I read a hilarious piece by David Sedaris in The New Yorker earlier this week.  He was asking how anyone could possibly still be undecided.  He compared the election to food service on an airplane.  On the one hand, you could have chicken, on the other something really foul with glass ground in it.  He said that the undecideds at this point are the people who would look at the two choices and then ask, “How was the chicken prepared?”

It’s a funny essay. 

But I have a lot of sympathy for the pain of the undecideds.  I’m an undecided and they have about 35 times as many minutes/hours to make up their minds as I have.  They have so much time left, they could spend vast amounts of it drinking a beer, sleeping in a hammock, or well, doing anything they want.  They have the luxury of time left in which they may yet avoid having to make a decision.  They can wake up on Tuesday and if they are still undecided they can pick up a voters guide and thoughtfully reflect upon the candidates and issues as they make their way to the polls. 

I have no such assistance.

Tonight at midnight my options will have expired and I will have to either do it or not. 

Of course, I’m talking about NaNo.  And no, I still don’t know. 

What I do know is that with my schedule the only possible way I could complete NaNo this year would be to spend every Saturday closeted with my computer writing from Sunup to Sundown.  I only have 1 half-baked premise for a book.  No outline, no index cards, no opening scene envisioned …

You know, there’s a great tradition among American writers of turning to alcohol and I’m beginning to understand why.  The pain of indecision is intense.  If I feel this way about something so relatively unimportant to greater mankind as whether I’ll start my next book tomorrow, how must it feel to know that you could be one of the 1,000 or fewer people who decide the fate of the free world. 

Happy Halloween.

For my costume today, I was a VooDoo Witch/Sorceress/Priestess – whatever.  I collected a shelf of potions with such titles as “Blood from a Turnip”, “Oil of Fair Isaac”, and “Wool of Bat Bum”.  I wore my Mardi Gras mask, my purple feather boa, beads, black cape, and my purple stilettos.  Oh yes, and impossibly long and garish purple eyelashes.  I love wearing the fake eyelashes.  I only do it on Halloween, but I may start doing it more often because it’s just FUN. 

… I know, because I go shopping with her and I don’t let her buy funny looking clothes.

Tucker’s therapist was trying to get him to answer the question of when it might be appropriate to tell a little white lie.  She suggested that perhaps he might be tempted to spare my feelings if I was wearing something that didn’t look good on me. 

After the session, she was telling me how it had gone, and then she had to look at me and ask, “Is it true?  These outfits you wear … does he pick them out?”

Okay, the kid knows what he likes.  My bff says that I look like a “Mom.”  Its said with a certain affection, although from time to time I wish I looked a little more glamorous. 

Last night Tucker shows me a PowerPoint that he did for his Infotech.  It was all about him.  He had slides describing his favorite subject, his favorite passtimes, and the person he admires most.  He picked his Mom. 

Oh, yeah.  I’m bragging.  He said, “She’s kind, she cooks really good, and she pays our bills on time and teaches me how to handle my money.”

It’s okay with me that I look like a Mom. 

Okay, I came out of the closet last night (as if) with my liberal condition.  And now, it seems that I have an irresistible compulsion to state the obvious on other fronts as well.

There is a place (don’t freak out) there is a place WITHIN the United States where resources are held collectively.  Where private business doesn’t purchase them, but leases them from the residents and then pays enough for these leases that every man, woman, and child gets an annual payment.  Now, I may be wrong, it’s been minutes and minutes since I looked up the Communist Manifesto, but isn’t that the very definition of Socialism? 

Wouldn’t you think that the Governor of the State – the ONLY State in the country that has this arrangement – no income tax, just handouts – wouldn’t you think that particular Governor would hesitate just a LITTLE before going out and calling anybody else a Socialist? 

You know, if I were a socialist, I’d probably be impressed that her administrative experience has been in that sort of organization.

However, I keep thinking about experience and how the McCain campaign has talked about McCain’s time in the Senate administering … his staff?  of what … 30?  Max?  They talk about Palin’s administrative experience as mayor of a town with fewer residents than my son’s middle school.  And then we have Obama, who’s managed to run a disciplined campaign for two years administering a staff of thousands with offices … well over a hundred in Florida alone.  It’s kind of late and the math whiz in my house has already gone to bed, so I’m not going to try to add it all up, but I think that again, if I were the McCain/Palin ticket I wouldn’t be inviting people to take too close a look at the differences between us and HIM.

I feel that if I don’t say what I’m thinking I might just explode.  Not the funny kind of exploding like what happened with my bra a few weeks ago.  I did tell you about that right?  I was on my way to work when all of a sudden “S P R O I N G” the underwire in my bra exploded out.  Now, if that’s not an argument for breast reduction surgery, I don’t know what is. 

But in the end that was kind of funny. 

Here’s what’s not funny.  The letter from Focus on the Family.  As I read it, I thought of another letter that’s been held in affection by Christians for half a century or more. 

In C S Lewis Christian Classic, The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a senior demon writes advising his nephew, Jr demon Wormwood, on how to subvert his “patient”, a human who has sadly gone over to the side of the Enemy (God). 

Screwtape tells Wormwood to keep his patient stirred up.  Keep him afraid.  

“WE want a man hag-ridden by the Future — haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth — ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other — dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see…”  Or to borrow a line from an old song, “to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause …”

The letter from Focus begins with a future Christian, from the year 2012, looking back over the past four years with tears over the loss of personal and religous freedoms under the Presidency of Barack Obama.  It goes on to blame younger Christians for voting him in.  And that’s only the first paragraph.

There are pages which follow in which we are warned that homosexuality will dominate our culture, sex education will be forced upon first graders, abortion rates will skyrocket, child pornography will become protected speech, gun owners will have their weapons taken away, gas will be $7 a gallon, Israel will be the victim of a nuclear attack from Iran, The US will suffer attacks from terrorists in multiple cities resulting in hundreds of dead, preaching the Bible will be banned as hate speech …

In another passage from Screwtape, the senior demon advises the younger to keep his patient flipping back and forth between extemes of pride and humility but warns him, “But don’t try this for too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.”

The Focus letter is so over the top that it’s almost certain to have that kind of affect in the end. 

But here’s what I’m thinking, the letter as crazy and fear-based as it is, attempts an appeal to a segment of the population almost certain to feel threatened at this point. There are people who seriously believe that “liberals hate real Americans that work, and achieve, and believe in God.”

Well, I have news for them, some of us who work very hard, honor achievement, and believe in God are also Liberals.  I am a Liberal in part because of my faith in God.  I believe in separation of Church and State because my faith says that the State will not save me.  I’m all in favor of deer hunting, God knows in Southern Arkansas where I grew up, women start counting down the days from the 5th of July until the (mostly) men will head to the woods for a week of sitting around the campfire, eating chili, farting, and refusing to take a bath because everyone knows that the smell of soap will warn off a deer.  It gives us a chance to get everything all clean and pretty for the holiday season.  I’m not in favor of selling automatic weapons to people with a history of mental disturbance.  (Va Tech anyone?)  I have worked on both sides of the predatory lending fence and I believe that when fast talking, smooth operating, thieves are able to devise a contract that I can’t understand well enough to know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, they need to be regulated and reined in. 

I believe that Free Speech does not mean that people can shout “fire” in a crowded theater; slander, lie, and libel their neighbors; or incite hatred.  Free Speech means that in the market place of ideas, no one can be excluded merely because his or her ideas are unpopular.  It does not mean that any and every crackpot has a right to be heard, believed, or even tolerated.  Just that we don’t persecute harmless crackpots (yes, it’s a line from Beauty and the Beast). 

As you read the Focus letter, I want you to ask yourself one thing, What would Terri do?  For some of you, I’m the only liberal you know, so I’m willing to be your measure of liberals.  Thinking about me, my kids, my devotion to fiscal responsibility and family, would *I* do the kinds of things that the Focus letter suggests?  Because that’s what Dr. Dobson is asking you to believe.  He’s asking you to accept the premise that the liberal perspective is … stupid, bumbling, and destructive in it’s single-minded pursuit of weirdness. 

As a Christian Liberal, I’d be offended if I didn’t feel such pity for the fear that must have driven the writer.  It makes me want to bake him a batch of warm oatmeal cookies, invite him for herbal tea, and give him a pair of birkenstocks and a tie-dye shirt. 

The Letter from 2012

So here’s what I’m thinking.  I logged in briefly to check the discussion on Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  (And has anyone else noticed that in 20 years, George Will has not aged at all?  He looks exactly the same!  So that was kind of creepy but not what I wanted to talk about.)

Listening to various pundits and talking heads and candidates and their probable appointees making statements of “fact” that I’ve known for weeks are either false or misleading made me wonder.  Has the existence of www.factcheck.org or www.snopes.com made a difference in this campaign?  Is part of the reason that the polls keep showing that “going negative” doesn’t work the fact that the independent electorate doesn’t have to take these statements at face value because they are so easily checked?  (Oh, and one of my favorite websites www.politifact.com.  They evaluate statements made by candidates and some of the email flying around the internet.  They tell you whether it’s based on any fact, and then they rate it “mostly true, half and half, mostly false, or Pants on Fire.”  I love that.  Pants on Fire … )

Last night I had a conversation with Miss Eva.  She and I both voted early yesterday and she wanted to talk about how I made my decisions.  Neither of us voted a straight ticket.  Both of us were more impressed by record than we were by position statements, but both of us had read those statements.  She doesn’t have internet access though and she had a lingering question about one of the candidates.  She wanted me to look it up and see what we could learn.  In the end, the information we found reinforced the decision she had already made, so she was happy.  But it just made me wonder.

Has the world of blogging and links to neutral sites that give information made a difference?  Do you use these sites?  Do you fact check the information you’re hearing?  Or do you react to the message based on how you feel about the messenger? 

I’d just love to learn that the nature of politics is changing because the bloggers of the world are fact-checking and forcing candidates to stick to the truth.  I know, it’s about like that commercial from a few years back where they outlined ever more unlikely scenarios and then ended with “and wouldn’t it be great if it came with a beer?  A really GREAT beer?”

Oh, and speaking of introducing alcohol to politics, there was a great video … let me see if I can find it …

Hmmmm, I couldn’t find an embeddable link, but I did find this http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27360049#27360049

Yeah, that’s what we need.  More beer in the political recipe!  And a live duck. 

Today is a politically charged day here in Albuquerque.  Senator McCain was here this morning giving a speech on the New Mexico Fairgrounds; Senator Obama will be here this evening on the UNM Campus.  Hilary Clinton was giving a speech this afternoon at 2 but I’m not sure where because I didn’t recognize the name of the town. 

I confess, I didn’t get know about the McCain rally until it was too late or I’d have dragged the kids there.  But I will be dragging them down to UNM tonight to hear Senator Obama. 

We headed out to vote today and I’m really glad we went early.  There was a line, but it wasn’t very long, the kids were able to come with me, and they got to ask questions about the process.  Michael asked more pertintent questions, Tucker mostly wanted to know if he could drag a chair over to sit down while I was filling in my ballot.  I’m very grateful for the League of Women Voters publication because the print on the ballot was just the titles of some of the initiatives and I’d have had no idea what I was voting for or against if I didn’t have that paper with me. 

It’s anyone’s guess how New Mexico will go.  Bush lost New Mexico to Al Gore in 2000 by 366 votes.  Less than 500.  It was close in 2004 as well, but with Bush winning over Kerry by about 6,000 it wasn’t quite as dramatic.  Both races were decided by fewer voters than are accounted for by the “margin for error” in the polls we hear so much about.  

No matter how it goes, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people around here and everywhere on November 5.  Having been on the receiving end of some “rubbing it in” when my candidate has been defeated in the past, I have a few suggestions for people on both sides.  Whoever wins, whoever loses, this is not about the ultimate triumph of good over evil.  We have candidates who represent two very different points of view, but there are aspects to recommend both sides. 

The only way we can move forward as a nation toward the ideals and values we all hold precious is if we understand that we have to work toward liberty and justice for all.  Even the people with whom we don’t agree.  So winners, look carefully at the perspective of those who’ve lost, don’t dismiss their fears, and don’t patronize them.

Losers, you aren’t without a voice even if your candidate lost.  One of the women in our Autism group reminded us by email this morning that regardless of who holds the office, we have access.  She has made appointments with Senators, Representative, State Legislators and Judges for years as an advocate for the Special Needs community.  It’s hard for anyone who hasn’t lived with the challenges of special needs to understand how to help so she expects that she will be answering a lot of questions and raising considerations if the officeholder isn’t aware of the nuances.  She’s been able to work with people on both sides of the aisle by approaching everything as a human issue, not a Democratic or Republican issue.

I’ve made no secret of my political leanings for President. 

I support Barack Obama.  The health care system of our nation has reached a point in which 1/6 of our population has no access to healthcare.  We need someone who will advocate for us.

Over the past 8 years, we’ve seen a complete 180 degree turning away from the Just War philosophy (which was first a theological position proposed by Augustine) which has served Western Civilization for 1700 years.  The only time we deviated from that position on any scale (before now) the deviation led to the shame of the Crusades.  We need someone who understands history and who can move us back to the higher ground.

We need someone who is willing to work on behalf of the 37 million people living in poverty.  That’s more than 10% of the population of the richest nation in the world (even AFTER the terrifying plunge of the stock market.)  We have people in this nation who go to bed hungry.  We have mothers who let the kids eat first and only eat what’s left over.  We have families who sleep in their car.  We have  people who skip doses of medication because they can’t afford their prescriptions.  We have to do better than this and I believe that Obama’s record shows that he not only has a deep understanding of these issues but that he has a willingness to act to address them.

We’ve experienced the greatest redistribution of wealth in our nation’s history over the past 10 years as people have been duped by unregulated industries into financial products, credit cards, and mortgages that promised what they could never deliver.  We need someone in the White House who understands and will ask for policies of regulation to safeguard the property and potential of everyone, not just the few at the top. 

We need someone in the White House with an old-fashioned understanding of human nature.  We don’t need any more Lord of the Flies mentality.  We don’t need any more social darwinism.  We don’t need any more decisions based upon the false hope that industries are capable or even motivated to regulate themselves.  (As Mr. Greenspan finally admitted when he testified before Congress this week.)  I believe that Barack Obama “gets it.” 

If you’re still undecided, I urge you to go to the websites of the Presidential candidates and read for yourselves what they have said their policies will be.   

Barack Obama          John McCain

(And btw, I have to say something about Sarah Palin’s policy speech yesterday.  She mocked funding fruit fly research.  That research has helped to isolate a possible genetic link to autism and offered promising lines of new information because fruit flies are like lab mice.  They reproduce so often that they make it possible to track genetic markers through multiple generations.  Anyone who claims to be a special needs advocate should know that before she stands up in front of a group of people and calls “pork” the very research that might one day provide the answers to some of our most heart-breaking human diseases and conditions.)

Only a few more days to decide, to vote, and to start living with the consequences. 

Are you ready?

I just posted this Madagascar 2 Widget for 500 credits; you can earn free credits too!

Is anyone else tired of the phrase “redistribution of wealth?”

We are on the tail end (I hope) of an era of massive redistribution of wealth.  It occurred over the past 6-10 years primarily as people were convinced to take the accumulated equity in their homes (the single largest source of “wealth” for Americans is the value of their home) and pledge that wealth over to large corporations as they refinanced again and again, driving up the cost of their homes while undermining the value of the properties in question. 

Wealth redistribution happens every day, every where.  When the gap between rich and poor grows wider, it’s not because those at the top managed to expand the pie that everyone’s trying to get a slice of, it’s because they managed to get their slice and a bit of yours too.

How many people think that’s a good policy for the economic health of the country?  Come on, you’re attending all those rallies shouting the charge of “Socialist!” against the candidate who has said it needs to change so I know you’re out there ….

Idiots.

Princeton Professor of Political Science, Larry M. Bartels has published Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age which compares the economic outcomes for people in different income groups under the various economic policies of the 57 years from 1948-2005.  His work is summarized by the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve in the following New York Times story on August 30.  Is History Siding with Obama’s Economic Plan?

It’s taken me a couple days to calm down enough to write about this so I’m sure that quite a few people who have said it better have already weighed in on this.  But I want to talk about what I thought/felt when McCain, during the presidential debate, did this little wriggling fingers “air quotes” around the phrase “the health of the mother” to mock Senator Obama’s position in answer to the question about overturning Roe v Wade.

The medical definition of abortion is “the premature ending of a pregnancy.”

By that definition, I’ve had 3 abortions.

2 spontaneous abortions in which for reasons known only to God, my body aborted the pregnancy and left me grieving. 

The 3rd case is one in which I and my Doctor chose to end the pregnancy.  I was not quite 8 months along.  I first developed pre-eclampsia and then the full-blown condition.  My blood pressure was running 160/110 and I was in imminent danger of stroke in spite of having religiously followed the Dr’s orders to be on complete bed rest for 2 months.  (Pre-eclampsia kills about 70,000 women worldwide each year, and the reason that number isn’t a whole lot higher is because modern medical practice gives women choices that they’ve never had before.) 

I entered the hospital on the day that O J Simpson was doing his surreal slow-motion run from the cops on national television.  I watched CNN with my face averted from the nurse who was administering the medication that would soften my cervix for the procedure to take place the next day. 

The next morning my Dr. asked me if I was ready and then she broke my water. 

Six hours later, Michael Caleb was born.

He was tiny, and he wasn’t in great shape.  The doctor took my husband aside and explained to him that I was still in danger of dying from stroke and outlined exactly what would have to be done to give me and my son the best chance of survival.  And we followed her orders. 

My story has a happy ending as do the stories of many women across this country every day who have to choose to either continue a pregnancy at great risk to themselves and their babies, or “aborting”. 

When Senator McCain made that mocking gesture, it was a slap in my face.

I believe that going on and on about overturning Roe v Wade is a dangerous distraction that enables politicians to cloak themselves in the garb of righteousness while doing nothing to actually change anything. 

If we are going to see a reduction in “birth-control” abortions, we are going to have to address the conditions that prompt women to make that choice. 

The most common reasons that teens and young women choose to have
an abortion include:

• Awareness that they are not mature enough to
  have a child.
• Knowledge that they are financially not able to
  support or care for a child.
• Concern that having a baby would
  change their lives and compromise their (and a child’s) future-many young
  mothers don’t ever manage to get the education and employment necessary to
  raise their child above the poverty line.

The most common reasons women consider abortion are:

• Birth control (contraceptive) failure. Over
  half of all women who have an abortion used a contraceptive method during the
  month they became pregnant.
• Inability to
  support or care for a child.
• To end an unwanted
  pregnancy.
• To prevent the birth of a child with birth defects or
  severe medical problems.
• Pregnancy resulting from rape or
  incest.
• Physical or mental conditions that endanger the woman’s health if
  the pregnancy is continued.

If we are going to make a difference, we need to stop talking and start working.  We are going to have to make it possible for young women to get medical care.  (Do you wonder how many of the 45 million uninsured Americans might become pregnant this year?)  We are going to have to make it possible for them to continue their education even if they are mothers.  We are going to have to make it possible for them to have employment that will enable them to support themselves and their child(ren).  We are going to have to create affordable, safe, housing options. 

When Barack Obama pointed to the fact that the Democratic Platform includes a call for policies and practices that will address these things, he was talking about actually doing something to make a difference.  When Senator McCain mocked a woman’s “health” he showed a contempt for the reality of what it means to be a pregnant woman in this country. 

We are going to have to get over our fear that some “welfare mom” somewhere is going to take advantage of the system and somehow enrich herself at taxpayer expense.  We need to wake up to the fact that welfare reform has created conditions in the United States of America in which over 18 percent of all children under the age of 18 live in poverty.  If we want to see birth-control abortion rates go down, we are going to have to go to battle against the conditions that create a climate in which women feel they have no choice.  If we can spend trillions of dollars on a war against terrorism, or a rescue of the economy, how about just a couple billion for childcare?  Or health care?  Small business loans?  Educational grants?  Affordable housing programs?

Proposing, even passing laws making it illegal for women to have abortions doesn’t solve the problem.  It worsens the problem because it makes the assumption that all women who would elect to end a pregnancy prematurely are doing so as a means of birth control.  It removes the ability to exercise control over our health from individual women and our doctors and places it in the hands of the state.    

A law prohibiting “late term abortions” would most likely have cost me my life, and the life of my son.  That’s not a call I’m willing for any politician to make on my behalf. 

Last night during the Presidential Debate, John McCain brought up the ACORN organization.  He described them as  “maybe perpetrating one of the
greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the
fabric of democracy.”

In a country with an extensive history of suppressing the votes of minority groups, that’s a bold statement, but was it true?  I did a little web surfing today and here’s what I found.

ACORN hired 13,000 workers to
register a remarkable 1.3 million new voters. And a few of them turned in registration forms with inaccurate and even made-up
names to get credit for work they didn’t do. ACORN fired them and turned them over to the authorities.

In most states, ACORN is required by law to submit all forms collected whether they appear to be bogus or not—that
way election officials, not partisan groups, can make the call. ACORN flags cards that may not be legitimate. And in many
places, the charges of fraud only came up because ACORN was the one who flagged the cards!

No one is allowed to vote unless they
are properly registered. And there is no evidence of false registrations actually leading to organized voting fraud.

http://acorn.org/quickfacts

There are a lot of things that bother me.  I’m bothered when the tea I order costs $2 and tastes like water.  I’m bothered when I work all afternoon on an analysis and someone sends me a document that they “forgot” earlier that changes the whole thing so I have to do it over.  I’m really bothered when my kids don’t pick up their laundry and their room starts smelling like something died in there. 

I get angry over a few things.  When we have powerful people attempting to prevent low-on-the-totem pole people from voting, I feel angry. 

In the United States of America, we ought to be about promoting the exercise of voting rights.  Period.  We need to be doing everything we can to help people be registered, informed, and able to participate in government.  Its terrible that an organization that has dedicated itself to helping people learn to vote was defrauded by some of its employees.  It’s much worse when a politician who’s seeing his chances for election diminish hourly would seize upon this as an excuse to launch lawsuits designed to suppress votes.

We don’t require people to own property to vote in this country, people like me who rent are supposedly welcome.  But to the families hurting from the pain of foreclosure, the GOP won’t rule out using residency change to challenge a ballot,”
Indianapolis Star, October 3, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=31237&id=14429-10830728-PWbWIGx&t=9

The Justice Department did some research after charges from the Bush administration that there was widespread voter fraud and what did they find?  “In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud,” New York Times,
April 12, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html

“The Truth About Fraud,” Brennan Center for Justice

http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/

“After A Surge in Registration, A Surge in Suppression,” Brennan Center for Justice, October 7, 2008

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=31236&id=14429-10830728-PWbWIGx&t=8

We have been really loud-mouthed around the world about the need for other nations to protect voter rights, what a shame if here at home we are asleep on the watch.