active not aggressive

it's doves versus hawks.  it's neo-conservative versus liberal.  it's john mccain against hillary clinton.

a diplomat needs finesse, but the world knows the united states better for its hubris.  john mccain doesn't understand foreign relations or what the word influence means.

“Now this is the same president that two years ago said that Bashar Assad must leave office, and so where is America’s credibility?” Mr. McCain said on Fox News. “Where is our ability to influence events in the region? And I promise you that those who say we should stay out of Syria do not understand that this is now a regional conflict.”

i have argued that obama should be more aggressive about addressing the situation in syria.  it seems like europe is ready - they're looking for consensus from the rest of the world.  and by ready, i mean by lending support to the opposition as we did to the rebels in libya.  syria deserves this sort of aid from us.  let them fight their own battle.  let this be their own independence.  but let the u.s. aid them so that they may successfully break from the yoke of a dictator who uses chemical weapons to quell his own people.

if obama has committed to the level of activity in syria i would have recommended, this doesn't mean he's been completely idle.  he has been attempting to extend influence.  he leaned on bashar al-assad to commit to first form a unity government; he has allowed funding for the rebels; he set a "red-line" against chemical weapons to at least encourage the assad government to avoid their use, assuming at least the posture indicating that the united states believes the government should step aside.

america does not want to become involved in the syrian conflict, but if one looks at the media that seems to be exactly the direction we are headed.  not only is the direct involvement mccain calls for scary, i'm not sure that it will be necessary.  the united states can do plenty to support the syrian opposition without moving troops to the country.  what america should see is that the media is overblowing the situation and mccain is playing politics.  the situation in syria is emotional but our involvement does not have to be.

un-summer

the cat sat tightly on the bed, her legs tucked up under her like a spider - she stares out the window (big yellow eyes round) and she knows.

what exactly is that smell?  hot when i went to bed, at some point i pushed off the blanket over and me and dug down under the comforter.  the morning is cold and these are the final days, everyone recovering from summer sickness.  it's a crispness, a clarity, but also a wetness that aromatically heralds autumn's approach and underscores the mornings of many oregon summer days.

it's a break from the sinking sewers, their contents dried and decomposing in the stretch of rainless days in the past few months.

how do you feel about the summer sickness?  it seems as if the rate of infection has been low, the symptoms mild this year.  john said, summer was over long ago, even as he continued to drink through the afternoon into the evening and through to the next day.  but we're all okay.

i hear some friends long for the cold wet days of oregon winter.  having grown up in alabama, i thought i had had enough of the sun - summers in the south are brutal, hot, humid, unrelenting.  but here, i think all year of the summer, long for the long hot days when we'll stay up too late and drink too much and bike about it and dance and go to the river and go camping and feel the vitamin d build up under our skin.

the hand of god in the patent wars

this is also the story of another obama disappointment - which will only further the lie that i am secretly a republican.  i promise you, though, i have no plans to vote republican.  i have no sympathy.  i am just at times disappointed in obama's decisions.  i think you can still be a democrat and criticize the official you helped elect.  i can still want something more.

let me tell you why i'm disappointed now.

president obama overturned a decision by the united states trade commission to ban sales of older model apple iphones and ipads in the country.

the trade commission had determined that apple had infringed upon patents possessed by samsung. "Apple argued that Samsung had committed to licensing its patents related to wireless technology standards, but was refusing to keep that promise. Samsung said Apple refused to pay licensing fees for its patents."  this is a war that apple started and now that the courts and the trade commission are ruling against apple, apple had run to the president.  this reeks. what does the president have to do with patent infringement?  does he really believe that the american economy could collapse if apple cannot sell its older products after a federal body of experts have determined that apple continues to act unfairly?

here's what i think happened.  apple approached the president as a friend and a large american company.  apple, a company that hardly pays any taxes in the united states.  and the president was convinced he needed to help this huge behemoth of a company out, to keep him on its good side.

this past friday, the same trade commission decided that older samsung products had violated apple patents.  the president has sixty days to overrule the freeze placed on samsung products.  but will he?  will he show the country that apple and samsung and other corporations need to end the childish brinkmanship over patents?  will the president overrule the trade commission for the benefit of american consumers and for the sake of fairness and competition?  or will the president ignore this development because apple is an american company with friends in high places.

seeing this ugly feud that apple started, president obama needs to chastise apple and other companies to behave civilly and fairly and not reward unruly companies that make plenty of money on americans on products exported from foreign factories and paying hardly anything in tax to the american government.  let's get real.

now we're still waiting for obama to act.  he could overturn the decision against samsung as well, fairly saying "enough" to all the companies in america currently fighting the patent wars.  this would be a wise move, though i am not sure it would completely cut the competitiveness between these companies nor do i think it would do much to quell apple's aggression.  but it would be a step in the right direction.

untitled (anxiety)

sometimes it's difficult to know just want to say.  i want to say something, that surely there must be something to say, but i'm at a loss.

all i can imagine is the fear and pain.  a greatness of fear and pain that erases any hope, any sense of survival.

have i ever mentioned my fear of confinement?  i've never found myself in an actually frightening situation of confinement or paralysis, but thinking about such a condition makes me feel cagey, makes me start to hyperventilate.  trapped under fallen rocks; pressed under a collapsed building; locked in, paralyzed like the writer of the diving bell and the butterfly; alien control of my body, my consciousness unwilling witness to my body's action: this is what i fear.

i have not suffered, but imaging what it must be like for a man or woman to face painful, inescapable death bears down on me.  no one deserves this.  and we, the living, not survivors but those kept in the security of our homes and routines, can do nothing but worry and try to sympathize, try to understand, though this is impossible.

and what do we take away from the loss of our loved ones from the world?  senselessness.  no program.  no plan.  death can just be senseless and we are left with the broken trajectory of someone's life, with all these expectations we had for a person.

senate confirmed disappointments

a while ago, my friend told me he believed the senate might actually change its rules for the filibuster.  incredulous, i insisted it would never happen, but over the past week or so it has really seemed like senate democrats would push for a change.  harry reid said, “This is a moment in history where circumstances dictate the need for change.”

a miracle, i had faith.

and then lost it.

at this point america knows how paralyzing the filibuster can be our governing bodies.  the changes senator reid proposed to the rules guiding the senate would have been minor - confirmation of presidential nominations to posts within the executive branch would not have been subject to filibuster, potentially allowing these posts to be filled rapidly.  nominations to the supreme court would not have subject to this rule change and the filibuster could have still been used to prolong discussion (stall the vote) on general legislation.  it seems sometimes that the filibuster should be abolished completed from congressional procedure, but at least this rule change seemed modest for those who believe the filibuster to be necessary.  we have watched the obama administration struggle to fill vacant chairmanships and posts within the executive branch.  the amount of vacancies in the administration due to republican blockage in congress is historic.  and the people who fill these positions change with every administration.  when the republicans regain the white house, they'll be seeking to confirm their own nominations to these positions, positions that handle the quotidian governing of different departments within the governments.  the confirmation process originated to ensure that responsible people filled these positions, that our government followed a meritocratic nomination process against cronyism.  the confirmation process was never meant to allow any political party in congress to keep the elected president's administration from functioning.

the senate should have voted to abolish paralization and the american people are still waiting for the change they chanted for five years ago.

instead we get compromise.  which isn't compromise at all.  senate republicans have promised to allow a vote on a couple nominations and the rules regarding the filibuster remain the same.  tacitly, republicans have also promised that other nominations would still be held up, that they would continue to paralyze the governing of the country whenever in a minority in congress.  this is not compromise - this is optics.

and these optics are harry reid's.  one cannot say that history dictates a need for change then accept a republican allowance of a few votes.  nothing has changed.  there was no compromise.  there is only disappointment.

morphology

aeon ends and americans spell it eon now.

the romance languages devolved from classical latin, the uneducated wards of the roman empire speaking a common or "vulgar" latin that mixed and degraded into several romance languages across the european continent.  the declension system spun out into prepositions; articles sprouted up like weeds; and consonants softening, palatalized, the cedille twining itself around the c.

Romance (Old French)	Approximate Vulgar Latin Equivalent	Translation
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon uol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.	"Pro Deu(m) amore(m) et pro christianu(m) populu(m) et nostro commune(m) salvamentu(m), de istu(m) die(m) in ab ante, in quantu(m) Deus sapere et potere mihi dat, sic salvare(h)a(b)eo ecc'istu(m) meum fratre(m) Carolu(m), et in aiuta et in cata-una causa, sic quomo(do) (h)omo per directu(m) suum fratre(m) saluare debet, in (h)oc quo illoe mi(hi) alteru(m) sic faciat, et apu(d) Lothar(m) nullu(m) placitu(m) nunquam prendere(h)a(b)eo quod meum volu(m) ecc'istu(m) meu(m) fratre(m) Carolu(m) in damno sit."	"For the love of God and for Christendom and our common salvation, from this day onwards, as God will give me the wisdom and power, I shall protect this brother of mine Charles, with aid or anything else, as one ought to protect one's brother, so that he may do the same for me, and I shall never knowingly make any covenant with Lothair that would harm this brother of mine Charles."

latina eram.  et maintenant, c'est francais.

at the end of the night i found myself sitting with zebra and john and mikiel and i thought, wow, this is just like old times.  we sit and drink and talk and gossip and drink.  a lot has changed, but years ago there we had stomped through everything, godzillas, gods of destruction with each other.  now zebra moves to san francisco in a week and some people wonder how far behind him john will be.  i read buzzfeed lists about people in their late twenties and try to gauge how similar, how boring i have become.  surprisingly, i don't feel very average or that boring.

i consider going to booty reunion saturday night.  booty, an event before my time here in portland, still continues to haunt and affect the city.  portland isn't the same, but these markers carry over and continue.  i am not the same.  i drink a lot more.  john and zebra have driven me to drink a lot more.  and i have had fun.

every summer is the end of an era.  then we hibernate and see something new in the spring.  but the old decomposes into now and trace minerals, particles of speech, conventions are left in our mannerisms.

"omnia mutantur, nihil interit."

dynasty

amnesia the other day, john and i sat with another barfly, talking about politics, discussing the evitability of jeb bush's bid for presidential election and the continuation of the bush dynasty in america.  boring.  i don't think jeb bush's candidacy is as inevitable as my friends would like to believe.  and even if we do see him running in the next republican presidential primary, i'm not sure the bush name will strongly carry either fiscal conservatives or the christian right wing to secure jeb bush a place in the presidential election against a democratic opponent.  not with so many other high-profile republican candidates currently being groomed for the campaign.

the revolving cast of characters in politics sometimes disgusts and dismays me.  america doesn't seem as bad as europe sometimes.  berlusconi finally went to jail - but how many times have we seen him in office?  today i saw this article in le monde in which nicolas sarkozy is called above any political party.  what's happening?  what's he hoping to accomplish in france?  is he hoping to return to office?  in the midst of the confusion in france surrounding the socialists and the economic slump and the power crisis of the european union, i bet france looks back and remembers (perhaps falsely) the stability of sarkozy's time in office.  i say do not become conforted with the false myths of bygone days.  nothing was really that golden.

and it's not just europe: japan just re-elected shinzo abe as prime minister, which at first seemed to be the manifestation of the eternal japanese wish to return to a golden age of politics and national stability.  i will say that abe seems to be making some difference to the japanese economy despite his track record his first term in office, though i should also say that while abe seems to be taking concrete steps to encourage growth, his central bank policies are small and any recent growth in the japanese economy might soon fade without any larger development.

it's not unusal for past american presidents to influence, encourage, and advise in political and diplomatic matters, but they cannot run again.  they take their turn and move on.  or they encourage their families to run for office.

remember when you found yourself really excited about obama?  i never found myself fascinated with him during the election the way the rest of america was, but i want to feel that way about a candidate.  i want to see a candidate run that won't just run on past ideas or family ties or a return to a golden era of politics.  i want one big idea.  at least one big idea.  i want someone committed to changing at least one thing.