Thoughtful Thursday

Trying to get the cobwebs out of my brain and get woken up this morning. It appears that the sun is out this morning and that always makes for a nice start to the day. I have the window open and I can hear the birds chirping. I am waiting for my special hummingbird to make his or her appearance. How can you tell the difference between a male or female hummingbird?

I do not know. I looked but was unable to find the answer. Oh, I am sure it is out there. I am just to lazy to look for it right now.

I really enjoyed the feedback I received about last Thursdays thoughts I had about President Obama and the nature of politics in general. It really highlighted for me how different we all are when it comes to what we think is the best way to run the country. The more I think about it the more it really feels like a thankless job to me. I suppose it is possible that if something miraculous were to happen and the job rates were to soar to 100% and the deficit would be completely wiped out that a president could have an approval rating of 100%. But I am sure that despite all of that there would be people who would be unhappy and it wouldn't matter to them that everyone was working or that the USA was not in debt to China anymore. They would just find some other, vastly important, reason to be upset.

I think Carl said it best in the comments when he said that "...but I live and participate in an imperfect system." I think that is really key and something I need to remember. The system is never going to be perfect. There is no perfect system. There never will be. The best we can hope for is a system that seems to function most of the time. When I look around the world at other countries and their governments I see very few that I would like to emulate.

To be completely honest since I lean toward the Socialist, and I know that is enough to make a lot of your heads explode, I like how things are done in Sweden. Things just seem to work there. I am sure that there are a myriad of reasons why they are wrong and why that model of government would not work here in America. But, that is not my point. My point is that I like what they do there. There are people who like what we do in America and I am sure there are people who actually like living in Cuba or even Haiti for that matter or the old style Soviet Union or the new style Russia. Though for the life of me I am not sure why anyone would have liked living in the Soviet Union. I can understand being stuck there. But the way that people were treated who lived there it must have just been miserable.


I sidetracked myself. What I am trying to say is that one of the neat things about America is that we are able to freely debate these kind of things and do not have to worry about these thoughts being censored or being put on some kind of list for having a conversation and that is a pretty cool thing. So lets agree to disagree and ROCK IT OUT FOR THE USA!!!! USA, USA, USA!!!!!

From Russia...Love Withheld

Pretty interesting news yesterday, it seems that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as arrested 10 people. The Washington Post has a story on it as well as most news agencies.

While I am very interested in this story. I am not surprised by the news at all. Vladimir Putin is the current Prime Minister of Russia but that is only because he had already served two terms as President. So, when he ran up against a term limit issue he hand picked his successor, Dmitry Medvedev , and became Prime Minister a position that I believe has no term limits. Putin is old school KGB he joined up in 1975 and, I feel, is Cold War all the way. I think that America has not been as diligent as they should have been in dealing with him. For us to think that just because the Soviet Union fell apart means that Russia wants to be our friend is short sighted and really dangerous. The international world is not a safe place and these countries that have long been our enemies, Russia and China, to name just two, are not going to sit on their hands while we devote all of our time and considerable resources to the Middle East.

Now, I realize that part of the problem is that the Middle East is sitting, due to no fault of ours, on our oil and we need it to run our cars and big machines. But I think if we continue to act like Russia and China are countries that we do not need to be concerned about we are going to be in big trouble in the next few years.

I believe that there has been an 11th arrest in the Russian spy case and I bet there is going to be more. This case is going to be something to keep an eye on and I am sure that both sides of the American political coin are going to be spinning it for all it is worth. But, I do not think these arrests are intended to discredit President Obama, this is a far bigger issue then mere political maneuvering and if that is the sole intent of these arrests then we as a country deserve what is coming to us.