Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Bob Packwood, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, John and Robert Kennedy, David Vitter, Anthony Weiner, Christopher Lee, Newt Gingrich, Arnold Schwazzenegger. What do all these people have in common? They are white politicians. But they, among many others I'm sure, were either caught or accused of sexual misconduct of some sort. More than one of them tried paying off the women with whom they misbehaved. So in what way is any conversation about Herman Cain's paying off women about allegations of sexual misconduct "a high tech lynching," or race-driven in any way whatsoever? There is no racial component to men's behavior being driven by sex, and there is no racial component to lying about it, or trying to pay off the women to keep them quiet so that either the wife or the public don't find out about it in the case of public figures. I am angry that anyone, in particular racists like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and yes, Herman Cain himself, would play the race card here.
Sexual misconduct aside, and with a full understanding that the only reason that Herman Cain is doing so well in republican polling is because he (like Sarah Palin) doesn't talk like a politician. Which leads to a problem I had with a quote from him last week-because I like it when people who know stuff run for office. "How would I deal with China? I believe in peace through strength and clarity." I wish I had heard him speaking with clarity since he's joined the public conversation. But this is the guy who answers every question with, "That's apples and oranges." Even when it's not.
I'm also wondering who is going to pay for the double wall that Michelle Bachman wants to build? Isn't she against federal spending? We know she's against the government creating jobs.
I was just watching a round table discussion on "Up with Chris Hayes," on MSNBC, and he played a quote from an ob-gyn named Dr. Freda Bash in Mississippi, where an important vote on a "Personhood Amendment" will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 8. She said, "Science has proved that from the point of fertilization, and egg is both fully alive and fully human." Really? I've seen fetuses up to the point where human features begin to appear, and while they may indeed be alive, they are not viably, definitively human. In fact, they look a lot like fetuses of almost every other mammal. If shown side by side, I would defy science, and certainly evangelicals to tell the difference between them. I know that a woman't right to choose will never be a resolved issue between people who see things in a completely emotional way. But, as our current chief justice, and some presidential candidates have stated, Roe v. Wade was decided more than thirty years ago-it is established law that we do not have a police state in the wombs of American women. We need to leave it alone.
Away from politics-someone I know had a blowout on the street next to her home. She was safe, and had a neighbor to help her. And I heard her and one of her friends agreeing that "God was watching over you." "Yes, God is always watching over me!" Really? So why are there accidents in which believers are hurt or killed? Is God not watching over "THOSE" people? I find fault with the argument that her incident had a happy ending for any reason having to do with "God watching over her."
I've been reading a novel in which there is a council meeting in the town in which the action takes place. There are people who clear their throats during the conversation of the town council. As I read this, I found myself clearing my throat. Just like yawning when someone else yawns. Does that happen to everyone? Are you clearing your throat now?
Was the guy who invented nachos name Ignacio?
Does anyone but me have a problem with THE SCIENCE CHANNEL showing a program called "Punkin Chunkin?" In particular, is it really, really, really stupid to refer in their commercials for the show to the participants as "athletes?" I guess it's no stupider than referring to participants in food eating contests as athletes. But it makes me very sad for our culture.
I was at the grocery store yesterday and saw a product called "gluten free ham." Isn't gluten a wheat product? How can ham contain gluten unless it is between two slices of bread?
As I rode down the highway yesterday there was a billboard for "The Rad Law Firm." While there was a photo of a guy who had hair like a televangelist on the bottom corner of the billboard, I couldn't help but silently chuckle at the name "Rad," like it was a hipster add from the 1980s.
We live in an apartment complex on one of the busier streets in our large city that has a long fence behind it, and behind that fence was a wonderful field. My dog and I have found our way through that fence and taken nice walks along the creek in that field. We've seen lots of city wildlife-some rabbits, some coyotes and lots of different birds and plants that you just don't see along developed roads. Two years ago a large swath of that field was torn up because of a huge highway project that may be completed soon. I was sad then, and I'm even sadder when I approach the resulting access roads to that highway. For miles this construction has torn down trees and green stuff, and has replaced it with packed, gray concrete. It is ugly and desolate-like a moonscape. Or like a mountain top removal coal mining activity. I'm sure when they finally get the highway finished, they'll put out some grass and bushes. But it is depressingly ugly, and one more example of humans displacing animals for highways. Yes, we need the roads (or as it is referred to now, infrastructure.) We also need the jobs. But, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone. They've paved paradise and put up a...." new highway. (Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970)
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