COUSIN MICKEY AND THE HEN HOUSE

 Cousin Mickey contacted me on Face Book the other day and suddenly a host of childhood memories flooded in.  Mickey lived in Estill Springs,  my Mom's home town, in middle Tennessee, between Winchester and Tullahoma, just so you know. Jimmy and I were big time city cousins who loved to visit from Birmingham.

We had modern things in Birmingham, like TV, way before they did and stuff, but Mickey had things we had never seen up close, in Estill Springs, like salt licks in the pasture. Well, we'd never been in a pasture before either.  Mickey explained about the fun of licking the cows' salt lick, right in the middle where their tongues had worn it down. Jimmy didn't try it, but I did.

Mickey lived across the road from Grandma Cherry, whose house was the big old one she raised her 5 kids in.  Mickey had indoor plumbing and a regular kitchen and all at home, but she didn't have anything like that when we were little. We couldn't believe it. She had a big old coal fired cookstove in the kitchen.  There was no running water inside the house.  She got her water from her well, which tasted fresh and cool.  However, no inside water meant we had to take baths in a big tin pan with water warmed on the stove, and, worse,  we had to use an OUTHOUSE. I was astonished again every time I visited.  The root cellar under the house with all the stored potatoes and jams and all; the grape arbor, weighted down with  muscadines

enough to make your stomach ache for three days;  the telephone you dialed by cranking the handle--those were all neat and made you think you had stepped back in time. But I could not abide using the outhouse. 

Especially since Mickey warned me about all the snakes and black widow spiders that lived there.

When all the cousins were there, which happened now and then during winter holidays,  all the kids slept together in the attic at Grandma Cherry's. It was warm most everywhere else in her house, even in the coldest part of the winter.  She had great fireplaces in every room that kept them toasty warm.  There were quilts as well.  The attic was a different story.  There was no fireplace.  There was no insulation.  It was
one big drafty room with a host of iron frame beds lined up side by side.  I never tested it, but I am pretty sure if you licked the iron post on the bed, it would have frozen your tongue right there onto the post till spring.  For warmth we had a stack of homemade quilts to use, dozens--as many as you wanted to pile on.  Trouble was, in order to stay warm, the number of quilts required could be in double figures. So we would be warm--except for our noses sticking out from the covers to breathe-- weighted down and unable to move side to side or turn over, and reduced to hysterical giggles.  There is not much required to induce hilarity in a bunch of  6-12 year olds.

What really sent us over the top was when we had to get out from under the 12 or so quilts, make a mad dash across the icy room to visit the slop jar. In the attic, since the sleeping space was shared,  the bathroom arrangements were different from the usual slop jar under the bed.  In this case the slop jar was in a separate room at the end of the attic, set into a large throne-like chair that you sat on, much like the something you sit on in an outhouse. Mickey would help out with a running commentary about the things we might encounter while up and about, like bats and rats and such.

The first step in the march toward modern things was Grandma's spigot on the back porch.  The next year she  got indoor plumbing.  Since she no longer needed the outhouse, she sold it for the lumber.  I never knew whether that was a joke or not, but it was told for the truth.  She was mighty thrifty, so it probably is.

Mickey was a wealth of information about country things and was helpful in so many ways.  He was careful to explain how to recognize poison sumac, for example.  He just forgot to tell me about the poison ivy patch.

Uncle Brooks, Mickey's Daddy, owned the General Store in Estill.  General Store means it sells overalls, flour, kerosene, corn, chickens, and I don't know what all. Whatever you needed you could find somewhere in the General Store.

Our favorite thing was the penny candy at the front.  Uncle Brooks would let us pick out two or three pieces a day each while we were there and it was agony for me to decide between Mary Janes, Sugar Daddys, Necco Wafers, Bit of Honeys--oh my gosh, do they make that stuff any more? I was delirious during the whole vacation each year (probably on a sugar rush).  Mom was a strict nutritionist at home, so we had nothing sweet in the house except fruit. Jimmy

was not so much into candy, but Mickey and I would fight over the sack of candy all the way home.  We would make ourselves sick on Wax Bottles.  You bit off the necks, sucked out the sticky sweet syrup inside, then chewed up the wax.  Yummy. They were about as good for you as soft drinks are now.  Eating the candy cigarettes made us decide to try the real thing, and so of course we did. Or they did.

The boys didn't want to include me.  They never did. I was little.  I was a girl.  I didn't count.  Sometimes I could appeal to Mom and she would intervene on my behalf, but if it were some big, dark, secret thing or whatnot, I had to whine and wheedle my way in on my own.  I was pretty good at that.  Unceasing whining is effective. Refusing to go away is a strategy I tried often. Threats to tell was the best.

The boys sneaked a few cigarettes from each grownup's pack and some matches.  That was easy, since they all smoked several packs a day in those days and left cigarettes, ash trays and matches everywhere.  The boys had their pick--Lucky Strike, Philip 

 

Morris, Camel, Winston, and more.  In the field by the side of the house Jimmy and Mickey smoked their first cigarettes. As they puffed away, I ran around in circles hollering for them to give me a turn.  Pretty soon I stopped though, cause they quit puffing and sorta laid back stunned and sweaty, with greenish faces.  Mickey moaned and Jimmy kinda half-gagged and I stayed very quiet. After the vomiting was over, we swore a pact never to tell and returned to the front yard.  Well of course one look at the pale sickly faces by the grownups and the jig was up. The punishment was light and I didn't have to share, since I was not party to the crime.  We were soon ready for our next adventure.

Some of the country things that were supposed to be fun involved the farm animals.  Jimmy and I love animals. We have been involved with fish and turtles and dogs and cats and hamsters and guinea pigs, but never with farm animals.  They were foreign to us and quite interesting. Almost everything looks easier than it is.  Take milking for instance.  You just walk up to the cow, poke the bucket under the teet, grab it and start pulling and the milk streams out.  When it slows down, you go to the next cow.  Yeah, well it doesn't work that way for me.  It doesn't work at all.  The milk streaming out part.  Oh, well.  Fun to try.  The cows were gentle and let me feed them hay while Uncle Brooks milked them.

The next thing was gathering eggs.  This was an absolute nightmare and I still won't go close to a chicken.  I don't hate them like I hate cockroaches, I just keep my distance.  The first few times I helped gather the eggs I went with Aunt Pete or Grandma Cherry. 

Here's how it went.  They would pass by each brood hen, reach up under her and take an egg.  They would pass it to me and I would carefully place it in the basket.  Soon we would have visited every nest and leave the hen house with our basket brimming.

After several days of that, it was time for me to gather the eggs for the family.  Unaware of the disaster I was about to face, I stepped into the hen house tentatively 

and with great hesitation timidly approached the first hen. She grew larger before my eyes and sort of hunkered down over the nest and her eggs. Grandma explained later that she was fluffing up her feathers to make herself look bigger as a defensive tactic against foxes and other enemies, me included I guess. I was about a foot away when all of a sudden........ wooowweeee....... Such screeching and flapping I never saw.  She came at me with all she had and I dove to the other side of the hen house with my arms wrapped around my head.  It was an awful few minutes.  After awhile,  when she determined that she had me subdued,  she settled down and 
scrambled back on her nest. I unfolded from my fetal 
position and thought about what to do.  Well, I didn't want to be labeled as a scaredy cat from the city and disappoint my Aunt, Mom and Grandma and be made a laughing stock by the boys.  Maybe that was just a
specially figgity hen and if I approached the next one with more confidence and authority, things would go better.  They did not.  This time I got my hand almost up to the nest.  Two hens went nuts.  I got my hand pecked in several places and then my heels from the back as I high tailed it out the door.  So much for what the world thought of me.  I knew what the hens thought.  They had made that very clear and my egg gathering was ended.

 Jimmy and Mickey did make me a laughing stock.

The summer of the great adventure was the one after Jimmy got his Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. He loved that gun. He polished it. He read all the  inserts--the 

 instructions, the safety precautions--over and over.  Mom and Dad outlined very specific limits about how he could use it.  He was pretty much confined to using it to target practice, shooting tin cans in the back yard--which backed up to the railroad tracks. He also practiced by making me dance to the tune of BBs bouncing off my tennis shoes.  That, however, was outside the limits of acceptable BB gun behavior and ceased. There was little use for a BB gun in the city.  Then we were off to Estill Springs!

In the wide open spaces of Estill, Jimmy and Mickey had great fun.  They shot lots of cans off fence posts. They shot lots of leaves off  the elm trees in Grandma Cherry's great huge front yard.  They shot the cows in the fields from the porch (a long way) to see if they would feel it enough to take off running.  It made them flick their tails, but not otherwise move.  As a previous  target of the BB shooting, I felt sorry for my fellow victims, threatened to tell on the boys and the cows were spared further torture.

They soon got bored with regular ol' targets and tried to think up new ones.  While they were thinking, they passed the time by making fun of me some more about my hen house adventures.  That's when they came up with the greatest plan of the summer!  Why not shoot all the windows out of the hen house?  Why not indeed!! It sounded delicious. There in Aunt Pete and Uncle Brooks' back yard was the long luscious hen house with its many windows, the ideal target. We waited till the grownups were all gone down to the creek to fish, and then----- the boys started shooting. All the

chickens ran out with great cackling and clucking  and the coast was clear to get serious.  Oh my gosh, it was wonderful!!  It started with little round holes in the first window pane.  Then more and more. Finally that one crashed to the ground, with a lovely sound and shattered glass all round.  Then another and another.  They got fancy and started shooting patterns in the glass--criss cross and hearts and all around the edge in a circle.  It took many BB's to finish off the first side, with Jimmy and Mickey taking turns.  As they made their way around the hen house, I could see that there were fewer and fewer panes left.  I began to

   holler for my turn.  They ignored me!  It was always the same.  I pulled on their arms! I screamed! I jumped up and down! I cried!  The last pane crashed to the ground.  They clapped each other on the back and rolled around on the grass They were high on naughtiness,  drunk on pure boy badness and I was as mad as spit.

So full of themselves they never saw the grownups coming up the road.  I did though and began to scream and point in horror at the terrible thing the boys had done.  And it was terrible.  

There were some 30 windows in shards on the grounds and many chickens desperate for a place to call home. The remainder of the summer was another kind of terrible for the boys.  They worked from dawn till dark-- milking, tossing hay, digging fence posts, hoeing weeds from the garden, doing all the farm chores needing to be done--to pay for replacing the windows in the hen house, the many windows in the hen house.

And what punishment for the one who did not do the crime, but only longed to, who only lusted in her heart? Other than spending the rest of the lonely summer in Estill without playmates, I got off SCOT- FREE. So there!

Disclaimer:  I wish to point out to Jim and Mickey that any distortion or exaggeration of fact is solely due to the tricks of mind/memory caused by the vast passage of time and is not at all intentional.  

Money Talks

Corporations Become Humans and Curse Their Creator

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave corporations, unions and individuals First Amendment rights to donate unlimited amounts of money to buy political ads for candidates without disclosure.

Meanwhile, corporate fat-cats, whose corporations are created by government, rant and rave against government and condemn government creation of public sector jobs programs for the poor and unemployed.

In Citizens United the five conservative justices composing the majority said, “… this court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or to the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.” Can we keep faith in a government whose highest court makes such an absurd comment about big bucks being spent by “speakers” sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce and other special interests who lobby government for corporate and big moneyed interests? The Chamber’s lobbyists led the defeat of the Disclose Act to close the loopholes created by the Citizens United decision.

Foreign corporations contribute money that goes into a Chamber of Commerce fund used to pay for political ads to defeat candidates who do not tow the line for their profits over people agenda. Playing key roles in the effort are Karl Rove who was George W. Bush’s political hatchet man and the late Lee Atwater’s protégé, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee Chairman and another Bush advisor. They are involved with a group called Crossroads GPS and its associated organization, American Crossroads. The groups are running ads in key Senate and Congressional races and are trying to raise $52 million for ads in the November elections

The Court’s conservative majority of justices were appointed by conservative politicians in the White House and confirmed by conservative US Senators who owed much of their political success to wealthy contributors and corporate interests. The history of corporate influence and control of our government is depressing.

In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the U.S. Supreme Court “ruled” that corporations are "persons" and have the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of former slaves. However, in the decision itself the Supreme Court never ruled on personhood, but a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis who was the court reporter put the “ruling” in the decision’s headnote:

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

Headnotes are not law but subsequent cases dealing with the issue accepted the headnote as precedent to give corporations rights under the Fourteenth Amendment like natural persons. Justice William O. Douglas's later lamented that, "corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives."

The Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976 said donations could be restricted as potentially corrupting, but there should be no ceiling on expenditures since that could be like limiting speech itself (money equals speech). The McCain-Feingold law in 2002 closed a loophole that allowed companies to spend money "independently" just before elections designed to defeat targeted candidates, but that loophole was re-opened with Citizens United. The Court struck down the provision of the McCain–Feingold Act that prohibited all corporations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, and unions from broadcasting “electioneering communications” that mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election.

Ironically, government initiatives that would put people to work rebuilding our infrastructure are condemned as socialism by the plutocrats of corporate America. In an Orwellian twist the money magnates would have us forget that corporations are created by government statutes. Government limits their personal liability for acts perpetrated by them under the auspices of their corporations.

Corporations would not exist if government statutes did not allow them to make profits and shield shareholders from liability if the corporation is caught stealing, or otherwise damaging people. Corporate employees, including CEOs and other officers of a failing corporation can lose their jobs but are not personally liable to the corporation’s creditors for their mismanagement. Corporations control the system that creates them by making campaign contributions to our elected officials, and by lobbying and influence peddling. Hiring relatives and staff of members of Congress also helps the big money interests to manipulate our government. Such tactics have enabled them to water down attempts to regulate their out-of-control greed that caused the worst economic recession since the great depression.

Democracy dies when corporations are given the rights of human beings and corporate bribery becomes free speech.

POOR HILDEGARD COCKROACH

In my last post I spoke of my intense dislike of cockroaches and blogger Shaw Kenawe shared a poem she created in hopes that she could change my attitude:

 HILDEGARD COCKROACH

Hildegard Cockroach lives in the city
And lives a life that's not very pretty.
She spends her days down in the drain
Of a smelly old sink. It's really a pain.

At night she crawls onto a sticky plate
or a stain of gravy that's second rate.
And if she's lucky, she's sometimes able
to feast on leftover food on the table.

"Nobody likes me," Hildegard thought,
"because of the life I lead, and it ought
not to influence how the feel.
It isn't my fault I must scrounge for a meal.

They jump when they see me, they run and yell.
They reach for the bug spray, and I can tell
how they hate me. But what did I do?
Just munched on a moldy old crumb or two.
O, it's true. The life of a cockroach is very hard,"
sighed the sad little cockroach, Hildegard.

It is a very nice poem and I appreciate her efforts.  Here is my response.

POOR HILDEGARD COCKROACH

I’m almost persuaded.

She near touched my soul.

As the many sad hardships

Of her bug life she told.

Poor Hildegard Cockroach

A cockroach life is no crystal stair

And Hildy certainly does have a story to tell.

She’s a real sob sister

And a pitiful victim as well.

Poor Hildegard Cockroach

First she complains she must scrounge for her food.

Oh. she whines about every little this and little that.

“Nobody likes me; everybody hates me.”

The wailing and  moaning Hildy has down pat.

Poor Hildegard Cockroach

Tom writes in the comments, loving those bugs still.

How could he? One jumped on his head!

And Jeny write of bugs in her mouth!

Blaaah—I want all Hildys DEAD!

Gross Hildegard Cockroach

Not one to give up in having his say,

Tom maintains there’s good in all bugs—even Hildy, by the way.

So, quite disdainfully,  and sure I am right, I googled cockroaches today.

6 million nasty hits--but wait--2 were good

 What can I say!

AH Hildegard Cockroach!

It seems in September of 2010

The Docs found cockroaches to be of some use

Fighting infections they searched for new antibiotics and found,

if you please, hot diggidy,  they could use cockroach brain juice!!!

Valuable Hildegard Cockroach

I’ll donate to science; I’m up for that.

I’ll kill ‘em and keep the carcasses all 

In a trash bag out of my sight

Till the bug hearsh comes to call.

Recycled Hildegard Cockroach

 Do we jump when we see her?

 Do we reach for the bug spray?

Oh yeah, you betcha! Without delay!

Disgusting Hildegard Cockroach

I’ve searched my heart in iambic pentameter* verse         *sort of

Should we cut her a break? Does she deserve her fate?

Yeah, cause she’s icky, she’s yucky, she carries disease.

Stomp on her; smash her;  run her down. Hate! Hate! Hate!

Goodby  Hildegard Cockroach

Poor Hildegard Cockroach

War Steals From the Poor and Unemployed

Military spending is causing huge deficits and wasting money needed for education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and developing clean, renewable energy. 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. 50.7 million Americans did not have health insurance and 43.6 million or 14.3% lived beneath the poverty level in 2009, according to the Census Bureau and the numbers are even higher now. Expenditures for our bloated war complex are about 55% of all discretionary spending. We have spent more than a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and much more in bribes to government officials, and tribal chiefs and payments to corrupt private contractors. According to the Democratic Leadership Council, US military spending accounted for 44% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and the military in 2009.Our military spending is as much as all of the next 15 countries combined. The number of people killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is anywhere from 100,000 to a million or more depending on who does the estimates. Statistics on the number of civilians and military personnel killed are often distorted by military propaganda.

Glorification of the mass terrorism of war by media, politicians, weapons makers and other violence peddling war profiteers is depressing. Killing people by war and willful violence is the most demented activity of our species. War is intrinsically evil. Peacemakers like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are real heroes rather than the war complex hyped “warriors” who “fight for our freedom” by killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan so the US can control their governments and natural resources. Metaphors like the war on poverty seem inappropriate in describing anti-poverty programs, which are diminished by the diversion of resources to make war. Lyndon Johnson took on the pervasive poverty

of the 1960 by promoting broad anti-poverty social programs like civil rights, education, Medicare and Medicaid as part of his Great Society.

Rather than advocate more social programs that provide jobs, Obama wants to tinker with middle class tax cuts and a roll back on tax breaks for the fat cats, but how much will trickle down to poor and unemployed people?

When a reporter asked Obama to discuss his views on the poverty agendas of LBJ and Dr. King, he answered, “I think the history of anti-poverty efforts is that the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy. It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Economic growth and tax cuts that increase corporate profits will not eliminate poverty. Such praise of Reagan’s supply side economics isn’t new for Obama.

During the presidential campaign in 2008, Obama said, “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” Does Obama model his super smooth style after Reagan’s slick salesman act?

Reagan was a mediocre movie actor when he became the host of the General Electric Theater on NBC. General Electric launched his political career by sponsoring a national speaking tour for their handsome, look-um-in-the-eye, all-American guy, who promoted their conservative philosophy. He was the ideal political huckster for corporate America's unbridled greed. Reagan put a nice face on the mean-spirited politics of fear and greed, blaming welfare mothers, social programs, government regulations and the “evil empire of the Soviet Union” as causes for America's troubles. Scapegoating poor people and criticizing government programs enabled him to deliver a giant tax break for the rich, roll back health and safety regulations, and push through a gigantic military buildup for corporate defense contractors like General Electric. His racially charged attacks on affirmative action hurt racial minorities and women.

Obama’s smooth rhetoric can’t conceal his role in bailing out Wall Street, cutting deals with corporate interests to dilute the healthcare reform bill, and developing financial regulations in closed-door meetings with bankers.

Rather than praising Reagan, Obama should make Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt his role models and work to establish social programs which provide jobs for poor and working class people. LBJ can also teach Obama that endless wars won’t work. We should end tax cuts for the rich and transfer funds from war and Wall Street to social programs that put people to work and reduce poverty.

YEECH SOME BUGS DESERVE THE DEATH PENALTY

Tom and I agree on most things--politics for instance. We both are progressive, but not slavishly Democrat.  We have voted for a Republican before (rarely) and are supporting a Green candidate this election cycle. It is truly about the issues and the person.

We also agree on movies--musicals, movies with a message (or sappy movies as Jeny calls them), quality cartoons, like Up, movies with a historical theme.

We both like sports, especially basketball and soccer. Tom loves football; I love tennis. We are CRAZY for the Tar Heels, hate Duke, enjoy USC and are interested in Clemson. We follow the NBA.

Tom and I like the same food--basically all food, except that I don't like beets. I can't stand beets. 
 



                                                 
  
                                                         Yuck to beets.

There are some things we do not agree on, but that would be the subject of a different post.

Well, it is sort of, in a way, relevant to this one.  Tom and I absolutely agree about the sanctity of life, about the worth and dignity of every person and the interdependent web of all existence. In some cases that means the same thing to both of us.  We do not believe in the death penalty.  We do not hunt for sport. We do not believe in using fur or exotic animal skins for designer accessories--fancy fur coats, leopard Prada handbags, alligator shoes, meat dresses.

 
Tom and I also agree that we should not destroy animals or insects that invade our home.  Though their natural habitat is outside--in the yard, forest, or garbage or whatever/where-ever, on occasion a creature will come into our house uninvited.  There have been many times when the visitor has been drug in by the cat--as they say,  ungrammatically. Muck is the hunter one of our two cats, who likes to bring her prey in through the cat window, usually still alive. She brings in crickets, grasshoppers, baby rabbits, birds, snakes, frogs, mice. Other creatures wander in on their own--ladybugs, spiders, bees. We always try to get the creature back outside, by picking it up, which works for ladybugs, spiders, even snakes sometimes. We shoo them out through broadly open doors.  That works for birds, rabbits and bees. If we can put a container over the top of them and carry them out, the crickets, grasshoppers and frogs make it outside.  Even the mouse is treated humanely.  We use the type of trap that draws him inside an enclosure with peanut butter bait, slams the door behind and allows us to transport him outside and release him far far away from the house, far away. We respect the sanctity of all creatures, including insects.

........except one.........

When I see a COCKROACH, I step on him. I step on him with a vengeance.  I grind him into pieces. I run him down.   I have no mercy. I am glad he is dead.  If I see one outside, sometimes I kill him as a preventative measure.  That is one cockroach of the 200,000,000,000 in the world that will not be coming into my house. 

Cockroaches abound in South Carolina.  It is hot and damp, which makes an ideal breeding ground for them.  Euphemistically we call them Palmetto bugs.  And, in fact,  there is a slight difference between the two.  Palmetto bug are larger and they can fly!

 
Tom argues that we should treat them as we do other 
 creatures, that they should be carried outside and set free to live their cockroach lives. This is one thing that we have argued about pretty consistently.  I don't think they deserve to live and the thought of picking one up is so revoltingly repulsive that I can taste the bile in my mouth at the thought.  I try to educate Tom about cockroach facts. They spread filth; they cause allergies, including asthma. He maintains that is all Orkin propaganda.

 Recently, I was at the computer in our home office.  He was in the den watching the news on notFox. I heard him   say, rather loudly, "Woooow."  Then he said "Umph."  In a minute he remarked, in a peculiar voice, "The oddest thing just happened!  A huge cockroach just landed on my head. When I tried to knock it off, it kinda got tangled in my hair."  I was incapable of a response.

I do not anticipate that Tom will, upon sighting the next cockroach, be carrying it outside to continue its cockroach life.  In my opinion, some bugs deserve the death penalty.  I wonder if  Tom now agrees.

Listen to the Tea Partiers Speak for Themselves

Tom posted on our blog recently about the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington.  It was a controversial post that elicited a lot of angry comments, on our blog and several other places where it had been published or reposted. He was called some really bad names!  The commentors said over and over that he was an angry man (that was the nicest thing they said about him).  I read the post, in fact I helped edit it, and I didn't sense any anger in him as he wrote the article.  I did think that the commenters sounded quite angry, however.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as leaders of the gathering, held center stage in Tom's post.  There were others who were hand picked to speak at the gathering. 
 
I was curious about what the other folks, the common folks-- those who were not on the podium--were thinking about the whole event.  What would they have said if they had been at the mic? Would it have been exactly the same rhetoric, or would some have had a slightly different take on it all.

To my delight, I found a video of a young reporter who had been there, circulating through the crowd, interviewing ordinary people, people who had come with friends and family to be part of the huge event. They were eager to talk to the young man, and very enthusiastic about sharing their views.  Here is the video. If you have a problem watching it on the blog, click on it and go to YouTube to watch it.  It is over 13 minutes long, but worth watching if you are interested in hearing some Tea Partiers  in a conversation about the issues.

 What did you think?

The Myth of the Founding Fathers

With Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers

Led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Tea Party worshippers of the Founding Fathers want to return to the “good ol’ days” of 1787, when most African-Americans were slaves, many poor whites were indentured servants, and women couldn’t vote. At the time the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Native Americans were being slaughtered for their land, and Mexicans who were indigenous to the Southwest and the West coast of what became the United States were included in the genocide.

None of the ancestors of the African American, Native American, or Latino speakers addressing the mostly white Tea Partiers at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech would have been among the Founding Fathers. No women, Jews, Muslims, poor people or non-land owners were numbered amongst the Founders who were rich white men.

Conservatives have trouble seeking sensible solutions to our present-day problems of poverty, violence, and perpetual war that make rich folks richer while poor people suffer and weapons makers and war profiteers make big bucks while killing and injuring innumerable innocent people. The problems are caused by big moneyed interests with the help of simple minded sycophants like Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers. Their answer is to look backward to the wealthy Founding Fathers for guidance. The Tea Partiers believe the mythologized Founding Fathers are more intelligent and moral than anyone today except maybe radical right-wingers like Beck and Palin.

While hosting the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show and the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel, Beck has been promoting conspiracy theories and delivering incoherent diatribes against socialists and environmentalists. Beck has called President Obama a Marxist, communist, and socialist who is taking America down the road to fascism. He has accused Obama of being a racist with a “hatred for whites”, and alleged that the Obama Presidency is like evil gorillas, endangering humankind and compared Obama’s America to “the Planet of the Apes”. He said that Al Gore wants to create a new “Hitler youth” because he promotes environmental awareness among young people. Beck doesn’t believe in global warming, but loves guns and militarism.

In Washington Beck did not mention Obama or Gore, but rather, assumed the role of an evangelist, presenting a religious theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity” which was a lame attempt to mask his worship of Mammon, the God of big business. Beck’s big show “just happened” to be at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King II made his iconic speech 47 years ago to the day. Beck said he was totally unaware it was the anniversary of King’s address when he scheduled his event and he believes the Lord led him to schedule the event at that time and place. He also boasted that the right wing rally had “reclaimed the civil rights movement.” Beck said he heard the voice of God while addressing his flock, a symptom characteristic of schizophrenia. He and his far right friend and probable Republican Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly mentioned King’s legacy, as giant screens carried King’s image and brief excerpts of his 1963 address. Earlier this year Beck denounced King as a “radical socialist” and questioned why a national holiday had been named in his honor. Beck was born in a Roman Catholic family, but converted to Mormonism. He says he “found the Lord” who saved him from his alcohol and drug addiction and his channeling the voice of God sounds like the faith required in a 12 steps effort to stay on the wagon. .

In his rambling speech Beck gave several quotes from the Declaration of Independence, recited the Gettysburg Address, invoked trite clichés of Americana and read bible verses. Palin said she was the mother of a “combat vet” and led a chant of “USA, USA, USA.”

In the past other extremist populist movements in America also wrapped themselves in the cross and the flag, but espoused some social and economic policies that appealed to the common man. Father Charles Coughlin and Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith were demagogic leaders in the depression days of the 1930s, who at least talked about the dangers of capitalism, with Coughlin advocating a guaranteed annual wage and nationalization of some industries and Smith calling for income limits for the wealthy and old age pensions for everyone.

When he announced the rally, Beck promised to present a plan which would provide “specific policies and action steps” to found “a new national movement to restore our great country.” Instead, in his speech on Saturday, he said he decided to not reveal the plan, because of a conversation he had with God. Rather than explaining his plan “to restore our great country”, Beck said that people should turn to the Lord by praying on their knees and leaving their doors open so their children could see them doing so. Could it be that the billionaires and corporate entities who fund the tea party movement nixed the plan that might help poor and working class people at their expense?

Beck, Palin and their fellow Tea Partiers worship the rich white men and moneyed interests who fund their movement and their politics. Their gods are 21^st century manifestations of the rich white men who were the Founding Fathers.