Negotiate this, Republicans.
Feb 3, 2009 What's Going On
For the past few days, Republicans – especially John McCain – have been all over TV, talking about how President Obama :-) needs to negotiate his stimulus bill in the Senate if he wants bipartisan support, which he does. He didn’t get it in the House. And he negotiated in the House. He took things out of the bill that Republicans didn’t like, knowing that they were inconsequential anyway and that Republicans were just looking for easy fights (Abortion! Abortion! Obama’s paying for Abortions! Look, everybody!). The bill passed anyway, even if it didn’t get a single Republican vote (there are some reasonable Republicans out there, so I have a feeling some pets and small children were being held hostage until after the vote).
It all reminded me of a quote I read a couple years ago, and with my husband’s help I was able to find it:
It is no big scoop that the majority party in Congress has always found ways of giving the shaft to the minority. But there is a marked difference in the size and the length of the shaft the Republicans have given the Democrats in the past six years...it is a one-party town — and congressional business is conducted accordingly, as though the half of the country that the Democrats represent simply does not exist.
So far, President Obama :-) has shown a determination to act the way I’m sure he would have liked to be treated when he was in the Senate under Finally Former President Bush. He’s trying to embody the golden rule in the face of amazingly short-sighted behavior by Republicans. They’re asking for things that they not only denied Democrats for six years, but denied them in a spectacularly blunt fashion, as if Republicans would be in power forever (an attitude that sped up their demise – talk about screwing yourself!).
If you do only one thing today, please read the article that the above quote came from: The Worst Congress Ever, by Matt Taibbi. It appeared in Rolling Stone in 2006 and yes, it is long, but it’s worth it (and funny, in an “I can’t believe grown people – our leaders! – are acting like that” kind of way). After you read it, think about it every time a Republican asks for negotiation, fairness, and consideration. And then watch in wonder as President Obama :-) probably gives it to them.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Democrats, House, John McCain, MattTaibbi, President Bush, President Obama, Republicans, Rolling Stone, Senate, Worst Congress Ever
Randomosity
Nov 3, 2008 Randomosity
A quick note first: I’m running a giveaway for a great prize, and it isn’t getting a lot of attention in comparison to the phone that I gave away last week. Please go here and enter. Even if you don’t have small kids, anyone with a child still in a stroller would love to get this as a gift. Please spread the word!
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This is what’s been floating around in my head for the past week. I need to clear it out to make room for more.
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This Fark headline from last week is in honor of my relatives in San Francisco, including my not-yet-living-in-San-Francisco mom:
Crime spree in SF-area cemetery – thousands dead.
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Ode to a Butter Bell:
I don’t know why every home in America doesn’t have one of these. I hate trying to put cold, hard butter on toast or English Muffins, and when I make grilled cheese I need soft butter to spread on the bread. I don’t remember exactly when I discovered these, I think it was in college. I saw them in a catalog, and didn’t really believe that they would work, but I bought one and have been using it for about 15 years, the same one.
You put softened butter (it fits one whole stick) in the top part, put cold water in the bottom part, and turn the butter over onto the water. It forms a seal and keeps the butter from spoiling. Supposedly it will keep butter fresh for 30 days with no refrigeration, but a stick of butter has never lasted a month in my house so I’ve never been able to test that out. I do routinely use the same stick for a couple of weeks though. I change the water every other day or so, except in very hot weather when I usually change it every day and sometimes even toss an ice cube in there (our current kitchen doesn’t have AC and gets beastly hot).
It works great! I hate staying with other people who don’t have soft butter. I’ve given these as gifts over the years – friends don’t let friends have hard butter.
While we’re on the subject of, I don’t know what to call it, things to hold things you spread on bagels and toast maybe? Here’s what I’ve been putting my cream cheese in since college. It keeps it from getting those crusty bits it gets if you leave it in the wrapper. My husband made fun of this one for years but I think he’s finally come to accept the fact that it’s better this way.
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I recently introduced Munchkin to Ramen Noodles, and she’s addicted. She wants it day and night, for every meal. She’ll survive well when she goes off to college. Pasta Boy, who hates trying new things, finally tasted some after watching Munchkin eat it for a week, and now he loves it too. I may never have to spend more than five minutes making dinner again.
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I don’t watch all that many commercials. I’m usually fast forwarding through them. But I spotted this one a few months ago even on fast forward. And every time I see it I have to stop and watch it.
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Hopefully by tomorrow night the enemies of science, education, and thoughtfulness will be going to sleep knowing that they lost a big election, and deservedly so. But here’s one more reason in a pile of reasons not to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. Sarah Palin’s War On Science.
I remember the last two presidential elections, sitting on my couch in disbelief as the realization came over me that the Republicans had won, despite so much evidence that they simply did not have the best candidate for the job. George W. Bush scares me, but in a head-shaking, what a moron way. McCain and Palin scare me in a very different way. Where W.’s biggest failing was his willingness to give himself over to whatever those pulling the puppet strings wanted him to do, it’s Sarah Palin’s own ideas that terrify me. With no help from anyone, her ideas are so obnoxious, so uninformed, and so backwards, that I literally shudder to think what she would do with real power if she got a hold of it. I rolled my eyes when friends threatened to move to Canada if Bush won (it’s worth noting that they’re all still here). But with the probability that the next president will appoint more than one Supreme Court Justice, the possibility of a McCain/Palin win keeps me up at night. Not to make light of past elections, but this one is no joke. This is going to shape things for decades to come.
Here’s a report card from a group of economists. It’s not even close. McCain as president would be bad for women. I think it would also be bad for men, children, fish, the air, bicycles, the economy, and my marriage (my husband would be near suicidal), but it would be especially bad for women.
One more day…
GObama!
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Barack Obama, Butter Bell, John McCain, Ramen Noodles, Sarah Palin
Sarcastic, Big-City Moms For Obama
Oct 22, 2008 What's Going On
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Barack Obama, Brooklyn, John McCain, Sarah Palin
Randomosity
Oct 20, 2008 Randomosity
This is what’s been floating around in my head for the past week. I need to clear it out to make room for more.
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I just saw a commercial on TV for K-Mart’s layaway program. I didn’t know that layaway existed anymore. That is truly a scary sign of the times.
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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Bradley Effect, the theory that some white people tell pollsters that they’re undecided or that they’re voting for a black candidate, when they actually plan to vote for the white candidate. I don’t quite believe that this supposed phenomenon is real, but just in case, remember what David Allen Grier said: “Just vote for the white half.”
DAG said that on his new show Chocolate News, which is hilarious. Kind of like The Colbert Report crossed with In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show.
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Jim Cramer (the nutjob who hosts Mad Money on CNBC) was on The Colbert Report a couple weeks ago, after the Dow had dropped hundreds of points. Stephen Colbert made a joke about Cramer liking roller coasters, and this is what Jim Cramer said:
Right, and when they- you go up, go down, hopefully you end up in the same place, sometimes you don’t.
Hmmm. Ummm, correct me if I’m wrong, but if you get on a roller coaster, and you DON’T end up in the same place, didn’t the ride break? I mean, either the ride ends up at the beginning and you get safely off, or something goes terribly wrong and it breaks. The best case scenario is that there will be some sort of rescue (bailout) and you will end up safely on the ground after your adventure, hopefully not hurt. The worst case scenario is that the car breaks free from the tracks, and you smash to the ground. So either Jim Cramer was making a very bad analogy, or he’s pondering the possibility of a financial catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen. Or, he’s just had really bad luck on roller coasters.
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As a blogger I get lots of stuff, and since my blog has the word “mom” in the title I get lots of stuff for kids. For some reason, I’m usually not given trucks or firemen, I’m given dolls and girlie toys. For months my son has reacted with grace and patience every time I’ve come home from an event with something for his sister and not for him. Sure, I could stop at the store and get him something, but life isn’t always fair and I’ve made it clear to both of them that these aren’t gifts from me, that they’re from companies trying to buy their love and my blog space. So the other day, when I came home with a video game that he would absolutely love and his sister would have no interest in, I felt like I was evening things out. Well, she threw a tantrum like I’ve never seen. We had to leave the house an hour after it started, and she was still crying. OK, so at least one of my kids gets it.
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This is the earliest I’ve ever gotten the kids Halloween costumes, and we even got to put up some decorations. But here’s the problem: the kids messed up the fake spiderwebs. Our neighbor’s kids came over and “helped” too so it was a free-for-all of eight hands grabbing for the cotton-candy-like stuff and clumping it onto the stair railings. It looks terrible! I was soooo tempted to go out after they went to sleep and fix it. I thought maybe I could fool them into thinking that they had done a better job than they actually had. But in the end I decided to leave it and try to relax. Next year, though, I’m going to hold a little seminar on how to string fake spiderwebs, and nobody gets to decorate until they pass.
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I’ve gotten several emails from friends and family members in the past few weeks trying to persuade me to vote for McCain. I haven’t answered any of them. I’m not going to be able to convince them any more than they’re going to be able to convince me. But all of the people who sent me these emails are intelligent people whom I respect very much, so it bothers me that we are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Arguments about whether Hillary or Barack should be the candidate were kind-of pointless, because they were very similar and even though I ended up 100% behind Obama, I understood why people would vote for Clinton. But this is different. I cannot fathom why in the world people I like would vote for any Republican at this point. Are they seeing the same news I am? Probably not. I tend to watch shows and read websites that like Obama, and they probably watch shows and read websites that tend to like McCain. It’s difficult to wade through the spin and the crap and get to cold hard facts sometimes, on both sides.
So here’s the conclusion that I’ve come to, the only way that I can wrap my head around it: Republicans vote with their emotions, and Democrats vote with their heads. Now, before you write nasty comments, I am not saying that Republicans are stupid any more than I am saying that Democrats are unfeeling. What I’m saying is the Republican strategists are geniuses at getting their constituents to vote based what they feel is right, not what will get results.
I don’t like a lot of the ideas being thrown around by Democrats right now. But they tend to be based on what history and experts both say are likely to work to solve the problems we’re facing. On the other hand, the Republicans aren’t throwing around too many ideas at all. They’re spending their energy focusing on painting Obama as a bad person, someone who isn’t proud of his country, who wants to take your money and give it to somebody else. They know at this point that they can’t win talking about issues, so they’re appealing to emotions, to subconscious, nagging feelings people have that Obama is too foreign, too exotic, too Socialist, too black, a well-educated wimp who is friends with bad people. And my big fear is that people will fall for it. That in the last moments they’ll let their emotions overpower their brains, and say “Hey, I may not like McCain much, but he’s white, he was a soldier, he’s more like me.”
Yesterday morning, on “Meet the Press”, General Colin Powell, Vietnam veteran, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, former National Security Adviser, former Secretary of State, and a Republican, endorsed Barack Obama. He did it by appealing to both emotions and intelligence, without hysterics or insults or spin. So, to the people who sent me emails, I read them. And in exchange, I just want you to watch this video. Seven minutes out of your lives.
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Bill Maher speaking about ACORN allegedly registering dead people to vote: “And also, let’s be honest: dead people are overwhelmingly supportive of McCain.”
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Barack Obama, Bradley Effect, Chappelle's Show, Chocolate News, CNBC, Colin Powell, David Allen Grier, George Bush, Halloween, Hillary Clinton, In Living Color, Jim Cramer, John McCain, Mad Money, Meet the Press, Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show
I finally agree with the American Family Association
Oct 18, 2008 What's Going On
I’m on the American Family Association’s mailing list. I like to keep abreast of what the crazies are saying to each other. But this time they actually sent out something that I agree with:
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.
That was from Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman, American Family Association. With just a few minor changes, I support this statement completely:
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to as tolerant of Christianity as Christianity has been to other religions. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage improvement will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage improvement will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.
So, as requested by the American Family Association, I am encouraging you all to vote. Especially if you are voting for Obama. He has a commanding lead, but I worry that McCain and his people will try increasingly desperate things to scare people into voting for him, and that Obama’s followers will get complacent. So please vote. As the American Family Association says, this is one election where your vote really counts.
They also sent me an email reminding me that it’s OK to say “Merry Christmas” (and they’re selling buttons and stickers so that you can remind other people). And once again, I agree with them, but for different reasons. They want to move Christmas away from the commercialized day that it has become and move it back to “holy day” status. I look at Christmas as what it has become: a federal holiday, a time for family and gifts and carols and cookies, a time to celebrate and give and receive. So if I say Merry Christmas to you, and you’re not Christian, well, I’m not either. I just like the holiday. And if you are Christian, take it however you like. It’s supposed to be a day to celebrate, no matter what you’re celebrating. And if you’re hearing it from a Christian, and you’re not one, don’t bristle. Don’t tell them you don’t celebrate Christmas. Just hear that they’re telling you to have a happy day in whatever way you choose to do so. I can’t believe the stupid things we argue over in this country.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: American Family Association, Barack Obama, John McCain
Randomosity
Oct 13, 2008 Randomosity
This is what’s been floating around in my head for the past week. I need to clear it out to make room for more.
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It’s supposed to be in the high 70s for the next few days, in NYC, in October. This is crazy!
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I’m so disgusted with John McCain at this point that I just can’t stand it. I can remember, back in the primaries, when the field was narrowed to McCain, Clinton, and Obama. And I said to a friend of mine, this is the first election ever where I would be happy with any of the contenders. I mean, no question at that point I wanted Hillary or Barack to win, but McCain seemed different than the other Republicans.
So what the hell happened? When did he decide to sell his soul and give up who he is in order to be president? He used to have fans on both sides of the aisle. He used to say things that made sense. He used to seem in control of his thoughts. Now he’s spouting talking points with the worst of them and making disastrous campaign moves. If he can’t do the simple things well, like navigate talk shows and pick a running mate who would actually help him in the polls, how can he do the big things in office?
We are witness to the biggest economic collapse in history, and instead of talking about that, he thinks he can distract his way to a win, that talking about a guy Obama may or may not have been friends with in Chicago is at all relevant (as if every single politician didn’t have shady associations). Thank goodness it doesn’t seem to be working. But it just blows my mind that he thinks the voters are this stupid.
Then again, these are the same voters who elected Bush twice, so maybe his thinking isn’t so far fetched.
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I was listening to The Michael Savage Show on the radio the other day (no, I’m not insane, I just like to check out what other people are listening to once in a while) and he played a clip of Michelle Obama saying something like “At least Barack knows what he doesn’t know.” Meaning, to anyone with half a brain, that if he doesn’t know something he doesn’t pretend to know about it, he’s honest with himself that he doesn’t know it. But Michael Savage went on a long rant about how if president, Obama will want to remain ignorant of things, that he would refuse to learn about things. That he would actually prefer not to know things.
I’ve never met a fan of The Michael Savage Show, so perhaps you guys could help me out, if you know any: are they that stupid? Are they that moronic that they believe this crap? I’ve never really understood in the past why talk radio was so popular with the right but not with the left. But I think I’m getting it. Far righters seem way more willing to believe anything that radio hosts tell them. I routinely check out The Radio Factor, and it doesn’t seem to matter what Bill O’Reilly says, how outrageous or unbelievable, his popularity just grows and grows. When he has someone on his show who disagrees with him, he cuts the call off before they have a chance to seriously refute anything he’s said. But the next day there he is, claiming that he listens to all sides, because just yesterday he had this person or that person on his show.
So I have to ask myself again, just how stupid are their fans? There’s a lot of nonsense talk on both sides, that’s politics. But conservatives really have cornered the market on letting other people think for them.
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There’s a dead mouse in my kitchen right now. I’m a complete baby about dead mice. I will not scream if I see a live mouse, but dead mice completely skeeve me out. We used to have a huge mouse problem, finding droppings and mouse hair on the counter every morning and killing at least a couple every week. Now we only kill about one every two months. But this one didn’t die in the trap behind the garbage can, which is where most of them go to the big cheese shop in the sky. This one died in the trap next to the fridge, and it looks like it dragged the trap about a foot before dying, so it’s sitting in the middle of the kitchen, keeping me from getting a Diet Dr. Pepper or making the kids breakfast. My husband’s still in the shower, and I’m not going in there until he takes care of it.
I can take care of most things around the house. I’m way better with tools than my husband. I routinely take out the garbage and recycling, shovel the snow, clean gross drains, and go out on the roof to clean the gutters. But I can not get rid of dead mice. If one ever dies when my husband is out of town, the entire trap will be going in a garbage bag, along with the two-foot-long BBQ tongs that I’ll have to use to do the job.
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James Taylor was on The Colbert Report a couple of weeks ago, and Stephen Colbert asked him a few questions about his famous song, “Fire and Rain”. The story that I had always heard about that song was that it was about his girlfriend, who had been flown in secretly to see him by his road crew while he was on tour, but her plane crashed. So when Stephen asked him about using pyrotechnics and a rain machine while performing “Fire and Rain” I was thinking to myself, that’s really dickish, even for Stephen Colbert’s rather dickish character on that show. Or perhaps he hadn’t done his research, which also seemed unlike him.
This really bothered me, thinking how horrible it must have been for James Taylor to face someone making a joke about the love of his life dying in a horrible accident. So I guess it was my love for Mr. Colbert that caused me to finally do some research about the validity of the plane crash story. Turns out it’s BS. According to Snopes, different verses of the song are about different things, including a friend of Taylor’s committing suicide, his addiction to heroin, his recovery, and his band’s break-up. But it’s certainly not the literal story about a broken airplane in pieces on the ground that has become legend.
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I just finished a four-Saturday run of a children’s show that had, in it’s entire run, roughly the same number of paying customers as it did cast members. Truly humiliating.
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We went out to dinner last night to a diner in Queens, and the waitress was weird. She was a great waitress in just about every respect but one: dealing with our children. She was clearly fond of them, and she was very nice to them, but when it was time for dessert told my daughter that she had to take one more bite of her dinner before she could have her ice cream. Umm…not your territory, lady! I politely said “Thanks, but she’s done with her dinner.” And she gave me a weird look, like I was letting my daughter get away with something sinister, as if she hadn’t yet crossed the imaginary threshhold of eaten food that existed in this woman’s head.
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Barack Obama, Fire and Rain, Hillary Clinton, James Taylor, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Snopes
Randomosity
Sep 8, 2008 Randomosity
This is what’s been floating around in my head for the past week. I need to clear it out to make room for more.
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Jon Stewart’s funniest line from The Daily Show’s week in Denver at the Democratic convention, following clips of dems speaking respectfully of McCain, calling him a hero, a friend, and a good man:
Shit on him! Without reservation! Without qualification! What are you doing? May I offer you a sentence you will not hear at the Republican Convention: Barack Obama is heroic and American.
It’s funny because it’s true. The next week, there was so much Obama bashing I thought I was watching the least-funny roast in history.
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Every year I look forward to reading the winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (yes, I’m a geek). This is the contest where you try to write the worst opening line to a non-existent work of fiction. This year’s winner is doubly delicious, since it is set in NYC:
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”
You can read the rest of the best of the worst here.
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There’s a hilarious article on Cracked titled The Eight Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters. I’m sorry to say I’ve been guilty of being several of those at one time or another. I’m not going to tell you which, but anyone who knows me well will have no problem figuring it out.
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It’s September. School is in session. I’m ready for the weather to get pleasant. Instead, I am dripping with sweat. I should not have to put sunscreen on the kids before school. I should not have to shower after taking the subway. It seems more and more like we go directly from steamy hot summer weather to freezing glove-and-hat weather. I want fall!
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A name has finally been put to those douchebags who obsess over every morsel of food that goes into their mouths, making sure that it is raw, or pure, or not imbued with fear (I’m not kidding): orthorexics. This article on ABCNews.com, Orthorexia: Obsessing Over Health Food talks about those weird people who take health food to such extremes that they cause their bodies irreparable damage. Not to mention the fact that people who eat real food think orthorexics are condescending jerks.
I don’t think I know any true orthorexics, but I do frequently come into contact with a bunch of holier-than-thou vegans and other crazies who are missing out on all sorts of delicious delights. I’ll call them orthorexettes. I could absolutely do with eating a bit healthier, but if I want to bring my famous taco dip to a party, I definitely don’t want a mini-lecture about what the dairy is doing to my body. If you need to jerk off by way of your macrobiotic diet, so be it. Don’t eat the taco dip. But shut up about it.
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I can’t get that fucking Optimum Triple Play commercial out of my head. Anyone who lives in NYC knows exactly the one I’m talking about. The one with the Latino gangster-looking guy and the three hot women. Sure, there are plenty of annoying commercials out there, but this one is different: it’s impossible to tune out. And after hearing it, it stays in my head for hours.
It’s been running for a really really long time, and they keep expanding it, so it must be popular. I’d like to meet the people who like that commercial and slap them silly.
But here’s the thing: I don’t know my husband’s work #, and yet if I needed to call for Optimum cable, I’d be able to rattle their number off no problem. Surely that’s a sign of a good commercial. So I’m confused: does the commercial suck because I hate hearing it, or is it the best commercial ever because it causes me to not only remember the product, but the phone #?
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, John McCain, Jon Stewart
Videos That Tickle Me
Jul 25, 2008 What's Going On
There are some videos that I can watch over and over (and no, not all of them are a-ha videos).
This one has been going around for a while, but my step-mom just emailed it to me and reminded me of its existence. It’s comedienne Anita Renfroe, condensing everything moms say to their kids in the course of a day into a three-minute section of the William Tell Overture. It’s hilarious.
If you want to see her interviewed on CBS, go here.
Even funnier, I think, is her response to “Momsense” called, of course, “Dadsense.”
Moving on to politics, where there’s always material, the funny folks at JibJab recently released their latest video, about the Obama and McCain campaigns.
But as funny as that is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the first JibJab video I ever saw, from the Kerry/Bush campaign. I’ve probably seen this 50 times, and it makes me laugh out loud every single time.
Sublime.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Tags: Anita Renfroe, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, JibJab, John Kerry, John McCain, Parody, William Tell Overture
