Sunday Thoughts

I’m still sick.

For those of you who have wondered why I haven’t posted so much, I just haven’t felt up to it lately. I have developed a nasty cold that just doesn’t want to go away. It’s not contagious. It’s a nagging chest cold that has left me with a cough and fatigue. I’m able to work. I feel well in the mornings and early afternoons. But by evening, I’m pretty much wiped out by 7:00. So, I’ve been going to bed early and just doing what my body is asking me to do. An observation on my energy levels of late...

IF Growing older = less energy output THEN

(Growing older + exercise) = (less energy output + exercise routines that lately end up sucking wind because of “less energy output”) ELSE

Enjoy life sitting in front of the TV and enjoying espresso and having those double chocolate cookies = BE HAPPY!

It seems lately that I’m falling through the ELSE and enjoying those cookies. I’ll work on that a bit harder.

Renee Fleming
Renee Fleming is coming to Hartford for a holiday concert at The Bushnell on December 15!

We will go to Peppercorns Grill, one of our favorite places for dinner at 5:30 (no need to be rushed), and will proceed to The Bushnell for the 8:00pm concert. We will be sitting 5 rows back from the stage. You don’t even want to know what I paid for the tickets. It was sold out, but they kept telling me to keep calling back because someone may cancel. I kept calling with no luck, until Friday. Two seats together opened up. I impulsively grabbed them!

I’m a huge Renee Fleming fan. She has such a beautiful voice which is very velvety to me. I was also pleased to hear that she has done some work with jazz as well. She is quite versatile. So, I’m not really sure what to expect from this concert, except that on December 21st, six days after her Bushnell performance, she is doing her “Rejoice Greatly: Christmas” concert at Carnegie Hall in NYC. I’m wondering if it will be the same performance. And I’m hoping.... no Puccini please! I don’t feel like crying my eyes out at this concert. Me and Puccini... very emotional mix. Moving on....

Christmas
I always have problems getting into the spirit of Christmas anymore. I suppose I consider myself to be a Christian. I was raised a Christian. But lately (in the last few years), I’ve grown extremely displeased with the whole damn lot of people who claim to be “Christians”, but know nothing, it would seem, about how to be a Christian. The only thing they are missing is the concept of love, understanding, and compassion. What they have a complete understanding of is condemnation, greed, lust, and selfishness. I want nothing to do with them.

So to me, a Christmas tree is something you put stuff on, sit around, and think good thoughts. That’s kind of hard to do when we are at war, being lead by a moron who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground (a fairly odd expression, come to think of it), people dying of disease around the world... well, you get the idea.

So, I think we will forgo the Christmas tree this year. There is talk, mostly from Kent, that we should at least put up lights. Maybe. We’ll see. My neighbor, you know, the Christian one who can’t stand us deviants, is celebrating Christmas in a very Christian way, by having a big (6 feet tall) blow up Santa Claus on his front yard. Pure class. What’s next, toilets placed in the yard that has been turned into planters? Sigh....

The President
A few tidbits I just couldn’t pass up.

Tidbit # 1

Despite some notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon is mostly associated today with disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power. Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law.

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court’s unprecedented rebukes of Bush’s policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law. [...]

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history. (source)

Tidbit # 2

Two days before he resigned as secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld sent a rambling memo to the White House in which he acknowledged that the current U.S. strategy in Iraq was not working and offered several diverging scenarios for reversing course.

In the classified, three-page document, Rumsfeld offered several options for reducing troop presence in Iraq, including some that were similar to proposals by Democratic critics of the war in Iraq and that have been sharply opposed by the Bush administration. [...]

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” Rumsfeld wrote in the Nov. 6 memo. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” [...]

Critics immediately seized on the memo as an admission of failure by one of the administration’s primary architects of the Iraq war and its aftermath.

“This is an unbelievable memo. It is an admission of failure. It is more frank than anything that any [administration] official has said publicly in the three years of the war,” said Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he thought the memo would undercut any attempt by President Bush to defend anything resembling a “stay the course” policy in Iraq. (source)

I don’t understand. Both of these men are known to be as brilliant as a dwarf star*. How could they be so wrong?

* dwarf star - n. A star, such as the sun, having relatively low mass, small size, and average or below average luminosity.

Finally, there was a story about gay people who are now faced with legal issues in Wisconsin, one of the states who just passed an amendment against marriage, civil unions, and anything that is similar to a marriage. That means that wills, power of attorney, medical directives... wait, those all are similar to marriage? Or are they? Guess what. A court will decide!

Anyway, I’ve reached burn out point on the marriage issue. Bottom line for you Wisconsin folks; pack up your bags and move to a state that will afford you protections, such as Massachusetts, or Connecticut. There’s really no other way unless you want your life and the custody of your children to become a court room test case. After all, it’s only your life we are talking about. Life’s too short for that crap. Move.

Now I’m off to see the movie Déjà Vu. Kent, want to come with me?