Earthquake in Haiti

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

     In this world of instant gratification, it's easy to forget that things are not always so instant. This article on Haiti reminds us of that. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35011584/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/ The problem with most people watching the horror is that we think that if we just show up, things will turn around immediately & everything will be ok. If that doesn't happen & the whole thing's a failure & it's all our fault.
     Here's the grim reality: Haiti's problems will not get fixed overnight. The earthquake literally wiped out over half the government workers & offices. Plan B was the United Nations. They have the exact same problem as the Haitian government. Up until last week, the harbor to Port-a-Prince was so severely damaged that you couldn't dock any ships there. The airport has one runway & very little space to store anything. The roads are completely impassable due to the severity of the quake & those are just the small problems.
     I know that cable news & bloggers have been going on & on about how the situation in Haiti is a complete failure because the help didn't get to every single person within a day or less. Things just don't work that was when you're dealing with a catastrophic earthquake. Success will take hard work & time; a LOT of time.

Tea Bagging Gone Wrong

I went online & watched a video of a tea bagging rally. I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about. What I saw was something very frightening, but not for the reasons that you might think.
The rally started innocently enough. Speaker after speaker went on stage & started talking about high taxes & the need to start trimming them. I’m all for that. I believe the deficit is getting out of control now & we need to start putting restrictions in place in order to bring it down.
Then, the rally started turning scary. The speakers started talking about illegal immigrants & the need to kick them out of the country & close the borders. One speaker even started talking about spics & niggers being the main reason for America’s problem, which received great applause. Well, THAT got my attention. The handheld camera started panning the crowd. All white. Go figure. One woman held up a sign that said “Go to hell Owebama (a cute play on the president’s name) & the camel you rode in on”. Interesting.
What is evident to me is that when the far right stole a page out of the far left’s playbook with these anti-tax rallies, the idea became perverted. What may have started out as a decent idea has now turned into a kinder gentler version of the Ku Klux Klan.

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