded.

We are seeing the same corrupt practices growing again today in the Democratic Party here in the Northeast that we saw in Boston in the '30s and '40s and in New York's ethnic neighborhoods during the Tammany Hall scandal. And we are seeing the same machine politicians.

I’s a free nigra, just the same I follow Massa Frank. Pomp, the Free Negro side kick of Frank Reade, Jr., pulp fiction adventurer of the 1870s

We are people who were formally Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren’t the pilgrims. They didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us. Malcolm X

One of the most interesting aspects of the Iowa caucus is the surprise and enthusiasm of conservative commentators – David Brooks and even Rush Limbaugh – for Barack Obama. Perhaps they are not old enough to experience an authentic political awakening like that which occurred with the rise of John F. Kennedy.

It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives, Black Elk.

Of all the garden variety secession movements springing up today in North America, from Quebec Nation to the Republic of Texas and up to the Bear Republic of California then back again to Vermont and the Free State initiative here in New Hampshire, Lakota Nation is perhaps the most interesting.

The NYTs and other major newspapers have opened on their op-ed pages a congenial and brotherly discussion of torture. Like the discussion of the use of nuclear weapons in terrorist situations at last summer’s Daily Kos conference, in which several of the Democratic candidates for President brought forth positions which would have been considered madness two decades ago, this kind of public discussion acclimates the culture to ideas previously unthought and unheard and spirals to a further descent into political and historical degeneracy. As Emerson said at the beginning of our arc of power: We see ourselves ascending a stairs. But today we see ourselves descending that same set of stairs.

"Is it not written in your law you are gods?"  John 10:34

John Lennon was gunned down and killed 27 years ago today in New York City. This event goes largely unnoticed in the press today, but in 1969, at the peak of the war in Vietnam, John Lennon was the most important man in the world.

The invasion of Iraq was fully enabled by the weak leadership, benign attention and implicit support of the most important and influential Democrats, especially President Clinton and Senator Clinton, who then and now had the greatest impact on public opinion among Democrats.

Today President Clinton says in the WaPost that he ". . . opposed Iraq from the beginning."

The issue is well reported on at Raising Kaine. Among quotes to the contrary, these from June 23, 2004 (CNN):

I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over.

That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for.

Here in northern New Hampshire I've been working as a volunteer for Barack Obama who, like Jim Webb, the new Senator from Virginia, and Robert C. Byrd, the old one from West Virginia, opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start. But I was disappointed to read this morning in the Time magazine piece that Obama would consider including President Clinton in his cabinet. That makes two of the leading Democrats who would include President Clinton in their cabinets. Might have to go back to John Edwards and Mudcat Saunders.