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. 

The boys and I just had a talk about Things They Need.

At first they were all about video games and more ice cream but I gently twisted their little heads in the direction of their closet.  What kind of clothing do you need?  I asked this because as I was trying to get ready for work this morning, and hoping to get out the door early because I'm planning to be a sorceress for Halloween and I needed to set up my potion display (wool of bat bum, oil of Faire Isaac ...) Tucker approached me with the news that he had No Jeans That Fit in his closet.

I was ... disturbed.  My savings account still hasn't recovered from all the clothing I had to purchase in August to send him back to school.  He now informs me that all I bought were shorts.  No, I distinctly remember buying long pants.  "Well, yeah, but they had those really cool legs that zip off, so I zipped them all off and lost the legs so all I have are shorts."

I inspected his closet (and found 5 legs which would have been much better if there were less than 5 pairs of "shorts" in need of their missing legs.  As we speak, I have the boys in there looking for more.)

And anyway, that brings me to the conversation we had about 20 minutes ago. 

"What do you need?"  I asked.

"Socks."  They said.

Okay, I bought socks last year at Christmas time, again in May before they left for a month of vacation with their dad, and again in August.  When I buy socks, I buy them in the 10 pack and get one pack for each son.  So by my admittedly imperfect math skills, I calculate that I've purchased no fewer than 60 pairs of socks.  In less than 10 months. 

Yet, when they go to put on a pair of socks all they can find is this one pair that they've worn so often that it has holes in it. 

Are they eating the socks?  Is there some sock addict at school who's buying the socks?  "Pssst, kid.  Gimme your socks, I'll give you this candy bar ..."  Have they been making sock puppet armies?  What?

*******

Mad Skills

Mostly when I write about the kids, I write about Tucker.  I do that for two reasons.  First he's always doing something that's just a hair off the beaten path.  And second, Michael is usually doing something that resembles  .... nothing.

Occasionally though, Michael demonstrates that he too got his share of the mad skills genes. 

About a week ago?  Maybe.  We made caramel apples.  It became a tradition when we were in Colorado Springs to take a stroll through Old Colorado City on a fine fall weekend and stop off at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a fancy caramel apple.  We have an RMC here at the Mall, but it's not the same.  SO we decided to make our own.

We did the whole unwrap a gazillion caramels, melt the caramels and swirl the apples.  Then we settled in for me to read to the boys while they ate the apples.  I had my eyes on the page of the book so I'm not sure how this happened.

I glanced up and saw that Tucker had eaten his apple all the way to the core.  Michael had eaten just ... the apple.  The entire caramel skin was hanging, empty, from his stick.  I still can't figure out how he did that.

A Doctor, Architect and an Economist were arguing over which profession
was the oldest.  The Doctor finally said, "Well, God performed the
first surgery in the Garden of Eden when He removed Adam's Rib so
medicine is oldest."  The Architect said, "Oh, no before that God
designed the Heavens and the Earth, so architecture and building
predate medicine."  And then the Economist said, "Aaaaah, but in the
beginning there was chaos, and who do you think creates chaos!"

* * * * * * *

It's come into the conversation once or twice (an hour) recently.  What's the difference between a Recession and a Depression?  How do you know if we're in one?  What are all those people talking about?  And what happened to that $3 Trillion that seems to have disappeared?

I know that everyone will be relieved to know that there is no agreed upon definition of a Depression.  Even economists can't agree, and politicians really don't know, so what happens is that as events are unfolding everyone runs around like their collective butts are on fire, and then once everything settles down they add up the damage and make the pronouncement, "By Golly, that was a Depression!  Who knew?"

(The old joke goes that its a Recession when your neighbor loses his job, it's a Depression when you lose your job.) 

Old-school Economists based all their rules, predictions and understanding on a fundamental belief in the rationality of man.  They believed that over time, people will do what is in their own economic best interest and that will translate into the economic best interest of their communities, states and countries.  Now, that's a real nice happy idea.  I like hearts, flowers and good fairies as well as most and better than some.  But even I (who own not one but two Tinkerbell lunch boxes) can see that this may not be the very best underpinnings of economic policy.

Most people I know manage to be adult-like from time to time over the course of the day, but for the most part they are content if they appear to know what they're doing and are left alone to be as childish as they want to be when no one's looking.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the way we handle money. 

We make decisions all the time that aren't in our financial best interest.  It's not in my best interest to exceed my budget just so I can have a pair of Christian Louboutin's but I can easily imagine a moment of weakness where I would say, "Budget be damned" because I have a weakness for shoes, and especially sexy-high heeled shoes.  My weak impulses have been held in check lately because all my various health issues of the last several months mean that I am still fighting swelling in my feet and ankles and I refuse to buy (or wear) shoes that call attention to this condition. 

But you see?  My decision making in the above paragraph isn't motivated by what is in my financial best interest, it's all about what I want and how I feel about it. 

In the normal course of business, markets cycle up and down for the same reason that my shoe acquisitions wax and wane, people either feel good about what they are doing or they don't.  When they feel good, they buy stock.  A lot of stock.  That makes the price of stock go up.  In the past, there's been a limit to how high that price could go because 1) people only have so much money to spend and 2) eventually they start not feeling so good about it so they start either selling or they buy something else.  When they are feeling good things go up, when they feel bad things go down.  That's what economists are talking about when they describe an ordinary business cycle.  When the down gets low enough that companies go out of business or have to be drastically reorganized (reductions in employees = higher unemployment rates = key economic indicator) they call it a Recession.

But what happens when you have events that fall outside that normal cycle? 

By now, I think you'd have to be pretty oblivious not to have heard, read, or seen far more about money and the workings of the markets over the past week than most of us care to hear, see or know in a decade.  So I'm going to skip over the parts about how the lending institutions were making ever more risky loans and then bundling these into investment products that appeared to minimize the risk through insurance and diversification but in actual fact increased the risk by giving everybody and his dog a stake in the pie.  I'm going to skip the part about how the Federal Reserve policies made it possible for these instruments to be purchased on credit long after the point that market forces should have kicked in and caused people to slow down or stop buying these instruments.  I'm going to skip over the ways that CDSes (Credit Default Swaps) made it possible for buyers to feel good when they should have been saying "hell, no!."  I'm going to skip over the part about how the whole house of cards was a pyramid scheme that required the price of houses in the US to increase by drastic amounts every year from here to eternity in order to sustain it. 

We've all heard that.

What I want to say is that going forward we need to realize that we no longer live in 1912.  News and information travels at the speed of light, and with electronic trading financial tsunami's can be launched with the push of a button from any keyboard in the world. 

People who are familiar with chaos theory are really fond of this butterfly in China who occasionally flaps its wings and causes a hurricane in Texas.  Well, in the same way, there are butterflies who are at this moment sitting at their keyboards making decisions about money.  On Monday the markets will open and all those butterflies' wings will begin to flap.  When the collective flap of millions of little butterfly wings happens at the same moment and in the same direction, we get a world-wide financial tsunami. 

Last week they flapped us to the worst week in the history of the US Market.  The thing that everyone was talking about by Friday was how they were all taken by surprise.  The companies in trouble by the end of the week weren't in trouble because they were over-extended, or because they were investors in risky CDSes.  They were in trouble because all these butterflies were looking at the butterfly next door and saying, "By golly, Joe is flapping east, and he looks like he knows what he's doing, I'd better flap east too.  In fact, I'm afraid if I don't flap easterly harder and faster than Joe, he'll get there first!!"

So what are we all to do?

We need to keep in mind that 95% of all the stocks we hold in mutual funds are strong and we need to stop looking at the butterfly next door.  If you invest in the markets, there are only 2 numbers that matter: the price of your stock on the day you buy it and the price on the day you sell it.  If you bought into a mutual fund at $32.50/share, it would be insane to sell it on a day that the price has dropped to $12.95.  But that's just what a whole lot of people did last week.  When you do that, the difference between your purchase price and your selling price becomes a "hard loss" - that's money that just evaporated away.  All the "wealth" held in 401(k) instruments that has supposedly been lost over the past week, isn't a loss at all until or unless someone tries to sell.  Until that moment it's just ink on paper. 

Over the past ... forever ... markets have consistently performed.  And they are likely to do the same in the future.  So rather than taking your money out and stuffing it in a mattress, leave it alone.  When the markets recover, and they eventually will, you can sell your stock for more than $32.50 and have a profit.  It may not be a huge profit (and don't be greedy, that's what's led to a lot of the recent wing flapping), but it won't be a loss. 

The best way to have money is to save money.  It's not to hope that the house you bought with zero money down will double in value and sell in time to save you from your Adjustable Rate Mortgage.  The way to comfortable wealth is not to play financial roulette, it's to calmly and steadily deposit regular amounts of money and leave it alone.  It's not exciting or sexy, but the thing that makes a money decision exciting is the riskiness of it.  The best personal financial policy is a boring personal financial policy. 

So don't worry, be happy, be a saver, and while economists are trying to sort out whether October 2008 was a severe Recession or was the beginning of a Depression, you can go back to not caring about the financial news. 

  I have a working wardrobe that consists primarily of basic pants and blouses or sweaters.  I have 4 pairs of black pants, 1 gray, 1 navy, 1 brown and 1 olive.  I have about 20 different blouses and 10 different sweaters. 

I write down my daily clothing choices on my calendar so that I can double check and make sure I'm not wearing exactly the same outfit two weeks in a row. 

I rotate necklaces, shoes, and to a lesser degree purses. 

Why do I do this?

Does anybody in my office care that I wore that blouse last week? 

Do you notice the clothes of the people around you? 

Do you pay enough attention that you are relieved when Jill wears that blue outfit that looks good on her because you know that means she's feeling confident today?  Do you worry when you see that Joan has on the same brown sweater she wore last week because that might mean that she's depressed?  Do you smile when you see Jane in the red blouse because you know that means her husband will be waiting for her after work for their special night out?

I have a new design using goldstone and hematite.  What do you think?

If you've been watching the news - or even just listening to the people in the office this week - you've probably heard some mention of the dangers of association.  And that's made me wonder about my associates.  I work in a building with approximately 50 other people and in a company that employs about 300 people in Albuquerque.

Statistics tell us that one in three women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime.  I wonder which of my co-workers could relate to my history.

Statistics suggest that in a room of 26 people, 2 will have the same birthday.  I wonder which of the people I work with have the same birthday and don't know it. 

Statistics suggest that if every person knows and interacts with approximately 100 other people, that there are only two people separating you from any other person in the country.  You know someone, who knows someone, who knows somone, who knows John McCain.  Or you know someone who knows someone, who knows someone who knows Barack Obama. 

Sometimes you can kind of figure out the connections.  You know the principal of your child's school, who knows a state legislator, who knows a Senator, who knows ... you see?

Sometimes you attend networking meetings and may have lunch with people who have a past.  Or you might volunteer for a day at a Habitat for Humanity project and find that the guy hammering nails next to you is a former President of the United States.

The problem with being a human being is that we are social creatures.  We interact with each other.  We aren't like the territorial animals who kill each other when they stray across territorial boundaries (except when they are driven by the urge to mate) - well, mostly that's not the way we are.

The difficulty with being a social creature is that we really don't know that much about most of the people we're hanging around.  We don't know who cheated on their taxes, or who gave half their income to charity last year.  We don't know who did stupid things in college, and who was a total nerd studying and walking the straight and boring path.

Much has been made of Barack Obama sitting on a board with Bill Ayers because Bill Ayers is a Bad Person.  Or at least he was a Bad Person.  And even though he's become a tenured professor, received community awards etc and so forth, he is probably still a Bad Person because everyone knows that no matter how you've lived for the past 40 years, it's what you did 40 years ago that counts, right?  And even though there's no evidence that Obama has even met the guy more than a few times, those few times are enough to count as "palling around" with a "domestic terrorist".

One of the things I hope very much is that there is such a thing as redemption.  I want it to be possible for people to turn their lives around.  I want it to be possible for me to become better in the future than I've been in the past.  In 1968 I preferred above all pass times to play with my dolls and dance naked.  To my mother's great embarrassment, I answered the door totally naked one morning and greeted a caller without my mother knowing anyone had even rung the bell.  I don't remember these experiences, but I believe they probably did happen because partly I've heard the stories from people I trust, and partly because if I thought I could get away with it I might still like to dance naked. 

Better be careful, Obama.  You know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows me. 

. . . . .

And I have one more thing to say.  The news tonight showed clips of McCain and Palin making accusations that Obama is a liar and a terrorist.  At one rally someone shouted "kill him" from the audience in response to McCain's remarks about Obama.  I'd like to point out that those are the kinds of doors we've worked hard to close in this country. 

My best friend read a book this summer about the last months of Bobby Kennedy's life and talked with me about the lessons this country learned from that time of turmoil and pain.  We talked about how the events of 40 years ago changed the direction of our country.  I don't really think that we want to go back there.  Surely we haven't all forgotten?  Have we?

I hope that over the next days as weeks you'll make the opportunity to speak to the people you associate with.  People who have their own agendas and pasts.  People who have their own sorrows and fears.  And I hope that you'll speak to them kindly and with compassion and tolerance, especially if they are on the other side of the political fence. 

We don't need hatred, distrust and discord.  In a world where all the rules seem to be undergoing hourly revision, we need cooperation, courage, and commitment to doing a little better tomorrow than we did today.   

I OBJECT to objectification.  It makes my skin crawl when I hear people arguing (for or against) a woman simply because she's a woman.  It makes me feel ill when I hear someone make a racial slur.  It makes me angry when I hear someone refer to a poor person by some stereotypical cliche that denies the humanity of those who struggle with poverty. 

There's a bumper sticker I see occasionally in traffic and if I were ever going to explode with road rage, I'd ram the bumper of the cars sporting it - it says, "Life is a bitch, don't vote for one" with a picture of Hillary Clinton.

Look I don't care if you like Hillary or not.  I don't even care if you agree with her positions or not.  But I care very much when someone opposes her (or anyone else) with such a demeaning and objectifying term. 

I don't have much of a sense of humor about that.

Nope.

Which is why I just bought this tee-shirt. 

www.thatone08.com

I've been saying it for ... a long time, that we don't need show people in politics.  We don't need people who play to the camera and toss off witty remarks with excellent timing.  We need people who will dare to be boring - and smart. 

Well, dang if I didn't get at least three-fourths of what I asked for. 

John McCain doddered around tonight wasting a lot of time trying to get in cheap shots.  I swear I could almost hear him thinking, "Okay, I'll say something using one of the words from the question so I can claim to have answered it and then I'll call Barack three names.  Did I mention that he's a liberal already?  How about a big-spender?  Did I say that yet?  I know!  I'll tell everyone he's a DEMOCRAT!!!!  That'll scare 'em."

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it been REPUBLICANS in control of Congress for 12 of the past 14 years?  Bill Clinton managed to hold them in check with his veto/threat of veto, but the love fest that's gone on under George Bush's reign would be enough to make Monica Lewinski blush.  From a budget surplus to record deficits with no end in sight ... It's beyond insulting for a Republican who served throughout that whole mess to dare to point at a Democrat and trot out the "big-spender" line.) 

Barack Obama couldn't bring himself to give a short answer if his life depended on it.  He demonstrated yet again that he understands the nuances of economic policy and international diplomacy, all the nuances, to the last degree, to the last cave of Pakistan ...  My mind was made up already, and because I too was frustrated by further demonstration that McCain and Palin share the same congenital defect that prevents them answering a direct question, I was willing to cut Obama some slack if he'd just walked over and spit in McCain's eye.  But no, he didn't let any of it get to him.  He patiently plodded through the answers that McCain seems incapable of understanding.

I have to say that as for me and my house, it was a waste of good popcorn.  I already know that Obama is cool, calm, collected and competent.  I already figured out that John McCain is desperate. 

My, my ... neither of these gentlemen knows that this is about entertainment. 

I'm Terri Verrette, and I approve this blog.

My son has picked up a less than wonderful habit.  I admit he got it from me, but that's no excuse.  Whenever something is ... not great ... he says, "That SUCKS."

I know, there are worse things he could be saying, but obviously there are plenty of better things he could be saying that would be more acceptable in the presence of his grandmother.

My best friend has a saying that I like, so I'm encouraging Tucker to substitute, 'That's below average ..." for that other phrase.  And by encourage, I mean, I'm making a conscious effort to say that as well, or something else that's a little less crude.

But thinking of all the below average things we encounter, makes me think about the above average things we might strive for.  Knowledge, wisdom, and character come to mind.  And by character I mean someone who is kind, patient, forgiving, courteous, humble, generous, courageous and honest. 

I freely admit that I have some room to grow in all the above areas.  I'm not sure I'd characterize myself as "below average" but then I'm not striving for average.  I want to be above average.  I want to be among the elite.  I want to be on the trajectory to exude the peace of the Dalai Lama, the kindness of a Mother Teresa, the patience of a Martin Luther King, Jr, the courage of Lucious Lamar, the generosity of Bill Gates, and so on. 

I don't want to settle.  And I'm tired of hearing words like "elite" used as an epithet.  I set high standards for myself, and I'm told that more than I give myself credit, I succeed in achieving my goals.  I've realized that I'm very uncomfortable hearing praise or hearing that I've done something exceptional.  It makes me immediately want to qualify by saying, "well, yes BUT ..."

In addition to adoption of the phrase "that's below average" to describe a distressing turn of events, I think I'll be adopting the phrase, "thank you."  I don't have to be the Dalai Lama or Bill Gates in order to be on the path to achieving the kinds of greatness they exemplify.  I'm shooting for a place among the elite. 

So I tuned in last night to the Vice Presidential debate (I am SO tempted to just quote Tucker's comments about their performance - but I'll limit myself to, "Mama, why's that woman talking like she has a jelly bean in her nose.")

In defiance of the punditry, I expected Sarah Palin to give a coherent performance.  And she did at least manage to speak in longer sentences than in any of her recent interviews.  I became irritated early on with her insistence on not only playing the role of debater, but also moderator, "That was a good question G, but I want to talk about energy ... that's in interesting question G, but I'd rather talk about taxes ..." o_0  Is the woman genetically incapable of answering the questions put before her?  Or is it in fact that she has so little depth of knowledge based on her limited experience that she has nothing to say unless her trainers have crammed it into her perky little head.   (In case you haven't guessed, perky gets on my nerves, funny I like, but perky is like fingernails on a chalkboard.)

I didn't expect to be warmed by folksy anectdotes from Biden's side of the aisle, and I wasn't.  But he clearly knows the issues inside and out which I like in a candidate.  I don't want the leadership of someone who's popping a six pack saying "Golly Gee Whiz, I just bet if we can get Nancy Pelosi over here for a friendly game of cards, we can work our way through the gosh-darned budget between the nachos and the buffalo wings."

I don't want someone in Washington who's "just like me" I want someone with a little better grasp of the situation than I have.  I want someone up there that I feel is a little smarter than I am so I don't have to wonder if I'm safe going about my normal life when maybe I ought to be in Washington myself offering advice. 

But here's the surprising bottom line for me, in the end, I identified with Joe Biden.  When he choked up over the story of how he had to figure out how to raise his two sons as a single parent after the tragic accident which took his wife and baby daughter from him, I was right there at his kitchen table looking into the eyes of his son over a bowl of badly prepared mac and cheese.  (I know, my imagination threw in a couple extra details beyond what he revealed, but hey, I was identifying.) 

Joe Biden is a man who's gone through a lot of pain, has weathered storms of doubt (he questioned whether he should resign from the Senate to care for his terribly injured sons, but was persuaded to stay and was sworn in beside one of their hospital beds.)  The Wikipedia article on Biden quotes him as having spent many nights walking through the streets of his home filled with doubt, fear, and rage ... I can relate to that.

I can't relate to someone who seems to have had everything handed to her with a beer on the side.    

... and Tucker says, "Have you noticed that Jethro is a lot like you, Mom?"

Now, I've thought that I bore a passing resemblance to more than one television celebrity, but Mark Harmon hasn't previously made my list so I had to say, "No, Baby, I hadn't thought that.  How do you think he's like me?"

"Well, lots of people try to say "no" to him, and they all wind up doing what he wants anyway."

God Bless his little heart.