No Politics, Please!

just blog about tomatoes and grandchildren and maybe the weather, oh, no, not the weather! The deniers are in charge and there is No Global Warming!  By declaration, they said so!  Life would be so pleasant if we just didn't talk.  as in, not voting, can't be bothered.
This "revolution" could have happened at any time.  We could have had our jobs back a long time ago.  We just don't want to go to any effort or expense to get them back.  It is easier to have others force this upon us.  We always had the opportunity to "Buy American", but face it, Walmart is so easy, just down the street, one stop shopping and cheaper!  We want cheap gasoline and will frack the hell out of the earth to get it!  Open up those coal pits and let the miners die of black lung disease, the air get filthy, the water poison.  Drill, baby, drill.  We have not destroyed the Oceans...enough!
    Is any one old enough to remember that previous to our entering WWII there were Serious Debates in our Congress as to which side to join?  We are just a hair breath away and it is frightening.
   We want to go back in time and "Make America Great Again".  Great but not gracious.  In the 1950's and '60's when our Freeway systems were constructed, when NASA was created and we did go to the Moon, we had a Progressive Income Tax.  In those days the wealthy paid their share.  Income tax went to 90% and they still grew richer.  No one is talking about that now.   I wonder where the money will come from?  Reduce SS, Reduce medical, Reduce Education.  It will come from the working poor.
   I am not really worried about all this,  History Swings this way and that and Our System still moves slowly.  Women will suffer now and maybe for 100 years to come, just more of what they had for the last Centuries.  I hear they are tougher.  Minorities have always gotten the short shift. We only believe in equality as long as we get ours!  I worry about the Planet, the garbage, the strip mining, the water and air we breath.  We have never been good stewards of this planet and I think we will get worse.
Like spoiled children.  What a Wonderful Gift we have been given, and we just trash it.

Chicken in Every Pot!

All right, I did watch the Republican Debate in Arizona.  I just needed a few days to go by in order to digest it without throwing up.  Clearly no one is worth a damn and the Republicans are scrambling, there is even talk of no one single candidate having enough delegates to win the convention.  They might throw all the bums out and pick someone new!

   I think it could be me!  Newt is promising $2.50 a gallon gasoline, like it is his and he can just reduce the price!  Mine will be $1.75.  That is right.  Vote for ME and I will sell you all the gas I own for a mere $1.75 a gallon!

   You can watch one of these debates and it doesn't take long to realize that there are problems in a Representative Democracy.  No one is really after what is best for the USA, it is all about Special Interest, like five fat guys on a committee to determine woman's rights!  I love it.

   I still think the best way would be everytime they vote for more money, say for the Olympics or that bridge to nowhere, they should just send us the bill.  Then we would really know what something cost.
There is a cost to everything.  We want to put pressure on Iran (think Persia!) to stop their nuclear efforts and they stop exporting oil.  Duh! Who didn't think of that?  As long as oil is the prize the world will be what it is.  We will fight for it and people will die for it.  More drilling won't help; it all gets sold to the highest bidder where ever it comes from.

   I think Santorum might be a great President of Iran or some other therocrocy where the religion of the day prevails and heretics are stoned to death or burnt at the stake.  I have a fear of people who think they are so right.  I wouldn't mind Ron Paul controlling the purse strings.  I think he might have every dime he has ever made.  But his isolatioism in this modern world is a little scary top me.  In think there are bad guys out there.

   The truth is I don't know whether things are getting better or not.  Everybody lies about everything,
that seems to be the only reality.  Obama says there "is no silver bullet" and I suspect he is telling the truth.  It is not what we want to  hear.  We want to be kissed on the forehead and tucked in at night and told all will be fine.  Deep down inside we really want cheap gasoline but I wonder what the cost would be?

   Maybe the Republicans couldn't come up with a better candidate because, well...they...are..
Republicans!  They are after a different time, a time in the past.  Yes, vote for me (and send me money!), I'll make it all perfect!

I Wake Up in Pain

   I am lucky.  Put me horizontal and lay me flat and I will fall asleep.  Or put me in front of the television and I will fall asleep.  But I always wake up in pain.  My feet hurt and I cannot feel them, my hands hurt, throb and I can feel them very well, like shuffling razor blades.  Peripheral neuropathy, my collateral damage, a souvenir from my successful battle with cancer.  I go downstairs and feed my doggy, the 128# Rottweiler-pitbull-mastiff breed my daughter gave me. I don't need a home security system although his bark is far worse than his bite.  I don't think he would bite anyone but bad guys don't know this.  He is a big dog.  I make some coffee and take a vicodin and head out my backdoor
the hundred feet or so to my studio. across the stone bridge to my office.  The blood begins to flow, life ebbs into my feet and my hands are stiff and sore, so far unresponsive.  Tender to the touch.
   My new computer is so much faster than the old one, I sometimes wonder why I even bought it?
It can "multi-task" and I cannot.  I have a routine and each morning is about the same.  I check my e-mails most of which are junk and I check out who is blogging what?  What is important and what are people doing and what are they willing to say?  Then I check the news and I have to admit I like this aspect of my computer.  I get news from all over the world.  It is pretty complicated and sometimes difficult to sort out.  It is almost never what the headlines say.  There is always so much more to the story.  I think if voting were a life or death issue I would want to know a lot more.  I sometimes wonder if when we die, if we are really put before God what would happen?  What would happen if He said:
"Well, it was a gift! What did you think about it?"
   So I read the news and I am so thankful that I do not live in Syria and I remember that we had our own Civil War!  There is so much progress in the art of killing people.  We are still tribal people, not much has changed at all.
    I read about how our economy is supposed to be getting better but I don't see that happening around here.  The Stock Market went to 3000 yesterday, carried by the likes of Apple and the price of gold I suspect.  My little $5,000 in Steel Stocks is still down to less than $2,000 and I know that things won't get better for the average person until we are building things again.  Corporations are doing well, making the most profits in that last sixty years!  But we all know it is not trickling down.
General Motors is back to being the largest car company in the world but I know few people who could actually go out and buy one.
   There are debates tonight and I will watch them.  I am saddened by American Politics. This election process will cost billions of dollars and I realize that a regular person can never become President.  It is a lot of money and has to come from somewhere.  Somebody is paying for this and they will want something in return.  As the economy is theoretically getting better the issues have turned to "social issues" and they are talking about gay marriage and religion and all of a sudden I think I am in Iran!  Don't we have better things to do than lurk around bedroom windows?
   By now my feet are better and I feel as though they will hold me up and my hands are no longer the center of my being.  One last check on blogger ville and I am off to my bath!  Hot water in a bubble bath in a six foot one hundred year old cast iron tub!  Pretty lucky, thank you so much.  Then I return to my shop or my studio or my office or my garden or maybe the greenhouse!  I have so many choices!  And I am just incredibly lucky!