Sweet Dreams From The Far Left Side

From The Far Left Side

The Good Folks at the North Iowa Tea Party

Cartoon created by TexasTrailerParkTrash (aka Ima June Pullet)

Meemaw's Watchin' Her Stow-ries

Major dilemma, ya'll! As a haughty, intellectual liberal, I can't afford have eschewed cable service in this little bitty small California apartment; we just drag transport our Roku player from coast to coast in a suitcase and stream the movies--I mean, films--from Netflix and Amazon. All us elitists think television is pure tee trash a vast wasteland anyway; we stick to quiet little British films and cerebral documentaries.  A-hem.  So what am I gonna do when my stow-ries start up again Sunday and I cain't watch!?  Help!!

Mad Men, Season Eye-Vee, honey!  The season premiere is July 25th, Sunday 10/9c! We get to find out if Joanie gets back with Roger Sterling; if Pete divorces that fool Trudy to be with Peggy Olsen, who is such a total prig; and--I cain't hardly STAND it--if Betty and Don Draper wind up getting the parenting classes they so desperately need!


I've been worried about their children for months, poor little tykes.  Their mother, Betty Draper, fits the profile for what, in the sixties, we used to call the Refrigerator Mother--the very type who got blamed for causing schizophrenia in their children. The only loving those kids get is from their nanny and there's a brand new baby in the family?  I know perfectly well they had birth control back then, so what's Betty doing having another child when she hasn't got two seconds for the two she's got?!  Questions like this are gonna get on my last nerve if I can't get hold of a television in time.

Celia Rivenbark, who writes a syndicated column that I just love to pieces, admits to envying Betty's parenting style. Celia looks at her own kids who beg, plead, ignore, pout, and act Twenty-First Century normal, and asks herself WWBD?

I don't think Betty Draper's a very good mother but there's one thing she does every week on "Mad Men" that I truly admire.

At her terse command to "Go upstairs," Betty's children wordlessly untangle their legs, stand up, turn off the TV and do exactly that. Not even so much as a "Just two more hours of Mario Kart, pulleeeeeezzz." (Although, to be fair, the show is set in 1963 so it's not like the kids are being asked to give up that much.)

She says it all the time, even if the table is set for dinner and you know the kids are going to have to amuse themselves for at least another hour while she swirls a drink at the kitchen table with moody husband Don, and smokes a cigarette or 12.

When the kids are outside playing and it's time to get cleaned up, Betty steps onto the front porch, puts her hands on her hips and says, "Go inside." And they do. No back talk. No rolled eyes. No negotiations.

At first I figured they were just scared of her - Betty Draper is about as nurturing as Drano after all. In fact, she often looks at her kids with utter curiosity as if she can't quite figure out how these short people came to live in her house. 

I don't know what it is about Betty but right after I call Child Protective Services on her I hope everything turns out okay and she and Don who's such a hunk get back together because you know they have been through so MUCH together and it would just be wrong for them not to reconcile seeing as how they make such a cute couple an' all and I wonder how come Don hasn't ever hit up on Joanie.


Lest you think we're talking about a mere pop-culture phenomenon, I'll have you know there's a celebration in Times Square for the Mad Men season premiere.  The story focuses historically on the cultural changes that occur during the sixties, especially in regards to feminism, consumer targeting, and the demise of the nuclear family as it was known in the fifties. And there's that knotty pine kitchen of Betty's that makes me want to thaw a block of Snow Crop peas. And the tail-finned baby-blue car Don got her. And the clothes are to die for! And Peggy is gonna wind up OWNING that ad agency, girl, you just know she is!  And how come Roger is such a narcissistic hound dog?!  Maybe Peggy and Joanie will take over the place as a team even though Joanie treated Peggy like pigeon poop the whole ENTIRE first season she did give her some pointers about how to dress and how to handle those MALE CHAUVINIST PIGS!


Very high brow, actually.





I've just got to get hold of a teevee Sunday night!  I'm going to get my hands on a TV Dinner with meatloaf and mashed potatoes with one of those little fake butter pats and eat it on a TV tray and just be GLUED to that television!  Even if I have to check into a motel room--hey, maybe one that has those little cottages with cracked linoleum floors and knotty pine paneling and rusted metal showers and sway-backed beds with coin operated vibration and those old solid color cord bedspreads from Sears.


I'll be an an elitist intellectual again next week, or at least until "Eat, Pray, Love" comes out with Julia Roberts.

Oh Dear, the Sky Is Falling!

My dear friend, Mrs. Little, is somewhat paranoid and has warranted some negative attention over the years for her premature shouts of, "The sky is falling." However, I feel the need to apologize to Chickie, as her friends call her, for assuming that her warnings were always without substance.


Every time that I read the daily newspaper or watch the evening news, I get a sinking feeling that I need to go out and purchase a hard hat. Wars on two fronts, oil filling up the Gulf, and economic disaster lurking around the corner has become the norm. Congress thoughtfully provided a tax break for the über wealthy by allowing the estate tax to lapse for the year 2010; former President G. W. Bush signed the bill allowing the lapse into law into 2001. The Democrats failed to get their ducks in a row and repeal it by the end of 2009 and it took effective January 1, 2010. According to the New York Times, billionaire Dan L. Duncan (net worth according to Forbes is $9 billion), who died in March, gets to pass on his estate tax free to his heirs. I'm not cold hearted and I certainly have sympathy for the Duncan family, but given the financial crisis that this country is in, it just seems--I don't know--stupid to let the estate tax lapse for a year.


Yesterday's news declared that the ranks of the unemployed were going to rise as the temporary census jobs are now ending, adding millions to those needing the assistance of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Of course, the Senate doesn't believe that UI needs to be extended. It seems that a lot of unemployed people are really enjoying themselves and refusing to work because they are receiving those huge weekly checks. I've got to wonder what some of these people have been smoking. I've been on unemployment and it pays a fraction of the salary that you earned while working. It's better than nothing, but not much better.


Then there's the NRA and its expanded agenda. It seems that now that the United States Supreme Court has twice ruled (DC and Chicago cases) that the 2nd amendment guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the NRA has had the time and resources to expand its reach into other issues that don't appear to have anything to do with the 2nd amendment. Funny how the NRA tends to only partially quote the 2nd amendment; the full text reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There is another version with identical language but with a comma inserted after the word militia.


The NRA worked with Senator Harry Reid (say it ain't so Harry!) to insert a provision in the Health Care Bill that prohibits insurance companies from charging higher premiums to people with guns in their homes. Of course, the insurance may charge higher premiums to people who smoke and people who are fat. Too bad there isn't an amendment saying that we have the right to smoke and be fat. The NRA was also the force behind adding a rider on a bill to restrict anti-consumer practices by credit card lenders that permits people to carry loaded guns in national parks. In another demonstration of its considerable power, the NRA also managed to get istelf exempt from the Disclose Act (sic; that's what they call it). The Act requires contributors to political candidates and campaigns to disclose their identity, but carves out an exemption that precisely fits some donors, including the NRA.


I'm beginning to think that Chickie has been right all along and that the sky is really falling. Maybe instead of a hard hat, I need to start on an underground shelter. Polls indicate that the Republicans, aka, the party of no, may win big in November. It may be time to start laying in provisions for a long siege on civil liberties and social justice. Think that I'll get a bulletproof vest as well.

Horses In Mid-Stream

Via my friend Steven at Projections, an article for the Chico News & Review by Sgt. Garth Talbott, stationed in Afghanistan.

Driving through to nowhere

A soldier’s view of the Afghanistan war

By Garth Talbott 

This article was published on 07.08.10.

Army Sgt. Garth Talbott is a Chico native who has served in Iraq and is now serving in Afghanistan. The CN&R’s Aug. 14, 2003, cover story, “Dear Anna,” was based on his letters from Iraq to his sister. This is an edited version of a recent letter from Afghanistan.

I’m beginning to feel the wear. This whole war just seems so pointless. I’ve come here with my eyes wide open, having done this before, and volunteered specifically for route clearance, but there is no sense of accomplishment, and the whole problem is systemic.

We clear routes, and the only clear part of the route is the section between the first truck and the last. Usually. Then the fourth truck back gets blown up. Well, at least that’s one less easily emplaced IED, and at least almost everyone in the truck is fine.

Then you run the same route back the next day and get blown up again. You start asking yourself what progress is being made. You can at least look at the short-term result, which is that usually you’ve saved the people behind you from getting hit, which really is a lot. Then you look at the long-term result, which is nothing.

They start putting pressure plates in, so we put $2.39 million mine rollers on the noses of the trucks. My first one lasted four hours. Then they offset the pressure plate, which costs them nothing except a few more feet of wire. Then we put big digger contraptions on the front of the mine rollers. We throw more and more money at the problems, and the adaptations to beat our money cost next to nothing.

The problem is that we have no real presence. We’re the dudes who drive by once in a while in our big-ass trucks. To the average Afghan, we’re no more than an occasional visitor, whereas the Taliban, whether welcome or not, are there, operating under our noses.
We provide nothing for the locals in the way of security. In fact, with our only occasional presence, we cause the problems. We’re the reason there are bombs in the roads through their villages.
What we need is not more equipment or facilities. We need to take the ridiculous amounts of money we’re spending here and put small units inside of every little town, not huge bases on the outskirts staffed almost entirely by support personnel. American and coalition soldiers need to be more like beat cops who know the town. They need to show the locals, through a constant presence, that they can be trusted.

We need to demonstrate by our actions that we can defend their way of life better than the Taliban by being present, and we can’t do that by just driving through, even if it’s every day. [my bolds]

Note Sgt. Talbott's words. Are we asking the Afghans to believe that we can defend them or that we can train some of their own villagers to defend them--from the Taliban--better than the Taliban can?

Whatever our goals and methods should be now, it may be too late to enact them due to the mixed agendas we've espoused since we first got there and the utter confusion that's come of changing leadership at the top at this critical moment. And, if that's the case, then our goal needs to be to get the young men and women, many of whom have given long and miserable stretches of their lives to our totally FUBAR'd Middle East wars through back-to-back and/or extended deployments, out of there as safely as possible.  I have no idea how.

There is supposed to be a critical, game-changing Kandahar offensive in process that makes it possible for COIN to succeed...right? We are supposed to be prepared for an increase in American fatalities as our troops attempt a modified clear-hold-build-and-transfer strategy used in Iraq to the very different conditions in this Taliban stronghold...I think.  I'm not prepared for that, and I don't think I would be even if I understood what we're doing. The Marjah-style offensive seems to have morphed into Operation Hamkari (Operation Cooperation), where our troops try to displace the Taliban by forming a bond with local leaders.

The build-and-transfer chunk of the plan is dependent on arming and training local police and militia.  That's a strategy that Karzai believes will result in armed challenges to the authority of the central government he's trying to build; he's putting his case to Petraeus in a series of meetings over the past week--a case that calls the entire plan into question. Between you and me, it sounds like a goat-rope. I have a sinking feeling that I'm watching the prelude to one of those last-helicopter-out-of-Vietnam moments.

What's your take?