An Ikebana Arrangement From The Garden

I made this a few weeks ago using all home grown flowers and plants from our Cherry Grove garden.

Will The Real Obama Apppear In A Second Term?

Michael Moore has high hopes for an Obama second term:

I'm going to go with my optimistic side here (sorry, cynics, you know I love you) and imagine a Second Term Obama (and a Democratically-controlled Congress) who will go after all the good that our people deserve and put the power of our democracy back in our hands. There's good reason why the Right is terrified of a Second Term Obama because that is exactly what they think he'll do: the real Obama will appear and take us down the road to social justice and tolerance and a leveling of the economic playing field. For once, I'd like to say I agree with the Right -- and I sincerely hope their worst nightmare does come true.

2012 Election: For Progressives A Hobson's Choice

In regard to President Obama's acceptance speech, there was the good:

We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.

...and the bad:

I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission.

Well here Obama is talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he says that he wants to return to Clinton era marginal tax rates on wealthy Americans (39.6 for the highest incomes,) yet Simpson-Bowles advocates a top tax rate under 30 percent, combined with draconian cuts to Social Security and Medicare (the "cat food" proposal that would leave many senior citizens unable to afford to eat anything but pet food.) Now Mr. Obama, which is it? The bottom line is that progressives have no real choice in this election when it comes to economic justice. This is because neither Romney nor Obama is advocating for real reform, i.e. a return to pre-Reagan era progressive taxation rates, which is what the country needs to put our fiscal house in order and restore economic fairness to our society.

Greek Islands Cabin View

The view from our cabin on board the Celebrity Equinox as we sailed near Mykonos.

The Reason For The Enthusiasm Gap

The New York Times:

Democrats also have a limited amount of time left to persuade the nation to let them hold the White House and increase their position in Congress. If they don’t start talking about their fundamental principles, going beyond the easy sound bites, they will lose voters who are hoping for more.

What happened to the enthusiasm for Obama that propelled him into the white house four years ago? It's not that he has failed in many important ways to live up to his promised change we can believe in. Voters including Obama's former young enthusiastic supporters do not fault him for failing, they have lost enthusiasm for him because he didn't even try. He didn't even try for single payer health care. He didn't even try to deliver on his promise of transparency. He let Wall Street crooks off the hook; none have gone to jail for the excesses that caused our current economic malaise. He sent more American kids to Afghanistan to die instead of ending the war. In his eagerness to compromise with the Republican pigs in Congress, he offered to give away the store and sell out seniors, the middle class and the poor. That got him nowhere because the greedy social Darwinist Republicans cannot be satisfied until they have returned us to the obscene economic excesses not seen here since the nineteenth century. So now Obama finds himself needing to re-energize his base in a way that George W. Bush never had to. That's because Bush actually followed through on his promises to his base. So now the New York Times has it right: Obama and the Democrats had better start trumpeting their principles especially if they have any hope of re-capturing some of that lost enthusiasm from 2008. And this president needs to acknowledge his mistakes and re-assure Americans that he will be a more principled leader during the next four years.

Mitt Gordon Gekko Romney

Obama ran on "change" in 2008, but Mitt Romney represents a far more real and seismic shift in the American landscape. Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution, in which transactions are manufactured instead of products, wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity, and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured while American communities fall apart. The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It's a vision of society that's crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it's running for president, and it has a chance of winning. Perhaps that change is coming whether we like it or not. Perhaps Mitt Romney is the best man to manage the transition. But it seems a little early to vote for that kind of wholesale surrender.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz25WqI46hy

Cruise Finale: Palermo, Sicily

Our last port was Palermo, Sicily. We arrived in the morning and took a bus tour of the city, as well as a trip to nearby Monreale. In Monreale, the magnificent Norman cathedral contains the largest collection of Byzantine mosaics anywhere. They were crafted by master artisans from Constantinople in the 11th century. Both William the First and his son William the Second are buried in the cathedral. Those Norman kings not only conquered Sicily, but also England. Sicily is a conglomeration of many cultures, like Malta, though it was never a British colony. It became part of Italy around 1860, though the Sicilians still think of themselves as apart from the ‘continent’ or mainland of Italy. In Palermo we visited large Cathedral or Duomo, whose exterior shows the architectural styles of the Normans, Byzantine, the Gothic period, and the Baroque in its large dome. Inside, the Palermo Duomo is simply neo-classical, as it was changed in the early 19th century. We also managed to see the great opera house, the Teatro Massimo, which is the third largest opera in Europe, after Paris and Vienna. In the afternoon our ship the Equinox sailed for Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, where we will disembark. Jim had a wonderful time at the ‘splash party’ near the pool in the afternoon on Sunday. All the passengers wore swim suits and danced in light rain—our only rain on the trip. After the pool party we walked from the crowded Martini Bar down to the Silhouette Dining Room and had dinner with fellow passengers from many places: Brussels, L.A., Dallas and Chicago. Some of our companions we already knew, and others were new faces. But there’s an easy camaraderie on the ship and it’s usually easy to talk to our shipmates. Today we leave the Equinox with many memories of the Mediterranean. –Dan

Malta: A Golden Limestone Island

Pictures from the top: two photos of the harbor at Valletta, Malta; an alley in the old capital; the co-cathedral of St. John in Valletta; distant view of the city of Mdina. Saturday we returned to the unique island of Malta after a couple of decades. The golden glow of the limestone is wonderful, and makes this strange island-nation unusual. Malta’s history is a conglomerate of many European cultures: it was a prehistoric settlement, and was variously controlled by the ancient Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs, Normans, Spanish, the Knights of St.John and the English. The people have their own language (a cross between Spanish, Arabic and Italian) as well as speaking English, since this island was a former colony of the British crown. No doubt the reason for Malta’s many permutations was its importance as a strategic point in the Mediterranean, from ancient times through WW II. The Knights in particular left a rich architectural legacy of Renaissance and Baroque buildings in the former capital, Mdina and the current capital of Valletta. We took a full day tour of the island and saw some highlights. In the great and lavish Baroque co-Cathedral of St. John (religious seat of the Knights) are two works by Caravaggio, including his largest painting, “The Beheading of St. John.” All the drama that one admires so much about this wonderful Baroque artist exists in that masterpiece. There are magnificent views of the large harbor from the gardens in the city. We also drove to Neolithic ruins, and after an extensive lunch at a Radisson hotel in the countryside, we explored the older city of Mdina. The Cathedral in that town is the seat of the Archbishop. Our guide Fiorilla was charming and humorous and delighted in showing us her native island. We returned to the ship only a short time before departing for Sicily.--Dan

Cruising Fun.

Jim and Dan boating on the Bosphorus; a frozen blue Margarita poolside; Jim at the 70s disco tea dance.

Turkish Folk Dancing On Board

Friday we were at sea all day making our way from Istanbul to Malta. However, before we left Turkey we were treated to a performance by a Turkish folk dance troupe on board our ship. The dancers were talented and energetic and performed for almost an hour in costume in spite of the heat.