It's Just Another Winter Day

No Black Friday Tasing or Pepper Spray was used in the making of my peaceful winter Sunday. It is merely the 25th of December to me.

I'm not a Christian so it makes no more sense for me to celebrate Christmas than it would for me to celebrate Hanukkah, not being Jewish. Do I wish everyone I meet on the street Happy Hanukkah? Do you? Does every greeter at Wall-Mart? The only significance to this particular day to me is an outworn convention I can't shake kinda like a tick. I get a call from an old friend and we trade holiday well wishes. I guess it's harmless. The best thing about the 25th of December is the lengthening of the days.

But I can't leave the subject of the birth of Jesus Christ without wondering what he'd think of the way Christians celebrate his birthday. What's up with the Pagan "Christmas Tree" and the Black Friday shopping stampedes that result in trampling of children, of guns and tasers and pepper spray being pulled and used by shoppers bent on being the first to get at that X, Y, Or X bargain worth sleeping out over night for, worth nearly dying for, worth nearly killing for? It all seems awfully far from the spirit of Christianity.

The best stories of the season have been the ones of people helping the homeless, feeding the hungry, sheltering others from the cold and sharing what little we have in times of scarcity. The Occupy movement has embodied this impulse to share. The riot police with their billy clubs and rubber bullets, their pepper spray and the relish with which they use it have represented the power of the one percent. It kind of looks like Christ in humble clothing on one side and the power of a hostile state with all its money and might on the other. "Dirty hippies" on one side and the Police and Wall Street and Mayor Bloomberg on the other. Who could imagine from this tiny band of dirty hippies a national movement would grow?

Walk Like a Model

I used to do these exercises when I was a kid to get in shape for ski season, so I never understood how hard they were for the teenaged girls I tried to teach to walk like a model. They were second nature for me. Stand against a wall with your back pressed from upper spine to tailbone into the wall.  Then slowly walk your feet out from the wall, keeping your spine pressed to the wall so that there is no space from shoulders to tailbone, as you make yourself the shape of a kitchen chair without the kitchen chair beneath you.  Then hold it until you feel the burn. Keep your spine pressed into the wall all the way down and your stomach flat. Keep your shoulders back and down. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it....

The easy version of this is to lie on the floor with your legs bent, roll your pelvis forward, press your spine into the floor from just below shoulder blades to tailbone, tighten your stomach muscles, then slowly lower your legs to a straight position while keeping your spine pressed into the floor and your stomach muscles tight. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it until you think you can't another second. Sounds so easy doesn't it.  Then repeat several times. And do it several times a day for days on end until it's second nature and you can do it standing against the wall and you can do it walking. Then that's the way you always walk.  Keep your neck long, shoulders back and down, back straight, pelvis rolled forward, stomach flat, lead with the hips...

If you do yoga it probably is easy. If you ski it probably is. If you model it probably is. It's why at fifteen modeling was so easy for me and was into my fifties.  But a couple of bad sports injuries and one backyard fall in my mid-fifties plus taking care of my mother put me out of my profession permanently and now my back is killing me.

I have Lumbar Stenosis. Now the exercises I have to do at physical therapy are some of the same exercises I used to give to teenagers who wanted to learn to walk like a model. And every muscle in my lower back, inner thighs, and stomach is screaming in pain. It never occurred to me that the poor little girls were in agony trying to roll their pelvises forward enough to get their spines flat against the floor to hold that posture long enough to strengthen their gut muscles enough to hold that posture in an upright position.  I have the advantage in that my body has the sense memory of this posture.  I know how to roll my pelvis forward, straighten my spine, hold my gut in, and walk like a model. I never realized before how hard it is. God it hurts.

Happy Holidays!

This was last years Thanksgiving post: How prescient am I!? I didn't know we had the 99 percent then as a movement but we all should have. So, eat your turkey and have your little dinner time squabbles because it seems nothing much changes as long as the same old turkeys stay in power at the top.

There is this story

And this story

Then there was this story

It's not exactly a poem, but it is some of what's happening in our country during this holiday season.  I have ignored the stories of frantic holiday shoppers trampling other frantic holiday shoppers on the aptly named Black Friday.  Extraordinarily sickening this year.  Somehow more so this year than any I remember.  The dark freakshow of materialism in a down economy.  I might be one of those crazed shoppers if I had a family counting on me to provide it with all the American Christmas creature comforts (like a bigger flat screen TV than last years version).  And I might be the provider who finds death preferable to the alternative since the future doesn't look rosy unless you're one of the top 2%.  If Thanksgiving was a disappointment to children of the 99ers, imagine what Christmas will be...  Don't know what the 99ers are?  You must be a member of the TeaParty or one of the 2% at the top.

Newt Gingrich Is A Big Fat DooDoo Head

I have reposted this because... Well...  Newt is a still a big fat doodoo head. At the time I first posted this, I was letting google ads, advertise on my blog, and every time I said something nasty about Newt, which was often, low and behold, there was Newt, hawking some shit of his on my site. It was almost enough to keep me using google ads, but not quite.

Thanks to The Lazy Iguana for this wonderful art work. Now I have photoshop envy.

So, just tell me Newt is not a Media Whore! Last time I posted a piece about Newt being a media whore, I got a google ad suggesting that you could get actual messages from Newt if you just push this button. Now I'm creeping myself out. But I needed the money. So I guess that makes me a whore too. And don't forget to check the sidebar. I do not agree with the statement that the NYTimes is a liberal newspaper. (I'm guessing google ads has not figured out that I'm a liberal). Newt is spreading the love, and probably herpes as well. So when you come a callin, bring a condom.

Media Whore Newt Gingrich

I'm reprising my old Newt posts. I've loathed Newt for a long time. Honest whores deserve some respect but politicians who are nothing BUT whores do not. Newt is the worst of the worst and I've written a few posts about this particular whore.  Now that the old whore is running for President again, it's time to replay the old posts, so here we go:  6/7/09

"Whores and politicians become respectable if they stick around long enough, as someone once observed, and the same is plainly true of media personalities – especially in a culture that never pauses long enough to remember anything. Where amnesia is the rule, there can be no accountability for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Patrick Buchanan and the rest of the broadcast mob denouncing the "racism" of Sonia Sotomayor. If anyone remembers who they are and what they have said over the years, their complaints about the Latina Supreme Court nominee will only elicit raucous laughter." Joe Coneson, from an Opionion piece in Salon June 5th

Then on Face the Nation this morning we have half the program devoted to the outrageous bullshit of Newt Gingrich. My question is WHY? There are so many skeletons in Gingrich's closet I can't list them all, but another resoursful blogger has and you can see them here.

When Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist on Twitter, he ignited a debate over her objectivity. Both sides of the argument had a chance to respond on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod defended his administration’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor against attacks that she is a racist.

"I think what she believes, harry, is that everyone is the product of their experiences. She's the product of hers," he told guest moderator Harry Smith.

"Have there been patterns of discrimination? Of course there have been. We all know that," he admitted, referencing the numerous occasions where Sotomayor said a “wise Latina woman” would make "better" decisions than a white male.

Axelrod called Gingrich’s comment “unfortunate” and said, "I think that it is so unfair and so unreflective of who she is."

Later in the program, Mr. Gingrich had a chance to respond.

He explained that he rescinded his initial comment because he called Sotomayor a racist, when really he does not know the nominee and meant that her comments were racist.

"One of the challenges for the administration is having first chided me for language, then having said she didn't mean it, and then having said she ought to restate it. Now they face the fact that she has said this, written about it four or five time," he argued.

He argued that, "if you say people of this ethnic background are superior to people of this ethnic background, take out her language and put in the word white. Put in white male where she had Latina, that person would be disqualified from the court. Also would be disqualified as a juror."

Gingrich admitted that it is "very doubtful" she will be disqualified as a high court pick because of her earlier remarks.

"She said the court should be radical. The court should rewrite law. The court is where policy is made. That's a direct quote. I'm not very comfortable having somebody at that level with that level of power," Gingrich said.

This is the first time I know of that anyone's asserted that Sotomayor said she was "superior" to a white man. And Harry Smith just let it stand, no challenge to that outrageous lie, no question about how Newt jumped from calling her a racist, retracting the term "racist", but then saying she has stated that she is superior to white men. Jesus, why is this idiot allowed to go on a Sunday morning news show and lie without even a challenge? Harry Smith, you are a disgrace for letting that one stand. Since Newt is not an elected official of any kind, just an over-the-hill has-been, why are he and Buchanan, Rush and Glen Beck getting so much play in the mainstream media?

Old Sports Injuries

I was always athletic. Sure, some of it was forced. I was taken on ski trips before I could walk. We rode horses, went swimming. I remember none of this but there are photos to prove that baby Peggy was the game little sport.   And some of that love of sports stayed with me.

I loved softball until breasts got in the way. I loved skiing but not the same way my hyper-competitive friends in Jr High and High School did--like it was a game of chicken and if you weren't willing to actually risk killing yourself every run you weren't really skiing.  I always liked the wide open bowls more than the narrow rutted chutes. I liked the beauty of the carved turns, the gentle spray of snow on a sudden perfect stop. I liked the clothes. When I was skiing, skis were long, children.  It was harder then.

Last time I went skiing was early in the incarnation of Deer Valley.  My last ski injury was there. It was a torn anterior cruciate. I was skiing with Tom.  I couldn't keep up with him, so he was riding up on the lift as I was going down. He saw it happen beneath him. I think that's how it happened.  I was trying to keep up with him.  Bastard!  It's so embarrassing to be taken off a mountain in a basket by the Ski Patrol. But thank god for them. I was in agony. It's a very painful injury.  You can hear it happen.

Good thing skiing wasn't my favorite sport.

Child Rape: It's Personal!

Finally the whole nation is talking about it. It doesn't surprise me that this time it's big time college football that gives us another opportunity to get it right. Oddly, I don't have much hope we will. We've been here before. Only when it's boys, and only when it's all male institutions and all male institutions we revere out of all proportion to the horror to the crime they have committed, serially, creating many, many victims, over decades, leaving lifetimes of wreckage that will ripple out into the lives of others when we stop and look in horror and wait. Will we just look and move on this time again? I was a raped child. The wreckage lives on in me. It's personal!

The perpetrators of these crimes have lived like heros, gods among men, rewarded with riches and fame, and honors.  Are we shaken enough to stop for a moment and gasp? What have we done! Will we hold them accountable?  Will we charge them all (and there are many) with the crime of child rape? Will we fully investigate?  Will we find all the victims? Will we pay them reparations for their injured lives, the therapy they'll need, the emotional support they will continue to need? Are we willing to keep our eyes focused on the worst within what we thought was our best?  If we're asking men who worship sports heroes and famous coaches to do that job for us, I fear we'll be let down.

He Tweets!

One of the reasons I no longer blog is that I tweet. Twitter takes care of my need to vent. Twitter is the place for news and politics. Every political writer I admire is on twitter and I can follow their tweets whether they follow me or not.  But what amazes me is that often they follow me back. Another thing I've noticed about twitter is that news breaks hours faster on twitter than it does on the broadcast news.  If you hear it on TV, it's old news.

Most of my blogger friends are there too, and/or on facebook. You guys were the ones who nagged me onto facebook. Now I've been called a friend whore. I can't help it. When Ezra Klein friended me I was hooked.

Anyway, Tom called.  Now he tweets.  He's catching on fast.

I'm still agonizing over the Hook for the book. It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to write. Should be only a sentence or so. A very good short paragraph. Impossible. I'll keep trying.

See you on twitter.

Love,
Peg

Dear Mystery Caller

Tom, how is it you only call when I'm not home and I only leave home once a week or so? That seems damn near statistically impossible given the extremity of my isolation. Hardly anybody knows I exist back here, so deep is my cover. I could die and not be missed for weeks. Yet only when I leave the house to go to the library and then straight to the grocery store do you call and leave a cryptic message with a phone number that's supposedly in Costa Rica so we can talk about "interesting things" (and god knows, I'd love nothing more). But when I call that number, some gringo with no hint of an accent, answers and says, he is "not Tom" and "no this is not Tom's number" and "no, Tom doesn't live here," and "no," he doesn't know Tom so stop calling. What's up with that? Why the bogus number? You've done it twice? I've redialed the caller ID number off the phone just in case I didn't hear your voice message correctly but I still get the same slightly impatient gringo with a voice so close to the same timbre as yours but without any of the warmth or musicality as yours. What is going on at that phone number? Call me at night. I'm always home then. I never go out after dark. If I don't answer then you can safely assume I am dead and stop calling.  Either that or I forgot to take the phone into the bathroom with me.

PS
I tweet. We could meet up there for a 140 character chat. Surely a with-it guy like you has a twitter account. If not twitter, how about Facebook? Send me an email. A blog comment? Anything. Just don't call during the daytime when I'm not at home and leave another bogus phone number please.

Living in Utah

Utah is the Reddest State in the Nation. We are more like the South than the South in our conservatism, but less like it in our inclusiveness. Utah goes out of its way to encourage immigrants to come from far flung places and take low wage jobs if they'll agree to join the Mormon Church. That's what Mormon Missionaries are all about—bringing in the sheep so they can tithe and work for the Church in it's many "non-profit" ventures.

Utah is orderly. It's orderly and clean. It's also spectacularly rich in natural beauty and opportunities for sports. Visitors often remark on Utah's cleanliness. Utah towns and cities have wide streets laid out in orderly grids that are clean and almost sparkly. Get on a plane to fly to Utah and you'll be struck by the number of pretty blonds traveling with blond children with straight white teeth returning home from one of the many Disney locations or some other very wholesome family-friendly vacation destination. They'll all be tan and remarkably well behaved. But you'll be shocked by how much they'll all resemble the perfect family in an ad for a cosmetic dentist or Mitt or Jon's vision of the perfect American Future if either of them wins the Presidential Jackpot.

I have no voice in the larger political landscape of Utah politics. My vote has never counted in a Presidential election if I cast it in Utah, though this has never stopped me from voting. I feel like an exile living here. I'm profoundly alienated from the larger culture here. So much so that I don't take the paper, don't watch local news, don't pay too much attention to what Utah's idiot Senators and Representatives do. I used to follow the careers of Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett because I knew them from the time they were both on the City Council.  I became a night supervisor at the Central City Community Center after Bennett's police goons kept getting their squad cars bombed in their attempt to "police" the center failed. I was never once menaced nor was there ever violence while I was on duty. God what victory that was! Take that Bob! I used to do Orrin's make up for local interviews. I always wondered how such a womanly man managed to avoid scandal all these years in Washington. I'm still waiting for something to undo him besides the Tea Party. But it is the Tea Party that's made Utah politics unbearable for me to continue following. It's just too awful now.

My neighborhood is all that saves my sanity or what's left of it. I live in one of the best little enclaves in downtown Salt Lake City.  More on that in another post.

From Yes We Can to No We Can't

My first clue should have been the health care bill.  Yes, it was great we were finally getting a health care bill but without a public option it was a gift to the insurance industry.  I have no idea why the Right isn't thrilled with it since it's entirely privatized. It's much like Bush's Medicare Part D only funded and phased in slowly.  It sure as hell isn't socialism. 


Hope is hard to give up on.


Yes. He's done some good things. He rescued our auto industry. He proved we can manufacture cars here and make a buck doing it. We bailed them out and they paid us back. It's a shame the banks didn't didn't treat us as well as the auto industry.  But that's the difference between blue collar thinking and hedge fund thinking. It's interesting that Republicans are still bitching about bailing out the auto industry, since it's the most successful part of the bailout.


Then there was the negotiation over extending jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. The Republicans insisted the President give them an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for some pitiful extension of unemployment benefits for people looking for jobs—but not the 99ers. Oh no, if you were unemployed that long you were just shit out of luck, but the rich folks got their tax break extended. That one broke my heart and made me worry for the future. 


Negotiation isn't one of his strong suits. He seems far too willing to cave to the least bit of Republican arm twisting. Why? This is our first black President. This is the President who located and killed Osama Bin Laden while roasting Donald Trump.  What the fuck? 


Turns out President Obama either isn't a very good negotiator or he's a really a moderate republican. He's far to willing to give in to the wishes of conservatives. He is certainly not a progressive. At every turn he seems to move a bit farther to the right.


Yes, there have been things on the good side of the balance sheet, but the list of on the side of disappointments is so huge that it tips the scale to the right so horribly I won't be voting with much enthusiasm this time. I'll be voting in fear of a Rick Perry Presidency more than likely. 

Dear Tom

It's almost your birthday and I always think of you this time of year. This is not to say I only think of you this time of year. I get mail for you at least once a week so I'm pretty much forced to think of you on a weekly basis and sometimes I find myself either thinking of you fondly or not so fondly as I curse you for not changing your mailing address.  Remember when we had that conversation about my place not being your real legal address? That was a long time ago. And yet... AARP still thinks you live here.  Ditto the DMV. So does Harold Clark. Wonder when he'll give up sending his bills here? I even got a certified letter recently. Can't remember what bill that was. When will they get a clue?

I kept your last long distance phone message on my phone and listen to it now and then. It was left as you left the country from some airport like LA or Dallas or Miami. I'm guessing you were headed back to Costa Rica. I know I've said and done some heinous things in my time and to make them worse, in public and/or in print. Keep in mind that over the years we lived together you, my dear, did and said some heinous things as well. Maybe you didn't say and do them in print and in such a public way, but they hurt every bit as much. But now I offer you my sincerest apology for whatever it was I said that made you stop speaking to me.  It was said in a moment of stupidity the way we all say stupid things. We all say stupid things sometimes, remember? Tell me what it was, and I'll do a public retraction.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a very happy, healthy birthday.

Maybe it's finally time to change your mailing address.

PS. I'm getting all your viagra spam as well, along with everyone else on your email list which gets forward to me too.

Downgrade

I give myself a downgrade for the prolonged silence here. I've been paralyzed by the freak show of the spectacle of the Congress in Paralyse. The horrible prolonged haggling over the debt ceiling and the President's caving to the Tea Party's hostage taking of our future has led to a downgrade by S&P.  Frankly I think it's long overdue.  Today they've downgraded Fannie & Freddie who happen to hold the Mortgage on my house. This doesn't make me feel too terribly safe, but I've never felt terribly safe so...nothing new here, move along, nothing to look at, just another old wreck...

Friday anybody watching news (like I do, obsessively) saw the Dow fall off a cliff and then, when the Market's closed, heard the news that S&P dropped our Credit Rating from AAA to AA & 1/2.  Is this a wake up call to the Tea Party that their brinkmanship is disastrous as a governing strategy? Fuck no! It's exactly what they wanted. Bring us to our knees, starve the beast! And in so doing defeat Obama! Well then, mission pretty much accomplished!

Now it's Monday, a little after noon and the Dow is plummeting again. The news is bad all over the world. Happy Tea Party?

Who's The Father?

An old voice talent I once dated for a moment called me the other night and I said, "Who's this?" He said, "Peggy, don't you recognize my voice?"
"No. Should I?"
"It's Scott?"
"Scott who?" I was kidding by then. (He'd driven by my back gate early in the spring and I was out in my grubbies wrestling with the overgrown garden, my hair gone as wild as the yard. He stopped his car. Oh no. Not good.
I said, "My eyes are bad. I can't hear you. I have company coming." Anyone could look at me and see this was a lie.  I actually waved him on.  As if we didn't speak the same language. And in a way we didn't. He's a really old man. I'm just an old womam.)
"I had a dream about you."
"Really.  What sort of dream?"
"I was living in a big house and you came to my door in the middle of the night. You woke me up.  I came to the door and you looked awful.  I said Peggy, you look awful.  What happened to you?  You said, "I'm pregnant."  Then the phone rang.  I answered it.  It was our agent.  I told her you were pregnant. She asked me to ask you one question."
"What was it, you tactless bastard?"
"Who's the father?"

Anthony Weiner's Sexting

I'm in my mid-sixties and I'm not shocked at all about Anthony Weiner's sexting.  Frankly I've never known a man who didn't like phone sex or some kind of virtual sex. It might be my generation.  We are the generation of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, so why is someone like Chris Matthews acting like such a prissy, childish, clueless, moron about it? Unless Weiner was sending pictures of his naked, erect penis to underage girls it isn't a crime, unlike most of the bullshit that Vitter and Ensign and so many others on the Family Values Right have carried on without anyone calling for them to resign.  The Left tends not to wrap themselves in the lily white sheet of Family Values Purity so when they do something stupid like this it doesn't reek of hypocrisy. Let the House Ethics Committee decide what it wants to do with Anthony Weiner.  Then let the voters of New York decide what they want to do with Anthony Weiner.  I'm betting he stays.  New Yorkers tend to be pretty sophisticated about such nonsense.  It doesn't have anything to do with the issues that effect their lives. Only two newscasters have handled it sensibly and they are Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow.  The rest of you are children or hypocrites.

Run Sarah, Run

I can't think of anything more satisfying than the spectacle of Sarah Palin making a run for the Presidency in 2012. Imagine the comic potential—the great debates between Sarah, Newt, Romney, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum (teehee)... Whoever.  It'll be fun.

She'll be a big draw for the lunatic fringe: the homophobes, the bible thumping anti-abortion zealots, the birthers, deathers, the racist, neo-Nazi skinhead nation. You know, the Tea Party. Men love her. Women too, clutching her book so fervently, hoping for an autograph. It'll be grand. Can't wait! She'll do well in those early Primary States too. She'll clean your clock boys. Her only problem will be in debates unless she's just debating Michelle Bachmann. Then it might be a toss-up.

Sarah will do some serious damage to the Republican party. She already has. Maybe I should restate that. John McCain did serious damage to the Republican party by picking her as his running mate. He created the monster that is Sarah. If he hadn't, none of us would have heard of her.  I do feel sorry for Megan McCain. She'll damn near die of embarrassment and she doesn't deserve that.

Mormon's will be conflicted about Sarah. She talks more Mormon than either of the Mormon men who'll be running against her. And Mitt has that Mitt-Care problem that became the model for Obama-Care. And Huntsman worked for President Obama. So sitting here in the deep wholesome bleeding heart of the Mormon Holy land it's going to be a spectacle worth observing.

Sadly, Sarah isn't really running. She just wants us all to think she is. It's a fund raising bonanza. But she's far too thin skinned to take the heat of a real run to the finish.  Too lazy to do the homework. And that's a shame. She's depriving a hungry nation of a good belly-laugh and don't we all need one?

Dear Paul Ryan, You Idiot

The people of New York's 26th Congressional District have spoken and they're your kind of people.  It's solidly Republican. Should have been a sure thing. Here's the thing you don't understand about fucking with the old people's Medicare and Social Security. Those old people have children who would have to take care of them if they didn't have Medicare to pay their medical bills and have Social Security to live on. We old people spent a lifetime paying into that trust fund. We worked like dogs paying taxes to earn our right to retire with a minimum of security and now you want to give us a voucher so we can try to find an insurance company that will cover our hip replacement or cancer treatment? Get real you morons!  You want to privatize Social Security? Hand it over to the very people who tanked the housing market and pension funds this last time around?  We may have short memories, but you bastards are still refusing to extend unemployment for the 99ers and you're still looking the other way while unscrupulous mortgage companies in cahoots with crooked bankers are busting into peoples homes claiming they're not current on their payments on their upside-down worthless houses and turning them out. Why should we trust you with something as personal as our health care?

We watched spellbound as your newly minted TeaParty driven GOP controlled House of Representatives flanked you as you rolled out your brave new solution to controlling the problem of the "exploding deficit" (which, by the way, happened under your watch under your GOPer President GWBush and his wars and his unfunded bullshitery and tax breaks for his rich cronies and unfunded Medicare part D (which I happen to like by the way—too bad you didn't raise taxes on the rich to pay for it, morons).  You'd rather cut every single thing that helps children and old people, the unemployed and the poor while you roll back regulations that protect us from all the abuses of power that got us into the mess we're in while you keep in place tax breaks for the gluttonously rich and the biggest of the bussinesses—those who rape and pillage the earth and ship their profits off-shore and pay nothing in taxes.  I hope you're happy now. Can you feel the cold wind of defeat blowing your perfectly coiffed hair?  Is that a shiver of fear running down your spine?

Mother's Day Isn't A Good Day For a Lot of Daughters

I had a mother I wasn't good enough for no matter how hard I tried. She didn't make a secret of her expectations and I tried to live up to them, but I always fell short. You might think this was some rebellion or some passive agressive bullshit of a sullen daughter and maybe in my adolescence for a moment or two you would have been right, but I did try to be a good enough daughter for my mother from beginning to the bitter end.

There are many people who knew my mother and almost worshipped her.  The mythology about her is larger than life and I have no reason to do battle with that ghost.  That woman was a fiction anyway so no amount of revision can correct the record.  That woman had press clippings. That woman won awards and served on boards of directors and Grand Juries.  That woman went to the International Year of the Woman.  That woman was a poet and an artist.  That woman was a pioneering Utah Feminist and those two words aren't often spoken in the same sentence together.  That woman was larger than life.  And I knew her just well enough to know my job was to stay well out of her lime light.

My mother told her fans and those she called her friends that she loved me, but I knew that was part of her image.  How could you tell your friends you didn't love your own child? Truth was it was motherhood she hated.  And any competition for attention. Maybe it wasn't personal, but why did she hang onto me so desperately? To me it seemed like mere sadism, that need to ruin things for me just when I was starting to have a bit of a life for myself.  She would manufacture some personal crisis of hers that required my return home to Utah and I'd be trapped again. Why was I so dutiful?  Why was I so obedient? It was then again the list of my many failures and shortcomings that would be hauled out and enumerated over and over just in case I'd forgotten how much of a failure I really was. I smelled bad to her, she hate my voice, I walked too fast or too slow, I payed to much attention to others and too little attention to her. I didn't share her hatreds or causes. She hated fat people. Though always skinny, I empathized with them. I always felt sorry for the targets of my mother's enmity, since I'd always been one. She said jump, I asked how high.  Why was that? Why did I never have the courage to turn my back and walk away?  Because she was my mother.  That's the power a mother has.  Use it well mothers.  You have the power to warp a life forever.

Borrowed for Tom

Edna St. Vincent Millay

02 May 2011 Borrowed from Katie Schwartz 0 In Great Quotes

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish-and men do-
I shall have only good to say of you.”

Characteristics Of Fascism

Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:   1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.   2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.   3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.   4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.   5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.   6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.   7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.   8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.   9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.   10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.   11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.   12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.   13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.   14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.   From Liberty Forum   http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_constitution&Number=642 109&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1

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If You're Pro American, You're Pro Union

I know that seems like a big leap, but I don't think it is. Union labor built this country and made the things we used to buy.  Now that corporations have shipped all the good manufacturing jobs overseas there are fewer good jobs here for working men and women.  About the only big unions left are the Public Sector Unions.  Support your union workers. We need them and the wages they spend in our communities.  Without them our cities would cease to be livable.  I always loved this song.  It's a relic of the days when we had healthy unions all over the country.

The Thirty Year Secret

I got a call yesterday from a close male friend of mine who wanted to talk about something he'd just discovered about a girl he knew when he was a young man living in Portland and involved in the music scene there.  I know so little about that particular music scene since grunge wasn't music that ever interested me.  I know who Kurt Cobain was and I know who that hot mess Courtney Love is, and only the tinyist bit about their relationship.  That's all I know about the Pacific Northwest's biggest contribution to the music world.  I know grunge was the music of the Gen Xers.  I don't know how generation X got the name or exactly what it meant, but I have a male friend who was there when it all happened and was a musician himself.  He and friends of his knew many of the players in that music scene which in many ways defined their generation.

My friend got a call from one of his friends of that period with news about a lovely girl they both knew.  She'd made the news in a particularly shocking way and what made it big news was the man who sent her spinning off into madness and a life of drug fueled self destruction. The man was Neil Goldschmidt, perhaps Portland's most famous politician.  This is the story that finally hit the local Willamette Week on May 12th 2004.  Old news, right?  Nothing to see here, move along.  It's the story of a coverup that mostly succeeded, and could only have hurt the girl in the story by revealing so little about her, so little about the consequences to her.  Yes, there was much made of the consequences to the famous mover and shaker at the center of this story.  It was a big bump in the road for Neil Goldschmidt but I'm willing to bet he's weathered the storm and is still moving and shaking and making money hand over fist.  But the unnamed girl in the story?  This is what happened to her.  Now she has a name.  Now that she is dead we know this lovely girl was named Elizabeth Lynn Dunham, and her downward spiral and death was an avoidable tragedy.  Elizabeth Lynn Dunham might have had a normal life.  She could have been a girl who wasn't seduced at thirteen by a man twenty something years older than she, a man so famous and powerful his reputation was much more important than her very young age or her possibly bright future.  It was all about him and his very public bright present, past, and future.  And the event wasn't just a one time thing.  It went on for at least a decade or more.  Now that she's dead we'll never know the complete story.  But it's clear that the precipitating factor in her downward spiral was the sexual relationship Neil Goldschmidt began with her when she was thirteen. It's now known that Elizabeth's mother also knew this well guarded secret.  Since the mother isn't talking, it's hard to know exactly when she knew, but that she knew is not in doubt. After her daughters ongoing "relationship" with Goldschmidt the mother got a job in the Goldschmidt camp.  Would he have given her a job if he hadn't been schtupping her underage daughter?  Who knows?

This story has brought up all the terrible events of my childhood.  I kept my families secret for fifteen years.  My father was a psychologist and my mother was his accomplice.  The thing that kept me silent was shame.  Like most very young victims of sexual abuse I was also an accomplice in that I didn't tell anyone.   It took a cousin's suicide when I was twenty one to make me decide to tell my father I knew what he did to me and I needed help coping with the damage.  During that one private confrontation I was told it was my fault.  At age six I was a very seductive child.  I begged for it.  I made him do it.  He was the victim.  And then he threatened to have me committed to a mental institution for the rest of my life.  Did that shut me up?  No.  Because once that genie is out of that particular bottle, truth is power.  But once I'd told my father's sister and her family, I was shunned and then disinherited by his entire family. He returned all the photos of me, every letter I'd ever written him.  It came in a package that might have been a delivery of pornography--in a plain box wrapped in brown paper with no return address.  And that was it.  They were all done with me.

I've been writing this story of mine for the better part of twenty years.  I'm still working on it.

Addemdum: After my father's death I spoke to some lifelong friends of his who knew us all during the years of his abuse of me and the years after he stopped.  They all knew about it.  These are nice, well educated adults with children of their own.  They did nothing.  When I moved back to Salt Lake and into the family home I talked to the woman who was my best friend's mother when we were little kids.  She knew.  They all knew.  And no one did anything.  This seems to be the most ignored crime of all.

Barometric Pressure, the Sudden Onset of a Migraine, and the Homeopath, or How I Become a Flaming Asshole in a Matter of Seconds

I have very few friends but one of them is so intent on convincing me my doctors are killing me I never have an encounter with her that I don't smack my forehead and wonder what the fuck was I thinking when I told her I was okay with her dropping by on short notice.  For one thing she'll say she's in the neighborhood but it will take her an hour or two to arrive, and I almost always have a moment with her that I want to reach across the table and slap her a good one. So far I have resisted this impulse, but now I think for my mental health I should claim I'm unavailable next time she calls or I won't be able to resist the impulse.  She thinks of herself as a homeopathic or naturopathic healer, but I think she should heal herself before she starts in on her friends.  She has never taken my advise to seek psychiatric help so why should I take her advise to stop consulting actual medical professionals for my actual medical problems?

This latest contretemps started after dinner when her partner was trying to convince me I needed to learn the mathematical formula for calculating the slope of my back yard in order to use my neighbor's free irrigation water this Spring.  My neighbor has offered year after year, but not to help with the actual process of setting this up.  He says I need a small pump with a hose connected to it and, voila, I will be able to water my backyard for free too.  I'm the kind of woman who is neither mechanically inclined nor interested in learning the why of certain things.  The how will suffice for me.  But I also have lower back problems due to working like a hod carrier when I was younger with untreated scoliosis as the starting handicap.  Then in my fifties, while helping train polo ponies, I had my first bad fall in a lifetime of riding horses and landed flat on my tailbone on frozen ground.  I ended up with almost a year of sciatica. It doesn't really matter why I now avoid doing certain things by myself, but the issue Sunday night wasn't about my personal labor, it was about my inability to grasp the concept of barometric pressure (the weight of air?) to calculate the slope of my yard.  I simply know the slope of my yard is sufficient to accomplish this task-- it's a slightly greater slope than my neighbor's yard and no pumping is necessary for him to turn his yard into a pond on irrigation day every week of Summer. I don't need to know the mathematical formula to calculate the precise degree of slope.  I don't need to know the weight of air.  I need a man or mechanically inclined woman to help me with certain tasks. I just not that handy.  I know when I need a handyman. (The reason I don't have my own water rights is my crazy mother's decision decades ago to give up her water rights. Once given up they cannot be restored.  Use it or lose it applies to many things including water rights.)

This particular conversation gave me an instant migraine.  I think math is tedious.  I kept telling him to stop trying to teach me something I didn't need or want to know.  But he's a retired physics professor and took my unwillingness to really try to learn it as a challenge.  He just wouldn't give up.  Finally I pushed myself away from the table to go in search of my migraine medicine.  I was a bit frantic since the pills only work if you can take them at first sign of a migraine.  I couldn't find them and settled for an 800 mg prescription Ibuprofen which is great for back pain, but a poor substitute for Midrin which I now have discovered has been taken off the market once again.  Motherfucker!

The subject of my headache began a conversation about my history with headaches and my upcoming appointment for a neurological evaluation.  There isn't a single member of my family who didn't die of either a massive heart attack (which left them instantly dead) or the slow and horrible death of vascular dementia.  Sadly for me, it's the men who get the quick death of the heart attack and the women who all end up shitting their pants and wandering around the locked ward or a nursing home muttering obscenities and drooling for ten years.  My plan is to get a baseline reading on brain health and then do a follow up every couple of years.  I plan to take my life before I get to the shitting my pants and drooling stage, but it's a tricky bit of timing.  Wait too long and it's too late to make any decisions.

My girlfriend thinks doctors kill you. She asks me why I need a neurological evaluation.  Why test for a future that may not happen?  Maybe I'll be the first member of either side of my family that doesn't succumb to the heart's attack or the brain's little bleeds and slow demolition.  It's a very long shot, but I'm willing to imagine that I could be the only member of my crazy family to eventually get some unrelated illness that kills me. But you have to admit that we all eventually die, and it's often an unpleasant process, so why not plan ahead? There are many adventures I'm up for, but vascular dementia isn't one of them.  She says, "Why have the evaluation? Why not just do what you're planning?  Skip the tests and jump to conclusions."  I'm damn near out of my chair trying very hard to keep my tone even and not slap her when I ask, "Why should I kill myself now, when I seem to still have my wits about me?!?"  She says, "You seem to assume the outcome, why not skip the tests?"  She has a grin on her face and seems to be suppressing laughter.  "Why is this funny to you?"  "It isn't funny, but..."

And since we've made this leap, I verbally pat myself on the back for having the good sense to make plans for my corpse.  I've donated my body to the Anatomy/Medical School to use as it needs.  Then, when the body's done being useful or most immature of male med students are through getting their jollies by scaring Sorority girls with the odd disembodied hand or foot, what's left gets cremated and disposed of and my name gets added to a marble wall in the Hospital's garden thanking those of us who donate for our contribution to learning.  No funeral, no cost, no muss, no fuss.  I'm not even in favor of memorial services, though you can't stop people from talking trash about you living or dead.  I'm singularly unsentimental about death.  I detach quickly.  Once any body is dead, I cease to have any interest in it or fondness for it.  What I have instead is memory, fond or not.

I think most of the rituals of death are insane and should be avoided.  Especially the kind where the dying asks someone to take their ashes and sprinkle them over the Swiss Alps in the month of May or some nonsense like that. I think agreeing to do such a thing and then keeping the ashes on your dresser in a cardboard box for ten years because not to make the trip to the Swiss Alps in May is disrespectful of the wishes of the dead is the very definition of crazy. If you recognize yourself in this rant, I could be talking about you.

Teetering on the Brink of Depression

In the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona almost every person speaking out about the shootings, and trying to figure out who Jared Loughner is and why he went on that rampage of gun violence targeting a specific Congresswoman and her aids and constituents, have pronounced him a madman, a homicidal maniac, a paranoid schizophrenic, a psychotic and more, all without a single mental health professional actually speaking with him and doing a mental health assessment.  And all this flinging of the crazy is done in a country with very poor access to mental health care.  I did hear one woman with mental health credentials (she'd been a profiler for the FBI)  call him all kinds of crazy without actually speaking with him, based solely on the tiny bits and pieces pasted together from his You Tube videos and the brief comments of a "friend" of his.  Not only is that kind of pronouncement hugely unethical, it's hugely irresponsible and prejudicial.  If there was already an impediment to seeking mental health care due to the stigma of a diagnosis that labels one "crazy," there is now the extra stigma of being labeled such a danger to society that we crazy people should all be incarcerated to protect the rest of you undiagnosed crazies from us diagnosed crazies. It makes those of us who have sought help for our mental health problems worry that we are now viewed by our friends and neighbors as a ticking time bomb of potential homicidal rage.  But these days, who isn't?  And when you look around, how many of those who seem too angry or too unstable to be out in the world are not only gun owners but packin' heat at any given moment.  Does this make you all feel safer?

Since the shooting rampage in Tucson, I've heard a great deal about the rights of all to buy a fully automatic Glock and an extended ammo clip but very little about the rights of all to receive mental health counseling.  In fact in these hard economic times most states are cutting budgets for mental health coverage just as we're ramping up the fear and loathing of the mentally ill. 

I know from my own experience with the mental health care system that it's not easy to diagnose a specific mental illness.  I have been depressed since early childhood, but my depression wasn't treated until I was in my late twenties despite two suicide attempts, one in my late teens and one in my early twenties.  I was called "moody".  And despite the many years of therapy, it took an internist to put me on an antidepressant in my late twenties.  She was smart enough to tell me that I would always need to be on an antidepressant.  In fact, the first antidepressant was so effective that it's still a great drug for me, for my specific brain chemistry, despite all the new antidepressants on the market these days.  I was in my mid-forties when I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  The reason this diagnosis took so long was that my mania was seen as unlimited drive, mercurial range, access to vast energy.  I was called high strung.  I was compared to a race horse.  My whole system was speedier than average.  I was a tightly coiled spring.  I was a disaster in the making.  But on the way to disaster I did a lot of very interesting things. I was articulate enough to get away with almost anything.  I even owned a gun.  And I almost pulled the trigger on a man in a moment of exasperation with him for not leaving me alone when I asked him to.  Luckily for me, and for all the annoying men to follow, I got rid of the gun and never replaced it.  Where is that stylish little Browning Semi-Automatic Pistol now?  Probably in the hands of someone like Jared Loughner.

Armchair Psychiatry in the Wake of Political Assassinations

Everyone seems so comfortable pronouncing Jared Loughner mentally deranged.  I've seen him called paranoid schizophrenic and/or psychotic yesterday on Facebook, and heard nearly every pundit on MSNBC or CNN  make similar pronouncements including calling him a homicidal maniac with the sole exception of Rachel Maddow.  If we can agree that anyone who commits mass murder and/or political assassinations is crazy, then we can stop calling political assassinations terrorism when the person committing mass killings with a handgun has a Middle Eastern last name. 

In the sense that Jared Loughner's had problems in school, was kicked out, tried to join the military and was not allowed to do so because he'd taken drugs or was on drugs or some other vague something about Jared Loughner and drugs is another fairly common part of his mental health assessment the armchair psychiatrists out there cite as proof that he was unhinged. (Drug use as evidence of insanity would make a high percentage of young men and women officially crazy on every single day in every place in the country at one moment or another.)  He was arrested for having drug paraphernalia, but the charges were dropped. I haven't heard how long ago that happened, but it's part of his history and I trust an arrest record and a courts dismissal of charges.  Are they determinative of his craziness?  Not in my book, but I'm just the bipolar lady living in her garage who makes little secret that she self medicates with pot and has her whole life long.  But then I believe almost all of you are self-medicating with one thing or another at any given moment.  And who didn't go through a period of experimenting with some kind of intoxicant that your parents might have called you crazy for (if they'd only known what you were doing) back when you were young and rebellious?

The attempted mass assassination of United States Congresswoman Giffords and murder of her staffers and constituents, with a Federal Judge as collateral damage, is horrific, unspeakable.  We can only make sense of it if the angry and alienated young man who bought the gun and ammunition and went on a very targeted killing spree was insane, was a homicidal maniac.  No, he was a just another angry and alienated young white man in America in a state where the crazy seems to be in overdrive and anyone can go to the local store for guns and illegal ammunition.

 It's a pretty safe bet that money for routine screening for mental health problems is nonexistent in Arizona where money for life saving organ transplants has been cut from the state budget in favor of providing $500 million to private prisons.  Besides that, how many angry young men in America do you know who would avail themselves of the opportunity for a voluntary mental health evaluation?  I'm guessing that a lot of young men would rather lose their left nut than be diagnosed with a mental illness. But once insnared in the system and diagnosed and treated with drugs and therapy, it's almost impossible to force young men to take the drugs that would manage their illness.  Men are under served by the mental health system because they can't and won't admit they have a problem that requires medicating.  It's stigmatized like nothing else in this country. I bet it's easier to take being called a fag than a psychopath.  This has to be part of the reason that his schools, the police and courts, and the military were not willing to make treatment mandatory after coming into contact with a young man like Jared Loughner.  Either the evidence of mental illness was thought to be too flimsy to make it mandatory in any of his brushes with authorities, or we don't know anything yet.  But can anyone who targets large numbers of people for killing be considered sane?  Is there a family in this country of 90% gun ownership who doesn't have an angry, alienated young man who isn't talking about why he's so angry, why he feels so alone?

We know that Jared Loughner was trying to get an education.  He was attending a Community College and was evenually asked to leave and prohibited from coming back.  He tried to join the Military and was rejected there.  I'm sure each of these rejections fueled his alienation and anger.  And even if he hadn't been able to buy a gun and amunition legally, he could have bought one from a private seller at a gun show or out of someones trunk in the parking lot of Wall Mart.  Guns are easier to buy than antidepressants, and cheaper when you get right down to it.



Monday Rachel Maddow held up clippings for twenty or so mass shootings by young men with handguns all over the country in the past twenty years (which was a fraction of the actual number of such stories).  It's not as uncommon as it should be.  I'm not as shocked as I should be.  Yes, I'm filled with sorrow for the family's of the victims.  I'm hoping for a good recovery for Congresswoman Giffords.  I'm stunned that no amount of slaughter with a single handgun with an extended clip can make us talk sanely about gun control.  We are the most heavily armed nation on the planet. This is the one area where we are number one.  There are 90 guns for every 100 people in the United States. I know, for most of you that's just a ho hum statistic. That's a sickening statistic to me.  Because there is no way to force anyone into a taking a psych evaluation prior to buying a gun and ammunition.  I think it should be a requirement for anyone buying a gun, but I'm just the crazy lady who takes her medications and doesn't own a gun.  But I'd bet money I could go to any sporting goods store and buy a Glock drive a couple of blocks to Wall Mart and buy an extended ammo clip.  It would make committing suicide a lot easier.  The difference between a crazy old woman and an alienated young man is, he's far more likely to kill other people before killing himself.

Bad Air Equals Big Money In Utah

Salt Lake City is infamous for it's bad air in the winter.  It happens every winter and it seems to me that it gets worse every year, but I'm probably getting more sensitive to it as I get older.  For at least a week, probably more like two weeks we've had RED AIR ALERTS every day. This means our air is toxic to breathe.  The Red Air Alert is a warning to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary.  I almost always think about the poor Mail Carrier trudging through this crude with weeping red eyes and a dry hacking cough as he/she worries about slipping on ice that no amount of ice melt will melt.  Day time temperatures haven't been higher than the 20s in all this time, and the combination of trapped stinking air pollution also keeps the sun from reaching the ground.  It's probably crystal clear and 20 degrees warmer at the ski resorts where I (when I was still skiing or living up Emigration Canyon) could look down on the Salt Lake Valley and see nothing but a bowl of thick taupe air that looked like a dingy blanket and wished I didn't ever have to breathe it again.  The local news media euphemistically calls this crud "fog."  I call bullshit on that.

We are governed by Mormon businessmen whose only goal is to get rich and richer and stay that way, by any means possible.  The only exception to that rule is the occasional Democratic Mayor who spends all his time (sad to say Salt Lake hasn't elected a Liberal Democratic female mayor in my lifetime -Didi Coridini doesn't count) battling the Legislature and Governor trying to improve air quality standards and put in place fines for polluters.  But we are now in the very big business of courting other countries toxic and radioactive waste, and I'd bet every penny I own that we're cutting corners on safety to make money for the dickhead politicians and their business cronies who are getting very rich in this business.  Our motto isn't "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free," or something nice like that.  Oh no, our motto is: "Give us the most dangerous toxic waste no one in the rest of the world feels safe living next to and we'll dump it near our biggest city, because we don't give a  shit about anything but money and the end days are near anyway, so get it while you can."  The company doing this is Energy Solutions and the guy running that operation is now on the staff of our new Senator, the very awful, very corrupt, Mike Lee.  I hear he also has a lobbyist for Blackwater/Xi on his staff.  This guy makes Orrin Hatch look like a saint.

Dead Birds Fall From Sky AGAIN In Louisiana, 300 Miles From Arkansas Incident Days Earlier

The Redwing Blackbird story just gets worse

Blackbirds Falling From the Sky

The story about Blackbirds falling dead from the sky by the thousands over Beebe, Arkansas makes me very sad.  Killed by trauma in mid-air.  What trauma?  Breathing the air over Beebe, Arkansas?  Why the huge fish kill in Arkansas?

Arkansas was the biggest producer of poultry in the US when I spent a year there living in Fayetteville, not all that far from the Tyson Chicken processing plants, surrounded with all the poultry farms that fed that enormous processing plant.  Maybe the Blackbirds were dying of grief at what we're doing to another breed of bird or they died from flying through the fumes of chicken shit that hover over all those factory farms, producing nothing but chickens and eggs and unbreathable air.  Probably produce some pretty toxic ground water as well. 

Texas TeaParty Socialist-Free Purity Pledge

(This was given to me by my doctor on my last visit.  Shocking to many will be the idea that a doctor might not be a GOPer.  Live and learn).

I____________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of the 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment Rights by legally, but brazenly, brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will forswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.  Also:

I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life.  I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

*     Social Security
*     Medicare/Medicaid
*     State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
*     US Postal Service
*     Roads and Highways
*     Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
*     The US Railway System
*     Public Subways and Metro Systems
*     Public Bus and Light-rail Systems
*    Rest Areas on Highways
*    All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g. see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations--  http//grassley.senate.gov/issues/upload/Master-Approps-73109.pdf) Public Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)

*     Public and State Universities and Colleges
*     Public Primary and Secondary Schools
*     Sesame Street
*     Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
*     Public Museums
*     Libraries
*     Public Parks and Beaches
*     State and National Parks
*     Public Zoos
*     Unemployment Insurance
*     Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services
*     Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal
      Government (pretty much all of them)
*     Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government Grant
      or Research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)
*    Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and Velcro (Nazi-NASA
      Inventions)
*     Use of the Internets, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPENET was the basis for
       subsequent computer networking.
*     Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce, and Crops that were grown with, fed with, raised with, or that
       contain inputs from crops grown with Government Subsidies.
*     Clothing made from Crops (e.g. Cotton) that were grown with or that contain inputs from
       Government Subsidies.
 *   If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forgo my VA benefits and insist
     on  paying for my own medical care

I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capital in Washington, D.C,

I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:

*   Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
*   The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments.
*   The government operated Statue of Liberty
*   The Grand Canyon
*   The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials'
*   The government-run socialist-propaganda location know as Arlington National Cemetery
*   All other public-funded socialist sites, whether in my state or in Washington, D.C.

I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forgo their government salary and government-provided healthcare.

I will oppose and condemn the government-funded, and therefore, socialist military of the United States of America.

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of other that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.

Upon reaching age 65, I will forgo Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF______________ IN THE YEAR______.

____________________                                __________________________
Signed                                                             Printed Name/Town and State