If GOP Politics Were a Sporting Event:

 

Margaret Carlson on Countdown

“If she [Sarah Palin] goes on radio… would be a shame… she wouldn’t be able to wink…”

 

 

Sarah Palin 26 July 2009: “We Eat Therefore We Hunt”

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) … pushing a proposal to end the practice of hunting from airplanes. Co-sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the bill aims to close a loophole in the ban against aerial hunting that allows the practice to continue in the name of wildlife management.” (Whole story here.)

Oops. 

Hollywood – 1
xGovSarah – 0

 

Sarah Palin Is No Sunny Davies

Just two hours before Sarah Palin gave her farewell speech in Fairbanks Alaska, I was writing a post. If the doorbell hadn’t rung, if my father-in-law hadn’t been looking for a misplaced spool of twisty ties, if the Heart Association hadn’t called seeking volunteers for their September doorknock appeal, I might’ve had time to finish my thoughts.

But then suddenly, Sarah was on television, live-streaming on Fox News so I clicked the [draft] button and sat down to watch. At the end all I could do was shake my head, holler what was I thinking!!! and shudder at the realization I almost wrote something sympathetic about this woman who no matter how many chances she’s given to fix things – always and only elects to make things worse.

I’d come this close (peering through a tiny space between scrunched fingers) to publishing the following:

Watching snips and pics of Sarah Palin’s final three days as Governor of Alaska on other blogs (The Mudflats, Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, Progressive Alaska, The Immoral Minority to name a few) I was struck with an odd sense of nostalgia. So I went digging and sure enough, the single movie scene which most reminds me of the whole Sarah Palin phenomenom was right there on youtube:

I ‘m in no way suggesting that Sarah Palin embodies the same Sunny Davies values that made this scene in  Protocol so moving, but I do believe, in my heart, that somewhere along the way, people who knew better sold Sarah the idea that she could be a star in politics without ever having to do the work.

And I believe this because when you step back and look at the picture as a whole, you can clearly see that what Sarah was good at, from the very beginning, was running for office. Period. But sadly, once in office, she’s had to hire other people to actually perform her job duties from as far back as her first term as mayor of Wasilla.

To use a beauty pageant analogy, Sarah was best-suited for that walk down the runway. She was was poised, beautiful, gracious, self-confident.

But no one gets to see what beauty contestants are like in the dressing room, backstage, off-camera. And while this may be okay for pageant professionals, it’s not at all how ordinary citizens should have to select their government representatives. And in the case of Sarah Palin, VP candidate 2009, no one in the audience got to see she didn’t actually know anything about running her state, much less an entire country.

But the people around her knew. The ones who purported to be her friends and advisors. They knew. And they all kept quiet because they each had their own agenda.

So it’s the educated people who have, this past year, plucked Sarah from the runway of obscurity to shove her headfirst into a national spotlight because a pretty face made them look good, who failed all of us. Because in cuccooning Sarah from real scrutiny, in teaching her how to hide her flaws rather than embracing and learning from them, they ultimately failed Sarah.

John McCain and his campaign staff should be ashamed of themselves. There are reasons candidates are carefully vetted and interviewed before adding them to a national ticket. Reasons, for which, Sarah Palin is now a glaring example.

 

And that’s where my thoughts ended and Iran out of time. Then came the speech and I was sucked straight back to reality. Sarah Palin is a nasty piece of work.

Sarah’s farewell speech was nasty. It was filled with criticism to and of the media, the lower 48, fellow Alaskans, all politicians and mankind in general. She snapped at reporters, accusing them of not knowing how to do their jobs. She snapped at the lower 48 for not recognizing that Alaska is the only state in the union with natural resources which benefit with the rest of the country. She snapped at Alaskans for not recognizing that they are living on the only piece of real estate on the planet with natural resources and yelled at everyone. Alaskans andlower 48’ers alike to shun any help which might be offered to them from the federal government because only the private citizens of Alaska know what’s good for them, for their state, for the whole darn country!

Blah blah blah…

Sarah Palin’s nastiness is surpassed only by her overly-elevated sense of importance. I’m happy she’s no longer in office. I hope the good people of Alaska, especially the ones who have suffered hunger, sickness and great personal loss at her neglect in rallying to provide for them during times of crisis can one day forgive her incredibly uncaring decisions to refuse federal aid.

And most importantly, I hope people all across the country will one day soon figure out that government, in a democracy, is made up of ordinary citizens.  It’s made up of ‘us’. Some of us are assholes, sure, but most are not. This constant Republican Party battlecry which infers the federal government is a separate, foreign entity that needs to be stopped in it’s tracks – is worse than ignorance personified. It’s Madison Avenue hype deliberately injected into politics so you’ll buy their brand.  It’s just wrong.

 The federal gvernment is not your enemy. If you don’t like the way it’s being run – vote to change who’s running it. But for God’s sake, stop letting people like Sarah Palin point a gun at  Washington, screaming shoot!

 

Governor Sarah Whines Bye-Bye!

Fairbanks Alaska, 26 July 2009

OMIGOSH! Is there any group of people Sarah Palin DIDN’T  criticize in her farewell speech? And  have you ever witnessed anyone as contradictory? My goodness! First she lambasts the press with her ‘stop making stuff up!’ spiel then turns right around AND MAKES STUFF UP!

Her whining comments regarding how no elected official gets anything done in their last year of lame duckness made me squint. Does she not realize that every term of office has a last year? What are we meant to do with a ‘last year’? Donate it to Goodwill? How does one NOT have a last year? Only ever work one?

*raises glass*

I will not miss this brand of political retardation. Here’s hoping Parnell has a better working knowledge of government. Alaska has more than earned a break from the educationally-challenged.

Let the music blare!!!

My Little Runaway – Del Shannon

 

Gypsies Tramps & thieves – Cher

 

Love On The Rocks – Neil Diamond

 

Hound dog – Elvis Presley

 

For The Good Times – RayPrice

 

Coming To America – Neil Diamond

*tiNk*

 

Let The Dancing Begin!

CONGRATULATIONS ALASKA!!!!!

I’m dancing with you on my side of the globe 🙂

Witchy Woman – The Eagles

 

The Beat Goes On – Sonny & Cher

 

Runaround Sue – Dion and The Belmonts

 

It’s Over – Jessie McCartney

 

You’re So Vain – Carly Simon

 

Lyin’ Eyes – Eagles

 

Oh Happy Day – Sister Act II

 

More Tomorrow! Keep Smiling! – OzMud

 

Today’s Headlines [are] Music To My Ears

From the Huffington Post:

 From the Washington Post:Two of the four most viewed articles are about how Sarah gets it wrong.

New poll shows that while Sarah is still the most popular candidate amongst Republicans, she’s lost ground with Democrats and Independents and at the end of the day, the Republicans won’t put her up as their frontrunner if they think she can’t win votes outside their own base. ooOo Sarah, that’s gotta hurt.

Oh look! Real Politicians challenging Sarah to participate in Real Politics! That’s just, well... hawt!.

Ok play the tape: Sarah goes on national tour as the Downs Syndrome Mother of the Year. Trig’s birth certificate shows up on CNN. Actual moms of DS children rally throughout the Southern states to protest the fraud perpetated by… Ok, I’m just saying…

From the Anchorage Daily News:
Not even the loyal folks at the ADN can stop this avalanche from rolling down the hill.

 

And there it is. That elusive ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ we’ve all been searching for since August of last year.  It’s finally going to shine.  I, for one, have picked out more than a dozen youtube clips with which to celebrate Alaska’s New Independence Day. Sonny & Cher from the 70’s performing The Beat Goes On,  Eagles version of Witchy Woman, Del Shannon doing his famous My Little Runaway and finally – Neil Diamond belting out America.

I can taste the hot dogs and mustard now…

PS: Has it occurred to anyone else that Parnell might just be blowing smoke up the governor’s ass just to appease her until she actually – like – you know, leaves? And that maybe he’s just waiting for the right moment to step into the phone-booth and change into his super-hero clothes?  That would be way too perfect, eh?

To comment on this post scroll back to the title: Today’s Headlines [are] Music to My Ears and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

Sarah Palin Makes Me Dizzy (and not in a good way)

Spent a good portion of my day reading a few dozen blogs and newspaper articles on Sarah’s latest ethics violation. It’s like sitting center front at a tennis match.

Sarah says the reports are false.
The papers say the reports are true.
Sarah says the frivolous complaint is still being investigated.
The investigator says he’s finished and the report he’s submitted is final. I’m quite literally dizzy.

One thing is clear.  There’s a report out there – the result of an investigator havng completed his work – which states Sarah Palin’s Alaska Fund Trust is not a legal fundraising vehicle and yet… it’s still running down Main St. picking up passengers. I mean donations. Donations which have now been classed as inapropriate and a violation of Alaska Ethics for the states’s Executive Administration. 

So here’s my new plan for a 2012 campaign strategy:

 

The Face Of Sarah Supporters pt-3

Sarah the Reburn Governor:

Sarah Palin riles her followers much like a reburn flares up on a patch of charred land just after a big fire. You never know where a reburn is going to occur, you just know that when it does it’s going to be hot, strong and dangerous. The fear of reburn is [one of the reasons] why firemen won’t allow you access to your property too soon after a fire. They know it’s there, somewhere, just under the surface quietly lying in wait.

The firedavidletterman.com incident of last month is one such reburn. It temporarily encited otherwise normal citizens to gather in a public place, shout perverse obscenities at passersby and cameramen in an emotional frenzy descriptive of the Salem witch burnings of olde.

One well-placed temper tantrum by Sarah Palin and a few hundred people were mobilized and focused on ruining the life and career of one of America’s most gentle icons, comic David Letterman. They were so focused, actually, they seemed to miss entirely the fact that Mr. Letterman had already apologized to Sarah and her family, at least twice.

A Fox News presenter interviewing the authors of the movement was visibly uncomfortable as she posed the question but David has offered a sincere apology which Sarah has accepted so the point of this rally is… what again?  Well the point of the rally was that a fire had been lit and it wasn’t going to be easily put out. We would need to be patient while it ran it’s course. Thank goodness, at least, reburns are characteristically short-lived.

This is Sarah Palin’s brand of politics. It’s one little flare up after another, after another. Not a lot of substance and they generally don’t last very long, but still they’re chockers with dangerous, hot air. They’re caused by flash fuels smouldering beneath the surface. Sarah Palin has cartloads of flash fuels. Things like government is too big and abortions are murder. Stuff like President Obama doesn’t think like the rest of us or that real America is only found in small towns. And now that she’s not going to be shackled by conventional rules, regulations or even the need to be civil, I expect many more of these ‘reburns’ are going to flare up across the country in the coming year.

With any luck at all, her flash will spark more firefighters than fires.

I leave you today with a look back at last month’s Fire David Letterman Rally. It’s important because this rally not only illustrates the mob mentality Sarah instills in her followers, but it identifies these people as New Yorkers. The people at the rally didn’t just watch 9/11 happen on TV, they personally lived through it and it doesn’t take much to re-ignite their fear.

*Letterman said nothing about rape. Sarah added that later.
*Bristol bore the brunt of the joke and she is an adult.
*It was a baseball game.
*Speak for yourself:  Everyone in the country was clearly not upset.
*How about doing some old-fashioned fact-checking before facing a camera 🙂

Well this guy isn’t that worked up. It’s probable he’s only there because his wife made him take her to the rally. And anyway he’s a Jay Leno fan. Anybody out there want to tell this guy Leno hit Bristol with the pregnant jokes months before Letterman?

 

This nice Jewish lady explains to us the meaning of schmuck and lets us know that Letterman is too old to be on television in the first place. But I do wish she’d pick an arguement: Either Letterman’s son is a bastard – or – he has a wife [whether she’s a slut or not is Mr. Letterman’s choice and completely irrelevant to this issue].

One should note: We stopped referring to children born of unwed mothers as illegitimate or bastard sometime during the middle of the last century. I’m forgetting which court, but somewhere in the US it was ruled that children should cease to be burdened with this particular stigma, that it was unwarranted, unkind and led to unnecessary childhood trauma. It was explained ‘all children are the child of God…’ Albeit why it’s on me to explain this to a religious person is ludicrous.

 

Why was it not okay for a professional comic to make light of a politician’s adult daughter regarding her very public pregnancy – and yet it is okay for one of Sarah’s followers to publicly accuse David Letterman of being a child molester? That’s a pretty serious accusation. I mean she didn’t even couch it behind the word ‘rumour’. (Where’s Van Flein when you need him eh?)

It continues to amuse me how Sarah and her minions trip over themselves in their inept efforts to turn free speech into a one-way street.

Amen to that!

To comment on this post scroll back to the title: The Face Of Sarah Supporters pt-3 and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

The Face Of Sarah Supporters pt-2

During the 2008 campaign for US Presidency, Sarah Palin planted seeds of hate. She called her opponent a domestic terrorist. She claimed he kept bad company. She called him anti-American and added “he doesn’t think the same way you and I do…” insinuating his roots didn’t qualify him to even be on the ticket.

The problem with planting seeds of hate is that some of them grow. Here’s a look at what Sarah’s personal ambition is cultivating in her political backyard:

 

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s a bit okay because, after all, this was a touch of orchestrated mass hysteria, rallied from an emotional campaign. Surely these nice folks have all gone home by now and regained their sanity.

Well – think again:

“As a silver bullet may be required to fell a werewolf or witch, so is Palin the person needed to defeat Obama in the next presidential election.”

I realize I’ve been out of the country for a while now but… when did losing an election become grounds for declaring war on the seated President? What happened to getting behind the winning team? When did a duly elected President become a symbol of evil? When did the Republican Party stray so far afield?

To comment on this post scroll back to the title: The Face Of Sarah Supporters pt-2 and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

The Face of Sarah Supporters

You can’t fix something without understanding how it works. Armed only with this psychological adage I’ve spent much of the past 48 hours with my head tucked into websites like Conservative New Media, Tammy Bruce and Michelle Malkin. (Google them if you want links.)

I’d rather not do it again.

It occurred to me, though, after publishing my last post, that it’s becoming increasingly important to put a face to the person who supports Sarah, believing every word she utters and willing to follow her down any road, even if that road leads to and over the edge of a cliff.

I realized youtube would probably provide the most diverse, if not the most accurate barometer by which we can measure Sarah’s public appeal. Typing Sarah Palin supporters in the youtube search engine netted hundreds of hits. A few clicks later and I can now offer you a glimpse into the mindset of those citizens who are working to put Sarah Palin in the White House.

Don’t dismiss them easily. Word on the CNM site has it that Sarah is laying the groundwork for the creation of a new political party, based on the belief that the White House is currently run by elitist terrorists.

And withhout the discipline of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin will be allowed to prey on the minds of men who believe she was sent to them by God himself to protect them and their families from the muslim terrorist whom they perceive currently sits in the Oval Office.

Ignorance with a shot of  charisma makes a lethal cocktail. 

For the sake of expedience and as I do not expect any of you to actually watch these clips in their entirety, I’ve noted the clip highlights by time so you can skip directly to the most pertinent data. If you can endure each clip in toto though, it’s quite an education.

Individually, we can forgive some of these people as folks emotionally caught up in the heat of campaigning for their candidate in a very animated Presidential campaign. The gentleman in the first clip strikes me as someone who doesn’t believe a word he’s saying, but has simply recognized a way to make a name for himself – much like the snake oil salesman who touted the bible to separate a believer from his money. Regardless, he is out there and according to his youtube hits people are listening to his lectures whether he’s talking from his heart or out of his ass.

More might be dismissed as a prime example of basic humanity which says that any group has a fringe. But note the hundreds of campaign videos which have been left on youtube for close to a year with thousands upon thousands of people exposed to the message Sarah Palin is the new messiah, President Obama is the anti-Christ and it’s up to YOU to clean up the mess – and you begin to get a much clearer picture of the danger that lies ahead.

Again, I do not expect any of you to sit through these lengthy diatribes of hatred and intolerance. Except for the last one. The last one is a must sit through in order to experience the full impact of the Sarah Palin for President phenomenon. Thankfully, though, it’s only two and a half minutes in length.

watch 5:30 – 7:30
CNM  has a  youtube library of 241 videos – most of which are just like this one.

 

 watch 1:50 – 2:30
RawVegasDotTV has a youtube library of 132 videos – most of which are just like this one

 

watch 1:00 – 3:35
AdoringPalin has a youtube library of 185 videos – mostly FoxNews clips

 

watch 0:00 – 2:29
drinkingwithbob has a youtube library of  576 videos – most of which praise Palin while slamming President Obama

Don’t be complacent. The number of these unhappy, angry-at-life people are growing with every new economic bombshell that drops – and the possibility of this mindset gaining control of the US government  is the real train wreck on the horizon.

To comment on this post scroll back to the title: The Face of Sarah Supporters and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

Sarah: Trig’s Mother or The Greatest Porky Ever Told *UPDATE*

Like almost everything Sarah, I’m left with mixed emotions after watching this particular youtube clip of our favourite ill-fated governor speaking on behalf of the 2009 Special Olympics. Part of me thinks if Sarah Palin can increase awareness and support of this worthy cause then you go girl! 

The other part of me is just plain angry. I still have trouble swallowing the story of her fifth pregnancy. I don’t understand why, if her story is true, she didn’t just go public with his birth certificate and put an end to the matter. But she never did. If her story is true, why was there never an inquiry into or a medical board hearing addressing the behaviour of Sarah’s ObGyn?

Because if Sarah’s account is true, it means:

A medical doctor licensed to practice in the USA, in a long-distance telephone conversation with her patient, a 44 year old woman in the eighth month of her pregnancy involving an unborn child with Downs Syndrome, upon hearing her patient’s water broke, advised her to travel several thousands of miles in (multiple) cars and airplanes to get home to rural Wasilla Alaska, rather than instruct her patient to immediately check into the nearest Texas hospital – all during an Alaskan blizzard !?!

To not believe the story is to believe Sarah has defrauded the public on a subject most sacred – the birthright of a child and his mother – so no matter which road your mind takes in this saga, whichever version you swallow, the bizarre pregnancy and Toad’s Wild Ride home or the unthinkable, sinkable  hoax – really either is just too much to ask a normal-thinking person to digest. 

 The following video is presented on youtube as an introduction to the 2009 Special Olympics. It’s posted on the Conservative Media Network account. If you believe the story that Trig is her son it’s almost lovely. But if you have any doubt…  if it turns out that Sarah is not Trig’s real mother and she’s spent the first year of Trig’s life giving  speeches like this – well that’s just wrong.

But wait! There’s more! 

Sarah’s gesture of promoting a worthy cause stops short of being ‘lovely’ as soon as you click open the video’s description and realize it may have been posted on youtube more to embarrass the sitting president than to promote the Special Olympics. 

This is the ‘info’ blurb attached to the video on the youtube site: 

Exact Date Unknown; 2009) — Alaskan governor Sarah Palin gives her remarks to those attending, and competing in, the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games held in Boise, Idaho.

Palin’s youngest child, Trig, suffers from Down Syndrome.

These comments by Palin stand in contrast with the insensitive joke made by Barack Obama on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. On March 19, 2009, Obama mocked the Special Olympics while referencing his own poor bowling performance during the Democratic primaries.

Obama rolled a 37 while on a tour of the state of Pennsylvania.

Governor Palin — along with millions of other disabled Americans, their loved ones and their friends — is not likely to appreciate the callous remark made by Obama, a comment beneath any president, particularly a sitting one.

 These are the tags (directing search engines like Google) to the video:

Conservative New Media
ConservativeNewMedia
threat fear angst terror terrified
protect defend
slutty flight attendant
David Letterman joke backlash
Willow Bristol Track Todd Piper Trig

 So to find this video clip about the Special Olympics through youtube or  Google, we should use tag words like threat, fear, terror and slutty flight attendant????

 I’m speechless.

*** UPDATE ************************************************************

It occurred to me how swiftly some documents have disappeared from the web once attention was brought to them so as I finished publishing this article, I thought I’d wander back over to youtube and take a screenshot of the page itself as backup to my quotes.

I appear to have been wrong in my statement about the tags. I apologize for the error and am pleased to report the tags I quoted appear to have been associated with another blurb. I’m guessing the blurb about President Obama and his unfortunate bowling joke on the Jay Leno was posted on youtube and copy-pasted onto the bottom of the Special Olympics blurb (most probably in an effort to disqualify the President while promoting Sarah) but the person who merged the two blurbs into one didn’t think to remove the tags previously used. Well, with so many people out of work in the US, I imagine it’s hard to find qualified help these days. <insert eyeroll>

In scrolling down to locate the actual tags used to link this video to search lists I noticed the word sexism, and that it’s apparently been translated into a few other languages. Umm huh?

The tags associated with this video clip are at the very bottom in blue lettering. Fear and terror are not there. Thank Goodness! Wait – What’s with the sexism, misogyny, hate, statutory rape, tea and fishing????

And MILF (mother I love to fuck – an acronym embraced by pot smokers) – of all things – is in the tag list as well. A tag list associated with the Special Olympics. A tag list attached to a video clip of Sarah Palin and two of her youngest children. Way to shoot yourself in the foot Conservative New Media!

Someone should tell Letterman he’s off the hook now that Sarah’s own people have publicly linked her, Piper and Baby Trig to sexism, mysogyny, statutory rape and the love of a good root!

Maybe someone should let the nice folks who run the Special Olympics know how their promotional video is being -well, promoted 🙂

Here’s the youtube page – and here’s my screenshot of the blurb in it’s entirety:

To comment on this post scroll back to the title: Sarah: Trig’s Mother or The Greatest Porky Ever Told and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

Yakky Doodle Dandy

In honour of the days when public opinion of governing bodies was cleverly masked in nursery rhyme (to prevent some mean-spirited ruler with no sense of humour from beheading them, no doubt) – and (also too) of a time when news was carried from town to town via singing minstrels, I give you the song in my head that woke me at 3am!

If someone out there wants to record this little dittyas a .wav or .mp3 I’ll be happy to add a play button so we can all sing along. In the meantime, Happy Humming 🙂

 

Sheet music and cliparts courtesy of:

musicedmagic.com
free-clipart-pictures.net
clipartheaven.com
michelespaintshop.com

 

Sarah: Before and After

Bouncing around youtube I came across this delightful little video, a melange of Sarah bites, all wonderfully strung together for our entertainment in October last. It reminded me * nervous shudder* how close we came to putting this woman in the White House:

It’s appropriately titled Sarah’s Greatest Hits – and I’m hoping it’s tpmtv creator has a post-resignation edition in the works:

 

And in scanning the papers I’ve run aross this piece in the Wall Street journal. I don’t always – okay that’s a lie, I seldom agree with Peggy Noonan. But I have great respect for her thoughts in this article and highly recommend, whatever your political orientation, you take a few minutes to click this link and read it in toto. 

Here’s an excerpt:

Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal
11 July 2009

“A Farewell to Harms” 

“Sarah Palin’s resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground.

…The media did her in.” Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it’s arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they’re perfect in every way. It’s yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

…The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.”

More youtubes tomorrow – shimmerings from the lower 48 that more people are finally coming to terms with the reality their rising star is more of a drama queen than a royal find. I’m feeling ever so much better 🙂

To comment on this post, scroll back to the title: Sarah: Before and After and click the word comments just beneath – Thanks, OzMud

 

Shoes… men’s size 12

Shoes… part 7

The following is a work of fiction.
Mostly fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

 

You promised yourself no matter what was ever said or written about you, you would not be distracted. You would stay focused. The most important thing, in light of the many, gruelling tasks which lay on your desk demanding attention, was to stay focused. You’d asked your top advsors to meet with each other this morning for the purpose of prioritizing the next steps in your current list of Cleaning Up America chores, but the public outcry against your recent decision to not persue war crimes charges against the previous administration was, in fact, distracting. In the end, you crashed the meeting and asked them to instead revisit the feasibility of a war crimes tribunal with it’s resulting impact on the general public, presuming such a tribunal was genuinely the will of the people.

You would entertain any ideas worth discussion, though you were doubtful a feasible plan existed to hold GW accountable for the war in Iraq. The people who had helped you reach this conclusion were the cream of the intellectual crop, and were all now looking at you, standing there in your sweats and sneakers, with a collective deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression. You shook you head, took a seat and said “I know, I know, I thought this was a done deal too. But after the report card we got yesterday for making this decision, I just need to be sure it’s the right one.”

There was head-scratching and wriggling in chairs and a lot of coffee pouring, but nobody wanted to be the first ,so you opened the dialogue. “I’m looking at the volume of papers sprawled on this table and all I can think is, “There’s just not enough money. In order to finance something this big, we’d have to start shutting down programs we just got off the ground. Or borrow from China. Or both.”

First Person: “What if we were to single out a particular instance, like the blatant ignoring of the Sabri Report, and charge Bush with something like deployment of troops despite evidence purporting the deployment was unnecessary?”

Second Person: “I can tell you any action taken against the Bush Administration would sit well with several foreign delegations – and show the world we don’t think of ourselves as infallible. That we make mistakes, but we’re also big enough to take responsibility for them.”

Third Person: “Sure, and once we convict Bush of war crmes, then Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the whole friggin’ Middle East see dollar signs and come at us with wrongful death, loss of property suits and we spend the next two generations getting clobbered in international courts, losing one case after the other.”

You listen carefully but clearly this has all been said before. You want the country to move forward. If we’re to have any chance at digging our way out of the financial, emotional and diplomatic mudflat in which the last eight years have left us wallowing, we need desperately to move forward. As long as GW is allowed to take center stage on any issue, anywhere, we can’t get momentum to move past him. And personally, you’re tired of living knee-deep in Republican mud.

The comments continue from around the table when finally the Attorney General hollers above the din, “Sarah Palin“, and everyone turned.

“The Alaskan governor?”

“Heh, the infamous clothes horse?”

“Isn’t she up on ethics charges?”

“Didn’t they impeach her after the campaign?”

“No, shes just given a speech at some pro-life dinner, I heard.”

“Why are you bringing her up?

The Attorney General crossed his arms and looked at his lap. “We can’t prosecute Bush for war crimes because of the exact same reasons the Alaska State Legislature could not hold Sarah Palin accountable for committing State Ethics Violations. And it’s not for lack of evidence. They’ve got all the evidence they need. Just like we have with Bush.

“But the government bodies required to do the investigating and prosecuting are all indebted to the governor. State witnesses who were in a position to corroborate the charges against the Palins were told by the Palins to ignore court subpoenas and not show up for court – and months later, not one of them has been made to either appear in court or spend one second in jail under contempt of court charges. Not one! They’re still getting away with it, for Christ’s sake.

“Thousands of emails containing state business were either destroyed outright or hidden from scrutiny by exorbitant fees and orchestrated delays until investigators finally just gave up trying to get at them. Sarah Palin is only the governor to a population of less than one million. Imagine how costly and fruitless gathering evidence against the Bush family would prove…

“Charging Bush with war crimes is a Pandora’s box waiting to bite the hand that opens it. There’s no telling how many more criminal acts would be uncovered by digging into the truth behind our declaring war on Iraq. How many other people would end up in jail cells because their acts would have been properly documented, and easier to trace than the President’s. So then we’re back to the days of Watergate and watching government employees who were just following orders, be the only ones put behind bars – while the man who concocted the orders in the first place, goes free.

“What was it Nixon said? If the President does it, its not illegal. That seems to work for the Alaska Governor as well. Might even be the mantra of what’s left of the Republican Party. Charge Bush with war crimes and you give them a new bone to chew on and use to further divide a country that badly needs to learn how to work together.”

The room is quiet. You lean forward in your chair.

The AG continues. “Look, all I’m saying is, if the state of Alaska can’t figure out how to hold their own governor accountable for ethics violations so flagrantly performed in the open that even high school kids in Kentucky know she committed them, then there’s not a chance in Hell this brand-new administration could pull off a major war crimes tribunal against GW and come out smelling like anything but pig-shit. And – it could easily prove to be more costly than the war itself.

You shift in your seat, elbows on knees, hands clasped, staring at your size 12 running shoes. This morning was supposed to be spent in the gym. Instead, you’ve got to look straight into the camera – again – and tell the public exactly what they don’t want to hear. Again. As much as it pains you in heart, mind, body and soul, the country cannot afford to bring charges against Bush, any of his administrators or employees, private or military, to help balance the monumental injustice they incurred on the world.

You can’t help thinking, if the Bush Administration, back on September 12, 2001, had just concerned itself with the task of healing, rebuilding and shoring up our own borders instead of rallying the call for justice – which we never attained anyway – that this morning, a lot more foreign countries would be our allies, a lot more Americans would still be alive, a lot fewer would be homeless, and you might have made it to the gym.

 

Shoes… men’s size 9 1/2 continued

Shoes… part 6

The following is a work of fiction.
Mostly fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

18 September 2002

The Sabri Report flopped effortlessly from your hand to the coffee table. The officer who brought the report sat facing you, awaiting orders from his Commander In Chief. The fireplace to your left, alive with burning pine logs, was testiment to the approach of an early winter. You leaned back in the upholstered lounge chair and nervously stroked your chin. You stared straight into the fireplace for a moment before finally speaking.

“Who else has seen this?”
“Two others.”
“Which two?”
“The two men who gathered and translated the intell.”
“Nobody else?”
“French Intelligence.”
“Pfft. But our people, only those two guys?”
“Yes sir.”
“You trust them?”
“Yes sir.”

You stood and paced the short distance between your chair and the fireplace. If this intell was true you’d need to recall the troops already deployed, stop the deployment of any more and figure out a way to launch the biggest political apololgy since Nixon gave his it’s not my fault and I didn’t do it but I’ll resign so you can’t impeach me speech to the nation. This would make Clinton’s I didnt know a blow job was sex, honest! speech look almost believeable.

“What if this report is wrong. What if this Sabri guy’s just saying this to blow smoke up my ass so I’ll turn around and run home.”
“That’s highly unlikely sir.”
“Why is that unlikely? This has as much chance to be false as it has to be true.”
“Not really sir.”
“But why?”
“Because, sir, the French have been monitoring the Iraqi government for a very long time. They have impeccable sources. Their intell places the probability of this being accurate at more than 90%.”
“But it could be wrong.”
“Sir, due respect, but we’re the only ones saying they have these weapons and capabilities and desire to use them against the US.”

Dead silence.

“Bury this.”
“Sir?”
“Bury this and anyone who’s seen it. The French are idiots. My intell is just as good as theirs and says the weapons of mass destruction are in fact in Iraqi hands. Maybe Hussein got away with this crap with my father but he’s not getting away with it with me.”

You pick up the Sabri report and hand it to the officer.”You take this back. You destroy the intell. Then reword this to back my plan and then share it with whatshisface, that English fella…”
“Prime Miniser Blair, sir”
“Yeah, him – and that Australian guy who was here on 9/11…”
“Prime Minister Howard”
“Yeah, Howard. You share the revised report with them like we’re letting them in on top-secret stuff and they’ll be so grateful we confided in them, we won’t be the only ones sayng Saddam has the weapons.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause. In a subdued voice the officer asks, “Is that an order sir?”

You deliberately lock your eyes onto his to let him know who’s boss. You’ve become rather accustomed to this alpha-male role you were handed two years ago and nobody was taking it from you now. Not now.

“Yes, that’s an order.That’s a direct order from your Commander In Chief.”
“Yes sir.”

The man stood up. Your eyes are still locked onto his. “I’m serious. Bury the report. Look at it this way – Hussein is a terrible man. The whole Middle East will be better off without him. And don’t worry, our troops will uncover enough horrors to show we had reason to go there. You’ll see.”
“Sir -”
“Yeah?”
“Sir, the French have similar intell and have based their reputation…”
“Fuck the French. I know what’s best for America. Not the French.”

The officer, pressing The Sabri Report tightly to his chest, walks across the room and pulls the door open. You call to him as he leaves, “Trust me. They’ll get over it.”

 

23 April 2006
Iraq Foreign Minister Naji Sabri’s original intelligence report along with corroborating French and American intell are made public on the American television show CBS 60 Minutes. The CIA officers privy to the actual account stood up and told the truth they’d been under orders not to divulge.

It remains a mystery to me, why, in light of confirmation of this report to have been delared true and my encounter with CIA Director, George Tenet on that September morning, four years ago, to be declared accurate, why I have not been impeached. Seriously. Either my father has stronger Washington ties than even I realized, or the Republican Party has come full circle to my rescue to save itself from total humiliation, or I don’t know what else..

But I do know that from here on out, if I just keep playing at being the class clown, do what dad says and stay away from making any big decisions on my own, I’ll get through the last 18 months of my Presidency with my balls intact. It’s been a helluva ride.

God Bless America.

 

 

 

Shoes… ladies size 7 ½ continued

Shoes… part 5

The following is a work of fiction.
Pure fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

 You look out the office window and smile. The smartest decision you and your husband ever made was for you to run for Mayor. Winning that election was a piece of cake. It took little effort and only a few promises to derail your opponent. But it hadn’t gone unnoticed that barely one-fifth of the population had even bothered to vote at all, and that you barely got the majority of those votes. “I’ll do better next time” you remember thinking and now, looking out onto this beautiful snow-covered city, through the window of the Governor’s office – your office – you grinned, thinking “heh, I did just that!”

And if running for Mayor had been the smartest thing you’d done so far, running into The Senator at that State Fair, a while back, was the luckiest. He was a funny old bird and had taken a shine to you right away. He was politically savvy and (for whatever reason) eager to share his road to Washington D.C. with you. Forty years of successful wheeling and dealing inside the US Boys Club. Wow. He’d been a fountain of information and good advice.

The way he could manipulate the media and the public was inspiring, but you were here now. You had arrived. You didn’t want him upstaging you much longer. He was the darling politician of your state, but he was also in some legal hot water over undeclared gratuities. Add that to his age and well, he was more than likely on his way out.

So you’d picked his brain and done the photo ops and followed his wealth of adages (things like play ball with the boys, doll, and ol’ Uncle Sam will always take care of you). But you knew what you wanted now, and how to get it, and you no longer needed this seedy old man hitching his worn-out coattails to your brand-new wagon.

By the middle of your first term in office you’d already decided if the Senator was going to fall, you’d just step aside and let it happen.

Turns out the most important thing about politics, you learned on your own, anyway. In the first grade no less, when that nasty third-grader tried to steal your lunch and you had to sucker punch him to get it back – and then smile at the teacher and say “he musta fell but I’m watchin’ him closer now.”

You just do whatever you need to do, take full credit for things that turn out well and deny everything else. Oh, and smile. Always smile.

That’s pretty much what you’ve done with The Senator already – just kept smiling while he told you how to shortcut this or circumvent that – find Jesus – the public loves it when you tell ’em you found Jesus. The Senator was sure right about that one. Folks who carry bibles will follow you anywhere if you tell them you have one too. The ones who don’t will get behind your right to say you do, so latching onto religion is always a win-win, politically speaking.

As Mayor, you carefully surrounded yourself with people you could trust. Old friends for whom you could grease the wheel and keep in your debt enough to be sure they would never betray you, because when The Senator first told you no matter how hungry people get, nobody kills the cash cow! it made you laugh. But eventually you caught on and embraced the idea.

And now, as Governor, you could do even more. You could travel all across the country and as long as you gave one little speech somewhere, the taxpayers would be happy to pick up the tab for the whole trip. You could have anything your heart desired, now, and your faithful staffers would find a way to write it all off as state business. The Senator, God Bless him, taught you well.

As you stood there now, looking out onto the snowy landscape, you realized you’d been right from the start. This whole business of winning elections and holding office really wasn’t much different from the inner workings of a small-town beauty pageant. You smile into the camera, occasionally (and quite accidentally) spill fruit punch on a fellow contestants costume and most important – tell the judges the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even if that means making it all up as you go along.

After all, it’s in everyone’s best interest that you keep winning.

 

Shoes… men’s size 11

Shoes… part 4

The following is a work of fiction.
Pure fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

August 8, 1974

You’ve taken off your comfortable size 11 penny loafers and slipped into the black dress shoes which had been laid out for you earlier. You lift the suit jacket from the brass valet and sling it over your arm, glancing out the side window one last time. The roses here are always so beautiful. You’re going to miss them.

It’s a particularly hot August this year, but strangely, you can’t feel the temperature. It’s as if your skin knows how inconsequential the weather is today. “They want to impeach me” you say under your breath but loud enough for the gentleman in the dark blue suit to hear.

“Yes sir”.

“In a sense, they’re blaming me for doing my job.”

“Yes sir.”

“They can’t possibly understand how important it was to know what the Democrats were up to back then – to stay one step ahead so my re-election wasn’t derailed. I didn’t just want to be re-elected you know. It wasn’t an ego thing like some are saying. I needed to be re-elected. The people needed me to stay their president. So much left to do. They still need me.”

“Yes sir.”

“They just don’t seem to know it. After all I’ve done for them. China. The draft. Everything. Hell, I even gave them the moon!” You let out a chuckle, but then slowly shake your head. “Still they want to impeach me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“No sir.”

“It’s not right you know. Whoever leaked the terrible rumour that started this – well it’s just not right. What my men did – that was my business, nobody else’s. They were just helping me find the enemy. Same way you look for termites when you know they’re there, but you just can’t see ’em.

“Loyal bunch. Damn, they were just protecting me and the country from the enemy. Those lousey dem- well. Well I’m not going to let them impeach me. Today I tell America I’m leaving office and that will be that. Gerry will have to figure out the rest.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m just so disappointed they couldn’t see what I was trying to do for them. They just couldn’t see. And those two damned reporters – like children fighting over a hole in the ground – just couldn’t leave it alone. Had to keep digging. Prying.”

“Yes sir.”

A knock on the door draws your attention. Another suited gentleman enters and announces “Mr. President, it’s time.”

You look up, pulling the second blue suit into your dialogue. “This is just like sausage-making you know. People don’t want to to be told what goes into sausages they just want to grill them up and eat them.” You slip your arms into your jacket. “Government’s the same way. People don’t really want to know how it works, they just want their taxes low and their mortgages paid and have enough money left over to put their kids through college and gas in their cars.”

You walk toward the door and see the military escort waiting in the hall. You stop to salute. They each salute back. “Mr. President” one of them says, gesturing you to fall into place in front of him. You take another step forward, and then another. The last steps you’ll ever take down this corridor. You’re overcome with sadness.

“Funny thing is, it wasn’t the people doing the asking. Just the reporters,” you say to the blue suit beside you. “Deep throat. Bah. Americans shouldn’t have to know what their President has to go through to protect them from wrong-thinking people. To give them what they need. To keep them safe. They just shouldn’t have to know.”

As you turn the corner, the camera flashes start popping. You put on your best smile, raise your arm and wave to the crowd of reporters. And as you take in the profound image of The White House Rotunda crammed with people, you think righteously to yourself …

“… and that’s the way it should be.”

 

Shoes… ladies size 7 ½

Shoes… part 3

The following is a work of fiction.
Pure fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

You slip into the size 7 ½  fuzzy pink slippers at the front of the closet and tiptoe down the short hall to the living room, trying not to waken the napping bub on your way. It was ironing day and lord how you hate to iron! But like every other chore in life, if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. So you turn the TV on low and get to work.

 

Your 1990’s soaps slide into a documentary on social security and entitlements. Well the ironing is almost finished anyway, and it’s this or afternoon cartoons, so you don’t bother changing the channel.

 

The documentary is almost exclusively about how many people in the US receive benefits without needing them. The baby boomer generation, in specific, when interviewed, mostly tell how they are entitled to SSI because they paid into the system their whole working lives and even if it’s not essential to their quality of life now, they earned it, it’s theirs, and they’re keeping it

 

The argument on the other side is how the Social Security system is edging toward bankruptcy and the entitlement-minded baby boomers are about to push the whole US benefits scheme over the proverbial edge.

 

Most of this is going in one ear and out the other while you concentrate on finishing the last two blouses, when the TV reporter introduces a former congressman (standing in front of a sprawling mansion you’d give just about anything to live in yourself) and you hear…

“… so yes, I was very lucky in business and live quite happily on a retirement of $9,000 per month, plus perks like full private medical insurance, and this is on top of the profits generated by tourists visiting my mansion (he gestures behind him and you drool again) which yields a decent income on it’s own. So really, the $1,800 per month I receive from SSI is completely unnecessary. But here’s the rub: they won’t take it back. My government says that because I served a couple of terms in the US Congress, I am entitled to this benefit and there’s no provision for cancelling it.  They’re going to keep sending me this check every month until the day I die, and all because I was an elected official, for a few years”.  

 

Wow. $1,800 a month for life because the guy was elected to some office job in Washington. You wouldn’t mind working in Washington. It’s got to be warmer than Alaska. Maybe tomorrow you’ll make a run to the library and see what you can find out about elected officials and long-term benefits.

 

You hang the last shirt on a hanger and think about how much more you’d like from life. The work here is hard. The land is hard. It’s beautiful and worth it, but it’s hard. You wouldn’t mind if it was just a bit easier, down the road, for your kids.

 

The trip to the library yields more than you’d hoped for. Not only was it true that certain benefits followed you throughout your lifetime, there was a stack of perks associated with being an elected official, and it looked like the farther up you got, the better the perks. And as luck would have it, a seat was just open on the city council of your little town.

 

You attentively read the requirements and full job description of a city councilman and excitedly make your plan. First step – the seat on the city council. Then mayor. Then, well, who knows how far up the political ladder you could go!. You make photocopies to take home to show your husband. You could do this! You weren’t afraid to try new things and you certainly weren’t afraid of hard work.

 

And after all, winning a small town election or two couldn’t be much different from winning a beauty pageant, could it? It was a popularity contest. Not rocket science.

 

Shoes… mens size 9 ½

Shoes… part 2

The following is a work of fiction.
Pure fiction.
It’s sole purpose is give the reader a chance to try on another guy’s shoes.
Maybe see how a different opinion fits.
Or not.

Your name is George W. Bush. You’re sitting behind a massive desk in the oval office of the White House, Washington D.C. You aren’t really sure if you can take your shoes off in here, but it’s stuffy and hey – you’re the president – who’s going to stop you! You slip out of the size 9 1/2 black leather dress shoes and let your feet sink into the plush carpet. Nice. But you wish you had your boots.

You aren’t really sure how you got here, but your dad said if you just did as you were told, listened to all your advisors and did exactly what they said, you’d get through this job with your balls intact and the two of you would make history as the first father and son to each hold the office of President of the United States since the days of John and John Quincy Adams. You always did what your father told you and it always worked out ok.

The first year as President was a little daunting. People were making fun of your speeches. Well, not so much of the speeches themselves but of how you gave them. You told your dad you weren’t a public speaker. Put me on a barstool with a cold beer and I can talk shop with the best of them, I said, but stand me at a podium with lights in my face and make me read out loud from a script and words just trip all over themselves trying to find the shortest route out of my mouth.

And then those stupid towel-heads, (yeah, you know you’re not supposed to call them that but that’s what they are), had to go blow up parts of your cities. They screwed your dad when he was in office and now they’re screwing you. You try to listen to everyone’s input but geez, most of it goes right over your head. What you do understand nobody can agree on. Every person who says they got the answer tells you something different from the guy before. You’d like to do what the people want – but you have no earthly idea what that is. Half the citizens are screaming at you to nuke the whole damned Middle East. The rest are angry and crying and pleading with you to just fix it. Just fix it! Fix it! How!

Nobody prepared you for this. Nobody. This was the United Goddamned States of America! We don’t get bombed!. We do the bombing! This job was turning out to be way harder than you thought. Way harder. The whole world’s watching you. The whole Goddamned world is waiting to see how you handle this, George. Thank God you’ve got all those smart people around to give you the answers.

Man, you hope they have the answers. But you have to admit, right now it’s not looking so good.

One guy you’re supposed to trust says if the military doesn’t catch Bin Laden soon, all the legislators on both sides of the aisle will give up on your administration and then it’s a sure death for you and the party. But Hell, you’ve been chasing Bin laden all over Afghanistan and he’s slippery as snot. You can’t just bomb every cave he’s been sighted in. That’s about the only thing your advisors do agree on – that the US can’t just go bombing anywhere they want in the Middle East.

Then again, the military thinks maybe you can.

Another guy says if we can’t get Bin Laden we need to get somebody. People are demanding justice! And they’re getting impatient.

Your advisors brought up Saddam’s name again. They say he’s got these nucular, nu-clear? however you say it weapons and that we know this for sure because they bought ’em from us. Heh. That’d be right. Well even if he doesn’t still have ’em, he’s bad for business. They showed you intell that says he kills and tortures his own people. He experiments on his own people with nerve gases! Geez.

The cabinet says there’s a plan on how to get the country behind an attack on Iraq. That we might even flush out Bin Laden, or at least scare the crap out of the countries who are hiding him, enough to maybe get them to turn him over to us. That would be great. You promised the people you’d fix this. Whatever it takes. Whatever the cost, you made a promise. They’re counting on you to right this horrible wrong.

You just wish you knew how.

 

Shoes…

 

 

When I first came to Australia the US was reeling from the discovery our President had lied under oath about his relationship with a 22 year-old White House intern. Every pub, bar and late night talk show on two continents was riding high on Monica Lewinski jokes. President Clinton was being dissected in news rooms on a daily basis. It was not the best of timing, on my part, to be an American abroad.

So I did what every red-blooded American would do under the circumstances. After having been verbally trashed in a queue at the grocery,  my husband-to-be and I packed up the car and spent a year in the bush on walkabouts. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind taking it in the ass for my President , so to speak, it’s just that I would’ve liked dinner and a movie first.

Occasionally, around an open campfire, we would run into other travellers. Inevitably someone would pluck my Californian accent from the night air and hone in on it like a seasoned hunter on safari. I would spend the rest of the evening apologizing profusely for the political holocaust my country imposed upon theirs, readily accepted complete responsibility for any inconvenience they may be suffering as a result of  my poor voting skills and promised to do a better job in the 2000 election. And, well, we all know how THAT turned out… *sigh*

Somewhere along the line I discovered that most Australians cannot hear the difference between California, New York and Canadian accents. And (probably because they still air Beverly Hillbillies and Dukes of Hazard re-runs here) it is assumed that all Americans have a southern drawl. So more often than not, a Californian accent is mistaken for Canadian. I quickly learned to say “Why yes I am a Canuck – aren’t you clever for sussing me out straight away!”

But my exposure to another culture and it’s different brand of politics has allowed me to literally live an adage my mother used to tell us, growing up. Before you criticize or condemn another person for the way they look at life, walk a mile in their shoes. Of course that adage has morphed through the years adding… then, you’ll be a mile away and have their shoes!

At the top of this page is a row of shoes. Some big, some small, some old, some new, some ladies and some men’s. And as we of the blogosphere are busy dissecting public figures like Barrack Obama, George Bush, and Sarah Palin, (to name just a few), I thought it an appropriate gesture to pause and try the other guy’s shoes on for size.

More tomorrow – right now my foot’s stuck in a pink pump…

 

California Prop 8 Karma

This just tickled me:  

This article appeared in the Colorado Independent on the 17th of November, 2008. It tells how this particular ministry, Focus on the Family, poured so much funding into the passing of California’s Prop 8 (banning same sex marriage) that it now faces laying off at least 20% (more) of it’s employees. It reportedly spent almost $625,000 in cash and other support. One of the ministries more affluent benefactors added an additional $450,000.

The article, on the one hand, explains how the current financial disposition of the ministry is a direct result of it’s dedication to the preservation of the legal definition of marriage remaining between a heterosexual couple. (I’m sure they meant to rake in the kudos by showing they were prepared to go bankrupt to fight this battle.) But on the other hand, there’s the perspective of those who see it as a huge misplacement of funds and question the expenditure and subsequent lay-offs as a betrayal to the ministries congregation. 

Some of us just saw the irony. Gay marriage will be a fact of life one day, just as inter-racial marriage is now a social norm,  when only fifty years ago, in my grandfather’s day, it was unthinkable.

The facet of this article that gave me the giggle, however, had nothing to do with story content. It was the e-zine’s page layout that slapped the huge grin on my face.

Observe: Mr. James Dobson, founder and president of Focus On Family, is seated directly to the left of the opening copy. Directly to the right is this advert from GayCupid.com

About ten minutes after finding this little political treasure, the GayCupid.com ad had been replaced by a religious jewelry ad. At first, I thought the editors had spotted the gaffe and corrected it. Well I was wrong. The ad is in a cycle which periodically reappears.  So evidently, not even the good Mr. Dobson has noticed how ridiculous he looks bragging to the world about his out-of-state coup while sharing copy space with his very sexy coup-ettes.

*Ministry Jobs lost due to zealous expenditure – 202
*Ministry money spent to prevent gay marriage in California – $625,000
*Ministry article appearing next to Gay Singles Advert – PRICELESS!

If this isn’t karma, I don’t know what is – and it just keeps looping back to bite FOF in the ass 🙂

Mr. Dobson the sound you hear rushing past your head is the fast-growing tide of morally educated, compassionate human beings who genuinely believe all people are entitled to happiness, speeding forward in a re-energized effort to plow through the narrow-minded doors which you and people like you keep tossing in our path.

You cannot stop the human race from growing up anymore than you can wave your arms at an oncoming tsunami and make it change direction. You’re better off stepping to one side and letting life be what it is.

Original article can be found here

 

Sarah Palin’s Door

Be careful what you pray for: Many wise people in my life have made this comment. I don’t always pay attention to the wise people in my life but this particular adage has always made sense to me. I’ve even passed it along to my own kids. I’m sure they think I’m terribly smart 🙂 

 

It’s from an old Sunday sermon about how when you pray for strength, God gives you a challenge to make you strong. Pray for patience or courage and you get – well there’s more but it’s been a long time since I sat in church. I would have to dig quite deep inside my brain to retrieve the rest of the saying and tonight I don’t even have the desire to google it. (Do you suppose someone once prayed for a way to stop thinking? Is that how we got google? Cool.) 

Be careful what you pray for and how you pray for it: The universe has a funny way of filling in the blanks we leave behind. And the universe, it seems, has an incredible sense of humour.

 

 

I was in my mid 20’s, driving home from a day in the country, feeling like I desperately needed a vacation. An hour later my car broke down on a dirt road, miles from any form of help. We didn’t have cell phones in those days and as I huddled under a blanket staring up at the stars I thought “ok this was NOT what I had in mind.”

My point is, Sarah made this huge public display about praying to God for a sign. An open door. Not even a wide-open door just a door opened a crack; enough so she could plow through. She’s a Maverick, you know. But by not clearly defining the kind of door she was expecting, Sarah left it to the universe to fill in the missing details.

 

Well Sarah, the last time I checked a dictionary, a gate was as good as a door and the universe is finally starting to answer all your prayers. And, as luck would have it, some of ours as well. We’re just waiting for Karma to kick in 😉

Sarah’s Doors: Troopergate * Travelgate * Clothinggate *  Bookgate *  Housegate *  Ethicsgate

Ohhhh it just keeps getting better 🙂

UPDATE: Thanksgiving brought another door for Sarah. Turkeygate!