{"id":67490,"date":"2013-06-01T04:26:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-01T08:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=67490"},"modified":"2013-06-01T08:29:50","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T12:29:50","slug":"transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Transition"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I tried to avoid politics this week, looking for a break from the havoc that seems inherent in this season’s news cycles, currently amped by all this chatty Gemini energy. I’d planned to ignore all but the headlines, while getting the tomatoes out of their containers and into the ground. It never happened. Days of deluge and thunderstorms brought requisite lightning and hail accompanied by on-again, off-again tornado watches to the Pea Patch. That’s kept the action inside, forcing me to wrestle four restless dogs and an insistent Miss Kitty, who prefers to hold court with her motley crew of suitors rather than stay clean and dry inside.<\/p>\n

\"Political To complicate things, let’s not forget the sweat-inducing heat signature that is moving toward the East coast even as I write. I’ve never made the leap to tolerate mind-dulling mid-western humidity, which leaves me wrung out like an old dish-rag and moving like a sloth.<\/p>\n

Still, I’ve taken some comfort that it arrives mid-summer, leaving me a spring in which I feel energized, and not as though I’m breathing underwater. But not this year; this year “hot” came early, bringing “wet” with it, proving that whatever you thought you knew about weather is moot now that ‘extreme’ is the new normal. Remember when Katrina was an anomaly? Now CNN spends as much time trailing behind storm trackers and reporting weather disasters as dogging recalcitrant politicians.<\/p>\n

So the tomatoes won’t make it into the ground until June, putting harvest farther into the future, but who knows how that will look when we get there! The baby lettuce survived that late snow a few weeks ago, and a layer of chicken-wire has protected them from the hail, but now they’re being hard pressed to survive wilting heat. I keep my wings crossed that they will make it to the salad bowl, but who knows. We are firmly in the “who knows” era, otherwise known as “transition.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Life is confusing by any standard, but now it’s like turning Rubik’s Cube by Braille, 5D version. We have to “feel” the colors, we have to “be” the colors. It used to be simpler when we could follow the bouncing balls of logic and good sense — now we have to try to spot our ping-pong ball before, during and after it joins the others in the room full of mouse traps. Just the snap and clatter are a distraction, leaving us tense, grumpy and thoroughly mystified. What we thought we knew is up for grabs, and what couldn’t be refuted (like science, for instance) is. We’ve talked about the need for change, discussed its dynamic for so long, we often forget how disorienting it is. Like embracing unwanted humidity, it’s a challenge to find a way to be comfortable with the loss of certainty that comes with shifting perspective.<\/p>\n

Yes, I avoided the news and tried to stay out of the political zone, but I kept my eye on things. In the course of the week, I took some pleasure in Michele Bachmann’s announced retirement, although like Glenn Beck I suspect she’ll find a new incarnation that will keep her bat-shit crazy constituents fed with the latest conspiracy theories. Michele insists two terms are enough for anybody, but she might be singing a different song if her campaign had not come under intense scrutiny for unethical activity.<\/p>\n

I can live with some kind of Palenesque background noise from Michele as long as she is no longer a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I mean, seriously, intelligence? Whose scatterbrained idea was that? Surely her absence will improve the intelligence of the committee, so long as they don’t appoint Ted Cruz or some similar side-show radical<\/a> to replace her. Except for the small group of fundamentalist supporters who showed no disappointment that in two terms Michelle was unable to produce or pass a single bill while being the biggest senatorial mouth to flap in recent history, the nation cheered her decision.<\/p>\n

I had a moment’s hand-wringing when I heard about the rogue patch of wheat found growing in Oregon that proved resistant to Roundup, later identified as an illegal GMO wheat that was never approved for commercial planting. If we’d just fallen off a turnip truck, we might take comfort in the FDA’s assertion that such wheat — field tested in several states from 1998 to 2005 — was harmless and safe to ingest.<\/p>\n

Tell that to the Japanese, who promptly canceled their order for U.S. grain. Other Asian countries — China, the Philippines, South Korea — are considering similar action until a test kit for GMOs can prove the product unmodified. The U.S. has no such kit, having successfully blindsided the public on this side of the pond for years, which shows the Asians to be better informed by leaps and bounds than their American contemporaries. As Asia imports more than 20 million tons of wheat annually, perhaps the loss of billions will get the attention of our profit-hungry plutocracy, as well as further inform a worried public.<\/p>\n

And speaking of profit, the sea change in marijuana laws in Washington and Colorado, along with the success of medical dispensaries in California, have prompted a group of investors<\/a> to come together to be first to launch a national brand of herbal smokes. The group is forming to become the “big marijuana” prototype, although running the gauntlet of state and federal laws may prove trickier than expected, especially when the Justice Department remains hostile to big growers. Legal in 18 states, medical marijuana has also come in for careful scrutiny from the IRS, which is harassing landlords and business owners with drug trafficking rules<\/a> that make commerce perilous, even dangerous. That’s a greater scandal, in my book, than scouring Karl Rove’s books for (bogus) signs of community service.<\/p>\n

Still, support for marijuana legalization has grown by almost 20 percentage points in less than a decade. 52 percent of Americans favor outright legalization, including recreational use, while 77 percent approve medicinal use. Recent attempts by the DoJ to tie marijuana use with crime has been poo-pooed by analysts who think of pot as the diet soda of stimulants. There’s more crime linked to it, they say, because everybody and their dog — you know it’s true — use it. Surprisingly, both Democrats and Republicans, not to mention Libertarians, agree that the Fed should mind its own business and let the states take care of this problem.<\/p>\n

In terms of transition, the ante on political maneuvering has been raised a bit by the relentless obstruction marking Obama’s second term. Sequestration is beginning to bite into reality by noticeably slowing economic recovery, and although proposed austerity has been trashed by its faulty ideology as well as the example of a diminished European economy, economic theory is the Mason-Dixon line of American politics.<\/p>\n

Free market fundamentalism must never be questioned by those who have taken voodoo economics to their bosom and fight tooth and toenail against any who seek to moderate that mythical golden goose. The fact that free market theories hang together with spit and Scotch tape, greased by cronyism and bribery while failing to measure up in practical terms, does not impact the true believers, which includes almost all dedicated capitalists. Anything else, so they’d have us believe, is downright un-American.<\/p>\n

As an aside, I would simply like to say, as one who considers a world-wide conspiracy to keep the working class in old paradigm indenture\/slavery forevermore as entering its decline, that achieving prosperity by taking food out of the mouths of children and old folks is the kind of barbarism the world is quickly coming to despise. It’s the reason Republicanism has become an endangered political movement. Our current muddle of ideology vs public relations, however, keeps us from knowing exactly whom to blame for all this, but that time is quickly fading.<\/p>\n

As Evan Soltas wrote for Bloomberg:<\/p>\n

For the last few years, politicians have enjoyed a curious luxury: They’ve been able to talk about making “hard choices” without actually making any. All the big changes to the budget since 2010 have been at least partly automatic. Sequestration was, as it were, remotely triggered, which absolved lawmakers of responsibility. This changes in 2014: Next year, Congress will own the consequences of its actions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By next year, sequester will no longer be about indiscriminate, across the board cuts. They will be targeted and selected from the small slice of GDP set aside for the welfare of citizens. Republicans will no longer be able to hide behind the rhetoric of false equivalency, and cowardly Democrats will have to fess up if they are protecting their own behinds rather than those of their constituents. These budget cuts, by the way, will be concentrated in the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education — a full quarter of their yearly funding on the block — which will jeopardize not only Obamacare and Pell Grants, but also continued operation of the Environmental Protection Agency, period.<\/p>\n

By the time 2014 rolls around, how many of us will be up off our fannies and making some noise about this, I wonder? Things are changing. Those who are continually frustrated by the lack of movement should be heartened by new fire in Harry Reid’s belly to go with the so-called “nuclear option” that turns filibuster on its head and returns a half-plus-one strategy to congressional voting. There’s Democratic method to this madness, smacking just a bit of “hold yer nose” politics, although if we think back to the pounding that progressives AND citizens took during Dubby’s turn at bat, it goes down easier.<\/p>\n

The Republicans have been stonewalling Obama’s court candidates for years, leaving literally hundreds of important positions unfilled, the judicial system limping, and justice denied. They filibuster candidates across the board, delaying even those they approve in order to keep this president judicially gelded.<\/p>\n

Currently there are three openings in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the court that is responsible for reviewing federal laws, regulations, and agencies that come into question on the Hill. Think, during these troubling times, what that might look like! Probably easier to make a list of what ISN’T being challenged than what is.<\/p>\n

As we speak, there are four (Pub-appointed) conservative judges and three (Dem-appointed) liberals serving on this court. Obama has now nominated three replacements to flesh out the ten slots for the D.C. Court. Did I mention that this is the court from which a majority of Supreme Court candidates have been selected over the years? Four of our current nine Supremes served there.<\/p>\n

As the possibility of a SCOTUS opening arises, probably that of game but cancer-stricken Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Obama will want to pull out of a pool of his own. He has given us two moderate women in the past, and has hardly turned the court into a lefty flagship, but that’s not what you’ll hear on FOX News, so get ready for a rumble.<\/p>\n

The only way to get these three appointments on the table, and the process started, is to pull the lever on the “nuclear option” and change the way congressional votes are used. The 60\/40 split was a recent agreement anyhow, which makes you wonder, once again, how these things get by the voting public. Still, as Robert Reich recently pointed out, “A president’s court picks shouldn’t require 60 Senate votes. The Constitution is quite specific about when “super-majorities” are needed, and makes no mention of super-majorities for court appointments.”<\/p>\n

Harry Reid made a gentleman’s agreement with Mitch McConnell in January to mend some of the obstruction of irresponsible filibuster, an agreement quickly broken. Reid does not want the option, but I think he’ll take it this time. We can’t do more years of watching time pass as the public stews, while nothing is accomplished. And Supreme Court placement is a big damned deal, down the line impacting economic, political and sociological issues for the future of the entire nation.<\/p>\n

Imagine the kind of shock we’d all feel if there was suddenly movement in the halls of congress, new laws and regulations not just passed but fully funded and staffed, as Dodd-Frank never was, for instance, continuing to put big business ahead of economic safety. Imagine doing some actual business for the people, as opposed to Darryl Issa running investigation after tone-deaf investigation, using up congressional funds the way Ken Starr did in Whitewater, trying for a presidential “gotcha” in a time-honored Republican panorama of mud-raking.<\/p>\n

Who knows? It could happen. We can’t remain at impasse forever. The first step to metamorphosis is to change the way we think about things, and sometimes that happens because the way ahead is blocked. Sometimes change comes when there’s too much pain to continue as is. We think outside the box when the box gets too tight.<\/p>\n

Unable to see the forest for the trees, it’s good to remember that we’re in transition, that the public expectation is far beyond that of the political process. And such a transition, often starting with confusion, shakes out over time, in not just a change of mind but of heart.\u00a0 As we stand in the trees, looking around us, it may seem like everything is same old, same old, nothing much changed. It’s not. What is old and archaic is being left behind by those who can’t stand still another minute.<\/p>\n

This is serious transition, not like we’ve done it before. It’s tech and hip, it’s young and bold, it’s old and wise. It’s an amalgam of all those things that we learned over an era, freshly applied to this time of awakening. In a new paradigm, politics and government must be a reflection of us, not the outgrown energy that has held us in service to the few. We’re going to have to put our trust not in government or politics, but in ourselves AS government and politics.<\/p>\n

Pick a position and get involved. Here’s a promise: what we knew about the world is fast being replaced by what we’re learning about ourselves, reassessing our needs and tuning out the voices that only serve self. We’re going to have to develop ourselves as the instruments of public peace and safety. We have to care for one another, because there is no one else to do it, and as we “do unto the least of these,” we do unto ourselves. The Dalai Lama tells us that helping one another is what life is about, why we came to this incarnation. All the wise ones say the same.<\/p>\n

It’s a time of transition from doing what we are told by the masters who still believe they own us, to doing what we came to do: fulfill our destiny as star people. It’s the era of “who knows” how it will look down the line, who knows what we can accomplish together, who knows what might happen if we try? We know how it will look if we don’t, sinking into the mire of cynical politics and a dying paradigm, but you know that’s not how this will end. This is our time to step up and do what we came for, believing that what is right and Light-filled is stronger and more powerful than all that darkness can throw at us. This is transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves I tried to avoid politics this week, looking for a break from the havoc that seems inherent in this season’s news cycles, currently amped by all this chatty Gemini energy. I’d planned to ignore all but the headlines, while getting the tomatoes out of their containers and into the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}