The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Politics

The Speech Nixon Never Had to Give

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This July marks the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Had tragedy struck President Nixon would have had to address the nation. This article discusses the speech that he would have given. It was entitled In the event of Moon disaster.

If Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had been stranded on the Moon, unable to return to Michael Collins’s orbiting Apollo 11 command ship, Nixon would have called their widows then addressed a horror-struck nation.

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace,” he would have told the watching millions.

These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

“These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

“They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

“In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.”

The President would have added: “In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.”

And in an allusion to Rupert Brooke’s First World War poem The Soldier, his concluding lines were to be: “For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

Sarkozy Calls Obama Weak

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This isn’t really the sort of response we want Obama to receive from other world leaders. OTOH, France hasn’t really been a significant world power for far longer than they care to admit. Take the criticism for what it is worth.

The US President is weak, the Spanish leader is dim, the German Chancellor is clinging on to France’s coat-tails and the head of the European Commission is irrelevant.

That, at any rate, is the world according to President Sarkozy, who has spent the week airing his unvarnished opinions of Barack Obama and an array of international politicians — abruptly ending France’s honeymoon with the US and needling Washington on several strategic issues.

In the latest in a stream of accounts from the Élysée Palace, Mr Sarkozy was quoted yesterday as telling an all-party group of MPs that Mr Obama was inexperienced and indecisive. “Obama has a subtle mind, very clever and very charismatic,” the French President said. “But he was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry. There are a certain number of things on which he has no position. And he is not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency.”

The US President had underperformed on climate change when they met, Mr Sarkozy said, according to an account of the MP’s session in the newspaper Libération. “I told him, ‘I don’t think that you have quite understood what we are doing on carbon dioxide’.”Mr Sarkozy was apparently irked by media reports that Mr Obama had saved the day in London by persuading President Hu of China to reach a compromise with France over tax havens. Mr Sarkozy’s version is that he shamed Mr Obama into action, telling him: “You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world.”

Taxday Tea Party Protest

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Is it just coincidence that as I began to write this post Fortunate Son started playing on iTunes. It fits my mood because I am angry at the finger pointers from both parties.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief,
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord,

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senators son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no,

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, dont they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

I have a long list of things that make me angry. I am angry about government waste. I am angry about the bailout, but let me be clear about my anger. I am angry at all parties. I am angry about the deregulation and lack of oversight that led to this place. I am angry about the cost of covering the huge mistakes and mismanagement of others.

I am angry about the idiotic remarks of those who take advantage of the rights/privileges they are afforded by living here and do not give back. I am angry because the finger pointers waste my time, my energy and my tax dollars by spewing out rhetoric about how bad the other side is.

Listen you ignorant monkeys, you are part of something bigger and greater than yourself. We pay taxes because it provides a government that helps to see that we have a functional infrastructure.

It pays for the roads that are used by truck drivers to deliver food to the groceries stores.
It pays for research for science that is used to find cures for cancer, for Parkinsons and other terminal illnesses.
It pays for a military that protects us from those who would harm us, be they pirates or others.
It pays so that our children can receive an education.

Damn, it wears me out reading so much garbage across the net. The blithering idiots who tell us that socialism is bad. Do you even understand what it is. Do you know what you are talking about or are you just repeating the crap that someone else spoon fed you.

The buffoons who are naive enough to believe that all people will be nice. George Will provides a good example in his latest column in Newsweek.

“The current president’s U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, was on Sunday television recently explaining why she thinks Iran, now several decades into its pursuit of nuclear weapons and close to consummation, might succumb to the siren song of sweet reason and retreat from success. Doing so, she said, would enable Iran “to be a responsible member of the international community”—perhaps not the highest priority for a regime that denies the Holocaust happened, and vows to complete it—and “enter the community of nations.” Otherwise Iran will face “the full force of the international community.”

Rice really thinks there is a community out there. To believe that is to believe, as liberals do, that harmony is humanity’s natural condition, so discord is a remediable defect in arrangements.”

I became an independent because I grew disenchanted with the labels and the “restrictions” that came with them. My issue is not with liberals or conservatives. My issue is with those that are so partisan they are unable to work with the other side. Their sole goal is to do whatever they can to thwart the other.

That is detrimental to all of us. So you’ll understand if I am less than enamored by the tea party protests. All that noise, we’ll see if they actually manage to do more than shout out cute slogans.

Saudi Arabian Hypocrisy

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So that wacky prince thinks that he can lecture President Obama about the peace process.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN — Relations between Arab nations and the United States hinge on American leaders living up to their rhetoric about commitment to lasting peace in the Mideast, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told CNN Saturday.”President Obama, in his statement yesterday, said that he’s genuinely making the effort to accomplish a peaceful resolution,” al-Faisal, who served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2007, told CNN’s Nic Robertson in an interview Friday.

“We’ve heard this before,” al-Faisal said. “We need to see implementation. We need to see facts on the ground change. We need to see rhetoric change. We need to see presence on the ground.”

He said he was encouraged by Obama’s appointment of George Mitchell as Mideast envoy, saying, “Mitchell comes with a track record of success.” But he suggested Mitchell spend some time in the region to make real progress.

“American envoys, when they’ve dealt with the Middle East, have always come and gone,” he said.

“I think it would be wise for Sen. Mitchell … to pitch his tent in Ramallah or in Jerusalem, let’s say, and spend a year, two, perhaps three years on the ground dealing with the daily aspects of making peace there.” The United States’ backing of Israel, in light of the latest Israeli military operations in Gaza, does not improve its standing in the Arab world, he said.

“What happened in Gaza, people have called it a tragedy,” al-Faisal said. “I’d go further and say it was a catastrophe in all aspects of that word. The killing and the destruction was so barbaric by Israel, and unprecedented in a such a small area like Gaza.

Hmm…The Arabic expression for bite me comes to mind. The chutzpah it takes to say this sort of stuff with a straight face is incredible. To place all of the blame on Israel and to wave his finger in Obama’s face is unmitigated gall.

It is really hard for me take any sort of Saudia Arabian peace initiative seriously. They are morally bankrupt, two faced and exceptionally intolerant to people who do not practice Islam. So when I see them try to lecture us or anyone about what we should do I roll my eyes.

Let’s take a quick look at a recent story about child marriage.

(CNN) — The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom’s top cleric saying that it’s OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

“It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. “A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she’s too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her.”

The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom in recent weeks.

Late last month, a Saudi judge refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.

This is sick and wrong. There is no justification for this. There is no spinning this to say that it is ok because it is culturally acceptable or religiously ok. Child sacrifiee and slavery once were considered to be acceptable and we don’t do that.

Want another example of their barbarism and why we cannot allow them to dictate morality. How about the time when the religious police murdered school girls fleeing a fire at their school.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

In a rare criticism of the kingdom’s powerful “mutaween” police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurredAccording to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.

One witness said he saw three policemen “beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya”.

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police – known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned “it is a sinful to approach them”.

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

Or what about the fact that 19 of the 911 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. The sad truth is that we can continue to cite chapter and verse about why the Saudis are among the last people to serve as arbiters of morality. Were it not for their oil money they would be a very poor and backwards nation with all of the relevance to the world that the Congo now holds.

If there is justice in this world we will witness the demise of the cash cow that has permitted these intolerant, small minded, bigots and promoters of terror to thrive.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Change is Coming

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Three weeks into the new year and I can tell you that I am still grumpy from the old one. Still have too many bills to pay and too few options. Tired of listening to people say that Bush is responsible for all of our problems. Tired of listening to people say that Obama is going to fix all of them. Tired of listening to Sarah Palin whine about whatever it is she is whining about. I am ready to turn on the television, open a newspaper and or surf the net without seeing her name.

Talked to the boys and confirmed that I am not the only curmudgeon feeling this way. But even if I were, I wouldn’t care. It is how I feel. Spent more than a few hours talking about such things over the weekend. A few of us got together and held a state of the union and discovered a few things.

We’re all ready to give up on women. every last one of us. The wives have gone out of their way to drive us to drink. There is a reason why clumps of hair keep falling out and we have knots in our necks. But I suppose that is only fair to say that the wives are telling similar stories among themselves and truth is that none of us are going to give on women.

To quote my friend John. “Jack, I love hanging out with you and talking to you is real easy. But it is much more fun to sleep with Kelly.”

John hadn’t quite finished his sentence when he realized how he had left himself open to all sorts of fun replies. Being a gentleman I told him that I agreed with him, it is much more fun to sleep with Kelly because she doesn’t snore.

On a more serious note, I suspect that a few more of the boys really are going to hang up their spikes and seek greener pastures. I find these conversations about troubled marriages to be troubling. I don’t really want to have give my opinion on whether they should stay or go. I think that it is the sort of conversation that is rife with pitfalls that I don’t want to fall into.

Every relationship is different and everybody has their own ideas about what they have to have and what they are willing to compromise upon. I can’t really tell anyone what to do, only what I’d do. I don’t like straddling the fence, but sometimes it is safer there.

If you wanted a list of complaints about these marriages I can provide it without trying too hard:

Not enough sex
Too much sex
Money problems
Different ideas about child rearing

I suspect that those are relatively universal problems that can crop up. But if you ask me the thing that I don’t hear any of them say is that their wives are their best friends or even good friends. Mostly they refer to them in a way that sounds more like a business partner that they occasionally have sexual relations with.

If I have any real advice about marriage to offer anyone it is that you need to like your partner. That is different than love and different than lust. If you don’t like them I don’t know how you are going to make it for the long haul.

Enough about all that. Here we are less than two hours into the Obama presidency and I wonder what we are going to see happen over the next four years. I am curious for any number of reasons. I suppose that part of it is because President Obama holds the title of first president that I consider to be a contemporary. As far as I am concerned he and I are pretty much part of the same generation.

It is kind of different. Until now I had always thought of the president as being either a really old man or closer to my parent’s generation then anything else. Maybe I really am getting older, who knows.

Obama- Realistic Expectations

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Less than two days left until we say goodbye to Dubya and set a new milestone by inaugurating Barack Obama as President of the United States of America. That is quite a mouthful, President of the United States of America.

You don’t have to spend much time looking around to see descriptions of the POTUS as being the most powerful man in the world. I’d say that it is relatively fair assessment of what comes with being POTUS. However I’d also say that it is not unlimited power. The president is not omnipotent.

So you might ask yourself why I am mentioning any of this. The answer is simple. I have grave concerns about the expectations that some people have of President Obama’s ability to solve the challenges facing him.

Far too many people talk about him in almost mythical terms. I am gravely concerned about what is going to happen if he doesn’t meet their expectations. And to be honest I don’t think that he will. That is not a knock against him. I am not talking about qualifications and whether he has them or not. That discussion is done.

I am convinced that he is a smart guy and that his heart is in the right place. But there is only so much that can be done. And it seems to me that there are people with unrealistic expectations about what he will be able to accomplish. We have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a very tough economic situation. Not to mention all of the fuss over what people think that he’ll bring to the ME peace process.

There is enough work there to last four terms, let alone one. So while I very much want him to succeed I do not expect it all to work. I expect that he is going to fail in some areas. And so I wonder what sort of response he is going to receive when this happens.

Let me be clear, I don’t think that anyone could walk in on January 20th and fix everything that needs to be adjusted. There is simply too much.

So here is what I am hoping happens. I am hoping that the man exceeds the expectations of those who wish that he fails and that those who idolize him gain a more realistic perspective. Add to that my wish and fervent desire that the polarization we have seen under Dubya and Clinton disappears.

It is time for people to pull together and stop pulling apart, at least that is my dream. In a couple of days we’ll get a chance to try and find out if some dreams can come true.