Foreshadowing? Michelle Obama's Black Widow Dress

Hello?! ?

Michelle Obama wears a black widow spider dress to her husband's election night speech. Black Widow? Foreshadowing? Am I the only person to wonder about this?

Even though I did not vote for him -- and have many concerns about his beliefs and policies -- for the sake of their daughters, I hope that Obama lives his natural life-span.

And I am trying to take comfort in the fact that it is Obama, not Hillary; I think that at last, we may be done with the Clintons.

:: a year ago today: Doctor Dandy and pumpkin soup

obama

I'm a conservative. Am I going to lose my job now?

Recently it was pointed out to me that I am putting my position as adjunct faculty at the local community college at risk by openly being a part of the local Republican party. It may be prudent then, for me to clarify WHY I am part of the Republican party.

I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I would like to see a small federal government that does not meddle in social causes, domestic or abroad. Be it education policies at home or regime changes abroad, I don't think it is our federal government's place to get involved. Education policy should be determined by local communities with a little bit of state coordination. Policies and politics of other countries should be determined by the citizens of those countries.

This is not to say that we should ignore heartaches abroad, but that our Federal government should not be the primary conduit of assistance. We allow the appearance of Federal Aid to stand in for personal involvement, even though we know full well that much of that aid seeps away in the form of bureaucrats' salaries.

Of the two parties, the Republican party historically advocated for small government, lower taxes, and individual freedoms more than the Democrat party did. Yes, the Republican party has drifted away (Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, etc., this atrocious bail-out) from its core and that is why I am involved. The Ron Paul movement allowed me to see that there are quite a few people who align themselves as I do -- more Republican than Democrat -- but pretty dissatisfied with the current face of the Republican party. If we all get involved, perhaps we can yank nudge the party back to the right.

I'm putting this out here so that if any of my community college colleagues come to check out the rumors that I am (gasp) a Republican, they can learn that yes, I am, because I don't like what the current administration has been up to.

In what ways do I disagree with the Republican norm?

1. I don't think government has any business organizing any sorts of marriage. I think we should do what Germany does. Individuals register their couple-ship with the state in a civil ceremony which takes care of fiscal concerns. Religious people hold a religious ceremony in a religion of their choosing. The state does not take a position on what is moral, and the religions are free to acknowledge - or not - the marriages of other flavors of religion.

2. Foreign policy, obviously. Why on earth are we out defending other countries' borders and repairing their roads and bridges when our own borders, roads, and bridges are falling apart? Military might is for defense, not meddling in other people's business.

3. No Child Left Behind. Yikes! Bureaucrats determining curriculum is always a bad idea. Schools should be accountable to parents, not to federal cubicle-dwellers.

So, there you have it. I'm that kind of conservative. A mind-you-own-business be-responsible-for-yourself shrink-federal-government states'-rights reduce-taxes kind of conservative. And I'm a really good English teacher.

I want to believe that my political ideas will have no bearing on contract renewals. Am I just being naïve?


:: a year ago today: rant: television
politics, job security, GOP

bailout vote fails

Yipee! I guess there is hope for America after all.

politics, economics, Ron Paul, bailout,

Ron Paul on Colbert Report

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ponderables

Three Things to Ponder:
1. Cows
2. The Constitution
3. The Ten Commandments

C O W S
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.


T H E 1 0 C O M M A N D M E N T S

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this:

You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians...It creates a hostile work environment.


:: thx to K. M. who sent this to me, I don't know who authored it.

Dino Rossi

Now is this a great photo op or what? We spent the first part of the day at a fundraiser to (re)elect Dino Rossi.



My kids and Washington's next governor.

Friday Poetry: Old-Fashioned Hen by Elizabeth Coatsworth

My sister and her husband have recently acquired some chickens, so I am posting this for them. Not that they read the blog, but maybe their chickens do.

Old Fashioned Hen

Now and again I like to see
a hen who still runs wide and free

who crosses roads and flies o'er ditches
and cackles till she gets the stitches,

who hunts for grasshoppers in the stubble
and scratches merrily in old rubble,

who cocks her head when roosters crow,
who knows all things a hen should know:

when to obey the housewife's call
and when to pay no heed at all,

where grubs grow best and how to roost
on some low branch without a boost,

and last of all, to prove her worth
(her nearness to the rights of earth)

let her become an agitator,
fixed enemy of the incubator,

and obstinately steal her nest
and shelter chicks beneath her breast!

~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

And how is this a Fourth of July post? Well that chicken has freedom of movement and freedom of speech and freedom to provide for herself and freedom to raise her own children and all sorts of freedoms that are being encroached upon thanks to the Patriot Act (turning citizens into suspects since 2001). Today we make a big to-do about celebrating our independence yet we are rapidly losing our civilian freedoms and apparently very few people are taking note.




Here is the coding if you want a button with a link to this week's round-up.

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://insearchofgiants.blogspot.com/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://lh5.google.com/image/chndlrsblog/RmBFj-SN_DI/AAAAAAAAB34/at3HZsHcKd0/poetry%20friday%20button%20-%20fulll.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a>
:: this post is part of the Friday Poetry roundup hosted by In Search of Giants.

poetry

wish me luck

I'm off this morning for my first day in my new official role of secretary for my county's Republican party. The Chair resigned on Thursday, so I'll be getting my feet wet in some murky and troubled waters.



politics

Ron Paul

My hero ends one campaign . . . . . . and starts a new one.







technorati tags: ron paul

The Ant and the Grasshopper

For your amusement and edification:

Traditional Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be responsible for yourself!

Modern Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer! The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't work to maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be very careful how you vote in 2008.

:: hat tip to LeQue

ron paul

works for me: 8 podcasts to inform & amuse

Oh my word. I may have found the cure for Mommybrain.

I've discovered podcasts, and no, you don't need an iPod to hear a podcast. Simply download iTunes and subscribe to some podcasts. Here are my favs:

All these are links to free iTune podcasts, unless otherwise indicated.

I'll publish full lists of each category some other time, but for now, here are my top choices.

Books & Literature : Classic Poetry Aloud ~ a nice man with a delicious voice reads classic poetry; he even takes requests!

Christianity & Modern Life: The Kindlings Muse - a conversation about American culture from a God-seeking perspective. Often recorded in a coffee house or pub here in Cascadia.

Comedy: CBC Radio Comedy Factory

Educational: Mises Institute ~ lectures from Murray Rothbard and others on economy, Austrian theory, the Federal Reserve Bank and more

Informative: Podictionary ~ a fascinating exploration of the origins and connections of words.

Kid Stuff: StoryNory ~Reader Natasha has a chocolate truffle voice which we just adore.

Sermons (because faith cometh by hearing): CS Lewis - note these are sermons referencing Lewis, not written by Lewis

Story-tellers: Nelson Lauver, The American Storyteller


These won't help with your forgetfulness, but they will give you something worth thinking about for a few minutes.

My other Works for Me posts.

works for me

Eli Chase on Ron Paul

ron paul

18 months in

A year and a half ago today our plane landed in Chicago and our kids became US citizens. Hours later another plane landed in Seattle and we were picked up and driven home. A year and a half ago today -- a mere 18 months -- our children walked into our home for the first time. We were still speaking Russglish back then, still using sign language, still essentially strangers to one another. Twas merely a year and a half ago.

How did we celebrate? My Gift worked overtime and I took the children first to class with me (last night WHoo HOOO) and then to a Ron Paul party to celebrate our successful convention. I did mention that 80% of the delegates from our county are Ron Paul's people, didn't I? We had much to celebrate.

GOP County Convention

Well I'm not quite recovered but I am -- at 4:30 in the afternoon --
finally bathed and dressed and functioning again. We convened at 9 am and adjourned at 9:15 pm, though I had an extra hour on either end as I was the Convention Secretary. I came home after a 14hour day with 20 pages of minutes and a backache and have spent most of today editing and organizing those pages.

It was a very interesting, to say the least. We rose to speak and moved and seconded and passed and failed and fillibustered and ammended and resolved and balloted and reballoted and reballoted all the live-long day and then some. We heard from current Legislators, future (we hope) Legislators, current councilmen, not-yet-announced Congressional candidates, and we watched a video to get us all ramped up to (re)elect Dino Rossi.

The most pleasant part was witnessing how fair-minded and welcoming the party faithful were to the large and rather green Ron Paul contingent. I was impressed.

Final tally? 25/32 delegates going to the State Convention are Ron Paul supporters.

I also learned that if you get pulled over and say to the officer/trooper that the reason you were speeding is that you had just spent over 14 hours serving as secretary to the GOP county convention and that you are hungry and anxious to get home, you very well may not get a ticket.



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Women's Voices. Women Vote

Have you voted?

new money

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a message from my hero

News from Ron Paul







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Whatcom County Republican Caucus Results

Final numbers:


Whatcom County Caucus Results; February 9, 2008 Precinct Caucuses

119 Precincts, 119 Precincts Reporting

Huckabee 87 Delegates 32.7%

Paul 64 Delegates 24.1%

McCain 53 Delegates 19.9%

Romney 23 Delegates 8.6%

Uncommitted 39 Delegates 14.7%

TOTAL DELEGATES 266 100.0%




ron paul

caucus report

Well that was interesting. Our pooled caucus had quite a few first-time caucusers there and many of us had read up on the prescribed procedures and protocols, to the dismay of the party old-timers who were often gently -- and sometimes not so gently -- reminded of the supposed-tos in contrast to the always-have-dones.

The piece that most mattered for the Ron Paul campaign was that when we broke into precincts, the PCO tallied up the Presidential Preferences from the sign-in sheet and declared that the numbers showed that, as we had 5 delegates to choose, we should choose 1 for Romney, 2 for Huckabee, and 2 for Ron Paul.

I then reminded him to call roll, which we did, and discovered that many Romney and Huckabee people had left. In a group of 17 we had then 9 Ron Pauls, 7 Huckabees, and 1 Romney, so an allocation of 3 RP and 2 Hucks would have been more fitting. Good thing we remembered to call roll! As it turns out, only one person was willing to do the county caucus for Huckabee, so we ended up with 4 RP & 1 Huck and all 5 alternates for RP. Much better than what the PCO had suggested at the beginning!

Poor guy, speaking of the PCO. Afterward he shared that in all the years of PCOing, they had never had enough turnout for it to matter. Whoever wanted to be a delegate got to be one, so he had never had cause to learn and practice the official procedures. Of course the Ron Paul supporters had all studied up and came prepared. How embarrassing for him!



ron paul

the tally

Wow! My state got popular! Thus far we have had phone calls from :
Ron Paul - recorded message
Ron Paul supporter - live
John McCain supporter - recorded message
Mike Huckabee supporter - recorded message
Barrack Obama supporter - live
[not my governor]Christine Gregoire for Obama - recorded message
Slade Gorden for McCain - recorded message
John McCain - recorded message




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