Mixed Bag

The planet has been a bit dark of late. We had the second familial murder/suicide story in as many weeks hit the local papers yesterday. And a marine corps chopper, the kind that continually flies over my valley, went down the next valley over the other day, on the heels of the Reno disaster and the crash in Russia that iced the beloved Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team.

A good friend confided in me that he has M.S. and is going through a lot of marital drama and processing at home. Several friends have lost their parents in the last week and my father's own state of dementia is weighing heavily on my psyche. Another friend has valley fever and I have a sister who just had major surgery and won't slow down. The House is threatening to shut down government again on September 30th, this time dems who object to their opponents carving out all the disaster funding out of a popular energy program.

I am told that I have been an edgy, irritable grump of late, but what else is new. And no, it wasn't my wife telling me this time. Have been a bit of a pill. Can't find the time to read or write. I hope that we all get a little positive boost and wish all within and beyond blogshot health and happiness.

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I read something yesterday about the recent grizzly attacks in Yellowstone. It is germane to me because I will be there in a few weeks and do not want either my spouse or myself to end up as some ursine supper. The article said that the late couple provoked the bear by screaming and making noise. You know, a bear starts mauling my extremities, I think I might yell a bit myself, no point coming off as some cool Gary Cooper wannabe with a grizzly's incisors sunk deeply into my gluteus.

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I had a cheap dime store epiphany on the way to work this morning. I passed a banner at St. Stephen's church that read "Mornings for Mommies." And I had the thought that I would sooner take the grizzly's place and chew my own arm off than hang around a bible study or the like with a bunch of born again mommies.. Everyone is free to believe, and if you want to do it conspicuously it is your choice, it's just not my bag. To each his own.

But if you look at the matter in macro or on a national scale, I think I start see the roots of our problem. We have two fairly fat and equal paradigms trying to inhabit the same limited space and things are getting a little too cozy and squishy. We live in two distinct little worlds, and they manage to function fairly independently, the problems arise when the edges start to overlap. A certain group needs homogeneity and control and the other faction wants to be left alone.

Those with faith want to trumpet that faith and evangelize, and then there are the faithless apostates like me who reject authority in most every guise. And it seems to me that if the believers had a little less faith, it just might be better for all of us in the long run. At least for the environment anyway. (Remember the video I put up last year from the congressman who chairs the environmental committee who said that the good book was infallible and assures us that man can never harm god's creation?) Do a little clean up on old terra firma before you waltz on over to the pearly gates. But then again, as my Stanford ethics professor friend once told me, if we had more people believing in a punitive place called hell, maybe people would be cowed into a more moral behavior. Even if we did have to invent it.

Each side is so sure that they have the moral or intellectual high ground that they have written the other side off as witless or faithless degenerates. And so we have this paralyzing tug of war with no sign of compromise from either quarter. We need a big time out until both sides agree to come back and play nice with each other.

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Obama is said to be on the hot seat right now because of those old bastards, the jews. Dems lost a safe seat in New York, the Weiner seat if you will, to a conservative Republican. Might resonate on a national level. Some jews evidently got sore when the Prez suggested that the Israeli's move back to pre 1967 borders, a geographical boundary that seems suicidal to many, including by the way, myself.

Now the Obama spin machine is going full tilt to illustrate what a great friend Obama has been to Israel, a country he has never visited and that he tends to treat like the embarrassing drunk uncle at the easter dinner. He did have the PLO over yesterday. Anyway there is a new "Obama jewish outreach" afoot and Debbie Wasserman Schultz even tried the old triangulation move, yesterday intimating that American jews have a lot of common with Obama and care about a lot more things than Israel. She said that "Obama was far better than Republicans on every issue that matters to this community." Which may be true, who knows? But sets american jews at interesting cross purposes with their Israeli brethren.

I think that the whole concept of massive jewish financial and political power will hardly stand up to scrutiny. And it is certainly not a monolithic block.  Jews comprise about 1.7 percent of the country's population or 5.2 million people, hardly a game changer. They tend to be highly educated, cause oriented and they do vote at a higher rate than their fellow americans. But certain other groups possess far more power in our society.

If an American jew says anything positive about Israel, he or she is quickly accused of dual loyalty and sedition. I was looking at a CNN article re: Obama and Israel and took some screen shots of some of the more interesting comments. I will spare you the ones that suggest "Burning the kikes in the ovens", if they have not already been deleted.

I am the son of a jewish man born in Palestine, before the establishment of Israel. I have lived there twice, once for a year and again throughout much of Desert Storm. I am not in lockstep with the present Israeli government, I disagree strongly with the way that they have handled the settler issue, but I can understand the logistics and motives of much of their thinking and the reality on the ground. I hope that people will look at the issues in a more meaningful and understanding way than some americans apparently do.

The reality is that I do think that Obama would screw Israel in a heartbeat. He has backtracked on so many other principles. They are a small country and it would be expedient and easier for him to cut them off, to the glee of many of my fellow citizens. I think that they will find a way to survive with or without his help. Or the whole middle east turns into a parking lot.