Alphabet Soup

Spitting fire today! If one more person uses the word recession to me, I will scream from the rooftops! We are not in a recession. We are in a depression -- yes, we can use the D word now. It may not be the perfectly defined D word with all the required criteria, but it is a depression. This is becoming more profound than the Great Depression because many people today have no idea of how to survive or the wherewithal to do it. We are lucky. As long as my husband and I can keep our jobs (not in peril as yet), we have a home and 7 acres upon which we can raise food (we actually do that for ourselves and the local farmer's market), but most people have no clue of how to survive or property to do it on. Remember, we have a lot of people who have been busy taking vacations, buying cars, hiring their yard work done and finding doggie-daycare and trying really hard to pretend not to see the problems we have (sarcasm). But, we mostly have those who have simply worked so very hard and expected the dream that their parents told them about, so that their survival knowledge base is just as lacking as Mr. and Mrs. McMansion's. I have two daughters out of work. One has already exhausted her unemployment and has a 3 day a week job. Luckily, she is getting food stamps and medicaid for her and our granddaughter. Also, luckily, my husband and I can tighten our belts and help her with her mortgage, but think of the number of people who aren't that lucky! My middle daughter's last day at her employment is Christmas day. The large pharmaceutical company that she works for sold out to another company and she and 23 others who had 3 year contracts have been let go. Of course, the company will take back their share of the 401K and allow the employees to keep what they put in. I find their generosity touching. She will begin collecting her unemployment. I asked the other day if she could get food stamps and medicaid and she told me that the rule is that 'if you are drawing unemployment so that you can possibly keep your home, (no food to eat in it), you can't get food stamps. When you get to the end of your unemployment and can get food stamps, you will have food (no home to eat it in, though). And someone said to me the other day that they could see no problem with Capitalism (the C word)! And we have a President that if I were a religious person I would pray for daily. This man is brilliant with the best of intentions and he has inherited a 2 front war and an economy on the skids like never before. Former President Bush and the puppet masters left our nation little hope, but left their cronies and themselves with lots of money. The President's own party is so afraid of the word 'socialism' (the S word) that they are willing to let pass the opportunity for us to join the rest of the industrialized world who has long known that it is imperative that people must have affordable (even free!) health care. Yes, dare I say, even a gov't ran program. This chance may never come again. The insurance companies will not run out of money to fight this because they are the richest entities in the country (that in itself should tell us something). Not a very uplifting posting today............Happy Holidays!

Our True Colors

Before we began our journey to establish affordable and available healthcare reform, I must have lived a very sheltered life. I had no idea that so many American people were selfish, hoarding, non-caring, lying, gullible, and plain didn't know anything about the difference between an economic system and a governmental system. Besides the fact that to support no healthcare reform must also mean they are fantastically wealthy and do not know anyone who has lost their home, their jobs and their health insurance (if they had health insurance which is as good as not having any) due to one catastrophic illness. Or they are not acquainted with any of the 45,000 per year in this country who die because they have no health insurance and so were not treated or were not treated to the fullest potential if they chose to be. The rest of the industrialized nations have seen the light and at least PRETEND to care about their people. Yes, it costs them a bit more in taxes, but not as much as health insurance premiums that protect very little. The world is watching and we are failing miserably. Our true colors are showing and I am very ashamed.

Evil on a Saturday

Yesterday, on two separate occasions, I came in contact with what I perceived to be evil. The first was when I opened my computer to news that Mike Huckabee believes that if we had had the 'Obamaplan' for our health care system, that Senator Ted Kennedy would have been encouraged to end his life earlier. What rude garbage--and this from a Baptist minister! Only proves the saying that the Lord (his lord, I presume--not mine) moves in mysterious ways! The second occasion was very close to home. Sitting in a lawn chair watching a soccer match (granddaughter is 9 and on the team) with my husband, two daughters, one of my daughter's best friends and husband and the father and mother of the best friend's husband. Stay with me here. The opposing team has a little boy named Victor on the team. Victor is about 9 and knows his soccer. He plays his heart out and he is a joy to watch. I noticed that the father of the best friend's husband is upset and keeps saying that the boy is doing something wrong (amazingly, the ref's just don't see it like this guy does). Then he gets up and walks around to my husband and I and says 'That's all those people know how to do, you know--just sports. I work with them and they don't work. They are lazy. I am not prejudice (this statement always brings up red flags!), but I work with them.' I am simply staring at him, aghast, but find my voice to say, Yes, I can tell you aren't prejudiced (sarcasm dripping). He is talking about Victor whose family is Hispanic (and, by the way, sitting close enough to hear). Victor is a beautiful little boy with a very supportive family (who, by the way, speaks perfect English). His mother was cheering the way all mothers do, but she happened to be cheering in Spanish and that really ticked the bastard off! Anyway, when he did not get the required agreement from my husband and I (or anyone else within earshot), he stomped off only to return a few minutes later to say to his wife (who either must be used to the ass or has kow-towed all of her life) and said gruffly 'Are you ready to go? Let's go' and stomped away. I guess we didn't join his little hate group and he was mad. Probably thinks we are some of those bleeding heart liberals who think he is upset because his poor, little white male world is crumbling and he has to have someone to take the blame. Yup!

Decent, Affordable Health Care -are you rich enough to deserve it?

I have had no time to blog since gardening and our farmer's market went into full swing, but I am taking this time today because I have not been so enraged at my own people since we allowed President Doofus to invade Iraq. I have never seen so much absolute crap come out of the propaganda mills as I have seen concerning one of the most important issues of our time--health care reform. Garbage from 'pulling the plug' on grandma (who we would obviously rather see starve since we don't care that she won't be able to pay for health care AND food) to 'standing in line for medical care like those foreigners in Europe who have (oh my god, dare we say it) SOCIALIZED medicine'. Like we don't stand in line now! The difference is that when Frenchmen and Englishmen stand in line they know that at the end of the line they can get good health care that will not throw them into a foreclosure if they can't pay for it (never mind if they insurance or not. I have insurance and I know better than to think that my deductibles will save me from the streets). We don't have that luxury. Here in the rural areas, we don't even know if we have a doctor within 20 miles, let alone at the end of the line. And here is the real clincher---even those of us with insurance have deductibles and out of pocket expenses that we can't afford. So, besides the fact that millions of our people cannot afford health insurance, the issue is not making sure everyone has insurance, but making sure that we can even afford the insurance that we might be 'lucky' enough to have. In the past month, I have heard on 2 separate occasions that people in high places (generally means people with money who think that somehow they have worked 'harder' for their money than those with less money) have blatantly said that 'poor people do not DESERVE good health care'. That by virtue of the fact that these fat cats were in the right place at the right time OR inherited well that somehow that makes them DESERVE good affordable health care. And of course, the appeal to the ordinary American who doesn't know socialism from raisin pie that somehow government supported health care would be the undoing of all of our freedoms-- not wanting to recognize that Social Security and Medicare are government supported programs, pretending not to know that military health care insurance and health care insurance for members of our Congress (by their own admission, the best in the world) has always been government-run.

I really don't want to believe that there are those in my country of supposedly humanitarian values (dare I say 'Christian' values--their true colors are showing), with the opportunity at least of self-education would let a bunch of rich right-wing idiots tell them that somehow decent, affordable health care--the kind that every other industrialized country in the world recognizes is important for their citizens-- is somehow not important for themselves and their children and would be too expensive to 'waste' on the common ordinary citizen. But I've seen us do some pretty stupid things--see 1st sentence in this blog issue--and use a whole lot more money. Would this venture into 'the right thing to do' be more expensive than an immoral war that has run on for 6 years? I think not.

Health Care Reform

It's about time. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that cannot seem to understand that private insurance companies do not provide insurance to anyone but their CEO's and stockholders. Why should we be SO far behind the rest of the world because we have such a big hangup on labels. It might be SOCIALISTIC and (say it isn't true!) that would mean that ALL people might have a fighting chance. Imagine the nerve--poor people getting the same chance and quality of care that rich people get........What is the world coming to? During the Bush adminstration, the propaganda was that people who went backrupt couldn't handle money, were lazy welfare abusers, had no work ethic, etc (of course that went along with 'people who live under bridges like their lifestyle), but now, as many of us suspected, we know that 61% of bankruptcies happen because of a single catastrophic medical event and many of those people had 'insurance'. Of course, between the premiums and the deductibles and the 'out of pocket expenses' and the services 'not covered', insurance did not insure them against anything! It is a placebo for the middle class. The only people who come out ahead here are the private insurance companies so having a health insurance policy means nothing. I work with people from Canada and, believe me, when the topic turns to our health care system or lack of health care system, they just can't imagine why we are so blasted stupid! I can't either. All the crap that the 'opposition' (and you know who they are) wants us to believe is that sometimes you might have to 'stand in line for medical care'. Well, we stand in line now and there are no guarantees that we will get care at all, but there is a chance that while we are standing in line that our home is getting foreclosed on. A difficult decision to make---my housing or my health. What a deal! It's time to put stupid phobias about labels behind us and grow up--call it humanism or anything you want--and just pass the legislation that the President has outlined and let us go forward. If we can afford a stupid boondoggle war started by an absolute idiot and supported by the same, we sure as hell can afford universal health care --- yes, even government sponsored. The South wouldn't let go of blatant racism until the federal government stepped in. The country will be in the grip of the insurance industry unless the same thing happens!

Three issues today--just keeps raining

Three Issues:
Swine flu. Sometimes I sincerely doubt our intellect. Who would actually quit eating pork because this possible pandemic was named ‘swine’ flu? Evidently, quite a few, since last Tuesday the pork industry took an 18 million dollar hit! Now, I am not an advocate of the method of confinement by which our meat is raised. (When I retire, I will be raising our own chickens for meat and not just eggs.) I strongly believe that raising our meat so confined is unethical (interesting to use that word when I/we are going to eat them) and with the use of antibiotics is dangerous and unnecessary. I believe in eating meat, but there are healthier, more humane ways to do it. At the same time, I just don’t know how some are making the strange connection that ‘swine’ flu would be passed to humans in meat that is cooked to 160 degrees. I come from the farm (I’m still there) and this doesn’t make sense to me. Personally, I feel much more comfortable eating the venison that my husband and daughter hunt in the fall. I help with the butchering so I do get up close and personal with the meat we eat. I detest those who devour their McBurgers at the same time talking about the ‘poor little animals and how sad it is that they must die’. I guess it is ok to allow others to do your killing for you. When asked, ‘why do you kill those animals’, I reply “Because I can’t eat them alive.” OK, now I am stepping down from that soap box. Heaven help us if the H1N1 becomes worse!
The Economy, stupid! No insult intended, but I couldn’t resist. I live in a state that is run by an idiot—bet you can’t guess which one it is because it seems to be commonplace. Our state has a ‘reserve fund’ of over a billion dollars. Our state has unemployment out the wazzoooooo and has been borrowing unemployment funds from the feds since last November. Our governor says that the reserve fund is for a rainy day. Just what exactly constitutes a ‘rainy day’. It’s raining cats and dogs and we are in the middle of a perfect storm! My oldest daughter is drawing unemployment and is trying to hold onto her home and raise our granddaughter (luckily they are only 4 miles away—at least they aren’t at the other end of the country). There are NO jobs. She doesn’t have medical insurance, granddaughter has Medicaid. Her unemployment will eventually run out—then what!? And it is EVERYWHERE. And we have asses in the Statehouse who want to ‘save it for a rainy day’. The ark is loaded and leaving! The President seems to understand, which is a lot different than the loser that we had in the White House before. Trouble is, can anyone get us out of this and soon? The answer is no since we are in the transition phase where we come to understand that capitalism is dead (rest in peace) in the last depression and we have only been working with an illusion since then since everyone is so afraid to let go. We will come through, but it will be an humbling experience that we deserve. And the world will be a different place—hopefully at least greener.
The War—many people are saying ‘at last, we are fighting in the right country’, but we still have a very expensive mess left in Iraq and jumping and running may take a bit more time than we would like. Keep in mind that no one has ever ‘won’ in Afghanistan, but we had a good chance in the 80’s had we stayed to clean up after the Russian mess. However, the American people only want to use money for war, not for the peace, so the Taliban moved in very smoothly. If Americans could just see that an investment in peace is much farther reaching than an investment in war, we would not be in Afghanistan. Of course, peace doesn’t seem to us to be ‘patriotic’ so it is not preferred. Don’t even get me started on that boondoggle in Iraq—an excellent vacation spot for George and Laura. Much closer to their Saudi buds.
You might note a bit of bitterness today. We have a quarter acre of vegetable garden for the farmer’s market that is standing in mud and isn’t planted. Wettest spring in years. We’ll do what farmers have done for centuries—we’ll just wait.

Peace to us all.

Spring Fever

Spring is the hardest season for people who work the land. You want to plant, but the ground is not ready yet--too wet, too cold. And yet you see the new grass, the tree buds and feel the warm air and it is so frustrating--especially when you know that this year you will begin the grand adventure of planting an acre of vegetables for the farmers' market which may or may not be bought due to the economy. But still, you think, people must eat and they should eat 'green' so it should work. Maybe, maybe not, but whatever happens, it won't go to waste. Food pantry's, family, livestock--we will all eat and we will eat better than most! Our seeds have been ordered and delivered weeks ago. Last fall we put in more fruit trees. Strawberry plants will come in the next month. In my father's basement, he has started the broccoli and cabbage and tomato plants we will use to turn our pasture into the 'truck patch' that I have dreamed about for a long time. I am so proud of the First Lady for planting a garden at the White House. It is a waste of space and water when so much ground is used as lawn when it can grow food. If it takes her to be the example, so be it. I am waiting for her to put up a clothesline like mine to have their clothes dried by the wind and sun. Probably should e-mail her to remind her of that.

When I opened the door to let the hens (and a few roosters) out of the chicken house this morning, I was greeted by a sea of chickens of many different breeds waiting at the door to begin the procession. As I looked across the moving, clucking crowd of the different colors, it reminded me of a moving patchwork quilt and that reminded me that I need to finish cutting out the quilt pieces for the quilt I have promised #2 daughter for the last two years.

Now I am rambling so I guess we truly have spring fever here and it means more work after the winter months when the only work we do outside is thaw out waterers and make sure the livestock and dogs and cats have bedding and food. Now is the time for spring housecleaning--there was a reason why my ancestors did spring and fall housecleaning. The women knew that once garden, food processing, etc. began, there would be no time for heavy cleaning. Then, of course, in the fall after the harvest was done, it was time to clean up from the summer so that one could do other things throughout the winter--sewing, knitting, taking care of livestock, etc. So there was a method to my grandmothers' madness and since we live according to the seasons like they did, we do the same thing. Of course, our jobs take a great deal of time away (darn those bills!), but we still have lots to do here. It seems I am rambling again and that is because my computer sits next to a window directly over the tire swing on the tulip tree and boy do I have spring fever! I have bread to bake and work to do that I brought home from the office, so this is all.

Peace be with us all.

I couldn't have said it better myself

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/cafferty.republicans/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
I certainly couldn't have said it better myself.

Hope and History

I saw the entire assembly applauding, craning their necks to see him as he addressed his first joint session of congress. The hope of the world is on the slim shoulders of this young man. I write ‘the hope of the world’ because, even though our reputation is tarnished and may take several years to rebuild, the United States is still the promised land, still that which all look toward to ‘make it better’ and if we don’t succeed, hope is lost and if hope is lost, we are lost. As the planet gets smaller and I get older, I know that the view of America is mostly illusion, but a necessary one. Everyone must believe in a better way, a promise of freedom and peace or life sheds its purpose. So I will believe in this man and what he stands for, but I also know that there are forces at work that long for the old way, the war way, the capitalistic greed way. I am concerned about the increased incidence of hate crimes and how his heritage will be used against him.
Already the partisanship has surfaced-- jealous, vindictive, racist, mean. All of the things that were hidden during the election for fear that the opposition would be perceived as racist. I am old enough to understand the strong relationship between organized religion, hate and conservative politics. In fact, Christianity in particular teaches hate, judgment, and persecution. Hitler only had to intensify the historic blame on the Jews and cast them as scapegoats for everything that was going wrong in Germany during the Weimar Republic. In the past weeks I have heard people place the blame for our entire economic downfall on ‘illegal aliens’. I know that rhetoric has been seeping into our consciousness for the past few years. We are not a nation that finds it easy to blame our own selfishness, wastefulness and greed on ourselves and so we begin casting blame. We ask citizens for donations to make sure that Ellis Island is preserved as a memorial to those who came to this country from Europe, but we are building a fence on our southern border against those who don't look quite as white as they should. With the rate of unemployment climbing, already we hear that 'if we could deport all the illegals, this wouldn't happen'. So simplistic. Of course, it couldn't be us that has made our own mess--it must be the fault of others who don't speak our language, who have audacity to come to this country to make a better life for their children. A very familiar story--one that all white americans should be able to relate to, since all of us came from an immigrant(s) who crossed the Atlantic to make a better life for their children. If we make others a scapegoat for what we have done, we will always have a reason for not making it right. We will always have to find someone to blame. And we may end up proving what we who have studied the Holocaust know. Any country at any time in history given the right set of economic problems and the right ethnocentric mindset could do what Germany did. Let's not make illegal aliens our Jews.

New Year's Day

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and the house is uncharacteristically quiet. Last night was New Year ’s Eve and we stayed up to watch the ball drop on tv. My eight year old granddaughter was with us and she really wanted to see it drop, but we all fell asleep and woke up at 12:04. I have never felt so little promise at the beginning of a New Year. True, we have a very promising president who will take office in three weeks and I really believe he will make a big difference, but he has been left with bigger problems than even FDR faced. That’s the way it always goes. A progressive is elected to clean up an idiot’s mess and is given only so much time. Then, if he is blamed for having to raise taxes, etc. for money to clean it up and the Republicans start heckling. And if his efforts to reform and change are not completely successful, they will point their fingers. But the rest of the world has been heckling and pointing fingers at us for decades since we have the dubious distinction of being the only industrialized country whose government does not think its citizens deserve decent affordable health care, whose environmental policies have been laughable. To me the cause is two things—greed and war. We are so greedy that we allow rich people to deregulate our economy and we allow idiots to borrow huge sums of money for a war for his/their egos. Can you imagine what good that war money would have done? Why do we never borrow that kind of money for peace and good, only war and weapons. The vast difference between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is increasing. The futility of capitalism was brought home to me in a big way two days ago. My oldest daughter lost her job. She and my granddaughter have a tiny house with a mortgage 4 miles from us across the river in a 5 block country village. The nearest town has around 4,000 people and it is only four miles from her, but there are no jobs there. The two factories that have supported that town, one for over 100 year and one for around 50, are beginning to shut down. The residents there look to Danville, Illinois and to Lafayette, Indiana for jobs and there are no new ones, in fact 800 people just got laid off at a truck trailer factory. The unemployment office is flooded with applicants as the economy gets worse and worse. Her unemployment will not give her money for at least 4 weeks. In the meantime, there is the mortgage, heating bills, electricity, phone bills to pay with no money. In 9 days she will be able to get food stamps, if she has the gas money to go get them (county seat where the office is 10 miles away) and the gas money to go to a grocery store. We will help in many ways, but what of those without family around? My husband and I have pretty secure jobs (we think) at the nearby University. Between us, we’ve been there over 40 years! But we are sure my salary and his wage will be frozen for awhile and we have bills to pay, too. We wonder how many people we can support with just 2 jobs, but we may find out. If my daughter and granddaughter have to come to live with us, the house is small, but we’ll make do. If daughter #2 loses her job and must also live here, we’ll make do. Anyway, right now we can clean out the pantry to make sure daughter #1 has basics and we can give her some gas money. Some system, huh? And there is no level playing field. Those who have lost a great deal of money had more money than most to begin with so even though they will moan, most will still be ok.
A problem overall is that many people have an interesting definition of ‘want’ and ‘need’. It is so blurred that to make a distinction is very difficult for them. To suggest that all the high tech gadgets are not necessary can send some into shock! To suggest that they actually use their stove to cook every day because it is better and cheaper to eat at home is quite different from their usual way of life! To suggest that there is more work they can do for themselves when they get home from ‘work’ causes a blank stare. To suggest that more family members should be living in those McMansions and that we all don’t need as much indoor living space as we think we do is unthinkable to some! Slight exaggerations? Maybe, but not too far off target.
My husband and I have a strategy that we are working on/have done that hopefully will benefit not just us, but our entire extended family. When early spring comes, my husband and I will plant three very large gardens so that we can sell vegetables at the local farmers market and so that everyone in the extended family will be able to eat well. We normally sell only eggs, noodles and baked goods, knitted items, but with our acreage, we are beginning to develop even more. Our newly planted fruit trees won’t bear for a few years, but in time those will factor into the farmers market sales, too. Chickens are laying and look healthy, so we have eggs to sell. Hopefully, there will money for people to buy what they need at the farmers markets in my area this year.
Happy New Year! May we all be here next year to tell about how we survived. Good health to all.