Do You Realize?

I think I'm a fake liberal.

Anyone who's spent a goodly amount of time around here knows that my politics lean pretty far to the left. I'm even pretty socially liberal. Or am I? My social liberalism has recently been tested by a situation in our neighborhood. I'm a fake. A sham. A freakin' NIMBY, for pity's sake!

We live in a nice, established neighborhood. The houses were all built 20 or more years ago; there are a few families with kids, but not a lot. Often, we leave our front door and our cars unlocked. It's usually pretty quiet, despite our across-the-street neighbor, who is a lawyer with an obnoxious, drunken twentysomething-year-old son.

Long story slightly shorter is this: We have relatively new neighbors with a young son (hereafter called "K.") who has begun taking liberties with other people's boundaries. In the span of a week, he's taken toys that don't belong to him; walked into our fenced-in backyard & jumped into our pool after being told he could not, as adults were not home; walked into our unlocked front door when no one answered the doorbell; walked into another neighbor's unlocked front door under the same circumstances; gotten into yet another neighbor's vehicle uninvited; and hauled out our garden hose to play with on several occasions. He does not leave when asked or directed, even by an adult.

Here's where my fake liberalism shows up. Through the grapevine, I've heard that a local church is buying and/or renting houses in town, then setting up underprivileged families in them, sometimes even putting a couple of families together in a larger house. This is how K. and his extended family (I've seen at least five different cars in the driveway) allegedly came to live in this house. A truly liberal person would think that this is a fine charitable thing that the church is doing to help the lower class families in town to get up on their feet to make a better life for themselves. Is that what I'm thinking? Well, yes. But, I'm also thinking that maybe it's not so wise to scoop someone up out of the 'hood and dump them, ever-so-benevolently, in a 4000-square-foot house in a quiet neighborhood with obviously very different expectations than the ones they seem to be accustomed.

I soothe my wounded progressive pride by telling myself it's a good thing we're not hard-core Second-Amendment-or-bust types, or K. might be pulling some buckshot out of his ass right about now.

Images of Intolerable Beauty

Chris Jordan is my new photographic hero. You absolutely must visit the link and see his work. It is incredibly powerful. His images are scenes depicting the staggering cost of American consumerism. An excerpt, written by the artist, from his website:

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity."

This is an appearance with Stephen Colbert. (Added as a link, because I'm too stupid to figure out what's going wrong when I try to embed this fucker.)

(Thanks, Dad, for the heads up on Chris's site.)

The tightening of the wingnuts

I've been surfing this morning, and the waves are high and treacherous .

Have you noticed that when a person can't poke holes in a politician's policies or the job they've done/are doing, they resort to trying to poke holes in their private lives?

Hate-filled fundies have done their best now to prove Obama attended a madrasa, that he's not a "true" Christian or that his church is racist against whites, and now this man has made not one, but two, YouTube videos claiming to have had a coke-crack-and-fellatio-fest with Barack in the back of his limo.

Let me just go on record as saying that if this story is, indeed, true, that Larry Sinclair is the singular highest form of idiot: one who doesn't know the monetary gains of true blackmail. Okay, that was a joke, but this isn't. If I have solid, proof-backed claims of misconduct of such a well-known figure, I know I'm headed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek. But Larry? His exposure of choice is YouTube, where any jackass with a cameraphone is a celebrity in their own mind. We teach our kids to ignore schoolyard taunting, and yet there are people out there who want Obama to respond to this? Right now? Shall he drop his campaign duties and make himself a YouTube response video?

On one wingnut delicious Republican site, which I shall not publicize, I found not only the Larry Sinclair breaking news, but also this bullshit juicy little morsel (which I've picked apart and provided responses) about hatemonger Fred Phelps being a registered Democrat:

Quick question, why do the Democrat candidates for President refuse to condemn the antics of the Leftist religious groups in their party?

I hardly think not taking the time to specifically address Phelps publicly constitutes a refusal to condemn the man and his hateful brood. And is there any such thing as a "Leftist religious group?" Also, if you truly think this is a "quick question," you're completely lacking in anything resembling intelligence.

Is there anyone more disgusting than their Westboro Baptist Church backers?

No. No, there isn't. Except maybe murderers and rapists and the pedophile pervert that recently found my site after searching for the words "underage cunt hole." (Boy, he was disappointed!) Those people may give Fred a run for his money.

Why will they not kick Fred Phelps to the curb? Is it because his hate is exactly like theirs, well except for hating FAGS? Is it because he uses their playbook religiously?

I'd like some clear proof, or at least a semblence of examples, of the accusation that he "uses their playbook religiously," and the "hating FAGS" is where he's more like the redneck fundies who pen entries like the one I'm addressing.

Will the Clintons return the money that Phelps gave them?

I tried at opensecrets.org to find that money, and I couldn't. Besides, Phelps has very openly been "anti-Clinton" once he realized Bill didn't espouse the same, errr, virtues as ol' Fred did.

Will Phelps again get invited to the White House if Hillary is elected like he did when Bill was? Will Phelps send his son to Hillary's inauguration like he did to Bill's first?

A Phelps may have, indeed, showed up at Bill's first inauguration. The one-sided love affair didn't last long. Fred's Westboro Baptist Church picketed Bill's mother's funeral, as well as Al Gore's father's funeral. I suspect he won't show up in support of Hillary any time soon.

I just want to know why homosexual groups refuse to try to kick him out of the party. I mean, is getting elected so important to them that they will allow Phelps and all the other hate groups (KKK, NAACP, etal) to continue to be the majority of their party?

Is it even possible to kick someone out of a political party? We are not the Pope; we cannot excommunicate someone who's simply chosen to keep the word "Democrat" on his voter registration card out of spite. And, are the Democrats so popular as to attract both the KKK and the NAACP? Seems like, despite its early Democratic implications, the KKK today attracts many more conservatives than liberals to its ranks.

Please, if there is a single Democrat that knows these answers, let me know. I just can't come up with one good reason why there is actually a group with so much hate amongst them.

I can't come up with a good reason for the existence of hate groups, either. But the fundies and their "Obamanation" agenda should recognize some parallels.

First and foremost, anyone who believes that Fred Phelps adheres to any political party's true ideals needs to be shot. Fred Phelps adheres to only one agenda: his own. I don't accept him as a true Democrat any more than I would be stupid enough to suggest he were a true Republican. Yes, his voter registration card (which is how old if Phelps is pushing 70?) says "Democrat." I like how Mother Jones stated it in 1999: "He still calls himself a Democrat, refusing to change just because his party has." If you look at Fred Phelps's beliefs, they are far and away closer to the right than the left: extreme religiosity, anti-homosexual, racist. But, again, remember I said I don't think he's truly representative of either legitimate political party.

Second, quickly addressing Obama's "clear" disrespect for white Christians everywhere, let's suppose he was, heaven forbid, NOT a Christian. Does our Constitution not declare that he should be able to choose any religion he wishes? Does our legal definition of who can hold the office of President of the United States include that (s)he must be a Christian? NO. Even if he were Muslim, he would be afforded that right by our Constitution, just as I'm allowed to carry my AK-47 squirrel hunting if I so choose. The problem is extremism, and I boldly declare that any religious extremist is dangerous. A fundamental Christian nut who bombs abortion clinics in God's name is no different to me than a fundamental Muslim nut who bombs the pet market in Allah's name.

A note on the Dems, and a couple of gems

Anybody watch Hillary and Barack last night? I heard the first 30 or 45 minutes on XM but I haven't gotten to watch it on DirecTV yet. I'm looking forward to hearing it, since their views are seemingly so similar on a lot of issues. I do plan on posting my impressions, but I have a bazillion errands to run today, and we have an appointment in Dallas tonight, so it may be tomorrow or Sunday.

I did want to make mention of the abominable new lows to which overseas terrorists in Baghdad are stooping. Where do people come up with an idea like: "Hey, let's strap up a couple of mentally retarded women, send them into the city's pet market, then blow them up by remote control?"  It's also pissing me off that some of the media are calling them "suicide bombers." I'm sorry, but I don't see mentally handicapped women making that sort of decision; this was murder, pure & evil.

And, speaking of evil, ask me how badly Exxon and their record profits make me want to vomit. Go ahead, just ask.

Finally, just consider the photo included in this article. Where's the grass these cows are supposed to be grazing on? Trees for shade? A pond or two? This is what we subject a majority of the nation's cattle to during their final days & weeks, just for a tasty burger. Pasture fed-and-finished beef is readily available nationwide now; there's no excuse for feedlots.

Asking the Wrong Questions

This video has surfaced, prompting people to question whether our beef is safe. It shows a cattle worker torturing a dairy cow who is too sick to walk into the slaughterhouse. (Unless an animal can walk in unassisted, it is not supposed to be slaughtered for human consumption.) Though that is a valid question (for those who don't do buy pasture-raised & finished beef), the question people should be asking is whether humanity itself is safe when there are members who are willing to look into the eyes of a weaker species and then do these things to them. Certainly the possibility of their willingness to treat children the same comes to mind. I'm sure the wives of the two workers pictured here are proud of their husbands.

According to this video, we're just monkeys that can operate forklifts. Animals, just like the others. (Warning to all my religious readers: you will be offended by this video, I'm pretty sure.) This video was passed along to me by a friend of Eldest; Eric, you are quite the fabulously intelligent and charming guy. Dance, monkeys, dance!

Sunday Scribblings--The Unspoken Competition

There exists in today's culture a competition so fierce, with competitors so driven, and so exclusive, in which men cannot even hope to participate and women have been accused of cheating for the title. It's a competition which is never advertised, and no one is to ever call it such. Its ostensible purpose is to help each other, to offer a sense of camaraderie and fellowship. Don't be fooled. It's a competition. It's the Childbirthing Championships.

When I got pregnant at seventeen, I didn't tell anyone for five months. Part of it might have been trying to avoid women of all walks of life telling me I was going to hell and that I should give that baby to a family who could raise it right, but most of it was self-preservation. I had seen women all but eat each other for the title of Most Death-Defying Delivery, and when they spy a pregnant belly, they seem drawn to it by some unnamed force, to tell their horrific, harrowing tales of painful parturition. The longer I could avoid that the better. Invariably, though, they found me. Each woman of Prima Gravida status or higher had a story to tell me, but not to scare me or to outdo some other woman of equally noble character; no, they were there to help me, to let me know what to expect.

I'm calling Bullshit. I'm now a member of the Multi Gravida Club, and I now have a story to tell, too. I KNOW that it's all about the competition. And everyone has a different strategy. Who went the longest without an epidural? (For the record, the epidural is my friend.) Who labored longer at home before going to the hospital? Who drove themselves to the hospital? Who was in such pain they passed in & out of consciousness, having Frida Kahlo art-inspired visions? Who endured pain and panic and delivered their baby at home on a holy rug with no pain relief but a midwife's comforting whispers?

I'll own up. I'm in. My story is easily as worthy of Childbirth Champion status as someone else's. My childbirth story. Let me tell you it.*

*I'll tell you later. Just know that it involves 38 hours of action, adventure, suspense, pain, blood, and gore. I'm in it to win it, peeps.

Sullying My Good Name

Don't you hate it when someone with your name does something reprehensible and loathsome and lands in the middle of a national scandal/debacle/debate/investigation?

I do. There's something a little unnerving about reading your name in relation to something heinous.

Sunday Scribblings

I found this challenge blog one week a month or two ago at the site of one of my fellow Photo Hunters. I thought it was great, but I didn't want to add another challenge to my plate. There is a weekly topic, just like Photo Hunters, but participants use it as a writing prompt.

And if ever there was a topic that was near to my own experiences, it is this week's Sunday Scribblings topic: Misspent Youth.

As  a child, I was terrifically smart; I taught myself to read at the age of four, and by first grade, I was being separated from the rest of my class because I was doing sixth grade-level reading. They had to separate me; I couldn't just switch classrooms to a higher grade for reading, because it was elementary school, where fifth grade was the highest grade. (By the time I was in eighth grade, there were three of us that needed advanced math, so we were transported to the high school & back.) This separation left in me an impression that if I were too smart, it separated me from my peers. All through elementary school, I was separated at some point in the day for some academic reason.

By the time sixth grade rolled around and we were moving to a new school, I knew what was in store for me: separation. Soon I developed a plan to purposely let my grades slip down to average. I was finally allowed a spot in my own classroom, but I was still separated, even if it wasn't physical any longer. I was still the smart kid, the kid off of whom everyone expected to cheat; I was still different. I tried my hardest to let my grades slip even further, and it worked. And I made some friends, ones that weren't interested in cheating off my papers, but in me.

By tenth grade, I wanted not just friends, but cool friends. And letting my grades slide wasn't the path to cool friends any more; grades were no longer any status indicator. So I quit band, colored my hair, and devised another plan. I got a boyfriend at a different school, one who was like me; B. hung out with the popular crowd, but he was not really a part of them. We dated for more than a year; we lost our sexual and alcoholic virginity together. After that relationship ended, with B. cheating on me in the back of his truck with one of my "friends"), I kind of felt like there was nothing else to lose. And so began two years of hell for my parents.

I had friends from four or five different schools in town, some popular, some not so much. Some had family money, some were poor. I did not discriminate; if they wanted to party, they were my friend.

In the course of those two years, I chased love and acceptance through promiscuity and alcohol. I never found it, but I tried. Many a night I would drive home drunk; it's truly fortunate that I never was involved in an accident. My parents had no idea how to control me, and so they sort of treated it as a "phase" I would grow out of. That ended up being the truth, but it took an incredibly long, painful fall to get there.

I was seventeen. I had met a really hot guy, C.,  from the wrong side of the tracks. (His grandmother had run a brothel "back in the day," and his father had eventually gone to prison, tried as a "career criminal" after attempting to arrange a hit on the DA. His uncle ended up dead, I believe, and not naturally so. I found all this out a year later, but it probably would have only made his appeal that much greater.) I had a job and had just bought my first car. C. would come to work & pick up my car to wash it every day. I had that car twelve days.

One Friday night, a friend and I went cruising in my car, staying out well past my curfew. Suspecting I was pregnant, but not having told anyone, I had not drank any alcohol that night. But it was very late. At about 1 a.m. I fell asleep at the wheel of my car, headed down an embankment, hit a culvert, and flipped my car end over end five times, landing on the roof. It happened on the highway in front of the house of my mother's best friend, who was an EMT. A truck driver saw the accident & stopped to pull my friend and me from the car. I never got to meet him.

I did, however, eventually meet the fetus that was two weeks settled in my uterus that night. She's now a beautiful, intelligent, independent, honest senior in high school. She's the reason that, although I consider myself mostly Democratic and liberal, I don't believe in abortions as birth control, or simply for poor judgment. She's my only daughter.

I'm dreaming of a green Christmas...

What? You mean you're not ready for Christmas? There's (an)other American holiday(s) to celebrate after Independence besides Christmas? Oh, yeah... little, (consumer) insignificant ones... Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving. But let's get to the real moneymaker: Christmas!

Every year since my husband & I were married, we've participated in the most ridiculous ritual with his brothers and their wives, and once or twice with my family as well. We draw names for gift-giving purposes, then proceed to ask the spouse of the person's name we drew what to buy for them for Christmas. (I told you it was a little ridiculous.)

This year, at the risk of being: (a) ridiculed, (b) persecuted, and/or (c) excommunicated for being an environmental, left-wing wacko, I'm going to make a radical, environmental, left-wing wacko suggestion. I'm going to suggest that, instead of gifts that we told our spouses to tell our name recipients to buy for us, we donate money to a charity that we tell our spouses to tell our name recipients that we support. Crazy, huh?

The two I will suggest for my name recipient are:

Kiva. This is a fantastic organization who lend money to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world to help them overcome poverty and in turn contribute to the economy. On the website, you can see see photos of the entrepreneur, often at their business they started, and it provides detailed descriptions of who they are, where they live, why they want to start this business, how much money they need, how much they’ve raised so far, and you can even see who else has donated. You donate in increments of $25.00, and as the debt is paid off, eventually you get your money returned to you, hopefully to re-invest in another entrepreneur.

Heifer International. The first two years we received their catalog in the mail, my husband and I scoffed. This could not be legit. You mean you can buy a goat or three rabbits or a llama for a family to help them produce milk to sell, weave yarn, fertilize small crops, increase their family's protein intake, or carry water? Since then, though, I've discovered that not only are they legit, they are supported by many notable figures, including Jimmy Carter, Ed Harris, and Susan Sarandon, among many others. If you are vegan or vegetarian, you can also choose to purchase a honeybee hive for families or to plant trees.

If anyone insists on purchasing an actual gift, I will be asking for sustainable gifts, like a bag from Alchemy Goods (hubby, are you reading?), a pair of Simple Shoes or a pair from MooShoes, more reusable tote bags, or gift certificates to Blue Canoe. These are all gifts that I can really get excited about receiving!

Whether you're giving or receiving this holiday season, I highly encourage you to steal all my gift ideas. I stole a couple of them myself.

Talking Head

Okay, I really was not going to tell another tale about my ex-husband, C, who was a pathological liar. I'm still not. But I do want to talk about another one (liar, not ex-husband...hehehe).

I was just reading my daily dose of Internet, and a story caught my eye (mostly because it was called "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire"). Apparently, a woman named Tania Head, who was, until a few days ago, the head of a 9/11 survivors' support group, has been lying the whole time.

Her basic story is/was/has been this: She was in one of the towers when the planes hit. She woke up on fire, and a man (who later died) saved her life. As she was then crawling out of the building, she came across a dying man who gave her an inscribed wedding ring, which she returned to his wife a few months later. She had a fiance in the other tower, named Dave, who died.

Here's all the weird stuff. She has told several versions of this story to various members of the survivors' group, and I guess no one thought to compare stories because it would seem morbid or something.
To some people, she and Dave had just returned from a trip to Hawaii, where they held a commitment ceremony. To others, they had only been seeing each other for a short time & were keeping their relationship a secret. Dave's family (he was indeed a real person, and really did die in the other tower) has never heard of her. They said his computer contained no emails or any other evidence of her existence. She will not reveal the name of the man whose wedding ring she returned, and no one has come forward to verify this story. No area hospitals have any record of anyone with her name in the days following 9/11. Merrill-Lynch, where she claims to have been working, has no record of anyone with her name ever having worked there. She claims to have gone to both Harvard and Stanford, but neither school has any record of any alumnus with her name.

This woman has been giving tours of Ground Zero, traveling to make inspirational speeches, the whole enchilada, for FOUR YEARS now. It seems to me that either: (a) this is a very emotionally disturbed, delusional individual who needs psychiatric treatment, or (b) this is a woman who maybe has some sort of amnesia and needs psychiatric treatment, or (c) this is a sad, pitiful woman so starved for attention she would construct an intricate web of lies for four years who needs psychiatric treatment. See a pattern here? Haste! Get thee to a shrink!

She kind of makes C seem kind of, you know, normal. Scary.