Not Me

"Who broke the wine glass in the kitchen sink?"
"Not me."
"Who left the toilet seat up?"
"Not me."
"Who's responsible for the mess the economy is in?"
"Not me."

Are you like me and have tuned out the noise about the election? Fingers point everywhere but at the speaker's own chest. It's always someone else's fault. I will grow old waiting for a politician to take responsibility.

Who's fault is the economy? Everyone's, with no small help from many different administrations. Government overspends. And spends on the wrong thing too many times.

TARP, set up by Bush II, had to be administered by Obama. Some of it worked; some of it didn't. I don't hear a calm voice looking at each million dollars spent, reporting back to the voters where it went, how much we were paid back, etc. I hear one candidate saying "he did everything wrong." I hear another saying "not me."

If we hadn't bailed out GM and Chrysler, how many jobs would have been lost? One candidate says the managed bankruptcy should have been supported through private equity, but I don't think a Bain Capital would have been willing to write a check. The managed bankruptcy was bailed out by the taxpayers. One candidate, who didn't like the bailout, now takes responsibility. "I always said GM should go into bankruptcy and I was right." Sorta.

The list is endless. I grow depressed thinking about it.

Do you have children? Were you a child once? Do you remember when your mother realized for the first time that you were growing up? Do you? What was the turning point?

For my mother and me, it was the first time I said, "I broke it" rather than "it got broke.

Isn't it time for our government officials to take the high road and grow up?

It's All About Values and Ethics

It's all about values. It's all about ethics. It's all about wanting something so badly you're willing to compromise both values and ethics to get it.

This happens all the time in politics. The dreadful term, flip-flopper, haunts politicians from John Kerry to Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum. The term itself implies no one can learn, no one can change his mind following the input of new data. Scientists change their positions all the time. With new experiments, new photographs from space, new studies into how drugs work in the body -- all allow thinking people to learn, modify their positions, and publish new findings that expand knowledge.

Sports teams want to win. Now we learn that the New Orleans Saints wanted to win so badly they put bounties on opponents with the goal of knocking the players out of the game. Players kicked in money to pay the "winner" who injured an opponent. Coaches knew about the bounties and did nothing to stop the system. The head coach, Sean Payton, wanted a Super Bowl so badly he was willing to compromise his value and ethics to get the ring.

Or did he? Is Sean Payton one of those coaches who would literally do anything to win? It looks like it. This isn't over. More information will come forth during investigations. Will that expand our knowledge? Will it help us learn from Payton's mistakes? Will Payton learn from his mistakes? Or will he try to blame someone else rather than taking responsibility for his team's actions? Will he admit he compromised his values and ethics? Will he apologize to the team's fans? Will the fans accept they had a rogue coach? Or did the fans also want the ring so badly they will overlook a few bumps and bruises that could have been career-ending for those on whom the bounty rested?

Have we compromised our ethics and values for so long that few see Payton and his coaches' behavior as wrong? Have we?

Politics of the Absurd

If you want to watch what happens when all bodies of government are controlled by a single party, doesn't matter which one, just watch Virginia. It's a microcosm of politics of the absurd.

Our governor, Bob McDonnell, gave his state of the state address last week where he called on the legislature to work together for the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He asked the state senate, which is evenly split between two parties, to put aside their differences and work to move our state forward. 'Course, he may be running for Vice President...

Wonderful words, but meaningless. Our lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, wasn't paying any attention when he approved Republicans to head every major committee. Yes, there is a 50-50 split, but Bolling casts the tiebreaker. He started the session by putting his brand of Republicans in charge of the major committees, even though there were many Democrats with seniority and half the seats.

Don't forget the attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who hates everything Democratic and everything Obama.

So if you think there is anyway this divided country can work together for the benefit of the country, think again. Just watch Virginia. You won't need MapQuest to see where this road leads.

How?

I have a new favorite word. It's "how." I use it every time I hear a politician talk about his or her platform. "I'll cut taxes. I'll balance the budget." "I'll reduce the debt." And my favorite, "I'll create more jobs in [fill in the location]."

I want to ask each talking head one question: How. How are you going to cut taxes, balance the budget AND pay down the debt, all at the same time? All three are contradictory. Cutting taxes in the last administration got us into this mess. Keeping they unreasonably low hasn't done anything to stop runaway spending or to reduce the debt.

How, Mr. Candidate, do you intend to create jobs? Do you really think that by keeping income taxes low, people are going to go out and hire someone, create a job where there is no demand for the goods and services produced? And just how many jobs have been created in the past three years in [fill in the location] with taxes so low we can't pay our bills? Couple this empty promise with the earlier one about tax cuts and I have a question: With unemployment stubbornly hovering over 9%, how's that policy working for you, Mr. Candidate? How many jobs did your tax cuts create? How can you stand in front of us and tell us that tax cuts create jobs? Do you really believe this yourself???

I went to a rally for a candidate running for our state legislature. I asked him how he was going to create jobs. He looked panicked. Evidently, no one had asked him how he was going to carry out his platform. He bumbled and mumbled and stepped on his tongue trying to answer my question. When he passed the hat for money to continue his campaign, I kept my hands in my pocket.

Why would I want to put money in his hat when he couldn't answer my question? Widen the lens, and everyone running for office at all levels has the same credibility problem. They talk a good line, but when pressed, they fall back on familiar sound bites. Well, I'm not hungry. I refuse to rise to the bait.

Oh, yes, the group that invited me to hear our local candidate suggested that I might not want to return. Ya think?

Political Musings

I've been piling these up for a few days. Today, they had to burst forth.

1. Government Accountability Office finds duplicate programs. A rider to a bill passed last year requires the GAO to do an annual audit. The first one was released yesterday and found massive duplication of efforts among different government departments. For example, 15 different agencies oversee food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs help the homeless and 80 programs provide for economic development. Do you think if we removed some of the bloat from the Federal government, we might be able to pay down the debt? I wish the voting public would stand on its hind legs and howl about this waste. I know my tax dollars would go further if we didn't have 80 programs for economic development. Maybe this is something the tea partiers should get behind. More money, small government. Seems like it would fit into that group's stated goals.

2. Sitting in at the Wisconsin state house. Shades of the '60s when concerned citizens blocked access to government buildings to get their points of view across to their elected officials. This is democracy at work. Peaceful protests of serious issues, no National Guard called out (yet) to remove people, and a group of elected officials hiding in an adjacent state. A different kind of March Madness continues. Let it be a lesson to the countries looking for democracy. Democracy's messy and not always quick, but it's a better form of government than revolution.

3. And speaking of revolution, what about the madman in Libya? Gadhafi says his people love him and will fight to their last bullet. Maybe, but he reminds me of the Iraqi who was standing in front of television cameras telling his people that Iraq had not fallen. And the tanks were rumbling down the highway behind him. Regardless of what we think aobut Gadhafi, his people don't deserve what he's doing to them. Unfortunately, after the fall may come a void into which who knows what will pour. We can only hope that calmer and wiser heads will prevail when Gadhafi falls. And he will fall. He can't continue slaughtering his own people without them getting sick and tired of it. And then, his promise to die on Libyan soil could come true.

Enough ranting.

Theater of the Absurd

You all know I'm a news and political junkie. I watched some of the opening of Congress and loved the theater of reading the Constitution. I did bother me that one person was so ill-informed that s/he didn't know two pages were stuck together, but I chalked it up to plain ignorance. Maybe reading the Constitution will help some.

Then, there is the non-debate over repeal of the health care bill. Oh, sorry, the Obama Job Killing Health Care Act. Two paragraphs that offer nothing to replace flawed law. Repeal would take away help for seniors in closing the donut hole, would drop everyone older than 21 from a parental health plan and would kick children with pre-existing conditions back into health care limbo.

That's what this is all about. Drama. No plan. Just pandering to part of the populace. And it's only theater. It'll play in the House, not in the Senate, not even in Peoria.

I got to thinking about plans and programs. No one seems to have a plan on how to fix anything. I do. I have an idea on how to fix the problem with the 99ers, those people who've been out of work for more than 99 weeks and who are drawing unemployment insurance.

I want each of us who have a job to adopt a 99er. That 99er would move into my house, where I would supply room and board. The 99er would have chores and tasks and one more year to find a job. Any job. Any where. No more unemployment insurance during the adoption period. No food stamps. No drain on the Federal budget.

Yes, it would be a drain on my budget, but no one in Congress gives a damn about my budget. After all, it doesn't have a debt limit. My budget would be my problem, not the government's problem. I would provide a clean, well lighted place to live, the same food my husband and I eat and encouragement to apply for and get a job.

Simple solution. As easy as when I proposed we solve two problems with one program: we feed the homeless to the hungry. But that wasn't well received. Somehow, I don't think "adopt a 99er" will be well received either.

At least I have a damned idea.

Looking Forward

It's the time of the year for ruminations and meditations and looking ahead. I htink most of us will agree that we are not sorry to see 2008 go. It was filled with highs and lows, for many of us more lows than highs.

It's the end of a error -- the Bush-Cheney Imperial Presidency. Good bye and good riddance.

Which lows were the most memorable?

First, it's the economy, stupid. That preyed on everyone's mind. My husband and I began thinking more about how we could help others than ourselves. True, our "portfolio" is thinner than it once was, but we thought about people who had no portfolio. We told our children that they could expect very nice cards, small gifts, and donations made in their names to food banks in their neighborhoods. It worked.

Then, it was political stupidity. It began with NY governor Elliot Spitzer getting caught transporting prostitutes across state lines. Hmm, we all knew what his wife thought as she stood behind/beside him as he resigned. It continued with John Edwards confessing that he had cheated on Elizabeth, "but her cancer was in remission." That made it all right. Then it was Sarah Palin, who now thinks she is the leading candidate for president in 2012. Keep thinking, Sarah. You might also consider returning to school to bone up on civics. Might help. And lastly, we have Rob Blagojevich apparently trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. There were probably more examples, but you get the idea.

There was political history of the sort we couldn't have imagined when Dr. King gave his "I have a dream" speech in 1963. Not only did we have a credible woman running for president, we had an African-American, a Hispanic, and a wrinkly white guy. When all was said and done and when all the votes were counted, the iconic image of the campaign flashed across our television screens on November 4: Jesse Jackson with tears of joy pouring down his face. So much progress, so much more to go.

And of course, there were the inevitable drop-ins at Christmas. We had enjoyed guests throughout the year, but had planned on a quiet Christmas day a trois.
We woke up Christmas morning with ideas of a quiet breakfast, putting dinner in the oven, going for a walk, and opening our presents in peace and quiet. I hadn't counted on having two whipped houseguests collapsed in the dining room. What do you think? Did I do well in feeding them?

And now 2009 is on the doorstep. We have a new president coming in. He's inheriting a pile of problems, and we hope he'll live up to even half of our expectations.

2009 will bring more time to write. I want to continue writing 4-5 days a week. My first Mad Max novel, Unintended Consequences, is complete and out with an agent for review. Book two, working title Shades of Pale, is nearly done in draft. V-E-R-Y rough draft, but a draft nonetheless. I should finish the draft in the next month, take a cruise to clear my head and return to revies-revise-revise the draft. Book three is taking mental shape,, but I need to do a boatload of research before I begin writing.

To all of you who have stumbled upon this blog, thank you for reading my musings. Have a terrific 2009. See you next year.

On No! Not Another Language Mangler

I suffered through the Bush II presidency. Not because of his policies, because I agreed with some of them. I didn't agree with all of them. But it was his mangling of the English (or American) language that pained me. I read The Bush Dyslexicon and wept. And that was written before he was elected.

I alternately laughed and wept again listening to Sarah Palin adlib a response to anyone. Like many people, I tried to keep an open mind about her qualifications, and yet when she tried to speak off the stump speech, I saw the ramblings of a disjointed mind. The most highly quoted gaff went viral in print, in the blog-s-sphere and in cyberspace within minutes of Katie Couric's interview on 60 Minutes.

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."


I lamented the fracturing of syntax to several of my favorite grammar police, all of whom returned my concern. However, only Becky Mushko outdid Sarah with her own spoof. Yes, this is an insider's joke, but I had to share the "sentence" with y'all.

"Well, yeah, but yanno that inspired me enough that I was like thinking kind of that maybe in the course of giving response critique-wise to certain folks who are not really seeking critiques that when they read, which is almost every meeting of a certain organization except, of course, when they're not there, which once in a while they are not, that we could maybe employ certain Palinistic rhetorical devices to maybe detrail the train of verbosity they exude or at least Palinetically hijack its caboose, ya think?"

Ya betcha! One seriously fractured sentence. Thanks to Becky for lifting my spirits and making me ROTFLOL.

Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m.

The day after the election, it took until three in the morning for my mind to calm down. The last of the cross-country phone calls ended by midnight. The last text message came in shortly before one. Some friends were elated at the results; others were in despair.

I kept thinking about what we had just done. We had elected a black man president. I didn't think I'd live to see that happen. We chose youth over age, black over white, and perhaps hope over more of the same.

I grew up in a multi-racial culture in Southern California. My classrooms were the epitome of the rainbow coalition long before the Reverend Jesse Jackson coined the phrase. A typical classroom could have had as many as twenty different ethnic minorities in twenty five seats. I watched the Civil Rights Movement play out on television without really being emotionally or physically involved. I was happy with the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964, but I was more impacted by the war in Vietnam and the Women's Rights Movement.

Then, I went to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in 1988. I was in a private area when Jesse Jackson gave his stirring speech on education. I admit to having tears on my cheeks when he finished. I began to understand what he and the Reverend Martin Luther King had been fighting for.

And now we have a president who missed all of this, but in a different way. He's our first post-Boomer president. He grew up with all the rights we have come to expect. He grew up in a multi-racial culture in Hawaii. And he made his own way through university and law school without relying on affirmative action. He did it on the merits of his intellect, not on the color of his skin.

So we are faced with impossible challenges: the failing (or failed) economy, obscene bailouts, two wars, a war on terror, healthcare, education -- who the heck would want this job??? President-elect Obama asked for and got the job. As Confucius said, "Be careful what you ask for. You might get it."

Whether we supported or opposed him during the election, we must rally and support him as our president. We owe it to those who came before, to those alive today, and to our children and children's children who will be paying for our combined fiscal follies long after we are on the wrong side of the grass.

NPR and Me

I had been working on an essay about voting, spin, not believing what candidates say, and checking facts when one of my colleagues at Valley Writers suggested I send it in to our local NPR station, WVTF. At first, I was sceptical, but the more I thought about it, I decided I didn't have much to lose. After all, nothing ventured, nothing sprained.

The long and short of it is that I recorded the essay below, Listen Carefully, on Friday, Oct. 3. It aired on Monday, Oct. 6, the last day for voters to register in Virginia. To access the recorded essay, please go to WVTF.

I believe in the power of words, written, spoken, and thought. I believe that freedom of speech is inviolate. I believe words can be helpful or harmful, supportive or hurtful, constructive or destructive. I believe my beloved grandmother was wrong when she said “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me,” because sometimes words can be ugly, demeaning, and misleading.

Words bind communities together and the same words spoken derogatorily tear communities apart. I believe as a crafter of words I have an awesome responsibility to know the difference.

We receive much of our information today intangibly – on television and on the radio. Less often, we receive it in written format, reading yesterday’s news printed on a dead tree with ink that stains our hands, but leaves little impact on our minds.

A few decades ago we began receiving dumbed-down messages -- news stories became shorter, language became simplistic, reporting became entertainment. The “sound bite” has done more to damage our understanding than anything else. We rarely if ever hear the entire message.

It is difficult if not impossible to reach an informed decision from a sound bite. It is too easy to skew a message in less than fifteen seconds.

A dozen lake friends have met regularly this election season. We watched the early debates, the main convention speeches, and the most recent Presidential debate. We represent both major parties; several remain uncommitted. And we have been watching the political ads more closely this year than in elections past. I am horrified at the misrepresentations and outright lies fed to us as truth.

Last weekend, this group argued loudly after the final credits of the first Presidential debate faded from the screen. I was stunned at the number of my friends who still believed lies that had been debunked months earlier: the Obama Muslim hoax, the Palin “thanks but no thanks” misrepresentation, and McCain distancing himself from President Bush.

Suddenly, we became fixated on a political ad, a black and white picture of a bearded Tom Perriello, darkened and distorted with striations across his face. Each point the voice-over narrator made was accompanied by a crack like a gunshot. No mention was made of the fact that the photo was taken when Mr. Perriello was in Darfur working with refugees. And then came the tag line: “I’m Virgil Goode and I approved this message.”

The argument stopped. It didn’t matter whether we supported Mr. Goode or Mr. Perriello. We gaped in shock. We wondered if voters would check the facts or believe the fear factor clearly implied with this spot.

As sentient beings we have the onus to review and think carefully about the messages fed to us like so much mush. We have the responsibility to sound off, make our voices heard, and combat disinformation.

The Constitution provides us the right to freedom of speech. It does not provide us with the right to lie, misrepresent, or spin. It is up to us to listen carefully, check facts, and repeat what has been verified as truth.

I urge all of us to question the information we receive. When we embrace the truth, we can work as a group to regain the high ground we once held in the world. If we succumb to negativism and believe the lies, we belong in the mud. To prevent that from happening, I urge all citizens once again to exercise a sacred privilege and vote.

This I believe.

Update: On Oct. 9 I learned that this essay is being used in a Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University class on news reporting as an example of what everyone reporter should consider before putting fingers to keyboard. Thank you, Bill Loftus.

Truth, Justice and the American Way

Given the silliness that is going on in our political sphere, I had to use this space for a brief rant. No, this is not going to be a political blog, but the stakes are so high that I can't keep silent. Blame it on my youth as a near-professional protester (I have the bailbond receipts to prove it!). Blame it on a cloudy day. Blame it on waking up on the pessimistic side of the bed at oh-dark-hundred.

I keep waiting for our political leaders to show some degree of maturity. If you've raised children -- your own, others, as a teacher, or in some other capacity -- you know that one sign of maturity is accepting responsibility. When a glass lies broken on the kitchen floor, the immature child says, "it got broke." The more mature child tries to blame someone else, "not me. Sissy did it." And the mature child says, "I broke it."

We have a broken economy, a broken national budget, and the worst international image in history. So, as I watch our elected leaders squabble over how to save our way of life through saving the economy (and grabbing pork all over the place), I see more of "it got broke" and "they broke it," rather than "we all broke it and it's time to work together to fix it."

Or maybe we just need Superman to swoop down, blast the greedy guys, shore up the economy and set us all on the right path. Instead of truth and justice, we have greed and finger pointing. I hate to think that this has become the American way.