Not Another Freaking Poll

Any time the mainstream media wants to help the Federal Government sell the American People another bottle of snake oil (read: higher taxes for an even larger government we can’t afford)–and this time the issue is “healthcare reform”–they whip out a poll.

The CBS News/New York Times poll, according to Reuters, (no liberal bias anywhere there, I’m sure) says 85% of all Americans want major health care reforms and “most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance.” So what percentage is most (surely they know the exact number, don’t they? Why not report that, too? Unless the number doesn’t help their sales efforts). What’s really disturbing, and another sign this poll is pure government propaganda, is that they base the results of the poll on speaking to exactly 895 people. They don’t say who these 895 people are, where they come from or their backgrounds; they don’t explain at length how 895 liberals (my assumption) are qualified to speak for 300 million Americans; they don’t give anyone the slightest idea of what criterion were used in selecting these 895 people to represent the views of all America; nor do they give any examples of what kind of questions were asked and in what manner. Were these trick questions, designed to elicit a yes when a no would have been more appropriate? We’ve all seen local ballot initiatives written like that to fool some of the people some of the time. But only CBS News and the New York Times know for sure. And we’re all just supposed to take their word for it that this poll is unbiased and accurate. Right. I’ve got a bridge for sale, if you’re that easy…

Have you ever been called to participate in a CBS News/New York Times poll? Neither have I. Personally, I think few, if  anyone, still working for CBS News or the New York Times realizes there’s life outside the Big worm-infested Apple and the Washington District of Crime, nor do they appear to comprehend for a New York minute that a growing majority of Americans are fed up with the more-taxes-bigger-government crowd. Case in point: the open letter to our government’s so-called leaders that Glenn Beck received from an Arizona grandmother. She’s got a yard of guts, this grandma, and she speaks for me and over a hundred thousand others (and counting) in demanding the Federal Government–Congress and the president–stop the spending and butt out of our lives, at least according to the petition based on her letter that had been signed by 116,767 Americans as of this morning.

So, again, I ask: do the opinions of 895 people about whom we know absolutely nothing, nor what kind of questions were asked and in what manner, mean just as much or more than the opinions of 116,767  Americans (and counting) who took time out of their busy lives to sign a petition of their own free will based on the open letter from an Arizona grandmother?

I am forced to assume from “impartial” data I’ve collected over the past decade that CBS News and the New York Times thinks we’re all morons out here in America.  One can further assume, again from my “carefully compiled” data, that most of the 895 people they selected to speak on behalf of all America had two things in common: one, they still watch CBS News for the “unbiased” reporting; and two, they’re still dumb enough to pay for a subscription to the New York Times.  I polled three people–me, myself and I–and that’s the conclusion we’ve reached, with an error rate of zero percent.

To my way of thinking, CBS News, the New York Times, and the Federal government should peddle their Federal snake oil  propaganda somewhere else–say, Russia or China or the US Congress. But just like the Arizona grandmother warns in her letter, continually ignoring the will of the American People will have severe consequences. Yes, we the People are coming, we’re coming for you all. 116,767 strong and counting…

At least give US some grease, Congress

The Congress (of America’s greatest thieves and liars) is trying to bend every American over without benefit of grease. This time the issue being ramrodded up our asses is healthcare. Although 76 to 79 percent of Americans want a public option for healthcare, that’s now off the table. In its place we get a proposal to fine us all for not buying coverage (a tax on a new tax) and co-ops.

I don’t know about you, but I already belong to a co-op, wholly against my will might I add, an electric co-op that raised its rates last year 22% while promising all members (those not on the board of directors) that our bills would only increase an average of $10.00. Well, my bill doubled–not even close to “just $10.”  And so did every other member’s bill that I spoke to. Yeah, I want a co-op for health insurance, a federally-run co-op. Uh-huh. This same federal government that can’t balance a budget or force Social Security to call you back in less than four months, the same federal government that can’t find 11 million or more illegal aliens, the same Feds who think they can run an auto company better than Russia did, back before it fell.

Why can’t we all join the same healthcare plan to which Congress belongs? Our senators and representatives seem to get rather good care at our expense. Why can’t they share with the rest of us who are footing the bill? Yeah, why can’t Congress lower itself to rub shoulders with the rest of us morons dumb enough to elect them in the first place?

How Congress plans to fund this healthcare is…wait for it…more taxes. That’s right. Higher taxes on alcohol and soft drinks, and a nationwide Value Added Tax of 3 or more percent. So, from an administration who promised no new taxes for 95% of all Americans we get…taxes, and spending, and taxes, and more insane spending, and taxes. Maybe Obama promised no new taxes for 95% of us because he really meant “incredibly higher and new taxes for 100% of all Americans.” Congress sure must think he meant that, but perhaps he simply neglected to tell the electorate to read between his lines.

The least our scheming senators and representatives in Washington could do is send every American taxpayer a tube of KY jelly–maybe even a case of the stuff. We the People ought to get something out of all the trillions of dollars being stolen from us every day by Congress and the president–even if it’s just grease.

Credit Card Bill Serves Congress More Than Consumers

The recent “credit card bill” is make-work for Congress. They want to look busy, they want to look like they care, so they pass a bill that doesn’t really address the major problem with credit cards today. All the senators and representatives want is to be re-elected so they can avoid a real job working their fingers to the bone like the rest of us. They don’t care about you or me or anyone else. The only people in this country they care about stares back at them from their mirrors.

While striking down the “universal default” clause is a good thing–if we consumers had some accountability, some way to check whether the banks were, in fact, abiding by the so-called “law,” which we don’t and Congress knows it–this bill does nothing to address the higher than high interest rates. The bill gives the banks NINE MONTHS to jack those interest rates to what the banks would deem an acceptable level (of greed).

The banks are borrowing our money from the Federal Reserve at nearly zero percent, yet they are charging the average credit card consumer double digit interest, not to mention collecting their percentages from the merchants on every purchase we make.

So, what does the bill do for us really? Nothing. It’s a vehicle to give every Congressman and woman some accomplishment to point to come election time. They certainly can’t point to the numerous bailouts or backing Obama’s plan to tax and tax again everything we consume as a feather in their caps now, can they?

Time to quit falling for this orchestrated crap and fire all of our so-called elected “employees” who’ve obviously forgotten that the People they were hired to serve do not smile back at them from their mirrors.

Oil Companies: Never Let a Good Holiday Go to Waste

I read last week that Exxon’s profit was down 58% over the same time last year.

So, I whipped out my trusty calculator and did the math. 58% of 9 billion equals $5,220,000,000.  That leaves poor Exxon only 3 billion and change to the good for the first quarter of this year. I feel for them.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Must explain why gas prices at all the gas stations jumped twelve cents a gallon here between yesterday and the day before. In unison. At the same time. So-called free-market competitors all reaching the same conclusion independent of one another.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Can you say collusion, boys and girls? Better yet, look that word up in the dictionary. Your word of the year. Nay, the word of your lifetime and mine.

Or was the egregious overnight price hike the result of the approaching Memorial Day Holiday?

To my way of thinking, we ought to stay home, drive only when necessary, and let the oil companies, and in larger part, the economy, take it in the shorts through what the oil companies love to call “the summer driving season.” Especially since they’re still trying to stick it to us all without benefit of grease.  But, just like Obama’s administration will “never let a good crisis go to waste,”  never let it be said that the oil companies wasted any opportunity such as an approaching holiday to bury their hands in our pockets. Even if they all arrived at the same conclusion independent of one another.

Uh-huh. Sure.

And our Congress does nothing.

The only extra-curricular driving I’m going to be doing this summer is to my local Tea Party.

3.6 Trillion minus 100 Million Equals What?

According to the Washington Post and others, Obama will convene his cabinet for the first time with the sole purpose of finding $100 million in budget cuts.

This would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.

3.6 trillion minus 100 million = the most minimal policy of appeasement.

The Post article says this move signals the President’s determination to cut the deficit. And when will that be? Sometime after he’s out of office maybe? During my ten-year-old daughter’s lifetime perhaps? Or maybe when China forecloses on our land for the debt we owe right this very minute, some 12 trillion and counting. Or will the deficit be cut only after every American who doesn’t agree that Congress and the President are entitled to spend our future and that of our children and their children is branded some kind of extremist for actually giving a damn about their country?

I think it’s nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction by all of Washington to the tea parties and their turnout. Gee, free people of all political ideologies, or none at all, exercising their constitutional rights to assemble and protest bigger government, wasteful spending and further erosion of the Constitution must really threaten Congress, the President and the real powers that stand behind our would-be slavemasters’ thrones–powers such as that unconstitutional private corporation known as the Federal Reserve, who answers to no one and has already loaned 2 trillion of our tax money to unidentified recipients. Not even some members of Congress, again trying to simply appease us all, can get an answer as to where that 2 trillion went. We just have to take Ben Bernanke’s word that we’ll get it back.

And We the People aren’t supposed to be a trifle upset by any of it. We’re supposed to snooze right in slavery without so much as a snort of disapproval.

Right.

Obviously, Congress and the President think We the People can be lulled back to sleep by such blatant political games.  Or maybe they are dumb enough to believe we’re all just that stupid.Yeah, I bet the British King thought all those angry colonists in America were just morons without a clue, too.

And what’s even sillier is  our modern tyrants in Washington laboring under the belief that directing the national media to publish stories on what Congress and the President’s advisors consider to be emotional issues will keep us fighting amongst ourselves indefinitely, like it has in the past. This particular game is also known as stirring up a smoke screen to hide other, more egregious assaults on our civil rights such as House Bill HR 45.

For those Americans just waking up or still depending on the national media for all their news, HR 45 would make owning a firearm not registered with the Feds a felony. This is an outright attempt to abridge your second amendment rights while further eroding the Constitution of these United States. Not only that, but here in Montana, this bill would attempt to usurp the Constitution of the Sovereign State of Montana, which says that no resident shall be required to register any firearm. And how far behind can an annual tax on owning a firearm be? This is just the latest endaround on our individual civil rights Congress and the President thinks they can pull on us all–obviously, they don’t feel an outright ban on firearms will fly, and most assuredly it won’t, so they’ll simply tax our second amendment right to keep and bear arms out of existence.

So, where’s the stories on this bill, this HR 45, this would-be major step in eroding the Second Amendment? Nowhere, because the Congress and the President along with their bedfellows in the national media don’t want you to know. They’d rather disarm us all, one of the first things the Tyrant 101 manual says they should do. Hell, it worked for Hitler, didn’t it? And how’d that turn out anyway? Who was it that turned the tide of Fascism in Europe? America. And yet, once America is successfully subjugated, who will be left to defend freedom? Gee, like the Federal Reserve and their buddies in banking systems all over the world wouldn’t want everything on the planet under their tight control, and no questions asked–but you sure don’t see any stories in our national media on the dangers of the New World Order, do you? Hmmmm…wonder why that is?

Duh.

You don’t think the elitists in national media living their cushy lives want to survive, even at the expense of liberty, truth, and justice for all?

Again–duh.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of being treated like a serf by a government that’s supposed to be working for We the People and America’s best interests, and not the other way around.

We didn’t become the great nation we are by letting anyone or anything “appease” us into regulated serfdom.

3.6 trillion minus 100 million = more tea parties. We the People must exercise our right to peaceably assemble and protest, to effect meaningful and long-lasting change–a return to our Constitution–without bloodshed, before that right, too, is stripped away from extremists like us, we patriots all.

Only We the People can change the direction of this country and ensure the liberty of our generations, and the continuing and future greatness of America.

See you at the next Tea Party!

Let’s roll, People.

Smear Tactics by the US Government

With the complicity of the media, the US Government has just begun new smear tactics aimed at frightening the average citizen from protesting their spend, spend, spend policies.

The release of this report by Reuters from the so-called Department of Homeland Security attempts to warn America that right-wing extremists are gaining new recruits.

The timing of this is impeccable, a blatant giveaway to the Feds’ intent to shut down any opposition to their suicidal financial plans, considering that tomorrow Tea Party protests will be held in over 250 major cities. Earlier reporting by the media on these protests attempts to portray Republicans as the culprits behind the Tea Parties, an accusation that could not be further from the truth. The outraged American citizens planning to exercise their freedom tomorrow to protest their government come from all walks of life, and all political affiliations including Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Libertarians.

This time the smear and fear tactic isn’t going to work.  If anything, these tactics are going to solidify and grow the opposition among the patriots of this country.

I’m putting the US Congress, the President, and their whores in the media on notice: Continue acting like the British and you will get just what the British did in 1776–an ass-kicking, American-style.

You morons. You were all so afraid the People of this country might wake up, you went on in your greedy selfish ways and woke them up yourselves. So, what do you expect us all to do now–roll over, go back to sleep and let you rob us of our country? Should we let you rob our children of a future? Nuh-uh. We all reap what we sow. And you’re  about to get yours.

People who choose to exercise their constitutional rights are not extremists, or right-wingers, or any other label the government with the help of their rich media buddies tries to smear on us–we’re Americans, patriots, and we’re going to kick some Congressional, Presidential, media ass if you all don’t back up to the Constitution and stay there. You work for us, we the People, remember?

Abolishing the Federal Reserve–that unconstitutional private corporation lending trillions of our tax money without telling us to who–would be a genuine first step in the right direction. God forbid our senators and representatives should do something for America once instead of whacking each other off in committee after nauseating, time-wasting committee that results in nothing accomplished. Or should I say, mission accomplished.

And you traitors in the media–why not hurry up and swallow so you can spit out that Congressional and Presidential and Federal Reserve dick you’ve been sucking long enough to get on your feet and ask yourselves what Edward R. Murrow and other great journalists might’ve done to protect the People of this country. They sure as hell wouldn’t be down on their knees before anyone in Congress, the Oval Office or the Federal Reserve to beg with open mouths, “Please, sir, may I have some more?”

Yeah, I’m just a bit pissed with all the bullshit propaganda. I am embarrassed by the lack of class shown by our current Commander in Thief, and incensed that he thinks he needs to apologize to anyone, much less the world, for the actions of our country. And bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia? All I have to say to that is BITE ME.

I’m FED UP with being treated by Congress, the President and the media as if I were an imbecile and can’t see through the bogus smoke screens and nonbinding resolutions and the blatant robbery of the US Treasury or the attempts to manipulate me and my countrymen using made-up fear as a prod as if we were all cattle dying to be driven to slaughter.

I’m not afraid to exercise my rights as an American citizen in defiance of a government bent on a Hitleresque type of tyranny that would enslave every man, woman and child to the next four generations. I’ll be at a Tea Party protest tomorrow–you can count on it.

In fact, to my way of thinking it’s about time we the People prepare to emulate the fine example set by our Forefathers before, during and after the creation of our great country. The entire Congress and the current President should be run out of America just like British in 1776 and let’s make sure those traitors in the media get a front row seat so they might report the experience to the world. You want to call that extreme? Take it up with Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the rest of our Forefathers. After all, I learned the true price of freedom from them and I’m more than willing to water the same tree of Liberty with my red American blood, should peaceful means prove unsatisfactory.

Good Old Boy Throwbacks

I don’t know about you, but single mothers generally learn first hand about gender discrimination practiced by good old boy throwbacks, and lest they forget their place, constant reminders thrown at them all the time. Neanderthals who still believe that a woman’s place is grovelling ten steps behind all men, and that includes female children as well.

I’ve got news for you cavemen out there–don’t terrorize my child. I will fuck you up, one way or another.

My daughter’s bus driver learned first-hand yesterday that even though I’m not six foot tall, I can still mess with his life, just as he thinks he’s entitled to mess with mine or my daughter’s.

The sixty-something subsitute driver missed the bus stop completely. Never even bothered to turn in. He didn’t know I was watching from the living room window. I saw the front end of the bus dip at our driveway, meaning he’d applied the brakes, then decided to motor on. That dip was also an indication that my child, as she stated later when I finally got her back, was screaming, “You missed my stop.” Repeatedly.

Did the man turn around as every other bus driver who’s ever missed our stop has done? No. He hands his cell phone to my hysterical child. She tells me that after she screamed and screamed, he told her he wasn’t going to bring her back. I said, “Put him on the line.” At this point he is no further than a quarter of a mile from my house.

He gives me this wanky hello and I said, “You will bring my daughter back or do I have to call [the district's transportation supervisor]?”

“Yeah, you better do that,” he says. And hangs up on me.

I did do just that, and the transportation supervisor suddenly cannot raise this driver on the two-way radio I heard barking in the background before he hung up on me. The transportation supervisor wants to stick up for the driver on one hand, but on the other, after he hears my story, he says, “I would’ve thought he would’ve just turned around.” Well, me, too, there fella. Meanwhile, I still have a hysterical child to rescue from this neanderthall substitute driver.

After learning the route from the transportation supervisor, and warning him to get the elementary principal on the road to run interference because I was going to seriously fuck this driver up,  I take off in my car. I’m clocking speeds above 80-miles an hour to get to the Glacier Gateway, where this bus is supposed to stop before taking off to Sun Prairie, a nice little jaunt that’s going to add thirty minutes to my daughter’s fear and my worry.

The clerks in the convenience store, one of whom just happens to be my close friend, haven’t seen the bus. At all. Now, I admit I turn into exorcist mom when anyone fucks with my kid, but I know I’m closing in on the red line–a genetic mindset passed down from my biological father, who isn’t much taller than I am, but the same man who once told an Army psychologist that he feels as if he has the strength of five men when he crosses over that red line. He, like me, doesn’t remember what happens after that, and he was in the doctor’s office because he literally picked up and threw a sergeant through a barracks window during basic training.  It’s only happened to me once in my life–so far–but one minute I’m arguing with my sister who’s abused me, physically and mentally, for nigh on twenty years and the next minute, she’s on the floor beneath me, her eyes bulging while her boyfriend and my boyfriend work to pry my hands off her neck–one finger at a time. With no other recourse left open to me except to cross the red line, I opt to call 911 instead. This neanderthall isn’t worth a trip to jail, although my child I would gladly die for, a hundred times.

While my friend and I are waiting–for the bus, for the deputy sheriff–I see the bus make the turn and head back toward the convenience store. Later my daughter would tell me she saw me waving, running toward the road and told the bus driver repeatedly, but did he stop? Hell, no. And that was his next mistake.

He and I could’ve waited together for the transportation supervisor and the deputy to show up right at the convenience store. I get in my car and chase this bus down, and follow him like stink on shit until he turns into my stop over an hour after my child should’ve been freed. I block the bus’s exit with my car and get my child safely into the passenger seat.

Then I tell this neanderthall, “We are going to wait for the deputy.”

He leaps off the bus, and starts in with his first lie. “I didn’t know [your daughter] was on the bus.”

What about that dip in the front end of the bus before he’d even passed my mailbox, or my child screaming “You missed my stop!” repeatedly?

“I was too far away to turn around.”

But he wasn’t too far away to turn around, not by a longshot, not when I can see the bus from the front step of my house.

I ask him why he didn’t answer his supervisor on the two-way after hanging up on me?

He says he loses communication with the bus barn when the butte gets in the way. But I already know, from where my daughter said she was when she called me hysterically crying–a quarter of a mile from my house–that he won’t lose communication on the two-way for at least six to ten miles and countless bus stops, if that. Thirty minutes or more before he briefly loses the ability to communicate on the two-way.

After he hung up on me, this neanderthall didn’t bother to tell my daughter anything about his plans for her. He let her cry instead. And she cried all the way to Sun Prairie, cried harder when he wouldn’t stop to let her out to me at Glacier Gateway, told her only after he’d finished delivering kids to Sun Prairie that he would, indeed, take her back, then failed to deliver on that the first chance he could.

Lights flashing, the deputy flew by me, my daughter, my Taurus holding this bus and its moron driver hostage  because, as I later learned, my friend had told him that when the bus passed us at Glacier Gateway, we couldn’t see any kids on it and I had taken off after the bus.  We couldn’t see a single child on that bus when it passed either. That’s because my daughter, after being told rudely that he wasn’t going to stop at the convenience store for her mother, despite the transportation supervisor telling him via two-way radio that her mother was searching for her, cowered in the seat then, further terrified. Do you think she’s going to trust adults after this? I don’t. I know both she and I will have emotional issues to deal with in future.

The deputy made his way back to us, and the transportation supervisor pulls in behind him, the high school principal (another neanderthall throwback) riding shotgun. After I tell my story to the deputy, the transportation supervisor holds out his cell phone–the elementary school principal, an enlightened man whom I admire for not allowing gender to cloud his equal and fair treatment of all people, is on the line.

I have a meeting this morning with him at 9:30 at the middle school, a mile from my home.

The deputy finally suggests this whole incident may have been a misunderstanding and, after I agree to concede, takes his leave, although I got the distinct impression he thought there might be more here than what met his keen eye.

Call me paranoid all you want, but I personally think after reviewing the evidence ad nauseam that this substitute driver may be a perv who was able to get past the background check because he just hasn’t been caught–yet.  Kids are snatched all the time by pervs, every single day. And always, the people who knew the outed perv say they’d never expected it to happen, he’s such a nice guy, blah, blah, blah. But too many things this substitute driver did just don’t add up to anything close to reasonable in my book and he may have thought he’d been handed a golden opportunity when I wasn’t waiting out there at the stop for my child. I hope he’s had the shit scared out of him now. How long that fear will serve to protect other children, if he is a perv as I suspect, remains to be seen. I will not put my child on any bus he’s driving, however. I intend to make that perfectly clear in this morning’s meeting.

I also have a few questions for the elementary principal: What happens after the bus driver calls in to the bus barn to report his bus is empty, meaning he’s delivered his precious cargo? What is the exact procedure? Does the transportation supervisor leave immediately, expecting each driver to take care of the rest of duties regarding refueling the bus, etc. and so forth? What if I had not answered my daughter’s call? Why did the bus driver give her his cell phone to make the call in the first place, especially when the bus was not yet a quarter mile from my house? What did the driver plan to do with my daughter if, as the high school neanderthall…er…principal suggested, they don’t like to leave kids at their respective stops without a parent there? Intimating all the while with tone and gesture that this whole episode was my fault somehow, that I should’ve called the district to let them know I’d planned for my nine-year-old daughter to get off and walk 100 feet home alone as an exercise in independence, then suggesting further that I had at some time in the past four years left instructions with the school district that if I wasn’t waiting there at the stop they were not to let my child off. (In fact, after I had time to cool down and reflect upon this last charge, the only instructions I have ever given to the regular bus drivers on my daughter’s route is if I am not there, they are to LEAVE my child anyway because she will go to the neighbor’s house to wait for me.) I will mention this today in my meeting with the elementary principal.

The high school principal, who arrogantly fancies himself a future district superintendent, also suggested I give them a signed letter in writing stating that the drivers are to let my child out, whether I’m there or not. Moron. Like I’m going to give a person I suspect might be a perv that much information. Or like I don’t personally know for a fact these drivers let a majority of the kids out at numerous stops along my daughter’s route without any parental supervision every single day. In fact, these drivers drop kids off at the convenience store with or without any parents in sight, and in one case witnessed by my close friend, a child waited from 4:00 p.m. to 8:30 before his mother showed up to get him. But, as single mothers are reminded constantly in word and deed, neanderthall good old boys will do anything to protect one of their own. And the instructions I will leave in writing with the elementary principal today will be that they are to leave my daughter off at my neighbor’s house, whether I’m there or not. My neighbor is a former marine who did time in Nam, his wife is my best friend, and neither will be nearly as nice or reasonable as I was if any driver fails to stop and let my child off the bus.

My child was terrorized by an insensitive and totally uncaring man she didn’t know for 45 minutes before he finally said, after all the other children got off the bus at Sun Prairie, that he would bring her back to her mother, then she was further terrified when he drove right by her frantic mother at the Glacier Gateway.

I asked her later why she wasn’t riding shotgun in the front seat of the bus when finally he allowed her to leave. I know she would’ve been in that shotgun seat if her regular driver was behind the wheel because he makes all his children feel safe. Of course, her regular driver would’ve turned around and let her off the bus, so this would never have happened–he did it before, the one time he missed our stop.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with [the substitute driver],” she said in answer to my question. She didn’t want to talk about the incident really, that was plain as the nose on her cute little face. And I don’t press these issues because I know she will talk about it eventually. Just not now, not while she’s still reliving the fear every time she thinks about it.

One other question I want answered, although I doubt I’ll ever get the truth: why did this man allow my daughter to cry for 45 minutes before he finally told her he would take her back to her mother? Did he enjoy my daughter’s suffering? That’s the way it looks to me. Another hallmark of the perv. And for that alone, he ought to be shot, or at the very least, castrated and sentenced to spend the rest of the years of his life learning that women are not chattel, are not less than him, and the high school principal can join him in his re-education of society and proper attitudes towards both genders of our species in these modern times. How easily these kinds of men forget that it was women who taught them not to shit in the cave.

If I don’t feel comfortable after today’s meeting, I may just pull my daughter out of this school district. Especially since I can no longer trust them to hire decent substitute drivers who care about the children, even the girls, nor can I depend on high school principal good old boy throwbacks treating my daughter with equal respect. Too bad the example set by the elementary school principal isn’t being emulated throughout the district, but attitudes bleed down from the top and good tends to finish last when neanderthalls are allowed to remain in charge.

My gut feeling remains that the substitute driver is a closet perv. That was my first impression when he leapt off the bus to lie repeatedly, like a cheap rug, to my face. And first impressions are…well, you know.

Senators, Congressmen, Lend me Your…

This is an open letter to Senator Jon Tester, D-Montana, in case he misses the personal reply to the stump-speech email he sent in response to an email I sent him. (Boy, ain’t that a mouthful?)

Mr. Tester,

Thanks for the stump speech.  I clicked on the link you provided for contact, Jon. And there’s no such page. So much for transparency. I’ll just put this on the Net, in case you miss it in your inbox.

Now, while your Democratic party fans the smoke from yet another screen–the AIG bonus smoke-screen to be exact–just what is it you Democrats are doing that you feel such a need to hide:

• Did you vote with your party to dump 5 billion more dollars into the auto industry last Thursday?

• Whip out your calculator there, Senator, and tell us all what you think the Fed’s going to do to the value of the dollar, and ye olde economy, when it prints 1-trillion more monopoly dollars to buy Treasury bonds and mortgage securities. Love to know how much spending power you think the average middle-class American family is going to have left and for how long. Even my nine-year-old can add and subtract, multiply and divide.

• Speaking of adding–the costs to the American taxpayer that Democrats have allowed to rack up since December 2008 between the Federal Reserve, FDIC, the Treasury and Federal Housing Administration total approximately 8.5 trillion, and this does not include the 5.8 trillion Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolios that we taxpayers are now solely responsible for…explain this to my daughter, will you? Explain to her how you and your buddies in Washington DC have mortgaged her life and future, and the lives and futures of her children, should she opt to breed more slaves for your new System of Governance. Please do. Give her your well-polished rap. Not that she’ll buy any of what you say since, as I mentioned before, she can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Hell, she can even work a calculator.
  

• What about Treasury secretary Geithner’s additional 2.5 trillion he wants to bail out the banking industry? Makes that 10-billion dollar lands bill stuffed with earmarks and immune to amendments that you senators thought you quietly slipped past us all seem like chicken feed, eh? What’s a paltry 3.5 million special-interest pork party to celebrate the city of  St. Augustine, FLORIDA anyway? Even that 410 billion dollar porkalicious spending bill you so-called defenders of the public trust passed a few weeks ago pales in comparison to Geithner’s demand.

• And what’s up with the $6 billion for volunteerism–GIVE Act, my ass–that slipped through the House behind the AIG smoke-screen? Who’s that going to reward? ACORN?

• According to various reports, Obama’s “cap and trade global warming” scheme is going to cost around 2 trillion, almost three times the original estimate and this “universal health care initiative” is projected to cost an additional 1.5 trillion dollars over time. Where do you think this money’s going to come from? Whip out ye olde calculator and tell me–better yet, tell my nine-year-old daughter, Senator. It’s her future, and America’s, you’re stealing, one ignorant vote at a time.

Thanks, for nothing, Jon Tester, but your blind eye, your deaf ear, your total lack of indifference to the slavery of your countrymen. What a great American you are. Oh yeah, we’re all going to remember you, all right; you and all your Washington friends.

Mari Bushman

Why not cut and paste this letter, change the names to out the guilty, and send it to your senator or congressperson? With our compliments. Can anyone say Tea Party?

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year

Yeah, ok, the title’s old and tired, not unlike me, but the sentiment is stronger than ever.

May you have the greatest days of your life, beginning today.

Happy holidays–Christmas, Hanuka, Kwanzaa, or your particular flavor. May they be filled with joy and wonder, beauty and love.

Now, for the atheists, the politically correct, and any other damp rag looking for a few seconds of fame at the expense of everyone else’s joy–bite me. Your dentist will love you and your pocketbook.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Have a drink on New Year’s Eve for me–I’ll be having several for all of you…

David Foster Wallace–an Apology.

In all the comments I’ve read springing up all over the Net like weeds upon the writer’s passage, the repeated mention of the pain he must’ve suffered seems a most arrogant presumption. To intimate or assume he was in the throes of some self-induced torture that he alone was responsible for is the epitome of arrogance.

Unmentioned remains the possibility, however far-fetched to some, that it was we as a society who caused his mortal wound, we who failed him and not the other way around. We have not shown the slightest inclination as a society to think, or to turn toward thinking and great thoughts, nor do we venerate intellect or intelligence. Quite the opposite.

I submit that he merely saw our ultimate end, and that end stole the last shred of hope, and by accepting that hope is dead, our lack of action, our unwillingness to change, our disinclination toward anything remotely resembling reason or common sense killed him.

When brilliant minds shine their lights on the changes we as a society must make to advance in a positive manner, yet we give only lip service to, or outright refuse, any real effort, what else can then follow? What further wisdom can be imparted that, without dissolving into nagging criticisms or continued harping, will convince us to act upon the truths to which we so often and publicly agree?

Not even death in so tragic a manner appears to disturb the course of this world or the fates of its people. We register our pain, our sorrow to be seen and acknowledged by those around us; in our public sympathies, in our shows of empathy, we mourn for his family and friends; and yet at first opportunity, we run back to our addictions, our self-indulgences, and never mention between ourselves or in any public venue that his death may have, indeed, been our collective fault, his passing or that of any other brilliant sensitive mind the result of our increasingly poor choices, his decision to leave this shallowing world in a time and manner of his own choosing reflective only of the absence of hope in the future of all of us as a whole.

Herein lies the real tragedy–that all but a thinking few will ever acknowledge, or even accept, that maybe we owe Dave and other brilliant souls lost in a similar manner an apology.

I am sorry, Dave. Truly. I will not, from this moment on, fail to encourage thinking, to spread kindness and hope, to try in every way, however large or small, to change the fate of this world, wherever and whenever I can. For all you gave us, we owe you that much at least.