If We Really Saw Each Other

Okay, so we've had a new president for just over a month now. I cannot profess to be a whiz at all the political stuff and as I said in my last post, I usually just catch snippets hear and there. Tonight there were three:

1. Hilary Clinton in her new role as Secretary of State has pledged some astronomically large amount of US money to rebuild Gaza. My question is, given the deficit and two war fronts and bank bailouts, where are we going to come up with that money? I suppose the key is "we" since it will probably come from taxes and such. I honestly don't get it. At the same time, I don't know that the US should follow an isolationistic policy like we did before WWII. (I remember that from high school history.) It seems there needs to be a balance....
2. California is talking about going bankrupt. The news said that the way California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. Not good. There was a job fair at the stadium (Sorry baseball fans, I cannot remember the name) for 500 jobs. 4,500 hopeful people showed up -- engineers even applying for positions as ushers. Reminder: Be thankful for the jobs I have.
3. Rush Limbaugh apparently said that he hoped that Obama's economic plan failed. If it fails, what will that mean for Rush? Probably not much economically. I think he is pretty well padded. What will it mean for the average American? I don't really want to think about that disaster.
   

The Rush thing bothered me. I never say who I voted for because for me it is never a black and white choice. So, it isn't that I'm "Hooray for Obama" or "Boo for Obama." I do think that he is our President and maybe that should entitle him a bit of respect.

Honestly, I get tired of the Democrat vs. Republican thing. Old, old stuff. I wish that somehow we could scrap everything and have our elected officials operate together instead of against each other. Seems like pushing in the same direction would get us further.

I also think Democrats and Republicans need to sit down and get to know each other -- not talking business but learning about each other. I bet the Democrat cares as much about his family as the Republican.

William Ury had this to say about humans and war:

We tend to think the problem is human beings have this natural tendency to kill, and yet in the middle of a hot war, WWII, a "good war," as it were, the US army was astonished to learn that at least three our of every four riflemen who were trained to kill and commanded to kill, could not bring themselves to pull the trigger when they could see the person they were ordered to kill and that inner resistance to violence is a well kept secret.

Maybe seeing each other would cure a lot of things: politics, school bullying, family feuds, genocide, . . . .

Who do you need to see?