Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Three more days to go.

  • I just got to make it to Sunday. Three more days left in the current slog and I can spend a whole day with Tony.
  • From Seablogger, I get this link: an excellent analysis of anti-Americanism and Obama. I pull this quote from it: So Barack Obama, en fĂȘte around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.
  • David Warren on what is wrong with Obama (there are many things actually): Read what Ronald Reagan wrote, in his own hand, and often only to himself, over many years (there is the collection aptly entitled: Reagan, In His Own Hand) -- and you find a man who is consistently thinking about his people and his nation, about what is right and what will work. Then read Obama’s Dreams From My Father. It is all about finding himself. It is a well-written book, an interesting piece of literature, but it is strictly narcissistic. I have heard excerpts from Obama's book, over the Internet, read in Obama's voice. Frankly, these excerpts reminded me of my much younger, self-pitying self that it took listening to Rush Limbaugh and a good dose of common sense from a Irish in-law to partially escape from. But this is not to say that I have completely shed myself of those bad habits developed by the modern outlook on life and self. The flaws one has are not easy to rid oneself of. In fact, it is mightily impossible to do so. I still shirk the hard choices that have to be made. Which is why, despite his flaws, I have to steadfastly support George Bush. He has made hard unpopular choices and been shellacked permanently for it. But his choices showed a moral courage that most of his detractors lack.
  • Asking the students about the Olympics, lead to me being asked about Tibet and what I thought of it. I shirked that question....
  • Why don't you want to go to Africa? I asked some middle school students. One student told me he didn't want to go because it was full of black people. I could only say "ooookay!".
  • Our new TV will have to be taken in for repairs. It seems that it heats up, causing the picture to disappear.
  • I did an English Corner for fifty students this afternoon. It was more like doing stand-up than teaching. I did have them laughing. But don't expect me to be making jokes in public whenever I return to North America.
  • Here is another David Warren column from which I quote: The Pope has anyway only the power to be heard, and the responsibility to repeat, what every genuine sage has told us since the world began: that if we lead worthy lives, we needn’t worry about matters far beyond our control. This is the truth, and it begins at home.

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