Happy Halloween

Would you want your three-year-old to see this in your mailbox?

It is the scariest piece of direct mail I've ever seen; I nearly did a coffee spit-take when I saw it. Now nobody can say the Republicans don't prey on fear… while we pray in fear.

Happy Halloween.

I miss BSUWG

Don't know if any of you ever followed my link to Blowing Shit Up With Gas but he stopped writing on September 19th and might never return. It's really sad. Patrick Hillman was one of my favorite writers — and don't you dare refer to him as a mere blogger, nay, not that composer of novels, screenplays, memoir and piano music — and I'm feeling the loss of any new work from him.

If you have any sense you aren't even reading this entry anymore, having followed the link in the first line, but in case you haven't, his last entry refers to his personal 9-11: 9-18, in which he learned of his mother's breast cancer as well as something else so big that it shook him to his core and made writing a blog seem pretty damn silly (my words, not his, though that's the gist of it). He hasn't posted anything new since then, and 38 people have commented with well-wishes.

My point is, there's not much worse for a writer than to go through something that you can't, for one reason or another, write about. Especially after keeping an online repository for years. For this reason, and many others, I feel for the guy.

Nate Berkus

Nate Burkus — Oprah's favorite interior designer — is coming to San Francisco. The SF Chron helps explain his design aesthetic:

“Behind those cupboard doors – 'where I imagine most people keep things like pancake mix,' he said – Berkus stashes decorative bowls, vases and other accessories. In his always-evolving Chicago apartment, they are the finishing touches that he swaps in and out as inspiration strikes.”

This kills me (and I'm making sure the horse I've been beating all week comes along for the ride).

All I'm saying is, spend your money how you want. *Especially* if you're rich because, well, then, you can afford to. My only point is, does the money go farther, does your investment GROW more if you buy:

A) some vases and bowls to swap “in and out as inspiration strikes,” or
B) a year's worth of hot school breakfasts for some hungry kid you don't know.

innnteresting

Been a long time since I've been involved in a flame war. This one's got me thinking…

Do wealthy people really believe that they are better, more responsible people than those who flirt with the poverty line? What do they base that upon?

On a higher level, does more wealth mean that you're more worthy as a human being? Because my friends out here are some of the best, most loyal, most generous people I've ever known, and we're all scraping right around the poverty line.

And does the person who suggested that I'm poor because of my own “irresponsible, instant-gratification choices” (and how dare he/she speak to me like I'm a WaMu mortgage broker) consider him/herself to be a Christian?

Perhaps…

But we'll probably never know, as that person was only brave enough to write as Anonymous. Which pretty much tells me everything I need to know; mainly that he/she may have more money than I do, but they aren't actually WORTH a blog posting from Motormouth. 🙂

Hey Monstro, is it time for me to invoke Godwin's Law yet? Let me know….

McCain on women's health

“Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He's
'health for the mother.' You know, that's been stretched by the
pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's
the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, 'health.'”
— Sen. John McCain, during presidential debate
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Since when did women's health become extreme?
Just a couple months back, McCain had the deer-in-the-headlights
look, and couldn't answer whether he thought it was fair that
insurance companies that cover Viagra should also cover birth
control.
And, remember the time when McCain was asked whether he thought
condoms helped stopped the spread of HIV? McCain's response,
“You've stumped me.”
And there's more. Let's count the ways that John McCain is out
of touch on women's health and women's rights
*He's voted 125 times against women's health.
*He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
*He opposes funding to prevent unintended and teen pregnancies.
*He opposes requiring health care plans to cover birth control.
*He opposes equal pay legislation, saying it wouldn't do
“anything to help the rights of women.”
*He's proposed a health care plan that will be worse for women.

And since when does women's health equal abortion? I've never had an abortion, and it would take a pretty serious situation to make me want one. Does that mean I have nothing to say about women's health? Apparently, John McCain thinks so.

Letter from a Nobody

a.k.a. Motormouth's Manifesto

Have y'all received the forwarded email called “Letter from a 'Nobody'”? It's a folksy tome from Joe Porter of Champaign, Illinois, who says that every Obama voter he's talked to says they're voting for “Change”, and yet can't concretely pinpoint what specific changes they're voting for.

Mr. Porter, allow me to elucidate…

*I* want a president who will 1) get us out of Iraq, a war we were tricked into entering by our president's lies and obfuscations, 2) give more tax breaks to the little guys and a few fewer to those who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and have multiple homes, 3) promote affordable, high-quality health care, especially for children, 4) keep student loans secure, and 5) not start a war in Iran. From everything I've read, that's Obama.

I want a president who doesn't have a penchant for flying off the handle in anger. From everything I've read, that's Obama.

I want a president who will open up the thinking on our country's energy policies. Heating oil's going to cost my household six grand this winter — it's doubled each year. My family lives on the top floor of a windowy house in western Massachusetts, keeps the thermostat to 68 degrees, and can't pay to upgrade the heating system because, duh, we rent the place. Anyway, from everything I've read? Obama.

I want a president who supports the teaching of and advocacy for real-life, true-science sex education in schools, which of course would include but not entirely consist of “Abstinence!”; someone who keeps abortion as safe and legal as possible, if for no other reason than I'm not a medical doctor with a capital M.D and I also don't want to see 16-year-old girls going to prison for murder. From everything I've read, that's Obama.

And don't even get me STARTED on Palin's qualifications when stacked against Biden's.

And no, I'm a hippie-dippy dirtbag Teamster pagan liberal Masshole. I'm a Christian. Shit, I'm a Republican! Have been since age 18. But. I'm also a nursing mother who lives in a rented house, no stock market portfolio, no retirement account; who works three jobs, has two kids under the age of three, and a full-time-student husband who also works three jobs.

Frankly, we're drowning. We need a frickin' lifeboat. John McCain? He might as well be a big metal crate filled with anvils.

The people who represent the bulk of the future of this country need Barack Obama.

If you guffaw at that, especially if you're older than 65 or maybe the teensiest bit of a racist, please, go up about seven or eight paragraphs and read it again.

Nobody's saying McCain wasn't heroic, or doesn't have a sterling military record. But that was forty years ago and before I was born.

And how can he endorse waterboarding after being tortured for five years? I mean, this one time, half my life ago, I got raped. Eighteen years later, I'm not pro-rape.

(You know what waterboarding is, right? It's where they strap you to a plank and cover your face with a heavy dark non-wicking material and then dump gallons of water on that material so the material gets suctioned to your mouth and nostrils and you can't breathe.)

It's about time we had a president who has grown up under the specter of poverty, who knows what it's like to live in a family that waits eagerly by the mailbox for a paycheck that'll just go out to bills in the next day's mail. For that, and for everything you just read, please: Vote Obama.

“Nobody” repercussions

My friend Lucille sent me that first “Letter from a Nobody.” I wrote an abbreviated version of the above blog post and did one of my only ever “reply to all”s. I received two emails in response. Here's the highlight of one of them and my response.

(This is from my own guiding principle since 1994: don't put anything in email that you wouldn't want on the front page of The New York Times, or Motormouth)

Mark wrote:

Wake up and smell the roses! If you think that Obama will give you a helping hand up, you are wrong. If you review the history of the mess we are in you'll see that it is from those very policies of the people that think that the government can do better for you than you can do for yourself! You are right that he will take from the rich and give to the poor…that is called socialism! It's awfully interesting that when Ronald Reagan became president we were in a mess from the Carter years. One of his main strategies was to reduce taxes for ALL not for the rich. It was called the trickle down theory. And guess what? It worked! If you review the history of the mess we are in you'll see that it is from those very policies of the people that think that the government can do better for you than you can do for yourself!

I'm struck nearly mute by the vitriol and condescension of your response… nearly.

First off, I too am a Christian and a Republican. And I don't think the government can do better for me than I do for myself. Well, *this* government hasn't, and John McCain votes with Bush, though he won't say so. That's why I have three jobs; I'm not getting help from anyone, and frankly, I don't expect any.

I'm not looking for a president who takes from the rich to give to the poor, but I do think that those with more should pay more to fund our government, its war, etc. Ten percent from someone who makes 300,000 is a whole lot more than 10% from someone who makes 30,000. It isn't socialism; it's math.

That economic stimulus check? The majority of people spent it on their debt, which didn't stimulate anything; actually, what's the opposite of stimulate? Yeah. That.

Oh, and even though I make about 30 grand a year, I tithe. So I'm used to sharing, and wouldn't mind sharing a little more if it means that kids get vaccinated and maybe a little help toward a college degree. It's good business to have a healthy, smart workforce.

(also , its=possessive. it's=it is. No “e” in judgment. Socialism=when banks get bailed out by the government. That's just off the top of my head)

Additionally, Obama is not a Muslim. Obama did not have anything to do with the Kenyan elections.

Obama's associations? The judge who convicted Ayers (when Obama was eight years old) has complimented Ayers on the way he's turned his life around into that of an upstanding citizen.

Last week John McCain himself said of Obama that “He's a decent family man, citizen.”

Is it Christian to hold people to the standard of who they were decades ago? I mean, in the '70s McCain was a tortured POW. Now he supports waterboarding. People change.

why do I bother?

Monstro just came home. (I'm posting these posts in reverse chronological order so they read in proper format on the blog). I'd told him about Letter from a Nobody but he was surprised to hear that not only have I received two emails from my “reply to all,” but that I responded to both of them and blogged about it twice.

“Why do you bother?” he asked.

“Because I'm tired of people telling me I don't know shit about shit.”

Especially when they back up their arguments with information disproven by a nanosecond's search of Snopes.com. I mean really, people, please! And while I'm at it, Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer; NOT a journalist. He'll tell you that himself.