Indignant Republicans

Listening to the Republicans rant about how Mr. Romney is going to return our nation to fiscal sanity, after the Obama 4-year misfortune seems a bit like watching a Disney fantasy film. Their chosen strategy to gain power is always the same. You create a train wreck; then you will the train wreck to the Democrats; then you blame all the resulting wreckage on the hapless Dems.
Electing Romney, a 0.1%'er from the world of finance that delivered this particular train wreck of an economy to the nation and, in fact, to the world, is going to put us back on track. What are they smoking?
It is especially galling to listen to them prattle on about their fiscal bonafides. Excuse me??? George W. Bush and his republican horde tried to run two wars, one of which was clearly illegal, with no money, after having given the biggest tax return to the wealthiest in the nation's history, with the net result of the largest deficits in our history. Not only did they give us the largest deficits, but they then set about to prevent--actively sabotage--any effort by Obama to correct the disastrous course they charted. Remember Mitch McConnell . . . the guy who declared that his sole objective was defeating Obama, apparently by any means possible?  The best thing you can say about the republicans is that, they do their masters' bidding. When their wealthy overlords speak, they sit up and listen.
So, Chris Christy promises us that, if we only elect Mr. Romney, he will deliver jobs and prosperity to the American people.
People, if you believe that line, have I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn . . .

Ryanisms

So, I understand that Mr. Ryan is a great fan of Ayn Rand. I know that really the entire fascist wing of the Republican party--aka the teabaggers--loves Rand.  So, I was thinking that, as long as Mr. Ryan loves post-apocalyptic fantasy literature, maybe he should look into Mad Max and the Road Warrior as a guide to his visionary thinking processes. Perhaps Mr. Ryan sees himself as a Mel Gibson wannabe. I mean, the resemblance is striking.
But on the issue of budgeting, it does seem to me that, while fantasy literature might be ok for the VP to engage in to help give him a personality, perhaps a fifth grade math education might be a better preparation for his role as the ticket's fiscal conservative, especially since his budgets don't exactly add up to a balanced budget. Maybe he never learned "old peoples' math", and is too hung up on "new math", you know, the kind nobody really understands, unless they're fifth graders.
So, moving right along, Paul, let's hear you say it again:
"Let'm eat cake"
Hey, your Wife's name isn't Marie, is it???

Eliminating Medicare & SSA

So, Paul Ryan it is. And what is he best known for-- Elimination of Medicare. Now, see, he denies that. He says that he is simply attempting to open the program to “competition” in order to reduce its cost. Because we know that competition has worked out so well in the health insurance business.  I wonder whether Mr. Ryan is also going to include an identical voucher program for Congressional health insurance?  No, hmmm, isn’t that a surprise? I’m guessing that he also isn’t interested in capping/reducing the salary and retirement benefits for incumbent Congress-people to approximate, say, teachers.

Mainly, from what I can see, Mr. Ryan simply wishes to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in order to focus on his top priority--supporting the wishes of his owners. The first step is to replace the programs with “vouchers”, forcing people onto the prospective rolls of private insurers, who may or may not elect to insure them (remember pre-existing conditions??).  I’m not sure what he plans to do with Social Security. One thing republicans always like to propose is to “means-test” social security. See, that’s step 1 to eliminating it. First, you make it a program for the “less-well off.” Then you label it welfare. Then you refuse to increase the benefits to track cost of living. Then you place it in the care of someone like Michelle Bachman. Then you simply let it dry up on the vine.

So, Mr. Ryan is also now suggesting that Dems and the Prez refuse to do anything about the huge deficits created as a result of the republican tax cuts for the wealthy, the republican wars, and the republican-inspired recession that now resembles the one that occurred under Mr. Hoover, another standout republican.  I wonder whether Mr. Ryan voted for or against the Bush tax cuts? And I wonder whether Mr. Ryan voted for or against that war in Iraq—remember Iraq??? The war that Shrub didn’t have to start, but did, and that Obama ended?? That war?? And I wonder how Mr. Ryan reacted to all the gutting of the nation’s regulatory structure? And I wonder whether Mr. Ryan believes in global warming and its man-made origins—love to hear his conversations with the Koch bro’s on that one.

This will make a more interesting race than I had thought. A man of the rich party allied with a man who overwhelmingly supports the party of the rich. So, if Mr. Romney is, say, in the 0.1% group, maybe Mr. Ryan aspires to the 1% group. And we could call them the 1.1%’ers.  And for the rest, or maybe what’s left of the middle class and the lower classes . . .

“let’m eat cake”

Losing People

During the mid-1970s, my wife and I felt besieged. We had managed to surround ourselves with a nice group of friends in Suburban DC. We entertained them and they entertained us frequently. Dinner parties were common and great fun. We actually enjoyed one another and talk was fast and furious. Then, the world began to change. Maybe it was a hangover from the 60’s, maybe it was the ongoing war. Maybe it was just the 70’s. But one by one, we began losing our friends to divorce. One couple after another suddenly decided that they were not going to remain together. Sometimes they had found someone else. But mostly, they just decided that they didn’t want to be together any longer. Mostly, the divorcing couples had no kids, but a few did.  We felt like we were under attack. We continued to love and cherish one another, but this blizzard of divorces always seemed a threat.

Well, we survived. The broken couples all moved on and mostly we lost contact.

Now, fast forward to the present. We are older now, much older. And now, we are once again losing people, this time because they are dying.  I know, I know. Dying is one of those things that happen eventually to everyone.  Still, it feels threatening, in ways that exceed that which occurred during our friends-divorcing phase of life.

No one quite prepares you for this kind of thing.

But one of the things I am discovering is that, whereas I seem to suffer from compassion fatigue, my wife of now 57 years, seems to get stronger with this phenomenon. Her compassion seems to be growing in amazing ways. She calls people—the afflicted and the survivors-- daily, often more frequently. She offers them advice, solace, warmth, love. They respond in kind.

Perhaps this is one of those defining characteristics, in which women are simply better than men.  All I know is that I remain quite in awe at this endless capacity she displays for spreading warmth and love to people at or near the end of their lives. I know that not everyone can do such things, not all women and certainly not all men. I don’t know if she is unique in this regard, but it does seem so.  And the world is a better place because of her capacity and her willingness to spread this love and warmth to others at a time of need.

Quite beautiful.

Mitt the Dumbster

OK, now he has gone from being a buffoon in Britain, to a potentially dangerous idiot, every bit worthy of our past President Stupidhead.  Pronouncing to the world that we will support fully Israel, should Netanyahu decide to bomb, invade, or otherwise commit organized mayhem in/to Iran, seems both dangerous and terminally stupid.  Aren’t our leaders supposed to do things like consult with other national leaders, and even perhaps our allies before deciding to engage in war with someone with whom we are not already at war??? And committing us to support Netanyahu??? The world’s loosest loose cannon?  Wow, Mr. Romney, you give us new evidence that those who make their money in the loosey-goosey world of high finance are not the brightest lights on the planet . . . as though we needed more evidence.

So, if this trip is Mr. Romney’s big advance plan to convince the American voting public that he is better prepared for international diplomacy than our current Prez, guess what? You get a failing grade Mitt. You have placed yourself firmly within the group with whom you were running earlier—ya know, Crazy Michelle, and Sarah Bimbo.

Maybe had you ever actually worked for a living, instead of riding on the coattails of your rich daddy, you might have picked up some awareness of the world around you. And perhaps, had you ever engaged in manual labor for an hourly wage, you wouldn’t have turned out to be such a dickhead.

So, why don’t you go home to one of your seventeen houses, or houseboats and suck up a dozen vodka martini’s and get your ass off the world’s stage. Leave the business of international diplomacy to people who actually know whereof they speak.

Ethics

I wonder when business ethics became an oxymoron? Every day now, we are treated to some fresh piece of information pointing to scoundrels engaged in business, acting badly. We went into the F&M bank yesterday, a local bank, headquartered in Salisbury, NC. When they inquired how they might help us, I said, “Well, we would like to open a new account with you. We have been thinking that we would prefer to have a bank that is not part of a criminal enterprise. “ See, we have been banking with HSBC and generally, we were quite happy with our banking relationship. I was especially pleased when its name did not appear in the growing US banking scandals, and again at first did not appear in the LIBOR scandals. But then it hit. HSBC has been laundering money for the Mexican drug families, including setting up accounts in offshore locations. Nice. Our bank is acting as the mob bag man.  So, we decided to switch banks. We tried to avoid any connection with the global guys—BofA, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, since we know they have no ethics.  We are only mildly familiar with the F&M Bank, but our hope is that they still maintain something of the old community-minded banking ethic.  We don’t shop at Wal-Mart because they are huge and seem predatory, much like the global banks. Increasingly, we try to spend our money on local institutions—our food, as many of our other purchases as possible in this increasingly global world (including always looking for something actually made in the USofA, rather than China), and our services. Think small has become our mantra. Small is good. Big is bad. “Too Big to Fail” means too big to exist.

But is bigness per se really to blame for the absence of ethics among our senior executives of businesses? Somehow, commercial entities have grown apart from their customer base. When they seem to care, it almost always is a charade.  But why, I keep asking? Was it always like that? Maybe I am just getting really old. I think that businessmen used to have actual ethics and practiced it.  I know that the Rupert Murdoch’s of the world—total sociopaths—have always existed, but they represented aberrant behavior. The old “rotten fish in the barrel” seemed more accurate. Now, it just seems a joke (on us).  The Penn State mess seems typical of the problem. Protecting the Franchise was viewed as simply more important than protecting the kids—the Catholic Church line of thinking.

On the other hand, maybe bigness is a major contributor. Perhaps, the more distant executives get from their customers and from the people whose lives they touch, the easier it is to rationalize away their criminal behavior.  When bankers joke about manipulating interest rates in order to increase their pocket change, and their own internal systems either fail or are simply missing in action, perhaps those entities should be shut down. Whenever I hear some business entity whining about some regulation, I think, “maybe you need to get a real job. Shut up and quit whining, or you will need to go out of business.” Perhaps had the Catholic Church forced its pedophilic priests to enter jail cells, they might have been able to hang on to some of their moral standing.  Perhaps if Joe Paterno had arranged to send his buddy to prison ten years ago, a lot of kids would have been spared a lifetime of grief.

And perhaps somewhere pigs are flying, hell is freezing over, and the moon really is made of green cheese . . .

A Good Woman

Another good woman has passed from us. She was known mostly to her friends and family, a good woman by any definition. Her name, Edythe Schmidt. She was born into a large Italian-American family, living in Long Island, New York. She was the youngest of her siblings.  She and my brother married, oh so many years ago, over 60.  Just when we begin to believe it can go on forever, she was taken from us. She died in the loving arms of her daughters, much as we all might wish for our final exit from the stage called life.

Edythe loved and cared for her family all of her life, first as a loving daughter and sister, then as a mom.  Often we celebrate the famous people. But it is the ordinary people we need to celebrate—the folks who get up in the morning, and do what needs to be done for the children.  That was Edythe.

When Edythe and her hubby, my dear brother, were married 50 years, we penned an homage to them both. Now they are both gone, but our memories of them are intact. The words below still capture the wonder of this couple and their relationship with this world we call life.

 

Tribute to Bill & Edythe

On Attaining the Age of the Married Superstars

You must know by now that you are a special couple.

Because you are perfect?????

Nah . . .

Because you somehow learned how to transcend all of the big and little events, annoyances, and outrages that life serves up to married couples.

Just think.

When you were married Dwight D. Eisenhower was poised to take over the Presidency.

You’ve stayed married long enough to observe

The lunacy of this young century.

When you were first married,

You had to work and become educated 18 hours a day.

Edythe had to wash dishes by hand

Change real diapers for baby Claudia

And nurse baby Diane through some trying times.

You’ve graduated from an old beat-up Chevrolet

Which you used to drive your baby brother and his girl friend

To her home, so they could neck in the back seat.

Now you worry about the possibility of your grandchildren driving in the near future.

You cared for your children, your parents and even some grandparents

You even survived Long Island.

 We Love you both.

You’re an inspiration to your family

Your friends

And even, I imagine, to yourselves.

When you scratch your heads, and silently ask,

How did we do that? 

You already know the answer.

Because you wanted to

Needed to

Demanded to

Experience a long and wonderful marriage. 

May the next 50 be even happier than the first 50. 

Much Love

Richard & Carol 

 They didn’t make 50 more years, only some ten.  But their life was full, because they extracted the juices of goodness from each morsel served up to them.  Our memories remain full of their life. We loved them then. We love them now. Perhaps they know it, perhaps not. But they both knew the full measure of love given by a grateful family, grateful for all the goodness they delivered to us all.

May you rest in peace, dear Edythe. Your life was full and good.