Grief (China), and Humor (maybe) (Presidential Race)

Robert Siegel played a tape of Chinese children in a refugee camp practicing a song of thanks to the soldiers who had been helping them. And I thought I was done with the tear thing.

Anyway, the last two weeks had some amazing reporting, tho really, I would have gladly not had to have it.

How long is the concern going to last? Anybody hear anything about rebuilding in Indonesia and Thailand lately? The dead get buried, the mourners move on with life, and all the tears, grief, death and destruction become history. Read it in a book, research it for your thesis. Or forget it entirely. Perhaps somewhere in our primary or secondary education we should have a requirement to listen to tapes like the one of Melissa Block describing a woman crying over the rubble, "Mom is coming for you." Maybe it will help a little in keeping our children in touch with their humanity.

I do wish we could hear more from our media about how things are going NOW in places that seemed so important THEN.

I hear that McCain has minister problems. It seems that the Reverend Hagge finally jumped the shark, public-relations wise, and Johnny Mac had to disavow him. I've been wondering when the media was going to discover this wingnut. Let's see if they make as big a deal over Hagge as they did over Rev. Wright. I tend to doubt it. One of McCain's advantages is that he has not been canonized to the extent that Obama has by his supporters, so he is less likely to be damaged by the rubber room fringe persons. The sad thing is, Johnny Mac didn't disavow Hagge when he dissed the Catholic Church (isn't it funny how so many protestants forget that for 1500 years the Catholic Church WAS Christianity and that most of what they believe was preserved for them by the most Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church?(did I get all the adjectives right?)) or when Hagge said Katrina was retaliation by God for gays in New Orleans. It took Hagge offending a major voting block (the Jews) for our John to finally decide to cut this whacko loose. Now I don't have anything against Jews, I admire them and some of my friends are them etcetery, but this is a case of kiss-up if I ever saw one.

There are more gays than Jews in this country John, how about kissing up to them. Oh, not the best expression. How about letting them know in some way that you deserve THEIR vote? I bet there are more gays, bisexuals, transvestites and transgenders (did I leave anyone out?) in this country than conservatives at this point in time.

You're sucking up in the wrong places, John.

That last sentence was the Scotch talking, not me.

See how this campaign is making me mean? I'm really a lot nicer than this. Honest.

Not, say my exes.

Some people will use the Rev. Hagge's remarks to denigrate Christianity. It's not Christianity's fault that these wingnuts appear. It's not Christ's fault that so many have died in His name. And the religious wars are not the fault of God, Jesus, Mohammed, Allah or anyone else. The follower killers show up everywhere, in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, atheism. I like to edit a phrase from the National Rifle Ass. "Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people."

In the meantime, I see that Billary has gotten into trouble by referring to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. My problem with her remark is that it is kind of a non sequiter, if it can even rise to that level. It was just a weird statement, no doubt brought about by her trying to align herself with those who supported Robert Kennedy. You have to expect stretches of fact and imagination in politicians running for office.

There is speculation about Hillary being VP. I don't know about that. Here she is, running a determined campaign against Obama and dissing him whenever possible, and we should expect her to be a good soldier and work with him to be president? I dunno. It's not her so much. I worry about the spouse. I like ol' Bill, in spite of him being one of the slipperiest politicians since Tip O'Neil. (Tip O'Neil was to Massachusetts and the country back in the fifties-eighties, what Edward Kennedy has been in the past 30 years, only slipperier.) But I don't like the idea of Bill being there influencing (or trying to) the VP every night when she comes home with his take on the latest policies. Especially the policies that he put in place. This is not sexist. I would have concerns if the gender roles were the other way around.

McCain is vetting possible VPs. He even had Mitt the Haircut down to the ranch to talk. If McCain chooses ol' Mitt and Obama chooses John Edwards, I will get the "Battle of the Haircuts" I was looking for, albeit at a lower level than the presidential race.

I'm really running off at the mouth. Still, I sucked you into reading this, both of you.
Go to bed.
Time to quit.