September 17, 2012 · 0:00

Sins of the Father

My head is exploding and there is no visible evidence.  Nope.  Not a bit of gray matter on the walls.  Shouldn’t there be serious cleanup involved here?

What could cause this explosion?  This combustion?  This sharing of gray matter with my surroundings?

You might think that it is this video of Mitt Romney insulting about half of the country (47 bloomin’ percent!), by saying that

  • they are “dependent” upon the government — it doesn’t matter that they have been paying into Social Security and Medicare for DECADES!
  • they are essentially lazy folks, unwilling to work for a living, and
  • if you’re not wealthy, well, who the hell cares about you ’cause you’re not gonna vote for Mitt anyway.

Well, certainly Mitt Romney doesn’t care about them.

Now normally, this video would get me pretty damn riled up.

But, of course, there’s more.  Yes, it gets better.

You know how Mitt is always preaching about how he made it on his own?  How he and Ann struggled, eating tuna and pasta.  I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago.  Yeah, it is so very difficult to just live off the interest and dividends from your stock portfolio, Mitt.

But did you know about George Romney?  Mitt’s Daddy?  The guy who gave Mitt and Ann the stock that eased Mitt and Ann’s struggle?  He wasn’t always the successful businessman he became later.  He wasn’t born the CEO of American Motors.  Nope.  He wasn’t always rich and well connected.  Really!  Who would have thunk it!

Still, George Romney was by all accounts 10,000 times the man his son is.  He was an important member of the Moderate/Liberal Republicans that made up that impressive generation of politicians.

And do you want to know a secret?  One that you won’t hear Mitt talkin’ about?

George Romney was on Welfare!

Yup!  It’s true.  When he was young he was a refugee from Mexico (where he was born and automatically became an American Citizen because his parents were American Citizens — but I digress.) And when he was a child, a refugee who fled back to the U.S. with his family, well, the United States Government helped him survive.

Here’s a clip of his wife saying what a good governor her husband George would be.  And you know what?  She was right by all accounts.  He was a good man, a good governor, and would likely have made a good president.

One of the reasons he was such a good governor is that he had compassion all people.  For the poor and downtrodden.  Why?  Well, partly because he was once poor.  George Romney was once on welfare.  And he understood that being poor doesn’t mean that you are lazy.  That being poor doesn’t mean that you want a hand OUT but might just need a hand UP.  And that’s what George Romney got from the United States Government.

So some questions for U.S. voters:

  • Do you really want to elect a man President of the United States who courts the elite by denigrating the rest of us?
  • Do you really want to elect a man President of the United States who pretends his father’s past didn’t happen?
  • Do you really want to elect a man President of the United States who would have let his own father fail?
  • Do you think these folks whom Mitt Romney has just identified and insulted will continue to cling to their guns and their religion?
  • Do you really want to elect such an asshole President of the United States?

I can hear you shouting “NO!” from here.

 

*     *     *

Many thanks to my friend Lisa of Big Sheep Blog for telling me about this video.  I was actually working …

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September 16, 2012 · 0:00

Something to Brag About?

If you’re sick, do you try to choose the smartest doctor or the dumbest?

When you want an accountant, do you want to feel confidence in the ability of that man/woman to add, subtract, multiply and divide?  Use excel formulas?

When you need legal assistance, do you want a wise man/woman or a dope?

These are not trick questions.

I’ve always asked myself similar questions about the people who want to run my country.  I want the smartest people in office, from Town Selectman to President.  Naturally, that means I’m a Democrat.

But you know, I always sort of figured that Republicans at least thought (mistakenly) that theirs were the smart candidates.

Ummm, not so much.  At least, not according to one of the GOP’s shining stars, Rick Santorum.  You know, Rick “Don’t Google Me” Santorum, the former Senator from Pennsylvania (who lost by 18 percent!) who was also a former GOP candidate for President just this year.

Listen up to Ricky speaking just the other day to the Values Voter Summit here in DC:

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.

Well, Duh!!!!!  You got that right, Ricky.  But is it something to be proud of?

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September 14, 2012 · 0:00

Good Karma Needed!

Calling good Karma!

A beautiful girl, don’t you think?

This is Sophia.  She is the brand new granddaughter of my friend, colleague and right arm at work, Yenny.  Sophia was born on Wednesday, and her mom, Jessika, had an infection.  That infection was transmitted to Sophia during birth.  Today Sophia was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis.  That’s not good.

I’m just sending you this to ask you to send good Karma, prayers, happy, healthy thoughts to Sophia.

The prognosis is pretty good, even though meningitis is really nasty, especially so in a newborn.  But the doctors immediately put her on antibiotics and they are taking good care of her.  They seem to be doing everything right.  Folks in my office immediately rallied to reassure Yenny (and by extension, Jessika and their extended family).  Still, it will be a long couple of weeks for Sophia’s family.

Anyway, I just wanted to have you all thinking good thoughts in Sophia’s direction.  No baby deserves this.  Especially a baby with such a loving grandma.

Thanks.

Elyse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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September 13, 2012 · 0:00

Eye on the “Booker” Prize!

I am awesome.  Yup.  It’s true.  You see, well, I have a new prize.  A new award!

Yes, just the other day, I got A Booker Award!  Seriously!  Me!

What does that mean?  Well, it is awarded to a novelist of great achievement from the United Kingdom or from Ireland.  Cool!  I’ve been to both places.  I’m sure that qualifies.

The Man Booker Foundation awards the Booker Prize! But not to me.

Here is what it says on the Man Booker Award site:

Winning the Man Booker Prize is the ultimate accolade for many writers. As 1996 winner Graham Swift commented, “Prizes don’t make writers and writers don’t write to win prizes, but in the near-glut of literary awards now on offer, the Booker remains special. It’s the one which, if we’re completely honest, we most covet.”

Every year the Man Booker Prize winner is guaranteed a huge increase in sales, firstly in hardback and then in paperback. There is spin-off too in global sales of books, in future publishing contracts and in film and TV rights. Besides the fortune, the winner of the Man Booker Prize can also be sure of fame. The announcement of the winner is covered by television, radio and press worldwide.

Isn’t that cool?  Won’t it look great on my resume?

Janice, of Aurora Borealis actually nominated me for a Booker Award.  Pretty neat huh?  Especially since I will be the only novelist to win such a coveted award who has not, um, actually written a novel.  But hey, I won two Oscars without ever working on a movie.  Apparently I am multi-talented.

Oh wait.  I just looked at Janice’s post a little more closely.  Oh.  My bad.  I didn’t win the Man Booker Prize.  I won this one:

I got THIS one!

Cool!  Sorry for the confusion.  (But if you think I’m changing my resume, you’d better think again!)

I am delighted to accept it this award.  To do so, I need to

  1. Thank Janice for the nod.  Thanks so much for thinking of me, Janice.  For those of you who don’t know her, Janice is an amazingly good person, a writer of poetry, prose, of pieces that make your heart break, and your heart sing.  Of pieces that make you question the humanity of some humans, and soar at the gifts others can bring.  So thank you Janice.  You were one of my first followers.  And one of my first and best blogging buddies.
  2. I need to put a picture of the award on my blog – there it is!
  3. I need to tell y’all about five books I love.  That’s the hard part, because I love books.  I read two or three books a week.  Whichever one is in my hand is usually high on the list of my favorites – otherwise I would put it down and not bother with it.  But I will try to narrow my list.  Here are some of my favorites:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson  is the first book I remember.  My sister Beth used to read it to my brother Fred and me every night for years.  When I found the old copy of Treasure Island that Beth read from years later, the book fell open to the “Apple Barrel Chapter,” the one we begged for every night.  It was through the reading of this that Beth taught Fred and me to love books.  Good books.  She taught us to love stories and the magic you can always find in them.

Forever by Pete Hamill.  A young Irish man travels to America in colonial days.  Through an act of kindness, he is granted eternal life as long as he never leaves Manhattan.  The story traces the his and the city’s journey from colonial days to the present.  Magical.  When my sister Beth, who gave me books, was dying, this was the book I read to her in her last hours.  It is a beautiful story.  I wish I could have read her the whole book.

 

The Woman in White by Wilke Collins.  I’m a sucker for the classics.  Wilke Collins was a contemporary of Dickens.  He wrote beautifully about different problems in Victorian society, many of which we grapple with today.  The Woman in White deals with mental illness.  Poor Miss Finch is a blind woman whose life and disability is presented with dignity in a time when that wasn’t often the case in life or in novels.  No Name presents two upper class sisters who suddenly learn that by a trick of fate, their parents were somehow not legally married; The Moonstone set the stage for modern mystery stories.  He is a writer to check out if you love classic literature.  Collins’ protagonists are women and they are true heroines, all.

The Weird Sisters by ­­­­­­ Eleanor Brown.  Weird Sisters is the author’s first novel and it is so incredibly brilliantly (and differently) written.  The three sisters are complex and humorous and absolutely delightful, when you don’t want to kill them.  Just like real sisters.  The book is a gift to anyone with sisters.  Or anyone who likes to read.  Or maybe just a gift to me.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  A complex look at the lives of two women in Afghanistan before and during the Taliban’s rule of Kabul.

 

Ask me again tomorrow and, well, I’ll likely come up with a different group.  Because I love books.  I just can’t get enough of them.

Lastly, now I need to nominate five bloggers who can lie on their resumes, too.  It’s always hard because folks love or hate these awards, or fall somewhere in between, like me.  I tried to find folks who like awards and who haven’t yet received this one.  This is a challenge, you know!

Speaker 7 of Speaker7

Val of QBG Tilted Tiara

Frank of A Frank Angle

Cooper of Security is for Cadavers

Twin Daddy of Stuph Blog

Lorna of Lorna’s Voice

Totsymae of Totsymae

OK, so I can’t count.  Do not feel obligated to accept this award.  But I’d love to hear what you all like to read too!

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September 11, 2012 · 0:00

The View

Today at lunch, I am sitting in my office having my salad, looking out the window and reading the newspaper.  It is September 11, 2012.  Eleven years after.

My office overlooks the Capitol, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.  The Washington Monument.  The Pentagon.

From here, I can just barely see the flag that was unfurled this morning on the side of the Pentagon that was struck that morning.  Another Tuesday.  Another beautiful, blue sky day.  Folks who still work in my office were here that day, I was not.  Of course they still remember.  (We all do.) They heard and felt the impact; nobody saw it hit, as everybody except me keeps their blinds down because the office gets the hot morning sun.

I have long felt that George W. Bush let us down.  That the attack shouldn’t have happened.  That it should have been foiled.

Remember this?:

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

Might they have prevented the attack?  We will never know.

Well, in today’s NY Times, there is more evidence that the Bush Administration had more than the one presidential daily brief.  There were numerous reports, meetings and presidential daily briefings:  ON May 1, on June 22, on June 29, on July 9, on July 24.  These are the ones the reporter, Kurt Eichenwald, saw excerpts from.

But, and there’s always a but, isn’t there.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.  Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.  [Emphasis is mine.]

The link to the full article is here.

These neocons who got everything so disastrously wrong are the same folks that are working with Romney/Ryan on Foreign Policy.  This time they want us to go after Iran and Syria.

Elections matter.

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