We need a real investigation of 9/11. We need a real investigation of the entire Homeland Security apparatus. We will not get this with Joe Lieberman in charge: we will get more of the same.

Kabuki? More like Off-Off-Off-Broadway.

When it comes to Lieberman or other issues we differ as to what is to be done. I see him as an ant and wonder if it is necessary to squash him. I step on ants when they come inside my house but leave them alone outside. I guess Lieberman came in the house and should be squashed, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. Indeed the secret ballot may be more to protect the Senator voters from us rather than him.

So what to do? How do we promote ourselves from peasants to people whose voice matters?

How are you? If you can, try to stop by some time when you’re in town. It’d be great to see you.

In the meantime, check this out. I just posted a whole lot of China photos to my flickr last night. That’s where we were during the election (and yes, we all voted by mail before heading over there!). But it’s such a different experience being on the other side of the world while something so momentous was happening here.

Tuesday night here was already Wednesday afternoon there. As it happened, we were visiting a very poor, though quite wonderful, temple that day, located on the same site where the ninth century nun Moshan had lived and taught. Apparently, she was the first woman acknowledged as a dharma successor in the Ch’an tradition, and just as unusually she accepted both men and women as students. It was a rainy day. We had lunch with the abbess (amazing good food), then sat for a while in the zendo with the drip-drip of water leaking in through the roof. And just as we went back outside, Andy Ferguson (who arranges these pilgrimages) came up from the bus calling, “Obama is giving his acceptance speech!” It was so moving being there in that place linked to such a distant past, a place all the more beautiful for how plain and simple it is, with the air so fresh and the mountains full of mist and rain. Notwithstanding my comments above, it was very powerful, and I am profoundly grateful for what our country did while I was out there in the world (and for what you’re doing here, as well).

While researching Fuller’s final resting site (Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA), I learned behind his grave marker there is a stone carving with the words “CALL ME TRIMTAB”.
What is Trim Tab?

Here’s Bucky in his own words (according to Wikipedia’s quote of Buckminster’s 1972 Playboy interview:

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.

So I said, call me Trim Tab.

The Senate might be the rudder in this case, but we are the trim tabs.

As a citizen of New Orleans Sen. Lieberman’s lack of follow through on his promises of investigations into Katrina are a disgrace. The citizens of the country deserve to know what happend. I deserve to know what happend so I can make an informed judgement as to whether or not Katrina could happen again.

Adding to the fundamental lack of basic performace of the job of Committee Chair the devisive and uncalled for attacks on our President Elect during the recent election, I am compelled to implore you to remove Sen. Lieberman of his Chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

We have observed the operation of various other committees under their respective chairmen and there is no comparison with Joe Lieberman. He is a failure with regard to the Homeland Security Committee.

I have seen Sen Bayh on TV indicating the caucus can remove him later if it wishes. While this may be the case, I fear that if any real investigation is underway at that point that your caucus will be accused of obstruction of some sort. The appearace of impropriety must not be allowed to prevail in the Senate for the body is far too important to the overall governance of our nation. Similarly, the Homeland Security Committee is far too important to be entrusted to a person who’s execution of its chairmanship has been lackluster and furthermore whose basic views of the state of our nation is diametrically opposed to those of our caucus.

Please relieve Sen. Lieberman of his Chairmanship on Homeland Security and bestow on him another chairmanship that he would be more amenable to conducting faithfully and forcefully.

Thank you for your consideration.