My Civic Responsibility

I went to our polling place this afternoon and got in line.  I was looking through my purse for my identification when two women walked up in front of me.  A bit rude, I thought, but I was in no hurry, so I didn't tell them they should go to the back of the very short line.

But then there were problems.  The woman at the table taking people's names was new, and these two women didn't speak English well.  They didn't seem to be on the list and the woman was trying to help them figure out where they should go to find their polling place.

After about 10 minutes she finally asked them if they were registered and it turned out they were not, so she then had to explain about registering and that it was too late to do it for this election but if they registered they could vote in the next election.

Maybe next time I won't be quite so generous to line jumpers!

I filled out my ballot quickly.  If I wasn't sure about a candidate, I just made sure I was voting for the Democrat. 
 
I wasn't always like that... heck, I even voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for re-election.  But I'm so angry with the Republican party now I would drown the whole lot of them.
Today it's Scott Pruitt, the erstwhile head of the EPA who has been in trouble for many ridiculous expenditures and travel bills (but praised by our glorious leader).  Today, though, we learn, courtesy of the New York Times that he has had his staff, on the tax payers' dollar, setting up a meeting with the CEO of Chick-a-Fillet so that he can see about getting his wife a franchise (some 1,000 people a year apply and they only grant 10).  
 
This is so blatantly illegal and against all rules and regulations of the constitution, but who the heck cares about the constitution any more?  That document we were raised to believe as sacrosanct and the cornerstone of our democracy has become as meaningless as last week's shopping news.
The worst thing about this latest Pruitt outrage is that there has been NO OUTCRY from the Republicans about the abuses of his power.  Nobody cares.

But what is making me even more angry, to the point of tears sometimes, are those ~11,000 children being removed from their parents.  ELEVEN THOUAND.  Many under 12 and some as young as 2 or three. 
 
Can you imagine the terror of those kids, in a strange country, not speaking the language, not knowing where they are.  What is the government doing about it?  Trying to find an air force base where they can put them, perhaps on the other side of the country.  
 
Why are there no committees to oversee the conditions under which these children are being held?  Why was Senator Merkley (D-Oregon) denied admission to one of the facilities? For that matter, why  were the windows of that facility blacked out?  What is going ON in there?  Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was likewise denied admittance to a similar facility.  "When the elected representatives of the people can't observe how our government is operating, we're in an upside down world," he tweeted.

What do you feed 11,000 children, many of whom have to sleep on a floor with only those silver emergency thermal blankets.  Are there diapers for the youngest children?  How about toileting facilities?  Are any of those kids sick and needing medicine?

What is the process in place for eventually reuniting families with their children.  How cana that be done if the children are in Arizona and the families are in Texas, if there is a process at all.

NBC reports As of Sunday, nearly 300 of the 550 children currently in custody at U.S. border stations had spent more than 72 hours there, the time limit for immigrants of any age to be held in the government's temporary facilities. Almost half of those 300 children are younger than 12, according to the document, meaning they are classified by the Department of Homeland Security as "tender age children."

The stations, run by the Border Patrol and meant only as the first stop for children detained at the border, often lack adequate bedding or separate sleeping rooms for children.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security denied comment.

Of course he/she did.

The agency's Administration for Children and Families has 11,200 unaccompanied children in its care and takes 45 days on average to place a child with a sponsor, according to a spokesperson.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THESE CHILDREN?

This has never been done in our country's history and Trump could reverse it in a second, but other than saying it's a deplorable situation and it's the Democrats' fault, he does nothing.  Apparently he will hold the children hostage until congress gives him his damn wall.

I did my civic duty, but it seems so meaningless in the face of the monstrous obstacle that is Washington at the moment.

Mental Clutter

Without evidence to the contrary, I think we all pretty much assume that what we experience, what is normal for us, is pretty much what is normal for everyone.  I know I was 12 years or so old and got health insurance before I discovered that it was NOT normal to have a good eye and a bad eye.  I just assumed everyone did and was surprised when the doctor tried to correct my amblyopia (they caught it too late and never did get it corrected until my cataract surgery 2 years ago!)

So maybe not everyone goes to sleep the way I do.  I know probably all of you sleep in a bed, but that isn't what I'm talking about.

When I get onto my couch and snuggle under my quilt and get my pillow punched into the right shape, my brain goes onto auto pilot.  It decides what I'm going to think about as I fall asleep.  I kind of visualize this long plain white banner on which is printed ... oh, I don't know ... something about the day, or memories of something, or thoughts about a particular political issue I'm upset about (I try not to think about that), or just what is on the schedule for tomorrow. If I haven't written this entry yet, I'll think about what I want to say in the morning.  Often, because I'm a food-a-holic, my last thought before going to sleep is what I plan to eat when I get up.

Last night as I sat here writing this entry, my body cried out to go to sleep!!!  I finished up and went to the couch, but that mental white banner was as jumbled as the stuff on my desk. Thoughts I could not control came flying in from everywhere, everything from the things I planned to do that I've been putting off for weeks, to unpleasant memories from decades ago, to sadness over deaths we've experienced, to concern about my mother, to the projects I'm working on for SwapBot.

It was a real collage of feelings, thoughts, emotions, and visual images.  I tried to sort through them and concentrate on only one or two, but the effort of doing so woke me up and I ended up back in the family room watching Morning Joe and then as that got too depressing, switching to Netflix to finish the last 3 episodes of Grace and Frankie.

It was after 5:30 when I finally decided to try the couch again and by now all the mental clutter had gone and I don't think I was awake long enough to think of anything at all.  I managed to sleep for 2 hours.

Walt went off to San Francisco to the symphony this afternoon, after a "nap-ette" (he said) before hand.  It was quiet downstairs until he left and especially after he was gone.  I had all sorts of grand plans for things I was going to get accomplished and as usual did few of them, but I did make a big dent in the unfolded laundry and made "mystery soup."

I call it "mystery soup" because when I got home from the supermarket yesterday, the refrigerator and freezer were very full so I had to remove some things and chose to remove all the bones I had accumulated.  I knew there were turkey bones but I didn't know what the other bones were.  Some were from our spare ribs last night, others I haven't a clue.

Anyway, I plopped them all in the Instapot with veggies (some of which were well past their prime) and herbs and pressure cooked them for 2 hours, resulting in a flavorful broth, once I removed all the solid from the liquid.

The "mystery bones" looked solid and like regular bones, but after being pressure cooked for two hours they practically crumbled when I touched them.

I took all the solids and put them in a blender with some of the broth and blended it all up and it will be Polly's food for several days.  She was Very Happy.

In the evening, I alternated between watching ice dancing at the Olympics and flipping to MSNBC  to hear what is going on in Washington today.  This whole "arm teachers" thing is fraught with so MANY problems it's hard to know where to begin.  Teachers already have to buy their own classroom supplies because there isn't enough money in the budget.  Who is going to buy the guns and ammo and pay for training?  Will we arm nursery school teachers? Will a teacher have time to both protect kids in the closet AND go all Rambo on a shooter?

And, if we have a school filled with armed teachers, what happens when the police arrive to capture the bad guy and sees a hall filled with people with guns?  Who does he shoot?  Will teachers have the marksmanship to shoot just the bad guy and not the kids who are fleeing from him?

How many schools ARE there in the United States?  How many to-be-armed teachers are we talking about?  Thousands? Millions?  Where does the money come from?  Who will pay for the psychological assistance a teacher who might actually be lucky and hit someone will need after killing another human?

Oh such a bad idea.  Isn't it easier just to ban assault rifles???

Interesting to run #45's comments on background checks and compare them with Wayne LaPierre's comments and note that they are nearly word for word identical.  This does not bode well for substantive changes a-coming.

(I was also tickled to learn that several businesses--car rentals and banks--are ending their association with the NRA and that the FBI may be investigating the NRA to see if they are laundering money for Russia.  It's terrible that the NRA has such a terrible reputation when it is my understanding that the majority of the actual membership does not agree with the opinions of Wayne La Pierre.)

It's more pleasant to watch ice dancing.

And How Is YOUR Year Going?

It's getting so it's too, too depressing to turn on the news each evening.  The lead story in tonight's reports concerned Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and his use of private jets, on the public dollar.  He has taken at least 24 private jets since May (five just this week) to the tune of $300,000, which we have paid.  Good for us.

The saddest thing about this is realizing that something egregious like this no longer seems outrageous.  It seems that every night there is some terribly offensive sounding thing reported on and it just is all overload.

Tonight they were also questioning using Trump's campaign finances to pay his son's legal expenses, when DT, Jr. had no official position and technically was not a part of the campaign.

It seems that each day we hear of some other money-making scheme using the administration and its funds.  Or exploitation of the funds.

The Secret Service brought to bankruptcy paying expenses guarding everybody in the Trump family as they vacation around the world.  I still don't understand why they had to pay to live in Trump tower to guard the family.  You'd think that the prez could have given them a break on the rent.

And the lies.  Everybody lies and nobody seems to realize that there are videotapes around that prove the lies.

And don't even start on Manafort...!

But nobody in authority cares.  No Republicans have made a fuss or even suggested action should be taken on anybody.

And then there are the continuing ties to Russia, and the depth of Russia dealings.  It sounds more like a plot of The Sopranos than the U.S government.  (I keep saying I want to be able to come back in 50 years and see how the books record this period of our history)

And in the middle of this "the heck with you; I'm all for me" business (and I do mean business), congress is working to take away health care from millions of Americans.

We remain the laughing stock of the world, the president getting laughed at when he spoke at the UN.  His threat to "destroy North Korea" can only add fuel to the fire that is Kim Jong Un, who is just itching to blow something up.

I feel like there is a whole ball of "something" inside me that has died.  I had hope until the inauguration that somehow the cavalry was going to ride over the hill and save us, but they never showed up and we are stuck with this situation.  And even if in the unlikely event that he should be impeached and/or removed from office...look at who is coming up in the line of succession:  Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin (the guy who thought he could use a government plane to take his wife on a European honeymoon).  Not a single one of them I could get remotely hopeful about.

My friend Kathy and I had lunch this week.  We have been lunching together monthly for a couple of decades and we always spend a lot of time discussing politics.  We never mentioned politics this week.  We are both so depressed and so defeated by the knowledge that there is no hope.

---

I went to Atria today.  My mother was thrilled because she hasn't seen me in a year.

Comments like this make me feel more comfortable going less and less often because to her it's either today or a year ago or a year from now. 

I couldn't find her when I got to the memory unit and one of the kind aides said she would go and find her for me.

To my amazement she was outside!!!!!!  This may be the first time she has gone out of the building on her own (of course, I don't know if someone took her outside or not).  Today was the first really comfortable day we've had (75⁰) and a really lovely day, so I'm glad she was able to get out and enjoy it.
When the aide brought her in to her apartment, she didn't know me, but quickly figured out who I was, but I don't know if she thought I was her daughter or her sister.  Possibly both during the hour I was there.  At one point she talked about Walt ("what's the name of that guy you're married to?") and our kids, but then at one point she said "Mom is doing pretty good these days, isn't she?" and she I looked perplexed she said "Mom.  Our Mother" so I think at that moment, she thought I was her sister.  She also asked how Peach's mother Marge was (Marge died many years ago).

Steve Schalchlin's friend wrote a song about Alzheimers called "The Long Goodbye" and that's what it is...watching little bits and pieces fade away slowly.

If there is anything to be thankful for it's that she hasn't a clue what is happening in the world.  In fact, when I told her abut the Mexico earthquake she asked "was she working at the time?"  I never expected her to understand about the earthquake, but sometimes it's good to have something other than her age, and the weather to talk about, even if she doesn't understand it.

It's either a lemon or a chicken

Walt knows I'm crazy, but occasionally I have to prove it to him.

Now  don't know if I can explain this properly, but often I get images floating through my head that don't really mean anything but are somehow associated with something I'm doing.  It happens often when I'm reading a book that in some part of my brain, I am picturing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever it is I'm reading.  I might be reading a book about elephants and in some part of my brain there is a locomotive. This has happened my whole life and I just accept is as part of how my brain works.

But occasionally I stop and think about it .... what was that?

I was thinking about my pain the other day and remembering that it was on the right lower quadrant of my abdomen and when I thought of it, I thought of a picture frame around that area.  so far nothing that weird.

But then I realized that in thinking about the pain--every time, especially when describing it to a medical person, my brain pictured a rectangle with a yellow spot in the middle of it looking like a lemon...or maybe a baby chick.  I don't have a clue why it did that but I'm glad that the yellow spot is gone, finally.

So yesterday was returning to normal day.  I was scheduled for lunch with Char at the Red Lobster.  We planned this lunch during Red Lobster's crab fest but it had to be postponed because of my mother's broken bone.  Now crab fest is gone, but it's a time of endless shrimp and we both love shrimp, so we decided to go anyway.

My shrimp plate was huge (and I forgot to photograph it) and waaay more than someone in my abdominal condition should have ordered (so I brought home enough for Walt to have for dinner last night!).  But it was delicious, even if it did cause some minor abdominal distress.

Of course, we discussed the current political climate.  Discussions like this these days are so discouraging, so pointless, and so depressing.  You feel so totally helpless.  And we've come to accept lying as normal.  Owell, another lie, we say.

Ned pointed me to comedian Marc Maron, whom you can find on Netflix.  If you are feeling like I am, I STRONGLY urge you to check out his video, which is both hilarious and says it all.  The first set, about 10 minutes, perhaps, about Trump (in which he doesn't mention his name at all) is so spot on and says everything I'm been thinking and why I'm so depressed.

But other than that, it was a pleasant lunch.  It always is.  One of the things Maron talks about is that, at 53, he doesn't know how much time he has left and he thinks he doesn't have time to learn something new.  Like if Phish is a great band, if he listens t them, he doesn't have time to go back and get up to speed on their music because he might not have that much time left and he needs to concentrate on what he has NOW.

That's kind of what it's like in your 70s.  Do you have enough time left to start a brand new friendship? with all that entails?  

It's worked well for Char, who has a bunch of new friends in the senior living where she's moved, but here in Davis, where I'd have to go out looking for a new friendship, it's just not worth the bother.  So the friends of all my life become more and more precious to me.  They are the friends with whom you have verbal shorthand, where a word or two evokes a whole part of your life that you shared.  Char can say "I thought of Michele" and we both immediately are in the same place.

Those friends are becoming fewer and farther apart and I cherish the ones I have, Char at the top of the list.  Even if we both are so depressed about the world.  I decided that what we must do is not concentrate on what we have no power to change, but to find something where we can feel we are doing good in the world and that will have to sustain us.

When we parted, I drove to See's Candy in Vacaville and picked up a box of chocolates for my mother's birthday.  She's been 98 for four days and I hadn't seen her yet.  I stopped off at home to get Walt, who wanted to come with me, and we went to Atria.

She was thrilled to see me and wondered how long I'd been in town -- I really don't know who she thought I was.  We visited about an hour, I guess.

The most depressing thing, I guess, is that I imagined at at this age, we would sit back and reminisce about the old days.  But my mother can't remember old minutes, much less old days.  You can't remember the time Aunt Barb stripped at the family reunion or picking blackberries on grandma's farm, or talk about anybody in the family because she has no memory.

Then you realize that YOU are the only one with those memories and that is very lonely.

 

---

My sister died 45 years ago today.  I know my mother doesn't remember that.

Democracy in Action

All of my life I have heard about the glories of democracy and how this country is so great because we are a democracy, as we go around the world trying to force the glories of democracy on other countries, whether they want it or not, because democracy is so wonderful.

But it is more and more clear that we do NOT live in a democracy...probably not for a long time, but definitely lately.  

Our voting system is totally wacky.  The people do not elect a president, but a select group of a small number of selected representatives elect the president and even if the other candidate has received a significant majority of the actual votes, she doesn't win the election  How is that democracy, defined as "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system."

If an ethnic group is going to vote in large numbers for your opposing candidate, make it more difficult for them to get to the polls or qualify to vote.  How is that democracy...making it difficult for voters to vote?  How is that "a free electoral system"?

If the voting groups don't favor your candidate, there is always the Gerrymander, drawing the lines so that the majority of districts do favor your candidate.

And when your elected representatives get to Washington, they aren't there to do the will of the people, they are there to get re-elected.  If the majority of the voters express opposition to your opponent for the Supreme court, change the rules so that the negative votes don't count.  If the president you don't like nominates a worthy candidate for Supreme court. refuse to even talk with him on the flimsy excuse that he "only" has a year left in office, so should not get to name a new justice (historical precedent notwithstanding!)

I am so tired of the people making their feelings known and our "representatives" ignoring them and doing whatever they damn well please.

I am also tired of so many people with very shady pasts, people who have almost certainly committed crimes and get a free ride when Hillary Clinton went through a monumental witch hunt, which cost the American voters millions of dollars and turned up nothing, time and time again.

We call this a democracy.  I don't know what it is, but it is not a democracy!

 

You can't tell me that the majority of people want to return to this:

or to watch children getting sick from the use of DDT, which, has been used only in limited instances (killing fleas responsible for bubonic plague, for example) since the 1970s.  The ban on DDT has been credited with the return of the bald eagle, our national bird.  But now?  Go ahead.  Use all you want!

The Daily Mail in the UK reported that more than HALF of US rivers are too polluted to support life as a result of agricultural fertilizers.  I don't know the date of this article, but it mentions that the Obama administration finalized regulations to control mercury pollution in 2011.

Now?  Gone.  Dump all the junk you want to into the nation's waterways.  Remember Flint, Michigan?  Brown unusable water coming from  the taps?  Kids getting sick?  You can't tell me that this is what the majority of Americans want.

Anybody feel all cozy knowing that it is now legal to kill mama and baby bears as they hibernate in their dens?

These things (and too many more) are now legal in our "democracy" and you can't tell me this is the will of the people.

But where are the Republican with balls who will stand up to the tyrant who is systematically getting rid of every environmental regulation that Obama put into place, which has made our world so much cleaner and less dangerous.  Other than John McCain, is there not one senator who will say ENOUGH???

We are supposed to go into war only with approval of the congress, but Trump just sent troops into Syria without a public vote and without letting the public know he was doing it.

I just don't believe this is what the idea of a "democracy" is like.  Nothing is perfect, but this is so bad, bad, bad, and we, the common people trying to raise our families, feel so terribly powerless as we watch the country that we love slip away and as we become the laughing stock of the world.  (Just spend time with someone from another country to learn how people around the world feel about this country now.)

Hitting the Wall

With 7 months to go before the election, I have hit the political wall.

My nightly routine is to watch Christ Hayes and Rachel Maddow before Jeopardy comes on.  Last night, 10 minutes into Chris Hayes, I decided that if I had to watch one more interview about the upcoming election, my head was going to explode.

I've reached the point where I hate them all.  I'm so sick of the mud slinging, even the Democrats who started out running a polite campaign, strictly on the issues.  It kills me that this week the only candidate who is saying something with which I agree is Donald Trump, when he talks about the need for election reform.  When I find myself agreeing with Donald Trump I know my head has exploded.

The whole 2 year campaign cycle is too, too, too long.  We need to do it the way...is it England?...does it, where campaigning goes on for a month and then you vote. 

At this point i don't care who stole little Johnny's lunch money in grammar school and who was a bully in high school, or who joined which radical group in college.  I don't care who supported which bill in congress 12 years ago.  I care about how feelings have evolved and what candidates feel now.  I hate the name calling and the finger pointing and there isn't one single candidate who is not doing it.

I have gone back and forth and back and forth on which candidate I will ultimately support and think I have finally made my decision. but then tomorrow something else will come out and I'll be confused again.  I want my mind to be made up and not confused by the facts.

I hate the endless talking heads, no matter how intelligent and informed they are.  It's all guess work about what might happen and charts about what will happen if this happens or what will happen if it goes the other way.  I like Hayes and Maddow because their team seems to do the old fashioned investigative reporting and they invite people with whom they disagree to come on and set the record straight.  I like that they start every interview with "do I have all the facts straight?"  You don't see that happening with other news or talking heads programs.

It's also fascinating to be on some mailing lists, though I generally delete most of them.  To read things coming out of the Democratic camp, Obama will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents, to read things coming out of the Republican camp, Obama has destroyed the country and should be brought to trial for treason.

I'd hate to be a little kid trying to study current history right now.  I would like to be around 20-30 years from now and see how the history books treat this period of time.

It was 10 minutes into Chris Hayes' first interview last night when my head exploded and I decided that the Criminal Minds episode about child trafficking was infinitely more appealing.  At least you knew who the bad guys were and that they would get their comeuppance in the end.  Later, I checked in with Rachel Maddow and saw another chart and went back to Criminal Minds.  Maybe I'm adopting a head in the sand attitude right now, but I'm just fed up to here with it all and I just want it to be over.

And we have seven. whole. months. still to go.

Like a Pregnancy

It 9 months to November and I suspect that just like a pregnancy, this is going to be a continuing painful time for us.  It would be nice if we could have that comfortable, almost-pleasant mid-trimester, but I suspect this baby is going to be trouble the entire time.

If there is anything positive I can say about where we are in politics today it is that I went to pick up my mother's laundry (somehow dirty undies seem appropriate to this topic).  She did not have today's paper next to her and I found it on the table, unopened.  So I picked it up and pointed to the headline about Trump and Sanders winning New Hampshire.

Her ability to cover her inability to participate in a conversation or to understand what she reads worked well for me.  I started talking about the candidates and my frustration with the whole thing.  I must have talked for half an hour and every so often she'd interject something, but mostly she listened without letting me know she didn't have a clue what I was talking about.  But that was great.  I had the ear of someone willing to sit and listen to me rant and rave, and she got someone coming to visit her that she didn't have to entertain.

And she didn't once tell me how old she was.

Maybe this is the good part about this ridiculous election.

I am in such a quandary.  I hear from my buddies Bill, Hillary, Chelsea and Bernie at least a dozen times a day, often more because for some reason Hillary and Chelsea send me every notice twice on my normal account and another two times on my g-mail account.  I have stopped reading them.

This is such a frightening time in this country.  We have a real possibility of a President Donald Trump, which chills me to my core, and so the choice of the Democrat opponent is more important than it has been in the past.  Heck, even REPUBLICANS don't like Trump, to hear them talk!

But who is best to beat him?  Bernie or Hillary.  I go back and forth every day, sometimes more than once a day.  I should stop watching TV news, but it's like a train wreck.  I can't stop myself.

I really like Bernie.  I like what he stands for, I like his passion, I like his dedication to making this country great again (something Trump will not do, no matter how many hates and buttons he sells).  But he worries me for so many reasons.  It's wonderful to say that you are going to take on Wall Street and make college free, and give us single payer once and for all, but I have not heard him say HOW is going to do all that.  After watching Obama sail into the White House on promises that I believed in and then having watched him fight congress for eight years to get anything accomplished, I'm not sure how Bernie, who seems to be disliked not only in Congress but in his own home state, is going to accomplish that.  His medical plan alone, economists seem to think, will cost trillions of dollars.

(But then Trump, too, has made lots of promises that sound good on paper, but how is HE going to get tem through congress?  He's convinced Mexico will pay for that famous wall he wants to build, but he never says how, other than that he has good Mexican friends.  And as for deporting 11 million illegals...c'mon.  It's impossible.  Yet, he fires up his base every time he promises those things.)

I like Hillary too and I trust her more because of her wealth of experience.  She knows what it's like to be in the White House and she knows international relations, which are going to be so important in the next four years.  I haven't heard Bernie come out with a single plan for what he would do for various international situations.  He just slides back to the fact that if he taxes millionaires and billionaires everything would be hunky dory.

When you ask him what he would do about Syria, he reminds people that he was against the Iraq War.  Well.  Good.  But that was 2002.  What would he do in 2016?

Five years ago, he proposed Universal Health Care, but could get no sponsors.  How is he going to do any better if he becomes president?  Those things do have to go through Congress, you know!

But then there are things about Hillary that bother me too and so i sit on the horns of a dilemma and it may be months before I know who I am really supporting.  

One thing is for sure.  No matter which of them ends up winning the nomination, either of them would be head and shoulders over anybody on the Republican side.  Political analyst Ezra Klein says that "The rise of Donald Trump is a terrifying moment in American politics," adding "Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash."

And what saddens me the most is how many Americans are buying all of the negative crap that is coming out of those debates and those rallys.  It scares me that this is the kind of country we are becoming.  No longer a kinder, gentler country but a meaner country with people who have lost their ability to feel anything for those less fortunate than they are, or those who are suffering around the world. 

My mother has, for years, said repeatedly "I'm glad I'm as old as I am." I understand that now.  I feel sad for the world Brianna and Lacie will inherit if things don't change.

Unanswered Questions

I have been watching the Republican debate all day, it seems.  I watched the "kids' table" and then the big people's discussion.  This is how I feel.

Maybe it was when Jeb said that his brother kept us safe, or when someone intimated that Planned Parenthood was a baby-generating machine that did abortions so they could sell body parts that got me looking for an exploding head graphic.  But I felt the need many times throughout.

While I agree that the moderator was better than some in creating a real debate and trying to keep everyone, even Trump, on topic, but he, like most interviewers I have seen, allow statements to go unquestioned and it is driving me nuts.

How many times has Trump told you that he's going to build a beautiful wall and that Mexico is going to pay for it?  Has anybody ever asked him how he's going to get Mexico to pay for it?

Or those 12 million aliens that Trump is going to get rid of in the first two years.  Nobody ever questions him on statistics.  First, he seems to assume that they are all Mexicans and that he can just put them on trains and buses and send them out of the country.  First of all while, yes, there are a lot of Mexican illegals here, they are not all Mexican.  If you have Chinese illegals or Nigerian illegals...you can't put them on a bus or train.  How do you send THEM back to where they came from?

Secondly there are the legal children of illegals.  Whether Trump likes it or not, right now the Constitution says that if you are born here you are a legal citizen.  He seems to think that it's a simple matter to ignore that and send the kids back with their parents, which means deporting legal citizens of the United States.  He also seems to forget that you can't just change the Constitution without vote in Congress (which he seems to think will be easy to get.  Has he watched Congress the past 8 years???) and then passage by all 50 states.  But never mind.  He's the Great Trump.  He can do it because he is very rich and he knows how to run a business.

So assume that somehow you can deport families, illegal and legal members,  Where do you find them?  Haven't they been hiding all these years?  Are they just going to voluntarily present themselves to the bus or train station?

Someone else mentioned a path to legal residency saying they'd have to pay taxes for the years they lived here.  What about the illegals who get fake Social Security cards so they can work and do pay taxes?  (I've known some who do.)

And then there is Trump's plan to keep businesses from establishing plants out of the states. Ford is building a big plant in Mexico.  If Trump is president, he'll call the president of Ford ('cause he knows him, dontcha know) and tell him that unless he builds his plant here he will face at 30% tax on every car brought into this country. OK.  Sounds good.  But how does that happen?  The president can't arbitrarily charge a special tax just 'cause he feels like it.  Nobody has ever asked him that question.

Then there is ... who is it? ... maybe Rubio.  Maybe not.  Someone wants to tear up the Iran deal on day one of his presidency.  Is he aware that the deal was signed by not only the United States, but also Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China?  The U.S. President can't just tear it up because he doesn't like it.

And how about those who are going to repeal Obamacare on day one.  What happens to the millions of now insured citizens who currently benefit from Obamacare?  Are you going to tell them they no longer have health coverage?  What will you give them in return, on Day One?

But nobody asks those questions and those are more important questions than the fantasy beautiful country that all those candidates envision if we just give them our vote. Heck, vote for me.  I'll make sure every road in the country is repaired, gas prices don't rise above $2 a gallon, every dog has a forever home, and everyone has a daily chocolate allotment.

With all this, there is one BIG reason why we simply cannot let Trump be president.  After 8 years of the Bush smirk, I don't know if I can live with 4-8 years of the Trump supercilious pout.

Abject Apologies

I feel I owe all the readers of Funny the World and, indeed everyone in the country a huge apology.

You see, this country is in a big mess.  We are fighting the longest war in our country's history, our infrastructure is shot, children are starving, people are homeless, idiots are scrambling to see which can ruin the country better and faster than the next guy and I suddenly realized it is all my fault.  My fault for being so stingy.

Looking at just my g-mail over the past year, the mail I hadn't deleted (and I delete most mail), for a mere $3, I could have...

• Supported Donna Edwards for Senate in Maryland.
• Saved Planned Parenthood
• Helped Elizabeth Warren plan a training session for local elections
• Defeated the Republicans (fill in the blink on which issue)
• Re-elected Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley
• Cured Alzheimers
• Made big, bold, economic-populist ideas central in 2016
• Kept Daily Kos alive
• Sent a big Thank You to Jimmy Carter
• Stopped Comcast's takeover of California
• Let the FCC enact net neutrality
• Supported Bernie Sanders' Rebuild America Act
• Banned fracking
• Got Doritos to adopt a responsible palm oil policy
• Helped break Citigroup into pieces
• Help Pope Francis remodel the Vatican bathrooms

Bear in mind that I have both a .dcn account and a .gmail account and that I delete 90% of the "give just $3" messages and that I only checked gmail and there is just no end to the other things I could have done if only I'd been willing to let go of that magic $3.

There is inflation, though, and lately to save the whales, the Democrats, Planned Parenthood, or the polar bears now costs $5.  I probably won't give that either.

So I'm sorry if the world is in such a sorry state.  It's because I'm such a selfish bitch and refuse to part with $3 every time I get a message telling me what I can fix for only $3 (I often get several requests a day).

@@@@@

Today is Wednesday, Atria lunch day.  I woke my mother up at 11:30 when I arrived at her door and at the end of lunch at 12:45, she was ready for a nap.  (She's old, you know)

However, lunch was a delight.  We sat with Robert the 98 year old retired veterinarian/author who is quite garrulous, but very, very hard of hearing.  When we sat down, he was quiet and rubbing his eyes.  He says he has macular degeneration and his doctors tell him he's going blind.  He was obviously very dejected.  He mentioned how his deteriorating eyesight made writing difficult, and how he writes stories each week to read there at Atria.

I asked him what kind of stories.  He smiled and said "very eclectic."  Then he started talking about the kinds of stories he wrote, which evolved into a travelogue of all the places around the world he and his wife had visited along with observations of each country, then onto his genealogical research and his British relatives.  

When a lull finally came in his narrative, he smiled a big smile and said that when he got to lunch he was very down and depressed and that our conversation had lifted his spirits--told my mother I was better and cheaper than a psychiatrist--and that he was going back to his apartment before he got depressed again.

So I feel I did some good at Atria today!

I also contacted the resident services director at Atria, who will take care of my mother's medication reminders while we are gone on our cruise next month, so I feel relieved about that.

A good day.  Maybe while I'm on a roll, I'll find a worthy organization to pledge $3 to this afternoon....

My Heart is Heavy

My euphoria over the election results have been tempered by stumbling across a stream of Twitter messages that broke out during the day of the election.  I am loathe to reprint them, but feel I must so we are aware of the mood in this country. I would like to think that the writers of these messages are the sorts of people that reality shows would exploit to show the extremes of society (think HoneyBooBoo), but since the internet gives one anonymity, these could just as easily have been written by a banker as a hillbilly (no offense to hillbillys meant).

I will admit that my biggest fear about Obama's election in 2008 was that he would be assassinated by those who have never accepted Emancipation and who hate anyone of color.  There certainly were enough of those on Capitol Hill from day 1.

In reprinting these messages, it is not possible to avoid the "n-word."  Know that if I write n* the word was written in lower case and if I write N* the word was written in upper case.

Keep a barf bag handy.  You will need it.

    Can't wait for Mitt Romney to win the election & kick that filthy n* Obama and his family out of the white house.

    When in doubt, kick the n* out.

    Can we all just get out and vote for romney so we can get this n* out of office?

    Meanwhile that n* Obama hugs that fat faggot Christie and BOOM now everybody wants to vote for him because hugs are positive like smiles.

    There is a fine line between a respected African American and a n*.

    OK.  We pick a worthless n* over a full blooded american. What the hell has our world come to? It's called the white house for a reason.

    Obama only won because he's black. Romney would have been a much better president president as he actually has morals, unlike n* Obama.

    No N* should lead this country!!!

    The movie 2012 first New York floods and there is a n* in office also.  See a [sic] coinensadince.

    Y'all it's called a White House not a black house or n* house.   He should just call it welfare house.

    LOL. Obama may be the president but even he still needs welfare. #n*

    *Ns are voting Obama cause they afraid Romney is gonna create jobs. Ns hate to work and rather live off the "gub-mint."

    Why did Obama's great granddaddy cross the road? Because my great granddaddy tugged his chain in that direction."

    america is f'd.  full of f'ing n* lovers needing support from the god damn government.  FU!

    I'd honestly be willing to spill blood and attack the north and Take Back America.  Civil War 2012.

You get the idea...I'm too sick to print any more. There are some 300 of them.

And then there are people like Donald Trump, calling for revolution (he should team up with the person who wrote that last tweet up there)  Trump states (or maybe it was Karl Rove...it's so hard to tell them apart, unless you see the tops of their heads) that the fact that Obama won proves that we no longer live in a democracy.   So if HIS guy won, and my guy lost, I should accept that was because we live in a democracy?

(Why isn't Mr. Moneybags down in lower Manhattan helping Jon Bon Jovi with his free soup kitchen for those displaced by Sandy or throwing tons of money at organizations that will be helping to rebuild the homes of those who were left homeless by the storm.  Why doesn't he give that $5 million check he was willing to give to Obama for a peek at his school records to the Red Cross?)

I learned an interesting thing about Obama's college transcripts today.  An attorney friend told me that in every law school in the country, each student is assigned a number on arrival.  All tests are taken by number, not by name.   All results are posted by number, not by name, and every year, the numbers change, so there is no way whatsoever to trace a student by his number.  Even if you were to accept Trump's ridiculous assertion that the only way Obama got into Harvard was because of affirmative action, he would still have had to earn his degree--and honors--the old fashioned way--do the work himself.

But then when has Trump had any relevance anyway?  It's just that his stupidity makes me angry.

I don't have a clue what it is like to be a person of color, to walk about your daily life, riding public transit, going to ball games, shopping in the local store, working in a corporation, and not knowing which of the people you encounter in your day to day life might be the sort of person who would write some of those horrible tweets.

Hatred is still, I fear, a very real part of this country.  I pray that somehow...somehow we can start to look at each other with less hatred and more acceptance.  But maybe it's going to take another generation....

But then, what will the next generation learn?

    You've got to be taught
    To hate and fear,
    You've got to be taught
    From year to year,
    It's got to be drummed
    In your dear little ear
    You've got to be carefully taught.

    You've got to be taught to be afraid
    Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
    And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
    You've got to be carefully taught.

    You've got to be taught before it's too late,
    Before you are six or seven or eight,
    To hate all the people your relatives hate,
    You've got to be carefully taught!

274

Ohio...Ohio...Ohio...

They put him over the top.  President Obama has another four years, and I can start breathing again.

I didn't realize how tense I have been all week until I tried to eat today and everything made me a bit queasy.  Even pancakes, which normally set quite well.  I didn't finish my pancakes (the dogs were thrilled).

I gave myself half an hour to vote and then was in and out of the polling place in less than 15 minutes (I wore my Obama t-shirt from 2008, which, I realized when I saw the "100 feet" polling signs, was probably illegal campaigning, but nobody said anything and let me vote without sending me home to change my clothes.

After voting, I went downtown to meet my friend Ruth for our 2x/month lunch.  We eat at a Chinese place and after having a couple of things I didn't like very much, I usually order the honey walnut shrimp because that is almost always good.   This time it was the best I'd ever had there.  But my stomach was in such knots, I had to ask for a box after just a few bites.  The only thing that went down easily was the soup and I suddenly realized I had a craving for soup and I should start having more soups for lunch.

I drove home and put the food in the fridge and tried to concentrate on anything, but couldn't not watch all the talking heads.  Election coverage, of course, couldn't start until the polls closed but before that there were endless poll results and guesses and all sorts of stuff I couldn't turn off.  I may have taken a nap.  I don't remember.

Anticipating the worst, I even designed a new logo for my facebook page, which, for the past two months has been this:

...and if Romney won it would be this:

I googled "deadlands".  I didn't dare design on for a happy outcome.  Too superstitious.

When the first poll numbers started coming in, I was more and more depressed as state after state was racked up in Romney's column.  I didn't dare hope, though people on Facebook kept pointing out that the early votes came from the South, where Romney had always been expected to win.

Then the Obama states started to come in.  The big jump came when California's 55 votes went to Obama and then that glorious announcement that Ohio had put him over the top.  He needed 270. he had 274 and was leading in all of the remaining "too close to call" states.

The crowds went wild.  Walt was watching TV upstairs, so I called my mother, my friend Joycie called me and I rejoiced with Facebook people.

 

Then came the news that Romney disputed the Ohio results, claims that Romney could somehow get the rest of the states and still win, and Trump was calling for revolution (I've always thought The Donald was revolting anyway).  Was this going to be another Bush v. Gore/Florida situation?  But then Romney did the grown-up thing and conceded the election in a classy speech...and, as it turned out, Obama didn't even need Ohio anyway.

So our long national nightmare is over.  There will be no Ami Bera ads tomorrow (I read that he won in his district, so I guess that's a good thing).

The problem, of course, is that I don't ever remember an election that was so close.  All the votes have yet to be counted, but at the moment, Obama is only leading Romney in the popular vote by 300,000+.  No matter who won this election, 50% of the country was going to go to sleep depressed.  The task ahead of the president in the next four years is to win over some of those people.  Maybe without an election ahead of him, he can do more unpopular things that will promote the things he wants to accomplish and leave behind a lasting legend.

I have every confidence that he can do it.

Superstitions

You gotta love the Republicans.  To paraphrase Henry Higgins, "they are so deliciously low."

But I just loved this photo.  The obvious response to this is "yes you did!"  I don't think this was quite the message that the convention intended to convey.

I loved The Daily Show's Samantha Bee, interviewing conventioneers about the Republican Platform, which states that life begins at conception and that no exception in the case of rape or incest will be allowed.

She asked a handful of delegates how they felt about it, and they all said they believed it completely.  Then she said that Romney had said he would allow exceptions for rape and incest and asked how they felt about that.  The answers were so beautiful, I just had to transcribe them.  Remember, these are delegates being interviewed about the republican platform and all of whom state unequivocally that they believe life begins at conception and there should be no exceptions.

SAM:  But Mitt Romney would allow for exceptions.

Delegate: If that's the choice he makes, that's his choice.
Delegate: He's allowed to choose
Delegate: I know the percentage is so small, so small of a person becoming pregnant from a rape that I just don't know if that's even in the equation. There have been some cases

SAM:  Yeah.  About 32,000 a year.

Delegate:  Is it 32,000?  OK.
Delegate:  We live in a free society. We live in America. It is up to any human being to choose, to decide what is best for themselves.

(remember these are delegates talking about Romney's right to allow exceptions to the no abortion policy)

Delegate:  Is it Romney's choice to be different from the platform?  Well, of course!  Who are we to tell someone how they should act?
Delegate:  We're not forcing Governor Romney to accept anything.
Delegate:  I don't feel that it's forced on anybody.
Delegate:  I do not believe for one second that he has made this decision lightly.
Delegate:  It's hard to make that decision unless you're the one in that situation.
Delegate:  It's not for me to judge.
Delegate:  Government has a purpose and we lose sight of that.  The purpose of government is to protect your individual liberties.
Delegate:  That's what the country is.  We're individuals and we get to be who we are.  Everybody gets to choose the path they choose because it's their choice.

...unless you're gay and want to marry, or have been raped and want an abortion...

This is the party of hypocrisy.

And did you see how many people (including a FOX News reporter, of all people!) pointed out the lies in Ryan's acceptance speech.

• Ryan accuses Obama of shutting the GM plant (which was shut down while Bush was still in office)
• Ryan claims taxpayers got nothing from the stimulus (The stimulus added 3.3 million jobs, cut unemployment by 1.8%, and grew GDP by 4.1%. Nothing is what the country got when Ryan and his fellow Republican obstructed the American Jobs Act.)
• Ryan says Obama put the federal government in charge of Healthcare.
• Ryan blames Obama the country's downgraded credit rating
• Ryan hints Obama is a Socialist.

(For complate answers to all of these charges, check this page. You can also find it on Huffington Post, and a host of other links, including Sally Kohn of FOX news who describes Ryan's speech in three words: Dazzling, Deceiving, Distracting, and added that it was "an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies.")

But I am becoming superstitious.  I was so involved in the 2008 election, read everything, listened to everything.  But I come from a long line of losing candidates and I'm so afraid that I'm going to believe all the negative things about the Romney/Ryan ticket and confidently assume Obama will sweep effortlessly back into office.  I'm afraid to believe. 

I no longer have the audacity to hope.  I want to send in an absentee ballot and then crawl into a cave and come out after the votes are counted.

Playing Catch-Up

I'm a bad mom. 

Preoccupied Pipers (the band Ned and Marta play in from time to time) was playing in San Francisco last night.  I had intended to go to the show, but found I literally could not move last night.  Walt left the house around 9:30 and I was going to write this journal entry and then go to sleep, but I couldn't even get up to do that.  I ended up going to sleep within minutes after he left, woke up when he got home around 1:30 and thought that after five hours sleep I'd be up the rest of the night, but then had no energy to get up and write this entry then, went right back to sleep and slept through until after 6 a.m. this morning.

I'm not feeling as "jet-laggy" as I did after China, but things like this make me realize that I really am affected by all this flying around!   Yesterday I showed up at the book store to work, not realizing that my day had been shifted this week to Saturday, to let me recover from all the travel.

Getting back to normal involves finding out what has been going on in our absence.  It was the better part of a month news/current event black out and it's weird to start getting back into the groove again.  We got a daily news sheet on the ship, with one page of headline news, one page of sports and one page of business news (and one page of whatever else they needed to complete the stories).  We got CNN, but every time I turned it on, it was yet anther business program, so I gave up trying to find out what was going on in the world through the TV.

Jeri and Phil have a television, but rarely watch it, so it wasn't turned on the whole time we were there and I didn't read the paper while we were there (though Jeri read us the comics each day, which was fun).

So I came home and started watching TV again.

It's weird having so little knowledge of what has been going on in the Olympics.  I usually watch a lot of the events but it has been catch as catch can.  I saw some of the early sports while we were on the ship, but usually ended up finding kayaking.  I knew nothing of kayaking, except that you have to wear a little boat and make it through a complicated course while going through rapids, and keeping the little boat upright.  We saw folks kayaking on the Rhine. I assume they were learning how to right the boat after it tipped over.  Either that or they were very, very bad kayakers.

But I missed all the big emotional moments.  I saw one or two events in gymnastics, but couldn't tell you the name of anybody on our team (except that adorable Gabby Douglas).  I saw girls happy and girls unhappy, but didn't know why.

I saw about a minute of one of Michael Phelps' events.

What upset me when we returned home and I could turn on the shows talking about the events was what upsets me every time we have an Olympics.  The "tragedy" of "only" winning a bronze medal.  What a disaster -- being only the third best person in the entire world.  How can you possibly hold your head up after such an ignominious defeat, especially if you were just seconds behind the winner.  Sometimes you just want to tell commentators to shut up.  

I seemed to see more of the weird stuff -- the controversy over Gabby's hair, what was outlined in that rower's bathing suit during the medal ceremony, Serena Williams' victory dance (really, folks...get a life!).

I found out that we landed a rover on Mars and there was another horrific shooting at a Sikh temple and an attempted shooting at another showing of The Dark Knight.  I kinda sorta knew those things had happened, but really knew very little about them.

And then there was the political scene and back to watching the talking heads dissecting the events surrounding the presidential race.  Char's husband Mike watches FOX news, to find out what folks on the right are hearing and believing.  I do not have that strong a stomach, but going back to MSNBC and realizing that it is as slanted to the left as FOX is to the right is just as bad.  I loved hearing everyone assessing how the Romney campaign is imploding, but realized that those listening to FOX are hearing the same thing about the Obama campaign.  I'm becoming very superstitious.  I don't want to hear how badly Romney is doing because I'm afraid that he's not doing bad enough to convince voters.

I saw an absolutely horrific campaign ad yesterday, about a candidate who, according to this ad, wanted to allow thugs from Mexico into this country.  The pictures were horrific and scary, watching these hard-edged, sneering men in dirty t-shirts moving into your neighborhood.  It took awhile to realize I was watching a cop drama, not a real life Super PAC ad.

I want to get on another ship and not get off until the election is over.  It's too upsetting to watch the daily reporting on who had done what to whom.   A news blackout was actually very nice.

Barbarians

Well, we have learned that Mitt Romney was (maybe) a bully in school to (perhaps) a gay kid.  We've got those who obviously didn't like him in school telling us that he was a bully, and those who did like him telling us that he was a good guy who was just always playing pranks, and we have a candidate who can't seem to remember shaving a screaming boy's head 'cause maybe he did it so often it just slipped his mind.   But he wasn't punished by the school so either it never happened or Daddy's millions paid them off.  Pick the story you prefer to believe.

But then Obama has admitted bullying a girl in school in his autobiograhy...and we now know that he ate dog as a boy.  Maybe the dog fared better than the Romney family dog, forced to ride on the roof of a car 15 years ago.

Hey,folks...are these the sorts of things that we are going to weigh when making a choice for who is going to be the next leader of the free world?   Really?  A high school bully or a kid who ate the dog that was fed to him?

Anybody remember that little thing called "issues"?   Are we so obsessed with youthful indiscretions (no matter how egregious) that we prefer to discuss them...seemingly to death...rather than find out what each candidate plans to do about insignificant stuff like the economy, the budget, equal rights, health care, poverty.  OMG, we can't discuss those things because we have to get to the bottom of the current rumors, innuendos and scandals!

You know...?  Screw it.  I cared last time.  I don't care this time.  This country is so ridiculous that we are going to end up with the president we deserve.  I hope it's my guy (Obama), but I'm not going to get emotionally involved again, not when the media, left and right, is taking us down these bunny trails following every little rumor, the more salacious the better.

I am tired of listening to MSNBC commentators (except Rachel Maddow, whom I still like) phrasing questions designed to elicit exactly the kind of answer the questioner wants to get.  The interviewer knows damn well what the answer is that he wants and gives the interviewee no alternative but to give it to him.

I don't listen to FOX and probably I should to get a true "fair and balanced" opinion (the far left reporting of MSNBC and the far right reporting of FOX and then making my own decision), but my blood pressure just can't stand most of the talking heads there.  But then my blood pressure is getting to the point where I can't stand Chris Matthews or Ed Schulz either.  And I no longer miss Keith Olbermann at all.

What happened to candidates actually debating each other?   Oh we have what we call debates but neither candidate gets enough time to fully state a position and the structure of the debate makes it impossible to allow for an honest give and take.  How do you think the Lincoln/Douglas debates would have gone under the current rules we have for debates these days?  You don't really learn much about either candidate's position, but you sure do get a lot of talking points.  

And yeah--there's that buzz word thing.  Watch Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow playing one clip after another, with each person on screen saying the exact same thing.  Totally coincidentally, of course.  

In a pig's eye.  

You gotta believe every person who is likely to go on TV is handed a script of points that the party (Democratic or Republican) wants them to make, and every single person does.  That's how the "etch-a-sketch" candidate came to be, how Kerry (and now everybody else) became a flip-flopper.  One day someone says something that sounds kind of catchy and the next day every single person interviewed is talking about the "bad" candidate using that phrase.

It's what's "trending" now (another catch word that has come into popular use within the past few months)

I may have to do something really radical and start watching the PBS News Hour, except they are now talking Romney and the hair incident too.

A friend of mine lost her mother sometime this past year and she started writing a haiku a day, which she has posted to Facebook, to help her work through her grief.  Perhaps it can help me get through this election.

Haiku of the Day

Mitt  was a bully
Obama ate some dog meat
Seven months to go