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Posts Tagged ‘Congress’

7 Ways to Not Apologize

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, religion, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“The fact still remains, I am not going to apologize for something I didn’t say.”

Okay, Lying about what you said is never a good way to start an apology. Tea Party member, veterinarian and righteously dishonest Republican from (where else) FLORIDA, Ted Yoho, has given us all a lesson on the non-apology apology. Unfortunately for him, he accosted AOC on the steps of Congress in front of a reporter.

Generalizing, or not saying the name of the person you offended, is cowardly. “I’m sorry if my words offended someone?!?!” Just like turning away from the person you are calling a “fucking bitch,” but saying it just loud enough for her to hear it.

Contingency – Don’t make your apology contingent by using a conjunction. Slightly different from the last non-apology because at least it is directed towards someone, but just as heinous. “I’m sorry IF my words offended you”

Deflecting, don’t even try to apply a reason for your hateful speech, our couch it with your better angel. Don’t couple an apology with something else, like your “passion.” That’s the old “I beat her because I love her so much.”

Making up an excuse. Offering an excuse is just plain pathetic. Never offer an excuse for your bad behavior: “I was having a bad day” or “I drank too much,” or especially, “You made me do it!” Children make up excuses for their bad behavior.

No quid pro quo – Hmm, where have we heard that before? This implies that the person you’ve just insulted or accosted, in some way deserved it. Well you were yelling at me! You think I’m deplorable, so I can call you whatever I want. Pretty sure Yoho can’t read minds though.

Don’t make your apology a bid for sympathy – so what if you have a mother, most of us do! OH, wait you’re a Christian? That’s great! I was taught to turn the other cheek in Catholic school, what kind of Tea Bag Christian are you?

Here is this morning’s view from my desk. I’d wager a bet that most women have heard some or all of the above during our lifetimes. Don’t forget to vote by mail if you can!

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Lack of Decorum

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2020| 1 Comment »

It’s been a busy week: I started physical therapy; Great Grandma Ada had a visiting  friend from New Jersey, so I took her to a drag brunch; and Ada also regaled her JCC Book Club with a look back on her life… which will have to be continued since 95 years cannot possibly be distilled into an hour!

We did learn something new though – Ada was voted “Most Charming” by her Brooklyn high school class.

Since I’ve found the Senate Impeachment Trial of Mr T most distressing, and not charming at all, I refuse to watch it. Relying on the occasional Tweet to keep me up to date, especially of my favorite Senator Amy Klobuchar, it would seem that only Justice Roberts is taking this trial seriously. I’m glad he admonished both sides to keep it civil and behave with the gravitas the Senate chamber deserves.

A trial with no witnesses and no documents is still a trial worthy of respect. Right?

I was served a subpoena twice. Once a long, long time ago when I was working at Head Start in Jersey City I accidentally hit a homeless woman illegally crossing the street. Just as the sun came up over the skyline of Manhattan, I was blinded turning a corner and didn’t see her. My insurance company kept me in good hands and settled for the maximum amount on my policy.

The second time I was served we had just moved from NJ, and I had left my old car behind, it was a green Ford Explorer that the Rocker had inherited and drove to high school every day. But he wasn’t allowed a car on his college campus in Trenton, so we sold it. Or I should say, Bob sold it to a young man while I was in VA.

Long story short, he was arrested the next day for having marijuana in the car, my old Ford Explorer, and somehow or another I was still listed as the registered owner. Hence, a guy shows up at my door in Virginia ordering me to appear for a trial in New Jersey.  Again, a lawyer was deployed, money was exchanged, and a calamity was averted.

Isn’t it strange that I’ve never been called for jury duty, something I’ve actually wanted to do all my life, but I’ve been served TWO subpoenas! What if I didn’t have car insurance or the money to pay for a good defense? I was recently talking to a friend about Jane Fonda getting arrested for her Climate inspired Fire Drill Friday demonstrations.

I mean with all the protesting I’ve done over the years for women/human rights, why haven’t I been arrested? It’s almost a badge of honor today.

Congress should have subpoenaed Ambassador Bolton, sure, and he would have every right to hire a lawyer and fight it, if the Senate had the guts to call on him. It sounds like he’s willing to talk, and he might even lend some decorum to the proceedings, but his Republican cronies are afraid of the truth. They can’t handle the truth! 

Here is Amy Klobuchar’s early morning Tweet:

 “At 1:30 a.m. after a bunch of votes to stifle key witnesses the Republicans just voted down having Justice Roberts decide the witnesses! Why have this job if you’re not going to protect the Constitution? We are sworn to protect our democracy, not serve the President’s interests.”

Can you handle this cuteness?

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Untold Stories of the ER

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »

People never just “go” to the Emergency Room, they rush to the ER. And if you’re Mr T, you take your motorcade along, a helicopter would be too flashy. He wanted to avoid the “fake news” after all. The Bride caught wind of his “irregular” trip to Walter Reed on Saturday while she was working in her ER because it was blowing up in her private female MD social media group – I mean Twitter wasn’t even on the story yet. I wonder why Google hasn’t told us the reason for his visit.

According to most news outlets, the White House has a regular mini-clinic-hospital in one of its wings. So this unscheduled, outside of protocol trip to the ER is a mystery. Does anyone believe the press secretary’s line that Mr T was only fulfilling the first part of a routine medical exam? His BFF Roger Stone goes to prison and the impeachment witnesses are heating up reality TV, and rumor has it Ivanka actually observes the Saturday sabbath with her family, so he was all alone in the residence… and figured he’d get a check-up?

Naturally with two-too-many ER docs in the family, we try to avoid ER visits, unless it’s to deliver apple cider donuts. Last week, Great Grandpa Hudson was having a problem breathing, certainly a good reason to call an ambulance. Instead, two ER docs showed up to check him out and he was just fine. Thousands of Medicare dollars saved because a 93 year old man would certainly have been admitted for the complete work-up. His only problem – a salt-loaded free restaurant meal at a local restaurant for Veteran’s Day.

Maybe Mr T had one too many hamburgers? His cholesterol is rather high and his weight is an issue. Or maybe he thought he was having a heart attack, and it was only a panic attack!

I have a friend who went back to work years ago, and left their 3 month old baby with her husband who worked at home. He ended up in an ER with a panic attack that can mimic a full-blown MI – sweating, heart irregularities, a feeling like your world is coming to an end. I’ve had one or two panic attacks myself while I was trying to conceive a second baby and kept having miscarriages. I went into hard core OCD and didn’t want to drive over bridges.

Maybe the constant strain of being presidential, rising at 6 am and taking 3 hours of “executive time” to watch state-sanctioned FOX News, then starting your day at 11 am and ending with very busy Twitter fingers is taking its toll. I wonder if he has dinner with Melania, or if she eats early with Baron? Or is she even there? Then there’s all that golf on the weekends. It must be exhausting!

He left Walter Reed without a jacket, his shirt open, no tie. Sounds like it was a quick exit, the kind of patient who leaves an ER “against medical advice.” You know the type, and Mr T is certainly that type of arrogant, egoist.

He is back at Tweeting his agenda this morning – using middle school bullying tactics and name calling to intimidate his enemies. Nancy Pelosi is “Nervous Nancy.” The “Do Nothing Democrats” are at it again with “Fake News.” Mr Tweety T whines that he was only exercising his First Amendment rights when he live-Tweeted a threat to ex-Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch on Friday.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump wrote. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. it is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”  https://www.vox.com/2019/11/15/20966716/impeachment-hearings-trump-yovanovitch-witness-tampering

I was thinking somebody should have removed him from office, or at the very least removed his not-so-smart phone from his tiny fingers. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; an honorable woman who had been told to leave her post in the Ukraine quickly, “on the next plane,” was again being maligned in public, on TV, by our commander in comedy.

She talked about being “knee-capped,” like his administration is a cast from the Sopranos.

“According to the Department of Justice, intimidation of witnesses testifying before Congress is a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1515(a)(1). However, in this case it is the president who is allegedly doing the witness intimidation and an OLC opinion (see Indicting a President Is Not Foreclosed: The Complex History – Lawfare) states that a sitting president cannot be indicted.”

It’s a shame really, or a sham that this president who sits around all day surrounded by sycophants cannot be indicted. Because he’s not just intimidating a witness, he’s projecting his insane policy of panic and chaos around the world.

In other weekend news, two ER docs and two writers went out for sushi with two adorable children. Can you find the redhead?

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A Kiss is Just a Kiss

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2019| 2 Comments »

Today is #EqualPayDay across the globe, meaning any woman who thinks she isn’t a feminist isn’t paying attention. For every single dollar, or euro, a man makes, a woman will collect only 80 cents. Think about it, we make almost one quarter less than what men make for doing the same work! Maybe back in the day, where MAGA-hat-wearing people long to live, men went out to work and plunder leaving their mates at home, barefoot and pregnant. But today, we ladies are half of the workforce, maybe the “better half?”

Last week, the D Majority House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act. Why should that matter? Certainly some industries are fair when it comes to the payroll – historically women-centered careers like healthcare and teaching have been gender-neutral for the most part. But now the Paycheck Fairness Act will help to close the 20% wage gap in a broader way by banning employers from asking about former salaries. And maybe most importantly, prohibit companies from firing or retaliating at workers who share their wage information!

So step over to the next cubicle and talk about money people!

I remember my first real job. Before my days of teaching at a Head Start in Jersey City, I was hired to interview temp workers for a large American firm. This entry HR job meant I had to administer typing tests and ask the kinds of questions above and beyond what your last salary looked like – “Are you married?” “Do you want to have children?” Those were the good ole days, when it was more of what your body actually “looked like;” the days when my older sister Kay had to keep her child a secret if she wanted to continue to work as a stewardess in the airline industry.

And she had to starve herself too, in order to stay at a certain weight. We women of a certain age have these memories floating around in our hippocampus, judging ourselves in the mirror every day.

And being a card-carrying feminist means one should fight against sexual harassment in the workplace, or anyplace really. But listen up, I may offend some of you here, maybe we’ve gone a step too far? I mean, I LOVE ex-Veep Joe Biden! He hails from my hometown, and has the most authentic, warmest smile. His son died of the same kind of brain tumor that killed my biological father. He reminds me of my foster father, Daddy Jim; I’d share a cup of tea with him anytime! And guess what…

If he kissed the back of my head, or leaned in for some Eskimo kisses or even butterfly kisses… why, I’d hug him right back! There, I said it. Most women can differentiate between a lecherous old guy who is too handy and goes for your lips, and a Mensch. The first kind of man makes you instantly turn your face away, he hugs too hard and too long, we can see it in their hungry eyes. Great Grandma Ada had a friend like that, even into his 90s he’d put the moves on you.

But Uncle Joe just doesn’t strike me that way, you know, the way Mr T strikes me.

So let’s settle down Dems, we will never win in 2020 by fighting amongst ourselves. Let’s teach our little boys about consent, without scaring them away from intimacy. Teach them how to know when to shake hands or hug hello. Here is Pop Bob (a genuine Mensch) teaching the L’il Pumpkin about tools with his very first tool box. Clap your hands if you believe in fairy houses.

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I’m Sorry, sooo Sorry

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, racism, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

How to properly apologize should be an AP course in high school. Especially for boys, who seem to barrel through life taking no prisoners, like they are entitled to step on a few toes along the way. Girls and women apologize too much and too easily; what are we so sorry about anyway? “Excuse this mess…Sorry for the inconvenience…Please accept my…” You might think we were born with a need to make excuses for taking up space!

Certainly my Catholic education prepared me for a lifetime network worth of apologies. I’m not quite sure how they did it, but those nuns had us feeling guilty for any minor indiscretion, and made us write, “I’m sorry and I will never do X again” a thousand times on a blackboard. In proper cursive mind you. No wonder we all vied for the privilege of erasing the blackboard after school.

Bob and I watched the Cohen hearing with eyes wide open: I thought it was an act of redemption, while Bob focused on the broken-record belittling by the GOP. The most absurd moment came when Rep Mark Meadows (R-NC) had a Black woman standing in a white cape behind him. Rep Rashida Tlaib lashed out at this pathetic attempt to prove our Commander in Comedy is NOT racist because he hired her. Tlaib scolded:

“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them does not mean they aren’t racist,” Tlaid said. “And it is insensitive, and some would even say that the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee”—here she took a heavy sigh—”is alone racist in itself.”

Well did he take umbrage? Of course, he didn’t like this woman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, suggesting that he pulled a racist stunt. HOW DARE SHE! So she immediately apologized in a polite, that wasn’t my intent way, “To my colleague, Mr. Meadows, that was not my intention, and I do apologize if that’s what it sounded like. But I said ‘someone’ in general.” This is called a hedging your bets apology.

OK so I understand it takes a lot of guts for a freshman/woman legislator to call that old white guy to task in a public hearing, and it certainly takes a good amount of grace to apologize and later hug it out. But this morning the Twitterverse would like HIM to apologize to HER. We all know that will never happen, but what if it did?

May I present exhibit A on how to apologize… the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau!

In 2017 he delivered a speech on the floor of the House of Commons apologizing for the dehumanizing treatment of LGBTQ service members and other government employees throughout the second half of the 20th century. It wasn’t the common, half-baked apology, “If I managed to offend your poor little ego I regret it, it was not my intention…” Which is basically a “I’m really the good guy here and you need to grow a pair” kind of non-apology apology.

It was a good and proper apology, one that my old nuns would approve of, if they ever accepted the human race as sexual. It was eloquent and moving, hitting all the right notes, and I happened to read it again on a quilt last weekend. You can read the text here: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/full-english-text-of-prime-ministers-apology-to-members-of-lgbtq-community

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The Payback Kid

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2018| Leave a Comment »

The Flapper once told me that TV shows are written for the 12 year old brain. Watching TV, therefore, would warp my mind and keep my critical thinking skills at a minimum. Of course she couldn’t have factored in streaming sites, or HGTV for that matter, but still my Mother was one smart cookie. Like Lenin, she also told me that religion was for sheep, and did I want to lead the crowd or be led? What rebellious kid wants to go to church anyway, especially one who had just been kicked out of Camp St Joseph for Girls!

Lately, I feel like watching and listening and to some extent even reading the news out of Washington is like time traveling back to my pre-teenage years. Omarosa is roasting Mr T every day with a naughty bit of audio tape. The Queen of Soul dies and Mr T’s take is that she worked for him? And anyone who has anything to do with the Russia investigation better watch out, they might have their security clearance taken away – kinda like being unplugged!

Because we have a twelve year old payback president who calls the free press his enemy.

My 3 am TV channel was tuned to PBS last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by a documentary on what’s happening in Iran now. It followed a Western guy “Our Man in Tehran” who spoke perfect Persian and interviewed modern, middle-class Iranians, including a middle-aged Persian pop star in LA! It was so good and compelling I woke Bob to tell him that Persian sounds just like Hebrew!   https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/watch-how-the-internet-has-changed-iran-from-cappuccino-cafes-to-headscarf-protests/

Why, you might ask, was I awake at 3 am? Well, I found out I need to have a Mohs procedure done on my dominant hand thanks to sun damage. But in the middle of the night I thought about how alike we all are, how connected via the internet, even Iranians have Instagram. How it’s only the different myths we believe that separate us, as if any one country or culture owns God, even if she/he exists. It was almost a religious experience. And this morning, I give you the Dalai Lama on Twitter:

“I am one of the 7 billion human beings alive today. We each have a responsibility to think about humanity and the good of the world because it affects our own future. We weren’t born on this planet at this time to create problems but to bring about some benefit.” 

So are you a problem maker or a problem solver? Taking retribution against your “enemies” is pretty pathetic, so is tearing up the Iran nuclear deal and walking away from the rest of the whole damn world on climate change. Swinging tariffs around like a bully in the playground. It feels like we have a 12 year old steering the ship, this reality nightmare of a Congress that is 2018.

I was a senior in high school when Aretha sang “Respect.” She was a mighty warrior queen who gave my generation of women its anthem. I will pay it forward, not back, by redoubling my efforts to register young voters and support Planned Parenthood – the one and ONLY clinic left in TN to provide abortions. If we cannot control our own bodies, respect will become an empty noun.

ps, we voted early this month!

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Opposite Day

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2017| 2 Comments »

I’m feeling like a two year old. It’s a rainy, cold morning in the mountains and I just cranked up my Twitter account to read about some middle-of-the-night GOP shenanigans. It would seem that Congress has voted to dismantle the Office of Congressional Ethics! So somebody please sit me on your lap, get me a blankie, and read me Rebecca Patterson’s book, “My No, No,NO Day.”

Won’t somebody make it stop?!

After nine days in Nashville without cable news of any kind, I was almost looking forward to watching some CNN. Y’all know I’m a news junkie, an ex-reporter and school board policy wonk with a taste for irony. When West Nile began swelling my brain until my eyes turned beet red, I didn’t go to a doctor until I couldn’t read that new-fangled news crawl. But I’ve been quickly disabused of this notion – it would seem that media coverage today consists of deconstructing Mr T’s Tweets.

And I refuse to follow him on Twitter. NO.

SO, since throwing a temper tantrum isn’t an option, today we here in MountainMornings Land will be observing Opposite Day! I am in opposition to this whole damn Electoral College business (this is true) and Mr T is NOT my President-Elect! Get it?

Today I will dress up funny, I will say the opposite of what I mean to say, and probably mumble. A Lot. Kids love doing this in Middle School; they learn about antonyms and might play a game of Opposite BINGO in their classroom. When the Rocker was very little, we were playing a board game with a group of adults, the one where you can’t actually say the word in order to get your team to guess your word and win…his word was “Negative.”

“The opposite of affirmative.”

That’s what he said, and we all looked at each other. This response has been etched into our family’s history.

In some ways, I feel as if our country is living in a perpetual state of Opposite Day. Since journalists are now trying to parse what, how and when to use the word “LIE,” and translating Tweets has become a common practice. It’s only because I have Twitter on my phone that I read about Mr T’s New Year message to his “enemies.” Tasting like a bad clam, I wish I hadn’t.

Nancy Pelosi said, “Ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress.”

Elizabeth Warren said, “Tell us, @GOP: Who, exactly, thinks that the problem with Washington is that we have too many rules requiring the gov to act ethically?”

And I say, shall I list the antonyms of ETHICS? Corrupt, Dishonest, Immoral, Improper, Unjust, Unrighteous….

Some friends and family have stopped watching the news on TV altogether. But being an ostrich about current events isn’t the answer. In fact, this beautiful, tall bird has gotten a bum rap all these years. They actually DON’T stick their heads into the sand! http://mentalfloss.com/article/56176/why-do-ostriches-stick-their-heads-sand

So let’s suspend all our belief systems for the day, or maybe the week, or even this New Year. My cookie broke and ballet is too itchy and… Put on your big girl boots and get ready to March on Washington ladies on January 21.

 

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Delayed Reactions

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2015| 2 Comments »

Something deep down in my heart that I knew to be true – even Republican women believe in a woman’s right to choose an abortion. They may not say this directly, or out loud; it’s like a Democratic Senator who may own a rifle for hunting but would never be seen holding a gun in a picture. What I didn’t count on, was the audacity of this Congress to try and slip in a bill restricting late term abortions, a procedure which constitutes 1.4% of all abortions due to education and Plan B in this country, and adding this codicil to a post 20 week abortion in the case of rape, hold on to your seats everyone:

…it’s OK ladies only IF you have reported said rape to the police!

Thank you GOP women for soundly seeing through the error of their ways. Approximately 68% of rapes are not reported to the police, and a reported 98% of rapists will never spend a day in jail. Why you might ask? Because women are still not actually believed, so why bother; because some think they deserved to be raped or abused since that’s all they know, and some were impaired and so find themselves guilty a priori. For a myriad of ridiculous reasons rapes go unreported. And on college campuses it is even more nauseating.

One in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, according to studies, many of them during their first year by someone they know. The first 15 weeks of college can be the riskiest; the group Futures Without Violence just launched “The Other Freshman 15,” a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting college and university officials to address the issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/09/19/seeking-to-end-rape-on-campus-wh-launches-its-on-us/

“Given control of Congress and the chance to frame an economic agenda for the middle class, the first thing Republicans do is tie themselves in knots over . . . abortion and rape,” writes the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson. Maybe the Republican Party will implode? I almost, I said almost feel sorry for Speaker John Boehner. They are not only out of touch, they are seemingly out of their minds! But thanks to those women in red who saw through their shenanigans. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30943828

Let’s talk about climate change, and income inequality folks and leave a woman’s body up to her and her doctor. This debate is demeaning and insulting. What if the Democratic ticket had two women, two smart women leading the charge to the Hill? You know who I’m talking about. We would be unstoppable. It IS on us! images

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For Art’s Sake

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

There’s good news and there’s bad news this week. On the good side – Our do-nothing-Congress has passed a 1+ Trillion dollar budget deal that should keep our government humming along for the next nine months. On the bad side – Congress has defunded ALL portrait painting, which is pretty stupid since I understand that every single Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense doesn’t need an official oil-based portrait painted costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each.

But no more Presidential portraits? Are you kidding me? Even I have had my portrait painted, by my sister mind you! This may have started my fondness for hats.

The Author, age 15 in Oklahoma

The Author, age 15 in “Oklahoma”

You know that gallery at the Smithsonian with all of our Presidents hanging regally along its walls in a continuing line of American history? Well, it’s about to stop short. Someone on the blogosphere somewhere said it’s because we can’t have a “president of color” up there with Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy and really? I suppose this means no more First Ladies either.

The horse-trading was done by only about four dozen of Congress’ 533 members, working in private. What’s supposed to be 12 separate spending bills was combined into one mammoth stack that finances the government through Sept. 30.http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/16/5-things-to-know-about-deal-to-avert-shutdown-of-u-s-government/

It’s the “working in private” part that bothers me, behind closed doors in a secret session, along with the sheer lunacy of stopping a tradition that deserves to be maintained. I tend to think very forest for the trees about art. Artists are really doing our society a favor. They reflect back to us what’s going on in everyday life, with a different spin, giving us a new perspective. Enlightening, illuminating and just plain enriching our thirsty souls. Sometimes art can even change history. Think of the photograph of a child about to be shot in Vietnam. Think about the mini-series Roots. Think about a little Goldfinch.

Today the Oscar nominees were announced. Nothing new or unusual except Ms Oprah was denied again for her role in The Butler. A movie about a man who served how many presidents through sweeping social changes in our country. A true story, but one obviously overlooked in Hollywood. Instead a movie about a real political shakedown in NJ in the late 70s, the Abscam scandal, was the basis for the big winner, American Hustle.

“…today offering bribes in exchange for legislation seems almost quaint. The lobbyists do the same things we did, only to a much greater degree,” said John Good, a former FBI supervisor who oughtta know.http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-the-players-in-abscam-the-real-life-american-hustle-the-bribes-now-seem-quaint/2013/12/26/d67648c2-6c15-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

I wonder who’s writing the Chris Christie biopic now? Maybe we need to get some art lobbyists up on the Hill. You know, bring in the big guns – the owners of auctions houses and film industry moguls, maybe a few museum directors? At least we need to appoint a Secretary of Culture, every other country in the free world has one! We don’t need to paint their portrait either. But we DO need President Obama’s portrait painted.

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization,” President Kennedy once remarked, “than full recognition of the place of the artist.” http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/should-the-us-have-a-secretary-of-culture/277409/

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Skullduggery

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2013| 2 Comments »

When the news first broke that we’d been spying on some of our closest allies, Grandpa Hudson immediately nailed our collective indignation with this remark, “Skullduggery!” Don’t you just love obtuse and ancient words? I knew immediately I’d have to dig into this Halloween-themed noun which according to the Slang Dictionary comes from an earlier Scottish term, “skullduddery” and means: “deceitful doings; dirty work. :  Without skullduggery, politics wouldn’t be interesting.”

So if the NSA was involved in “tricky behavior” of the “hanky-panky” variety, and we now learn that well, really, everybody’s doing it, spying on each other that is, we can all rest assured that the Bourne  or for that matter, Bond movie machine will live on in perpetuity. I’m just not so sure I can recover from my binge watching yesterday morning of CNN and the public spectacle aka witch’s hunt we now call a “congressional hearing.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held up rather well under her grueling three+ hours of testimony. Here are some of the low-lights I gleaned from yesterday’s “monkey business.”

A Texas Representative, R- Joe Barton, likened the roll out of the Affordable Care Act to a scene in another classic movie, The Wizard of Oz. Maybe he thought of this because Sebelius had served as the Governor of Kansas or maybe he just likes “hanky-panky.”

“Dorothy at some point in the movie turns to her little dog Toto and says, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Well, Madam Secretary, while you’re from Kansas, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Some might say that we are actually in the ‘Wizard of Oz’ land given the parallel universes we appear to be habitating.”

Another GOP gambit was trying to get Madame Secretary to tell us which health policies covered abortion. A hot mic caught another congresswoman say in a plaintive voice, “Oh, here we go again.” While a NC woman of the right got into a bit of “kerfluffle” over whether single young men should have to buy insurance with maternity coverage saying, “To the best of your knowledge, has a man ever delivered a baby?”

There was more posturing, and posters of college boys doing a keg stand, I’m not sure why; oh yes this “chicanery” lasted well into the lunch hour. Which got me thinking about Niccolo Machiavelli.

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

Happy Halloween from one parallel universe to another. I’ll close with a bit of “funny business” from my little trick or treater who adores going to puppet shows in her pachyderm costume! ps the nose is on the hood in back but don’t you just love the Pebbles pony?

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