Amar Bakshi looks at hatred directed at America...

I enjoy the perspective that Amar Bakshi brings to his Washington Post articles, and I found this latest one Hate America; Hate Amar Too? to be especially thought provoking. While I recommend reading the whole article by Amar, one part I found especially noteworthy:

In many cases the U.S.’s most vocal “enemies” have never visited America, met an American, or been directly impacted by its policies. However, they do live in social or political circles that bond over a shared animosity toward the U.S. Built up from news clippings, word of mouth, and domestic discontent, professing hatred for Americans can become anything from sport (I saw plenty of this in UK pubs) to a crucial way of demonstrating belonging. Group pressure can also lead individuals to mask their curiosity about the U.S.

Realistically this hatred and fear is not based on personal experiences but based on the fear of the unknown, the fear of the differences in the cultures, the fear that someone will try to force change in a culture has happened before.

This makes me dream of nice soft beds...

Now was probably not the best time to start looking at bedding online since I am sleeping on a sleeper sofa in our living room due to my brother-in-law staying with us for a 21 day visit. It made me realize all too late how much more comfortable my night sleeps could be with some new shams or a nice quilted duvet cover. Terry's Fabrics will soon be adding mattress toppers, which could very well come in handy since from what I understand, another visitor will be coming before this summer is over...My Mother-in-law...

Talk about taking losing a bit to far....

While I realize it can be upsetting when your favorite team does not win, this story is one that is disturbing as to how angry a New York Man became, he beat his mother to death with a barbell after the New York Mets lost a game on Saturday.

I have had moments of frustration when watching my favorite NFL team play and at times have turned the TV off in disgust or said some pretty nasty things to players (who of course can't hear me through the tv). One can't help wonder if someone got that angry if there was some underlying problem that would make some snap to that level to hurt both parents and end up killing one...

A junket to Jamaica...

Ever since I watched the movie "Cool Runnings" about the Jamaican bobsled team, I've always wondered what it would be like to actually visit Jamaica. For me when I watch a movie about a location I wonder, is it really like that? From a political junkie standpoint, the political history of Jamaica has also been of interest to me, the islanders have endured quite a few moments of upheaval and change yet have been able to still try to maintain their economy through tourism.

When I was reading more in the Jamaica Guide I couldn't help but notice that the movie I mentioned above that increased my interest in Jamaica is also mentioned under the culture of Jamaica section of the guide. Apparently I'm not the only one who has had dreams of what it would really be like to visit there and I also had to admit Rastafari intrigues me, it would be awesome to meet someone there and be able to talk with them about this religion. Then of course I'd want to spend time on the beaches...All politics/religion and no play would be an impossible task given how amazing the island looks in pictures.

Members of GOP reject amnesty for illegals...

As reported by several media sources including the Washington Times, 47 of the 168 member Republican National Committee are going against what the President wants, amnesty for illegal immigrants in some form.

The proposed RNC resolution does not address such issues as a temporary-workers program, the issuance of "green cards" and paths to citizenship — issues that helped derail the Senate bill — but instead calls for using all means necessary to secure the borders, including the regular Army as well as the National Guard.

The resolution, fashioned by Arizona Republican Chairman Randy Pullen, asserts that the "ability of millions of unidentified persons to illegally enter and remain in the United States presents a grave risk to the sovereignty" of the nation and the American people.

"Congress has already authorized the construction of 854 miles of border fencing and appropriated $1 billion to construct it, and it is reliably reported that less than 20 miles of such fencing have been completed," the resolution says.

I understand the concern about amnesty, yet I still have to wonder how anyone believes the fence is going to work...

Paid blogging without driving you crazy...

In my never ending balance of doing blog postings that will result in me get paid to blog that will be of some value and interest to the readers of Liberal Common Sense, I have signed up with another company that does blog advertising by the name of "Smorty".

They have some interesting things to blog about, as well as opportunities like this one where I you get paid for blogging about joining their company. Life in the getting paid to blog world does not get much easier than that. Their payment policy is faster than some of the other paid blogging companies and thus far they have had a varied amount of topics for me to select from, which I think benefits all of us, since it creates variation. Their sign up process was very easy, the two blogs I decided to enroll were approved within a very short time period and I had opportunities waiting for me to post about. They also email you when new campaigns have been released so that you have a better chance of not missing something that you would really like to share your thoughts on. So, I do recommend that you get "Smorty".

:-)

Japan should apologize when the US does..

Our wonderful government at work...rather than concentrate on issues that directly affect US citizens, this was one of the headlines today:

U.S. House urges Japan to apologize for WWII sex abuses.

Here in the US, women have been abused through out history, the Japanese were forced into interment camps and had their homes, businesses, and financial security taken away from them. Chinese immigrants were abused during the Gold Rush days, Indians have been abused and mistreated through out history and then of course let us not forget how many African Americans were forced to come here as slaves.

I suggest when we become perfect and we have apologized for all of the wrongs done by those in the past, like say...dropping bombs on hoards of innocent people and killing them to force their country to surrender...Then we worry about trying to force Japan into apologizing for something that happened before a great deal of us here today were even born.

US pledges billions to Middle East?

In reading the headline from this Washington Post article, U.S. Pledges Billions in Arms, Aid to Middle East my first reaction was where in the blue hell are these billions going to come from? Then, I wondered why it is the responsibility of US taxpayers to provide arms deals to the Middle East. We have huge issues in this country where billions of dollars could have a much larger impact on lives of Americans rather than to continue to give money and assistance and arms to other countries especially when so many times these arms end up in the wrong hands anyway.

This was my grrrr moment of the day...

The arms sales alone are estimated to be worth about $20 billion, although administration officials said the exact amounts would be negotiated over the next six weeks and then presented to Congress.

Let's hope that Congress grows some balls and says NO!

I can imagine this clock in my living room now...

When I was looking at Grandfather Clocks at 1-800-4clocks, I spotted one particular grandfather clock that I fell in love with, it's from the Ridgeway Ivey Grandfather collection, I have never seen a clock like this aged iron one, it should be considered art work. The design in the picture made me really want to see what it looked like in person, and I knew immediately exactly where this Ridgeway Clock could go in my living room. I admit I had no idea how many different styles of grandfather clocks there are out there and the huge variation of wall clocks and mantel clocks gave me some surfing enjoyment as I looked at some of those clocks that I could picture in other parts of my house. So it might be "time" for you to head over to their website...

As a ps...There is even a blog post featuring my dream grandfather clock.

:-)

Okay Kraft...I have a bone to pick with you...

Are you tired of false advertising especially when it comes to how food companies make their product look on the box then when you actually cook that product it looks not even remotely appealing? I am...Hence I share with you this:



Note how different said frozen dinner is pictured as on the box versus how yuckky it looks in reality. The dog didn't even want to eat it...

:-)

Having a news crew at your house...

Today one of our local television stations, sent a reporter and a cameraman to my house to interview me about my local political blog and a few things that have been happening over there. I had to scramble to make the house look more presentable since they wanted to do the interview and taping in the part of the house where I blog to get video shots of me blogging. It made me realize it might be time to start looking at office desks, since mine is starting to get a bit "worn".

:-)

Latino Interns making some waves...

Very interesting article in the Washington Post about a group of 34 of the best and brightest Latino college students interning in Washington DC. The article is one that gives me hope that we will have future leaders that are not afraid to ask questions, challenge authority and to lead...

There's a contradiction in how the interns want to be understood. On the one hand, they're tired of the diversity of the Latino community being ignored. The interns' families together claim roots in eight Latin American countries. When students from Caribbean cultures cook in the little campus kitchens, students from the American Southwest don't recognize the names of the dishes.

And yet, unlike their parents and grandparents -- who found solace and strength in Chicano power, Puerto Rican power, Dominican power -- this generation feels free to move beyond those ethnic cul-de-sacs. Historians say this is the first time a pan-Latino identity is emerging, a banding together forced by the immigration debate.

"I used to get offended when people would say, 'You must be Mexican,' " says Carmen Mendoza, a junior at the University of Wisconsin, whose parents fled the civil war in Guatemala. "Now I don't get mad because you know what? . . . At the end of the day I look Mexican, even though I'm not Mexican, and my people are having the exact same struggle as the Mexicans are having."

Just a few paragraphs of the longer article...

Anonymous surfing...

For various reasons out there, some people prefer to engage in anonymous surfing using a Personal VPN, VPN means Virtual Private Network. This gives them away to engage in anonymous browsing that protects their identity and in the case of municipal or open Wi-Fi connections does provide a much higher level of security. I have a few friends who do prefer to use such a system, when I worked at a call center for a cable internet tech support department most of my co-workers were experts at the virtues of a VPN.

Obama tries to turn table on Hillary...not many buying it...

I know it's silly to expect a politician to take responsibility for anything that they do wrong or misstate and I doubt many people would think that Obama's answer on meeting dictator's of nations was a smart one. Yet rather than to stick to the damage control that his team tried to do to imply he really didn't mean what he said, he's decided to try to turn the tables on Hillary and attack her for her vote on the war. Considering that Obama is now in Congress and has not exactly been forthcoming in being a leader on the issue of the war in Iraq or cutting funding on the war...this comes off to people I've spoken with as "just one more fake finger pointer who won't accept responsibility for anything".

Fake Viagra gets rise out of authorities...

Okay, I'm sorry...really...but I couldn't resist making that as a headline after reading in Reuters that Chinese police seized more than a ton of fake drugs for impotence, bird flu and malaria, that included at least 18,000 fake Viagra tablets. The Chinese government has been cracking down on companies recently due to some of the recall issues but one starts to really wonder if a fake "little blue pill" would work some mental magic or leave the pill popper sad and blue...

:-)

Get Great Deals on Gift Cards!

If you are like me, you don't like just giving someone money in an envelope, you want it to be more personal, which is why gift cards are becoming used more and more often. It gives the person receiving the gift more of a choice as well as letting them know you took the time to search out something for them rather than to just stick some cash in an envelope or worse yet, mail a check. This leads us to a great way for you to Save 10-50% on your favorite Gift Cards! CityDeals.com has an amazing number of choices of gift cards, to many of your favorite places to eat, to shop, and more. What I think is really great about CityDeals.com is the way they have their site organized, with specific sub-categories that make it even faster and easier to find what you are looking for. You can also search by keyword or by zip code, the zip code feature is a nice one because many local places are starting to use City Deals so there could very well be a special deal waiting for you...

Bloggers said to be reason John Doe lives...

Whether you agree with the "John Doe" protection which is designed to prevent airline passengers from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior or not, what is clear is that the power that bloggers had in pushing this issue.

At times it's wondered what can bloggers do, and in this scenario the blog posts, the phone calls, the emails all created a scenario where something that would have most likely been pushed aside will now get a vote on the floor. If you are wondering what exactly is at debate, from the title linked Washington Post article:

"Any person who, in good faith and based on objectively reasonable suspicion, makes or causes to be made, a voluntary report of covered activity to an authorized official shall be immune from civil liability under federal, state and local law for such report," the conference language says.

Personal Safety...

Recently there has been an increase in violent attacks here in my hometown, people who are trying to do things such as merely walk down a City street or be able to ride their bike through their neighborhoods are being attacked by a roving group of young men. This has made me really start thinking about personal security especially after a recent episode in front of my house.

My neighborhood is one of the better ones when it comes to crime prevention, my neighbors look out for each other and we pay attention to strange things happening. We also are not afraid to call the police if necessary. We don't just shut our doors and not pay attention to what is happening outside and to our neighborhood.

I did have an encounter not long ago that made me think about looking at tasers. A group of older teens were walking down the street in front of my home and one of them was dragging what appeared to be a small pit bull type puppy. The puppy was obviously a very young pup and not leash trained. Rather than pick the puppy up since it was pretty clear to me it was tired, the young man reached down and smacked the puppy and told it to "walk". Off I went flying out the door without even thinking about what I was doing.

I confronted the young man, told him to pick the puppy up and never ever smack a dog that young for being tired. I told him to take the puppy home and give it some water. He started calling me some names, but I stood my ground and told him it was wrong to treat such a young puppy that way and that I better never see him treat an animal like that again. Then one of his friends spoke up and told him that I was right, it wasn't cool to treat the dog like that. It made me think later though that it probably wasn't a wise idea to go out there like that without at least a cell phone or a taser or something like pepper spray before I decide to confront half a dozen people...

Obama does Wal-Mart campaigning

So states this Time Magazine article entitled, Barack Obama's People Problem:

What Smith and her two friends discovered, however, is that when hundreds of people are willing to drive as far as they did to hear Obama speak, retail campaigning becomes Wal-Mart campaigning: It's all about volume. All three left unsatisfied and still undecided.

I can relate to how Lauren Smith felt, I tried to get an answer to a question I had from Barack Obama before he even announced his presidential run and am unsatisfied with him....

The country is disgusted with everybody...

They are two very different Democrats: Neil Abercrombie is a liberal from Hawaii, and John Tanner is a Tennessee conservative.

The congressmen were on opposite sides when the Iraq war began. But they're now joining forces to try to break partisan deadlock on how to end it.

"The country is disgusted with everybody," Abercrombie told CNN. "They think the president is being stubborn. ... and they think Congress failed to act in a responsible way. We have to change the direction of the conversation."

Okay, most of us probably agree with that, especially with the "The country is disgusted with everybody" part. So what are these two planning on doing and is it nothing more than another grandstand scenario where nothing happens in the end?

Abercrombie and Tanner -- along with five other House Democrats who span the political spectrum -- are pushing legislation to force the president, within 60 days, to give Congress his plan for getting out of Iraq.

At this point I say grandstand scenario where nothing happens in the end but I hope I end up being wrong...