And the horse you rode in on.  What a piece of slime!

It's bad enough that you are indulging in the harassment of a candidate's wife.  But to slam their "green shag carpeting"??

Can't you find anything more important to talk about, like the Spirit rover mission on Mars?  Yeah, we have a mission up there, right now, not just the hot air/wet dream that windbag tool of a president is discussing.  Maybe you should be discussing the distorted unemployment numbers and the growing problem of hunger because of 3,000,000 permanent job losses.

Sure, the Dean family is frugal.  That's a great thing.  They don't have cable television and Howard wears a twenty-year old suit on occasion.  I'd rather vote for a guy who's willing to be as frugal as the rest of us need to be these days.

But to slam their carpeting, breach the privacy of their home?

On top of piling on an unassuming and highly professional doctor like Judith Steinberg?

F*ck you, Olberman.

MSNBC, you'd better watch out.  Get used to the sound of [click].

 

  8:07:18 PM    comment []

 

Did you catch this?  Most American press outlets haven’t.

 

Dick Cheney may be indicted by the French on corruption charges.

 

This could be a good news-bad news story.  Think about it.

 

If Cheney suddenly stepped down because this story was building up too much heat just before the election (“I’m resigning for health reasons/ to pursue personal interests/ spend more time with my family”…pick your spin), the Bushies would look for another tool who would further their cause and might even win them the election.

 

Giuliani, you think?

 

  3:43:18 PM    comment []

 

Did you catch this latest load of bullhockey about the MoveOn “Bush in 30 Seconds” ad?

 

Seems there’s a movement afoot to buy air time during the SuperBowl to air the winning ad, “Child’s Pay”.

 

Now CBS is saying it’ll have to pass standards.  WTF????

 

If this innocuous but honest ad doesn’t pass their so-called standards, CBS is admitting they are fascists, supporting control of the media by the current Adminstration.

 

I say we hit 'em where they live.  Deny them eyeballs and money.

 

I'm going to suggest that we do it the our way, the MoveOn way. We boycott the game, have an alternative event like a MoveOn Meetup concurrent with the game. We don't need no stinking over-commercialized semblance of a game. We can take our high-tech toys and play elsewhere. Without our money and eyeballs, what do they have?

 

Do you really, really need to know who won the game that you must cave in and lap up every bit of their fascist swill?

 

Can’t you wait until the game is over to find out, versus wading through literally hours of advertising crammed in your face ad nauseum?

 

  2:36:27 PM    comment []

 

Son-of-mine was hungry last night; he ate non-stop from the time he got home from school.

 

Must be another growth spurt coming, I thought.  I’d just put broccoli and rice on to steam.  The pork chops were seasoned with garlic and ginger, then slipped into the hot pan on the stove.

 

I am SO hungry, I have to eat RIGHT NOW, he said.  He was winding up to a classic tantrum.  Time for a redirection of attention.

 

What did you bring home for homework? I asked as I tended the chops.  Can you show me while I cook our dinner?

 

NO! I have to eat RIGHT NOW! He stormed off towards his book bag, his blond head bobbing right and left in sync with his stomping feet.

 

Not good.  This could get really ugly very quickly.  The smell of food was surely making it worse, too.

 

He came back with an empty folder and a library book.  See? No homework!  He waved the folder angrily.

 

Wow, that’s a nice library book.  What’s it about?  I hoped he would take the bait.  He wouldn’t touch his dinner if I let him eat anything more right now.

 

He bit.

 

It’s about a grandfather, he said.  Can you read it to me?

 

Sure, put it on the counter here and I’ll read it now.  “Grandfather’s Journey”, it says.

 

Yeah, it’s about a grandfather who catches fish, he says as he traces the words on the cover.

 

Hmm, he’s not dressed for fishing, is he?  The illustration on the cover shows a man in a long dress coat with a bowler hat, standing on the deck of a ship.  There is something rather familiar about him, I think, but I don’t share that. 

 

You know, one of your great-great-grandfathers went on a journey, on a ship, too.

 

Really?  Which one?

 

He opens the book and I begin to read, cleaning the counter and checking the rice as I do so.  Ah, no wonder.  It is the story of a young man who emigrated from Japan and traveled across the U.S., then settled in California.

 

Yes, this is rather like your great-great-grandfather’s story, only he came from China.

 

Where?  Where did he go?  We read a little more about the grandfather.  He returned to Japan for a wife, then back to California to live.

 

Your great-great-grandfather was like this grandfather; he traveled by ship from China to Hawaii.  Only we don’t know if he had a family in China when he left there.  We know he had a family in Hawaii and you’re part of that family.

 

There were complications in the story that we glossed over.  There was a war that kept family members from going to or coming from Japan.  A family home was destroyed and the grandfather’s family went to live in a remote Japanese village.

 

I am choked up and can’t finish this part of the book.  Fortunately, my daughter has taken over the reading at this point; she didn’t want to be left out and miss what happened to the grandfather.

 

As I tended  the chops and fended off the choking sensation, I listened.  The family returns to Japan after the war; the grandfather is torn, feeling at home in Japan and missing his home in California.

 

The “boy” who wrote this is close to my own father’s age.  I can sense the dilution of time and language and space that have softened the story and left only the essence.  While this boy and his grandfather moved between California and Japan, my father was growing up in Hawaii, living at times with his own grandfather.

 

My father shares with a boy’s same curious and removed perspective the morning that the planes flew over Pearl Harbor.  He tells us of standing in the backyard on a Sunday morning, eating a pancake rolled in his hand, believing the planes to be an exercise.

 

The hardest, hurting bits have been sanded off, smoothed; there is no mention of internment camps here in this book, no mention of hostility.  This grandfather’s story is that of a joy in a strange place that becomes home to the heart.

 

It must have been much the same for a grandfather who came from instead from China.

 

It’s time to eat; the chops are fragrant with ginger and garlic.  The rice and broccoli are done.

 

So is the story.

 

  10:35:50 AM    comment []