A welcome change

Today this blog will leave behind politics for a post or two...

Its time to talk about Ice Hockey. The IIHF world championships are on and I have been trying to keep up with them, even watch them when I can (Germans aren't all that crazy about it). So part of the time I have watched the games from LNT (Latvian TV which streams some of the games online for free).

Anyway this looks like another bleak year for Team Sweden. We have once again a rather average group of NHLers and KHL and even a few from the SHL. So we crushed Austria, then lost in a shootout to Latvia (for the first time in history by the way), and then against all odds came back from a 2-5 deficit and beat the USA in overtime 6-5. Not bad, so now today around 16:15 we get to take on Russia. If we lose (high probability) we have to beat Switzerland and France to have any hope for advancing (note that beating those two would be a walk in the park with our top A team available).

It might be a very short World Championship this year.

Disturbing at best

Certain conservative news programs have been running with the idea that it is immigrants who are bringing the flu. This is really racist and a sick, uneducated guess. Its stuff like this that leads to violence and hate. It also provides good ratings, because people want some kind of conspiracy theory to live by. Take Michael Savage, he is proposing that its Al Qaeda at work. Somehow, in a cave somewhere in Pakistan, they have managed to figure out how to make a flu virus and then they set it off in Mexico. Does that even sound like it stands a chance. The only bright note in all this racism and idiocy is Fox New's anchor Shepherd Smith who has been the only voice of reason on the network. Here's to you Smith, may some better network scoop you up one of these days.

Here is to you Glenn

This will be the first edition of the Paranoid awards (a.k.a The John McCarthy Prize). This months goes to none other than Glenn Beck. Congratulations on making up news (none anywhere other than Fox as lying) and proving the point continuosly that you don't need a brain to be a personality on TV. I bet your stomach rises to your mouth everytime you hear there is a White House press conference, where you fear the outcome will be the announcement of the end of the US as you imagine it to be. Here is hoping that your ranting and raving is just losing more of the conservatives and that the rest of us will see your party for what it really is; a bunch of paranoid pre-teens.

Torture

I am really impressed that Dick Cheney is continually seeking out the spotlight and trying to paint a better picture of himself. I am also continually impressed that so many Americans have decided for themselves that what we did was not torture (even though after WWII we prosecuted Japanese for waterboarding as well as our own soldiers after Vietnam). The thing that is really sick with denying that it was torture is that these people are probably the same ones who believe in manifest destiny (get over yourselves America is just another country).

Lets look at another country that has done extremely horrible things: Nazi Germany, but I would be willing to wager that if they had managed to surrender without the Allies taking full control, there would have been no Nuremberg trials and no one brought to justice. People would even have said, no what we did wasn´t really all that bad, hell it was even necessary. The sense of guilt that Germany finally took on was not something they immediately accepted, but had to be pushed on them from the Allies. That was necessary. In the US however the officers will get away with it because they followed orders (that excuse didn´t fly at Nuremberg). I know these are two very different examples but the idea about guilt and accepting the truth is the same. I am happy the US has a president who isn´t arrogant and can even admit that the US makes plenty of mistakes. Refreshing difference from Cheneyism.

Gingrich

He is not what he was yet wishes and hopes and thinks that he could be. The once and future king? No doubt all the recent jockeying by Newt G. is meant to set up his bid to be President in 2012. The sad thing is that we really don´t need someone like him in that office. By now the world would have been destroyed (he would have attacked N. Korea), Cuba would have been invaded (because after all people everywhere just want the freedom that GW had on tap), and there would likely be no Venezuela as well. Obama is soft he says. I say Newt is looking more like his namesake every minute. First off Obama has presented and acted in a manner worthy of a President, and second the actions he has taken have not shown any signs of weakness. If being strong means making threats and ignoring others then the Republican party is a group of bullies.

Now getting down to things I find really interesting is Newt´s accusation that Chavez is a dictator. Where is Newt getting his information from? Is he not aware that this man is democratically elected and that he will remain so until the moment he refuses to step down should he lose an election. To lie about this on tv only further confuses Americans. Oh wait so I guess I will go one step further then... I am officially calling Newt, the Newt, Gingrich a slimy little liar.

Right Wing extremism

This one bothers me. One of the government departments released a warning about far right groups being a threat to US security in the future. Now its being slammed by the republicans and their puppetmasters the radio show hosts. In all fairness the report was not as clear as the one released a few months before about extreme left wing groups (don´t recall hearing any complaints about this one). Two things then: the republicans are going to attack everything Obama does from now on till the end of the first term so everyone is just going to have to get used to it, the second thing is that considering all the apocalypticism that the right wing media has been stirring up as of late, this report seems very justified. With radio show hosts and politicians talking about secession (gov. of Texas) and revolution and so on it seems that there is a good chance a group of isolated psychos in the US have a good chance to do something stupid. Of course getting a hold of the automatic weapons to do so wouldn´t be a problem either.

Its a sad time when you have so many people spewing hate on the airwaves. I guess it proves that there are a lot of sore losers out there.

Republican´s like teabagging

Its almost too much, that the GOP would set themselves up for this kind of joke but they went ahead and did it so let them choke on it (the teabags that is). Apparently its going to be a real riot with plenty of strange Americans out and protesting at what they think is socialism (but in fact lower tax policies than under the Reagan years for 95% of Americans). That is what makes this so amusing; these people are out and about protesting about something they don´t understand. This should be one of those signs that the Republican hardliners aren´t really completely there or it could just be a sign that they are into strange things like....teabagging. Wish I was in the US right now so I could go congratulate all the people who are proud to be teabagging together...haha this just doesn´t get old.

the Mad Hatter and the Hare have a tea party...

This thing with tea parties in the US is really one of those amusing things that just couldn´t be allowed to pass by without a blog post. Let me put it in these terms; if Democrats had done the same during the Bush years, we would have been told we were anti-american and unpatriotic. Yet these conservos throwing tea that they paid for into the water are heroes according to Fox News. The term "Fair and Balanced" should be changed to "Fully Biased."

To those engaged in tea parties; I refer you to Jon Stewart from the Daily Show "losing is supposed to taste like a shit taco." Your actions are a mocking of everything those original Boston residents stood for. All this talk about revolution by the way is actually tantamount to treason and if it had come from Liberals you would be saying this as well. Get over it, come up with something good policy wise, and try to win the next election; that is how it works in a democracy.

Florida and Sustainability

I was reading Time Magazine´s online webpage today and they had an article about a sustainable development housing scheme that just might come to be a reality (whether it actually works the way its supposed to is another thing). Anyway what is amazing isn´t the article itself, or the project for that matter. What is worthy of a blog post is the way that the author, Michael Grunwald, slams the way the state has been developing previously. I will have some quotes that illustrate Mr. Grunwald´s opinion (that I admit I share to its very core):

1. "The community of Babcock Ranch is designed to break new frontiers in sustainable development, quite a shift for a state that has never been sustainable, and lately hasn't had much development"

2. "southern Florida's planning-nightmare sprawl of golf courses, strip malls and cookie-cutter subdivisions named after the plants and animals they replaced"

3. "It's no secret that growth has been Florida's primary economic engine for decades. Yet Fortune 500 companies haven't flocked to its sprawling bedroom communities with lousy schools and overpriced houses, and the paving of paradise has left the state with overtapped aquifers, overcrowded hospitals, overstretched services, traffic jams, a dying Everglades and a vanishing sense of place."

I think the last one really sums it up best. Here is to you Mr. Grunwald, you have summed up the state in only a few seconds.

News or not news?

I like to read Foxnews sometimes. Why is the question that is most likely coming to your lips at this moment? Because they are amusing. First, they always have this celebrity section down at the bottom with a couple pictures of scantily clad females wearing way to much make-up. Secondly, their layout is oddly reminiscent of a gossip tabloid and the headlines of most of the articles seem to back this up. Thirdly, the content of their political commentaries are pure classics in the sense of how biased they are. Take today: there is an article stating that the President has yet to attend church in Washington. I don´t see what is so newsworthy here. In fact the only point of this article is a weak attempt by some right wing nut to try to impose his views on why Obama is not a Christian and so on. A typical right wing evangelical stance (I apologize to the evangelicals who vote left). The truth is that its actually none of this writers business when or if he goes to church.

Final note: I want someone to write a book doing research about all the lying that Sean Hannity does on his show. Its amazing that Fox news would present themselves as serious journalism and then run with this type of programming, don´t get me wrong I very much like the fact that this man spews his lies whenever he opens his mouth, I just wish the rest of the media would really do their homework on the issues and call him on it. Of course I don´t see this realistically happening, but it would be nice.

Anti this, Anti that

There is a lot of talk about Anti-Americanism in the US press. They sit around and talk about why there is this feeling going around in Europe that is a hate for the US. Then they go on to explain it as being some kind of jealousy because America is so great (this is American Exceptionalism (I prefer the term nationalism) at its best). I always find this idea really amusing. I have lived on both continents and I don´t really know what the Europeans would be so jealous about.

The thing that isn´t talked about so much is Anti-Europeanism that is coming back from the US. All these comments about Socialist European governments and this idea that the European Union is failing somehow are some of the most amusing sentiments around. However no one in the US is condemning these attitudes or even questioning them. Why do these sentiments exist? Probably due to a lack of experience. Most of these "haters" have never left the US for longer than a week or two of vacation and thus suffer from what I would call a nationalist tendencies. They know there is another mountain with another set of pastures that are somewhat different, but they never even bother to read up on it. So as long as they shout about anti-americanism, I will shout back with anti-europeanism.

Back from the Baltic

Ok, I am back in Berlin and working on the ever present thesis. Its going to be a long two final months but I am going to get this done, or die in the process. Sometimes after working on the whole thing all day I feel that I actually know nothing about what I am doing. That is of course an exaggeration but this is apparently how it feels to write a thesis. Anyway Clara and I, as well as some others, spent the weekend at the Baltic Sea in a small town near the German port of Rostock. It was beautiful, sunny and we came back with a little bit of red skin. When we got home we found out that the tree directly outside our bedroom window had bloomed and this was a source of great joy, as well as the fact that its pretty much non-stop sunshine here right now. The summer is going to be amazing.

Prediction

By the time the Republicans are done using the word socialism, the average American will assume that it means anything not Republican approved.

Sustainable Republicans

Its definitely a strange title for a blog post on such a liberally biased blog as this (yes I admit my bias). So what could I possibly mean by using such a word to describe a republican? The easiest answer would be to say that they have highjacked the term like just about everyone else these days (after all, an ill defined term can be used quite freely; freedom is a good example). No, what I mean by using this term in the same sentence is the interesting stance that the Republicans have taken on the bailout money and stimulus spending. They keep talking about or kids being poor (shall we remember for the sake of argument, just who spent the last eight years running up debts for the sake of planting a flag in "freedoms" name). This talk about the future generation is therefore a discussion on sustainable development; since one of its key notions is intergenerational equity. If you are rather unaware of what I am going on about here then you may try reading about it on Wikipedia (and then go to your library since your taxes pay for it) and read up on John Rawls. The Republicans are making the argument that our kids are going to be poor because of our choices now. This is rather strange, because in general the republicans have no problem using up all the oil and other non-renewable resources (in the name of the father, the son, and the free market). So if businesses were to use up all these resources that would be fine in the sense that it was a free market decision but trying to save the economy now in the hopes that growth in the future will make up for the lending is not ok. Strange thinking.