Mumbai Massacre: Ruins Thanksgiving in Seattle

I am very busy lately, this holiday season, like most. I am working full time and also attending school. I had a job interview yesterday and today I have to put up a curtain rod thing before guests arrive for Thanksgiving dinner, do some reading for school and sometime this weekend I need to get a paper done. I have the Lions/Titans game on the radio, and am drinking coffee at my computer, a typical Holiday morning. So I click on the Seattle Times link and am SHOCKED to see in their infinite editorial wisdom they have some yahoos in India running around with rifles and building burning, and the news medias’ favorite word Terrorism on the front page.

So I read a bit thinking ‘well this must have something to do with me or it wouldn’t be there”, but it does not. Other than a mentioned feeling, that because some programmers at Microsoft came from India, there is no connection whatever to me and mine or this area. I am here to tell you that irritates me. I thought this paper was the “Seattle Times” not the “World Terrorism Watch” or the “Disaster News”. Pulling this wrong-headed stunt today, on a holiday the Seattle Times is their dupe, their scary news whore and it saddens me.
Apparently the Times thing is going for shock value.

Apparently, the Times can’t come up with a story people would want to read. Apparently, the Times have no writers that can write, about this area, on this holiday weekend. Apparently, they are just knee jerk hacks that publish anything someone else gives them with no ability to produce original, content of their own that has something to do with Seattle, on Thanksgiving.
I don’t have any problem with it being in the paper. But if all they are is a newsprint version of disaster TV channel CNN, and they feel to get on the front page, it has to be about killing, they have nothing to offer me as a reader. It should be noted here the number two story is the “South Center Mall Shooter”!!

Jesus H!@

Anyway Times, since you are clearly struggling, let me help you. Here is my idea, it will massively get you in the news, and you might even be able to charge people for on-line subscriptions. Just as you already have a sports section, a local section, religion or whatever you can now have a section called: BLOOD AND GORE.

You can name it whatever you want SHOOTINGS AND SHOOTERS, DEAD PEOPLE, TERROISM TIMES. This would be where you would put stories like the India massacre on the front page today. You could publish full color foldouts of death and violence. In addition things like photos of horrific car crashes that are still published in South American newspapers could be reinstituted. You could have celebrity autopsy photos, and all manner of blood and death. There clearly is a market for this, why not mine it?

Mumbai Terror: Cancels Seattle Thanksgiving

I am very busy lately, this holiday season, like most. I am working full time and also attending school. I had a job interview yesterday and today I have to put up a curtain rod thing before guests arrive for Thanksgiving dinner, do some reading for school and sometime this weekend I need to get a paper done. I have the Lions/Titans game on the radio, and am drinking coffee at my computer, a typical Holiday morning. So I click on the Seattle Times link and am SHOCKED to see in their infinite editorial wisdom they have some yahoos in India running around with rifles and building burning, and the news medias’ favorite word Terrorism on the front page.

So I read a bit thinking ‘well this must have something to do with me or it wouldn’t be there”, but it does not. Other than a mentioned feeling, that because some programmers at Microsoft came from India, there is no connection whatever to me and mine or this area. I am here to tell you that irritates me. I thought this paper was the “Seattle Times” not the “World Terrorism Watch” or the “Disaster News”. Pulling this wrong-headed stunt today, on a holiday, the Seattle Times is their dupe, their scary news whore and it saddens me.

Apparently the Times thing is going for shock value.

Apparently, the Times can’t come up with a story people would want to read. Apparently, the Times have no writers that can write, about this area, on this holiday weekend. Apparently, they are just knee jerk hacks that publish anything someone else gives them with no ability to produce original, content of their own that has something to do with Seattle, on Thanksgiving.
I don’t have any problem with it being in the paper. But if all they are is a newsprint version of disaster TV channel CNN, and they feel to get on the front page, it has to be about killing, they have nothing to offer me as a reader. It should be noted here the number two story is the “South Center Mall Shooter”!! Amazingly, the third story down I s about a 18karat gold bookmark stolen from an auction house in Madrid in 2002 by a Romanian and his arrest in Bellevue.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008441903_bookmark27m.html

Jesus H!@

Anyway Times, since you are clearly struggling, let me help you. Here is my idea, it will massively get you in the news, and you might even be able to charge people for on-line subscriptions. Just as you already have a sports section, a local section, religion or whatever you can now have a section called: BLOOD AND GORE.

You can name it whatever you want SHOOTINGS AND SHOOTERS, DEAD PEOPLE, TERROISM TIMES. This would be where you would put stories like the India massacre on the front page today. You could publish full color foldouts of death and violence. In addition things like photos of horrific car crashes that are still published in South American newspapers could be reinstituted. You could have celebrity autopsy photos, and all manner of blood and death. There clearly is a market for this, why not mine it?

The Neocons

There are many definitions of Neo-cons and Neo-conservatism. Some think it is a movement started by Irving Kristol, father of the commentator William Kristol, and founder of the Project for the New American Century. Kristol also seems to have coined the term, saying that neo-cons were “liberals mugged by reality”. Others feel it is a reactionary movement to the liberalism of the 60’s. Most feel it was kicked off in the early 70’s and features a traditional conservative approach on social issues; such as limiting welfare and affirming individualism, promoting traditional moral standards, being anti communist, and having a vigorous interventionist foreign policy designed to push American ideas and ideals around the globe.

Many parts of this are traditional values from Barry Goldwater but there are two main diversions. One is the new interventionist philosophy of foreign policy. This was basically spoon fed to George W Bush from the likes of advisors such as Paul Wolfowitz and has become known as the “Bush Doctrine”. Since it is so central to the modern Neocons’ basic plank there is little wonder so many were upset Sarah Palin had no idea what it was when recently interviewed.

The National Security Strategy, published on September 20, 2002, is often quoted as the basis for this as the core to the Bush Doctrine, these four main points: Preemption, Military Primacy, New Multilateralism, and the Spread of Democracy. This policy made a certain amount of sense in Afghanistan since Osama Bin Laden was headquartered and supported their by the ruling regime.

In Iraq however, it has been an unmitigated disaster mainly due to the tremendous cost. The human cost is of course mind-numbing and hard to calculate. Many analysts around the world have spoken of how America has lost a certain “moral high ground” that it seemed to defend in the past. Who would have thought America would be known as a torturer nation and ignorer of the Geneva Convention strictures? Who foresaw special code words like “rendition” would be developed to mean we were shirking international human rights? Most citizens of the world feel George Bush is a war criminal, and many feel he should be arrested and put on trial similarly to Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian and if convicted imprisoned.
The other cost is of course financial. It is clear the US economy is simply not robust enough to pay for the Neocons’ gargantuan spending spree. This is the other way in which Neocons differ from the old school Pat Buchanan and Barry Goldwater Republicans. There is no concern whatsoever in the former Ronald Regan or current George Bush encampments to pay our bills. This new political agenda of the Neocons, to balance the budget by borrowing, to spend way beyond the nation’s means is not sustainable.

This is a very fundamental, basic shift in thinking, about what it means to be a conservative and which political party is the real conservative when it comes to fiscal management.
The Republicans, long a party to not care about the future of the environment for our children, now also have become a party to not care about the future of America’s finances or ability to pay its bills.

What a change from conservative to neocon.

Obama pulls it off!

Well Obama did it. My wife Lisa and I were in San Francisco and November 4th was a very memorable night, it was something I will never forget. We were staying in a hotel near Union Square (aptly named for public demonstrations during the Civil War), and the people there just went completely nutso!

She was down on business and I was maximo-turista; I had walked and walked that day, clear down to the waterfront, and then up the stairs to Coit Tower, down to China Town and back. We were both exhausted. We took a nap and I had gotten reservations to a restaurant called Michael Mina’s, which is supposedly the best restaurant in San Francisco as rated by Michelin and others.

We walked up to the St. Francis Westin where the restaurant was and we could see people gathering. The bar was packed and CNN was on the election results. We paused a moment to watch and a dude jumped up and came over to tell me I was blocking his view. So we went up and were seated in the restaurant and had a fabulous dinner experience, (more on that later). I was seated looking out the window to Union Square and Lisa was looking on the restaurant. Periodically, during dinner a roar of cheers broke out from the hotel bars. I mentioned to Lisa that curiously, a big group of people were milling around in the square, then a line of police cars.
I thought; what the hell, is this all about the election? Lisa was like a little kid with the biggest grin on her face. The odd couple seated next to us (apparently on an internet date), were talking politics loudly. As we left just walking down the stairs from the restaurant to the lobby people were streaming in dressed in Halloween type costumes, yelling, screaming and laughing! It was just so crazy. Now the main lobby bar had about 1000 people in it and you could hardly get through, the hotel staff were unsure what to do, they didn’t want a riot breaking out.

Going out the door to Union Square it was packed with people, all the sidewalks were jammed with people just standing there not walking. People were ripping off their shirts and waving them running through the intersections. People were hopping up and down screaming OBAMA! And the crowd would cheer YEAH back! Cars were honking their horns in time to the chants.
There have only been a few times in my life when people seemed so connected and together, all the various and sundry disparate elements pulled together for a moment in time. Later, I thought of these times in my own life:

• 
  Kennedy’s assassination, I really remember the funeral procession on TV in black and white as a kid, with the horse drawn hearse and the horse being led with no rider.
• 
  The arrival of the Beatles, I was at a cousin’s house and people came running over from next door screaming “you have to come over and see this, there are guys on TV singing and their hair is long like girls”! On the Ed Sullivan show.
• 
  Landing on the moon, everyone held their breath. (whether it was faked or not).
  The first time the 747 flew, people ran outdoors to stare and point, it was just way too big and slow to stay in the air, truly it slipped the brain gears.
• 
  Leaving Viet Nam in 1975, what the hell happened?
• 
  Nixon resigning (a collected sigh of relief).
• 
  The Sonics winning their championship in 1979, now I know how people can get trampled in crowds like that, it was actually scary, moving down the street without moving your legs like being in a river of human flesh.
• 
  The start of the first Gulf War. People put huge American flags, on their huge Ford pickups, and stormed down the street honking their horns.
• 
  911, of course.
• 
  And now this

I realize that in other areas the reception was most likely much different, like Texas for instance. So I was glad I was where I was, to see and enjoy the moment, because their just isn’t many of these kinds of moments that happen in any one person’s life.