As you might be reading about our President’s recent speech in which he continues to show his detachment from reality.

From the Wash Post:

Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. ‘It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,’ he said in a telephone interview.

‘We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn’t work our will,’ he said.

‘What is Bush suggesting? That we didn’t fight hard enough, stay long enough? That’s nonsense. It’s a distortion,’ he continued. ‘We’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It’s a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.‘ (em added)

Bingo. Once again. We on the left were correct. ‘Nuf said.

I walked out of my office tonight at about 7 with thoughts of the holiday on my mind. As I walked by starbucks I saw the decrepit old homeless lady I frequently see in the area. It is cold and raining so she is inside reciting names and numbers from an old phone book. I assume there is something mentally wrong with her because an obsession like this is a good indicator.

What memory pops into my mind? The exact moment I learned holidays are a sham and people suck.

I was about 6 or 7, because my parents were still married, at least they wanted it to look that way, and I was driving in the car with my father. We were stopped at the light on the corner of Union and something street, I am guessing 14th maybe. As I looked at the large tanks of the milk processing plant across from the bank, my father asked me what was wrong. I told him that I had read a story in the Bangor Daily about how many unwanted cats and dogs there were at the local shelter. Worse yet, and the main point of the article, that people give the gift of animals far too cavalierly resulting in even more animals post holiday being killed at the shelter.

My father tried to reassure me, but he could not. Instead he used it as an object lesson in responsibility.

As you can see, I never forgot that moment. Nor have I forgotten the lesson.. We have a responsibility to tend to things around us. Do not make excuses, get up and go out and do it. One less gift if one more donation. Do not fall for the trap of hopelessness or the intractable nature of the problem. We have the power to make our world at hand better.

So this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the gifts I have been given that I can give away.

UPDATE: Thanks to google maps, it is exactly Union and 14th, it doesn’t look like there is a dairy there anymore, but this was almost 30 years ago.

Well the SDA didnt last. I dropped it in the parking lot and death set upon it. In short order I have replaced it with the new T-Mobile Dash. A MS SmartPhone landscape device from HTC. It is very thin, small, and pretty rugged feeling with all the features I need. I have to give it to Microsoft, they really do not have a valid competitor. PalmOS it utter crap and I will not give them another dime. Plus, I will not buy non-GSM phones so Verizon and Sprint are out.

Moreover, any former “Bell” will have to pry a nickel out of my cold dead hand as they screwed us for generations with 5.00$ a minute calls across the river. I would rather be teleincommunicado.

I admit that I got swept up in the hype over the cartoons of The Prophet, may he not rest in peace at the horror of the actions of his followers, when I got in a fight with a cab driver and told him to chill out for he was very angry. I then suggested he might want to take out his prayer rug from the trunk and pray to Allah for peace. When he was enraged (which was the point, duh), I told him that if that upset him, I have some cartoons to show him. Score one for multiculturalism here in NYC. Anyway, I have been trying to get copies of the Iranian repartee cartoons but no luck so far, only text descriptions are online.

Most of the descriptions seem to be prerecorded, phoned in from the normal set of stereotypes of Jews. But this one is great:

That sentiment finds expression in a split-image cartoon from a Brazilian entrant in which a stand-up comic is portrayed performing in a venue called the West Club. In one image, captioned ‘Making jokes about Islam’, the comedian is greeted with raucous laughter. But the accompanying picture, marked ‘Making jokes about the Holocaust’, shows him being booted out of the window.

Did this genius miss the whole The Producers hype? The whole thing is a spoof on accounting, production, and THE HOLOCAUST! Maybe someone should send him a copy of the soundtrack so he can sing along to the mocking of Hitler, Germany, and so on. I cannot imagine anyone reading this has not heard of The Producers…

As has been noted, no one is burning anything in the streets, in fact this topic is hardly in the news here. I even would relish the MoMA or The Met doing an exhibition on the history of antisemetic or racist cartoons which includes both the Danish and the Iranian cartoons. Often you can examine your own perceptions of race, the changes in culture, and just laugh at the cliches. Do I need to point out the juxtaposition here, I doubt it.