Happy Memorial Day

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (May 22, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then kindly return.)

It's Memorial Day, a day in which we remember and honor those men and women who died in the military service of this country.  It's a day I mourn my brother who died of Alzheimer's hastened by the chemical exposures he sustained in Viet Nam.  It's a day in which other families mourn the deaths of their lost soldiers, some dying as recently as a week or so ago.

And for what?

To say they died to preserve our democracy just doesn't cut it with me anymore.  The last ten years I've come to realize that what my brother and others died for was to keep the 1% fat and happy and, unfortunately, in control.

That democracy has been sold to the highest bidders, from the White House right on down to the local dog catchers.  Our Congress can't get even the tiniest bit of gun control passed, although an overwhelming majority of Americans want at the very least background checks for those who would purchase guns.  Our president has continued the shredding of those rights guaranteed by the Constitution carried out by his predecessors.  And our courts have tilted, nay careened, to the right to protect corporate interests to the detriment of we-the-people.

And I don't see an end to any of that.

So I mourn.

Eighth Blogoversary!

(Graphic snagged from this site.)

Yup, it's the Eighth Anniversary of Cab Drollery, and even I'm surprised at that.  I didn't imagine this joint would be open this long, yet here we are, over 5800 posts later (many of them by Ruth Calvo, who's now with Fire Dog Lake.)

Will I do it for another two years, a whole decade?

Hell, I don't know.  I briefly considered announcing the end today, primarily because I am tired of being disgusted and angry and cynical by all the news I read day in and day out.  I also am noticing a gradual impairment of my cognitive and memory processes.  The old head bone isn't as nimble as it used to be.

But then I ran into a homeless guy I hadn't seen for a while, a man I feared had died.  He had been living in his car, moving it as the cops rousted him, but always parking nearby so I saw him every day.  Sometimes, in the early morning he'd still be asleep.  Other times he'd be working for people in the neighborhood, doing yard work or minor repairs.  Then two days went by when he was still asleep mid-morning.  On the third day, he was gone, but so was his car.

Earlier in the week he showed up at Burger King (who let him do clean-up work each day for his food) to announce he had finally saved up enough  money to rent a room in San Gabriel.  He just dropped by to see how all his friends were doing.  I had a hard time hiding my tears and a couple of regulars kidded me about that.

It dawned on me that this guy kept plugging along against incredibly long odds.  The lesson struck a deep chord within me.

So I will continue for at least a while longer to churn out some electrons.  I may lighten up a bit more, maybe with more good news, maybe with book reviews not involving politics.  We'll see.

I hope you'll keep dropping by.  If you feel so inclined, you can encourage me.  Donations are always a sign of encouragement, but so are comments.

And, thanks.

What David Said

David Horsey posted a thoughtful, even lovely, column yesterday, reflecting on the import of President Obama's second inauguration.  I think he nailed it in one.  I recommend you read the entire column (which isn't very long), but here's a taste:

The spirits of two great men, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., stood watch over the West Front of the United States Capitol on Monday as Barack Obama took the oath to serve a second term as president with his left hand placed on two Bibles -- one Lincoln’s and one King’s.

The event not only fell on the King holiday and 50 years after King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but also came within days of the 150thanniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Without the revolutionary changes for which Lincoln and King were martyred, Barack Obama’s presidency would not be possible. This was abundantly apparent four years ago when he became the nation’s first African American chief executive, but it seems no less remarkable and significant the second time around. ...

The residue of the racism that once justified slavery is still evident. There is no doubt that Obama would not be such a hugely controversial and maligned figure in some political circles and in certain parts of the country if he were white. The good news is that the beast of racial bias is cornered and dying. Obama’s reelection is proof of that and, perhaps, that is why the second inauguration of the man seems to be as important a marker of our progress away from slavery, Jim Crow and bigotry as was his first. The first time might have been a fluke; the second time is evidence of real change.

Amen.

I Do Have A Conservative Streak

(Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich and published 1/10/13 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Click on link to enlarge and then please return.)

OK, on some issues I'm a purist.  In this case it's baseball.  I am an unabashed, old-fashioned fan and have been for nearly sixty years.  As many of you know, I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I was at just the right age when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee.  I got to see Warren Spahn and Lou Burdette pitch.  I got to see Eddie Matthews and Red Schoendist play the infield.  I got to see Henry Aaron bat. I got to see the other teams' stars when they came to play, like that cranky s.o.b. Roy Campanella and that brilliant pitcher Harvey Haddix.

And, thanks to an older brother who for some unknown reason taught me about the game even though I used blackmail to get him to take me with him when he cut school and hitch-hiked to Milwaukee County Stadium after it opened, I learned about the important parts of baseball.  He explained the geometry of the park and of the game.  The abstract purity of the game appealed to me, even as a rookie.  At age ten I understood some pretty arcane rules, like the infield fly rule and the balk rule.  It all made enough sense to me that I learned how to play the game, although "hard ball" was pretty much closed to girls.  When I discovered that, I switched over to "girls" softball and got to be pretty good.  But I still followed the game the boys played because the rules were the same.

When the Milwaukee Braves broke my heart and moved to Atlanta, I switched team allegiances to the Los Angeles Dodgers (mainly because I was driving across country to relocate in Southern California and heard Vin Sculley call a game and I was enthralled).  I got to see an entire infield move up to the bigs:  Cey, Russell, Lopez, Garvey, managed by Tom Lasorda.  I watched as Fernando Valenzuela changed the face of baseball in Los Angeles and the status of Mexican Americans who came out to watch their countryman show that the game was for all of us.  The geometry was the same.

So, when I read the news that no one, including Mike Piazza (another of Lasorda's kids) made it into the Hall of Fame this year, I was pleased.  Clemens, Bonds, Sosa:  all of them took the short cut way.  They used drugs to replace the hard work that any sport requires.  There's some indication that Piazza may also have.  You know what?  Those divots couldn't carry Spahn and Aaron's cups, even with those steroid enhanced muscles.

About thirty years ago I went through an obsessive bout on the muscle-building tour.  I went to the gym four nights a week and lifted free weights.  I modified my diet to get rid of the excessive fat.  I walked around the neighborhood for at least 45 minutes each day.  And, after a couple of months, I saw the results:  even as a girl, I had muscles.  I could lift things (like a 25 pound bag of dog food) without assistance. I dropped a couple of clothes' sizes.  I felt terrific.  It was hard work, but I felt rewarded ... until I started reading about the pros who were using steroids to get the same and even better results.  Folks like Arnold Schwartzenegger.  Folks who believed that winning at any/all costs was more important than anything else.

That's not for me.

I think that's not for any of us.

And I think that we need to make that clear.

Small Blessings

One of my favorite elder blogs is Ruminations.  Its proprietor is Florence, a pharmacist who retired early for health reasons and who now spends her days gardening, quilting, cooking, and (of course) blogging.  She has a series of  "Three Things That Made Me Happy Today" posted which got my attention, but good!

Here's one of her recent entries:

★ Three things that made me happy today★ 

I didn't sleep well last night so I took an after breakfast nap. Ah, the joys of retirement. Eat your heart out, worker bees! LOL!!

Beautiful day. Clear, cool, low humidity. 

No cooking day. Took 2 containers of veggie soup out of the freezer and toasted some sourdough bread.

No, nothing earth-shaking, but nonetheless important.  In the midst of the stresses of life these days, including (but not limited to) our seriously defective economic system, our maddeningly deranged political system,  our rapidly deteriorating environment, taking time to note the small blessings of life provides a kind of perspective, a chance to breathe, however briefly. 

And so, here are three things that made me happy on Thursday.  (Friday, well, I'm not quite ready to process that day.)

A friend I met online and then again in real life sent me an email to check my current address so she could send me a small Christmas gift.  I was touched by her grace and generosity.

I go to Burger King for a second breakfast most mornings.  There is a group of men about my age who do the same.  One bought my breakfast and told me that he and his buddies were always glad to see me.

During my afternoon walk, the rottweiler puppy I hadn't seen walking in several months appeared with his owner.  No longer a puppy-puppy, Hans is at the gangly adolescent state.  He recognized me and sat at my command so I could give him a dog biscuit (provided by his owner).

I've decided that I will now pay attention to those brief moments, those small blessings, and be grateful for them.  They may just turn out to be life-savers and soul-savers.

Thanks, Florence.

Is It Over Yet?

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader (October 10, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.  Or not.)

I admit to growing weary of debates.  I feel like I'm six years old again, trapped in the car with my family for a long drive somewhere and all I can think to ask is "Are we there yet?" over and over again.

Last night was the Brown-Warren debate, and while I didn't watch it, I did read what my compatriots at Eschaton had to say as it unfolded.  Obviously, we're all pulling for Elizabeth Warren in her bid for the Senate, so I'm certain there was a certain amount of bias in the reportage.  I'm also certain that press accounts will be slanted the other direction and many will slip in a line about her Native American claim.

Tonight it will be Ryan and Biden going at it.  Now, I can kind of understand why a debate between the nominees for that position is appropriate.  After all, the Vice President is just "a heart-beat away" from the presidency.  But both men have been campaigning vigorously (Ryan for two jobs:  Veep and Congressman from Wisconsin) and we pretty much know where both stand on the issues.  We also know more about their (ahem) proclivities, as Pett's cartoon shows. 

Will I watch it?  No.  I don't have television and I have dial-up internet.  I'll listen to it on NPR and read the live-blogging on Eschaton and then tomorrow read the various press accounts. 

Will it make a difference in how I vote?  Nope.  Not at this point.  We're less than a month from the election and I've made up my mind.  And unless something totally unforeseen comes in the last two presidential debates (and why are they so close to the actual election date anyway?), they won't change my mind either.  I suspect most other voters, regardless of their political persuasion feel the same way.

I think what we have here is a manufactured race, one built to keep the media churning and to keep the money coming in.  Think about it:  just in reportable expenditures, the tab for the presidential race will probably come in at over $2 billion dollars.  That doesn't include some of the superPAC numbers dispersed over congressional races and the numbers from the 501(c)4 expenditures. Think about what that money could have been used for at a time when deficit reduction and tax cuts and medical costs are the topics du jour.

I grow old, I grow old.

Mirrors

David Horsey has been on a trip to Ukraine and speaking to people there about a free press.  His first column, published 9/27/2012, dealt with the problems which are beginning to emerge in this new democracy.

As in Russia, rich businessmen -- many allied with Yanukovych -- are building monopolies in all sectors of the economy, including the media. As these "oligarchs" gain control of major media outlets, they stifle aggressive, critical reporting and leave little of the advertising market for independent newspapers, magazines and broadcasters.

The second column (and the one to which this cartoon is attached) was published 10/1/2012 and points to the increasing power grab by the Ukrainian president.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is the model of a new kind of power-grabbing authoritarian. Gone is the preening, bullying fascist in a comical military costume, like Hitler or Mussolini. Mao’s jacket and Fidel Castro’s combat fatigues are out of fashion. Today, it is all business. Today, Stalin would be wearing Hugo Boss or Brooks Brothers, his mustache would be shaved off and he, like Yanukovych, would look like any chief executive flying business class.

The pogrom and the putsch have given way to PR. Yanukovych has hired lobbyists and public relations teams to help him project a progressive image while he quietly squeezes the press and rejiggers election laws to guarantee his party permanent rule.

An example of this is the Podesta Group’s $200,000 contract with an entity called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group is an American lobbying firm run by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta. And the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine? That just happens to be an operation controlled by Yanukovych, according to Ukrainska Pravda.   [Emphasis added]

Horsey's ostensible point in each column is to show how this fledgling democracy is sliding back into a form of dictatorship, one that the US needs to confront diplomatically rather than ignore completely.  Yet I can't help but think that what we are seeing in Ukraine is the same set of processes that are being played out in this country.

Media ownership in the US has been consolidated and reconsolidated so that the news, both print and electronic, are owned by fewer and fewer entities, all of them corporate in nature.  One need only look at local newspapers names:  Journal Sentinel, Star Tribune, Journal Constitution.  And the same owners usually have a local or national television station. 

And as to slick image make-overs, our current politicians on both sides of the aisle have availed themselves a-plenty.  The euphemisms of the cartoon are just as viable in the US as they are in Ukraine.  In fact, I suspect Yanukovych hired Podesta for just that reason.  The very worst of our system is being emulated by the Ukraine leadership, something which I find appalling. 

And, sadly,  it may very well work.

There Be Monsters

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader (September 28, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.  Please.)

This cartoon really took my breath away because it seemed to capture my feelings from all of the stuff I've been reading the past few days.  Apparently I'm not the only one suffering from shock.  The next place on the net I visited was Eschaton, where Atrios (linking to the Rude Pundit) had this to say:

This enrages me. The other thing which enrages me are heartwarming local interest stories about a community and friends who got together and figured out how to raise the $180,000 needed to keep somebody's kid from dying of cancer or whatever. That people do this is heartwarming, that it is necessary means we're monsters.  [Emphasis added]

Yes.  Yes, it does.

We have become a culture of monsters, and the monstrosity is indeed wreaked cradle to grave, as Joel Pett points out.  Let me give a few more examples from the past couple of days.

There's this:

A man who apparently had just lost his job at a small business in Minneapolis' Bryn Mawr neighborhood returned to the building Thursday afternoon and opened fire, killing the company's founder and three others and wounding four others before taking his own life.

Two other company executives, director of operations John Souter and production manager Eric Rivers, were in critical condition at Hennepin County Medical Center. Hospital officials said one other victim was in critical condition and a fourth was in satisfactory condition. Those two wounded victims have not been identified.

And this :

A popular fifth-grade teacher fatally shot a masked, knife-wielding prowler outside his house during what appeared to be a late-night burglary attempt, only to discover he had killed his 15-year-old son, police say.

Police said 15-year-old Tyler Giuliano was shot at about 1 a.m. Thursday in New Fairfield, a town just north of Danbury.

The teacher's sister was alone in her house next door to his when she believed someone was breaking in. She called her brother, and he grabbed a gun and went outside to investigate, police said.

The father confronted someone wearing a black ski mask and black clothing and fired his gun when the person went at him with a shiny weapon in his hand, police said.

And this:

Over the course of two decades, the Boy Scouts of America covered up the acts of hundreds of child molesters within its ranks, never notifying authorities and instead quietly banishing offenders, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles. Sometimes, the molesters left one Scout troop and reappeared at another to molest again, according to information in the 1,600 confidential Boy Scout files that go from 1970 to 1991.

That pattern sounds horribly familiar. As with the sexual-abuse cases that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State, here is another situation in which authorities, entrusted to care for young people, failed to deal properly with molesters in their institution, which led to more children and youths being victimized. And as in those previous scandals, Boy Scout officials were not just elevating the protection of the institution over the welfare of individuals, but also were perpetuating a culture in which sexual abuse was seen not as a crime to be punished and denounced but as an embarrassment to be dealt with quietly.

And this:

At Fort Myer, Va., a small Army base across the river from Washington, D.C., Chaplain Mark Worrell is talking to about 100 soldiers, reciting the grim numbers.

"This year, 2012, there have been more suicides in the Army than combat deaths," he says.

And I could go on, but I'm getting depressed and I fear that I'm not doing your blood pressure any good either.

I know, I know:  if it bleeds, it leads. Still, there is one hell of a lot of blood being lost in the space of just a couple of days of news articles, and I can't help but think there is something wrong with our society, something horribly wrong.  And I don't quite know what to do about it.  I don't have any ideas on how we, all of us, can fix it.  I fear it will continue.  Our society will splinter and sputter until there is no society, no concept of community, no network of support.

And the selfish part of me is glad that I am old and won't have to watch the whole process of disintegration unfold.

May God have mercy on me and on all of us.

9/11: Some Reflections

(Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich and published 9/12/01 by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Click on image to enlarge. Come back here.)

Let me begin by noting this is not how I remember Mike Luckovich's cartoon the day after 9/11. That may be because that part of my memory is slowly being burned away, or it may be because the Atlanta Journal Constitution decided years later to save that cartoon by scanning a portion of it for posterity. Either/or, it still is a powerful image for me. Back then I wasn't blogging, nor was I following blogs from the big guys. I was watching television, primarily CNN, and they had Mike on to explain the cartoon and how he came to draw it. That sucked me in as far as political cartoons go. While I've only been recently inflicting my love for political cartooning on my blog visitors, I've been following that genre ever since.

So, here we are, eleven years later, and that image still haunts me. At first, the images of the planes headed for the Twin Towers in Lady Liberty's eyes grabbed me. Now, however, it is the tear rolling down her face that choked me up once I found the image on the 'net. That was prescient, as art often is, however unintentional.

While I know, rationally, that we were primed for everything that has happened since 9/11, on that date the ball emerged from the murky clouds to become more visible. George W. Bush made it clear that he intended to be a "war president" before his election, and fulfilled that promise in a way I hadn't anticipated. We now know that his new administration had been warned from the start that Al Qaeda intended to attack this nation (as late as 8/6/01 -- my birthday), but he shined the warnings on, apparently believing that even if it happened, it would be no big deal: he still would go after his intended target, Iraq.

Oh, yes, he declared war on Afghanistan, invoking NATO rules so as to get other nations involved, and then ignored that war for years while he sent troops to another country to secure their oil for our nation and to make our defense contractors (and their cheerleader-in-chief, Dick Cheney) wealthier. Thousands of our troops died, thousands more were grievously wounded in body and soul. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths later, we exited. Those Iraqis are still dying because of our meddling. And that war was justified on lies.

Our national leadership decided that international rules didn't apply to the US anymore. We were the only superpower. So we ignored the Geneva Conventions we had signed and engaged in renditions, black prisons, torture of all prisoners in those black prisons and in acknowledged prisons such as Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and water boarding entered our lexicon. Due process exited.

And due process didn't just exit for foreign prisoners, it exited. Period. Along with other constitutionally guaranteed rights. The Patriot Acts, including all of its iterations passed with little if any discussion. Our emails, our telephone calls, even our library habits were opened up to the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Defense Department and we had no recourse. We cannot even board a plane without removing our shoes and subjecting ourselves to revealing x-rays. Our internet habits are tracked easily. Local police departments now have drones to track our every move.

Yes, we lost a lot on 9/11, but I have to tell you, I can't blame all of that on Obama bin Laden.

Kyrie Eleison.

Just 60 More Days

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (September 7, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and consider returning, please.)

Kevin Siers' cartoon expresses my opinion of President Obama's acceptance speech now that I've listened to most of it and read all the commentary I had to time to. What struck me most is how similar Obama and Bill Clinton are in so many respects. Both are superb orators, amazingly so. Both will have a crowd on their feet quicker than almost any other politician of my life time.

And those oratorical skills have the effect of, well, softening the parts of the message which they have to deliver without turning off their audience. People still adore Bill Clinton, even with his personal and political shortcomings as a Democrat, and I suspect we all have some affection at least for Barack Obama. Still, a close examination of what they each have said and what they have done does not match what the Democratic Party used to be about.

That should not come as any surprise. After all, both come from the DLC wing of the party, which, if you think about it, is more oriented towards business, not the working and poor people of this country. For example, Bill Clinton presided over welfare "reform" and wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare."

Barach Obama, in his Thursday speech, referenced Simpson-Bowles, which means Social Security and Medicare is still on the table. Both will cheerfully be jiggered to save money so that the Pentagon and their sweet deals with contractors can go on unmolested. Downsizing/outsourcing government functions will continue.

And what especially saddens me is that I will vote for Obama, because the alternative is so much worse.

I grieve for my country. I really grieve for my niece, nephews and their children and all the generations that follow mine. We at least had a taste of the dream.

Because It's Too Damned Hot

(Editorial cartoon by Jim Morin / Miami Herald (August 12, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

As much fun as the Romney/Ryan Express is turning out to be right now, I'm just too overwhelmed by the heat wave in Southern California to be coherent enough to blog about it. It's as if my brain and my body have decided to head off into some other dimension in protest.

Now, I'm willing to admit that August and September are the hottest months for this area and that days of temperatures in the upper 90s and even triple digits are not that unusual. This heat wave, however, is different. First of all, humidity levels are much higher than in usual in SoCal. It's been like breathing and moving through wet cotton.

Second of all, while we might have spells of three or four days of high heat, we don't have several weeks of it with no end in sight. We're well into week two of these temps. Yesterday the high was 96F for the mid-San Gabriel Valley. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be 95F, and then the temps are supposed to start climbing again. That will put us into week three of the heat wave, and that is unusual.

What is worrisome from the practical 'here-and-now' is that our energy sources are badly strained because the San Onofre nuclear power plant (which supplies a considerable amount of electricity to Southern California) is down and won't be up until after the summer is over, if then. We've had several "flex alerts" called, asking consumers to reduce power usage as much as possible between noon and 9PM to avoid brown outs. People have complied, but that still doesn't offset the loss of the power from San Onofre.

I've tried to cut my personal usage as much as possible. I've ramped the a/c to kick in at 80F, unplugged everything but the refrigerator, and stayed off line during the afternoon. The problem is that I live in an apartment building with a stucco exterior. Now stucco is a wonderful insulator. It keeps the building cool during most sieges. When it's this hot for this long, however, the stucco gets hot and holds the heat in.

And what is more worrisome is that this might very well be a pretty good indication of the future. It won't be unusual, not at all, not here or elsewhere. And I really don't see that anyone anywhere is willing to do anything about it.

Jim Morin's cartoon nailed it.

It's My Birthday

Today is my 66th birthday and one of the ways I'm celebrating it is by not blogging on things that happened over the weekend and that depressed me (domestic and international violence will have to go on without me). I probably won't even read the newspapers I usually read early in the morning, although I may relent later in the day if I'm exceptionally bored.

Instead, I plan on sipping champagne at various times during the day and on wearing purple.

For those of you who would like to give me a present or two, please consider a donation via PayPal or a gift certificate to Amazon.com. No gifts are necessary, however, just keep dropping by.

And may the day be peaceful for all of us.

I Am Just Saying

I've been thinking about my little trip to Milwaukee for my mother's funeral. Yes, it was a sad time, but it also had some very positive elements. I got to see things I hadn't seen in over 40 years: robins and cardinals and fire flies and a little league game where the parents of the 11-year-olds playing were noisy but well-behaved. I had frozen custard from Murph's in Waukesha and a fish fry on Friday night. And I got time to spend with my extended family, a key part of my growing-up years.

Now, with the exception of my younger sister (who makes me look like a centrist), my family is fairly conservative, both fiscally and socially. I stayed with a cousin and her husband, along with my sister and brother-in-law, and we engaged in some political talk. I have to tell you, I learned a few things from those two Midwestern conservatives just by listening.

Fred, my cousin's husband is a retired cop (Milwaukee PD) who had to take a disability retirement because of heart problems. He is a real conservative, but he's no dummy. One morning, over coffee, he and I tentatively talked about the economy, tentatively because we are fond of each other. I told Fred that what we need is a jobs program, and he agreed. He did, however, point out where Presidents Bush and Obama really screwed most of us over.

"Instead of giving all that money to the banks and General Motors, the feds should have given each American family $50,000. Yes, they would have paid off some of their debt, but they also would have been able to buy things. Things like washing machines and clothes and a dinner out. That would have meant that Sears would have had to hire another person for the appliance department and maybe the kids wear department. Restaurants could have hired another waiter and dishwasher. And that's just for starters."

Sound familiar?

Later in the morning, his wife Lynn (my cousin) and I sat out on their deck overlooking their beautiful backyard and continued the conversation. She said she'd had it with all the politicians.

"They're all crooked. All they care about is the money they get from the rich people and that means only the rich people get what they want. The middle class just gets screwed, even though we've worked hard and done everything we were told we had to do to be good citizens. I don't trust any of them."

Does that mean they'll vote for Obama and the Democrats in 2012? Oh, not hardly. What it might mean is that they won't vote at all, and that would be a shame, all things considered. Lynn and Fred are good people, people who are generous and loving, people who opened their home and their hearts to my sister and I when we both really needed it. They are like most of the people in the Midwest and in the rest of the country. Decent folks who have just had a very rude awakening.

I find I can't just write them off as stupid and and deserving of Scott Walker and hard times. What I want for them is what I want for me: a decent life, one lived with dignity and hope for them and for their children and grandchildren. I think both political parties have, however, written them off, just as they have written me off. It's time for us to try to find a way to reach out towards each other on the basis of all that we have in common so that we can restore some semblance of unity on all sorts of levels so that we can confront the inequities.

And then we need to clean house.

Seriously.