Yesterday while watching my dogs play, I saw a tiny little bird under my car. My dogs would have killed it so I picked it up but couldn’t find its nest. He/she is such an admirable feisty little creature. I no longer take my own birds to vets since my survival rate in treating them with homeopathic remedies is almost 100% & the vet’s failure rate is about 100%. (They’re good with dogs & cats; they don’t know birds.) So I’m treating the little one & hoping to bring it to a wildlife rescue center on Tuesday (tomorrow is a holiday). I’m calling on some blessings from my FB friends. You get a lot of blessings in life; you gotta give some.

In the process of researching, I learned incidentally about the origins of the electoral college which we now see is an oligarchic contraption to control elections. But originally the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention devised the thing to give slaveholders greater weight in national politics. It was to protect slavery.

In a direct election system, northern states would have outnumbered the South where slaves could not vote. The electoral college prototype let each southern state count its slaves (with a two-fifths discount) in computing its share of the overall electoral college.

Legal historians have pointed out that for 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a slaveholding Virginian was elected president–including slaveholder Thomas Jefferson who won the 1800 election against northerner John Adams “in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory.” Observers at the time said ‘Jefferson rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.’

The more you know about US history, the more you realize we didn’t get to where we are by accident. The more you know, the more you understand the two parties are central to the problem & no part of the solution.

That would explain why some refugees fled on foot rather than be herded on to the buses where they could just as well be deported to Turkey, as per the European Union agreement.

According to media & more reputable sources like Doctors Without Borders, most of the forcible eviction went without incident. It was probably not difficult to persuade people to leave squalor, especially after their tents were mowed down.

Immigration is a human right & one of the most urgent issues of our historic period. Open the damn borders. Oppose the wars & sweatshop economics that create refugees.

(Photo by Yannis Kolesidis/Pool/Reuters)

Kaplan has a regular column on war & US foreign policy in Slate magazine which is owned by the Washington Post. In an article on Obama’s visit to Vietnam, he said the trip is about “shifting the focus of foreign policy away from the stagnant battles of the Middle East, more toward the dynamic promise of the Asia-Pacific—which Obama has wanted to pursue since the onset of his presidency but which the old world’s ceaseless crises have thwarted.”

“Stagnant” has lots of meanings, most indicating stasis, inaction, sluggishness, dormancy. Do any of those terms describe the killing fields of the Middle East where there is massive bombing going on? And what’s this “old world” crap? Old world usually means associated with the past, especially things quaint & charming. What’s so charming about millions of people being displaced & bombed to death? Or is it meant to suggest backwardness & avoid being openly racist? As for that “dynamic promise of the Asia-Pacific,” is he speaking of the militarization of the region & of the increasing possibilities for war with China?

Our man elaborated on US lethal arms sales to Vietnam: “With the United States selling caches of weapons worth hundreds of millions (in some cases, billions) of dollars to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, & Azerbaijan, it doesn’t make much sense to deny a place on the list to Vietnam—whose record is no worse &, compared to some, much better.” Kaplan obviously doesn’t think human rights crimes in any of those countries is worth concern. But of course if you think the Middle East is politically stagnant & building up arsenals all over the Asia-Pacific as a phalanx for US power is dynamic promise, then you probably have your head stuck up your rightwing ass.

So the question remains: who the hell is handing out those Pulitzers & are they worth as little as the Nobel Peace Prize? If he walks like a fool & talks like a fool, he’s probably a fool.

(Photo of sorry-assed Fred)