Author: lux

Healthy Marriages?

The New York Times, and many other news sources, are reporting today on President Bush’s latest proposal, to earmark 1.5 billion dollars to promote healthy marriages. With 7+ years of marriage under my belt, I’ll be first to admit that healthy marriages take work, but I’m appalled that in such tight economic times this is considered a big priority by The Powers That Be.

“A growing body of statistical evidence suggests that children fare best, financially and emotionally, in married two-parent families,” says the Times. And that’s true. But what this country really needs is not more smarmy commercials promoting being a Dad, but a focus on creating the kinds of jobs that help families stay afloat financially and on improving education so that more Americans are capable of holding down those good jobs.

Most of the press coverage I’ve read focuses on how this plays to the president’s base of conservative voters, and how this may be the first step towards federal regulation or legislation against gay marriage. I find myself wondering whether this is another way to get the much vaunted “faith based initiatives” back into play. After all, the Federal government really doesn’t have much apparatus for family counseling or marriage training. A lot of churches do, though.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is another one of Karl Rove’s political moves. It’s not really about public policy or actually helping people. It’s about having a proposal on the table that you can use to smear your political rivals as being “anti family” if they say anything to oppose it. And to top it off, this proposal appeals directly to the soccer Moms who are key swing votes.

I know this is the sort of thing to expect in an election year. I’m sure more is to follow. But boy, does it suck. This is the kind of blatant political posturing that made me think I’d sooner pick up doggie poo all day than run for political office.
I did want to run for office when I was younger. I thought I would be able to do something good for people. I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t think I would like being the kind of person who can successfully get elected in America these days.

I’m a left-wing freak show?

I wrote about this issue yesterday and here I am back at it again today – a post over at Blog For America set me off. According to The Club For Growth, people who support Howard Dean are part of a vast

latte-drinking,
sushi-eating,
Volvo-driving,
New York Times-reading,
body-piercing,
Hollywood-loving,
left-wing freak show

The Burnt Orange Report posted a nifty comeback. An excerpt:

Even when you work this out on a per-capita basis, there is one Starbucks location in Vermont for every 307,000 Vermonters, versus one Texas location for every 53,987 Texans. In other words, there are over five times as many Starbucks locations on a per-person basis in Texas than there are in Vermont.

Since the market would never lie to us, we can safely assume who the real latte-sippers are.

Although this sort of tit-for-tat admittedly brings a smile to my lips, the underlying issue is a serious one. It all gets back to that great cultural divide in America these days, and it worries me. We have become a nation of “Us” and “Them” and we seem to continually strive for more ways of dividing ourselves.

I am really, really tired of it. Sleazy, divisive, insulting, underhanded politics seems to be the name of the game these days – and not just in Republican circles – and I’ve had enough. I want my country back.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that Howard Dean is as good as we supporters believe him to be, because I don’t think I could stand another letdown. If he turns out to be yet another slimy politician who’s brillantly, yet cynically, manupulated himself into his current front-runner status, I’m going to give it up and look hard at moving to someplace nice and quiet like Tonga.

The God Gulf

I’m tired and have been fighing off a cold these past few days. Been tough to get the energy together to post. But Nicholas Kristof has a good column in the NY Times today and I wanted to call a bit of attention to it.

America is riven today by a “God gulf” of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution. All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don’t know John from Job.

So expect Republicans to wage religious warfare by trotting out God as the new elephant in the race, and some Democrats to respond with hypocrisy, by affecting deep religious convictions. This campaign could end up as a tug of war over Jesus.

Over the holidays, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Christmas card symbolized all that troubles me about the way politicians treat faith

Oh Happy Day!

It took almost a month, mostly consumed by Allstate’s inability to get off their butts, but I picked up my newly repaired SL2 from the body shop today!

New side panels, new front and rear bumper, new strut & wheel, G-d know what else… and of course had to pay my deductible (ouch) … but she’s MINE again!!!

I told the body shop to give me an alignment report and they did, but frankly I don’t know what to look for on it. I have the paper on file though just in case.

What a relief. Driving that icky Honda loaner car was really a drag.

7 Years and counting down to New Year’s

Lest it pass unnoticed, Dec 28th was Scott’s and my 7th wedding anniversary. In previous years, when our schedules and finances permitted, we would try to get away somewhere to celebrate our anniversary, but that wasn’t possible this year. We had a nice day anyway. We went to a favorite diner for brunch, did some shopping, and came home. Scott cooked us a nice dinner, and we watched Duty, one of the new Horatio Hornblower DVDs. One of the plot points in Duty is Hornblower’s marriage, but that was just a happenstance of timing.

Aficionados of the original C.S. Forester series may find the additions to the plot confusing and/or annoying. Or as Scott might put it, I have a really bad habit of yelling at the TV when the plot deviates from what I expect based on the book. Nevertheless, overall the A&E version of the Hornblower series is a lot of fun. Its strength in casting goes a long way towards alleviating the weaknesses of the plot and the production values. Ioan Gruffudd (Hornblower), Paul McGann (Lt Bush), and Robert Lindsay (Sir Edward Pellew) are my favorites, but the other actors are all quite good as well.

One aspect of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books that’s extremely hard to dramatize is Hornblower’s internal life. In modern parlance, Hornblower struggled with depression and poor self esteem, which only his extreme self-discipline and willpower kept under control. It’s not easy to put that on screen, and the A&E series generally doesn’t try to do so – which is, I suspect, part of the reason for so many plot additions.

Anyway, I’m re-reading Hornblower and The Hotspur.

And so 2003 winds to a close. We’ll spend New Year’s Eve at a local comedy club, which should be fun. We hadn’t planned it that way, but a friend has tickets she can’t use and it’ll be a nice change of pace. Some of the better New Year’s Eve’s we’ve spent in the past few years have been up at Lake Tahoe, but again, time and $$ took that off the table for this year.

I can’t say I’m sad to see 2003 go. It was a better year than 2002, but not a stellar one. Financially, we’re ending the year in better shape than when it started, but we’ve got a lot of catching up to do after the fiscal chaos of the past couple of years, and it’ll be a while yet before there’s light at the end of that tunnel. Our families are healthy and thriving, which is good, but America as a whole is still a mess, the war in Iraq is a sinkhole, and the outlook for the future could be better.

One bright spot: in 2004 America will elect a new President. My heartfelt wish is that we Americans get our collective butts in gear and send President Bush back to Texas where he belongs. In 19 days, the Democratic primary season starts with the Iowa caucuses. It’s an exciting time. It’s no secret I’m for Howard Dean, but even if some other Democrat is the nominee, I intend to do my part to make sure whoever gets the nomination can beat Bush.

Happy New Year, everyone! Please be safe if you’re going out tonight.

Frozen Jell-O

Did you know Jell-O could freeze? I didn’t. When I went to take some of the batch I’d made a couple days ago out of the refrigerator tonight, though, I found that one of the cups had frozen up. Guess it’s time to adjust the coolness setting in the fridge.

I let it defrost a bit then vigorously stirred it to break up the frozen bits. Frozen Jell-O tastes OK. A bit crunchy.

I’ve been a bit down the past few days and, not wanting to turn this blog into something overly self-absorbed (if that’s possible in a personal blog) or negative, I’ve refrained from posting. I’m feeling a bit better tonight.

I had to give one of my staff members a 30 day review today and had been quite nervous about it. I’ve had so many bad managers in the past that now that I myself am in a manager’s shoes, I want to make sure I do a better job of managing than what I had to cope with. It helps that the employee in question is overall doing a good job, but I was still somewhat nervous about getting it right. I wanted to hit just the right tone – positive, but still wanting to call attention to some areas that needed improvement. I’m reasonably sure I did. She seemed happy after we were done and things went smoothly the rest of the day at work, if that’s anything to judge by.

Business has picked up post-Xmas, which is also a reason for feeling more cheerful. It’s no fun to be bored at work. Plus, I’ve taken the holiday music CDs and packed them away until next year. I wanted to break them into little pieces and then toss the bits into the garbage, but decided that might be overkill.