A Valuable Family
Politician’s children are in the public eye whether they want to be or not. It’s not fair, of course, that a teenage mother and father can’t work out their lives in privacy. On the other hand, Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson are likely to start their new lives with at least $100,000 from whichever magazine wins the bidding war for the baby pictures.
They’re going to need it — neither one has completed high school. This would normally be an obstacle to any kind of decent job. Kids in that situation are usually lucky to be serving french fries or washing floors. Along Branch Avenue you may see people walking with young children and their groceries–no car and the public transportation doesn’t run often enough.
So yes, I’m hard on Sarah Palin, the candidate of family values, self-sufficiency, religion and tax cuts. Especially when it looks like her family gets special privileges while others in the same situation struggle to survive and are disparaged for being poor. This is from Alaska’s newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News…
Have you noticed how our governor seems to have convinced herself only some of the rules apply to her?
This attitude was really at the heart of Troopergate. It also allows her to do things like take cash from the state for spending more than 300 nights in her own home in Wasilla.
Now it appears the governor may have found a new way to skirt the rules. How is it possible that the governor’s soon-to-be son-in-law, Levi Johnston, is working as an apprentice on the North Slope?
The governor, in trying to dispel rumors the father of her grandchild is a high school dropout, released this statement this past week,
“Levi is continuing his online high school work in addition to working as an electrical apprentice on the North Slope.”
But federal regulations require all members of apprentice programs, union or otherwise, to first obtain a high school diploma, something the governor’s soon-to-be son-in- law does not have.
The article goes on to say that a similar apprenticeship program has a waiting list of 100 applicants. None of them, I’m guessing, have the right connections to jump the line.
There’s nothing unusual about teenage parents, and being pro-choice I respect Bristol’s decision to have and raise her baby. It’s natural that her mother would do anything possible to help her. But ordinary teenagers are living in a completely different world than the Palins. Sarah Palin is cutting the safety net from under the ordinary people, who have to take the consequences of their decisions, and play by the rules.
--Nancy GreenApology, Fox Style
You probably heard about the Fox ticker (the words scrolling under the video) that called the President-elect ‘the magic negro’. This was a little embarrassing for the network, so they offered a very special apology.
Fox News VP of programming Suzanne Scott explains, “We received tens of thousands of text message submissions during our New Years Eve special, and this particular viewer submission was inadvertently cleared for air. At FOX we recognize our error as opposed to networks who allow their hosts to utter crude vulgarities to the public.”
I’m going to use this format next time I get caught in a foxy situation. For instance–
“I’m sorry you overheard me calling your grandfather a geezer, but he is really old and at least I recognize my error as opposed to your garbage mouth cousins.”
That should smooth things over.
“I’m sorry I was late for work, but I’m not a morning person and at least I recognize my error as opposed to Debby who has her boyfriend punch in for her.”
I see a promotion already.
“We’re sorry about that Inquisition thing, but we had a real shot at total world domination and at least we’re redeemed as opposed to all you godless heathens who are going to burn in hell.”
See, if you do it like Fox, the apology won’t hurt a bit.
--Nancy GreenDog’s Life
By way of Pam’s House Blend…While Michael Vick sits in jail, one of his former dogs makes the cover of Sports Illustrated. Sweet Jasmine looks adorable in the cover photo, and has way more fans right now.
I hope Sweet Jasmine dodges the curse of Sports Illustrated, and her team (of rehabilitated dogs and their owners) wins every prize. She’s really good at being a dog. I hope Michael Vick figures out how to put a leash on his vicious side. But that’s the side that will be rewarded until he loses his fight and the money runs out.
Vick is on track to move into a halfway house which is more comfortable than jail, where he might feel he is receiving inhumane treatment. Look for him to show up on a football team soon.
--Nancy GreenWildest Prediction 2009
Nomi told me this–and it wins the award for most wildly improbable yet funny prediction so far. I was tempted to put it in my post, but better yet, check out the original here.
--Nancy GreenBaby Girl Born Mid-Flight Netherlands to Boston
Of all the things that can happen on a plane, here’s one I hadn’t imagined, until now:
Baby born during trans-Atlantic flight to Boston
BOSTON (AP) — There were 124 passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 when it left the Netherlands. There were 125 when it landed in Boston.
A woman went into labor and gave birth to an apparently healthy baby girl over the Atlantic Ocean during the eight-hour flight Wednesday from Amsterdam, said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Logan International Airport.
The plane landed without incident in Boston about 10:30 a.m., and the mother and baby were immediately taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, Orlandella said.
“It was wonderful,” Dr. Paresh Thakker, a family physician from Methuen, Mass., who assisted with the mid-air delivery, told reporters at the airport. “Happy New Year for everybody in the family.”
Orlandella said for customs’ purposes, the baby was considered a Canadian citizen because she was born in Canada’s airspace. He could not confirm media reports that the mother was a Ugandan national.
“The spirit of America is alive and everybody was there to help,” said Dr. Natarajan Raman, an oncologist from Minneapolis who also helped deliver the baby, told reporters at the airport.
“It is always a joy to see a newborn baby and I was glad I was able to help,” said Raman. “At the end of it, (the mother) thanked me. She seemed a little exhausted.”
Happy New Year, little one, and may “the American spirit” of everyone helping out herald in a better 2009.
--Kiersten MarekClaiborne Pell
Senator Claiborne Pell has passed. He will be missed by many, and left a long record of service and accomplishments.
When asked his greatest achievement, Pell always was quick to answer, “Pell Grants.”
He sponsored legislation creating the Basic Educational Opportunity Grants, which passed in 1972 and provided direct aid to college students. The awards were renamed “Pell Grants” in 1980. By the time Pell retired, they had aided more than 54 million low- and middle-income Americans.
I hope our new president continues this work. Thank you, Senator Pell, you made us proud.
--Nancy GreenPredictions 2009
When I was a little girl in St. Benedict’s school, I used to get my penny candy at a store that sold tabloids, like the Star, and the Enquirer. You may not consider today’s colorful gossip rags to be respectable news sources, but compared to what they were in the ‘60’s they’re practically the Wall Street Journal. Of course, I was forbidden to look at them. They were not only lurid, they were tainted with the occult. They published New Year’s predictions by witches like Sybil Leek, and psychics like Jeane Dixon. I wouldn’t dare touch them. Make a sign of the cross if you even think about it.
But of course, eventually, I had to know what these gifted people had to say about the future. I cannot overstate my bitter disappointment when I discovered that they used their powers, gained no doubt at the cost of their immortal souls, to peer into the future and come up with stuff like this–
“Elizabeth Taylor will marry again.”
Like that was any surprise, and anyway, who gives a rat’s posterior? When it came to political predictions they were not much better–
“There will be unrest in the Middle East.”
Or global–
“A natural disaster will occur somewhere, sometime in the next year.”
I realized that the prediction biz has a pretty low bar. Last year I made my own psychic predictions, and in the tradition of psychics everywhere, I will cherry-pick the ones that even remotely correspond to what actually happened.
July — Stock market dives, President Bush says the economy is strong.
August — The Fed prints up another batch of money to keep the stock market happy. New bills are pink, with picture of Paris Hilton.
The Hilton bills never happened, but I noticed my money was more colorful this year. I give myself a ‘C’ for accuracy.
Yahoo has a collection of predictions for ‘08, with comments. Here is an excerpt–
4. “The market is in the process of correcting itself.” — President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech
For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting and correcting and correcting.
You would think there would be lots of pundit predictions for this past year up on the net, but many of them have mysteriously been taken down. I was able to get some conservative foresight from the experts on National Review—
Regardless of what they tell pollsters, many fewer people will vote for a young African-American man than an established white woman, even if they don’t really like her. So, if Obama is the candidate, he loses big. (Unless he is running against Huckabee.)
–Lisa Schiffren
Running against Hillary Clinton — who will be tarnished once against by new campaign finance scandals — the House GOP will pick up a dozen seats in the House of Representatives, leaving Speaker Pelosi a greater challenge to manage an already unmanageable House.
Christina Applegate’s new show on ABC will be cancelled.
After a surge in Iowa, Fred Thompson will win the GOP nomination and then be elected the 44th President of the United States.
–Carrie Lukas.
So okay, how about the weather?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA has predicted above-average temperatures for the United States this winter. The national temperature average will be 4 percent warmer than the 30-year normal.
Score one for the scientists.
The year 2008 is on track to be one of the 10 warmest years on record for the globe, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. For November alone, the month is fourth warmest all-time globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature.
Eerily, it’s back to a psychic for a foreshadowing of the national mood this November…
2008 is more than a year. It is a turning point in history. It is the exact apex in time when the balance of ages, suspended, begins to tip away from forces and themes defining the last 2,000 years. History will now incline with ever increasing direction, for better or worse, towards those values and influences that mark a new 2,000-year era.
Hello, 2008. You are the real dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
You are the age where even the smallest individual can change the course of the future.
–John Hogue
Well, that’s what I heard from Moveon.org, more or less.
This year my cards are heavy on the suit of swords, indicating strife, but you knew that already because you read the paper. I can’t make any predictions yet. My crystal ball rolled under the bed and it’s stuck somewhere behind the baseball glove and the cat toys.
So, readers, how about you? Are you feeling lucky? What do you think the new year holds?
--Nancy GreenLooking Up
I saw this last night because the sky was very clear, it should be even better for the last eve of 2008.
A delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year’s Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset.
Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky. It’ll be visible — impossible to miss, in fact — just as the sun goes down, assuming skies are cloud-free.
I’ll kiss my hand to the moon and pray for peace in the Holy Land. Military experts can argue the strategy, but one thing is clear — launching a bomb into a city is a crime. Whether you are claiming to be a freedom fighter or claiming to defend a nation, innocent people are on the front lines.
Through the long decades of war, people of good will have been working for reconciliation. Against all odds, they live nonviolence. Let this be their year.
--Nancy GreenWhiplash
On my Cox homepage the headline says that Gov.Carcieri is planning a hiring blitz. Huh? Wasn’t there just a firing blitz? Didn’t he aim to eliminate 1,000 state jobs?
Carcieri Administration Plans Hiring Blitz
12-30-2008 4:05 AM(Providence, RI) — The governor’s office is working to fill dozens of state vacancies. (link)
There was a surge in retirements. Maybe caused by his inviting state workers to not let the door hit them on the way out.
I don’t know. Some of you Kmareka readers are pretty wise to local politics. Any opinions? I gotta go to work. Glad I have a job.
--Nancy GreenGOP Ticks Off Another Musician
You might call Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary, an entertainer. But Mr. Yarrow is better at political discourse than the Republican Party is at entertainment.
Yarrow, and Lenny Lipton wrote ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ a children’s song from the ‘60’s. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Yarrow’s response to the unwelcome use of his lyrics-
What might have been wearily accepted as “the way it was” in the campaign, is now unacceptable. Obama is not a candidate. He is the President-Elect, and this song insults the office of the Presidency, the people who voted for him, as well as those who did not — and taking a children’s song and twisting it in such vulgar, mean-spirited way, is a slur to our entire country and our common agreement to move beyond racism.
Read it all, here. It’s worth it.
--Nancy GreenMoveon.org Advocacy Training in Cranston
A friend and fellow mental health professional, Susan Wright, will be facilitating a training for all of us interested in learning how to advocate for the causes we believe in. Here are the details:
When: Sunday, January 11, 2009, 2:00 to 3:30 pm
Where: Church of the Ascension, 390 Pontiac Avenue, Cranston
What: MoveOn.org is providing the training materials and we will all learn to effectively advocate with our legislators for causes that we are passionate about.
You can RSVP to this event on Facebook by clicking here.
This will be a great opportunity to meet neighbors and members of the community who want to move our state and country in a healthier direction. I am planning to attend and hope to see you there.
--Kiersten MarekCentral Falls in the New York Times
Very worth reading. This is an in-depth look at the economic impact of the Wyatt Detention Center on the City of Central Falls, and the social effects of the crackdown on illegal immigration.
In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.
The article cites several cases of people being ‘disappeared’ without even one phone call to their relatives, and transferred to a prison in Texas without warning.
Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.
“Without the rules that protect criminal suspects.” The prison was supposed to be an industry for a depressed city, and a benefit for society–keeping dangerous criminals confined. Central Falls would get good jobs and steady revenue.
But at least in Central Falls, the incarceration economy was not delivering on its promise.
In late June, Mayor Moreau, a big man with a florid face and a police siren in his car, offered up a budget that laid off firefighters — and told angry city employees to get used to it.
“We’re at the end of the financial rope for Central Falls,” he told the City Council, citing more than 200 boarded-up homes, foreclosures at the rate of 25 a week, and cuts in state and federal aid that required a 4 percent property tax increase and an 8 percent spending cut in the new $17.4 million budget.
Outside, past the defunct factory where Hasbro once made G. I. Joe, beyond the rusty hulk of the downsized Sylvania plant, the summer twilight gleamed on Wyatt’s new facade.
What had happened to the windfall of money and jobs it had offered?
The jail’s annual revenue had almost doubled in a year, to $21 million, mainly from increasing immigration detention. But the city budget projected revenue of only $525,000 from Wyatt, which is exempt from taxes.
That was not even enough to cover its share of city services, according to an estimate by the city’s finance department.
I imagine deals were made with fast-talking entrepreneurs, and contracts signed, and citizens hustled into voting yes. How much of the drain of people and resources from Central Falls is due to the immigration crackdown? And how far do we want to go in constructing a category of people without rights and prisons to confine them?
The article is long and detailed. You can read it here.
--Nancy GreenWinning the Black Vote
President-elect Obama is coming into office with record high approval levels:
In a new USA Today/Gallup Poll, a sample of 1,008 Americans picked President-elect Barack Obama as the man they admire most. No president-elect has topped the poll since war hero Dwight Eisenhower 56 years ago.
So, showing the leadership that we’ve come to expect in the last eight years, a major player in the Republican Party decides to pull a stunt like this…
(CNN) — A candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship said Friday the CD he sent committee members for Christmas — which included a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — was clearly intended as a joke.
The title of the song about President-elect Barack Obama was drawn from a Los Angeles Times column.
“I think most people recognize political satire when they see it,” Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman told CNN. “I think RNC members understand that.”
The song, set to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” was first played on conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in 2007.
Its title was drawn from a Los Angeles Times column that suggested President-elect Barack Obama appealed to those who feel guilty about the nation’s history of mistreatment of African-Americans. Saltsman said the song, penned by his longtime friend Paul Shanklin, should be easily recognized as satire directed at the Times.
The CD sent to RNC members, first reported by The Hill on Friday, is titled “We Hate the USA” and also includes songs referencing former presidential candidate John Edwards and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, among other targets.
According to The Hill, other song titles, some of which were in bold font, were: “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish Banner.”
Saltsman was national campaign manager for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid in 2007 and 2008. Before that, he held a variety of posts, including a number of positions under former Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee.
Bill Frist?! Keep your cats indoors.
I like to listen to Michel Martin’s radio show, ‘Tell Me More’ which gives air time to issues of interest to black women. One day before the election she was interviewing African-American Republican women. Although I disagreed with their point of view, the women made their case in thoughtful, civil terms. They didn’t slam the Democrats, they praised the Republicans. They talked about values and self-reliance. They often had to defend their politics to their friends, both black and white. After this ‘thank you’ from the Party I imagine they have a lot of explaining to do. But at least they are not alone. They can ask their Hispanic Republican friends how they like “The Star Spanglish Banner.” Wouldn’t want to miss any demographic.
Playing the racist card is the kind of politics that made lifelong Republicans vote for Obama. It makes the Democrats, who have so often failed and taken for granted black voters, look very good by comparison.
If the population projections are true, we are on track to become a more multi-racial nation. The dinosaur strategy of race-baiting is going to end up in the tar pits where it belongs. Of course, for some, gay is the new black. President Elect Obama chose Rick Warren to do the Invocation. I regret all the gifted clergy he didn’t choose, from churches that are Welcoming and Affirming, and no less Christian for not being Mega. Reaching across the lines has its hazards and limitations. But I’d rather take the risks and the bruises than cozy up with the Republican Regular Guys, preaching to a shrinking congregation of the converted.
--Nancy GreenIt’s Not Too Late to Repent
I mostly ducked out of the Christmas shopping frenzy. I let the season pass over like the Ghost of Christmas Ennui and tried to stay cool. I had good family time, which is the best gift of all, and I’ve got the weekend off–life is good.
This year I didn’t do my usual seasonal conversion to Judaism, instead I looked to Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.
But now Americans are suddenly wise to Santa. We are rejecting this notion that Christmas comes from the FedEx jet, or Santa’s sleigh – from the outside. Our images of happiness are becoming self-made again, coming from within our loving relationships. Our dreams, memories and our imaginations are still independent from the grasping control of the marketing departments. This is the delightful and surprising world that is opened to us at the Stop Shopping church when we look at our email each morning. People report that they themselves are a fountain of dances, of paintings and song. They are making new memory fill-in games, promises of future journeys – we even hear of whole plays, dark comic musicals! In a word, we are awarding each other new experiences. This kind of gift is concocted from the funny adjustments that family members make over time to each other – those eccentric private arrangements that only we have, that no company could possibly mass produce.
Rev. Billy, you are an inspiration. Next time you see Jesus, ask him for that loaves and fishes recipe. We’re going to need it.
--Nancy Green