We, the Elites

With all this political correctness, let's start defining some of our terms, those special words we so like to fling around. Bluebery has been kind enough to give us the definition of the words "cracker" and "hillbilly." In case you missed it here it is again. "Cracker" means poor white. That's it folks. I think it carries with it the slight sense of the uneducated. Often poor whites don't get much education, since every hand that can do any work, is put to work. Often this means taking fairly young kids out of school to help in the farming or care for younger children, so an adult can get a wage earning job. Often poor whites remain somewhat isolated, and they see the "other" the stranger, the outsider, as threatening. Though the term "cracker" isn't necessarily a description of a racist, I have never know a cracker who wasn't a racist. K. has been equating my use of the word "cracker" with "racist," and in the since that the crackers in my family were indeed racist to their core, and completely unapologetic about it, that has been mostly my experience with crackers. My third husband's family was cracker to it's core. They were from the Ozark mountains, mostly from the area around Fayetteville, Arkansas. The third ex was the first in his family to go to college. He was an honor student where he got B. A. Degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow for his Master's Degree at the University of Utah, and got his PhD in creative writing from the University of Denver. He is now the Chairman of the English Department at Southwest Missouri State University. He is not a cracker. He is not a racist. But the rest of his family, yes, they were crackers.

Next a word that K. likes to use as a mild insult, and something to be avoided, is the word elitist or elite. Dictionary definition is "to be the best in a society or category because of power, talent, or wealth." I would add education, but I believe that is implied, for the most part. Unless we're talking about our current President, who has a background of incredibly obscene wealth, he attended the best schools, and has the world's most powerful position. But to me this man is in no way elite. He is stupid, boorish, ignorant, foolish, a braying ass in every way--this does not make him seem elite.

To me the Clinton's personify the word elite. Bill's early years were difficult, but he managed to rise above it, to get the great education, and his ambition took him on the path to elected office as the Governor of Arkansas and then the Presidency. Hillary's upbringing was solidly middle class, but she managed to get a first class education, a law degree, as did Bill, and then she married a man as ambitious as she. They personify the definition of elite. They are very wealthy. So, back to the begining. Smart, well educated, top job, and rich, equals elite. This word is not an insult. But to be elite, and pretend you aren't is disingenuous. That's a nice way of saying it's a lie.

Barack Obama did not have any of the advantages of the current President, or the past First Lady . And just to make his path to the top a little more challenging, he is black (in case any of you hadn't noticed) and the child of a divorced, single mother and raised by his white grandmother. This fact alone makes his achievement near miraculous. He and his wife have recently paid off their student loans. But even Barack is elite. He is the best. Brilliant, well educated, gifted with intelligence, talent and eloquence. And with his great education under his belt, he became a community organizer. He wrote a couple of very good books. He was elected to the Senate, and now he is running for President. Despite the fact that he wasn't particularly well known (and is not taking lobbyist or big corporate donations) has managed to gain such enthusiastic support across the country, energized the first generation of young and first-time voters since the 1960's, and is poised to gain the nomination to run for President against the best know brand in the Democratic party since the Roosevelts. He is raising money from millions of small donors. And Senator Clinton is borrowing from herself to finance a campaign that can't raise money. This would lead me to conclude that maybe managing our nation's budget might be a challenge for her. Now I know Hillary isn't entirely responsible for every little decision that is made in her campaign, but it is her campaign. I think she has surrounded herself with second-raters--an ineffective staff, men and women with bloated egos and salary's to match. Why are the Clinton's having trouble raising money? All Bill has to do is give a few speeches and they are back in business.

I have said over and over that whoever gets the democratic nomination, will get my support and my vote. I should not have to say that again. I'm also allowed the right to express my thoughts, feelings, and words on the topic. This is my blog space. If you really really hate what I have to say, it's a great big blogosphere. Until we have a nominee, I support Senator Obama. To that end, I will keep on talking, arguing, criticizing his opponents, and I'm sure, in so doing, will enrage some of you. You are free to disagree with me, but not to be too disagreeable. So please, no comments longer than the post, OK? I welcome your comments and god knows, I'm long winded, but if your comment is longer than my piece, send it to me in an email, please.

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa

OK here we go again. I have called the voters of West Virginia crackers. Yes, I know. It was wrong. Just because 22% of West Virginians when polled, by a complete stranger, felt perfectly fine saying race would be an issue for them in the election, doesn't mean all West Virginians are crackers. Pollsters estimate that if 22% admit that race would play a role in their vote, probably translates more accurately to 40% give or take a few percentage point. I know every citizen of West Virginia was not polled--it was a sampling. But since my mother's family comes from small town Texas, and never hesitated to express their racism, and I have always thought of them as crackers, family yes, but crackers none the less, still it was wrong of me to paint my portrait of the fine upstanding hard working white citizens of West Virginia all as crackers. But to all those crackers out there, you know who you are. I assure you I am not black, but even if I were, it wouldn't be cool to send the clan to my house to burn a cross on the front lawn. Even so, I think Hillary went way out of the way to fashion herself as one of them. The unelites. The regular folks. White folks. Hard working white folks, just like them. Their kind of people--those hard working, hard working white voters of West Virginia, whose racial mix is 89.61% white, undoubtedly hard working, mostly at Wall Mart, or however you spell that store I'll never set foot in. They have a black population of 7.49%. Jesus, that's small by even Utah standards. I know the times they are a changing, but my god, how long will it take for even the most inbred, ignorant, white trash bastards to get the clue that it isn't any longer cool to proudly declare yourself a racist to perfect strangers? But to those of you living in West Virginia, you have my apology. it doesn't make me like or respect Hill and Bill, but if calling a cracker a cracker's a crime, I'm guilty.

Olbermann Earns Pulitzer

Keith Olbermann has been delivering Special Comments for a long time now and every time I hear him do it I worry that he will be fired, or that he will disappear--maybe to Gitmo or worse. But tonight was maybe his best. He usually brings me to tears with his courage. But tonight I share his sputtering horrified outrage at the stupidity at the President, who gave an interview and said that he'd "given up golf in honor of the sacrifice of our troops and their families." And Olbermann has footage of the President playing gold at another course several months after the day on the links when he had his epiphany that it would be a good idea to give up golf for the troops. Holy shit!

Attention Must Be Paid--This Is For You, K

Hillary started this race as the presumptive nominee from the moment she started thinking about running. When was that? Probably in the last few months of Bill's last term. They left office with huge debt, mostly lawyers fees. By the time she actually started the race for real, during her first term as a Senator, she was thinking strategically. She's female, and therefor needed to be seen as Commander In Chief material. Tough, hawkish. So she voted for the Iraq war resolution without even reading the classified material available to Senators. Mistake number one. Actually it's mistake number two for me, since she blew our chance at single payer national health care in Bill's first term. Whatever, just for arguments' sake, I'll let that go for now.

Then after it was obvious to everyone that the war in Iraq was a mistake, John Edwards stepped right up, apologized for his vote, and said it was a mistake. Since we are a forgiving nation, we forgave him. Hillary, knowing her vote was a mistake took months to admit that mistake. It was only in one of the late debates that, when pressed on the issue, she reluctantly said she wished she'd had a do-over. Not exactly an apology, but admission of a mistake. I'd give her half a point for going that far, but she was pissing me off so much by then, it hardly registered. For months she had been trying to wiggle out of taking any responsibility for that colossal mistake. She justified and rationalized and made a right sickening spectacle of herself as a stubborn woman unwilling to say the simple words, "It was a mistake, I was wrong, I apologize." Too little, too late.

Then she came up with the "3A.M. Phone Call" ad that reminded all of us older, film buff voters of the Birth of a Nation association with the Clan. Little white children asleep in their bed, mommy checkin in on them in the middle of the night, and the voice over question, "Who do you trust to answer the phone at 3 A. M.?" Not that scary black man, luring in the bushes, waiting for the chance to slip in and steal one of your precious baby's for God knows what....
If you are young and naive, you might think it was the "terrorists" her ad was referencing. But we older voters saw it for the racist crap it was. Terrorists do not strike a family in a middle-class neighborhood and steal the innocents. Terrorists blow up buildings in the middle of the day, so they can get big coverage on the news. They want all the world to see their work. It was sleazy ad, and cynical, and it was another mistake.

Hillary was so convinced her place as our nominee was inevitable that she and her campaign strategists did not count on her having to campaign after Super Tuesday. Well, not so fast, Hillary. The Clinton Machine did not take Barack Obama seriously. After all, they were the beloved Clintons. Who the hell was he, but an upstart, a nobody, a kid with a slim resume as a one term Senator, and a nice speaking style? Big mistake.

Then there were the lies. for now the only one I'm going to mention is the infamous, sniper fire raining down of the airfield in Bosnia, a place too dangerous to send the President. What the Fuck? There was plenty of file footage of that trip--Sinbad was there, Chelsea was there, no snipers anywhere in sight. She was met on the tarmac by a little girl with a poem to read to her and flowers to present. The was a greeting party. It was relaxed, leisurely. Plenty of press coverage. How stupid was that lie? And when confronted with the evidence, she said, "So...I made a mistake." How arrogant is that? It was not a mistake. It was a lie, told several times in several settings--early in the day, in a prepared speech, at a St. Patrick's event. And then Bill goes out there and says, the press is ganging up on her. "Poor Hillary! She is sixty years old, and she made a mistake late at night, exhausted. Just once. And the press is against her, bla, bla, bla."

And after her blow-out victory in West Virginia, with a population of poor uneducated, openly racist crackers, we have today, John Edwards endorsing Barack Obama, at a packed venue in Michigan. Game, set, match. it's over, babe.

Star Wars, the Epic Campaign--The Reinvention of Hillary

The Wizard has posted a video clip taken from the famous You Tubes and it's playing at his place. And after watching it I got to hear Hillary's best speech in the Universe, according to Howard Wolfson, or however the hell you spell that screaming hack's name. I always scream back at him when he comes on touting Hillary's great chances for a comeback. Did I say that right? For a comeback??? She was never supposed to be the underdog, and all this playing the gunslinging, boilermaker drinking, tough and scrappy hard working white girly from Scranton, dodging bullets over Bosnia, etc, etc, etc.

Made me think about Vigilante and his hard on for them gun slinging, hard drinking, tough broads...... Has she won your vote, Vig? Was it the best speech in the Universe? I heard a lot of begging for money, and not a hell of a lot else. How about you?

Hold You Breath...Here It Comes...

News Flash... Hillary Clinton is about to give the biggest best most important speech in the history of the world!!!

Margin of two to one!!! Where is this? West Virginia? We're waiting for combustion!! Lift off!!!

Where is this? Oh yeah, West Virginia!!! Oh the crowd is shouting... What's that? Yes we can??? Where have I heard that before!!! Si, Se Puedes??? Sounds familiar. Crowd plagiarizes slogan from Obama!!!

Oh, ho-hum. It's back to writing about my damn crazy life.

My Later History With Guns

When I realized how vile and full of shit my family was, I rejected all their values. I threw out the good with the bad. And some of the bad I didn't understand had become who I was. I was foul mouthed, just like my mother. I was sometimes cruel, just like my mother. I chose terribly flawed men, just like...

I gave up gun slinging. But I became a seducer, just like my dad. I lived in denial, just like my dad. I could go on and on, but I'd rather not.

Still the young men liked to take me out to the gun club. I shot skeet. Sometimes I beat them at their own game, sometimes I let them beat me. Then I seduced them and left them in the dust. I might let them fuck me for days on end, but never make a sound. Must have been a bit like fucking a corpse. Still, they professed their love for me. Sometimes I played dumb for awhile, then I ripped their guts out with my razor wit.

I did not want "love." I was dying for love. I killed myself over and over, but never with a gun. I tried to gas myself. I lived, goddamn it. I tried pills, and lived again. Spent some time in the looney bin for that one.

I dated a married man who took me shooting. He saw my talent with a gun and insisted I own my own. We went gun shopping. I bought a Browning semi-automatic, hand gun. Can't remember what caliber--probably a .22. It held a clip. That I remember. The kind of gun you didn't need to be too accurate with. Wave it around and hold the trigger down and you'll kill whatever is in the way. I lived alone. He thought I needed protection. Dumb fucker. One night after I had gone to bed, he came knocking on my door, drunk and sloppy. I told him to leave me alone--"Go home to your wife. I don't like sloppy drunks." I shouted this through the door. When he started begging, I went to my closet and got my gun. I opened the door and pointed the gun at his face. I said, "Get lost! Do not come back. Do we understand one another?" He nodded and left.

I married my boss who was gay. I knew he was gay. That's why I married him. I was nineteen and he was thirty nine. He had never had sex with a woman. I had had too much sex with men. We did not discuss what our relationship would be like. I was the house model in the designer department he bought for. His boss was homophobic. I wasn't. I assumed I'd be cover for him, and I could do what I wanted. It would be just like before, only now I wouldn't have to pay rent, and he would have cover. But he thought he was "in love" with me. We got married, and imagine my surprise that he, too, wanted to fuck me. I did not pull my gun on him, but it was a marriage made in hell for both of us. I stayed a year, like I said I would, and then I took my gun and my great wardrobe, and moved to San Francisco.

It was 1964. I lived above Golden Gate Park, a few blocks from the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. I got a job as the house model for the couture floor at I Magnins. I saved my money and put money down on a one way ticket to Italy on the luxury liner The Michelangelo. I left my gun in San Francisco in early 1965. That was the last gun I ever owned.

My Early History With Guns

The first picture of me holding a gun and aiming it is when I am eight or nine. The gun I'm holding in the picture is my mother's Luger pistol, a spoil of war my biological father brought back from his adventures in World War II. I am a thin, long legged girl with shoulder length hair. The picture was taken at the city dump in Willamina, Oregon, in the summer. My new dad and I are out of school and shooting rats at the dump. He leans against our ugly green station wagon, a cigarette dangles from his lips, and when he isn't aiming a camera at me, he is holding a bottle of beer. I'm a good shot by then, but I don't remember when I held this gun for the first time. It has a fierce little kick that I have learned to control. I am standing there facing my dad with the gun held in my right hand, arm extended, head turned to the right, shot by the camera in profile, squinting slightly as I aim. My left arm hangs so nonchalantly at my side. I have very good posture. I'm wearing shorts, a camp shirt, and have espadrilles on my feet. It would have been so easy to swing that gun in a quarter arc and shoot my daddy dead. I remember thinking the thought, and then letting it go. And to this day I think it was an opportunity lost. I would have many more such opportunities as I grew older. But then as I grew older the penalties for me would have gotten so much worse. I learned that there were always consequences for me, just never for the adults in my life.

My father took me quail hunting, pheasant hunting, duck hunting, deer hunting. I was a fine shot with a .22 caliber rifle. But on most hunting trips I was the human equivalent of a hunting dog. Flush 'em and fetch 'em. When we spent part of our summers at my grandfather's cabin up Mt Aire, We went porcupine hunting. That's when I got to fire the .22 for real and I was a damn fine shot. So was my mother. On dull days at the cabin, we would take target practice with tin cans. I was always fiercely competitive. Whatever I set my mind to, I got good at.

Later, in my teens, guys trying to impress me would take me shooting, and were always shocked that I could handle a gun as well as they, and was almost always a better shot. Such is the cocky chauvinism of boys.

For All You Mothers

I have met some wonderful Mothers in this adventure in blogging. To all of you on this Mother's Day, Happy Mother's Day to you! And if you had mothers who treated you with love, respect, and kindness, this will be a day you probably love.

For those of us who had mother's who were our worst nightmares, and lived to tell the tale. I salute you in your bravery and your strong sense of survival. I urge you to write it out of your system. For there is nothing more empowering than to make your truth known and, in the telling, finally your own.

For those of you with mothers still living who tormented you with cruelty and neglect or alcoholism or worse. I can only say that mother's day just might be the hardest day you live through each year. Good luck on getting through another.

Death Turns Us All To Trash

The last funeral I went to was my teenaged cousin, Andy's. He was maybe the only member of my family I really believed loved me. He and his teenaged girlfriend asphyxiated themselves in his parents car in their garage after their senior prom. They had permission to go to several parties and weren't expected home until the wee hours, so nobody was shocked that they weren't home at seven A.M. when Andy's dad got up. By nine or ten, Uncle Bart, my cousins father was getting nervous, and went to the garage to see if the car was back. That's when he found them. They were naked and embracing and had that odd shade of color that carbon monoxide poisoning imparts to the corpse. Since it was an unusual death for two kids, autopsies were performed. She was several months pregnant. I think there were two reasons for these suicides: her parents were Catholic, his father was Jewish, and the kids had come to his parents (the more progressive parents) to ask for help acquiring birth control. These were the good old days when birth control was illegal. The irony was that Andy's father owned one of the chemical/pharmaceutical companies to make the first new contraceptive since the the condom. Andy asked for help and his progressive parents. They declined this help-- since the girls family would not approve, they couldn't help. And so it goes.

I had just returned from my year in Italy. And within a few short weeks of coming back this death happened. My parents had divorced while I was gone, so when I came home it was at my mother's request. My dad was living in Kansas City where his sister and her family lived. My mother had moved back to Salt Lake. I was asked to come to Kansas City to the funeral, but my mother refused.

I was horrified at the stupidity of the adults all the way around. My Aunt and Uncle were rich enough to keep the reason for the deaths out of the paper. So there was a lot of hypocrisy going on. Much pretending. I had wanted to stay in Italy, but due to my mother's request I came back. One of the many major mistakes in my life.

It was a nice funeral, but after the service as others where leaving the grave side, I ran back and threw myself on my cousins freshly filled in grave site. I started crying and couldn't stop for a couple of days. It was in that time of grief I decided to confront my father for his sexual abuse of me when I was a little girl.

We met at a down town bar. He was already there with a pitcher and his glass half empty. He was jovial, and weary at the same time. We were polite, until I make the statement he'd probably been dreading a long time: "Why did you have sex with me when I was a little girl?" He opened his mouth to say something, and I said, "I need help. I'm not doing so well. I want you to pay my psychiatric bills and help me with tuition."

"I didn't do anything to you, you didn't want. I never hurt you. You were a very seductive child."

"But I was barely seven."

"Did your mother set you up to this?"

"I've never told anyone. I kept your secret."

"You know what you are? You're a little gold digger. You just want money. This is blackmail. I'll never give you a penny." He starts backing his chair away from the table, but before he stands up, he leans forward and hisses in my face, "If you ever tell anyone about this, I'll have you locked up forever. And if you think mental hospitals are a romantic place to spend the rest of your life, think again. I can do it, too. Who do you think they'll believe? You, a young woman with a very checkered past, or me, a highly a respected psychologist., and your grandfather, a respected physician. If I were you, kiddo, I'd keep my mouth shut.

That was the last time I ever saw my dad.

I do not remember how I got back to my Aunt and Uncles house, but I was crying and soaking wet when I walked in the door. My Aunt who thought food would fix anything, started whipping up a meal out of the funeral leftovers. My Uncle called the remaining kids into action and they took me upstairs to get dry and changed. And finally, with all this accomplished, we sat around the kitchen table, and I told them the story of my life with Brian, her brother.

No one doubted me for a second. My Aunt said I needed the kind of therapy that rebirths you, re-parents you. If I would stay with them, as their child, she would pay for it all. The only condition was that I had to stay with them. I was through with conditions.

I went home to my mother's place. I told her my story and asked her why she didn't do anything to stop him. She arranged her face in what must have seemed to her like shock and horror, and said, "If I'd ever know what happened to you, I'd have killed the bastard." Then she ran from the room, up the stairs and slammed the door. It all sounded like bullshit to me.

I have never been to another funeral. Yes, I've had friends and family die, but it all happens without me. Not much of a slight to the dead, I imagine.

When asked, in my younger days, what I would want for a funeral, I'd say, "I want to be bagged in a hefty sack like the leaves and out in the garbage can for Tuesdays pick-up."

That was pretty much my stance on death, until I discovered my mother's plans while going through her papers, after I found out most of her brain had died from little strokes. There in her papers, I found her will with her signed contract with the University of Utah--she had donated her body to them for whatever they wanted. Jesus! What a wonderful thing to do with a corpse. Not only that, they write out the death certificate, and do pickup and delivery.

So now, I too, am a body donor. And nobody has to worry about how to fit me into a hefty bag.

Well I Don't Call Myself Utah Savage for Nothing

Sometimes I'm a complete ass. Not only that, but I'm savage about it. And what's worse I am sometimes both unrepentant and unforgiving. If I were the killing kind, I'd have been locked up long ago. I think my weapon of choice would be a switchblade. I found one when I was a kid and it appealed to me far too much, and after watching me get real good at flipping it open and throwing it into the bark of a tree with amazing accuracy, my dad took it away. Might of been the only smart thing that rat bastard ever did. See what I mean? My dad's been dead for years and I still hate him with a white hot intensity, and it's not because he took my knife away.

Well, what with my big mouth and my nasty temper, I got myself in a bit of a pickle in the blogging world. I have lost real life friends because of my impetuosity and nasty temper. And in truth, I'm mostly pretty unforgiving when I think real damage has been done to someone I love by someone else, or even by my friend's own bad judgement. I will give my friends plenty of do- overs, but if they just keep doing the same stupid shit in the same old way, I eventually gut them with my eviscerating tongue lash, and forget they exist. Oh, I may miss them, think about the good old days before I knew the truth, but once that bottom line has been crossed, I'm merciless.

I have committed a serious blogging faux pas . Perhaps the equivalent of a throwing down the gauntlet. For awhile, when I was married to my third husband I took fencing. It might have saved his life, as it was a mighty fine outlet for my hatred of him. But now, here I am traipsing from blog to blog, thinking I am making friends everywhere. And being a somewhat passionate woman, when I really like someone, I hate like hell to find them insulted, especially if I think the insult is stupid, gratuitous, petty, or nit picking. And being a rather literal woman, sometimes the finer points of irony are lost on me. I don't think of myself as humorless, but some subtleties just might pass me by. Just saying.

So now we get to the meat of the matter. Lets say, blogger S writes a short story, and kind of hides it like she is slightly shy about sharing this fine piece of writing. I read the story and think it's really good. And in the comments thread, blogger P makes criticism that doesn't make sense to me--like there's too much description of the layout of the house (which there isn't) and blogger S has used the main character's name too often (which she didn't). I jump right in and call bullshit--because that's what I really think it is. Then this critic P tries to justify his criticism by giving an actual word count, I shit you not, which trips some switch in my brian and down goes the gauntlet. I say bring it on motherfucker. Well, actually I said, are you kidding? A word count to make a petty point that is bogus to begin with? Are you shitting me? So I take blogger P to task for the small minded pettiness of his criticism. It gets a little heated and pretty soon he is calling me stupid and an idiot and not worth his time, and then I say, "Yo mama!" And I swear if we were actually in S's living room (which we sort of were) and I still had my switchblade, I 'd have gutted him right then and there.

Then just the other day, I was visiting blogger A who wrote a lovely piece , the topic of which currently escapes my memory, and when I went to leave a comment about her lovely piece there was blogger F followed by blogger R. So far so good. I can't remember what blogger F's first comment was since it didn't push any of my buttons, and blogger R said something lovely and used the word "catharsis." Then following hard on the heels of blogger R, blogger F comes back and says, "Don't use the word catharsis, it's hackery." Well, button pushed, by god. I happen to really like blogger A and blogger R, and have a lot of respect for blogger F. But no one insults my friends and gets away with it. So I go on the fucking rampage. I wake up this morning and call my post Catharsis, which kind of makes sense since last night was the Indiana and North Carolina primaries and I had to stay up really late to find out just how close it was in Indiana--it was a bit of a nail-biter. Then I go to A's site and she has written a lovely post on Catharsis, giving it's history--she is far more elegant than I. Then everywhere I go I find a way to work either catharsis or cathartic into my comments. So now I'm wading knee deep in petty bullshit, and creating a little ill will with blogger S who is a close personal friend of blogger F. So now I'm begging forgiveness. Please F, except my apology. S, I didn't mean to insult your friend. R, I know you are capable of using your own razor like wit to defend yourself if you ever need defending. Did I forget anyone? Oh yeah, P. Well in P's case I was completely justified and I don't take back a single word, even the "Yo mama!"

Catharsis

I'm trying to process my feelings after staying up half the damn night waiting for the Indiana results. Until I get my brain working, I suggest you take a trip to Anita at Anitaxanax. You will find her in my blog roll. She has written a lovely post on catharsis.

Hoping for a Knockout

Well it's your turn Indiana and North Carolina. For god's sake vote smart. Don't fall for the easy, cheap pander on the 18 cant a gallon gas tax B. S. because everyone, everyone knows it won't get through congress and if it did, by some dead brain virus, make it's way to Bush's desk, he'd veto it, and it might be the only smart veto he ever did. Not a single economist thinks it's a smart thing to do. it's purely political, and places, once again, Mccain and Clinton on the same wrong side of a stupid issue. Please vote smart. Please look past this summer, and into the future. If you want change, vote for Obama. If you want the same old shit vote Clinton.

Gas Tax B S

Hillary's pandering on the gas tax break she says she can deliver, is the worst pander I have ever heard. No one supports this phony crap but John McCain. Bush would veto the proposal in a New York minute, if it ever got through Congress. There is not an economist in the land, left or right, who thinks this is a good idea. Only morning Joe, Bill O', and Rush are rooting for the voters of Indiana and North Carolina to buy this load of bullshit.

Let's Drop The Big One And See What Happens

I always loved Randy Newman. I think he's one of Americas great songwriters, and I suppose his voice might be an acquired taste, but it always appealed to me. If I had the skill to find a video clip of his performance of this song, now would be the time to do it. Because I think it's what George W Bush is getting ready to do.

What better way for him to give his successor the finger on the way out of the White House than to drop the big one on Iran in the last days of his presidency. If Hillary's the new President this would be a good thing since she dropped the big one in her last debate with Obama, slipped in ever so quietly between inane questions about flag pins and "do you love America," while Hillary says she's cool with OBLITERATING IRAN!!!!..... No follow-up on that one.

We know McCain is cool with obliterating Iran, since it's where AL QEADE IS FROM!!!!

I'm a supporter of Obama from many reasons, but now, lately, it's because he's the only SANE CANDIDATE RUNNING!!!

PS Tomcat from Politics Plus was kind enough to post the link for this song. I dare you to listen to it twice. If you don't have tears rolling down your cheeks at the end of the second go through, there's no hope for us.

Depression Creeps In On Tiny Cat's Paws and Downs a Boilermaker With the Boys

It was a bad news good news kind of week for me. My shrink gave the Ok to put me back on my "normal" level of antidepressant. That cheered me up no end. Didn't fix the creeping depression exactly, but that takes a little time. But now I have this whole new array of "heart" drugs and I don't know what's making me feel this way. Maybe it's Hillary's fault.

Lately I've come to fear her about as much as I fear John McCain, George Bush and Dick Cheney. She has become the ten headed hydra. A new face for every little media market. In Pennsylvania she became the "daughter of Scranton," drinking boilermakers with the boys. She claimed she could bowl--thank you Ellen for putting that lie to bed. Yesterday, not paying close attention because I'd rather read your blogs than watch the "news shows," I heard her sounding like a hick from Padukah, talking for all the world like trailer trash. It was just background noise, but still, it set my teeth on edge. I started screaming "Wellesley Girl, Yale Law School, former First Lady sounds like trailer trash! OMFG! Who is this Hydra!" She's really starting to scare me! Wants to OBLITERATE IRAN! And no one in the "news media" has asked her to clarify that statement from the last debate, tossed off in a brief lull between why Barack doesn't wear a flag pin and some other inane bullshit questioning his patriotism.

Why aren't we talking about reinstating the Draft, if we want to put obliterating Iran on the table? Why is this conversation off the table?

Mending a Heart

Very little has ever interfered with my appetite. About the only thing that keeps me from wanting to eat is actual nausea and or vomiting. So far so good. No loss of appetite, no shortage of things to eat. Oddly, throughout the months of having atrial fibrillation, I had no clue that I should feel like crap. I thought I was fine, except for the fact that my psychiatrist had lowered my dose of antidepressant, and I was slipping into depression. I know the symptoms of an oncoming depression. The first thing to start to go wrong is mental acuity, the brain becomes sluggish and slow. And then there is a physical slowing down, which I notice most in my fingers, since they feel leaden and clumsy. The fact that this slowing down is systemic doesn't bother me as much as the fact that typing becomes almost impossible. And then I get pissed off. In the literature on bipolar disorder this irritability is a red flag that the patient is transitioning from "normal" into either hypomania or depression. So the mental health professionals watch for these changes--forgetting that we all have plenty of reasons to feel irritable at least once a day. Another thing they watch for, especially with a patient who actually has had a major psychosis (complete with hallucinations) is too much happiness. It was my being "too happy" that made my psychiatrist decide to cut me down to regular happiness by decreasing my antidepressant. I have learned my lesson--in future I'll be just barely happy enough when I go into her office.

So now I'm wondering if my irritability was a reaction to feeling fatigued, because my resting heart rate is at end-of-marathon levels all day every day. This also might explain the leaden feeling in my fingers--the only muscles I exercise every day. I did notice that on a leisurely walk around the block with my old dog, my thighs burned--this I chalked up to my incredibly sedentary life, and resolved to walk an extra block now and then. So now that I know why I'm so lazy, my dog and I just stroll slowly up and down the alley behind my house.

Now I have a whole new array of pills to take, and god knows what these drugs are doing to my mental acuity, my happiness index. But, happily, I've finished the anti-coagulant that had to be injected subcutaneously into my belly. Thank god that's over with because it was a twice daily reminder that my belly is fatter than I'd noticed before. I was also glad to learn that if I had to inject myself, or anyone else, I could do it.

This is what we (my cardiologist and I) now know, after I swallowed their little camera. There are no clots in my heart--this reduces my risk of a massive stroke and or heart attack. We also know that paddling me with the jolt-your-heart-paddles, did not jolt my heart into a normal rhythm. The only result of the paddling is burns and bruising on my chest and back. Next up is a procedure to repair the hole in my heart the little camera found, and zapping a nerve that might be causing the abnormal rhythm. For those of you enthralled with the space program, it just might be a teflon patch that fixes the hole in my heart. Thank you space race for teflon and Tang. For my many ex-husbands and discarded lovers who will be saying, "I always knew that bitch had a hole in her heart," I say "Fuck you."

Home Again, Home Agin

Well, the hospital is a hell of a place for the sick. My instructions were to come in at ten A.M. with an empty stomach. By eleven I saw my nurse who told me a wonderful rhyme for the first of May, which is, sadly for us, snowing and very cold. The rhyme is: "Hooray hooray, the first of May, outdoor sex begins today!" That did it for me. The fact that I had waited an hour, fasting and pissed off about it, vanished in an instant. I have terrible veins, tiny and rollers. But she hit one on the first try, but since I'm on blood thinners made one hell of a mess as she changed tubes. They hooked me up to the constant EKG thingy, pulse ox thingy on the finger and a blood-pressure cuff that kept a constant read going. Pulse was high--141 today, but oddly not as high as yesterday. You take your good news where you can get it. Pulse oxygen is normal. Well thank god for small favors. Then there I stayed wired up and beeping for two fucking hours, until the cardiologist could get to me. Once he came in I was told that if they found nothing bad with the little camera they were going to shove down my throat to get a closer look at my heart (looking for blood clots), then they would shock me with the paddles to try to reestablish normal rhythm. Good new, bad news. No clots. Three times shocked with the paddles and no normal rhythm. But I love that Versed. No memory of any of it and still, an hour later, a little buzz. So it's three more prescriptions, and the next round of tests to look forward to. It could be much worse. I could be drooling and brain dead.

Little Camera

Well, I'm up, bathed, and dying for a bowl of my morning latte. But not today. Today I go to have a little camera swallowed or shoved down an artery to look at the arterial chambers of my heart. I was a little discombobulated yesterday when they enumerated the procedures we would be embarking on to stop my fibrillating heart. So I not real clear on what, exactly they're doing exactly. Wish me luck.

More later, I hope.

Atrial Fibrillation

I'm fibrillating like crazy. Resting heart rate of 157. This has been going on for months, maybe a year. This should give you some idea of how healthy I feel. Aside from the burning in my thighs when I take my dog for a little walk, I'm healthy as a horse--in the sick sense of no viruses, no bacterial infections, nothing that would make me feel "sick" enough to go to the doctor. So the fibrillating has gone undetected until I went in for a follow-up after getting an MRI and carotid ultrasound to get a baseline. I wanted these tests because I had a little episode that I thought might be a small stroke.

Every woman in my family has died of vascular dementia, and every man of massive cardiac events. I envy the men in my family. They all went along feeling fine, then, Wham, dead instantly. Lucky bastards. Not so, the women. All of them have died the long slow agony of a million little strokes, just enough each time to wipe out a little more of their brains, tiny bit by bit, until they start shitting their pants and forgetting who they are. Anyway, it was at the follow-up to the MRI and carotid ultrasound, during the normal taking of my blood pressure that they discovered an unusual rhythm. Then they did an EKG. Fibrillating like crazy. My doc ordered an echo-cardiogram. Fibrillating like crazy. Then, finally the follow-up with the cardiologist today. Another EKG, still fibrillating like crazy, with the resting heart rate of 157. So I am now on a blood thinner, something else to help stabilize rhythm, and some damn thing I have to inject subcutaneously twice a day. And except for the fatigued feeling in my thighs when I walk, I wouldn't have any idea anything was wrong with me. So, I could stroke out at any time, but I'm feeling fine. I wouldn't mind any of this except that I now have to go through a bunch of invasive tests and procedures that require a babysitter to take me to the hospital to have these outpatient procedures done, since they all require sedation or general anesthesia. Bummer.

All of this to say, I have not seen the news today, since I spent the whole late morning and early afternoon getting baddish news from my cardiologist. I will catch up and get back to you.

I have not written this for sympathy or condolences, since I'm really feeling fine. It's the scare factor more than anything that's getting to me. It's the prospect of multiple procedures that necessitate inconveniencing a friend that pisses me off. And unlike E, I'm not young, I have no children, and if I die now, my affairs are in order. No one will be the worse off for it, and a few friends will make out like bandits.