You stay classy....

fear-mongering GOP pols. It's nice that politicians you don't like are on a par with terrorists. Cheers!

Obama legitimates Bush

Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize was another step in President Obama diminishing the space between himself and President George W. Bush. While he campaigned as a reformer, his promises, particularly on foreign policy, were so vague as to be meaningless. Hence these actions are not particularly surprising. However they are nonetheless disappointing as he confirms my worst suspicions about the course of his presidency. President Obama said in his remarks accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that America has underwritten security for the world over the past 60 years. I guess the President forgot to ask Mohammed Mossadeq, Guatemala, Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among others. President Obama also claims waging war is a means of securing future peace. So eight years in Afghanistan isn't long enough to secure peace in Afghanistan so perhaps 35 years will be enough? Would one more death in Iraq secure greater security there? No. Is there a compelling national interest for continued US presence and troops in Afghanistan? No. Is the US presence there ensuring further, understandable antagonism toward the US in the future? Yes. I never believed Obama was an agent of change because he was Wall Street's favorite son. Until there is campaign finance reform, none of this will change.

global warming

is fake say flood victims in Saudi Arabia.

complacent Obama fans

There are many WASP-y Obama supporters out there for whom the election of President Obama was not particularly significant insofar as he represented a rebuff to the insular, secretive, big-business friendly W presidency but too much, because he wasn't George W. Bush. Too many people voted for President Obama simply because they were so (understandably) sick of the increasingly brazen corruption which typified W's leadership.

However, voting for someone because they aren't the worst guy ever isn't much of an endorsement of the new guy. It's not saying much to remove us from the seventh circle of hell and improve things a little bit. If those are the standards by which we define success, well, our "leaders" will continually fail to reach the standards of ethical, responsible leadership which the people of America should expect. But worse than the damning with faint praise is the fact that President Obama has doubled down on the secrecy of the Bush administration by abrogating his promise that he would veto any bill upholding telecom immunity. Obama has empowered the same financial advisors who facilitated the treasonous too big to fail bailouts at the end of Bush's second term. And we continue to bomb our "ally". With friends like that, who needs enemies? That brings me to this. Too many of my nice, urbane, yuppie college friends are not sufficiently upset, if they bought into the claims of Obama that he would change things, that he is much too content with same as it ever was. He hasn't empowered people, but is run by the same interests that have run politics in the US for a long time. Fine, if you want to criticize Bush, totally reasonable, but is Obama living up to the hype? When you promote yourself, and win awards for a campaign promoting change, you should be more than just talk.

in spite of the name of this blog.....

sometimes good things happen. I guess since it was Thanksgiving yesterday, this is as good a time as any to post a more upbeat post. I am, believe it or not, an optimist. I'm just a hard-nosed one. This quote from Oscar Wilde sums up my outlook fairly well: "We are all laying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." It seems too many people take pleasure in the shortcomings and failures of their fellow man and use man's many failures to validate their own failure to try and make the world better. People see people's failures but not their successes? Why is that? Sure people screw up, but they also do things right, and well. Why can't people focus on those things rather than the negative? .

Anyway, I was at the airport the other day, flying back to the States for Thanksgiving and we had a starter problem on one of the engines, discovered only when we were taxiing down the runway to take off. So while the captain learned of this problem, we of course sat there helplessly, in the plane, for about an hour and a half or maybe even two, until they learned that the replacement part would have to be shipped from Japan. Finally we were told that because this part wouldn't be arriving any time soon that we'd have to go back into the airport. So back everyone trooped, having to return THROUGH customs because we had cleared once. It was a long, winding trip back to the terminal and at one point we had to descend an escalator to wait in a small area in front of an automatic double doors so that we could take a shuttle back. So as people came down the escalator, they naturally didn't move particularly quickly forward, away from the escalator. People would move a little ways and then stand there, because...well, why bother? However, it became apparent that if we didn't all move a decent ways forward from the bottom of the escalator after coming down it, that people coming down it would bump into the people who'd just come down and there could potentially be a bit of a build-up of people. Some people noticed this fairly early and said quite clearly and forcefully that people should move forward. There were probably 150 or so people waiting in an area around 20' by 30' and so it was imperative that people did move once they got down the escalator. Once folks got down to the bottom, we had to stand around for about 15 minutes, having sat on the plane for a couple of hours with no water, many folks having connections put in jeopardy or having missed them altogether.

However, there at the bottom of the escalator, folks stood around, joked, people were polite to one another, no one pushed or dissed anyone, and everyone was a good human, just waiting for our shuttle bus to take us back to the terminal so that we could make new reservations for our flights to wherever we were going. And there were people of every race-black, white, Asian, Latino. It ain't much, but it's something.

Meet the new boss

same as the old boss

15 Signs of the Unraveling of Society

Things fall apart the center cannot hold (Keats). Guns proliferating, jobs lost, health care has disappeared, continuing and accelerating mortgage foreclosure. Perfect storm for chaos.