Brad\'s Bobeche Blog

One of the blogs that I link to is Juan Cole’s “Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion.” Today’s post is worth the read if you want to get a picture of both what we did wrong after 9/11 and how India should or shouldn’t respond to the attacks in Mumbai. One of his points is that we failed to understand the nature of our enemy after 9/11 because governments are accustom to dealing with other governments is very incisive and something I don’t think i’ve really realized before today. I’ve always just thought of Bush-Cheney as one issue foreign policy people who hated Iraq and didn’t understand anything about the Middle East. Which might still be true.

My brother-in-law Greg sent me a site with a civic test given to more than 2,500 americans randomly with scary results. Over half of the people who took the test failed with a score of under 50%, the average score of elected officials was 44%. Only 0.8 percent of those surveyed earned an “A”. They don’t say for sure what score you need to get on the 33 question to earn an “A”, Greg missed one and I missed two, so i think we both got that “A”. (I missed questions 7 and 29) When you see question 7 you might laugh at me because that’s one i should have gotten effortlessly.

Take the test here, and if you get a good score let me know. I did forward it to Mr Baseball and I expect he’ll get that elusive 100%.

The full disclosure policy of the bbb requires that we admit that if there were a similar test on spelling or grammar I would be well below the national average. (Of course as a reader of the bbb you know that.)

I don’t know if it’s legal to cut and paste a story from a major news organization, if it isn’t I hope I don’t get caught.

            Stunning Break with Last Eight Years

            By Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report


            In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect
            Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the
            past eight years through his controversial use of complete
            sentences, political observers say.


            Millions of Americans who watched Mr . Obama's appearance on
            CBS' "Sixty Minutes" on Sunday witnessed the
            president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama
            employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every
            time he opened his mouth.


            But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his
            public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since
            after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd
            speaking style jarring.


            According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the
            University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it
            "alienating" to have a President who speaks English as if it
            were his first language.


            "Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are
            in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon.  "If he keeps it up, he is
            running the risk of sounding like an elitist."


            The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using
            complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find
            itself saying, "Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate -
            we get it, stop showing off."


            The President-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete
            sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his
            harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.


            "Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking
            in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and
            Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do
            that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she
            said.

Georgia Congressman Paul Broun made a big splash in the news this week when he compared President-Elect Obama to Adolf Hitler and his Marxist governance. Although his comments were to a local service club they were wild enough to make the national news on just about every station. He was even featured on The Daily Show. The uproar has caused him to apologize for his remarks. One of the things I have found most interesting about this whole thing is that as far as I can tell no one has pointed out that Hitler wasn’t a Marxist. Hitler was a Fascists. If Congressman Broun didn’t learn this in High School history he could have found out this bit of information on Wikipedia. I would like to think that our Congressman/Congresswomen, even the Republican one, know enough history and political science to know who Hitler was and how he took over the German Government. Hitler’s rise to power was the results of many colliding events, certainly one tactic he used was demonizing one group of people and splitting the public with hate, would it be unfair to point out that this is similar to what Congressman Broun was attempting to do by comparing Obama to Hitler?

I don’t know if it’s unfair or not, but I know it would be unfair to seriously claim there are similarities in thought because Broun and Hitler used the same tactic.

Obama picked up an additional electoral college vote – he now has 364, so it looks like i missed by 2. I have to admit I never expected Nebraska to split it’s votes.

I don’t think I often post jokes on the bbb, but this one is that good – thanks to Mr. Baseball, enjoy: One sunny day in 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench.
He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush. The Marine looked at the man and said, ‘Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.’
The old man said, ‘Okay’ and walked away. The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush. ‘The Marine again told the man, ‘Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.’ The man thanked him and, again, just walked away. The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U. S. Marine, saying ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush. ‘ The Marine, somewhat agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, ‘Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand? ‘The old man looked at the Marine and said, ‘Oh, I heard you…. and I understand…… I just love hearing it.’

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, ‘See you tomorrow” !

Wednesday, as I was on my emotional high as a result of Obama’s victory, I passed this sign somewhere in the Ozarks. It’s very difficult to know exactly what to say about the level of thinking that would attempt to influence an election with such outright racism and misunderstanding. First if you want to use Obama’s middle name, you don’t need to use quotation marks, that’s his name – just don’t expect anyone to believe that he’s related to anyone else with the name Hussein. Second, there are fewer abortions while the Democratic Party holds the presidency. Third, your state has past an amendment prohibiting same sex marriages and Obama has said he believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Fourth, unless you make more than $250,000 a year your taxes would be a little less under Obama, and looking at your sign I don’t think you make that much. And Fifth, if more gun regulations will keep guns out of your hands, that might be a good thing.

AS you might know I predicted that Obama’s electoral college victory would be with 367 votes. The results show he had 364. I guess I had more faith in South Dakota than I should have.

My congratulations to Mr. Baseball for coming in second in my contest – do you see a trend? If North Carolina had stayed red, Mr. Baseball would have been the winner – it was that close – kind of like the baseball bet.