Observations on the death of Osama bin Laden, part II

I know this is a rather long post for me I but there is just so much garbage being tossed around now it could have been twice as long. I started to write it yesterday as part of that post but I didn't want to take away from my personal thoughts. I was going to end the whole with the following questions but they don't seem to fit either post so I'm going to put it here. Now that bin Laden is dead what is the reason to be in Afghanistan at all? Isn’t it time to come home before we follow the British and Russian paths out of the Hindu Kush?

And part II ....

One depressing aspect of bin Laden's death is how conservatives have come out to take credit for it. It was because of George Bush's policies or it was because of water-boarding they say. Bush had seven years to catch up with bin Laden and never did. No, it was because of continuing hard work of government agencies and President Obama having the guts to make the call to do it when he was advised not to, my gut tells me Bush wouldn't have done the same. He would have used jets or missiles and wiped out half of Islamabad in the process. I wish this would have happened sooner but thankfully Bush never had that chance.

Still some of the insane talk is more entertaining than other. Condoleezza Rice speaking on FOX News about Bush's bullhorn speech at Ground Zero; "But President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history." In all of American history, to name a few things that means Gettysburg, July 4th 1776, Pearl Harbor, and a moon landing. Granted it was probably Bush's finest moment as President but it was overshadowed by his 'mission accomplished' speech a year and a half later. Coincidentally bin Laden was killed 8 years to the day after that later speech.

But some of this commentary borders on sheer petty ignorance. Even Rudy Giuliani said "I thought the decisions about getting rid of the body were exactly correct." Yet some would have had it very different. Among them Glen Beck, "I really would have put him in a meat grinder with a pig." And the always charming Michelle Malkin, "They should have fed him to the pigs and not the fishes." Is it any wonder some parts of the world hate us?

Than there are those, too many to name, that believe Bush and not President Obama deserves the credit for the death of bin Laden. Let me remind them of this Bush quote from a press conference on March 13, 2002, just six months after the 9/11 attacks. When asked about bin Laden's whereabouts he answered "I don't know where he is, I’m not concerned about him anymore." Which is precisely the reason why President Obama did do in two years what Bush couldn’t do in seven. It all goes to prove, as Rep. Barney Frank said a few weeks ago, they all seem to live in cloud cuckoo land.

In a presidential debate on October 7, 2008 than candidate Obama said “"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." Senator John McCain mocked him as being naïve.

It Gets Better

It really does ....

Observations on the death of Osama bin Laden

Sunday night was one of those nights that you are always going to remember. I woke up from a nap on the couch to the news that a major announcement was coming from the President, this late on a Sunday night it had to mean something big. Word soon began to leak on twitter but it wasn't official until almost 11:30 when President Obama said "Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." Even before his speech ended the streets erupted with honking horns and the cheering of people. If anything the sounds I heard as I stood on the roof combined with the photos I was seeing from Times Square reminded me of New Years Eve here.

I wasn't in the city on the day of the attacks but I drove up with a friend about a month after. I took maybe 400 photos (l) while I was there, most of which I have never shown anybody but my family. I snuck around a barricade to get most of the shots, saw the smoke, the dust, the utter destruction, and smelled the terrible smells. I was escorted back to 'safety' by the National Guard who than proceeded to call my dad. I don't think I ever saw him so mad at me because I didn't even tell him I was going there. What I saw are sights that I never will be able to forget. I’ve been back to Ground Zero since and I have seen the new construction but I still see it the way it was that day.

I told that story because yesterday I read and saw some opinions where it was said that we celebrated the death of bin Laden too much. That, especially in New York, we were just showing how the terrorists had won in the way they had changed us. Those who think that have to realize that most of the people out in the street celebrating were my age or younger and 9/11 is the focal point of their lives. It both literally and figuratively changed their lives forever. So many died that day and since that the celebration should have been totally expected. It was a pure natural reaction to learning that our ‘boogeyman’ was gone forever and we were still here. I'm sure the death of Adolf Hitler was celebrated in much the same way.

I fell in love with this city years before when I visited often with my mom. I remember how the feel, the energy, and the art of the city just amazed me. But I also remember first hand what it was like to be here ten years ago. My first thought on seeing the look on people's faces that day was that the city was dying, that it would never be the same ever again, the terrorists had indeed won.

I was wrong.

midday update - A friend emailed me an article from The Washington Post that says a little more about what I was trying to say, Resilient New York takes grim satisfaction in bin Laden’s death. Also I received an email from somebody who wanted to remind me that bin Laden "was in fact the creation of the same military and political establishment that has killed so many people under the pretext of the fight against al-Qaeda." Whatever, 9/11 was a watershed moment, one of those rare moments when what came before and what came after are totally separated. Not for me to decide.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 5.1

I never have thought much about wedding photography. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with doing weddings, just that it doesnt seem to fit my personality. A few months ago I found this photo by Drew of His and Hers Photogaphy (l) and I fell in love with it and wanted to share. If there was ever a wedding shot I wish I had taken it is this one. It's just such a beautiful photo and the more I look at it the more I love it. Is there anything better to say about any portrait than that it makes you smile every time you see it? This photo does just that to me and it's not even black & white.

Well I guess I should admit that what reminded me of it was watching some of 'the' wedding on Friday. I watched for purely historic reasons, truth, it is history in the making and I'm sticking to that. So while I'm writing I suppose I could offer some thoughts and trivia on the wedding.

So here are my primary thoughts on the affair, The future Queen has an awesome name, Kate, and she was hot. But Kate's younger sister Pippa was totally hotter in her simple dress that was designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen. If I ever get married I want a photo like the top and a dress like Pippa's. 

Pippa

My fav quote of the day was by Martin Bashir of MSNBC who said that the wedding just solidified England as the worst dressed nation in Europe. I guess I have to agree because it looked like some of the women guests had raided the discarded hat box at a Lady Gaga video shoot. On Thursday Dylan Ratigan did a funny piece on wagering on the wedding which included the odds on the wedding dress being red which paid $1000 on a dollar bet. More fun was betting on the color of the Queen's hat. On a $10 bet yellow paid $7.27, light blue $17.50, and my personal favorite black paid $330. The thought was that she always wears light blue in cooler weather so that was the way to go but the thought was wrong and she wore yellow. An unknown gambler placed a $6,000 bet on Kate wearing a Russian tiara which had been made for Queen Victoria. I don't know how that turned out. Where they will honeymoon is still a big secret with rumors swirling and changing daily. I liked the one that had them going to Transylvania where the Prince of Wales owns a property.
 

Personally I would pass on the vampire honeymoon, unless Pippa was going along. I know, you just can not take me anywhere.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.28

I was doing some work from home today when it suddenly got weird. Even considering this is my life I am writing about it was weird. The New York area was expecting thunderstorms all day so when it started getting dark outside I didn’t think anything of it. However the green tinted sky I saw over the Village was something I wasn’t expecting. I don’t think I have ever seen a green tinted sky and I had no idea what it meant. What I half expected to see were agents K and J pulling up in front of our building in their black Crown Vic. 

I quickly googled 'green tinted sky' and found this which was written by a storm chaser. "A green tinted sky is from the suns rays reflecting off moisture and hail stones up in the clouds. This means that the storms updraft is very strong. A very strong updraft is one of the key ingredients for forming a tornado." Now I'm not one to panic but given recent news from the south and west I wasn't at all thrilled to read that. I have seen the movie "Twister" and know how cows blow down the road in a tornado and my thought was the gods only know what would blow down a New York street in such a storm.

Still, in a situation like that there is only one thing to do, grab the camera and go for a walk. I got as far as Union Square when the heavens opened up and I dove in the nearest shop which as luck would have it was Trader Joe's Wine Shop. I guess there are worse ways to spend a thunderstorm than discussing something I know absolutely nothing about, wine, while my storm hair dripped on the floor. And damn the wine at Trader Joe's is cheap too. As the storm passed I claimed two bottles of Spanish Syrah for only $10 and was on my way home.

I know it sounds a little silly to go for a walk when the sky is green but how would we get all that good stuff for the Weather Channel if everybody did that? I just asked myself what Joe Cantore would do.

Flyers update - After last night's win the Flyers are now 9-6 in seventh games and 6-3 when they are played at home. Stanley Cup round two begins Saturday afternoon with the Flyers home against the Boston Bruins in a rematch of last year's series which the Flyers won after trailing 3 games to none. The puck drops at 3PM or shortly after “God Bless America" is song by that known hottie Lauren Hart.

Observations on Art 4.24

Anybody that knows me also knows by now that I have a love affair with black & white photography. It's something that I have had for a long time, long before I even started thinking about taking photos myself. I can even tell the exact time it started, the summer of 1996.


My dad has always subscribed to Rolling Stone and it was one of the first magazines I read regularly. The July issue in 1996 was the yearly summer double issue and had Jenny McCarthy showing her boobs on the cover. That may have been the reason I picked it up but something I found inside in ways changed me forever. In an interview of Patti Smith I found this quote, "When I perform, I can't say I feel like a male or a female. What I feel is not in the human vocabulary." I was so fascinated by the interview and quote that I combed my dad's massive vinyl collection and found her debut album.

More important than the music I found on "Horses" was the cover. A stark black & white portrait I just found stunning. The cover notes said it was by Robert Mapplethorpe so i did some more digging and my love affair with b&w was born. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were many things too each other - collaborators, lovers, each others muse, and lifelong friends. Through it all their one goal was to create art and they did just that through poetry, drawing, music, and photography. Mapplethorpe's photos are breathtaking, beautiful, and at times brutally graphic yet they seem somehow emotional to me, at one instant tense and at the next simply beautiful.

I'm not sure why this has all come back to me now. I think a major part of it was the realization that I live within walking distance of his 23rd street loft where Mapplethorpe did much of his work and Smith lived but a block away from here during that time.  I recently picked up a copy of the book "Just Kids" by Patti Smith which is her story the years together with Mapplethorpe. The book ends with their last days and conversations, as Mapplethorpe died of AIDs in 1989. In the back of the book are the lyrics to her memorial song for Mapplethorpe ....

"Little emerald bird

Wants to fly away

If I cup my hand

Could I make him stay?

Little emerald soul

Little emerald eye

Little emerald soul

Must you say goodbye?

All the things that we pursue

All that we dream

Are composed as nature knew

In a feather green

Little emerald bird

As you light afar

It is true I heard

God is where you are

Little emerald soul

Little emerald eye

Little emerald bird

We must say goodbye"

footnote - In February the J. Paul Getty Trust and Los Angeles County Museum of Art jointly acquired the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. The 200 artworks, 2000 photographs, 3,500 Polaroids and 120,000 negatives are worth in the neighborhood of $30 million.

Patti Smith interviewed by Tom Snyder in 1978. This interview is just classic.

Happy Easter

Not that I am turning religious or anything of the sort, it just seems to fit. Happy Easter everybody, now get out and find those golden eggs ....

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.22

The internet gods truly are annoyed with me. Once again I was consigned to internet purgatory for sins real or imagined. I’m not sure what office of Verizon decides that point, I’m not even sure what side of the world the office is on. After yet another long phone conversation I’m beginning to think I have the answer to the last part.

It's not the modem, not the wiring, or my comps, and I don't buy the theory that rats are chewing on my wires because I feed the rats regularly to avoid just such an occurrence. I even stretched a 50' wire down the hall and plugged into Verizon directly only to find it was just as weak at the source. So I am out of theories of my own and I'm open to any opinions but I did accomplish one thing today. After threatening that my next call was going to be to Time Warner I was told a technician would be out sometime this weekend to check any of their equipment in the area. Sometimes it does pay to be a bitch.

Speaking of bitches; In an update to my last geek post I want to say that, contrary to a minor rumor on Twitter, Madonna and I are not at all close. Funny thing about Madonna and I though, our birthdays are the 15th and the 16th of August so I guess karmically speaking we are a lot closer than I thought.

Game 5 of the Flyers playoff series against the Sabres is about an hour away so I just have to forget my internet ills for now. After game 4 ended in a major fight this should just be awesome.

midnight update - The Flyers fell to the Sabres 4-3 in overtime and now find themselves facing elemination Sunday. This series goes a long way towards explaining why I love sports the way I do. Not that I enjoy watching my fav team lose but anything can happen. The thing is last year the Flyers made the playoffs on the last day of the season after a late season surge and they ended up making a run all the way to the Stanley Cup finals. This year they dominated the NHL for most of the year only to tire near the end and slip to second deed in the east. Still things still looked good going into the playoffs until they ran into Ryan Miller who is playing goal as well as the position can be played. Two of the Flyers' three losses in this series have been 1-0 shutouts and that is something that has never happened before in their storied history. You just never know.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.19

Yesterday was just a day of uber-geekness that was followed by a night of sports overload. These are just some random thoughts I typed on my netbook but I never got around to connecting.

I had a geek meltdown when I awoke to find I had internet loading speeds equivalent to a wretched dial-up connection. As my empire began to crumble around me I spent an hour on the phone with a friendly enough gentleman who finally informed me what I already knew, my modem was probably shot. He said in would send me a new one that should arrive in approximately six business days. Now I know the call center was in India but I didn’t know Verizon shipped their products from there. The one thing that did irritate a bit was when the automated system had an Indian accent, jesus I yell at them as it is. "Sorry I didn’t understand, sorry I didn’t understand." I just wanted to say I don’t effing understand you either but all I would have gotten back was "sorry I don’t understand!"

In one of my ultimate geek confessions I admitted to a friend that I owned possibly a dozen Madonna CDs. Previous to this it had been a very well kept secret but that no longer seems to be the case. To make it all the more pathetic I latter ripped all the CDs and now have a huge Madonna playlist on iTunes.

A Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer declared last night basketbockey night because the Flyers, Phillies, and Sixers were all playing at the same time. The Flyers won their playoff game against the Buffalo Sabres and now lead the series 2 games to 1. The Sabres have never won a series after falling behind 2 games to 1, this will be their 13th attempt. The Phillies lost in extra innings and the Sixers were totally crushed by LeBitch James and the Miami Heat in their playoff game.

After a bad outing in game two, a win in which he was replaced early, the Flyers didn’t even dress rookie goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. I know the powers that run the Flyers are reading so I just want to say that I think it was a totally bad move. Goalies in any sport a flaky to start with, witness my brother, so it was a bad enough move not to start him. This was only magnified by not letting him backup Brian Bouchet. Time will tell what it does to his confidence. 

I really just wanted one of those mellow spring baths I wrote about.

Madonna - American Pie

Observations from the Bar 4.15

Sitting in my bar watching the Phillies game and reflecting on the Flyers rather inauspicious start to the playoffs. After having the best record in the NHL for most of the season the Flyers went into an end of season funk, losing 5 of their last 6 games, and slipped to just 2nd seed in the Eastern Conference. They lost their playoff opener at home 1-0 to the Buffalo Sabres. I only hope that hit them like a hard slap to the face and they hit back with a win Saturday.

What made the loss worse was a bad case of torn loyalties between the Flyers and Penn State. Penn State alumnus Terry Pegula purchased the Sabres in February for $189 million. Pegula is also the force behind the new Penn State men's and women's NCAA division 1 ice hockey programs. Along with his wife Pegula donated $88 million to the school to start the program and build a new multi-purpose arena, the Pegula Ice Arena.

Now I see nothing wrong with spending your money on a sport you love, there are far worse things to spend it on, but during the game I was reading tweets from PSU ice hockey and PSU sports and this is where I got irritated. It seems Pegula's box at the Wachovia Center was filled with Penn State alumni and hockey people all wildly cheering the Sabres victory. This is somehow just wrong and I plan on boycotting Penn State ice hockey for a few years, maybe till they begin Big 10 play in 2012.

For the record Terry Pegula is a 1973 graduate of Penn State with a  bachelor of science degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering. You can guess where he made all that hockey money.

And the Phillies lost too. Perfect.

Observations from the Window 4.14

Something about the coming of spring, the official sunny warm walk outside without a jacket coming of spring, that puts me in a mood. I don't know what the right word is to describe it. Sexy, sensual, passionate, alive. Not that I don't feel this way other times, its just that the feeling is so magnified this time of year. An all consuming urge to explore and enjoy life, to go out and create.

It makes me want to fill the tub with my fav Bath and Body Works Black Amethyst bubble bath scented with bergamot and sandalwood. Do the whole routine with bubble bath, body wash, and spray. Take a long warm bath with the door open so the sun falls through the window into the bath. The slightest bit of steam rises from the water so the scent fills the room as I just lean back with a towel behind my head and soak with jazz quietly playing in the background.

It make me want to sit on the bed in my silk robe and do my nails with China Glaze midnight seduction, another fav. I won’t even bother straightening my hair, which seems so cold weather, just pull in back in a wild mess of black curls. Than just a last spritz of body spray before I pull on some grungy clothes and a pair of flip-flops. I'm ready to go out and take some pics.

Not that I did all that, no never.

W. Somerset Maugham wrote "It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

So much truer in the spring.

Observations on Politics 4.13, TBFM

I may have mentioned before that I have a temper but I don't dwell on it because lately I’ve been doing a good job of keeping it under control. Well last night I was looking at headlines when I came across one that just made me want to scream or honestly just smack her. "Michele Bachman calls for criminalization of same-sex marriage during speech in Iowa." (l)

During a speech to the right-wing and anti-gay group The Family Leader Bachmann called Planned Parenthood the "LensCrafters of big abortion" and than said this, "In 5,000 years of recorded human history, neither in the east or in the west, has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women."

What a totally ignorant bitch. Numerous societies have a broader definition of marriage or family than that and a broader understanding of human sexuality than purely heterosexual. To me faith-based is in such direct opposition to fact-based that it starts to approach pathology. "If I believe it strongly enough, it's true!"  Iraq had WMD's, Obama is a foreign born Muslim socialist and the founding fathers wanted the American government to be based on a narrow, radical and extreme interpretation of the Bible. Believe it? It's true.

Igor Volsky of Think Progress was there and asked the Minnesota congresswoman if she agreed with the stance of group head Bob Vander Plaats that homosexuality is a risky lifestyle akin to smoking. Bachman's answer was "Um. I don’t have an answer on that. I don’t have an answer. Why don’t I have another question." Because you are so damn pathetic you don't deserve another question.

Bachman often quotes this verse from the Bible, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). Personally I think the first part of it is might be true, it's much better with a woman, but I have no first hand experience with a man to base that on so please no e-mails. The larger abomination here is that Bachman was elected to Congress at all and that she is taken seriously as a contender for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

From this moment on I will simply refer to Bachman as 'TBFM' or  That bitch from Minnesota.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 4.10

This should have been posted as 'Observations from my Bed' but I was busy and never finished it. It would have been much more fitting a title though.

Sometimes I have dreams when I sleep. I know that is a strange thing to say but normally I don’t have them. There was a time that I did more often but that was long ago. I don’t know if it's the fact that I don’t sleep nearly enough, I drink too much, or if it is something related to my past as a pharmacist. I have never asked anybody why.

When I do dream it is almost always one of two ways. Some are very hot and sexy but I should add that I'm always alone in those dreams. I have been told that these dreams may come from a struggle to find a balance between the genders in my personality. The mystery lover of the night trying to show me the right balance of firm and gentle, bold and caring, yin and yang. It sounds a little deep but it could be true, who am I to say.

The other type I can only describe as an abstract type of dream. Physically I'm not in them but yet I am, or maybe you could say my soul is in them. I tend to style my life and art in shades of black and white yet these dreams are always colorful and graphic. I think of them as my inspirational dreams because they sometimes give me an idea for a painting or a shot I could take even if it has nothing to do with the dream itself.

The rarest form of dream I have is a combination of those two. You could say it's the most enjoyable of the three and that is where this post came from because I had one of those dreams last night. When I woke up I had what I think was an awesome idea which I'll post as an update later tonight. Rare as they are I have always thought that my dreams try to tell me something, it's just that I don’t always know what it is and I don't always listen if I do know.


"falling Down"

4/11 update - I stumbled on this quote by John Steinbeck that seemed to belong with this post. "People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all." No comment.

Observations on Politics and the Coming Shutdown

Some random thoughts on the government shutdown from my increasingly disillusioned mind as we approach 'zero hour' tonight at midnight ….

The fact that the Republicans and their teabagger members will shut down the federal government over the funding of Planned Parenthood strikes me as insanity or political theatre at its absolute worst. They keep saying it doesn't have to be debated today yet they don't offer to take the rider out of the budget bill.

I still miss Keith Olbermann but I'm finding that Lawrence O'Donnell is a worthy replacement. In some ways I like him more than Keith, he seems to be more in your face than Keith and less obsessed with Fox News. Still Olbermann's show on Current TV is slated to start in late May or June and I'll be watching from day one.

It has just amazes me to see so many young, healthy, rich white men debate women's health. All they seem to be proving is how little they know about it and how much less they care. They should know that Planned Parenthood can't spend any federal money it receives on abortion but it doesn’t seem to matter at all. So what does it spend the money on or what is it they want to cut? Teen pregnancy services, diabetes testing, breast cancer screening, and pap smears to name a few. I guess they think the oil companies deserve our money more.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reminds me of the spoiled little rich kid on the playground. The bratty kid who was so full of himself because his parents would do or get anything for him and always had that I’m better than you smile on his face. The little shit that would run home and tell daddy when the weird girl yelled at him because nobody else would. Anyway, Cantor reminds me of that little shit, I mean kid.

Finally a question, who do you think would make a better President, Donald or Daffy Duck?

18:00 update - Going to share a bad joke I just received in an email. I'm not sure if I am saying it's bad because it isn't funny or because it's all too true. "What does the Republican party have in common with the Taliban? Both want to use terrorism to take away women's rights and return us to the world as it was like 1000 years ago. Difference? Republicans don't demand a burka.