You’ve got to stand for something…

President Obama Makes Hu Jintao Look Good On Rights (the full text of the editorial is below)

I don’t believe what is coming out of either of their mouths.

In school we’ve been studying WWII and the period directly after it. What struck me when we were reading about Truman wasn’t the fact that he had to make one of the hardest decisions anyone in the world has ever made but that he spoke his mind. Apparently he wasn’t eloquent and sometimes said the wrong things. He spoke from his heart, however, and said what he meant. He wasn’t worried about polls or feelings or how it was going to affect his legacy. He defeated Dewey, after all, when everyone except the voters thought he’d lose. And in the end, I think most Americans (who know a little about history) respect him as a president and a man.

I wish that our politicians were still like that. Not just the president, but every single politician. The American media assumes that a smooth tongue equals strong leadership. All it equals is someone who can put one word after another. The ability to speak well doesn’t necessarily mean there are benevolent motivations nor deep thoughts behind the words. It may only mean there is a teleprompter involved. Moses had a speech impediment and even had to have his brother speak for him, but he led the whole nation of Israel out of Egypt and helped them set up their legislative system. (On the opposite side of the spectrum) Jim Jones was certainly gifted with influential speech and we all know where that got his followers.

The next time a politician is speaking, especially this president, whose words sound so good, take a moment to actually listen to what is being said. Dissect the sentence and think about what it means. In the specific instance above, of course Obama doesn’t want to anger a foreign leader who is visiting us, but to completely whitewash the human rights violations that have been going on in that country is wrong. He doesn’t need to lambast Jintao right there, but come on, Mr. President, you’ve got to stand for something…

Sentences mean nothing when they are just fancy words strung together and have no conviction or heart behind them.

The full text of the article:

THE MOST significant statements at the joint news conference of President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday came in response to questions about human rights. Asked how China’s abuse of its own people affected relations between the two countries, one of the two leaders responded in a perfunctory manner, offered excuses for Beijing and concluded that disagreement on human rights “doesn’t prevent us from cooperating in these other critical areas.” The other forthrightly stated that “a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.” Disappointingly, that first speaker was Mr. Obama; the relatively honest statement came from Mr. Hu.

The president’s remarks were surprising because his administration had indicated before Mr. Hu’s state visit that it intended to make human rights a more central part of its China policy. In a speech last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton argued forcefully that as long as China represses freedoms, it will be unable to realize its potential. She cited the cases of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and missing human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng and said “those who advocate peacefully for reform within the constitution . . . should not be harassed or prosecuted.”

But Mr. Obama retreated to the administration’s previous approach, which has been to minimize the issue. In his prepared remarks, the president said he had raised human rights with Mr. Hu, but when invited by an Associated Press reporter to expand on the subject, he began with what sounded like an apology for the Chinese regime. “China has a different political system than we do. . . . China is at a different state of development than we are. We come from very different cultures and with very different histories.” The president then said that the United States believed in the universality of rights such as freedom of speech, and that he had been “very candid with President Hu about these issues.”

Then came more excuses for Beijing’s record: “There has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years. My expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution.” He concluded with the assurance that the United States and China cooperate on many issues, and that the issue of human rights “doesn’t prevent” such cooperation. The president made no mention of Mr. Gao, who has not been seen or heard from since last April, or Mr. Liu, who succeeded Mr. Obama as the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Their families could only conclude that China will pay no price for its persecution of the two men in its relations with the United States.

Mr. Hu, by contrast, was more forthcoming. He said “China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights,” before conceding that it had more to do. “We will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law,” he said, adding that China was prepared to reopen a dialogue with the United States on human rights issues. In fact, human rights have regressed under Mr. Hu’s administration, so his promises don’t have much credibility. Yet Mr. Hu at least formally recognized the need to move toward democracy. Mr. Obama’s failure to do the same made him look more tolerant of dictatorship than the president of China.

From the Washington Post Editorials Wednesday, January 19, 2011; 7:25 PM

Just a quick rant

It’s been cold long enough here. Long gone are the days of hating the heat and wishing for just mild weather, just one day. The days where to wear a sweater would be a nice, early fall treat. I’m sick of all my sweaters now. They aren’t even enough to keep me warm. It takes at least three layers, sometimes five or six to keep my bones from shivering. Who can move in all that? What’s even more fun is having to take a toddler to the public bathroom with all those layers on the kid as well and then having to bend and shift and rotate yourself enough to get the clothes off and on the kid. Without anything falling in the toilet.

I was born for warmer weather, God knew what He was doing, and my husband is right when he says I would not survive happily anywhere north of where we are. We still get out and do all of our extracurricular activities. It’s just now those activities might involve me bringing a space heater. I actually brought our space heater to R’s riding lessons last week. It warmed up my shins a little. I have no desire to go outside and let the kids play or to go outside and take pictures (I forced myself yesterday due to the frozen branches that I thought would look awesome) or to go outside and do field trips.

I want to feel the warm sun on my skin. I want to wear only one layer to actually let my skin see the light of day. I want getting dressed in the morning not to feel like I’m getting ready for a day in Siberia. I’m not positive that will come soon. February is usually colder than January. And we’re only half-way through January. Can I vacation in the Keys for a month and a half.

Now that that rant over I can think about being grateful to have a warm house to escape the cold. We have enough clothes to layer ourselves with. We have enough food to keep us going. And until the day actually comes I can just dream of burning the backs of my legs on the black leather interior that has heated up to 200° in the blazing sun. I can’t wait.

Project 365 on the iPhone

Another of my photo projects this year involves the Project365 app for the iPhone. It’s probably not too hard to figure this one out. 365 days, 365 pictures. So far I’ve managed to keep up. I learned about the project on 06 January. Fortunately, I had taken pictures on all but one day of January before that. Also fortunately, Du had taken a picture on the day I missed. His life is so closely linked to mine I decided it would be perfectly fine to incorporate his photo for that day. PLUS, my somewhat OCDishness just couldn’t take a blank day on the photo calendar! There had to be something there.

Most of these pictures have been/will be taken with my phone. Some people don’t care for the resolution, etc of the iPhone camera, but I’m clueless enough to think it’s great, especially with the apps I use to take pictures on the phone.

Click on the picture to be taken to a good description of a Project 365 and some motivation. If you want to download it then go to your phone. Doing some searching I found ShutterCal.com. If you want to do a Project365 but don’t have an iPhone or other phone that has the capability to download the app, and if you don’t want to create your own blog this looks like it’s the site for you! I haven’t tried it out so I cannot vouch for it…I’ m very tempted to try it out though. You know, ’cause I need another thing on my plate right now. A duplicate thing no less.

Here’s my picture from today (using the Instagram app to jazz it up):

If you’re bored and want to see my daily pics you can look up at the top-left of the blog. In that left sidebar up there I’ve got a Project365 button that links to my Flickr account. Apparently that’s going to update itself every time I update Flickr with my daily pic. So you can come back here and look everyday, or you can come back whenever you remember I write a blog and click on the picture and it’ll take you to all the pics I’ve taken. There’s a lot of moving parts there, hopefully they’ll all stay connected and working (and motivated).

I’m excited to be using the camera on the phone every day. If nothing else, it will help me become more creative in subject matter and composition. I love always having a camera with me!

Project 52 – weeks 1 & 2

To get better at taking pictures there is only one thing to do, take more pictures. In an effort to get better it seems that I am joining every single photo project that is starting up in January. What’s left of my organizational anal retentiveness flares its head in January and I aim to become more organized and super scheduled for the new year. My goal this year, it seems, is to be taking pictures every day…and at the rate I’m going, with the projects I’ve joined, you might as well go ahead and super glue my camera to my face.

I want to, overall, be a better picture taker (I will not call myself a “photographer”…not yet, not sure when I’ll feel justified to do that). But more than that, I want to be a better storyteller. Our daily lives are actually what make up the majority of our life’s stories. My goal is to document more of our everyday lives this year, not just the bigger events. But how boring can that be. That’s where being a better storyteller comes into play. My mentor is Tori. She can take an everyday scene and make it look magical, like it belongs in a magazine. I mean, take a look at “The Week“. We do that stuff at our house, but I haven’t yet been able to capture it like that. Step 1, start actually taking the pictures.

One of the projects I’m joining this year is MCP Actions’ Project 52.

Every week there is a new theme and the challenge is to take a picture in the nature of that theme. Gah!!! This is where I have to get creative. The first week was “Around the House”. That shouldn’t have been hard, but I didn’t get the camera out much and it ended up being hard to pull something out of the ol’ magician’s hat that would fit the bill. Week Two was “Song Title”. Hello. There are like, eleventy million seven hundred and thirty two thousand song titles out there. It was a little easier this week to pick a picture and come up with a song title to go with it. I KNOW that wasn’t what they meant for us to do. We’re supposed to take the theme and then shoot with that in mind, not scramble at the end of the week and try to make something work…that will start happening once I get my butt in gear and feel like I’ve got this superglued face camera under control…

So, here are the two shots that I chose for the first two weeks of Project 52:

Week 1: Around the House

Yes, that’s paint peeling off of the frame. A DIY project gone wrong. Must be righted soon. Not proud of this one, but it’s all I had. I’m just glad I actually took a picture inside my house that first week.

Week 2: Song Title

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding

I actually like the following one a little better, but I thought the above one would stand out better on the Project 52 Flickr Page.

Gah, that’s dark on here. Didn’t look that dark in LightRoom. Maybe I do like the 1st one better…

So, stay tuned. You’ve got 50 more of these posts coming throughout the year. Week 3’s theme is “shades of grey”, which I should be all over seeing that my iPhone’s camera settings are on nothing but black and white these days.

So there’s this bag…

There’s an old saying about diamonds being a girl’s best friend or something. I don’t worry about that because if I started walking around sporting a lot of bling bling who would honestly believe that I could afford it all. Bags, however, are a different story. Along with shoes, but that’s a whole nother post.

When I got my nice camera this summer I immediately bought a little bag to carry it around it because I needed to keep it safe. Since then I’ve added a couple more lenses and now my little bag doesn’t quite make the cut. It also looks, well, like a camera bag. I went online to search out fashionable camera bags that really look like purses and lo and behold I actually found some. And their prices sent me into cardiac arrest.

I am the one they call Frugal so I’ve been looking for other options. I found a diaper bag at the Coach store that actually ended up only costing me $140 (I KNOW!) and that is actually a really good deal. It was originally $400. And those chic camera bags cost anywhere from $120 to $400. That was a huge score. It had pockets and padding and tons of space. UNTIL I got it home and loaded my camera paraphernalia in it. There was still gobs of room for other things but it was pretty heavy on my shoulder. It wasn’t at all girly looking, so I could have gotten Du to carry it, but how often would he let me get away with that?

So I cried yesterday when I returned it. I immediately when over to JoAnn Fabrics to buy the materials to make my own padded inserts to put in the purses that I already own. What could be better than having a chic camera bag that only costs $7 in materials plus a couple of man hours for creation?

I’ll tell you. Today I found the better option. Free. I’m going to win this bag:

It’s called the Nevis bag by ONA and it retails for $329. Heart attack. But I’m not going to pay anything for it because MCP Actions is having a giveaway. I may still make those padded inserts just to have another option. Maybe not.

You could enter to win the Nevis too. But if you do you have to promise to let me share it with you. K?

Thank you, Candace Bushnell and Pentagon City

I homeschool for many reasons. One is the flexibility homeschooling affords on so many different levels. We can “do school” in the car on a trip or on a Saturday to make up for a missed weekday. Or we can even play Scrabble as our spelling lesson for the day. That’s what I chose to do today. We’re all a little antsy for Christmas Eve so Scrabble should have been a fun, innocuous way to get some spelling in.

We were plugging along, both somehow managing to find words that would fit on the board with our jumbles of letters, when Reagan picked an ‘x’ out of the pile to replenish her stash. She likes to form words with the letters that she has in her pile, no matter what is on the board. She makes words with her seven letters and then tries to find a place for them. She was desperately wanting to use the ‘x’ somehow.

I was concentrating on the alphabet soup that was my pile, including two ‘z’s when I hear Reagan say, “I can use ‘sex’!” Now, I’m not usually good at controlling my facial expressions. Usually I end up making expressions that I didn’t even know I was making, much less mean them. Somehow I channelled my inner botox and didn’t move the slightest muscle. In fact, I froze in my seat. I think my heart stopped.

Recovering, I said, “that would be good except you can’t use Latin words.” Saved! I thought. She’s thinking of her Latin vocabulary. “No, Mommy, I mean ‘sex’,” and she kind of does this little body shake. I wanted to cry and laugh and die all at the same time. She’s even adding movements!? (None that I had ever seen when referring to sex though.) “Um…what do you mean?” I ask cautiously because this could turn into a forced birds and bees convo. “You know, like Sex and The City!”

Now I KNOW she didn’t learn that in this household. I’ve watched one show maybe and that was in the middle of the night when Du was on a business trip and I couldn’t get to sleep and wanted to see what all the hype was about surrounding Carrie Bradshaw (who has some taste issues, btw). So where did my little innocent learn about Sex? At the local mall from a twenty foot banner hanging from the ceiling advertising it. The mall is fair when promoting sex shows though. They also have had banners for Desperate Housewives and shows geared towards teens that are probably all about sex. At least, that’s how the girls are dressed and that’s the facial expressions they have on the posters staring back at my innocent child.

Another reason we homeschool is to expose the girls to situations and topics when we think they can handle them. Obviously they are not in a bubble or locked away until we marry them off to someone who will keep them in a bubble. Our girls will be well-rounded and well-versed with the ways of the world but their knowledge base will be biblical. And obviously we aren’t going to be able to shield them from little zingers like a big sex poster hanging IN A MALL where people of all ages should be able to go and enjoy society without having crap shoved in their faces. (And I’m looking at you, too, Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.)

So, back to the ‘sex’ and the shake. I asked her, “what does that mean? Sex and the city?” And my innocent little girl, still unfazed by how the world is trying to get her to grow up way too fast, says, “oh, you know…cute, style…” and she does the little shake again, representing to her a cute, stylish little pose.

BTW, nice phallic symbol in that poster, huh.