Come On, Guys. Grow Up!

What are these crackpot Republicans trying to do to women now? 

When ‘the pill’ was finally put on the market, women’s access to birth control was pretty primitive.  There was the diaphragm which was to be inserted prior to intercourse, or IUD’s, which apparently didn’t work very well either, and also could cause infections if left in place too long.  Once inserted I never learned how one got an IUD out.  So the pill was really terrific. 

It was not only terrific for women, it was great for families, also, since the economy started going to pieces in the early to mid-1970’s.  Salaries of the main breadwinners began to flatten out while the cost of almost everything was steadily going up.  A salary that had been adequate no longer could be stretched by frugal housekeeping to cover a family’s basic necessities, much less some of the frills that could make life interesting, such as extra curricular activities for children still in school, or music lessons.  Because of this predicament that certainly was not the fault of the average householder, women had to enter the workforce.  

Fortunately for families, the pill enabled women to prevent the pregnancies that would have insured not only another mouth to feed, clothe and educate, but with even less income.  Seldom did women get more than sex weeks maternity leave with the birth of their child, which then meant they had to find child care when they returned to work.  With families living away from their extended families, this became a great problem.  So the pill was most welcome. 

At the same time, and this certainly had both an impact on, and was impacted as well, was the social movement called feminism.  Women were made fun of, criticized, denigrated and whatever for imagining that they could actually think and function without a man to tell them how.  No longer was the phrase, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about this.  We’ll take care of it” not acceptable to women, it became, at least for me, fighting words!   

As time went by it seemed that women had finally come into their own.  Their talents and gifts were being appreciated, although not always compensated for at work fairly.  There were a few battles left to fight, but contraceptives were generally accepted and abortion was safe and available.  Women’s voices were being heard throughout the land, so to speak. 

Then 2010 happened, and for women, all hell broke loose.  Suddenly contraception became a sin again.  Restrictions were put on how a woman might go about getting an abortion.  Abortion clinics were bombed, and abortion doctors were killed.  There has even been a real push to declare that a fertilized human egg is a person.  And because of that, women who have miscarriages could easily become criminals, regardless of whether they really wanted the pregnancy to continue.  It was proposed that women in Virginia who want an abortion have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound procedure that appear to women to be nothing more than legal rape, since it would occur without their full consent. 

Do not misunderstand me.  I think an abortion is a horrible decision to have to be made.  But I also firmly believe that there are all sorts of other means of preventing abortions than to criminalize and humiliate women.  Wherever there are good economic and social programs to support pregnant women who on their own cannot find a way out of the dilemma they are in, sometimes not of their choosing, the rate of abortion drops dramatically.   

So this is the terrible pickle women find themselves in, and it is not of their making.  They must work to help support their families.  But in order to do that, they must resort to contraceptives, which are once again under attack, both from the radical religious right, as well as the radical political right which are often the same. I think it is time some men (and by no means all) take a good look at the fear on their part that is driving these attacks on women’s sexuality.  It is so obvious to so many of us that the main reason for these attempts to squish women back into the constrained roles they had prior to the 1970’s is fear of women and their sexuality.   

Come on, guys.  Grow up.  You’re not going to succeed.  Women have had a marvelous taste of freedom, and they are not about ready to give it up.  Being barefoot and pregnant is over.  Get used to it.

El Salvador Revisited

El Salvador Revisited

Jon Weiner wrote in The Nation, 7/19/12, Bain Capital’s Ties to Salvadoran Death Squads.

“When Bain Capital was founded in 1984, Romney and his partners had trouble raising funds for their initial investments. “$9 million came from rich Latin Americans,” the Times reports, “including powerful Salvadoran families living in Miami.… At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Some family members of the first Bain Capital investors were later linked to groups responsible for killings.

“The civil war in El Salvador lasted from 1980 to 1992 and killed more than 70,000 Salvadorans. It started after Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while giving a mass shortly after he published an open letter to President Carter asking him to cut off US military aid to the Salvadoran military regime.”

When I read about this connection between Romney and El Salvador, which apparently is still going on,  I remembered an article I had cut out of our local paper and kept all of these years.  The article appeared originally in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and was reported by the Scripps Howard News Service in our local paper, The Telegram-Tribune, 1/14/91, Death squads threaten foes. Following are excerpts from this article.  I am only leaving out extraneous material such as what some Salvadorans like Archbishop Arturo Rivera Y Damas were saying.

“SAN SALVADOR – The worst fears of El Salvador’s leftist political leaders came true during the weekend, when a San Salvador radio station broadcast a threat from two of the country’s death squads to kill opposition and labor leaders, priests and intellectuals. 

The general commands of the Maximillian Hernandez Martinez and Aquiles Baires death squads sent the written statements by mail to the radio station, which broadcast the contents on Saturday…

“At this time,” the statement reads, “we are going to talk in all frankness about our philosophical basis and the politics of our movement.

This country’s society is divided into three classes:  a superior creative class composed essentially of specialists and large landholders; a smaller class that tries to imitate this superior class; and an inferior rustic class that is made up essentially of workers, poor peasants, students and small businessmen.

Another group exists that we hold in low regard and consider very small – the dangerous intellectual class that tries to contaminate the above mentioned classes.”

The death squads’ message to this intellectual class and opposition leaders is clear.

“The superior capitalist class in our country is naturally the strongest, and its destiny, without question, is to govern and regulate the inferior classes.  And what is more, it has a duty to exploit, dispose of, conquer and even exterminate elements of these inferior classes when the benefits of capitalism require such.

Our adversaries, the subversives and the great inferior mass, must be exterminated, or at least their leaders."

Thinking about these articles at the same time I am listening to what Der Mitt says he will do as soon as he is elected, I truly do get shivers.  He wants to eliminate all of the government entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  He wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood, and the Affordable Health Care Act, which has provisions in to support pregnant women, but also just to get rid of all of it.  He would like to get rid of unemployment benefits, pension benefits, teachers, fire fighters, and law enforcement.  These are the programs that the “inferior classes” rely on.

He talks constantly about how capitalism much be unfettered by government regulation – that corporations know best how to run their business, and he believes that corporations have the same rights as people. 

At the same time Der Mitt is campaigning on the above issues, the Republican Party, wherever they are in power in states, are doing their utmost to keep from voting the “inferior classes when the benefits of capitalism require such.”  If these voter suppression laws actually stay in effect during the November elections, it is estimated that approximately five million people, mostly students, elderly, and minority voters who would vote for President Obama, will lose their right to vote.  People will no longer be “equal before the law”.  Some will be more equal than others, by far. 

For years during elections, I have heard “we are at a crossroads” so we must vote for blank.  Well, during this election, we are at a humongous crossroad.  One of the first things a potentially totalitarian government does is take away the people’s right to vote, or to have any say in their government.  If these voter suppression laws are not overturned and if Romney is elected, watch out.  We are in for a terrible time. 

As the old Yiddish curse says, “May you live in interesting times”.  Well, these are certainly interesting!

Negative Campaigning. Define It!

As a former candidate who made every effort to avoid negative campaigning, these attacks on President Obama’s ads really tick me off.  I had an opponent who was relatively new to the area and whose name was Kat.  Since I had been a much longer resident here, naturally my first fund-raising letter commented, “I am no kitty come lately”.  The reaction I got from her campaign was that I was running a negative campaign, and on, and on, and on!  One would have thought I had accused her of the most baseless of actions.  Her campaign against me was pretty awful, but we never mentioned anything about her, at any time, from that point forward.

And that is a campaign ploy.  Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing.  Get enough people to repeat what you are saying and pretty soon it becomes “common knowledge”, and everyone says it, even though it may not be true.  This is what the Republicans use Fox News for.  They give Fox the talking point of the day or week, Fox runs with it, and without checking on whether it is a fact or not, the other rumor outlets, sometimes called news, pick it up and run with it.  And as an aside, there is nothing much that irritates me more than the phrase, “true facts”.  Has anyone, ever, for the last 50,000 years or so, heard of a “false fact”?  By definition, a fact is true. 

Back to campaigning.  A candidate’s record is fair game in a campaign.  It is perfectly all right for President Obama to rip into Romney’s record at Bain Capital, as Governor of Massachusetts, or his tax returns.  All of these are an indication of the direction, and the decisions, that Romney would make if, God forbid, he were elected.  Negative campaigning is inferring that somehow President Obama is not a real American, that there is something about him that prevents him from really understanding what America is all about, that his heritage means he can’t really understand American business.  Now that is negative campaigning, par excellence, because it is directed at some flaw in President Obama himself, and many of us believe that flaw for Romney, et al, is his skin color.  Present the record and let the people decide for themselves.

Of course we all would like to have the candidates only tout their own wonderfulness, and all that they have accomplished in their political lives.  But unless both sides pledge on a stack of Bibles, Korans, or whatever, that is not going to happen because even if they did swear to do so, their Superpacs would innocently go right ahead with the negatives and smirk that they did not pledge. 

Our entire campaigning system needs overhauling.  In my opinion three things need to happen:

1.       get the money out, and

2.       shorten the campaign to no more than six months, and

3.       overturn Citizens United.

These three steps would be a great start.  Probably everyone who reads this will be able to add to my three criteria, but they are a start.  In the meantime, stop saying that both sides are indulging in negative campaigning.  They are not!

Tired of being "trickled upon"?

A not too long essay concluding with ‘being trickled upon’.

When I registered to vote way back in 1951, I registered Republican.  Joe McCarthy was at the height of his career, the Republican Party was the party of civil rights, and there was no way I wanted to be a party to a Party of either Joe or poll taxes.  In fact, I had the first bumper sticker with “Joe Must Go” at the University of California, Davis, and a few years later while living in Nevada, were among some of the last Americans to pay a poll tax.  I’m not sure why my husband had registered Republican, but there we were.  A conservative in the 1950’s, however, bears absolutely no resemblance to a conservative of 2012!

We were still registered Republicans when Bill had the opportunity to retire early under President Carter’s “reduction in force” efforts, so we moved back home to Cambria in 1979.  Along about that time we received a questionnaire in the mail from the Republican Party with a 100 or more questions about the direction we would like the party to go.  I happily went through the entire questionnaire, answering the best I could, and so pleased that someone actually cared what I thought, and would take my answers seriously. 

Thus, when Ronald Reagan began his campaign, I was pleasantly surprised that he was campaigning on those issues I thought were really important.  Imagine my absolute disgust some years later when I learned that the Republicans had compiled all of the probably millions of answers into a campaign platform for the public, but that they had no intention of actually following it. 

We had the introduction into American politics of Madison Avenue advertising techniques.  “The women want a whiter wash?  Rename the product “Rinso White”, even though it won’t get the clothes any whiter than it did before”.  And for kicks, add, “Whiter clothes with no sneezy soap dust”.  Say what you think people want to hear.  Even if they didn’t know they wanted to hear it, say it over, and over, and over, and over everywhere that you can, and pretty soon people begin to think that everyone else believes it, so something must be wrong with you.

When Reagan was elected after duping idiots like we were in our younger years, he began a program of destroying unions, denigrating social programs such as welfare, social security, and Medicare, and deregulating business.  When he got away with breaking the Air Traffic Controllers Union strike with no repercussions, unions began losing membership since they were no longer the protection against predatory business practices they had been.  Unions, Democrats and social justice programs became the demons.  His famous, “The nine scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”, along with, “Government is not the solution.  Government is the problem” became the mantra.  A lot of people have forgotten that Reagan made a deal with Iran to sell them arms, supposedly for the release of American hostages, which coincidentally occurred the day Reagan was inaugurated!  All of this was supposed to be hush-hush.  There were other nasty ramifications to this affair, but are too much to go into here.  The release of the hostages on that day began my awakening to how really awful Reagan had been. 

In the 1980’s, the radical religious right, mostly Protestant but some Catholics as well, began the push among their adherents that Democrats and Liberals were trying to replace God with Government.  That somehow helping a bed-ridden person get help; seeing to it that a senior with no family had a decent standard of living and medical care; that a young mother abandoned by her husband or boyfriend should not receive help or ‘food stamps’ and should instead rely on God to provide became a tenet of belief.  At first most of us thought this was simply a fad and would go away because it was almost too ridiculous to believe. 

Perhaps one of the most troublesome aspects of this program has been the complicity of the media.  We used to have real journalists like Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, Huntley and Brinkley, and my all time favorite, Edward R. Murrow, who took on Joe McCarthy.  These were journalists who presented the news, and if there were two sides to the news, would explain why one side was right and the other wrong, or at least which was the stronger argument and which the weaker. We never knew what political party they belonged to, but we knew we could trust what they said.  What I think is wrong with the media now can be the subject of another blog.

We have this parroting from the radical right about not wanting to tax the job creators, because the country is in such a bad condition.  Well, it wasn’t in a bad condition until Reagan began the downward slide into economic chaos and George W. Bush finished it off.  Be that as it may, on the other hand we have Democrats lamenting that our country’s infrastructure is in really bad need of repair, and if we raised taxes we could fund the repair. 

But no one has put these two things together in what to me is a really obvious solution.  If the supposed job creators who make over $250,000.00 net income per year paid a progressive tax rate starting at a 5% increase with the $250,000.00, and going up 5% with every $50,000.00, the federal government would have sufficient funds to repair every road, every bridge, every public building including school buildings, and help states, cities, counties and special districts provide for the basic services that people need such as first responders, teachers, water systems, good sewer systems, roads, safe bridges, and still have funding for accountants and overseers of these funds to insure that the tax dollars are spent efficiently and economically.  And to make sure with strict enforcement and punishment that overt and covert corruption does not take place.  We have had enough of $700.00 hammers and the like.

Reagan had the economic theory called ‘trickle down economics’.  Making sure the people at the top had loads of money would then cause them to do all sorts of business things, and that money would ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us.  Well, for my part, I have been ‘trickled upon’ long enough.  When one is economically thirsty, a trickle simply doesn’t hack it.  We need a good long drink, and if you vote for any Republican this year, you must be happy with your ‘mere trickle’.

A Living God?

A Living God?

When Sr. Elizabeth Johnson published her book “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God”, who, other than theologians knew about it.  Then the conservative Catholic Bishops, in their infinite wisdom, began to have fits about the book as not being Catholic.  So of course I had to buy it, as did many others.  You’d think they would learn one of these days.

I’m sure the Bishops didn’t know what they were doing, but their not quite complete condemnation of the book was the best free advertisement possible.  For anyone out there who is interested at all in religion, this is by far the very best book on the subject I have ever read.  I quote Elizabeth Johnson from the back cover of the book, “Since the middle of the twentieth century there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition.  On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways.  It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations.  Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there.  Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.”

The back cover page continues, “This book sets out the fruit of these discoveries.  The first chapter describes Johnson’s point of departure and the rules of engagement, with each succeeding chapter distilling a discrete idea of God.  Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, Hispanic, interreligious and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity.”

As I read the book I think I realized why the Bishops were so opposed to it.  For one thing, there is one whole chapter, “God Acting Womanish” which discusses theology from a feminine perspective.  I did not mistype feminine rather than feminist.  There is a difference.  For the conservative Bishops to even think that God could be feminine would pierce their totally misogynistic hearts to the very core.

So many people, including conservative Bishops, are stuck in the theologies of the 1950’s and before that this book is like the fresh air that blew through the Church after Vatican II, blowing away the accumulated cobwebs of centuries.  The conservative Bishops would like to bring those cobwebs back.  For some reason the cobwebs make the Bishops feel really comfortable, but there is so much more to see and feel than those dusty old cobwebs. 

I have to warn the reader though.  This is not a really easy read.  It is college level, but well worth the effort.  And I’m not getting a penny for this endorsement, either!

               (The Continuum International Publishing Group    

               80 maiden Lane, New York, NY, 10038)   

Republican Insanity

Republican Insanity

 “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result”  Rita Mae Brown, "Sudden Death", 1983

This quote has been floating around in my head for some time lately, so I figured I had better think about why that was so.

It took me about five minutes.

The Republican Party, beginning with Ronald Reagan, then later via Karl Rove, et al, led a majority of the American people down a garden path of absolutely stupid economic theory that it was possible to grow the economy by cutting taxes on the very wealthy, cutting spending on vital services for the rest of us, and that would then cause the wealthy to put that money into their businesses, the rest of us to get a job, and the economy would equal out with the great increase in tax revenue from the grown businesses.  That economic theory started the downward spiral of the American economy because even Bill Clinton sort of bought into it.  He signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which had been in effect since the 1930’s, and which had kept the banks and mortgage business separate and regulated, authorized NAFTA, and encouraged the off-shoring of business.  Since the businesses were off-shoring, they weren’t paying as much in taxes, which in the long term negated the supposed growth in tax revenues.  Coupled with that during Bush 43’s occupancy of the White House and two un-paid for wars, of course we are in a Depression.  Call it a Great Recession, but a Depression by any other name is a Depression.

Because the Federal government now has massive economic problems, it is not possible for the Feds to send very much money on to the States, and most of the States have cut taxes as well, so they are being hit with a double whammy – less money from the Feds combined with less money from state revenues.  The only thing the States can figure out to do is cut spending on cities and counties, who then have to cut personnel and those services that the citizens need and have relied on for nearly 60 years.  Teachers, law enforcement, fire fighters, good roads, and other public employees to assist them when they need help.  In our county this also includes an excellent Elections Office which sees to it that there is no voter fraud in our county.

In 2008 we elected a President who understood these problems, although he was not given accurate information as to the depth to which our national economy had plummeted.  And, he also faced a Congress where the Republicans were determined that he would get as little done as they could manage.  This is not a conspiracy theory.  John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, have both stated publically that their aim is to see to it that Barack Obama is a one term President.  But he still has managed to accomplish some really good things for the country.

Now, we have Der Mitt to deal with.  He is going around the country saying what we need to do is cut taxes on the wealthy, have poor people pay their fair share of taxes, cut spending on the services people need.  Der Mitt made the comment at a televised campaign rally, and I paraphrase, “Didn’t Obama learn anything from Wisconsin.  The American people don’t want spending on teachers, police and firefighters.  We need to listen to the American people”.  Apparently he doesn’t believe that teachers, police and firefighters, and other public employees are Americans!

Which brings me to my next rant.  Just who does he define as Americans?  He talks about people wanting “free stuff” from the government.  He talks about how teachers, police and firefighters are ruining the economy for the American people.  He talks about how he will see to it that Americans will not become poor.  He seems to ignore that 99% of Americans who are already poor or worry about the poor from these crack-pot economic ideas.  Just who are these Americans he talks so much about?  Just the 1% with all of the money?  Does this make one an American?  What are the rest of us if not Americans?

Der Mitt wants to go back to the economic policies of George W. Bush, who famously said at a banquet, “It has been said that I represent the “haves” and not the “have nots.  That isn’t true.  I don’t represent the “haves”.  I represent the “have mores”.  So if we “have nots” go back to the failed policies of George W. Bush and expect a different result for us, does that make us insane?  You betcha!!

Life With a 20 Pound House Cat

Life With a 20 Pound House Cat

Life in the country is always interesting, but one must constantly evaluate all of the variables that can occur.  For example, we live in rattlesnake country.  But, rattlesnakes, like all living creatures, must eat.  For them field mice are a tasty treat and usually quite easy to find.  The job for the people, then, is to cut down on the number of mice around a house that will eliminate a reason for a rattlesnake to reside in the vicinity.  This is usually done by getting a cat that is also a good mouser.  We had such a cat for years, but she eventually got too old to hunt, so that started the conversation as to what kind of cat we should get.  I favored either a Siamese or a yellow one.  We had a great history with both.  Before we could act on our decisions I received a phone call from our neighbor.  She had found two tiny kittens beside the road where we guessed someone had dumped them, which is a stupid and cruel thing to do.  She brought them home, but since they were going away for the weekend, we agreed to keep the kittens for a couple of days.  Of course, we fell in love with these tiny balls of fur, and our neighbor was out of luck.  They probably knew this would happen.  We took the kittens to the vet to have them checked out, and they were both healthy, but sort of underweight at 6 and 8 ounces each.

After a couple of months we had to move every house plant out of the house, because they liked to play jungle and attack each other through the foliage.  Since we had a dog named Jack, we named the kittens Manny and Moe after the Pep Brothers, who owned a rather famous auto store and advertised on the radio and TV.  As time went by, Manny grew the way a cat is supposed to, but Moe never stopped.  He just got bigger and bigger.  At one point, he was stretched out on the end of our bed, so I measured his length from paw to paw at 36 inches.  He eventually stopped growing at 20 pounds.  He and Manny would try to play as they had as kittens, but finally Manny just gave up being rolled and smashed, and wandered off into the wilderness, never to be seen again.  At this point, the trouble started.

Moe, or Big Mo, as he came to be called, learned to really hunt, and brings in mice, lizards, and gophers.  He learned that if he could get them into our sunken shower, they usually couldn’t get out.  Sometimes one would, and that is when my husband found a use for a bell shaped toilet plunger, and that is that the mice would run in that lovely dark hole.  The plunger would be flipped up, taken to the first available door, and the mouse would be sent on a really high roller coaster ride back outside.  Thus, the invention of the mouse-o-matic, which I wrote about last December.

One night I started in to our bedroom to read while my husband watched TV, but stopped to pick up a fruit and nut scone from Costco to nibble on.  Big Mo was on the end of the bed, raised his head, and marched up to my chest and tried to eat the scone out of my hand.  I foolishly broke off a piece and tossed it down to his end of the bed, where he scarfed it down.  He marched back up to my face, followed my breath down inside my bathrobe, where he tried very hard to gain entrance.  I really didn’t want to share my bathrobe with a 20 pound cat!  I had a small piece of the scone left, which I put on top of the bookcase/headboard.  He followed the scent up there, fortunately, but no more scone eating around Big Mo, for sure.

This April we realized that Jack was 11+ years old, and it was time to get a new dog.  So, we got two puppies.  In true puppy style they bounced up to Big Mo, who let them know that bouncing around him was not appropriate behavior.  At the time Big Mo was twice as big as the puppies.  That vision is imprinted in their brains, and even though they are now twice as big as Big Mo, he rules the yard.

Every morning my husband takes the animals on what he calls their “pooper” walk down away from the house.  He looks like the pied piper with one big old dog, one huge cat, and two puppies trailing along behind.  The other morning, Big Mo decided that he didn’t want the puppies to go.  When Bill got up, put on his hat, and opened the front door, Big Mo ran out and chased one puppy one way, waited for the puppy to come around to the front steps, and attacked him there.  Then he ran back up the steps, chased the other puppy the other direction.  That puppy ran around to the bottom of those steps, but Big Mo had gotten to the bottom of the steps first, and attacked that puppy there.  The poor puppies had to wait for the entourage to go quite a ways before they could follow.  We determined that we have the only dog-herding cat in our vicinity.  Of course, Big Mo sometimes decides that he doesn’t want me to go where I am going, and he tries to bite my ankles.  I have finally convinced him that this is not acceptable behavior either, but he sometimes will take a swipe, just in case.

We do live in mountain lion country, and occasionally a lion will come down close to the house and scream at us.  One night, we heard such a scream, and Big Mo ran outside, and tried to run up the hill to chase that other cat away.  We finally convinced him through much yelling and noise making that this was not the usual wandering feral cat that comes our way, and he was at a distinct disadvantage.

Fortunately, Big Mo is not a lap cat.  I can’t imagine watching TV with a 20 pound cat putting my legs to sleep.  However, he does what we got him for.  The mice population is way down, the fear of rattlesnakes has lessened, and we marvel at how that tiny little 8 ounce ball of fur just kept growing.  Thank God he stopped!!