My mother grew up in Boston's hub for Irish when they immigrated from Ireland - Roxbury where anyone who is anyone went to St. Patrick's. The Irish community migrated to Southie and Dorchester around the 1950s or so. Growing up in Boston, the nobility, class and faithfulness of our Irish Catholic heritage was reflected in everything we said, we did, we were. I missed that terribly when I moved to the suburbs. I don't actually know if it exists anywhere. We seemed to scatter.
For as long as I can remember, my mother would tell me that when the nuns at St. Pats would teach about the Book of Revelation, they would tell the students that Catholics and America would be in terrible danger when the red dragon rose into power. When she told me, she would get very serious and tell me as though she were passing me something prophetic from very wise and holy women who warned her, something I needed to remember.
I've thought about it from time to time as our economy and failing banks have increasingly been bailed out and financed by the Communist Chinese and as more of our goods had "made in China" stamped on the bottom.
As I watched the Obamas bowing to Hu, I was thinking today that it seems like a lifetime ago when we lived in a country that sanctioned dictators who treated their countrymen with ferocious inhumanity.
Look at this picture - is it me or the communist flag taking a place of honor in front of our White House and beside our American flag.
Can you believe this terrorist is being treated with royalty and a swanky event on behalf of the American people?
Harry Reid was the only person to have the backbone to state the reasons why he declined to attend the event in disgust?
“He is a dictator,” Reid told a Las Vegas television station yesterday. “He can do a lot of things through the form of government they have. Maybe I shouldn’t have said ‘dictator,’ but they have a different type of government than we have, and that is an understatement.”
Several US Reps did not mince words:
Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, a longtime critic of China’s human-rights record, called Hu an “oppressor” and a “murderer,” questioning why Obama was giving a respectful welcome to “a monstrous regime.”
Democratic Representative Albio Sires of New Jersey said China was seeking “world domination.” New Jersey Republican Representative Chris Smith suggested that Hu should be brought before an international criminal tribunal instead of feted at the White House.
The remarks were in contrast to the scene today at the executive mansion, where Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcomed Hu with an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn.Obama said the U.S. and China “have an enormous stake in each other’s success.” Hu said, “Our cooperation as partners should be based on mutual respect.”
Enormous stake in each other's success? Partners based on mutual respect?
Do you think for a moment Obama would invite the South African Aparthied and say such a spineless and insensitive thing?
This is what cowardice and heartless arrogance looks like when it veils itself as civility and charity.
