Good Morning!

I've got a couple of snippets of ideas today, not really enough to make a blog out of, but stitched together they will bulk out the morning. Of course, I offer the usual apologies to Bob Ryan....from whom I shamelessly steal this theme from time to time.



We'll start today in the religious realm. Some of you may have been privvy to a brief conversation Raine and I had via blog about the Unitarian Church. Ever since becoming a "recovering Catholic" in the wake of the child abuse scandal, I've been a bit rudderless in that regard. Bouncing around from church to church, never really feeling at home at any one. I've been long fascinated with the world of Islam, and have been studying it (and even making feeble attempts at morning prayer) without actually taking the leap. But one thing I have always listened to since my earliest iPod days is the Daily Encouragement Podcast, posted every weekday morning by a modern couple living in Amish territory.

They try their hardest to interpret the Christian Bible for today's world...and very rarely do they let politics or current events affect what they have to teach. But this past week was one of those times. It was an offhanded remark about the pirates that killed those American missionaries this week..."no doubt, peace-loving Muslims".

That's an awfully broad brush. I have traded emails with the minister before, mostly on spiritual matters, and I almost sent him a screed about his categorization, but I didn't. But it sure rubbed me the wrong way this week. *grumbles*

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But speaking of Muslims, don't ya know there's a war on? Another of my many podcasts that I pick up is the "Old Time Superman Radio" podcast via Laser & Sword Magazine. (Curiously, this is also run by a raging right-wing tool out of Idaho. We've traded emails there, too...but only about Superman.) In any case, ol' Superman is busy saving the world in 1942 from Germany and Japan. But that's not the issue I want to look at today. How many of you have dusty and forgotten savings bonds in a drawer someplace?

During WWII, a titanic effort was made to push War Bonds. Of course, it was for all the right reasons....patriotism, helping the soldiers, paying for war material, and something more nebulous, that feeling that we were "all in this together" somehow. My said Superman podcast is bookended by War Bond ads aimed at the children audience...they could by a war stamp for just 10 cents, which meant 5 50-caliber bullets, or enough fuel oil to carry a destroyer one full mile closer to it's objective.

In any case, seeing how far in debt we are now, and how sorry the economy is...imagine if we financed our current wars through a war bond program starting in 2002? The budget gap might be smaller, and when the economy sank two years ago, all we needed to do would have been to liquidate all those war bonds and presto, cash in hand to foster spending and jump-start the economy. Of course, like everything else it could be done today, but there's no political cojones on either side to do such a thing.

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Finally this morning, not really a blog idea, but more of an observation. We've just had this awesome event in Christchurch, New Zealand. (used in the traditional definition.) The devastation and human losses are incredible, but it's got a sad air of familiarity about it. Just a hair over a year ago, we stared dumbly at the TV, but the images were from Port-au-Prince.

Remember what we said we were going to do then? Even though the US has not volunteered any aid or resources to Christchurch beyond rescue teams at this point, we should all remember this day and look back to New Zealand in a year's time.

New Zealand is white, prosperous and english-speaking.

Haiti is poor, black, and has a variety of tongues.

Who do you think is going to be in better shape in a year? (2 years for Haiti.)