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.”