Fidgety Foots

Ok, this has been brewing for a while, and I finally need to rant. Lets start with this CNN article where Sarah Palin tries to defend her lack of insight into policy issues, and keeps harping on how the Dumbocrats will increase the taxes on the middle class, which is a completely false accusation.  Of course this fear-mongering never fails to get a rise out of the misinformed moronic masses who cant spare two minutes from growing their beer bellies to actually read the facts on their own. This of course leads to chants like “Hussein the socialist”. Can you even imagine the mind-set of a person who can actually utter these comments and of someone who tries to rile up crowds to that effect? And to think that this person is actually considering a run for presidency in 2012, wow.

Also, I am not sure what all the bruhaha is with the “spreading the wealth” comment. Anyone know who expanded the Earned income tax credit program designed to pay low-income families money that is collected from higher-income families? Yup, Ronald Reagan. So, I guess Reagan was a socialist too. And anyway, for the last eight years havent the Rebublimorons been the ones spreading the wealth to the top 1% of the population? The nonpartisan Tax policy center’s analysis also suggests that Obama’s plan will save money for the middle-class and lower-income famlies a lot more than McCain’s plan. And yet, these are the same people who attend these rallies and yell “terrorist” or keep getting whipped into a frenzy when Sarah Palin and her cronies try to spread the myth that “Barrak Hussein Obama’s” patriotism is to doubted. The fact is that McCain’s policy will give Big Oil a $4 billion tax break, the fact is that Sarah Palin was found guility of abusing the power of her office. But then, as Joe Klein wrote in Time,  “Facts are powerless in the face of potent mythology”. Which is why McCain and Palin can keep spewing their venomous lies and the self-delusional public keep swallowing them. Yup, keep voting for incompetent candidates on religious grounds without knowing the facts, and you will pay the price for it by sending your loved ones to a war started by a draft-dodgers on false premises, while getting poorer due to the financial policies drafted by a guy who has failed in every position he has ever held.

As we came off the freeway ramp today, there was a man standing with a board that said “Homeless and Hungry”.

I imagine he’d been standing there all day watching the waves of cars pass him by. A rough and conservative calculation places ~50 vehicles per hour on that ramp. Assuming two people in each, that’s 100 people who see him standing there each hour, 600 people for a short day’s display.

I wonder what he thinks of a society where the probability of getting help outside an institution is less than 1 in 600? I wanted to ask, but I was afraid of the answer. Besides, he was standing in a bloody inconvenient spot.

We wanted to rent a house from a couple who were all white. Everything in their house was white. And they were worried that renters would make it dirty. So we told them to take out their stuff and just give us the house. But they invited us to a party.

Before the party W and I went to the Fantastical Shapes museum where W got sick. She couldn’t drink any water because her mother had forbidden her to. The museum had sculptures and installation on floors, walls, ceilings, some rotating slowly, some chugging by on trains.

When we got to the party they served us the wrong fruit with the wrong cheese. They liked us a lot so they wanted us to rent their house. Now it was my house and I was playing host. So I had to see the guests off. I drove out with one family to the main road, explained directions to them and hopped out of the van to walk back. (the mother who was driving didn’t notice traffic lights, so I was glad to be out). The roads and people were Indian.

I walked back to my new house through lawns and tall trees, and finally an alley. A scrawny dog came running toward me and tried to bite my leg. I kicked it in the jaw and it fell unconscious. I started running hard. When I looked back the dog was struggling to its feet, then it chased after me. I barely made it back to the apartment and closed the door.

The dog whined and scratched and I wondered why it didn’t like me. I put out a hand through the door crack and it growled, then sniffed my hand and licked it. I gave the dog some milk and chips to eat, and it turned into a dirty young woman in pajamas with a bruise on her cheek where I kicked her. She told me she’d never been treated to a meal like this. I was consumed with guilt so I invited her to the party. Our guests didn’t like this smelly person and they left. I was glad because I didn’t like them anyway.

Then I woke up.

She treads the edge of her site

testing the waters

almost on his turf, but not quite.

She would flee before a frown

but silence emboldens her advance

encroaching on sacred ground.

So….I have to confess that this category has been silent because I upgraded wordpress. Huh?? you say? I explain. The upgrade nuked the ability to hide posts from a category on the home page and I didn’t feel comfortable displaying bits of my soul. You know, dirty undies and all.

Recently at girls night out we were discussing the merits of anonymous blogging and I *blush* argued that it should be nonymous. But look at me now, making excuses not to blog about the ten thousand things in my head because I couldn’t hide them.

Sometimes I fool myself very well, which is gratifying because I seldom fool anyone else…

So this is finally what we have come to as a country. Our standard for success is to have a vice-presidential candidate not come across as a complete nincompoop in a debate. Doesnt matter that Palin didnt have a clue about most of the issues, doesnt matter that her answers didnt match the questions, doesnt matter that she had obviously memorized key paragraphs and kept repeating them with folksy terms like “gosh” and “betcha” thrown in,  whats really important is that she didnt screw up. Wow, the high degree of excellence we expect from our future leaders. But then after the last 8 years, I guess our barometers have been recalibrated.