Visiting Day at Day Camp

Today is visiting day at day camp. Ok, it is visiting dinner, really.

I still remember my parents coming for visiting days when I was at sleep away camp. I remember the summer my mother went gray. It was 3-1/2 weeks since I had seen my parents and I wondered who were those odd people waving at me. Maybe it was my mother’s gray, my father’s checked pants and white shoes combo or the red keds (the really wimpy kind — not the now-preppy-cool kind) my mom wore. It was probably the whole picture that made me weak in the knees.

Luckily, my son saw us this morning so the trauma should be muted. More later.

Dick Cheney demeans us all

Cheney unlawfully withheld information from the Congress, violated the rights of our fellow citizens and approved torture. We regularly incarcerate people for crimes lesser than the ones he committed. How is this different from the goings-on in third world nations that we regularly deride as having corrupt governments? Thank you, Dick Cheney, for putting us on the same level as a country ruled by a belligerent and paranoid dictator.

China

Why do we refer to that vast expanse and culturally diverse land simply as “China”? Each region is so distinct, with its cultural, tribal and religious nuances and, as we see in the news, bloody clashes. I know nothing about China, but it seems that describing China without at least specifying a region is a little like trying to describe all of the Americas in one thought. And we know that there is no unifying generality that applies to all of the Americas.

We need to understand China, because in this world it is hard to be so ignorant of 1 billion people.

Thought for the day, July 9, 2009

Obama is back on the hot seat now that Jacko is dead, Sarah Palin is the Political Undead and Gov. Sanford got a “get out of jail free” card.  Now the pundits are focused on the economy and why Obama hasn’t produced miracles yet. 

If I were Obama, I would hope that another pop icon or political enigma hogs the airwaves for at least 6 months.

Second thought of the day, July 8, 2009

A (former, I hope) CIA analyst  appeared on the Glenn Beck show and said the best thing for us is if Bin Laden attacked us again so that the government would finally protect us. (ok, set aside the logical flaws for a moment.)

If this lunatic were, let’s say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and not some nerdy white guy, would MSNBC be the only news outlet covering this?  If Bush were in power, would the guy be on his way to Gitmo?

Thought for today, July 8, 2009

Gov. Sanford is really lucky.

Just when it looked like he could never recover, Michael Jackson died and Sarah Palin resigned.

And Michael Jackson is still dead (as is Generalissimo Francisco Franco) and will presumably stop making news some time soon.

But Sarah Palin will forever make headlines and late night joke lines and blogoshpere fodder. She is the Political Undead.

Sanford owes her big.