The Obamas got another family member - Bo (pictured above with them), a Portuguese water dog. We'll see if they walk him enough. There was the controversy about whether Bo was really a rescue dog (which candidate Obama had said they would try to get). Yellow ribbons and U.S. flags went up when U.S. Navy snipers rescued the heroic U.S. merchant ship captain and killed three of his captors. But two Facebook friends of mine introduced other perspectives: one pointed out that most Somalian pirates are younger than Vincent, and the other characterized the pirates as Somalia's coast guard (recall that Somalia has almost no functioning government), defending its territorial waters and coast (and exacting fines) for Westerners' massive nuclear waste dumping and overfishing off of the Somalian coast. Coastal Somalians who have suffered heavily because of both of these post-fall of the Somalia government trends apparently sympathize wth the pirates (a small boatland of them having been captured in the picture below). (Recall that we abandoned Somalia after a brief intervention during the "Poppy" Bush to Clinton transition.)
U.S. folks in Louisville, Tallahassee, Albany (NY), Columbus, St. Paul, and no doubt other places where we've lived showed up in force on Wednesday (Tax Day) to protest the Obama budget, the bailouts, tax reform, and so on - linked with some Republican figures. I had hoped to go to the downtown Louisville event (to check it out) - which drew at least several hundred people - but didn't get away from work at lunchtime. (Pictured below are protesters in Albany.) I guess these folks would have generally not signed my support President Obama's budget proposal petition 2 1/2 weeks ago. But some might subscribe to the theories that President Obama is really a Muslim and that he really was not born in the United States and so should not be a U.S. citizen.
-- Perry
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