Thursday, December 3, 2009

Take Two Puppies and Call Me in the Morning

Paul, one year, sent out a picture of himself in a Santa suit, looking like Bad Santa with the greeting "Merry f*ing Christmas" (without the asterisk). It sounds like a good sentiment to resurrect at the moment.

I was sitting in the parking lot at Petco last night, after having bought food for Lizzie and Sheila. I turned on the radio and listened to Obama's speech. For awhile there I thought he had picked up one of Bush's old speeches.

He made his points more eloquently (and convincingly) than Bush ever did, but my heart was heavy...heavy...heavy.

I came home and resurrected this song by Steve, which seems to be the only thing I can think of right now.

Why in the world does anybody want to be president? From the day you take your oath, you are already the enemy of a significant portion of the country. Obama is the only person who has all the facts and, unlike his predecessor, he has taken time to actually weigh his options.

I don't like his decisions. I don't know whether he's right or not. There are dozens of people who are convinced that they know the answer and have been saying so on talk shows all day long. They all make convincing arguments for why it's wrong ... and convincing arguments for why it's right. The truth must lie somewhere in the middle.

My only "in depth" knowledge of Afghanistan comes from reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns," which traces the history of the attack and occupation of the country by several groups, including the Taliban. I'd be a terrible person to make a decision based only on a novel, but it just seems like a lost cause and why are we throwing good money after bad? What do they call Afghanistan? Empire killers? Something like that.

I don't even know enough to praise or criticize. All I can do is hope. And I don't even know what I'm hoping for.

brokenHeartNY.jpg (5654 bytes)Today, the day after the Obama speech, came the vote in New York, another state to deny gay marriage. That's not an issue that comes anywhere near the scope of an escalation of troops to Afghanistan, but my friend Bekah (who is not gay) posted a video to Facebook filmed as she watched the vote being read, bursting into tears when the issue was voted down. She held her head and just kept crying "That's so sad! I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry!" over and over again. I couldn't help but cry myself.

Bekah.jpg (39286 bytes)

When will anybody admit that civil rights should not be up for vote by the people who are not involved in the outcome? If you want to vote, fine. But only card-carrying gay people are permitted to vote. Straight people must stay home because the issue does not affect their lives.

And then we are learning that U.S. legislators who are members of "The Family" are involved with the decision in Uganda to put to death by hanging any homosexual person, and imprison anybody who knows a gay person and does not turn that person in. "Both the president of Uganda and the legislator who introduced the bill are core members of the now infamous secretive religious group The Family." You know The Family, don't you? The guys who protected those pedophiles and philanderers? Now they support the decision by a country to kill homosexuals.

There is so little to feel hopeful about at the moment. I'm so glad we have puppies in the house because you can't help but smile watching puppies at play, but I hear every day about someone else whose life has been turned upside down for one reason or another, like the families of the four police officers killed as they took their coffee break the other day.

As depressing as it all is, when Freddie wants peanut butter (his pill come imbedded in peanut butter) and waddles into the kitchen to bark at me (the only time he barks) and then stands there trying to get the peanut butter out of his mouth, you can forget all the violence and hate and frustration -- for a minute or two.

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