Sunday, July 13, 2014

Sunday musings

America has a tough problem staring it in the face these days with the  illegal immigration of mainly Mexican children across its common border.
It seems large numbers of Mexican parents are loading these children on trucks or even tossing them over border fences into America in the belief that the children will be taken in by the Yanks.
The American President, Mr. Obama seems to be unable to focus on this issue and instead had adopted the political course of dodging and weaving and avoiding taking any position at all because he seems to want to avoid offending any or all people.
I dunno, when he became the first black President, the world media gushed like a giddy school girl over his role in the shaping of the future. Indeed he even got a Nobel Peace prize almost overnight.
Strangely, he seemed to have gotten that by doing nothing to deserve it.
His bold, visionary course for the thorny issue of the Middle East now appears one on persistent vacillation.
Now understand this, being the head of a small company, let alone the leader of the most powerful coutry in the world is truly a no-win situation.
Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.
I understand this better than most - I went through decades of this in my business life as everyone can do better than you but sure as hell will not take that responsibility - much easier to sit on the sidelines and snipe (hmm, almost like some the these social activist twitter vipers full of spite but resolutely opposed to involvement all around these days). That being said, if elected to lead - do so or get out of the office.
America is the light that illuminates the world (for better or worse) and action, decisive and consistent was always its trademark, or at least it used to be.
It just seems that American Presidents lately are more committed to serving two terms regardless of the cost to the people of America and the world. And are surely more focused on their soon to be built Presidential Libraries (read monuments) and how soon they can get on the lucrative speech making circuit - just ask Mr. Clinton how much money he makes off that gig!
The expectations of the media that Mr. Obama mainly by virtue of being black, would be a superman style of President just because he was non white are in retrospect almost criminal.
Who could possibly live up to this type of expectation - especially if you look at his record in politics before the media fell in love with him.
The mass influx of Mexican children and the escalating carnage in the Middle East will not go away and will get much worse and one suspects that the President will continue to be paralyzed from action whatever the reason.
And that is the modern Great American tragedy now unfolding.
Speaking of the Middle East, reports state that the Israelis have targeted mosques and hospitals in Hamas controlled areas in retaliation for the continual bombardment via missiles of Israel by those folks.
And is it just me but the manufactured outrage and anger of the Arab politicians against this of saying to one and all  "they are attacking mosques and houses of innocents" rings so hollow these days? Because the fact, now plainly boasted about by the same folks, is that these buildings actually stockpile supplies of missiles and bombs and assorted weapons and use the people living in them as throw away human shields and they really do not give a damn if people die as long as they achieve their goals?
What is wrong with these people?
And now for the German word of the week -  Sturmholz
Kind of a cool word as it means literally storm -wood, or the uprooted trees after a storm.
Considering that the German custom is to use 55 letters where 4 would do, this is a fantastically brief, accurate word - will wonders never cease?
Monday sees the start of the final phase in the refloating of the ill fated liner Costa Concordia off Giglio Island in preparation of its last journey to the shipyard that built it for scrapping. One still marvels at the unbelievable feat of marine engineering that has been done to raise this wreck to the surface without any massive contamination of the seas from oil bunkers in the ship that would have been released if anything went even slightly wrong in the complete process - just incredible.
Man can do this but no one yet has developed a machine that can skim the oceans harvesting the floating plastic crap man has flushed there, and converting the debris into a fuel source or product?
And why not I ask you?
Hey, wonderful news just came across the Interweb to me this morning and that on my second most favourite island, Maui, that the MauiTVnews is back on the air ( http://mauitvnews.com/blog/ ) after a much too long absence and life is better! This link has been a conduit for me to that fabled isle and was sorely missed.
Here on my island, well.... as stated last week, not too much except the usual 10,000 step walks and as we are in the middle of a two week heat wave without almost no rain, well, just a tad dry.
Here is a snap of a small bay near where we live.
Anyway, take care out there,
flatlander52

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