Before leaving the G-20 meetings in Cannes, France, President Obama joined with French President Sarkozy to pay tribute to the two countries’ alliance and celebrate the successful intervention in Libya that ended the rule of Moammar Gadhafi.

“Every man and woman in uniform who participated in this effort can know that you have accomplished every objective,” Obama said. “Today, the Libyan people have liberated their country and begun to forge their own future.”

Obama, who launched the Libyan mission amid widespread Republican criticism, had good reasons to greet Gadhafi’s overthrow with relief. And all hope that democracy can take root. But once the U.S. intervenes in an internal foreign dispute, we bear greater responsibility for the outcome. Before the “war of choice” on Iraq, former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President Bush about the “Pottery Barn rule: If you break it, you own it.”

That’s why the U.S. and its allies must respond to the credible reports of terrible violence being wreaked on dark-skinned Libyans by the victors.

I know a lot of folks don't take me seriously, because I don't have the money machine behind me that Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama, but but here's my two cents again. I am not rich. I am not owned by the corporations or by the political machine. I am of the working folk, like you. Not a Wall Street mouthpiece robed in false promises of populism. Not an Ivy League-educated lawyer with a web of powerful and dangerous connections.

I am not a lawyer, but I have been reading the Law now for years... like another man you may have heard of... his name was Abraham Lincoln.

I am tired of our current President and our current Congress tearing down our world. Every four years a new President come into office, and every four years, all the President does is work for the rich and for the war machine. And they continue to destroy and despoil our planet.

The crushing defeat Ohio's working people dealt 1% politicians this week has critical implications for a whole other issue---election protection.

In a voting process that might otherwise have been stolen, a concerted effort by citizens committed to democracy---NOT the Democratic Party---guaranteed an official Ohio tally that finally squares with reality. The defeat of millionaire Republican Governor John Kasich's union-busting Issue 2 by more than 20% actually squared with exit polling and other reliable political indicators.

In the 2008 election, Richard Charnin has demonstrated how there was a more than 5% shift towards the Republican presidential candidates John McCain than predicted by the highly accurate exit polls, the gold standard for detecting election fraud. In Ohio’s 2010 election, exit polls revealed a 5.4% unexplained “red shift” towards the Republican Party. The shift led to the defeat of Democratic Governor Ted Strickland as well as Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers In the South, 1865 - 1960
By Rebecca Sharpless
University of North Carolina Press
182 pages, Notes, Index
Though I have not read The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, I have seen the movie. It has unleashed furious criticism, especially in the black blogosphere. The most common criticism is that The Help sanitizes an important and painful part of African American history: the role of black female domestics in white homes. Not to worry, though: the real story has been told, and more than admirably, in Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens.

Sharpless explores three issues in relation to black female domestics: the manner in which they moved from slavery to paid employment as domestics; how the women survived the brutal discrimination, racism and poor working conditions common to their roles, and the myths and stereotypes surrounding African American female cooks.

As the numerologists note our arrival at 11/11/11, our attention is better focused on this day as the anniversary of the end of the useless, worthless, horrifying war that turned so much of 20th Century into a twisted, violent mess. And on how we must prevent the same from happening to our shiny new millennium.

A superb route to that understanding comes through a modern masterpiece, TO END ALL WARS: A STORY OF LOYALTY AND REBELLION, 1914-8, by Adam Hochschild.

A seasoned author and social critic who helped found Mother Jones Magazine, Hochschild's page-turning account of the "Great War" in Great Britain is both a joy to read and a tragedy to digest.

Its glory lies in Adam's ability to penetrate the human core of the arrogance, foolishness and utter senselessness of a conflict that for no real reason killed at least ten million people outright and tens of millions more (including 500,000 in the US) by disease, most notably the influenza, which struck just prior to humankind's ability to mass-produce penicillin.