Letters to Washington

Dear Senator Klobuchar,
I have been following some of the healthcare debate and, although I have excellent health care provided through my husband's employer, I beg you to vote yes for a public option.

I broke my leg very severely 7 weeks ago, requiring surgery, a three-day hospital stay, and I am still at home recovering on my employer's excellent disability benefits.

I have been uninsured, though, and if this had happened then I would most definitely have had to file for bankruptcy or live with the debt for the rest of my life.

I cannot be the only person who thinks that a public option would stem the flow of medical bankruptcies and crushing debt. I cannot be the only person who thinks that access to healthcare might stem the tide of unintended pregnancies and that regular checkups for children might detect more child abuse.

Senator Klobuchar, I am well insured and I would like others to have that opportunity. Please vote for a public option so that those who do not have employer-provided insurance may spend less time and money worrying about their basic needs and more time contributing to the health and welfare of their families and this country.

Syl

I have emailed the same letter to Senator Al Franken and Congressman Erik Paulsen. I urge everyone to contact their senators and representatives to express their opinion on the public option. Whatever that opinion is, please express it logically and respectfully. I have seen too much impassioned fear-mongering to last me a lifetime.

In the news

Dead Celebrities - I don't want to see retrospectives. I don't want to see "never-before-seen" home videos. I don't want to see pictures of people in the back of an ambulance, pictures of their children, pictures of their family, or mourners, or the house they lived in when they were 5. I don't want to know who's going to get the kids or the house or the millions. I can remember the good parts without glossing over the awful or pretending it didn't happen.

Sarah Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska - WTF? Since when is a governor with 18 months left in office a lame duck? Don't even pretend you're doing something noble for Alaska. Sarah Palin is all about Sarah Palin and what everyone else can do for her. If she thinks she's going to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2012, she's out of her mind - her star is tarnished and the party blames her for McCain's loss. And with 2 1/2 more years before the election, there's too much time on the public stage for her to seal her own fate with her mouth. So best of luck Sarah. I hope Alaska is better off with the Lieutenant Governor you are giving a leg up and I hope I hear very little from you for the rest of my life.

MN Senate Race - I don't know how this played nationally, but it was pretty huge news here. Al Franken was declared the winner of the Senate race by the MN Supreme Court by just over 300 votes and Norm Coleman has conceded. Minnesota should have a second sitting senator early next week.

Our governer has also declared his intentions not to run again, and it appears that while Republican governors are starting to jockey for position on the 2012 ticket, several are having a difficult time keeping their personal lives out of the media. Affairs keep bringing them down. Poor Republican party, in bed with the Christian Right and family values wonks and yet their candidates keep proving to be so damn fallible. Affairs funded by public money, pregnant teenage daughters, what's a Republican to do?

Mad Love

So, I've been on Facebook lately. I got into Flair, which is just little buttons you can add to your corkboard. You can make your own or pull them off of the website.

The Flair is overwhelmingly "Twilight" related, but there's also lots of religious Flair, Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift, emo Flair, and a whole subset of Chuck Norris flair (Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird; Chuck Norris' tears can cure cancer, too bad he doesn't cry).

There is also a new market in anti-Obama flair.
"I'll keep my guns, my money, my freedom, you keep the change."
"I hope I have some change left in 4 years."
And my new favorite:
"You didn't respect my president, why should I respect yours?"

Ok, fair enough. I had no respect for George Bush and dogged him at every turn. In all fairness, although I hated him the whole time, he did end up with a 30% approval rating, so I certainly wasn't the only one. But ok, I didn't give your president respect just because he was the president and you don't have to respect Obama.

But. Obama does have a 60-80% approval rating (depending on who you read) so he's not just my president. So I'm thinking the anger and disrespect is coming from a pretty small percentage of the population.

Maybe he's a love-him-or-hate-him president. If his approval is 60%, maybe 40% of the population loathes him, they're not just blase or intellectually against him.

I don't know. I don't care. I have nothing but respect for him and what he's done so far. I wish he would reach across the aisle a bit more, but I'm not sure it would help - it seems the republicans have decided to make a stand against him, although they don't have the political capital to change anything. Makes them look like spoiled children.

In fact, although this post was supposed to be about Obama, maybe it's really about the Republican party. Congress and Senate Republicans have stood, almost without exception, against everything Obama has sent to them. They have said it's because he has not reached out to them. They have come forward with rhetoric and sacrificial poster-children to explain why they are not voting for the bills. The issues they have brought forward have been blown far out of proportion and constitute the smallest portion of the bill.

And they are doing these things, things that they have been doing for 10 years, as if they still have the political capital for it to work. They pick out one item from a bill and vilify it when the balance of the money hardly matters and as if they have never stuck pork into a congressional bill. They use rhetoric to expose a worst-case-scenario or make a piece of funding sound ridiculous (money for field mice? it was funding for some California refuge thing).

And I would like to say to the Republican party that these tactics worked for years. From the age of Newt Gingrich through the first 4 Bush years, this stuff worked. America has started to grow weary, however, and the Obama election should have been a clear message that America is tired of the bull and vitriol. You might be energizing your very core 10%, but you're turning off everyone else. And you don't have the numbers in Congress to have it work.

So just as Gingrich recreated the Republican party into what it has been, so must the current party recreate themselves to function in the new political climate. I believe we are seeing the first part of that recreation right now on the floors of Congress as each bill comes through and that it will continue through the next 18 months until the mid-term elections. The mid-terms will determine if they have successful.

Hey, that's me!

I listen to MPR a lot now. So I've been listening regarding the stimulus bill and the new proposal for turning around the mortgage crisis. I'm all for progress and I believe in Obama, so I'm pretty happy about both on a moral level.

And then, as part of the mortgage bill, they described this little benefit:

They want to adjust the rules to help homeowners who have "done the right thing" with their mortgage and who would like to refinance to take advantage of the current low rates, but find themselves "underwater" on their mortgages, or owing more than the house is now worth because of falling home values.

Which is us. We bought a house we could afford and put down over 20%. We are current with our payments. We would love to refinance into a better interest rate, but we owe more than what the house is currently worth.

The only caveat is that they will only be helping people whose mortgages are owned or secured by Frannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Dammit!

For once, I thought we were actually going to be able to take advantage of a specific government program that isn't just built into the tax tables. They were describing me until we got to that part.

And they all breathed a collective sigh of relief...

I don't know when the last time was that I could say I was proud of my country.

Tonight I can actually hear the country breathe. I feel the negativity of the last month lifting. Hearing McCain's concession was like a weight lifting - positive and gracious, for once in this whole election (from anyone).

And listening to Obama now is like listening to my best friend. He's got my best interests at heart, but he's going to tell me the truth, even if it hurts.

I don't know how this is going to turn out over the next 4 years - it's proving time for the Dems. No one knows what's going to happen. But for one night, I am proud to be an American again.

2067

I was voter 2067 in my ward this afternoon.

And dang, were they organized. One judge out in the hall stopping folks who needed to register so they could start outside the melee. Switch-back lines so everyone could wait inside the gym in an orderly fashion (middle school, you know). Line directors at the front to show people to open polling stations and to allow people a bit of privacy while they fed their ballot into the machine.

In all, it took about 20 minutes for me to do it all. With an additional 100 people milling through the process. Brilliant.

Oh, and I so love that there is one precinct reporting in for Maine right now - with a total of 3 votes. If I could extrapolate that to the entire Presidential election, I would be a happy girl.

Tee hee hee

Ok, so Michele Bachmann, Represenative from Minn to the US House, questioned if Obama had anti-American views and suggested that Congress ought to call him out on it.

Many of us liberals here in MN (the only state that voted for Mondale, thank you very much, D.C. not being a state) have been cringing at Bachmann for years. She seems to always be putting her foot in her mouth or getting herself on camara in some weird way. You might remember her from such hits as getting awkwardly affectionate with the president after a State of the Union speech (on camara on national television), or her extremely conservative views on women's issues. I secretly think she either hasn't completed her transgender surgery yet or that she's a total closet lesbian - something that's causing a lot of self-loathing.

So anyway, let's return to our faux pas already in progress. So Bachmann makes this inflammatory comment on national television while in the middle of running her own campaign for reelection. Within hours, the great people of Minnesota have donated $600,000 to her opponent (unfortunately named, and I'm not even kidding, Edwyn Tinklenberg).

So nice job, Michele, excellent campaign strategy. We hoped your own comments would eventually bring you down, but we couldn't even have dreamed of something this delicious. Thanks for making the election season a little more exciting, even when you're not in my district.

Random Thoughts - VP Debate edition

Um, did anyone else throw up a little bit when Gov. Palin talked about the "expanded definition" of the VP's responsibilities and how she would take advantage of them, like Dick Cheney has?

Palin word count:
Maverick: 6
Main Street: 6
Partisan/Bipartisan: too many to count

When the first comment is, "Well, she didn't embarass herself," I wouldn't feel terribly encouraged.

Pants and I agreed that, while she didn't fall flat, Palin appeared to have 5-7 talking points that she kept coming back to, and we didn't feel she answered a lot of the questions.

Have I mentioned how much it completely pisses me off that here is only the second woman to share the presidential ticket for America and she's dumb as a rock. We finally get another on in there and it's Phyllis Wheatley. She's Jesse Ventura with better taste in suits. She's a novelty as Alaska's governer and they like her because she's "anti-establishment" and she gives them a check every year. Remember the Jesse check? Remember the budget deficit the year after he left office? Ask Alaska in 2 years how they feel about Sarah Palin.

And so it begins

My husband and I agree that the National Conventions, both RNC and DNC, are more like theater than politics. Scripted, rehearsed, staged. Theater. They are more about pumping up the party and introducing people than they are about issues, stances, or specifics.

So yeah, we watched the RNC and Palin's and McCain's speeches, as apparently everyone else did - the ratings for Palin's speech were higher than the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. She was such an unknown, such a wild card, that we all wanted to check her out. And she spoke well, I will be the first to give her that.

But it's one thing to deliver a written speech and quite another to face the nation during debates, live visits, and meet and greets where all of the candidates will have to speak off the cuff. They will have to be knowledgeable about issues and be prepared to back up their positions when challenged. In fact, they'll actually have to take a stand on issues, not just spit out sound bites.

And that goes for both parties. I'm tough on the Republicans, but Democrats do the same thing. Most politicians do. If it can't be played in a 20-second clip on the news, it apparently is not worth uttering.

Here is my wish - that someone would actually list out the stances of each candidate, complete with pros and cons, without judgment or favor. Tell me clearly that when McCain says he is "for education", he means he supports school vouchers, and what the pros and cons are of the program. When Obama says he is "for education," what does that mean? More money? Smaller class sizes? French fries for lunch? JUST TELL ME.

Worst. Tragedy. Ever.

Pants told me about an email today that said it was everyone's duty to fly a flag on 9/11 to commemorate the worst tragedy in American History.

Huh?

I'm not saying it wasn't bad, and it was certainly the worst American tragedy in my lifetime. But come on. Um, Pearl Harbor? The World Wars? The Civil War, where we suffered the worst losses of any war? Ok, we were on both sides and sustained ALL the losses, but hey. Much worse tragedy.

So it's different because it was aimed at civilians?

Let's ask a Native American if 9/11 was the worst American tragedy visited upon civilians. Or how about an African American, whose ancestors were kidnapped and shipped here into slavery. Hmmm. That sounds like a tragedy.

So, let's not be so short-sighted. If we put this into the timeline of American history, I'm not sure this incidence even ranks in the top 10. It was bad, and those of us who were alive when it happened will always remember where we were when we heard. But ask your parents where they were when they found out Kennedy was shot. That was a pretty big tragedy to them and now it barely rates. Perspective.

Um, sorry, have you seen my $12 Billion?

"I know that $12 billion seems like a lot when you stack it up on palettes..." Yeah, I know that a few years in congress seems like a lot when your constituency is waiting to vote your ignorant ass out...

So the government cannot account for the $12 billion in cash they sent over to Iraq to boost the economy. The Iraqis say it's because of their poor bookkeeping and payroll systems. Those wacky Iraqis.

In totally unrelated news, I have my fourth cold this year, about 3 days behind Kitten's cold. Meimei is about 2 days behind me, but Pants decided to buck the system and got the flu instead. I guesstimated today (in the cough and cold aisle of Downtown Target) that we have spent nigh on $80 on assorted infant and adult cold medications this year alone. It's not even the end of February.

And yet I soldier on, attending work every day (can you hear the sighing?). Except those two days when I got the sinus infection. I'm just waiting for this one to turn that corner so I can pull a vacation day, drive the kids to daycare, hit the clinic for my Penicillin substitute, drop some Q, and watch Law & Order until I drift into a drugged stupor and start speaking to Buppy.