Tidbits

As is normally the case, didn't do a whole lotta posting while at home. Got back to Utah late last night. Just wanted to post a couple of things though:

• I loved the way Jay writes in his Monday Impromptu's column about Bill and Pat Buckley:

  His parents, my beloved friends, were big, big people with big flaws. “Issues,” we might say in today’s parlance. You could feel the sting of those flaws, or issues. But, more than that, you felt the love and the warmth and the fun and the huge, huge humanity. I think of this couple regularly: not just Bill, as you would expect, but Pat, too.
  
  She could be furious with me — furious with me like anything! — but then she would love me like anything. She could be at my throat, ready to slit it, one minute, and then the tenderest person the next. It is the love that remains, believe you me. All the rest simply washes away.
  
  Holy Moses, do I miss them. I’d take them at their worst, right this second, just to sit down with them again.

  I just thought it was really touching how effusive he is in his love for them. The way he writes about them makes me think of that line in the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem about Success - To win the respect of intelligent people...
• Last Wednesday was Earth Day and some people were encouraging celebrating Earth Hour by turning off all power at a designated time. One of Jay's readers sent in this demotivator that he created:You know what? Indoctrination really works on children (and adults too). One of my friends was talking about how she was cleaning out her kitchen and putting everything in a trash can when her oldest son, 5 years old, starts freaking out because not everything just goes in the trash, some of it has to be recycled. I wonder when I'm a parent if I would go to the extent of keeping my kids home from school on Earth Day like it's some kind of sex ed course that I don't want them learning about from hyper-liberal people. Would I let them watch Wall-E? Is that too extreme? Probably, but where should you draw that line?
• I was eating lunch last week with my mom and CNN was playing on one of the TVs in the place we were at. They were talking about the sharp criticism that Cheney had for Obama in the wake of all the interrogation memos, and they actually had a poll that asked, "Does anyone care what Cheney has to say anymore?" I couldn't believe the implicit condescension in that question. Did anyone ever even think twice when Al Gore criticized Bush on his policies? Don't even get me started on the tea-party/tea-bagging comments made by the major media outlets.
  
• About Bush and withholding criticism...the guy has been nothing but first-class in how he has responded to questions about Obama and how he's running the country. He was the same way when asked about Clinton while he served as President. I had a brief exchange with a friend about this subject today. Obama takes no accountability, and displays no solidarity with the recent leadership of this country. Between him and Secretary of State Clinton, it's just a constant campaign. It's so ugly. Is it Un-American? Maybe in one respect it's completely American. Think about it - we live in a country so free that we can express utter disdain for the people who are working feverishly to protect our interests, while in the same breath heaping praise and sympathy for those who seek our annihilation. How many other places have freedom to that extent?

Until next time, dearhearts.