Where Did I Put Those Rose Tinted Glasses?

Despite my great week there are a few things that are troubling me. A few days ago I was watching a late night news show where Barack Obama was being interviewed about his previous opposition to the surge that has succeeded in Iraq. I noticed how well spoken he was, how confident and I thought hmmm, he has a strong chance of beating McCain. I had visited his campaign site earlier in the month and had compared it with McCains. While I agreed with nothing that Barack was promoting, he was thorough on his plan of execution should he win the presidency. McCain, who I agreed with in SOME areas was full of catch phrases, and very unclear as to how he would go about the changes he felt were in order. But I've missed my point... Here is a portion of the interview: Moran asked what Iraq would look like now if Obama's policy of withdrawing in the face of the violence had been implemented.

"That is a hard thing to speculate," Obama said, "The Sunnis might have made the same decisions at that time. The Shii’as might have made some similar decisions based on political calculation. There was ethnic cleansing in Baghdad that actually took the violence level down. And so, as I said before. Nobody has a crystal ball. If we did you just hire the guy with the crystal ball."

It was one of those moments where I said... Did he just say that...did he just put a positive spin on "ethnic cleansing". Is ethnic cleansing the PC term for genocide? I waited for the interviewer to say something-anything about that statement. He just moved on.

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought. Surely that's not what he said.. So I googled it. The first article I came to was from a 2007 interview on the Today show.
DAVID GREGORY: You heard Secretary Rice say there is progress in Iraq that cannot be ignored. She spoke about when, not if, the United States prevails in Iraq. Do you see it that way?
BARACK OBAMA: I think it's important to understand that after two days of testimony [by Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker], here's the bottom line: that having put an additional 30,000 troops in, and continued the same course we were on, we are now back to the horrendous levels of violence that we were back in June of 2006.
So there's no doubt that we've seen some measured progress in Anbar province, primarily because the Sunni tribal leaders made a political decision there that they would work with the coalition forces. We've seen a very modest reduction of violence in Baghdad, partly because entire neighborhoods have essentially been ethnically cleansed. Those are all positive things, but we are now back at the levels of violence we were 18 months ago.

Then I found the transcript from the interview that I had just watched.
I had not misunderstood. When has ethnic cleansing ever been an acceptable means of "reducing violence" during war. Isn't ethnic cleansing a horrid form of violence in and of it's self.

Closer to home, I was told second hand that the park that is supposed to be built around our new library is receiving opposition from environmentalists. I tried to look more information up about it, and have not been successful. I am so angry. Just miles away a builder plowed down thousands of acres of prime Sonoran desert at the base of a mountain. They plowed it down before they were issued permits to do so, built 3 model homes then abandoned the project due to the housing "slow down". Did it make the news?-NO. Did any protests take place? NO. Did KB homes just get a billion dollar loss tax write off. YES. This makes my blood boil.

Do you ever feel like the world has just gone mad?

I'm disappointed at this election year. I don't like McCain. I don't think he will make a good president. I'm sick about the high probability of Obama winning.

I just read another article about Central and South American countries bending to the will of Venezuelas president Hugo Chavez. Cheap fuel beats out US loyalties. He and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Vladmir Putin all seem very cozy.

So let me get this straight we have no good presidential nominee, Asia owns us financially, we may get a replay of the Cold War, terrorists can infiltrate our borders with ease, and the American people are at their witts end because they can't afford their McMansions and Plasma TV's, and are willing to move to a socialistic economy so they can mantain a false standard of living. We protest parks and look the other way for huge housing developments built on nothing more than speculation and tax write offs. GREAT! Time to build up that food storage, and go cry on my big pillow.

PS.
While in California IndyMac shut down. There were lines of people outside the bank demanding their money. I wonder what the depression looked like as it was happening. We all have seen it in retrospect.