What Defines Patriotism?

Here I go, asking questions again, but everytime I listen to or read anything about Palin, my mind starts filling up with questions. I look for answers, I read, I research and while I find lots of other people's questions and concerns, I don't always find anwsers. During the VP debates last week did you really learn anything positive? I'm afraid I didn't. According to what Palin said in the debate with Joe Biden, if you’re in the middle class, in her neighborhood, it’s not patriotic to pay taxes. Say what??

Thomas Friedman of the NYT wrote a great column today about “Palin’s Kind of Patriotism” and he is surely as outraged as I am by such a statement. He writes that he wishes she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, then who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects – printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.”

He goes on to say, that he grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and his parents taught him that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I also agree with Mr. Friedman when he reminds us that our country is in serious trouble right now and like him I wonder if the people so ardently supporting Palin have any idea of just what serious trouble our country is in now?

According to him, we are in the middle of an economic perfect storm and we have no idea how much worse it is going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, no bank feels they can fully trust anyone they’re doing business with anywhere in the world. And it’s just the beginning.

Only good governance can save us right now and, according to Friedman, he isn’t sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.

It’s not even a question of whether or not John McCain has the stuff to be president, he is endangering this country by putting a total novice like Palin in a position to possibly have to steer us through the most serious economic crisis of our lives and that is total recklessness and the very opposite of conservative. Well, what about advisors? She can find those can’t she? And if they disagree, what happens then?

I also agree with Friedman when he says his biggest fear about Palin is the fact she is promoting our further dependence on oil, which means further dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia and that surely isn’t patriotic! Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy, not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. Friedman hasn’t heard of her having that kind of a plan. And needless to say, neither have I.

Words of Wisdom from Maya Angelou

I do like to pass on occasional words of wisdom when I hear them and these are some of the best.

I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

'I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things:a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.'

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life.

'I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.'

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Today's Two-Story Outhouse

A friend sent me a cartoon today, one that I’m sure some of you have seen, with a picture of a two-story outhouse – the second floor is designated for Politicians and the first floor for Voters. Hey, sounds about right to me these days! But I want to believe that Obama – you know, “that one” -- is one of us first floor users who is hoping to tear the whole thing down and build a one level house with an indoor bathroom.

What is it about “equality” that McCain and his bunch find so hard to deal with? I do feel that if (hopefully) McCain does lose he will realize that he is as much responsible as anyone for failing to live up to his own – or what use to be his own, personal standard of honor. He was defeated twice by George Bush because of the same kind of no-conscience campaigning and yet here he is running the same kind of campaign with help from one of the people that put him down – twice, Lee Atwater. Atwater, creative monster who helped Bush One defeat Michael Dukakis and McCain himself, with rumors that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock, black baby. And now McCain himself is using almost the exact same rhetoric against Obama. That Obama is one of those liberals who will raise your taxes, take away your guns, won’t protect the country, is a Harvard “elitist” and has a funny sounding name and is on the side of “The Black Man”! Mmmm sounds familiar to me. Surely, at some point McCain has to view his own tactics these days with disgust.

But instead he’s going right along with the same outrageous hype and has released Palin to do the same, only more. And while I do think that at one time John McCain had at least some sense of decency and morals, I can’t say I think the same about Palin who looks to be able to out Cheney, Cheney. Both she and McCain are doing everything in their power to vilify Obama, to picture him as “dangerous”, “dishonorable” and “too risky for America”. I ask you, considering the shape our country finds itself in today, are you really willing to give Republicans another chance? Are you really willing to continue having to use the bottom floor of the outhouse?

Tuesday's Debate

According to Ari Melber of The Nation, John McCain did not have the debate he needed on Tuesday night. The following is an article by him immediately following the debate tonight. I know The Nation is very liberal, guess that's why I like them, but I do agree with most of what he had to say

McCain's style was aggressive, disciplined and occasionally punchy. He heaped criticism on Barack Obama, blasting his record on taxes, health care and earmarks, and at one point derisively called the Democratic nominee "That One." McCain made over 14 references to the candidates' "records," pleading with voters to put aside Obama's words and inspect his history.
McCain's policy rhetoric was populist, reformist and sometimes contrarian. He floated the name of Obama backer Warren Buffet as a potential Treasury Secretary, and pledged that his administration would swiftly "buy up" all "the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes." (Obama's rapid response team immediately noted that the bailout bill already includes "authority" for the Treasury to buy residential and commercial mortgages.) After all the audience questions and Brokaw quips piled up, however, McCain still failed to upend the narrative. It's a major setback in a race that is trending towards Obama and running out of time.

While McCain attacked most of the night -- in spite of the intimate, town hall setting -- Obama stuck to a crisper, measured tone. He still returned fire when necessary, counter-punching a financial attack by noting that "McCain's campaign chairman's firm was a lobbyist on behalf of Fannie Mae." Obama swiftly pivoted, however, to addressing the economy from a regular voter's perspective. "But, look, you're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers. What you're interested in is trying to figure out, how is this going to impact you?" Then he touted his plans to "strengthen" home buyers and advance regulation instead of the free market fundamentalism that ruled over the past "eight years."

I think Obama's best moment came when he reprised McCain's attack from the last debate. "Sen. McCain, in the last debate and today, again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand," he said firmly. "I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment. When Sen. McCain was cheerleading the president to go into Iraq, he suggested it was going to be quick and easy, we'd be greeted as liberators," he explained, concluding, "That was the wrong judgment, and it's been costly to us."

Before the debate had even ended, the Republican National Committee was already spinning a disappointing night for McCain. In the 10pm hour, an RNC spokesperson sent reporters a post by Politico's Ben Smith, "Not really a town hall," complaining about the format.

More Jobs, Now!

Okay, so much for lovely memories, it's back to ugly reality and reality seems to be the one thing this country has been avoiding, but we can’t continue to pull the shades over our eyes for much longer. Banks and brokerage houses are failing all around us. Trillions of dollars in bailout money has been added to the nation’s debt burden, families too numerous to count are being driven from their homes. Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics – like good jobs, the primary component of a sustainable family life. But our economy is never going to be anywhere near what it needs to be until this country figures out how to provide work at a decent pay for at least most of the men and women who want to work.

The amount of debt for the typical middle-income family, earning about $45,000, grew by a third from 2001-2004, according to the Center for American Progress. The reason for all this added debt was the rising cost of housing, higher education, health care and transportation. At the same time, wages grew just slightly, if at all. It’s going to take more than work, obviously and don’t even ask about the debt burden of the federal government.

The fact is that there haven’t been enough good paying jobs to sustain what most working Americans view as an adequate standard of living and that is the fundamental flaw in the U.S. economic system. This latest financial meltdown has created widespread outrage over the excessive compensation of top executives, so where have we been??? The rich have been running the table for the better part of the last 30 to 40 years! The earnings of the average men in their 30s have remained almost flat for the past four decades, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Accordingly, disaster was avoided by the wives and mothers entering the workplace and by embracing huge amounts of debt for everything from home mortgages, cars, clothing and vacations to food, college tuition and medical expenses. And guess what? The middle-class and working families are up against the wall and the only way to continue financing a reasonable quality of life is through a paycheck. But nearly 160,000 jobs were lost in September alone. More than three-quarters of a million have vanished over the past nine months.

According to people who know a lot more than I do, the economy won’t be saved by bailing out Wall Street and waiting for that day that never comes, when the benefits trickle down to ordinary Americans. It won’t be saved until we get serious about putting vast numbers of Americans back to work in jobs that are reasonably secure and pay a sustaining wage.

We have a lot of rebuilding to do; we need to put more of us to work rebuilding our country’s collapsing infrastructure, revitalize the public school system, working to create more energy self-sufficiency and try, for a change, to do a re-take on an economy that still leans strongly in favor of the rich.

Now, let’s hear the politicians talk about that for a while and stop the name calling and slander, the “it’s all about” me and “he’s the bad guy” crap and start working together to redeem this country before it’s too late – for us – you know, the guys at the bottom of the pole!

Old Photographs and Memories

I received a letter from a cousin of mine today and enclosed were a handful of old family photos that she had found going through some albums. There were several of my parents and aunts and uncles over the last several years of their lives, but the two on the bottom were the surprise. It was me at eleven years old, wearing a long dress, sitting on a stool in front of one of those big old radios -- remember those? It was taken on February 14, 1945 and on the back of the photo my mother had written that I was going to a valentine party that night at a little club I belonged to and that I was elected Queen of Hearts that night.

I wish I could say I remember the event vividly, but I actually have very few memories of my childhood. It wasn't a particularly happy time except for when the pilots, stationed at the air base near my hometown, and their wives lived with us during the war -- a time I wrote a post about not long ago. As it happened, the dress I'm wearing in the photo was the same one I wore when I was a member of the wedding of one of the pilots. That I remember vividly. Strange what memories stay tucked away in your mind, while others were lost somewhere along the way.

I hadn't seen any of my cousins in nearly forty years when we finally got together again a little over three years ago at my son's house in Dallas, Texas. There are only six of us left, one was unable to make it, but the other four came with wives and husbands from various parts of Texas. My son had just bought his house and I had told them that while it was a great house, he had no furniture to speak of. So, they all brought lawn chairs and coolers and photo albums. We spread out in his big empty den off the kitchen and proceeded to look back over the past forty years. It was marvelous fun!

When I married my children's father, whom as many of you know by now, is black, a couple of my aunts and uncles refused to have me in their house. Now it seemed the time had come to put all that stuff behind us and be the family we had once been. They were impressed with my son -- of course they would be! he's wonderful! We took pictures and laughed and looked old photo albums, ate pizza, toasted the day with a bottle of champagne and it was quite late before they left for their hotel.

We stay in very close touch these days -- of course, email makes that easy, but I'm so grateful we had that opportunity to reunite. Since then the husband of one of my cousins died the next year of pancreatic cancer. About the same time the cousin I use to spend every summer with at our grandmother's house was diagnosed with breast and liver cancer. She's holding on and is amazingly brave.

So, it's been a nostalgic evening, with good memories and sad ones, but the good ones, the lovely ones are the ones to hold on to and we'll all weather the sad ones. Times like these help to put things in perspective. Helps you to realize that the politics will come and go, the country will survive and it is up to each of us to make the very best of our lives, each hour and each day, to enjoy our chilren and families and to let them know just how much they are loved.

So, for tonight I shall push all the grim news of the day, the politics, the doubts, the fears for the future, into the space under the stairway, put on some music, look at the pictures again and remember and be grateful and toast my family with a glass of wine.

Beautiful Summer Memories

It was a lovely summer, time spent with good friends and family, lovely trips, new adventures.

And I would like to share them with you from a seaplane flight, to Pike's Market, the Dahlia Festival, Orcas Island. Some with family, friends, pictures shared by friends of their adventures.

These are the memories, the pleasures that get us through the difficult times we are all experiencing now. I try to focus on the good -- I'm not always successful, but these help.

Sarah Palin unleashed by John McCain for attacks on Barack Obama - US elections

Sarah Palin was deployed by John McCain as his election "attack dog" at the weekend as the race for the White House entered its final month.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
UK Telegraph

Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of 'palling around with terrorists who would target their own country' Photo: AFP / GETTY Mr. McCain's aides had kept Mrs Palin, 44, under wraps as much as possible, beginning to fear she might become a liability. But fresh from an assured performance in the vice-presidential debate, and with Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, surging ahead in the opinion polls, Mr McCain threw caution to the wind and ordered that Mrs Palin, 44, attack his White House rival repeatedly and ferociously.

Let off the leash on Saturday, Mrs Palin accused Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country" in a reference to him once being a member of a Chicago community group with William Ayers. The former member of the Weather Underground was last active in the domestic terrorist group during the presidential candidate's childhood.

She added: "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."
The Obama campaign responded that Mrs Palin's attack was "gutter politics" and other supporters suggested that the McCain campaign was merely trying to distract voters from the economy, on which Mr Obama is deemed to be more competent.

However, more worrying for Mr McCain is that her first pitbull-like assault on Mr Obama appeared yesterday to have backfired spectacularly as Democrats queued up to dish electoral dirt on Mr McCain.

They believe that John Kerry lost to George W. Bush in 2004 because he did not respond strongly enough to Republican attacks. But they do not intend to stand idly by this time.

Paul Begala, a leading Democratic strategist, said that Mr McCain had been on the board of a group for ultra-conservatives that was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as being a forum "for extremists, racists and anti-Semites".

"Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain's record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face," said Mr Begala.

The Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel warned there was plenty of ammunition to launch against Mr McCain if the race soured further.

"If we are going to go down this road, you know, Barack Obama at eight years old somehow responsible for Bill Ayers. At 58, John McCain was associating with Charles Keating." Keating, a lawyer and banker, was jailed for his role in a savings and loan scandal in the 1980s.

Mrs Palin joked at the Republican convention that the difference between a hockey mom - a title she proudly proclaims - and a pitbull was just "lipstick".

Make-Believe Maverick

I would urge you to read this although it is indeed disturbing. Particularly, when you think that this man could end up in the White House as president of this country.


http://www.truthout.org/100508A
Thursday 16 October 2008
by: Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.

Searching for a Light at the End of the Tunnel

That’s what I felt like I was doing this morning – I didn’t find it. Instead there were more horror stories as the Dow fell below ten thousand. I usually try to post something humorous in the middle of the day and in the evening, as a way to wind down the day, something of beauty with pictures from around our great country. I could find no humor this morning, the skies are gray and I’ll have to look harder for those beautiful pictures for this evening. What I did find was this article by Roger Cohen, Op-Ed columnist for the NYT, obviously my favorite paper. As I looked at the title I wondered how he was going to connect Kipling and Palin in any sense of the word. But he does it, although it surely didn’t brighten my day any. But it’s a great piece nevertheless and makes you wonder if Kipling was, indeed, able to look into the future.

Kiplin’ vs. Palin
By ROGER COHEN
Repeat after me: pigs can’t fly. Repeat after me: if you don’t work you die. Repeat after me: fire will certainly burn.

Perhaps these truths seem self-evident. But let’s face it, the whole Wall Street debacle, with its cost of some $700 billion to generations of Americans, was based on the fathomless human ability to disregard facts and believe in cloud-cuckoo-land.

Risk no longer existed. The penniless could afford a $200,000 house. Real estate prices could only rise. Securities full of toxic loans would prove benign. Debt was desirable, leverage lovely, greed great. Two and two made five. The moon was a balloon and streets were lined with gold.
How could it happen? That outraged question springs now to everyone’s lips. But from Dutch tulips to Californian dotcoms, great heists have happened and will again. No flight from reality is as sweet as the illusion that money grows on trees.

A friend wrote suggesting I take a look at Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” in the light of current events. Written in 1919, when Kipling was 53, in an England drained by the Great War, which had taken the life of his teenage son, the poem makes sobering reading.

A copybook was a school exercise book used to practice handwriting. At the tops of pages, proverbs and sayings (like “Stick to the Devil You Know”) appeared in exemplary script to be copied down the page by pupils. The truisms were called “copybook headings.”

The poem begins:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
And what are the qualities of these “Gods of the Copybook Headings?”

The fourth verse sets them out.

With the hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

The seventh verse reads:

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul:
But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Truth, in short, confronts delusion and utopia.

Kipling is not much in fashion these days, other than for his children’s books. For a politically correct age, he speaks too bluntly of the world’s — and empire’s — cruel ironies. But his vivid evocation of war’s horror, man’s hypocrisy, illusion’s price and power’s passing make him important in this pivotal American moment.

As it happens — life’s ironies — I was reading Kipling after watching the vice-presidential debate, or more precisely Sarah Palin, the winking “Main-Streeter” from Wasilla. And the words of hers that rang in my ears were:

“One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say ‘Never Again.’ Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those managing our money and loaning us these dollars.”

Huh?

I’m sorry, Governor Palin, words matter. Life has its solemn lessons. “Never Again” is a hallowed phrase. It’s applicable not to the loss of a mortgage, but to the Holocaust and genocide.
According verbal equivalency to a $60,000 loan and six million murdered Jews, or 800,000 slaughtered Rwandans, is grotesque. Perhaps Palin didn’t mean it, but that’s no less serious. The world’s gravity escapes her.

Not Kipling, who wrote in “Epitaphs of the War” (1914-1918):

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
I wonder, after the lying and the dead of the Bush Administration, in the midst of the wars, in the face of 760,000 lost jobs, is Palin’s offer of a “little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street” enough?

“The Gods of the Copybook Headings” ends:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Palin, Mainstreeter that she is, loves to drop her g’s, so she’d no doubt call the poet Kiplin’. She might have asked, with that wink, to call him “Rud.”

That’s cutesy politics. But pigs still don’t have wings. The world’s still a dangerous place. It’s time for copybook realists in the White House.