He realized that there is a whole group of fanatical jerks, using His name to bash just about anybody else who believes that there is an important role of government in the lives of American citizens.
The Rally for Which Tens of Millions Stayed home and dry
What does God do when he is pissed?
God sends natural disasters, of course. Just ask any TV preacher when he’s not asking for money. (OK, you’ll have to interrupt him.)
This time, he sent rain. And not just any rain – but about 4 inches of rain in a 12 hour period to an area that was already saturated.
God obviously is pissed at the Tea Partiers. Can you blame him? I am too.
* * *
My thanks to my friend X, at List of X for inspiring this post.
First, thank you all who read my post Immoral Dilemma and offered words of comfort, advice and all manner of expressions that showed that my bloggin’ buddies really get me!
To anybody who didn’t read that or click on the link: On Saturday, a GOP primary was held to choose the GOP’s candidate in my congressional district. I detest the front-runner (I’ll show you why later on in this post). Virginia primaries are open primaries — regardless of how you register, you can vote in either side’s primary. However, this time, if you voted, you were required to swear an oath to support the GOP candidate in November. My question was basically is swearing an oath, an illegitimate, possibly illegal, unethical oath binding? Could I just go and vote and swear the oath and do as I pleased in November? Could I go there intending to lie, even if I felt it was for an important goal.
Comments were on both sides of the question — and if you look at my answers to them, you will see that I went back and forth with each one. Apparently, I sway with the gentlest of breezes. Thank you all. Truly. Did I say that? Yeah. Well, thanks again.
I tossed and turned Saturday night, and did a lot of soul-searching for most of the day. I read and considered everybody’s comments and realized that both sides were right, which is why I was having such a hard time. But then just as I had to really make my decision, I read Mae’s (of Maesprose) comment:
Do what you feel is right but when you call someone a liar or not truthful – like the Republican party – remember, what you hate may become your own definition. Just sayin.
And I realized that she summed up (at the 11th hour as it were) just what I thought. I’m not a liar. And I don’t want to take on the characteristics of the GOP that I find so disgusting. So, while on a long, thoughtful walk, I decided against going.
When I got home, though, I found that I had a little elf at home who was helping me. My husband John had learned that, while they were calling it a “primary” it was really more of a “straw poll” — there were about 6 places around the district (which is huge) where Republicans were meeting in a large room where they would vote — no voting booths, no anonymity, no semblance of a real primary. Names and registration were taken.
I would have been turned away at the door.
So in fact, the decision was made for me. But I wouldn’t have gone — as much as I loved how Val of QBG Tilted Tiara suggested I look at it:
You do know acting like the enemy is nothing more than ‘going undercover’. Perfectly acceptable during wartime.
Predictably, the candidate I most feared won. Barbara Comstock. She is currently in the VA House of Delegates, where she has voted consistently against women’s interests, and bizarrely, against spending funds for transportation here in NOVa. She worked as an opposition researcher for decades. In fact, was one of the main people working on Travelgate and other Clinton-era scandals. She is a pit bull. If she ends up in Congress, she will make Daryl Issa look like an amateur. She is a nasty piece of work. And this district is so heavily gerrymandered, that she will be there for the rest of her life.
So it looks like I will be busy in the fall.
Thanks again to everybody who offered opinions, options, words of comfort. You guys are the best. Can I come and live in your political district?????
Just today I realized that I really am a good person. Nice. Law-abiding.
It’s true. Because somehow today I did not live out my longest held fantasy. One that I’ve wanted to enact since childhood.
I will admit that I was close to doing it. Possibly closer than I have ever been to saying “What the Hell, I’m gonna do it! — Now! Today!”
I will admit to seriously considering doing it just for the moment when I was struggling to get into the driver’s seat of my car today at lunch time. The moments. OK, it took half of my damn lunch hour.
You see, I had an important errand that I had to take care of.
But some asshole had parked so close to my car that I couldn’t even get my purse into the car from the driver’s side.
Did I deserve to be placed in this, ummm, position? Did I park outside of the white line? No. I was parked just fine, thank you very much. Parked within the designated parking spot. Straight. Did I mention that I was well within the white lines on both sides of my car? Well I was.
I did not deserve to be treated in such a manner.
So when I realized that without liposuction, a detention in a concentration camp or a colonic, there was no way in hell I could get to the driver’s seat from the driver’s side. I was annoyed, I stood there for minutes with my hands on my hips, glad there were no children milling about to increase their vocabulary.
But I had no choice; I had to go. So I walked to the passenger side of the car, to climb into the driver’s seat. I soon realized that the driver’s seat was as close to the steering wheel as vehicularly-possible. I realized that I was also not supposed to exert myself following my surgery.
Did I mention that it was important that I go?
So I struggled to get my body into the driver’s seat without a cerebral hemorrhage.
Somehow, I managed.
The cerebral hemorrhage happened when I carefully backed out of my parking spot, and realized two things:
There were 24.5 parking spots in that section of the parking lot alone, and five floors of empty parking spots on the floors above us; there was no reason for someone to park in such an assholic/inconsiderate manner.
The car sported a special license plate.
Instantly, I started fantasizing. Within a heartbeat, I was transported back in time. Teleported to the very first movie I remember watching.
I was very young. Young enough to be crabby that my brother, Bob, had control of the TV. Annoyed that he was watching a movie instead of cartoons. Annoyed enough to forget that as long as the TV was on I didn’t really care what was showing. (I had, just that morning, been watching the test pattern.)
The movie was brilliant, and I have never watched the test pattern since. It was called
If I Had A Million
It was a compilation of a bunch of sequences where various characters were given a million dollars that they could spend however they chose. It later became the TV series “The Millionnaire” where a wealthy man would give people $1 million as long as they didn’t tell where it came from.
Anyway, in the move If I Had A Million, WC Fields’ lady-friend Mary had just had her new car ruined by what we would today call an “asshole,” but who was then called a “Road Hog.” When WC Fields and Mary Bolandgot their million, they knew just what to do:
They bought a bunch of old clunker cars, and whenever there was a road hog around, they would ram their clunker into him, causing the jerk to totally wreck his own car, along with theirs. But that didn’t matter, because that was why WC and Mary had bought those old clunkers!
They did this repeatedly. And it has been my fondest wish since I was about six years old, to be able to do that to the bad drivers, the folks who cut people off, who weave and edge and drive dangerously.
Revenge would be so sweet!
But in spite of being a wise ass, I am not an asshole. I did not smash the car that parked so inconsiderately. I did not accidentally-on-purpose run my keys along the $60,000 Audi Q7 SUV. I did not even spit in its general direction.
It was especially challenging because I realized that the owner is represents everything I hate. I realized that I’d seen him before, changing lanes discourteously. He (and yes, it was a he) had an overpriced car that he drove like he owned the road. And those specialty license plates?
The Asshole was A Tea Partier! Photo Credit: VA DMV Website
And I realized that I really needed to feel sorry for the dumb rich guy. You see, this genius paid extra taxes to the Commonwealth of Virginia so that he could protest paying taxes.
There are days when you just look your best. Most women I know can point to just a few times when the stars are aligned – when we are simply movie star beautiful. Every hair is in place (or perfectly out of place). The dress hangs just so; the pearls, even though fake, hang at just the right length. The dress accentuates the right things and hides the imperfections.
Perfect. Stunning. Memorable.
I had a new dress to wear that spring day in 1984 . I had waited to wear it until I needed the perfect combination of professional and sexy. This was it.
A meeting with clients in my DC office. Lunch with an old friend. A date.
So on that Friday morning I put my new dress on. I was looking pretty damn good, my best. And I knew it instantly. I would remember this day. Unusually, I primped in front of the mirror. Everything looked perfect.
The dress was black, with three-quarter sleeves. It hung straight at the sides with just the hint of a curve at my waist. The six-inch white stripe down the center added a little bit of elegance to the dress, and to me.
My shoes, slightly professional black pumps with two-inch heels, worked. The pearl necklace – yup a perfect accessory.
My curly reddish-blond hair was swept back into a French braid, but wisps of curls invariably straggled out, softening the lines around my face.
I looked like a movie star. At least as good as Marilyn.
Google Image
Or Audrey
Google again
Or Eva
Heads turned towards me as I walked to the metro. A man offered me his seat and then flirted with me until I got off. More heads turned as I walked the two blocks to work.
My office was at the end of the hall, and I passed my colleagues.
“Wow, Elyse!”
“You look great.”
“Nice dress!”
“Got a date tonight?”
With each compliment, each appreciative look, I preened just a bit more. Smiled a little bit more. Walked a little taller. I couldn’t help it. I looked gorgeous!
When I arrived at my doorway, I turned to go in. I looked back down the hall feeling as if I’d gotten off the runway at the Paris fashion show.
Ed, the lawyer who sat in the office across from mine, got up from his desk to see me.
“Elyse!” Ed said. “Wow! You look like a movie star! You look just like Pepe Le Pew!”
There are places I remember All my life Though some have changed Some forever, not for better Some are gone And some remain All these places have their moments
I’ve always formed strong attachments to places. The house I grew up in in Connecticut. The house we bought in France across the border from Geneva. My office. Yes, I have a deep love of my office. Because when the company gave me that office, it was as if I’d gotten the winning office Lotto ticket.
For 11 years, I’ve dragged everyone I know up to my office to see the view. I’ve even taken you, my bloggin’ buddies up there a few times, like when the space shuttle flew over on its last lap and when two Supreme Court Justices visited us immediately after the oral argument on Obamacare.
From my three large windows, I can keep my eye on all things Washington. I can see much of official DC and a big hunk of Northern Virginia. Nobody in Our Nation’s Capitol gets on a helicopter without me knowing about it. And I can tell you for a fact that Dubya’s motorcades caused a lot more disruption than Obama’s do.
As you can see, my office overlooks the Lincoln Memorial up the Mall to the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, the Capitol Building. During the Inaugurations, from my office I could see the bunting hanging from the Capitol Building. I can also see the Jefferson Memorial, the bridges, National Airport (which I will never, ever, ever call “Reagan Airport” while there is life in this body), Arlington Cemetery.
The Iwo Jima Memorial to the U.S. Marine Corps is one of my favorite places to walk on nice days. It lists all the major battles the marines have seen. The Iwo Jima doesn’t list the “Civil War,” though. Amusingly to this Connecticut Yankee, it lists “The War Between The States” because, after all, it is located in Virginia.
A picture from last night’s walk.
The Pentagon is ahead, just to the right. Folks who were present that day heard the impact as the plane slammed into the side of the building there on the right, although no one actually saw it hit. They smelled the smoke, heard the sirens, saw the fire engines fly from every direction. For a while, when we were all still expecting an imminent attack on Washington, I worried that I might have a window on history to something I would rather not see.
That’s the Pentagon, behind the Netherland Carillion. Oh, and my window is very dirty. Gonna have to leave this place.
When there was a small earthquake in the middle of the day a few years ago, I watched (from my spot in the doorway) as government helicopters swooped in to inspect the bridges for structural damage before the ground stopped trembling. I’ve often imagined that drivers on the bridges must have felt like they’d suddenly stumbled into the filming of a James Bond movie, as the choppers dipped and spun to get a closer look.
A month after I started working there, a townhouse just down the road went up for sale. The ad highlighted the view from the rooftop terrace of the townhouse, and priced it at $2.25 million. I clipped the ad, taped it to the fridge in the kitchen with a note:
“Hey, we get PAID to look at this view!”
Sadly, today is my last day as an office space lottery winner. Monday, my company will begin the week in new office space.
I’m just not sure how I will be able to keep an eye on Washington for y’all.
FiftyFourandAHalf 