International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Try to remember:

*a very, very popular leader

*clear human targets of blame for their problems with a strong sense of national humilation

*past miltary dominance

*unwillingness to respect dissent or disagreement

*preoccupation with the unfairness of the decisions of past administrations – bitterness

*preoccupation with their reputation in the world

*a tanking economy

*massive spending on infrastructure

*troops in combat on several foreign fronts

*a commitment to change

*an inability or unwillingness to question themselves

* very intelligent respectable people loved this leader

*they loved their children and wanted a better future

Never forget

Diddly’s torture policy

Hi friends,

I just want to be clear. If anyone is planning to hurt anyone I care about, or kidnaps them or something, and you are likely  to have information that will help me get my loved one to safety – I will torture you to get that information when other methods fail.

And I invite you to torture me under the same circumstances. I’ll forgive you if you were wrong about me having info.

I hope you will forgive me if I I was wrong about you.

But the forgiveness is beside  the point I want to make here..

I will torture you.

Maybe someday I can be as wonderful as Obama, and never be able to imagine  a situation where I would torture someone.

Fear of real debate as Americans swoon over the hope of ‘unity’

Giving banks $700 billion dollars makes a lot of us nervous. What is really unnerving is the fact that there was no willingness on the part of the US government to direct the banks about what they were to do with the money. In other words, as many of these banks are already fiscally insolvent, they are not going to dispense the money  and make it available to people in need of credit if all they are trying to do is try to prolong their own existence. They’d have to be forced to do so by a greater power. The greater power could have been the terms of a contract with the US government, but no real negotiation took place.

Paul Krugman calls it fear of the N- word - nationalization. I call it fear of making a REAL DECISION by Republicans or Democrats.

  If the banks are going to take taxpayer money in the form of a so-called stimulus package, then representatives of those taxpayers should have all the rights and responsibilities of control over that money, or it ought to have been NO DEAL. Nationalization or nothing.  If our government representatives were unwilling to take on that responsibility, than they  should not have been giving away the money to banks who are bound to have conflicting interests that will not serve the American people.   We have to choose one way, and see if it works. If it doesn’t, we try something else – like Bush and his SURGE in Iraq. There was no real debate between Democrats and Republicans on this issue.  We needed a winner and a loser in the debate, rather than a compromise that allows everyone to keep pointing the finger elsewhere when things don’t work out.

Ask  nobel prize winner Paul Krugman – a very liberal economist:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/opinion/19krugman.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Many of Bush’s policies will not be discarded by Obama

We will be well served by many of Bush’s bold policies for years to come. We take for granted that we have not had a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. This was his stated mission after 9/11, and he accomplished it. You can’t take that away from him. His boldness also had its downside. Look before you leap is as true as he who hesitates is lost.  Many think that more people hate America now, and that is what makes us unsafe. They also said that about Israel when it finally responded to daily rocket attacks from Gaza. I hope we learn lessons about what makes people feel the need to attack us, and remedy those problems if we can, but I do not believe one of those lessons is to be passive in the face of attack. Bush got that – at least. He leaves Obama the tools he needs to continue doing his primary job as President – keep Americans safe.

    From the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. :

After the Clinton decade in which al Qaeda and proliferation went unchallenged, the Bush Presidency had to scramble to defend against a terror threat that with WMD could kill millions of Americans. His decision to fight this as a “war,” and to marshal the means attendant to war, has been controversial and expensive. But like Harry Truman’s decisions at the onset of the Cold War, we suspect more of his policy will survive than his many critics now admit.

Just chalkin’

You’ve probably chalked, just didn’t know it.

I didn’t either, until Reena asked me at 2:30 am after I came back in our room after going to the bathroom, and she asked me if I wanted to chalk. It is somewhere between talk and chat.

So we chalked.

R: It is so cold. I want to go to the Bahamas. Where do you want to go?

W: I just want to be able to take a crap ( I was constipated)

R: I guess that would feel warm too. I guess. Why don’t you have some plum juice?

W: I think you mean prune juice.

R: Aren’t prunes dried plums?

W: I think they are.

R: So there you go.

W: I’ll never find plum juice at the supermarket.

R: Well, they should make it. It is juicier.

W:  Why are we talking about this?

R: I just wanted to go to the Bahamas.

Bad Baby Decision

When our 2 year old Josie does something naughty, like throw her bowl or smack the dog, Reena will say, “that’s a bad baby decision.” Josie gets this pensive look while she scans her environment for other things to throw or hit.

People cut me off in traffic now, I no longer flip them off, I just  hope they can read my lips,

“Bad baby decision …

 

 

 

you mother fucker”

Obama’s comedy jam

I heard a hilarious skit on HJY’s Paul and AL show of Obama. Check it our here – just scroll down to ‘Obama comedy’:

http://whjy.com/cc-common/podcast.html

These guys were merciless with Senator Clairborne Pell, so if you want political correctness, you won’t find it here. Hilarious.

Update on Xavier’s indoor soccer

Xavier’s indoor soccer team started a new session. They switched from B-league to C-league. They were winless in B-league, and pretty demoralized. They were thrilled to tie West Warwick 6-6 today. Xavier played well at defense.

I found a good liberal blog

I think I found a good liberal blog. Check it out.

http://taylormarsh.com

I love this line about US entry into the Iraq War:

The American public’s lazy trust revealed a soft inner core allowing belief to replace facts and truth.

At the core of everybody’s rage at Bush should be shame at ourselves. I was for the war. I was lazy and trusting. Anybody else willing to admit that? Hello out there!

Obama wasn’t lazy and trusting, and he used that moment of good judgement as a stirrup to get on that horse to the Whitehouse. And that horse was America’s  self-righteous rage at Bush.

If we can move past this ‘anger’ stage of our grief about the Iraq War, I think we ought to organize a national day of apology to the family’s of dead American soldiers marking our collective lazy gullibility that got us into the war.  Maybe then we can look back at these years and those to whom it applies can see their  Bush Derangement Syndrome for what it was – a way to distract ourselves from our own culpability by hyperfocusing on Bush’s.  

We will be culpable again if we don’t hold Obama to a higher standard than we did Bush right after 9/11. It has the same feel to me – the ‘need’ we have to believe in him because these are scary times. Conservatives needed to demand more of Bush then, and liberals need to demand more of Obama now.