We Need You Again, FDR

 

They were far from rich.  They were factory workers, secretaries and postal clerks.  They scraped together the down-payment to buy a $7,000 duplex in 1949, proud as can be to be homeowners.  They were my family and they adored-- literally adored-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

My mom and her brother were children of the Great Depression.  To this day my mother boasts about how far my grandmother could stretch a dollar.  They ate potatoes six ways to Sunday.  Boiled, roasted, peeled, baked, soup, and salad.

The New Deal saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who managed to outlive the Depression. It restored dignity to people who would sooner die than stand in soup lines or beg for crusts of bread.  It restored the American economy to normal levels. And it reformed the U.S. financial system to prevent anything like the Great Depression from happening again.

I wonder if today any of the people who are crowing about wanting to take our country back have given any thought to FDR and his programs.  I am willing to bet they all have ancestors who directly benefitted from New Deal programs; some still are.  That was a whole lot of government, doing a whole lot of thinking and planning and working in order to get our crippled nation back on its feet and on track to the prosperity many of us enjoyed in the ensuing decades.

Based on the following YouTube video, it appears that among FDR’s formidable talents was prescience.  Listen to him:

Hmmmm.  The more things change the more they stay the same, eh?

Ryan is a Smooth, Charismatic Liar

As Paul Ryan strolled confidently to the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, my thoughts jumped immediately back to 2004.  I had the exact same thought when now-President Barack Obama opened his mouth and uttered his first line from his Democratic National Convention keynote address that year.

“He certainly LOOKS the part.”

Ryan’s speech was well-crafted and well-delivered – just like Obama’s was eight long years ago.  Ryan has an easy-to-hear cadence to his delivery – just like Obama does when he is working from a script. 

But there was a big difference in the two young politicians and their approach to the opportunity they enjoyed. 

Obama chose to inspire a more unified country.

“There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.”  Now, true, Obama’s speech was not an acceptance speech; Ryan’s was.  Perhaps it is tradition for the keynote to be lofty, more of a view from a higher altitude.  But whatever Obama chose to include in his remarks as true were, well, true.

Not so the appealing Mr. Ryan.  In an article on today’s Salon.com by Alex Seitz-Wald, Paul Ryan: The definitive fact-check , the writer lists nine different instances of Paul Ryan telling a bald-faced lie. 

The closing of the GM plant in Janesville, WI, his hometown?  Yes, it closed, but it closed in 2008, before Obama even took office.

I remember sitting bolt upright last night as I listened to Ryan slyly tried to attribute the downgrading of the country’s credit rating by Standard and Poors to Obama’s “failed policies.”  I didn’t have to read it anywhere;  I remembered how the Republicans in Congress held the country’s debt ceiling hostage – and so did Standard and Poor's.

Ryan said he and Romney would create 12 million jobs if voted into office.  Yeah?  Raise your hand if you believe that to be even possible.

Ryan: “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak.” 

Oh really?  Then why do the majority of your proposed spending cuts involve programs designed to aid the poor, Mr. Ryan? 

I spent quite a bit of my life in Wisconsin.  I went to Ripon College for four years, graduated and took a management training job at A. O. Smith Corporation in Milwaukee.  I lived there five more years.  I met dozens of Wisconsinites who were good and honorable people.  My husband-at-the-time was executive-assistant to Milwaukee’s mayor Henry W. Maier for many years, so politicians were not unknown to us.

While in college I became friends with young men and women from all over the state of Wisconsin, most of whom were Republicans (or at least their parents were. Civil rights and Vietnam changed a lot of my classmates’ political views forever,)  Paul Ryan would have been a BMOC at Ripon, had he been there at the time. There were many Paul Ryan types on campus and they were my friends.  Good-looking, athletic and bright was a winning combination there, too.

Paul Ryan has done an injustice to all the good people in Wisconsin by resorting to out and out lies in order to cajole voters away from President Obama.  The Wisconsinites I know, many of whom I love, are not deceitful.  They are not so ambitious that they would purposely spread falsehoods about other good and honorable people, just to foster their own agendas.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney ought to be ashamed of themselves.

This Sure as Hell is Not the Country I was Led to Expect

 

Sometimes I half expect to wake up from a looooooooong sleep, one that featured a dream lasting for decades.  No nightmare I have ever had can hold a candle to the daymares the world faces on a daily basis.

Remember that scene from the movie Private Benjamin (1980), when the adorable Goldie Hawn, surrounded by circumstances far beyond her abilities to cope with, told her Captain:

Judy Benjamin: I think they sent me to the wrong place.
Capt. Lewis: Uh-huh.
Judy Benjamin: See, I did join the army, but I joined a *different* army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms?

When I was growing up, my world was very small – small town, small family, small parochial school – and I was surrounded by a lot of people with small aspirations.  But my imagination was huge.

I imagined that people in the rest of the world were hearing the same lessons I was learning about brotherly love.  When asked by someone what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer always included some form of “I want to help people.”  You see, that’s what I thought we were put here to do.

As my world grew, so did my expectations of life.  I thought it was quite remarkable, the things human beings were accomplishing in the 20th century.  From horses to horse-power.  From riding in cars to flying among the clouds.  From clunky manual typewriters to sleek portable computers.  From operators asking “Number, please?” to one phone for every person to carry in a pocket.

I marveled at the complex minds that worked together to create such magic in such a short time.  I believed corporations like the one I chose to build a career within were run by some of the finest minds in the world, and I couldn’t wait to finish school so I could get in there and mingle with those powerful minds.

The light started dimming on that vision not too long after I fulfilled my goal of joining a high-powered nationally known corporation as a college recruit.  It was gradual, that dimming.  I held onto my idealism for dear life, probably because I wanted to be in on the action.  I wanted to be in the midst of all these brains working together “for the greater good.”

But the realities of human foibles became too vivid to ignore.  There were people in high places who were quick to do low-down acts of disinginuity.  There were people in positions of power who were far out of their depths and terrified of being found out.  So they lied and cheated and stepped all over the very people upon whose backs they had climbed.

My dream of helping people went up the same chimney as my belief that most people are inherently good…and smart.  I was astounded by the number of certifiably dumb people I encountered in my day-to-day life in the corporate cauldron.

I started paying attention to politics in more than a peripheral way when I was in my thirties.  Based on the civics classes I took in high school, I came to believe the United States of America had the best system of government in the world.  I actually believed we were a democracy and that my vote was equal to every other American’s vote.  Why else would so many people in the South be willing to die just for the right to cast a ballot?  I was passionately liberal, still believing it was our human inclination to adopt the Three Musketeers’ motto:  All for one and one for all.

By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I was forced to send that vision up the chimney with the other smoky ideals I had. I paid 16.5% interest on a mortgage.  I burned a quarter tank of gas waiting in blocks-long lines to buy gas, thanks to a foreign-policy-induced “shortage” of gasoline.

In my forties I heard increasingly more rhetoric from conservative neighbors who said “I’ve got mine.  Let them get their own.” Reaganomics.  Trickle-down.

Similar to Private Benjamin, I think I landed on the wrong planet.  I was brought up to believe in a country that was a melting pot.  We were the country that had a giant green torch-holding lady in the New York harbor who stood there to welcome all comers – even those who might have arrived on the Amistad.

I was taught that the key to success in any endeavor is the ability to compromise.  And the people around me in my childhood told me to fight hard for what I believe, but that the majority rules, so if you are on the losing side, you must stand behind the winning leader and support him.

Tonight I watched and heard the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, deliver a rousing stump-speech of a keynote address at the Republican National Convention. “We are not afraid.  We are taking our country back.”

From whom? 

Where am I?

Hoof In Mouth Disease Just Might Save the Nation

 

Ah, Todd Akins.  You are such an intellectual lightweight, I’m not even sure you understand what a favor you have done to the Obama campaign.

     Candidate for U. S. Senator Todd Akin,( r.,) stood at Paul Ryan’s side as Ryan announced his controversial budget plan for the nation

Last year, the “misspeaking” Todd Akin joined with GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as two of the original co-sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” Among other things,this bill sought to differentiate between “forcible rape” and “statutory rape.”  Although that language was eventually removed from H.R. 3, thanks to public outrage, it changed nothing about what we know about Akin and Ryan and their desire to redefine the meaning of rape. 

Mr. Akin’s ridiculous statement on a recent Missouri news program that again indicated a distinction in his addled mind between any old rape and a “legitimate” one.  He went on to say that rape should be punished, but the punishment should be the rapist’s and not the child’s, should s/he somehow thwart his bizarre theory that the female reproductive process can tell the difference between intercourse by force and intercourse by consent.

In other words, the hapless woman should only have access to government-paid abortions if she can prove she was raped by physical force.  Otherwise, I guess the woman is supposed to carry the fetus to term whether she wants to or not. 

That 12-year-old down the block who was impregnated by her 21 year-old brother?  Tough.  According to Akin and Ryan, she shouldn’t have been fooling around, she should know better and she must carry the resulting child to term no matter what harm it may do to her physical or emotional well-being.

Todd Akin can cry, recant, plead and dissemble all he wants, but even the most conservative women in the GOP will have to see him and their party’s Presidential ticket for what they are:  Warriors against the rights of women to determine their own reproductive futures.

Akin is no male version of Mrs. Malaprop.  What word could he have possibly been going for when his mouth accidentally said “legitimate?”  Unfortunate?  I doubt it.

Akin is done for, but Paul Ryan’s problems have only just begun.  American women are wising up every time one of these “gaffes” occurs.  Even the most conservative mother in the country should not want her young daughter to be forced to deliver a baby at age 13 after being taken advantage of by an older relative.  Would Akin and Ryan call that consensual sex?  Is that circumstance any less violent to the health and well-being of the victim?

This position isn’t just conservative; it is downright ignorant.  Akin said it, he meant it, and he will pay for it.  But if the women on the right continue to close their eyes to the real intent of these anti-abortion positions – to exercise unreasonable control over all women’s reproductive issues – and they allow themselves to be bamboozled into voting against their own reproductive rights, this nation will take a giant step back into the 1950s. 

I don’t want to go there.

Reasons to Be Proud

When I ran into a neighbor I hadn’t seen in months in the grocery store this past week, she was anxious to tell me how much she enjoyed my son’s role in the 2011 hit movie Moneyball. 
“How is your son?  You must be soooooo proud of him!”

Many of my friends have made similar statements, and of course I respond that I certainly am proud.  What parent wouldn’t be proud of a child who has persevered for more than a decade to achieve one of his dreams?

But the truth is, my pride for what he did yesterday and what he has done quite frequently lately, is far greater.




Yesterday Stephen faced one of his fears with much trepidation and great courage.  Why?  Because he can’t live with the idea that children around the world are being exploited by greedy, soulless sex traffickers.  He promised his Facebook friends that if they would help him meet his fundraising goal, he would do a skydive.   This from a guy who gives new meaning to the term white knuckle flier.

Oh yeah, I’m proud. 

To donate to 18 for 18: Project Rescue go here.

A couple of weeks ago, this happened:




Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich commended Stephen publicly for his volunteer work in the supervisor’s extensive foster care programs in the LA area.  When he put this photo on Twitter, Stephen’s hashtag was #GivingBackFeelsGreat.

Oh, yeah.  I’m proud.

Kids are my son’s priority, though he has none of his own yet.  He flew coast to coast twice in 24 hours not too long ago in order to avoid letting down a small group of kids in northern California who had invited him to speak to their acting club.

In my book, the measure of a man is how much he cares for others.  So yeah, I'm proud of him.

A Right-Fighter Never Really Wins

 

A right-fighter is someone who struggles to win arguments, even if they doubt their own view. A right-fighter is someone who gets overly emotional or angry when people do not agree with them and their opinions or beliefs. A right-fighter is someone who insists on having the last word in an argument or refuses to back down no matter what.—Dr. Shawn Byler, Ph.R.D. in Psychology*

---

As my online family grappled with a serious breakdown in communications recently, I was reminded of a term I heard on the Dr. Phil Show.  Right-fighter.

Dr. Phil stopped a woman who was talking eloquently and endlessly about why she was right and her husband was wrong. 

To the woman Dr. Phil said “Are you here to solve this problem or are you here to prove you are right?”  It stopped her dead in her tracks.

Few of us enter into an argument, friendly or otherwise, thinking we want to be proven wrong.  Quite the contrary.  But what happens when person after person – people whose opinions you respect and whose characters you admire – weigh in on the opposite side of your premise?

Some will actually listen to what is being said, consider the fact that s/he seems to be standing alone and acknowledge that the other people involved in the discussion might have a point.  In other words, the point of view of the opposing side is given value enough to consider.

The right-fighter takes on all comers, no matter how compelling the arguments to the contrary.  That’s because the right-fighter has his or her value tied to the outcome of being right.  To feel lovable and worthy, the right-fighter feels deeply he or she must be right.

Since the right-fighter is always going to be “right” a lot of other personal values are predictably lost in the shuffle.  Having to be always right alienates the people around the right-fighter, creates feelings of not being heard and  not being valued.

Right-Fighting is an acceptable form of violence or aggression. Because the right-fighting pattern usually ends up one sided and includes a winner and a loser, the effects are similar to those of physical abuse. Learned submission on the part of the children and often the other parent/spouse is inevitable. "Right-Fighting" is in fact a form of emotional abuse. A right-fighter parent is particularly harmful to children because the child is made to feel like the "loser" and that his or her opinions are
not valid or important. Right-fighting is a direct reflection of low self-esteem. And unfortunately the low self-esteem of one steals the development of strong self-esteem of others.  -- Dr. Shawn Byler

In the statement above, Dr. Byler is discussing a woman who is a wife and mother.  Similar outcomes, however, can be expected in the workplace if the person in authority uses her power to impose her rightness. 

In situations where the right-fighter is on equal footing with those s/he tussles with, the likely outcome, over time, is for others to refuse to even enter a discussion – why bother? – or for people to give the right-fighter a wide berth.  Animosity and bad feelings set in, because the other people may not have their personal needs met; i.e., the need to be recognized as having an opinion worth considering.

The number of right-fighters on the internet seems to me to be extremely high.  Dr. Byler calls it a habit, a behavior that can be and should be modified if the person wants to live a happier life. 

This habit is also observable in political circles and certainly in our government.  Adhering to one and only one ideology, at all costs – cogent arguments to the contrary be damned – leads nowhere, as we are learning during this Presidential election cycle.  Opposing sides resort to all sorts of dishonorable behaviors in order to appear to be right.  Deliberate lies.  Underhanded innuendo.  And absolute refusal to EVER concede a point.

All it takes is a few little words that say “I hear you and I understand what you are saying.”  That doesn’t mean concession.  It means openness. 

 

Source: Are You a Right-fighter?

*Dr. Byler’s Degrees and Certifications:

Ph.R.D. in Psychology and a Masters degree in Psychological Therapy and Counseling from Logos University, along with minors in both Communication and Organizational Leadership and Supervision from Indiana University. She is also Shawn is a certified diplomat of the National Institute of Sports Division. She’s a GCCA member and former WBE member. Shawn is also a certified Temperament Therapist and a certified FIRO-B administrator.

A Letter to Gabby Douglas

 

Dear Gabby,

Congratulations on your monumental achievement.  That gold medal hanging around your tiny neck is your reward for your hard work and your great sacrifices.  Most of us here back home are bursting with pride, as if we did something other than cheer you on.

You probably haven’t had much time to notice, but the vultures in America have wasted no time trying to knock you off that vaunted pedestal.  It’s the American way or so it seems.

You are aware of the “sistahs” in Tweetland who decided your hair looks “a hot mess” while you do things with your 4’11” body that most of them couldn’t even dream of doing.  They who sit at their smartphones tweeting nasty remarks about the appropriateness of your hairstyle instead of celebrating your unprecedented achievement are ill, Gabby; they just don’t know it yet.

You have stepped up like the champion you are and told those haters they might as well stop tweeting, because you aren’t going to change a thing.  You were kind enough not to point out how utterly ridiculous they are for not noticing that your hair is styled exactly the same way all your teammates have theirs done, and how indicative their behavior is of a deep-seated racial self-hatred we African American women still sometimes model and propagate.

Maybe you are too young and too sheltered to realize that last point – after all, your training regimen doesn’t give you much time to get down in the dirt with the mean girls, who are so jealous of your accomplishments they deflect the recognition you so rightly deserve by being critical of the nappy edges of your sweat-soaked hair.  You should know though, Gabby, there is a high likelihood that those tweeters are tweeting while wearing hair that originally grew on the heads of some women in India, so consider the source.

It is bad enough when your own peeps try to play Whack-a-Mole with you.

Now the lockstep talking heads over at Fox TV News have decided you are portraying a kind of “soft anti-America sentiment!”  And they went and found themselves a black member of the Tea Party to support that view.  Why?  Because you wore hot pink (which, by the way, was also worn by your teammates) on the day you made history and became the best all-around female gymnast on the face of the earth.  The geniuses at Fox News think you should have been wearing the flag colors. Let me take a wild guess – you had nothing to do with choosing the uniform that day, right?

I can’t help it, Gabby; I wonder if that medal had gone to, say, Jordyn Wieber, if the right-wing broadcasters would have remembered how they once accused another African American woman of being anti-American for something she said off the cuff.  That would be Olympic Games fan #1 –our First Lady.  You don’t suppose your skin tone had anything to do with it, do you Gabby?  It’s hard to know.

Welcome to the world, Gabby.  I pray you will have around you the support you are going to need to help you negotiate the sewage you are about to have slung your way.  I guess it is too much to ask that you be idolized and iconized in the same manner as Mary Lou Retton was, you being such a lightening rod for bovine defecation. 

You are probably already wealthy by now – the Corn Flakes box is just the beginning.  You certainly have earned it.  I just hope you won’t be required to earn your fame and fortune over and over and over again, just because you sweat and you understand the meaning of the word “uniform.”

With warm regards,

L in the Southeast

Photo by USAToday

Video from Fox News

August Storm Surprises

 
It seemed to come out of nowhere.  The cooling afternoon thunderstorms we have  been getting with unusual frequency were not predicted yesterday.

I was reading OS posts on my laptop  when the sky opened and literally poured sheets of rain over our landscape.  Rain is good, I think to myself; we need it.

Before it started raining I had gone to my mailbox and found the fat letter from the IRS I kind of expected to be there.  I omitted an important form in my 2010 federal tax return -- the one that reports the short sale of my house.  That caused an audit.  Easy fix, no big deal.

But when I saw the figure on the letter next to Balance Owed I nearly swallowed my tongue! $170, 221!
So I was upstairs digging in the file cabinet looking for the documents I needed to restart my heart when a gust of wind slammed the crepe myrtle tree against the window.  Just one gust.  Had to be at least 60 mph.

Coqui and I nearly jumped out of our respective skins, bracing for what we both thought was more to come.
 
Oh, shit, I just KNOW trees are coming down out there.
 
Sattelite TV doesn't do well in thunderstorms, so it was taking a break while "searching for a signal..."  Miffed at the timing right before the start of the prime-time Olympic coverage,  I answered the call coming in on my iPhone.

A friend who lives next door to my other friends' gigantic 115- year-old Victorian across the street was calling to see if I had an alternative number for the owners.  One of the towering live oaks in the side yard between their two houses had come down and hit the house -- hard.    No one was answering his calls and he was concerned about the safety of the family.

This is the house where the kids I have tutored for years live.  Their mom and dad are close friends of mine.  My hands started shaking in concert with my voice.  I croaked out the number.
The rain had slackened and the lightening hadn't flashed in about 10 minutes, so I grabbed my umbrella and ran to the front for a look at the damage.

The damage was in the same location it had been when a limb from that same tree fell around four years ago, but this was much worse.




















Under that hanging soffit is the porch swing where one of the daughters sits to read every afternoon.  All the neighbors were out by this time, calling out to anyone who might be trapped.  No response.

The gate was accessible, but the stairs were not.





















We finally learned that no one was in the house at the time, which is a small miracle.  It is a Bed & Breakfast, and the family is large.  The mom was in another part of Atlanta picking up the daughter who would usually sit reading on the porch. Where they were, nothing was happening -- no rain, no wind, no thunder or lightening.  She was stunned by the news when the neighbor reached her by phone.

Many falling trees took out power lines in our neighborhood, although my power only went out for a few seconds.  My favorite BBQ restaurant, Fox Brothers, had a tree fall directly upon the dining room which was filled with dinner-hour patrons.  Again, not one injury.   They will have to remained closed for several days.

More thunderstorms are predicted for today, tomorrow, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  The ground is saturated, which causes the giant tree roots to loosen their grips and topple in winds even half as strong as the gust we had yesterday.  We are all holding our breath.

Oh, and I also called my accountant!

Mosquitoes–170M Years of Misery

 

"One in 10 people are highly attractive to mosquitoes," reports Jerry Butler, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Florida

Lucky me!  For once I am in the upper 10% of a category of humans.  Mosquitoes are so enamored of my essence, they hunt me down like stealth bombers and select my hide out of a crowd. I cannot go from my front door to the mailbox without having my blood sucked, unless I first cover myself in DEET.

There are many reasons I was happiest living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the 15 years I was privileged to live there, but the lack of mosquitoes topped the list.  I thought I’d gone to heaven.

As a child in Illinois, I remember being routinely asphyxiated by clouds of chemicals that spewed forth from big-assed trucks driving slowly down our elm-lined street.  According to the adults in the family, the spray killed the armies of voracious mosquitoes that terrorized all moving, respiring, blood-filled beings during the dog days of summer.

I’m here to tell you, some of those nasty bastards eluded the spray.  I could hear them giggling as they honed in on the backs of my knees, for some reason a most delectable target.

Other than providing an abundance of sustenance for the lower quarter of the food chain, the only reason mosquitoes exist is to drive living vertebrates starkers and less often, to make them sick with diseases like malaria and the West Nile virus.  They need to ingest mammalian and avian blood in order to produce the eggs they lay in every puddle of stagnant water they can find.

Why me and not my neighbor, who can stay outdoors for hours on end without a single bite?  Experts say it is about 85% genetics.  Thank you so much Mom and Dad!

With all those millions of years to evolve, mosquitoes have developed highly efficient sensors they use to make their menu selections.  They can detect carbon dioxide, which is contained to varying degrees in the exhales of all breathing things, from as far as 100 feet away.  They also seem to be attracted to individuals who have higher amounts of steroids and cholesterol on the surface of their skin.

“Mosquitoes also target people who produce excess amounts of certain acids, such as uric acid,” explains entomologist John Edman, PhD, spokesman for the Entomological Society of America.

Heat and the lactic acid produced from our sweat glands make us even more attractive when we try to enjoy outdoor activities that require us to move.  And the white or lighter colored clothing we are encouraged to wear to stave off the heat act lighting airport runway landing lights for the mosquitoes.

The saliva in the mosquitoes mouth serves her purposes of stealth because it acts as an anesthetic.  Often the victim doesn’t feel the presence of the pest until his body sends histamines to the location, which causes the itch. In my case, if I don’t treat the bite immediately with a dose of an antihistamine, the swelling will continue to ten times the normal size and become black and blue and yellow and green.   I am more allergic to the bite than most, it seems, and the tortuous itch lingers for more than a week.

The average life span of a female mosquito is 3 to 100 days. the male lives 10 to 20 days.  There are more than 170 species of the nasty critters in North America alone.  And, like humans, some “skeeters” are more equal than others.

My son played professional baseball for several seasons with the Northern League’s Saint Paul (Minnesota) Saints.  When his aunt and I flew in to watch him play the first time, he had failed to warn us that the state bird of Minnesota is said to be the mosquito!  They are that big.  So big, they are less able to sneak onto a target without detection; their hum is much too loud.  But what they lack in sneakiness, they more than make up for with their vicious bite.

I’m not sure if I believe in Heaven or Hell after death.  I lean more toward the belief that those two concepts exist right here on Earth.  But if I’m wrong and there is a Heaven, I hope to God the mosquitoes will reside in the other place.

 

Source material

http://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/are-you-mosquito-magnet

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/insects-arachnids/mosquito.htm

http://www.control-mosquitoes.com/