Random Thoughts

Armenians, Turkey, and the Sky is Blue

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has declared that the mass killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey during 1915  was genocide.

WASHINGTON — The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted narrowly on Thursday to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians early in the last century, defying a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote that seemed sure to offend Turkey and jeopardize delicate efforts at Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

And it only took them 95 years to make this astute observation.

Next up, the US Senate will declare that the sky is blue.

The Armenians were NOT killed. Even if there’s proof, it never happened.

And now Turkey is unhappy with the US.

But to Turks, what happened in 1915 was, at most, just one more messy piece of a very messy war that spelled the end of a once-powerful empire. They reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide, saying there was no premeditation in the deaths, no systematic attempt to destroy a people. Indeed, in Turkey today it remains a crime — “insulting Turkishness” — to even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians.

Of course it wasn’t “systematic;” herding hundreds of thousands of people away from their homes and villages, executing them by the tens of thousands, sending tens of thousands of them on a forced death march, it was…spontaneous? A whim? No, wait, I remember the excuse: “They all moved away.”

Turkey has perfected the art of national denial. Suck it up, admit to your country’s past sins, and maybe then you can legitimately move past them Until then, they are hanging like a rotting albatross around your collective necks.

For those who are unaware of this holocaust and the subsequent efforts to pretend it never happened, a little reading might be useful.

Yes, they’re clickable. I’m all about education, especially in the face of deliberate, willful ignorance.

Nothing like this really ought to surprise me anymore. From the national to the personal, if we’re not ignoring killing, we’re celebrating it. H/T Brutally Honest. Days like this, I despair for humanity.

Coffee and guns

Maybe I should make this a monthly blog. At least I’d feel less guilt. Then again, I could just pull a Rachel Lucas, except that I refuse to Twitter. I have to draw the line somewhere!

So, this just cracks me up, in a good way:

SEATTLE – Coffee chain Starbucks Corp. is sticking to its policy of letting customers carry guns where it’s legal and said it does not want to be put in the middle of a larger gun-control debate.

The company’s statement, issued Wednesday, stems from recent campaign by some gun owners, who have walked into Starbucks and other businesses to test state laws that allow gun owners to carry weapons openly in public places. Gun control advocates have protested.

The fight began heating up in January in Northern California and has since spread to other states and other companies, bolstered by the pro-gun group OpenCarry.org.

Some of the events were spontaneous, with just one or two gun owners walking into a store. Others were organized parades of dozens of gun owners walking into restaurants with their firearms proudly at their sides.

Now, gun control advocates are protesting the policy. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, launched a petition drive demanding that the company “offer espresso shots, not gunshots” and declare its coffeehouses “gun-free zones.” And Wednesday, that group delivered 28,000 signatures to the coffee giant’s headquarters in Seattle.

The group also held a press conference near Seattle’s Pike Place Market, just a few yards away from where the first Starbucks cafe opened. Gun rights advocates showed up as well, some carrying handguns in holsters around their waists.

Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign said carrying guns intimidates and frightens people, and said the group thinks Starbucks will “do the right thing” and change its policy.

“They’re putting their workers in harm’s way by allowing people to carry guns into their stores, especially open carry,” Malte said.

Heh. Heh heh heh. “Carrying guns intimidates and frightens people?” Yeah, if the people are bent on holding up a store, or robbing customers, then I expect the weapons WOULD intimidate them. I hope to heck they are frightened.

Personally, I feel very safe when I’m around people who are licensed to carry weapons and have them at hand. I do find it all kinds of funny that anti-gun people would try to pressure Starbucks into kicking customers out of their stores, and in defiance of the law. No end to the arrogance…

H/T My Gun Fun Blog

Along these lines, courtesy of Instapundit, a must-read : The Path to Tyranny: A History of Free Society’s Descent into Tyranny.

Throughout history, free societies descended into tyranny when their populations realized they can use the power of government to give themselves benefits at the expense of others. The Path To Tyranny examines how and why each of these free societies descended into tyranny and evaluates the current prospects for the United States.

It doesn’t get much more relevant than that.

Tacky is as tacky does…

The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised Rahm Emmanuel used the phrase “f—ing retards” in a White House meeting.

We knew he was a snake when Obama picked him up. He’s probably just echoing what his boss thinks anyway.

His apology is worthless at this point; let the man display better behavior for a year or two and then I’ll believe he’s truly changed his crude speaking ways.

And pigs will fly. Backwards. Through the Oval Office.

Allahpundit over at HotAir points out just how ridiculous Rahm’s apology really is.

The Obama Administration: The epitome of class and dignity. Only really, really not.

And in other news, FLOTUS Michelle publicly humiliates her daughters to authenticate her new pet cause: Childhood obesity.

Nothing like having your mama air your personal health concerns in front of the entire freaking world.

These people redefine classless and tacky on a daily basis.

Just Visiting

Today’s blog is personal, because something’s been on my mind since this morning. I’ve been reading Beyond the Pale’s musings about her own church travails, and thinking about the parallels between her apparently dissimilar situation and mine.

I’ve been attending a very large local church for over a year now. It’s a church that, two years ago, I would never have considered attending. Three years ago I would have laughed in the face of anyone who’d said “You’ll become a regular visitor here.”

It’s the first time in my adult life I’ve been a perpetual church visitor; I’ve always been a member. I like belonging to things, whether they are message boards, school associations, political parties, or churches. I like to contribute, to be a part of things. I don’t like being an outsider.

I’ve been a church outsider since May of 2008. That’s when the elders of the small church I’d belonged to for nearly a decade decided that 50 families just weren’t enough, and that–even though the church’s accounts weren’t in the red (I would know, my husband was a treasurer) the church wasn’t accomplishing its mission. So the logical thing–to them–was to disband.

It hurt. A lot. It felt like I was being handed divorce papers without cause. A “what did I do wrong, can’t we work this out, please don’t do this” feeling.

But so it went. And I and my family spent months visiting other churches. Small, medium, big, mainstream denominational, non-denominational, whacked out fringe denominational (that one was an accident) and at one point I swear I considered Catholicism just to be somewhere. Somewhere solid where I could say “This is home.”

It didn’t happen. Some of the places that might have worked for me didn’t work for MrRandomThoughts (one in particular we visited for over four months). Some didn’t work for Youngest Son. Eventually we ended up at The Mothership — at my former church we called this place “The Mothership” because it’s the largest church in our community. And it kind of looks like it landed on the big grassy lawn it’s perched upon.

Prior to our arrival, this church had gone through hell with a promiscuous pastor, a year of interim pastors, and only now, just as we began attending, had they hired a permanent pastor. He’s a fellow who is the complete opposite of the scoundrel who formerly filled their pulpit–a fresh faced preppy forty something fellow straight out of the Midwest by way of a small town with a big church in Virginia. Three kids, a great wife, and as doctrinally solid as granite rock. It looks like this time the elders got it right.

I do not trust church elders though. They took away my last church, and they screwed over this one when they hired the current pastor’s philandering surfer boy predecessor. But I figure this church is predisastered. It’s safe now, it’s already had the spiritual equivalent of an airplane through the roof.

Still, I just can’t bring myself to consider joining this church.There’s something about it that annoys me. The artificial fog that is pumped onto the stage during the worship songs, the not-quite-hitting-it attempt at a rock band, the dozens of Hummers, Mercedes and Lexus automobiles that fill the parking lot, the auditorium that seats over 2800 people…it’s all so affluent and so theatrically driven…

This Sunday, when they showed a media presentation about the Elders (a new one just was elected) I found myself actually getting angry. I’m still not sure why, except that I don’t want to hear about the middle aged affluent white men who can directly influence my ability to worship at a given place.

Yep, I’ve definitely got issues with elder boards.

And I really don’t fit in here.

I tried; two months after we began visiting, I went to the annual all-church women’s luncheon. The guest speaker happened to be someone I know personally from Youngest Son’s grade school. She’s also a minor celebrity, which is why she was the guest speaker (she happens to be a very authentic, deeply spiritual woman too). I did not get to say hello to her. There were too many women talking to her, too many who wanted her attention, and I felt frankly odd about working my way through the crowd of them. I sat at a table where I knew no one. The other women knew each other. Beyond greeting me with a smile or a nod, they ignored me. I am a rather sociable person, but there has to be some reciprocal effort, and on their part, there wasn’t.

They began the event without prayer. Someone figured out that it might be nice to pray as we started to eat, so they threw that in. For the most part, it seemed to be a chance for the women who knew each other to gossip about their daily lives. There was a psuedo-cooking demonstration, and a sort-of-craft demonstration, and music by the couple who regularly lead Sunday worship. As a duet they’re good, better than they are on Sunday morning when not-quite-hitting-it band surrounds them. And then there was my friend, who gave a very moving and challenging talk. People at my table left during it.

I won’t go to another women’s luncheon at this church. I wish I could have gotten the cost of the ticket back too.

Other events, family things held outside on the massive lawn, can be somewhat better. I can wander around with a cup of coffee in my hand smile and say hello to strangers, and not feel too uncomfortable at being ignored. Mostly I just show up on Sundays and try to get my head and heart into some kind of worship, despite the theatrical staging, and hang on until the sermon.

The pastor’s sermons are always good. He cares a lot about ministry and missions, he’s willing to address the tough stuff too about faith and sin. I wonder if he and his family are happy here. I hope they are, but they’re so different from everyone else in the building, myself included. They remind me of what I was like when I first came to California from Illinois. They aren’t jaded. I hope this place and the faint Hollywood vibe it puts out doesn’t suck the joy out of their lives.

The youth group at The Mothership is really kicking it for Youngest Son though, and MrRandomThoughts is happy in obscurity, his involvement limited to sitting in the fifth row, left center section every Sunday. So I guess we’ll just keep visiting.

I miss my old church so darned much.

Unthinkable

I don’t have the words…

This tragedy just continues to echo around us. The depth and breadth of suffering is unthinkable.

Elsewhere, the Anchoress has a powerful update on Haiti.

And here is an inside scoop from the aid efforts of the USNS Comfort (H/T Confederate Yankee).

Unlikely heroes

Sometimes heroism comes in unlikely packages.

ARLINGTON, Va. – Ray Vivier had been an adventurer, an ex-Marine who explored the country from South Carolina to Alaska, the father of five children.

The 61-year-old also was a man starting to get his life back together after living for years in a shanty beneath a Cleveland bridge. He had struggled with alcoholism, but by November he had a welding job, friends and a place to stay at a boarding house.

He rescued five people from that house when arsonists set it ablaze — but Vivier couldn’t save himself. He and three others died, and two people have been charged in their deaths. Vivier’s body, unclaimed and unidentified for weeks, seemed destined for an anonymous, modest burial.

A soup kitchen volunteer, though, remembered Vivier and heard about his heroism. Jody Fesco and her husband Ernie traveled back to Cleveland from their new home in Pennsylvania to make sure Vivier wasn’t forgotten. They identified his body, found his family and arranged a proper funeral.

On Friday, Vivier’s ashes were inurned at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

“You can see from what he did that he definitely had a good heart,” said Mercedes Cruz, Vivier’s ex-wife of 23 years, who attended the funeral with the couple’s children. “No matter what our difficulties were in our marriage, I’m very proud of what’s happened.”

For his grown children — who now are scattered around the country — Vivier had been gone for about 15 years. They know of his heroism now — but they don’t know much about the man he was trying to become. They remember their dad’s struggles with alcohol and other troubles.

“What I’m trying to get out of this is to have one good, concrete memory that I can have of him for what he did to save those people,” said his oldest daughter, Elisha Vivier. “I’m proud of the man that he was becoming.”

Vivier’s funeral procession                                                     AP Photo/Kevin Wolf

I’m far too quick to label people in my mind with some sort of limiting descriptor, such as “homeless.” That makes it far too easy to fail to see them as complex people, capable of anything, no matter what sort of life they’ve been living.

As C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory,

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Pause, reflect

I am really looking forward to the day when this woman will be out of a job.

It’s one thing to be a hypocrite. It’s one thing to lie. But to be a lying, in your face, serious as a heart attack hypocrite takes some kind of evil skill I can’t even fathom.

“We’re not in a big rush” on health care, Pelosi said. “Pause, reflect.”

I read that, and I almost had an out-of-body experience. Like I was suddenly set down on another planet. Because this is the woman who has been shoving universal health care down America’s collective throat like there is no tomorrow.

August 2009:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed on Wednesday to push through the government-sponsored health care program that the late Ted Kennedy characterized as his life’s work. “Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” Pelosi said in a statement.

October 2009

“Leaders of all political parties starting over a century ago with President Theodore Roosevelt have called and fought for health care reform and health insurance reform,” Pelosi said. “Today we are about to deliver on the promise.”

December 2009

“We would do almost anything if it meant we would pass health care for all Americans (by) the Christmas holidays,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “Maybe we can’t,” she said, in which case Congress could deliver “a New Year’s present for the American people.”

6 January 2010

Lawmakers are “very close” to resolving differences between the House and Senate health care bills and sending a final version to President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.

And now she says “not a big rush,” and “pause, reflect.” I suppose the stunning failure of Democrats to hang on to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat wouldn’t have anything to do with Ms. Pelosi’s dramatic change of attitude. Not that she’s capable of understanding what Massachusetts’ voters decision represents,

“Massachusetts has health care and so the rest of the country would like to have that too,” Pelosi said, referring to the state’s health care program. “So we don’t [think] a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should.”

It’s not complicated, Ms. Pelosi. Americans simply don’t want to pay for universal health care.

We can only hope that this is an epic fail for what has to be the worst bill in the history of US government.

Right voices thinks it could be the beginning of the end for Pelosi.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit calls it a quagmire.

And Instapundit…oh jeeze, it hurts to laugh this hard.

Could we Californians hope for a Barbara Boxer reelection loss? American Power thinks so. Oh, be still my heart.