No Denial:Top BIODIESEL Co. Dying? Fab USAnet Debut:RoyalPains, Support OBAMA-StopIsrael Petition

This week I did something I have never done before. No, it was not something disgusting like winning a pie eating contest.

Okay, maybe I have done it before and I just don´t remember it, but this seemed important enough to get behind and PUSH pretty hard.

As you know, President Barack Obama spoke in Cairo this past week. He was a fairly huge hit, even, I think, in the minds of the Republicans who want to think it was not. Barack Hussein Obama though he likes to joke that the Irish nation tries to claim him by adding the apostrophe into his last name to make him an "O´bama" at least temporarily. Well, inside America, you don´t hear the President claim his middle name for fear of political backlash, like the Republican´s tried to make of it during the election campaign last year. This week, in Egypt, he not only was introduced by his full name, he proudly claimed his heritage as "son of a Muslim father, from Kenya" as well as "several generations" of Muslim´s before that.

The clapping and cheering was thunderous from the Egyptian audience, including at least one person who, in a quieter moment, yelled out, "We love you!" to the visiting President. By the time he had finished speaking (or rather, by the time I had finished listening, because I am told that it happened "live" at around 3:00 AM EDT, and one of my partners (who worked on the Obama campaign) actually woke up to watch it LIVE, via the internet) I was ready to shout the same thing.

The entire text of his 55 minute speech is available here, on WhiteHouse.gov, but there were several important bits that are worth pointing out, in case your local "late news" didn´t highlight them for you properly. President Obama openly acknowledged that at least one source of resentment among Arabs and Islamic relative to the US was the "colonialists" exploitative approach to Arab and Islamic nations for too long and, "a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations." He also referred to, "tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims," meaning mainly al-Quaeda and the September 11, 2001 attack on the USA, clearly indicating that neither he nor his country felt that the US was at war with Islam, just that violent minority. But it was also a well planned and executed speech, that outlined new policy. Though many Washington pundits claimed it did not. There were some specific words there that hadn´t been heard before (or at least not recently) from a US President. He told Hamas that it would HAVE to allow that Israel had a right to exist, that a 2 state solution was the only practical solution. He also, as was mentioned on Washington Week on PBS "While Mr. Obama emphasized that America´s bond with Israel was ´unbreakable,´ he spoke in equally powerful terms of the Palestinian people, describing their plight as "intolerable" after 60 years of statelessness, and twice referring to "Palestine" in a way that put Palestinians on parallel footing with Israelis." He also called for immediate cessation of constructions of Israeli "settlements" in the "occupied territory", which riled conservatives in Israel, but also the Israel´s conservative ruling party and Prime Minister.

So, what did I do (quite clearly it was not watching television, and in fact I went into my office and I forwarded a plea from the Arizona wing of the Democratic party to sign petition in support of the President´s insistence that Israel stop building new settlements on Palestinian land. I sent it out to half my relatives and several friends, especially those in Canada, because the form actually took into account that some people who would want to express their support might be living not only outside Arizona, but in other countries.

I have taken up a good deal of your time to tell you this story. It really is "out of character" (up to this point in my life, who knows, maybe this will be a "flexion point") to ask anyone to sign any petition in support of anything. This time, an exception, I think is important enough to violate my own rules against it, because I think we need to REALLY EMPHASIZE to the Israeli Government, that there is a real chance for peace in Israel and Palestine in the very near future. A chance for a lasting peace with multinational support from not only the Arab world, but the rest of the world as well, but that they HAVE to make this reasonable and sensible gesture to get the ball rolling. So, if I have persuaded you, or you just agree, please go HERE, and sign your name added to the tens of thousands who already have. It may not create immediate and universal world peace, but it will, in the words of John Lennon, "give peace a chance."

I did some actual "investigative journalism" (well, for me, on my scale, it was) looking into the rumor that one of the leading biodiesel from algae companies may be closing up shop. I still can´t say for certain how close the rumors are to true. What I did find was another column that claimed to be quoting from an email from the former, interim CEO of the company, Bob Metcalfe (yes, really, THAT Bob Metcalfe who is personally credited with creating the "ethernet" protocol that lead to almost all computer networking in the world today) (He´s now a venture capitalist having created and sold one of the largest computer networking companies in the world.) Perhaps that columnist is an old friend of Bob´s and Bob might have been "incautious" about "speaking" to such an old friend, but when I wrote to him he replied that he "could not" talk about it. Since the company is a publicly traded company (albeit on the Bulletin Boards not one of the major exchanges) as an "insider" he has an obligation to not say anything. One might infer something from Bob´s response, but one would do so at one´s own peril, since Bob is a man of integrity and would be bound by his obligations not to say anything even if the rumor was NOT true, too. I am sorry that I have no more to report than that. I am also pleased that we see an extremely successful business man, world renowned even, and he is too ethical to "leak" a story. There has been a shortage of those sorts of persons in the upper echelons of business in the past couple of decades.

Having TiVo´d the season opening episode of USA Network's Burn Notice this week, we were distressed to discover as we polished it off that the show contained a promo for a show that was to follow immediately, and we hadn´t set up to TiVo that, so the show was three quarters over already. We dropped everything, and dashed over there to find that, in fact, the show was (in typical cable network fashion) not observing strict episode ending times, and was, in fact, a half hour from the conclusion, so we watched what we could.

Why did I drag you though all the dirty details of that? Well, that´s the way I write, but also because again the actions this prompted were a little unusual. We set up Royal Pains on a TiVo "season pass" and then double checked that it would record the episode we had already watched, in part. It did, and we WATCHED THE WHOLE THING, AGAIN! And boy, oh boy, were we DEILGHTED! Royal Pains was anything but a pain to watch. It was funny and well crafted, the plots took all sorts of unexpected twists, and the characters were delightful too. The premise is a little like, "Magnum PI moves to The Hamptons of Long Island", except that our intrepid hero is a "Dr. Hank" played by the very charming (and handsome ?) Mark Feuerstein a veteran of many, many guest starring roles, including long runs in some series like when he was Senate Majority Counsel Cliff Calley on West Wing . A terrific guest star as a socialite who is constantly under-re-construction, Christine Ebersole adds just the right touch of real glamour to all the mansions and beaches. Another fine performance is by Ezra Miller as a highly self-reliant, 16 year old heir to billions, who needs the help of Feuerstein´s "Concierge Doctor" character "Hank" (aka Dr. Lawson) but he prefers the informal first name basis. It is not quite the "slobs versus the snobs" comedy you might expect, and indeed the classiest character so far is Dr. Lawson´s would-be Physician´s Assistant named Divya, played more than ably by Reshma Shetty (pictured above). I do hope the writers and producers find a good deal more depth and some less annoying quirks for the comic brother sidekick played by Paulo Costanza, and unlike the missing millionaire in Magnum PI the creators have invented a really interesting mysterious billionaire in the most amazing "house" I have ever seen (it looks like San Simeon with better coordinated architecture) who actually played a significant role (adeptly portrayed by Campbell Scott) in the plot of the pilot episode.

If you are old enough to remember how refreshing Tom Selleck was in the first few episodes of producer/creator Don Bellisario´s Magnum PI you may understand why I feel such gushing enthusiasm for this new USA Network series. If you are not that old, imagine putting on an old pair of favorite jeans that fell off a hanger and got lost in the back of your closet a year ago, AND finding a hundred dollar bill in the pocket.