Almost Over!!!

 

 

By this time next week, the election, thanks be to God, will be over!!  It is obvious to any reader where I stand on this election.  I know from my time in office that it took me some two years before I felt the least bit comfortable in what I was doing.  Further, as I’ve stated before, I followed someone who was basically incompetent, and as a result it took my legislative assistant and me all of that first two years to respond to all of the constituent concerns that he apparently didn’t know how to do.  And our county had only about a 270,000 population.  It is beyond my comprehension what President Obama had to deal with when he became the President.  Although I have hit on some of these same themes in my previous blogs, I am going to state, once again, why the thought of a President Mitt Romney actually terrifies me. 

The first, of course, is his position on what progressive Catholics refer to as the “pelvic issues”.  Abortion, contraception, and homosexuality to name the most prominent.  It has taken this country some time to understand that women are as perfectly capable of making decisions as men, and in some cases more so when it comes to their own health care.  Men tend to idealize pregnancy, making comments that pregnancy is not a disease.  It does not fit the classic definition of a disease, but it can be just as lethal to a woman and the fetus as a disease, regardless of what Joe Walsh thinks.  If Romney is elected we will go back to the way women were treated when I was a young person, and I don’t want my beloved grand and great-granddaughters to have to live that way. 

The second reason is that it is pretty obvious that these radical right wing Republicans want to reestablish a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) aristocracy.  Since I don’t fit in to the P, or Protestant, part of this, I really question why some conservative Catholic Bishops are encouraging their “flock” to vote for Romney.  The Bishops of course have lost track of the fact that their “flock” is no longer recognizing them as legitimate “shepherds”.  The radical right has forgotten that the 99% of us vote.  Or perhaps that is why the voting machines in Ohio have ties to businesses that Romney has ties with. 

The third reason is that the safety net for American citizens will be shredded.  One never knows when one will need this safety net, including health care.  We can assume that possibly when one is older, but I know plenty of younger people who need help now and then, and we need to have that hand-up there for them.  This is not creating a dependent society.  It is creating a society where we care for each other.  In my youth in Southern California I was imbued with the notion that one took care of oneself and one’s family, but if a neighbor, through no fault of his or her own needed help, we would be there.  And if for some reason the tables were turned, our neighbors would be there for us.  This attitude that we are only in this for ourselves is so far from the way Californians in the country side lived (city folks may have had a different attitude), that I find it really hard to comprehend. 

The fourth reason is that Romney will roll back as many of our newly attained civil rights as he possible can.  Affirmative action will go out the window.  There will be massive voter suppression among ethnic and/or poor neighborhoods.  Racism will no longer be a shame; it will be the norm, as it was in my youth.  Fortunately for me, my own parents were so prejudiced against blacks, browns, Jews and anyone who was not like “us”, they never talked about it.  I think they thought it came with the genes!  Consequently I grew up not learning to look down on anyone. 

But the final reason is the trend toward totalitarianism I perceive in the GOP.  I’m not going to say they are going fascist, or becoming Nazis.  But they are beginning to exhibit tendencies toward excessive authoritarianism.  Saber rattling in the form of building up our military; removing any feminine influence from the public sphere by removing any legal protections for women (refusing to expand the Violence Against Women Act, and the sure overturning of that Act if our government goes all GOP); the reestablishment of a WASP aristocracy; the emphasis on business, or corporations as the ultimate good, and that government is all bad.  Go ahead.  I’m sure you can name a few yourselves. 

As some wit said, “The GOP believes in bi-partisanship when the Democrats do what the GOP orders them to.”  Hardly the ideal democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

"Please, God. Just let this election be over"

Me and Jon Stewart.  “Please, God.  Just let this election be over.” 

All of this pure crap over abortion, rape, birth control, etc. has me so disgusted I can’t believe that at my age I can still get so enraged!!  Unfortunately for those around me, when I get in this state, my really sick sense of humor tries to bring some sort of sanity to the argument.  Usually not too successfully.

Consequently, I awoke last night thinking that all of these middle-age+ white men aren’t worried at all about abortion being ‘homicide’.  What they are really concerned about is ‘spermicide’.  Since they care not a fig about the child once it is born, nor are they ever concerned about the life of the woman or what happens to her, it is logical to assume that what they are really concerned about is whether their little sperm gets its chance to life, “as God intended”.

Bringing God into it absolves their conscience about wanting government out of business, but wanting government into the lives of women without of course asking women their opinion about these plans.  My view is, without any documentation, that men assume that for a woman to have a baby is sort of like a man having an orgasm.  Very enjoyable, with some more very enjoyable feelings after, but that’s about it.    Nothing could be further from the truth.  If the man is irresponsible, the woman is in it for the long haul of 20 years or so.  Or if something happens to the man like war, sickness or an accident, the woman, through no fault of her own, is the sole parent and/or provider.  This can happen to a responsible man, of course.  Vice-President Joe Biden is the most notable example.

And if the pregnancy is the result of rape, it is even worse.  I give great credit to women who chose to carry the baby to term.  But I can certainly not fault the women who chose to make sure this pregnancy does not occur.  Usually within the time that a normal miscarriage might occur anyway.  (See last week’s blog.)

There are so many factors involved in pregnancy for a woman that men have not a clue about, for most not because they don’t care, but it is so far from their realm of experience.  The only analogy I can think of is the difference between someone who is color blind, and someone who has an acute sense of color.  Try to explain this acute sense of color to someone who can’t experience it.

Men who insist that they are being objective and only acting on facts are delusional when it comes to pregnancy and women’s concerns about abortion, birth control and rape.  There is simply no way they can know completely, even if they sincerely want to and try hard.  There is a really simple solution to this problem, however.

Just include women in the conversation!!!

 

 

 

Personhood or Wackadoodleness?

Last February I wrote a blog entitle “Wackadoodles” which described some of the more ridiculous actions of some Republicans.  To wit: Congressman Daryl Issa of California holding a Congressional hearing on women’s health issues without having any women on the panel.  After a considerable uproar, on the second day he had two women, carefully screened ahead of time to make sure they were in line with men making these decisions for women.  In that hearing, Bishop Lori compared government involvement in the requirements for employers to provide birth control (which never really existed) to government requiring a Kosher deli to serve pork.  Needless to say, there was even more of an uproar since there is no woman who likes being compared to a piece of meat, regardless of whether it is pork, lamb or beef. 

At that time Rick Santorum was sounding off about birth control, and at the same time wanting to take away state and federal funding for education.  Also I wrote about the stupid comment Mitt Romney made about tying his dog’s kennel to the roof of the car, with dog in it, to take a 12 hour long trip.  He said there was no problem, the kennel was airtight.  Had the kennel been airtight, after 12 hours the poor dog would have been dead.  As it is, no one has particularly mentioned whatever happened to the dog after that trip.

I thought we had reached the end of our wackadoodleness until this personhood thing turned up wherein a fertilized egg would be proclaimed to have full human rights, perhaps even including property rights.  This would, of course, require a constitutional amendment, but don’t let a little thing like that get in your way.  So we have Todd Aikin, current Congressman and Senate candidate from Missouri pronouncing that rape cannot result in pregnancy because a woman’s body knows that little illegal sperm is up to no good, and shuts itself down!  And we have Congressman Joe Walsh, Illinois, saying that with modern science and technology there is no way a pregnancy can harm the mother; that claiming this is just the way to get an abortion! 

There have also been proposals, which fortunately have gone nowhere, to make miscarriages criminal, just as the fundamentalists want to make abortions, probably because the medical term for a miscarriage, the lay term, is spontaneous abortion.  After a Google search of the frequency of spontaneous abortions, it is estimated that about 1 in 3 women will have, and I return to the lay term since that is what I am, a miscarriage.  Some women experience this so early in the pregnancy they may not even know they are pregnant, unless they are using a pregnancy kit to determine if they are. 

This is a subject that most women don’t talk about.  If they didn’t know they were pregnant, the reason for not talking about it is obvious.  But later in the pregnancy, particularly if the baby was desperately wanted, the event was too personal and painful to discuss with anyone but their partner and/or doctor.  If the personhood amendment would actually be passed, and any cessation of a pregnancy would be criminalized as the murder of a real person, how devastated the woman would be by the fact that not only did she lose her baby, but now she is in jail, at best!  I assume that this would apply to married women as well as unmarried women.  To avoid the stigma of being criminalized, women will not report that they have had a miscarriage.  Generally speaking this is ok, but not always.  If the ‘spontaneous abortion’ is not complete, and some tissue remains, certainly a septic condition can occur.  The sepsis may damage her uterus, thus preventing future pregnancies, or at is worst, cause the death of the woman.  Is it reasonable to assume that if a personhood amendment passes, the same fundamentalists will have eliminated Obamacare in favor of high-priced medical Insurance, as we have now?

What is it with these wackadoodles anyway?  They talk about how they are so pro-life, about the miracle of life, but when it comes to women, they seem to be pro-who cares?

Two Down -- Two to Go

Two down and two to go.  Debates, that is.  This last one with VP Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan was pretty interesting.  Since I am not a debate aficionado I hesitate to judge who was the winner based on style, manner of presentation, etc., but I do know a lie when I hear one.  I’m not talking here about incorrect statements such as Biden’s when he commented that Ryan had written two letters asking for stimulus funds.  According to The Huffington Post, Ryan had actually written four.  A goof like this has no bearing on the point Biden was trying to make, nor did it change the direction of the discussion.  An incorrect statement, yes.  A lie, no. 

What is a lie is when Ryan started throwing all sorts of numbers around over taxes and who would pay what.  I learned years ago in politics that when someone does that, almost invariably they are trying to obfuscate what is being said.  Most people concentrate on the numbers and don’t hear the words.  Since I am terrible at numbers I don’t listen to them, but concentrate on the words.  My, oh, my.  What one can hear!!  Or when Ryan tried to state that some budget plan of his had bi-partisan support because Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon supported it.  Even I knew that Wyden had withdrawn his support.  For Ryan to say that plan had bipartisan support was a lie.

I really wish lying were a major part of calculating who had won a debate and who hadn’t.  The pundits could say, “It appears that so and so has won this debate, but we haven’t heard from the fact checkers yet, and when we do we’ll reevaluate our opinion and let you know”.  The fact checkers, of course, will have to have some criteria such as that which I have outlined above in order to keep goofs and gaffes from being called downright lies.  But that shouldn’t be hard to craft.

This next debate should be a humdinger!

The Last Word on the First Debate

The Last Word on the First Debate

 

Most of you know by now that I view the world sideways.  When in the 4^th grade, my beloved public school teacher, Mrs. Clippinger, explained this to me very nicely without giving me any negative thoughts about it. 

So, I believe Der Mitt really lost the debate the other night.  President Obama wasn’t at his best, for whatever reason.  Perhaps, just perhaps, he was goading Der Mitt into lying, although Der Mitt doesn’t need any goading to do that.  It seems to be sort of spontaneous.  But then these lies could be used in campaign ads.  This might be real because by the next morning, the President’s campaign committee had ads up and running on Der Mitt’s lying.  One comment I heard, from Martin Bashir, I believe needs repeating, and that is that debating Mitt Romney is like debating a bowl of jello. 

On to Der Mitt.  Of course there have been innumerable analyses, news stories, pundits, etc., which and who have commented on his lies, so I need only mention here that he did.  Perhaps I don’t know the rules of debating, but it would seem to me that straight out lying ought not to be allowed, much less just sort of discounted in the final analysis of who won.  On this issue alone I would say Der Mitt lost the debate. 

Poor Jim Lehrer has been on the receiving end of much wrath over how he conducted the debate.  Jim Lehrer is not only a gentleman, but he is out of the tradition that in a debate, the debaters respect the moderator’s instructions.  I doubt very much that he has ever had, over the years, someone who seems to actually believe that rules do not apply to him personally.  He is a child of privilege, leads a privileged life, and rules are for those ‘losers’ over there. This total disregard for the agreed upon rules would have, in my opinion, tossed Der Mitt out of the debate right there.   

And then we have that god-awful condescending smirk that Romney had during all of the time he wasn’t talking.  He looked to me as though he were thinking, “Well, those mooching 47%ers voted this guy into office.  He isn’t very bright because he’s never made a payroll, and I can run over him in time, but right now unfortunately I have to be quiet and let him talk.  But I don’t have to like it!”  President Obama, on the other hand, was faulted for not smiling (so no smirk), smiling too much, smirking while smiling, and on and on.  I have seen that Romney smirk on many people’s faces in different places.  On men who think they are superior to women when women are talking, on the faces of fundamentalists of any religion when someone of another religion is talking about religion, on women who think they are superior to whomever it is they are talking to.  I doubt if smirks are part of debate scoring, but I certainly found it quite offensive.   

One point that no one else seems to have picked up is when Romney compared the President to his own sons when they were younger, saying that he used to tell them that no matter how many times they said something, it didn’t make it true.  That statement is correct, but by comparing the President to his much younger sons, he was basically calling him “boy”.  That didn’t sit well with me at all, and I am a medium beige.   

During the time in the debate that Romney actually got excited, his voice went up a bit and he began to speak very fast.  The picture of a Macaque Rhesus monkey popped into my head, calling out and sort of chittering up there in the trees.  It indicated a lack of self-control on Der Mitt’s part, to say the least. 

On the subject of taxes, when Der Mitt denied ever having heard any law giving a company a tax break for taking jobs overseas, he was technically right.  There are a series of them in the tax code that gives a tax break to companies that take jobs overseas.  To start with, on the basis that a company must pay taxes in the new country, the company is allowed to postpone paying taxes here, although the tax rate is based on the amount of taxes paid in the new country.  So the company searches out the countries with the lowest tax rate.  When it is time to pay back taxes here, the taxes paid here are based on the tax rate of the country there, so essentially the company is given a tax break. 

Let’s compile these negatives that I have written about above:

1.       Lying,

2.      Being above the mundane rules of the schedule and moderator,

3.      Condescending smirk,

4.      Obliquely calling the black President of the United States a “boy”,

5.      Trouble with voice control,

6.      Trouble with taxes. 

Do we actually want a President of the United States who lies, doesn’t think he has to follow the laws that others do, feels superior to other human beings, denigrates the current President by equating him to his sons when younger (Imagine what he might call a Middle East head of state).  The tax issue is a bit more complicated.  Perhaps this is what is in Romney’s tax returns.  That he has gotten a considerable “tax break” by taking jobs overseas.  I use a phrase from my youth regarding pigs.  (For those who are unacquainted with pig anatomy, the best cuts of pork come from near or at the back bone.)  By getting these significant tax breaks for taking American jobs overseas, Der Mitt is living high on the hog, while he begrudges the rest of us even pickled pig’s feet!

 

 

 

 

 

Heresy, Heresy!

Heresy, Heresy!!

Today, 9/28/12, on Martin Bashir, Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson stated, and I paraphrase, that CEO’s of businesses do not make good political candidates and/or politicians.  In this case Mitt Romney.  If I were the swooning kind, I would have swooned with joy!  This has been my contention for years.

Business types, especially the ones at the top, are simply used to telling people what to do.  If the person doesn’t do it, or makes a mess of it, people like Romney enjoy firing them.  Also, the phrase that government people don’t know how to run government because they have never made a payroll is probably the most idiotic statement I have ever heard.  What does making a payroll have to do with running a government? 

To start with, government is not a business.  A business rightly is in the business of making a profit.  It couldn’t stay in business if it didn’t.  The more profit a business makes, the more people it can employ, and the more it contributes to the general well-being of the community.  So a CEO of a good-sized business is constantly on the lookout for both ways to make more money, and ways not to spend money.  The orientation and mindset of dynamic CEO’s are actually a detriment to running government.   

Government’s primary role, however, is to spend money.  It receives a certain amount of revenue from the people, and must budget that revenue to provide the things that people need.  All people need the infrastructure that government provides:  roads, bridges, school buildings, library buildings, fire and police stations, government buildings for services districts, cities, counties, states and federal offices.  The next tier of expenditures is the employees to occupy the buildings so that these public employees can provide the essential and emergency services that people need:  teachers, librarians, fire and police personnel, transportation departments, department of motor vehicles (licenses), and on and on.  Every time I leave my home in my vehicle, I rely on government to keep my very rural road in enough repair in these tight fiscal times that I can drive on it, for example.  People who live in downtown New York rely on their government for the same essential service.  Public employees are at the mercy of politicians who are elected to office, and oftentimes the quality of our politicians don’t make good personnel managers, thus public sector unions are absolutely necessary under these circumstances to protect the employees.  Not only are the politicians responsible to the community and also their employees, but so should the unions.   

Government is the opposite of business in that government is not in the business of making money.  That is why this push to privatize government services is so terrifyingly dangerous.  We saw what happened when student loans were turned over to Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae.  These institutions had to make a profit since they were businesses.  When government took back the administration of student loans and took the profit motive out, there has been much more funding available for Pell Grants, etc. for students.  Prisons are the most egregious example of privatization.  Since they are a business, they must make a profit.  The businesses do this by decreasing the amenities the prisoners receive, such as decent food and medical care.  Further, the prisoners are often leased out to companies to work for a pittance as low as $1.50 cents a day.  The prisons, of course, are paid much more by the businesses, which love this deal since they don’t need to worry about health benefits, decent working conditions, pension benefits, or raises.  This practice in the United States is a scandal that has long gone unnoticed because it benefits some of the biggest corporations.  Many of the prisoners are undocumented immigrants who have absolutely no recourse.  This used to be known by the ugly word: slavery. 

Of course in a blog of this length it is not possible to go into all of the ways that business and government do not function the same.  It is possible for business and government to cooperate, but only if they realize that each has its place in the universe.

The people who make the best politicians are women who are used to running a household and do a lot of volunteer work.  A household only gets in so much money, and this amount must be budgeted to provide for the essentials the family needs, as well as to save a bit out for what the family wants.  Much like government.  And people who have done a lot of volunteer work, and especially those who have been in charge of volunteers, know that volunteers, like government workers, cannot be fired without cause, that volunteers must be held accountable for the work they volunteer for without making them feel they are being manipulated or coerced.  Even though the mayor, Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Governor, or President would like to wave a magic wand and get what he or she wants done, they are all constrained by the laws and ordinances that prevail.  Which is why I get irritated at business people who whine about regulations.  We all have regulations in our lives.   

So, hail the heresy that CEO’s do not make good politicians or Presidents. 

 

 

The 47% Fiasco

This has been truly the week that was!!  Being a news junkie, I listened to and watched more than I really needed to.  After several days of analysis, replayed clips of Romney placing his gold foot squarely in his mouth and then Senator Obama discussing ‘redistribution’, three comments, I think, were absolute gems.

The first is that in just a few short years, my husband and I have gone from some of the youngest of The Greatest Generation, touted by Tom Brokaw as the generation that lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War, then simply got an education, paid for by the government either in the public education system, or the GI Bill, passed by Congress, to pay returning veterans to go to school and get good educations.  My brother earned his Doctor of Education on the GI Bill, and pretty much dedicated his life to teaching.  Although not on the GI Bill, my husband earned his PhD in Soil Physics, and because of his research, thousands of people in the Central Valley have clean water to drink, and he has helped other locations pro bono after he retired from the US Dept. of Agriculture.  But after WWII, we just simply got on with our lives.  No big deal.  It was somewhat of a shock, then to realize we had gone from such an elevated status to being ‘moochers’, feeling like victims, unwilling to take responsibility for our lives, which we thought we had been doing for the past 60 years.  But we have pensions and health insurance from the government, paid into by us for those 60 years, along with my Social Security and Medicare.  What slackers we have been without even knowing it.  At the ages of 82 and 83, I guess we had best go out and get jobs to satisfy the $50,000 a plate lunch (or was it dinner?) bunch.

The next comments that I have found hilarious except for their utter stupidity is the taking President Obama to task for calling for the ‘redistribution’ of resources.  Ever since Ronald Reagan, the sainted Teflon President, wealth has been being redistributed – up.  Every chart shows that the average income of wage earners has remained stagnant since he was President, an almost straight line across the bottom of the chart, while the incomes of the wealthy keep going up, and up, and up.  It seems to me that just like leeches, the top 2% are sucking the basic quality of life out of the bulk of the population to appease their own avarice.  Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, made the comment that the 47% video was a call that, “We have to stop coddling the servants”.  Right on, Mr. Robinson!  And another pundit remarked that the word ‘redistribution’ is code for, “Those black people are after your stuff!”

The third observation, made by Krystal Ball, on The Cycle, was actually a question.  She asked who the most powerful person in the world is at this moment.  Not the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, or any of the other fat cats.  The most powerful person in the world is the worker, for minimum wage, no doubt, who took the 47% video!  Now this worker maybe set the cell phone hoping to record something he could sell.  The reason why is irrelevant.  He took it, then had the good sense to take it to Mother Jones who checked both the person setting up the phone, and the video itself to verify its accuracy.  Perhaps he or she was a student making a few extra bucks working the party.  Only Mother Jones knows and they aren’t talking.  But this action only goes to show that the most prosaic, mundane action in the world can have powerful effects.  It reinforces the fact that anyone of us, all of us, are important.  No one is any more important than anyone else.  We are all God’s children, and any one of us can make a terrific difference in this world by our actions.  Together we can change this world for the better.

Perhaps the saddest part of Romney’s blurt was that he believes a person’s worth is measured by whether they pay income taxes or not.  Don’t pay any attention to what a person does with his or her life.  Don’t pay any attention to whether they make a positive difference in anyone else’s life, however small.  Don’t pay any attention to anything else but making lots and lots of money.  Is this what the once Grand Old Party has fallen to?  Total inconsistency in the message, to wit., you are only successful if you make a lot of money and can avoid paying income taxes by parking your money elsewhere, and you are a total failure if you don’t make enough money to pay income taxes. 

This whole thing has gotten so ridiculous that it is impossible to make sense of any of it.