Here I Go Here I Go Again

So a man and a woman discover one another by happenstance. It was not planned. Twenty-four hours before the first day of engagement you did not know one another. Now all of a sudden you are a new part of each and others life. So the journey begins and you make your first joint decision. You decide to like each other and because it is too new the reason will have to be just because. Their you have it. You like each other just because while realizing that now is not the time to say how much you like each other. Given the fact that you had lives before knowing of one another you both have situations. Like other ladies and gentlemen in your lives, who were formerly in your lives, who messed up your lives, who make you happy, who get on your nerves, who you are over, who you still have in your pocket, yes folks this is a never ending run on sentence but life is and will ever be like that. (Deep breath for emphasis) So. The journey begins and like all journeys we want to make sure we reach our destination safely. So we develop safety mechanisms like seat belts and car seats and air bags. You set speed limits. You set safety standards. You purchase armor insurance for your feelings. You may even enter into prayer. Together and individually you evaluate your situations and circumstances and rules of engagement. So a man and a woman who discover one another by happenstance set out on the journey of discovery. You want to know the who, what, and why are we here and what is this all about. Porgy are you sure that Bess here is your woman? Bess are you sure that Porgy is your man? Are we heading for the friend zone? Will we go to the Paris of heated passion? Are we gonna get some? Will we be an item? Will we get to the point? What is the point? When will we know? Be prepared to stumble and bumble and regroup time and time again. Be prepared to fight all of the feelings of vulnerability. Be prepared for the push and pull. You will need each other at times to the point that it may hurt. You will miss each other when those times come when space is needed. When will you know what it is you are to be to one another? Perhaps it is when you look at one another and the poet in the journey,and it matters not which one of you is the poet, says to the other "do you hear music"? And the other responds "baby I always hear music." That is special and there are all kinds of ways that men and women can be lovers and special to one another. You have to find your special way to your special keeper of your heart.

Tormented

It won't be long now. The torment is almost unbearable. Writers need torment to get the rhythm needed to reach people some place. This is 2009 and some people in America are hating everybody who is not them. This does not require deep analysis. If you hate everybody that is not you in essence you hate everybody. Hell at that rate you might as well make it perfect and hate you too. Here we are when all we need to do is prove human beings can earn the right to be considered being the highest form of life and we won't do it. I guess somebody has declared this period in US history the return of the tower of Babel. I wonder as I wander, what is on people's minds? We have this strain of decency when we judge people one by one. Yet when we group people and identify them as a group we marry ourselves to insanity. I have gotten along with conservative rednecks as individuals. But they tell me I am different. So I tell them I could introduce you to a lot more people like me. You like me you will more than likely like them. I am greeted with this "Really" kind of stare then the "come on dude really, really" kind of look. I always say nothing is that deep until we make it so. We are being lead by idiots and folks it is making us stupid. How can you be against anything that will do you good? How can you defend the interest of rich and powerful people when you are poor and powerless. It makes you question what kind of education is America producing? It seems to be churning out a plethora of non thinkers, hate mongers and failures. We are barely literate. Forget and resent logic, forget reason, make them both obsolete. We don't need to be ruled, my friends we need to be governed and served. We pay for it. Thats right we are paying for it and therefore we should be the boss. How can I pay for something and then somebody tells me what to do? I will let you govern me and represent me but not rule me. That is the way it is and the way it should. We have a great country but at the rate we are going that will not last. The worry is not for somebody invading us but rather our own self imposed implosion. For many people in America the enemy is another American. Lord knows we have enough leaders, primarily from axe to grind conservatives, who are pitting Americans against one another in hopes of regaining power. While healthy debate is fine, what we have is a dismantling of civility. I am tormented by this because I know we as citizens of this great country are capable of doing better. Why are we a great country? Because of the people. We have all kinds of people with endless talent passion and decency. For that reason I still have hope.

Character Sketch 2

She lives on the east side across the bridge in a tiny enclave in what would be in a good neighborhood called a Cul-de- sac. Where she resides its known as a dead end street. She has three children two by one man and one with a 3 a.m. in the morning hook-up after a night of clubbing. Their union was a last call booby prize that has played out at the end of a night when loneliness and desperation claims a victory. He was not her Denzel Washington and she wasn't exactly going on in a Halle Berry kind of way either. Her home doesn't need mirrors and she keeps her hair short because she has two little girl heads to do in the morning and a boy who is aqua and soap phobic. Her heart beats faster because she has to catch a bus and drop two kids off at day care and one to school before she can head in to work. She used to have a lot of leave time. She has none now thanks to doctor visits, emergency room camp outs in the middle of night at the hospital that takes in children with high fevers or who fall off of jungle gyms. She never has time for herself. She always has to spend time doing things. She helps with homework she picks up things at the grocery store on her way home. She plays games and makes herself happy. She feeds them dinner, a hot meal every night. From time to time there are gunshots in the street. The kids know to stay away from windows. They take baths and she reads her children bible stories of hope. She stays in a constant state of being tired. She is still young but she does not date. Gentlemen do not come to call. She no longer feels like a woman. She is a mother. She tells herself she has no needs but she knows she does. Her heart can no longer trust getting too far ahead of itself. Women stay, men leave. Women give and men take. That may not be the way it should be but it is the way that she is familiar. Her life is always defined but what some man that she trusted did or did not do for her or what he did to her. Glamour being the crown and high privilege of a woman is farther away from than the farthest away place. No message, no spa, no formal affair to attend no high end car. Just day after day the same ole same ole and the resolve to make it work. That is until one evening as she watched the tail end of a reality show in anticipation of the late night news she drifted off to sleep and began to dream a dream. One of those so excited in anticipation of things female and hopeful dreams of angels and mysterious roads leading to happiness. She dreams of being able to do one thing or perhaps many things that will make her happy. Maybe a gift certificate that she can use to buy something nice for herself before she talks herself out of it because the kids really need something more than she does.

Character Sketch 1

He is the kind of guy that people misunderstand. He gets a lot of attention but you will find him alone more often than not. His favorite company is small cracks in windows that transports a thin streams of light and the air he breathes in his favorite room. He likes his music and his pundit shows. He stores his faith, thinks in terms of proverbs, and designs his life around being missed. He knows the difference between alone and loneliness. He likes sounding like things that he is not just to laugh at how wrong people can be and how easily they are fooled by appearances. This sounds like a guy who has both the world on a string while being confused at the same time. He is neither. He works hard and smart with an affection for good communication. He does not carry cash and wraps all of his coins leaving behind a wallet that does not bulge. Is he a great lover? He ought to be but how are you to know unless you have been with him and how is he to know if you were faking it or not? If his life were a sentence what would he be? Declarative, Interrogative, Exclamatory, Imperative. Maybe all four but we do want to know which is he inclined to lean toward the most. We assume he is deep but we want to know how deep is he. Is he cool or prone to prodigious outbursts? The fact is he is kind of easy and self centered, detached from his middle but getting to the end of things in the most interesting kinds of ways. He is scary. He is confident and yes his drummer does not sound like yours. He hears the sound before the stick strikes and your reaction. He has a way of making you connect to yourself and he makes specific humor that causes you to laugh. What does he do for a living? For the time being he lives. Where is he going? He does not know nor does he care. He has always had what he needs so he need not worry. He never answers you when you ask him if he can help you until you declare that you want his help. Most of what he will do he has already started and you did not know it. Later on you will feel him. When you do he will be back to keeping company with the air he breathes and the light that travels with speed through small cracks in windows.

I Do Declare

I just wanted to talk to myself for a moment. To place word down into a form other than the mouth. I realize that when it is in writing it is more committing. There is proof of your promises suffering, joy and pain. I am learning that negative thoughts are in fact the pavement to positivity sometimes. Because you should and have to put negativity in its proper place. Negativity is something to walk on. Something worthy of the bottom and not the top. I am finding in my sixth decade on earth that I still want a lot of things. I still have a lot to give. I like my life because I have options but I want to do more. I am going to make it happen for me and others that I care about. I can still hear my mother singing to me as a child this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine let it shine. Watch me people. You are going to hear from me and you are going to hear about me. I will do it with class style and truth. I will fail and pick myself right back up until I succeed. I will make mistakes and correct them and trial and error myself to the victory. I am going to win and then share it. I am claiming it now!

I Woke Up To Write My President

In a world that grows more complex simple answers seem wrong. So I think its time to be "wrong". Mr. President you received a lot of money from small donors like myself. On the other hand Mr. President you and the Congress have received large amounts of money from the health care industry. That includes some of the so-called "Blue Dog Democrats" who are stone walling on universal health care. That "big" money helped you win the White House and it helped the Democrats retake the House and Senate. America is now in the grip of a few people with narrow and greedy interests. They have the power to control us financially and they have shown their power to influence people, through lies and distortions, to work against their own best interest. The Health Care Industry and Wall Street are about the business of making money. They do not want Health Care Reform. The Republican party is not going to help you get Health Care Reform. Such a victory would almost surely seal your reelection and solidify a progressive agenda that would fly in the face of their entitlement agenda. The right for women to vote was a moral issue. Civil Rights was a moral issue. Affordable Health Care for all Americans is a moral issue. In a country as great as ours no person should be without health care. Mr. President, the forces against you have effectively dusted off every thing that they are and said that is what you are. They have called you a Nazi, a racist, and Un American while they are behaving in that manner. In a nutshell if you have been seeking a way to finesse this issue forget it. The bully has backed you into a corner. As anybody knows if you corner a man, even a coward, he knows he has to fight out of that corner. Mr. President move forward with the strongest bill. Fight for the public option because it is the only way to move the Health Care Industry to a level of fairness. They have proven that they do not want competition by their actions. They also know a little of something in this case is really nothing. They will walk away from any compromise knowing they can loop hole their way around any meaningful change. Mr. President your support came from progressives who want change. We are your foot soldiers. We are the soul and the passion driving this country to inclusion and moral decency. We are ready to go to the mat with you because we know that this is the moment. This is why you were elected. After years of waiting of not thinking it would ever be done it was done. It was the right time and the right moment. This is a battle for our children and their children. It is always a fierce fight for God decency and what is right. Such a simple solution to this problem has to be wrong. Actually it isn't. For you see the truth is always cut and dry and simple. It is what it is as my daddy used to tell me.

Morning After a Month and Three Days after 60

Today I feel like I have earned the right to give advice to others with confidence. I think they will at least have something to chew on after talking to me. That is a good feeling. I am struggling to improve my life too. So if you come to me in some sort of humble state know too that I am trying to grow a personality too. We can walk together as partners. This is all like walking up a broken down up escalator. Who likes it? But isn't good to know you can do it if you have to. That is life.

Health Care Reform: Get It Done

I wanted to post this article on my blog to illustrate the real motives to the opposition to Health Care Reform. What I believe is the cost isn't the concern it is the politicians bowing down to the Insurance and Pharmacy Lobbies. They have poured many dollars into these peoples coffers. These folks are trying to stall and mislead the American people. It is the fear strategy all over again. This time it is being used by the Republicans in Democratic clothing, the so called "Blue Dogs". Too many people are uninsured, the cost is too high, if you have an existing condition you will not be get insured. That is what needs to be changed. If our law makers are owned it is by every American and they are to serve our interest not those of greedy special interest. Congress has had 61 years to get this right and I have to believe they know what to do to get it done. Stand up for Americans for a change and get it done. What the dummies looking at this from the political angle don't realize is getting this done is the best politics and when families benefit they will get those votes needed to stay in power.

Blue Dogs heel when lobbyists whistle

Why their vaunted "fiscal conservatism" targets health reform -- and never Pentagon waste

By Joe Conason

Jul. 24, 2009 |

Nobody could be better positioned than the Democrats who call themselves "Blue Dogs" to sabotage healthcare reform, the primary objective of their president and the signature issue of their party for more than 60 years. Thanks to fawning publicity in the mainstream media that persistently describes them as fiscally conservative and ideologically moderate, the Blue Dogs enjoy an almost unassailable position in the middle of Washington's stunted political spectrum.

Certainly the Blue Dogs are astute players of the game, their power enhanced by their willingness to echo Republican rhetoric while enjoying the perks and prerogatives of Democratic power. But this is a cynical group indeed, whose reputation for fiscal probity is grossly inflated -- and whose loyalty to corporate interests, over and above the priorities of their party and the welfare of their constituents, is a darkening stain.

What supposedly troubles the Blue Dogs these days is the estimated cost of healthcare reform. By their calculations, a trillion dollars over 10 years represents an unsustainable expenditure, even if the program succeeds in providing universal quality coverage. The chairman of the Blue Dog healthcare task force, Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., has repeatedly threatened to kill any reform bill that increases the deficit. "We have to take steps to hold healthcare costs to the rate of inflation, or we will never balance our federal budget again, and health insurance costs will continue to become less and less affordable for the American people," he said last week.

Holding healthcare costs to the rate of inflation is a laudable if unlikely goal for Ross and his fellow Blue Dogs, but the simple fact is that their concern over costs and deficits is highly selective -- and their claim to fiscal conservatism is utterly unearned. That should be instantly obvious to anyone who glances at the Mike Ross House Web site, where all of his puffery about holding down the deficit and saving taxpayer money gives way to his boasting about the pork he brings home to Arkansas. His most recent spate of news releases touts earmarks adding up to $66 million, mostly in the House Energy and Water appropriations bill. (If every member of Congress snatched that amount, the total would far exceed $300 billion, by the way.) That doesn't include the $87 million that Ross claimed for Arkansas to weatherize homes and schools, courtesy of the president's stimulus legislation.

Chances are that the river and port improvement projects forming the bulk of the Ross earmarks are perfectly legitimate -- and that may well be true of most of the earmarks that the other Blue Dogs regularly grab for their home districts. But who knows? When talking to Washington reporters they proclaim their single-minded dedication to fiscal prudence; when talking to the home folks, they brag about their skill at pork barreling. So as sentinels of the public treasury, they have about as little credibility as the Republicans who used to control Congress.

If the Blue Dogs were truly worried about wasteful spending, they might use their influence to curb the outrageous looting of the federal Treasury by defense contractors, which remains by far the largest drain on the public purse. They might have spoken out against the brazen theft of billions of dollars by private contractors in Iraq, whose thievery harmed troops as well as taxpayers. They might have cautioned against squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on programs that don't work and probably never will, from the F-22 jet fighter to the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Yet with precious few exceptions, the Blue Dogs whisper nary a word against military extravagance. If they are like Ross, they mindlessly endorse the expansion of virtually any and all military programs, simply because some of those dollars end up in their districts. At a time when the Pentagon's annual cost overruns approach $300 billion a year -- dwarfing the entire defense budgets of most developed countries -- these "fiscal watchdogs" simply have nothing useful to say on the subject. Their silence is regularly shamed, or should be, by the efforts of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an actual conservative who at least tries to trim around the fattiest edges of the defense budget.

If the Blue Dogs aren't really worried by wasteful spending, then what do they find so troubling about the prospect of change in healthcare? The unflattering answer, which may be found in a study just released by the Center for Public Integrity, is money. Corporate interests are showering dollars on the Blue Dogs and their political action committees in record amounts. The center's analysis of the latest campaign financial data shows that well over half of the Blue Dog PAC's million-dollars-plus over the past six months came from three industries -- energy, finance and healthcare. Much the same pattern pertains to the individual PACS maintained by Ross and the other Blue Dog leaders. These pooches heel when the lobbyists whistle.

But why would we expect anything else from them?

Let's recall that the founder of the House Blue Dog caucus -- and still a guiding mentor to its members -- is Billy Tauzin, a Democrat from Louisiana who helped start the group in 1994 and then jumped ship to the Republicans a year later. Just months before he retired from Congress in 2005, he pushed through the Medicare prescription drug bill, guaranteeing hundreds of billions in waste and enormous profits for the drug companies.

As soon as he left Congress, Tauzin became the chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, where he makes sure the Blue Dogs never get carried away with any of that rhetoric about fiscal prudence or holding down costs -- by writing generous checks.

-- By Joe Conason