PAINT IT BLACK & LET RAINS FALL

PAINT IT BLACK & LET RAINS FALL



It is sometimes nice to see something thoroughly black on TV, unless shadows of terrorists in a Mumbai hotel.


SECTION I: AMERICAN DREAM(S)

America spoils American people.

The great nature and territories of America spoil American people.

The vast space and room around people spoil people.

The super-power class military capability spoils people.

Easy import, introduction, and application of fruits of European Civilization spoil American people.

Unlimited labor force, workers, and immigrants coming from abroad who speak only poorer English than American people spoil American people.

But more spoiled seem to be Big Three executives than Big Three’s factory workers:

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Working People and Good Jobs are the Foundation of Our Economy, Not the Problem
November 28th, 2008

…
As the union representing the men and women who build America, we hear the same thing in the construction industry. Anti-union groups complain about prevailing wage jobs that pay the workers responsible for building our roads, bridges, mass-transit and energy systems in the highest skilled positions as much as $40 an hour. That’s a good, family-supporting job. But it’s less than what a typical corporate CEO literally makes in 10 seconds - despite being in part responsible for our current economic crisis and now lining up for billion-dollar handouts.

Everyone will have to make sacrifices before our economy turns around. Working people have already made more sacrifices than most. But we cannot go backwards, lowering standards and degrading the foundation of the American Dream. Working people and good jobs built our economy and they are the key to our economic recovery.
This post was cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

Permalink | Comment on this post (0)

By Laborers' International Union of North America General President Terence O'Sullivan

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/11/28/working-people-and-good-jobs-are-the-foundation-of-our-economy-not-the-problem/#more-7842
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That is why I am telling you that you can understand what America is only from a religious view point but not from a material-success viewpoint.

If Americans, including Big Three executives and Big Three’s factory workers, get richer and richer but other peoples in the world get poorer and poorer, what is good about American Dream?

Yet, if Americans, including Big Three executives and Big Three’s factory workers, get more pious and more Christian, other peoples in the world get richer and richer.

For global citizens, “American Dream” must mean that America makes the world richer.

On the other hand, traditionally, American pundits have thought:
If America serves the God by diffusing democracy and freedom all over the world as their historical duty and mission, America is allowed to enjoy prosperity more than any other nations, pursuing "American Dream" until all the crude oil reserves underground have been comletely exhausted.

This paradigm has come to the end. Or an era that has accommodated this paradigm has come to the end.

President Mr. George W. Bush is the last President who is allowed to live in this paradigm.

America is now requested by history or the God to respect “New American Dream” that means that “American Dream” must mean that America makes the world richer.

For this purpose, Americans, including Big Three executives and Big Three’s factory workers, must become more pious and more Christian than any other peoples in the world.


SECTION II: This Week’s Invention

Stop wars and build a huge artificial screen or net to capture vapors from the heated sea so as to let them fall as rains on a desert.



Without the Andes, there cannot be Amazon.

But, with another Andes, the regions from the Sahara to the Arabian Peninsula can be another Amazon or Brazil or Argentine, so green and grassy.

So, to get enough rain falls in those regions, we have to set up miles-high poles and fix to them screens or nets that stretche for 100 to 1000 kilo-meters on the dry ground facing a sea so as to exert effect as an Andes.

This project will cost only a few billion dollars.

Oil-rich Islamic countries should adopt the idea to consult with EEE Reporter.

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That is all for today.


[Yeah, today, my writing looks like tottering and lurching in style and logic like conventional economists now ready for assigning high grades to electric-car ventures in the Silicon Valley.]



(That is why I am suggesting that you will be sorry if you think that Allah never gives a follower of the God, including EEE Reporter, prosperity in addition to security a kind of which Arab Royal families are enjoying along the coasts of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/1555/paintit.mid

Source: http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/1555/mainmidi.html）



Luk 11:29 And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.

Luk 11:30 For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.

Luk 11:31 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

YOUNG POLITICS

(Tokyo Tower and Haneda Airport around the Tokyo Bay)


YOUNG POLITICS


Sometimes I do something that can be otherwise abandoned and left because I don’t have to though I am neither a statesman nor a manager of a religion company.


SECTION I: The Obama Effect on Japan

Will the outcome of the brilliant victory of Mr. Barack Obama influence the Japanese national politics?

Yes, it will; the coalition of the LDP and New Komeito will probably have to give up the reins of government if a snap election is held at any time until the termination of the term of House of Representatives members, namely next September.

However, if the Democratic Party of Japan is put into power with some allies, including a breakaway faction from the LDP, it may lose the subsequent Upper House election due to possible recovery of economy and the rise of patriotism, leading to another unstable condition.

Nonetheless, as it is said that Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, the top leader of the DPJ, is pro-America as much as Prime Minister Mr. Taro Aso is, the relationship between Japan and the United States will not be derailed if the regime change should occur in Japan in near future.

Anyway, this afternoon, the two top political leaders of Japan, Mr. Ozawa and Prime Minister Mr. Aso, will have a face-to-face debate in a special session of the national Diet.



SECTION II: Japanese Obamas

There are no African Japanese lawmakers in the national Diet of Japan. Except several Diet (Parliament) members, almost all of the 720 national lawmakers in Japan are of the Japanese race(s).

So, they all look very different from Mr. Barack Obama and Mr. Joe Biden.

Anyway, national lawmakers of Japan I like to introduce here are as follows:


YUKARI SATO (LDP)
Ms. Sato stopped update of her blog this February when her constituency was changed to Tokyo. Yet, she recently reported that she joined a committee on finance to question the Finance Minister on urgent measures to bolster the financial system.

In her home page, she argued that economic growth (lnY) is a sum of a growth of total factor productivity (lnA), a growth of capital (a*lnK), and a growth of labor force (b*lnL):
lnY = lnA + a*lnK + b*lnL

Especially Ms. Sato emphasized importance to strengthen the labor-force base that has enhanced purchasing power.

(Some of her fans say that she has both brains and beauty, since she once studied economics in New York.)

( http://www.y-sato.org/policy/index.html )


MUNEO SUZUKI (Shinto Daichi)
Mr. Suzuiki, a notable come-back member of the Lower House, criticized Prime Minister Mr. Taro Aso for his recent comments. Even the media have dealt severely with recent behaviors of the Japan’s Prime Minister as his words seem to reflect too much of his own personal judgment which should not be expressed publicly as he is the top of the Japanese Government.

Mr. Suzuki argued that as Prime Minister Mr. Aso was born and raised in a super-rich family he cannot understand minds and hearts of ordinary and poor people.

Mr. Suzuki, a veteran but marathon-loving lawmaker, also pointed at the incumbent Chief Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries having shallow experiences in politics.

( http://www.muneo.gr.jp/html/page001.html )


HIROSHIGE SEKO (LDP)
It must be useful for foreign researchers of the Japanese politics to check his blog, since it shows how a Japanese politician is communicating with supporters in his constituency, though Mr. Seko is a member of the House of Councilors of the national Diet.

Recently he was very much embarrassed to find that a certain high-level lobbying group from his electorate used his title of four years ago in a petition.

He is a busy man since the Upper House is now under control of the opposition parties, consulting sometimes with former Prime Minister Mr. Shinzo Abe and Mr. Yoshiro Mori.

( http://blog.goo.ne.jp/newseko )


AKIRA NAGATSUMA (DPJ)
Mr. Nagatsuma is a real hero, since he has revealed many errors and breeches of duty of officials of the Social Insurance Agency.

He has made many TV appearances since his investigation gave a great shock to the Japanese people who blindly trusted the Social Insurance Agency for decades.

Millions of Japanese people are losing some part of their promised pensions due to unfaithful performance of bureaucrats.

If DPJ is able to take the helm of the nation in the coming general election, the number-one person of merit is Mr. Akira Nagatsuma, in my humble view.

( http://naga.tv/diary.htm )


NOBUTERU ISHIHARA (LDP)
It is not because Mr. Nobuteru Ishihara is the eldest son of political super-star Mr. Shintaro Ishihara, the Governor of Tokyo, that I focus on him.

Mr. Ishihara, a lawmaker of the House of Representatives, presents his interview with former Prime Minister Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi. However, it was before Mr. Koizumi was elected as Japan’s Prime Ministers in 2001 that Mr. Ishihara had this interview with Mr. Koizumi.

Remarkably, Mr. Koizumi looks like having honestly observed his words he had made public before his assuming the premiership, since he took the seat of Prime Minister until he left it in 2006.

Accordingly, Mr. Ishihara was assigned to some important Cabinet posts by Mr. Koizumi.

( http://www.nobuteru.or.jp/mass/koizumi.html )

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That is all for today.



(Indeed maybe they are still young like Mr. Barack Obama if you are much younger, since veterans of WWII seem to have some die-hard influence even today.

http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/gs/anotokikimiwa.html )




Mat 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Mat 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

Mat 11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

America and Japan or America and China and India

America and Japan or America and China and India



If the Vatican disappeared, the whole Europeans and European Americans would face a crisis.

If Israel disappeared, the whole Judaists would face a crisis.

If Japan disappeared, the whole non-European races would face a crisis, ironically　including American Judaists though they look like members of European races nowadays.

Of course, Mr. Barack Obama is authentically one member of European races, since his mother was one of them.

(But, his daughters might be to be included in non-European races, accordingly.)

Anyway, Japan is unique in that it more than stands alone against the Indian and the Chinese Civilizations as America does against Europe (and Africa).



SECTION I: Brutus and Authority

When reflecting the Bush Administration, the relationship between Ms. Condoleezza Rice and "her old mentor and the nation's realist in chief," former national security adviser Mr. Brent Scowcroft (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901502_pf.html) might be a key figure to understanding its underlying nature in terms of its national security policy.

Accordingly, a unique Japanese journalist Mr. Sakai Tanaka wrote that Ms. Rice actually played an important and superb role to pull back the Bush Administration to a middle course after the failure Vice President Mr. Dick Cheney and his hard-line associates had made was publicly exposed. As Mr. Brent Scowcroft was at odds with Mr. Cheney and his company, Mr. Brent Scowcroft, once a harsh critic of Ms. Rice since her riding on the War-in-Iraq movement, came to have a good opinion of the Secretary of State again, since he has figured out and realized what she has meant in these years.

( http://tanakanews.com/081125obama.htm )

And, most importantly, President-elect Mr. Barack Obama is now showing a sign to take this middle course, too, while acting like a Brutus to liberal and very liberal supporters, though he seems to intend to have Mrs. Clinton as new Secretary of State to check the hardliners associated with the military-industrial complex, according to the analysis by Mr. Tanaka.

Finally, the U.S. national security strategy seems to be rotating around the standpoint of Mr. Brent Scowcroft as a pivot.


SECTION II: Authority and Declinism

Mr. Brent Scowcroft, the authority in the U.S. national security strategy, recently discussed not a middle course policy but American declinism.

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Is America’s new declinism for real?
By Gideon Rachman
Published: November 24 2008 18:08 | Last updated: November 24 2008 18:08

…last week the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M hosted a conference designed to discuss the latest, markedly gloomy world view issued by America’s intelligence establishment. Every four years the National Intelligence Council – which oversees America’s baroque collection of intelligence agencies – releases a global trends report, which is given to the new president…

This gloomy mood was captured by the opening address to the NIC’s conference, given by none other than General Brent Scowcroft himself, returning to the institute named after him. The general noted that the US had found itself in a position of huge global power after the end of the cold war, which was “heady stuff”. But “we exercised that power for a while only to realise that it was ephemeral”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ddbc80d0-ba43-11dd-92c9-0000779fd18c.html
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When somebody goes into the shade, others come out to bathe in the sun.

After the Vietnam war and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is true that a kind of declinism covered the American society. It was Japan that came out to rank with the U.S.

But, it is China that is going to be the formidable challenger to tarnish the pride of America, the F.T. report suggests.

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But the “declinism” represented by Prof Kennedy was quickly dissipated by victory in the cold war, Japan’s lost decade of economic growth and the high-tech boom of the Clinton years. All this set the stage for a resurgence of American confidence and the swagger of the Bush presidency.

Odd as it is to recall now, there were people during the early phases of the cold war who were also genuinely worried that the USSR might outperform the US. There was also a national crisis of confidence caused by the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon warned his fellow countrymen they risked looking like a “pitiful, helpless giant”. In the 1980s, Japan became the new challenger to American supremacy. Now it is China.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ddbc80d0-ba43-11dd-92c9-0000779fd18c.html
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But note that this is an article introduced by The Financial Times.

And, remember that when Lehman Brothers drastically faltered and fell, super-rich fans and readers of The Financial Times were gathering in a world economic forum held in China though they must have been in Wall Street.

Something must be wrong in their argument, since they referred to the NIC report reading that "the rise of China and India suggest that America’s days as the world’s largest economy are numbered" while "Mumbai was rocked by deadly attacks" and "polluting factories in central China sicken farmers."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7751160.stm

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Polluting_factories_in_central_China_sicken_farmers_state_press_999.html



SECTION III: Declinism and Japan

The above FT report mentioned some about Japan.

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Odd as it is to recall now, there were people during the early phases of the cold war who were also genuinely worried that the USSR might outperform the US. There was also a national crisis of confidence caused by the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon warned his fellow countrymen they risked looking like a “pitiful, helpless giant”. In the 1980s, Japan became the new challenger to American supremacy. Now it is China.

Professor Wohlforth argues that the NIC report reflects “a mood change, not a change in the underlying assessment of power”. As he says, rising powers do not always complete their climb and economic strength does not always translate into political power.

This is all true. But there are still reasons for thinking that the new declinism may be more soundly based than its predecessors. China has a record of sustained and dynamic economic growth that the Soviet Union was never capable of. And China’s sheer size makes it a more plausible challenger than a relatively small nation, such as Japan.

This time it really does feel different. But then it always does, does it not?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ddbc80d0-ba43-11dd-92c9-0000779fd18c.html
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A certain Japanese professor wrote that the report reflected an American sense of disdain of Japan.

He also argued that some right-wing politicians and left-wing journalists in Japan have contributed to strengthening this American sense of disdain of Japan against Japan’s interests.

Yet, those who cannot see through the true state of China and India cannot also even reasonably disdain Japan if so logically biased and religuously unsound.

The above report might rather reflect the underlying fear of, and the immature respect for, Japan that for the first time in history has so advantageously competed with Western Christian powers in terms of science, technology, economy, business, and culture.

Compared with the deep impact and shock Japan has delivered and made to Western Christianity-dominant world, including America and the E.U., in these centuries, China and India are yet to prove any of its capability and potential for contribution to the global peace and prosperity.

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President-elect Mr. Barack Obama is now expected to take a middle course rather than a clearly liberal-leaning course.

Mr. Obama can be a more honest disciple of Mr. Brent Scowcroft than Ms. Rice has been.

But, one thing crystal-clear is that Mr. Barack Obama will surely try to avoid the making the same mistakes made by his Democratic predecessors in the White House, since his immediate Republican predecessor has shown some good examples as he befriended Japanese Prime Ministers, each looking like posed in the middle between a Chinese leader and an Indian leader in some international summit meetings.



(When there was no declinism in the U.S., the people loved sounds making them feel modestly high. Even the couple in the White House was a symbol of gracefully mild romance; Don’t you think so, Barack?

http://www.menziesera.com/midi/telstar.mid

Source: http://www.menziesera.com/media/music_jukebox.htm)




Mar 11:27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders,

Mar 11:28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?

Mar 11:29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

Mar 11:30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.

Like a Hero or an Avenger

(A Waterfall Brook along Town Stairs)




Like a Hero or an Avenger




What will you do if you are another J.P. Morgan or a Prime Minister of Japan?



SECTION I: Postal Service Privatization

A few years ago, the biggest political agenda in Japan was the postal service privatization.

Then Prime Minister Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi strongly promoted the policy to privatize postal services including postal savings.

However, then Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Mr. Taro Aso was against the policy, though he did not openly come into collision with his Prime Minister Mr. Koizumi then.

Yet, Mr. Aso is said to have exchanged harsh words with Mr. Heizo Takenaka, a notable economist who was then appointed to a state-minister of the Koizumi Cabinet for promotion of the postal service privatization.

( http://ameblo.jp/aratakyo/ )

In fact, Mr. Aso was later reassigned to a new post, Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2005, while Mr. Takenaka was promoted to a new post, Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.

Now, as Mr. Taro Aso is Prime Minister of Japan while Mr. Koizumi has already announced his planned retirement from the politics and Mr. Takenaka has returned to the academic community, the process of the postal service privatization in Japan might be significantly altered.

Anyway, the one-trillion dollar scale of postal savings of Japan might undergo a further change, since the myth of Wall Street is now fading away even among Japanese politicians, economists, and journalists.


SECTION II: Global Economic Boom A Year Ago

A year ago, the world was enjoying great economic boom or at least a sense of great economic boom.

Mr. Taro Aso, the LDP Secretary-General then, wrote in September 2007 that the world was enjoying unprecedented business boom. “Though the housing loan problem is making the situation unstable, the value of the dollar is well maintained. Globally the main trend is toward tightening of money, but the financial market is in a state of a money glut. While crude oil prices are getting high, many countries do not inflate, and there is no deteriorating employment situation. This is a situation no economics textbooks have ever dealt with.”

So, Mr. Aso concluded that we had to expand business, or preemptively take a risk aversion strategy in that unusual economic boom just a year ago.

( http://www.aso-taro.jp/lecture/kama/2007_9.html )

He finally added that Japan should have more confidence in its underlying strength and vitality the diligent people have built up (over its unique two-thousand-year history).

Anyway, a year ago, the world was enjoying great economic boom or at least a sense of great economic boom.


SECTION III: "Warren Buffett Braves a Crisis"

Though now it seems to be the U.S. Congress that holds a key to salvation of failing businesses, including GM, once it was an individual.

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Like J.P. Morgan, Warren Buffett Braves a Crisis
October 6, 2008, 8:23 am

…
But those were dire economic times. Morgan gathered his fellow financiers at his Manhattan mansion and hammered out a rescue plan. After a few rocky weeks, the panic subsided.

“In 1907, Morgan was not only committing some of his own money but also organizing the entire financial community to join in the rescue,” Ron Chernow, a business historian and the author of “The House of Morgan” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), told The Times.

Indeed, Mr. Chernow said, one motivation for creating the Federal Reserve in 1913 was that Morgan would not be around forever. Morgan died that same year.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/like-jp-morgan-warren-buffett-braves-a-crisis/
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Just 100 years ago, the financial crisis on Wall Street was prevented from leading to the whole Great Depression by an individual, namely J. Pierpont Morgan, who took an initiative in mobilizing super-rich people.

Will Mr. Warren Buffett act like another J. P. Morgan?

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As far back as 2003, Mr. Buffett had warned that the complex securities at the center of today’s troubles — once so profitable, but now toxic — were "financial weapons of mass destruction." These securities were engineered by the math quants on Wall Street, and in the interview Mr. Buffett expressed his disdain: "Beware of geeks bearing formulas."

To help pay for the rescue, the government should raise taxes on the wealthy, Mr. Buffett suggested. "I’m paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life," he said. "Now, that’s crazy."

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/like-jp-morgan-warren-buffett-braves-a-crisis/
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If all the super-rich men in the U.S. become super-poor through taxation or other system to save the world economy, the world economy must be surely saved.

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Jesus Christ said that you cannot serve the two masters at the same time, since you will surely hate either of the two.

You have to serve the God instead of Mammon.

Ultimately there are only two things you can love in whatever situations: the God and/or money.

But, eventually you will devote your love to the God, or submit your money to the Devil, both the final collectors of fruits of human life.

So, from a religious point of view, it depends on how much the leaders of Japan and the U.S. as well as super-rich people in the world would resist the reign of Mammon if not welcome the reign of the God, since they are not the Pope.



(Do you know a difference between a hero and a proud man? A proud man cannot be a hero necessarily; and a hero cannot be a proud man sometimes. Choose a humble believer rather than a proud but bogus hero.

http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/movie/proudones.html )



Mar 11:26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

MOBY DICKS

MOBY DICKS


If you don't forgive your enemy, you might end up as another Captain Ahab.

Jesus Christ never called the Roman Empire his Moby Dick.

I never call anything and/or anybody my Moby Dick.


SECTION I: Mr. Obama and "Moby Dick"

Let’s check 50 facts we have to know about next U.S. President Mr. Barack Obama:

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Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know
By Jon Swaine
Last Updated: 3:40PM GMT 11 Nov 2008

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books
• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine
• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)
• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire
• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers
• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso
• His speciality as a cook is chilli
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/article3401168.ece
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Now we have confirmed that Mr. Obama’s favourite book is “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville.

It is understandable, since he spent his early years in the Pacific Region where American whaling industry was so thriving in the 19the century.



SECTION II: Mr. Rove and "Moby Dick"

On the last Sunday, they aired the interview with Mr. Karl Rove. When Mr. Soichiro Tahara flew to Washington D.C. to hold the interview with President Mr. Bush, he also met with Mr. Karl Rove. Mr. Tahara introduced the video of his interviewing Mr. Rove in the same TV program as the one where he presented the interview with the President.

--------------------------------------------
Rove: 'I'm Moby Dick'

'I'm Moby Dick'
In statements, congressional Democrats assailed Rove — "architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided," in the words of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — with some implying that his leaving is tied to the bicameral congressional hearings about the controversy involving the fired U.S. attorneys...

"It's not figured in my decision, no," Rove said, adding that he's "realistic enough to understand that the subpoenas are going to keep flying my way. I'm Moby Dick, and we've got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab — so, they're going to keep coming."

…Rove said he had "no idea" as to what he will do next. "I'd like to teach, eventually," he told reporters, "but in the meantime, I need to make some money."

Rove, who never graduated from college, joked that he has "an employment record that I think would be attractive to any employer. I've worked in an industrial kitchen in a hospital; I've waited tables; I've worked in convenience stores and have been robbed at the point of a gun twice; I've pumped gas; I've babysat; I've cut lawns; I've delivered newspapers."

He added seriously that "the president has encouraged me to write a book. I will do a book…"

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3475995&page=1
--------------------------------------------

Indeed, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq looked like Moby Dick. President George W. Bush was a kind of Captain Ahab, though so successful in technical terms of the war between the Bush Administration and the Saddam Hussein Administration.

But, President-elect Mr. Obama might also start to act like Captain Ahab with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Summers as his aids.

In that case, who or what is Moby Dick?



SECTION III: THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

Now look around. Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf have been economically so thriving.

However, in the west, Israel is still militarily suppressing Arabs. In the north, Iraq is still in a state of a civil war. In the east, Iran is playing a role of a mortal enemy of America; Afghanistan is in the middle of a war with NATO soldiers and the Taliban/Al Qaeda fighters directly exchanging fires over poppy fields or barren lands; and Pakistan is still in the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In the south, Saudi Arabia is yet to arrest Mr. Osama bin Laden, and the sea in the south of the Arabian Peninsula is full of pirates.

But, Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf have been economically so thriving, since the Bush Administration launched the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2001.

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January 22, 2002
Moby-Dick and the War on Al-Qaeda
Remember the Pequod!
By Brendan Cooney

…It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I cannot tell why this was exactly…

Chapter One
Moby-Dick
…


From a sociobiological perspective, the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack suggests is either the predominance of the face-saving urge among humans or, more gravely, that those without good self-monitoring will eventually be selected out of the population. That is, unless the United States snaps out of its sense of indomitability, it may be doomed to follow the Pequod to the bottom of the indifferent sea….

But, as Faulkner points out, Ahab is disregarding his own people in taking his ship down with him. Likewise, as hatred of America surely will intensify around the world in reaction to U.S. terrorist-hunting, Bush is taking all of us down with him.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cooney1.html
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Mr. Barack Obama might become more Ahab than Mr. George W. Bush was.

It is so, since the war in Afghanistan might not yet enter the main stage.

It is so, since financially emerging Islamic nations around the Persian Gulf seem to have no intentions at all to cooperate in putting an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Islamic nations might still want the U.S. to act like Ahab though Moby Dick is not in Afghanistan and Iraq any more.

And, if they are another Moby Dick themselves another Ahab cannot still identify, it is no wonder, since everybody from Israel to the south of the Arabian Peninsula might simply like to see the new Ahab advancing to Afghanistan for more real than the old Ahab.

**********************************************************

If Wall Street is Moby Dick, who is Captain Ahab?




(Yet, there is no Moby Dick for me. I don’t even care administrative vice ministers of the Japanese Government. I have been just watching TV news programs since they look like a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances, Mlles. Or do you like so much the Pequod named after a tribe name of native Americans if not the native French?

http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/images/sc4_7_1.mid

Source: http://www.hpmix.com/home/kitano/C4_3.htm#9)



Joh 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

Joh 11:26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY

(Night Fuji on November 23, 2008; Click to enlarge.)



FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY


Yesterday, Sunday, it was already 4 p.m. and getting dark.

Yet, I took a routine course via a post office to the holy river side.

Around 5 p.m. the sky was getting so dark and around 5:30 p.m. I was watching Venus and Jupiter, as Mt. Fuji was almost on the linear line linking the two overwhelmingly bright planets in the evening sky westward over the Kanto Plain in this deep autumn.


SECTION I: Terror in Tokyo

The middle-aged Japanese man who killed a former administrative vice minister of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and his wife sent a message via the Internet to a TV station in Tokyo prior to surrendering himself to the police.

The man, living alone without a job according to media reports, claimed that the Ministry kills half a million cats and dogs every year when keepers abandon them or the public office forces them to do so, which he cannot tolerate.

He also emphasized that it was not terror and he had no intention to run away and hide.

On the other hand, one bureaucrat of the Japanese Government wrote in his blog that an official should be allowed to wear a mask and use a pseudonym at work on duty to hide his identification for his safety.

(http://www.seri.sakura.ne.jp/~branch/diary.shtml )

Yet, as the culprit was arrested, the elite bureaucrat is now mostly wondering if a lucrative offer of a new post will be made to him in the near future as usual.



SECTION II: Hillary as Secretary of State

Will the new position make Mrs. Clinton richer?

Or will the decision to include Mrs. Clinton in the Cabinet make Mr. Obama look more thoughtful?

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THE BIG QUESTION, Nov. 21 — ATR President Grover Norquist
The Big Question for Friday, Nov. 21: Will Hillary Clinton work well as a member of President-elect Obama’s cabinet if she is selected to run the State Department? (See all responses here.)

Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform: Having deposed the heir apparent in the 2008 elections, Obama is very generous to bring Hillary into his cabinet. Here he mirrors the generosity of Julius Cesar who unlike Sulla refused to engage in retribution and accepted into his government men such as Cicero, Brutus and Cassius.

http://blog.thehill.com/the-big-question-nov-21-grover-norquist/
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Yes, Brutus is also well known in Japan, too.


SECTION III: "Thank You Sir, Your Majesty President"

On this Sunday morning, I unusually watched a political discussion program on TV moderated by Mr. Soichiro Tahara, the No. 1 veteran TV journalist in Japan.

To my surprise, they showed a video of Mr. Tahara’s interviewing President Mr. George W. Bush at the White House that had been conducted just before the President’s flying to Peru for the APEC meeting held yesterday or so.

As Mr. Tahara is fairly older than President Mr. Bush, his speaking very Japanese English did not look like irreverent behavior at all before the American President.

At the end of the interview, Mr. Tahara declared the end of the session, saying, “OK!”

Then the President replied, “Thank you, sir!”

Mr. Tahara said in the live TV program yesterday, “President Bush was a nice guy.”

*********************************************

This morning the U.S. military radio station situated around Tokyo broadcast a joke show on the bailout plan for the Big Three auto manufacturers.

Indeed, if the U.S. Congress ordered and purchased from the Big Three cars and vehicles with the budget of $25 billion and distributed them to voters in every constituency, the Big Three would get profits, voters would get new cars for free, and people in the Congress would be reelected receiving so much appreciation.

Anyway Iraq is the oldest home town for Christians in the world today, since Abraham’s brother died in a great city of southern Iraq 4016 years ago, in my humble presumption.

It is not a car but a war that would test a navigator capability of Mr. Barack Obama, the next U.S. President.


Gen 11:24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:

Gen 11:25 And Nahor lived after he begat Terah an hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters.

Gen 11:26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Gen 11:27 Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.

Gen 11:28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.