Do You Really Think John Boehner is Going to Return Your Calls?

Last night I spent some time making phone calls on behalf of CT's Attorney General, Dick Blumenthal.  He's running for the US Senate.   (Reading the tea leaves, Chris Dodd "retired".)  Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a phone fan.  (Average waiting time to get a call returned from me = 2-3 days.)  I sat in a crappy, windowless office overhearing people I don't know, calling people I don't know to vote for a man that I don't know, will probably never meet, and having not lived in this state long enough to know or care about his record, have no personal stake in him triumphing over the Republican candidate, Linda McMahon.  I did it because I consider myself a liberal, Democratic pragmatist, and as such, I think it is important for each of us to perform the 1,001 things that are required to get the party's candidate elected in the best of times, much less some of the worst.

As a woman who can vividly recall Reagan's winning the Presidency (because my now almost 30 year old daughter was in utero and just as the election was called for him kicked me with a violence she hasn't displayed since); who remembers the 2000 Presidential election, and who spent part of November 2004 in West of Nowhere, Ohio, on my own dime working to get John Kerry elected (a man for whom I felt even less affinity for than I do Blumenthal).  I am here to tell you that it makes my blood boil to read "progressive" ideologues neigh about the Obama administration's perceived betrayals and shortcomings.  So much so as to decide not to vote in the midterm elections.

I am not saying oh don't talk about such things in public because anyone who knows me knows that I can sling dirty laundry when I want to.  But, really now, until we get a parliament instead of a 2-party representative democracy, power (and the ability to wield it skillfully) is situated in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.  There are a few elected independents, an occasional Socialist, but even they have to caucus with one party or the other. What I'm saying is, we don't have the luxury of sitting this election out because Obama and the Democratic Party sometimes have feet of clay.  How effective was Cynthia McKinney when she was representing Georgia?  How effective is Dennis Kucinich?  And what voter anywhere wants to defend voting for Raph Nader in 2004?  If the outcome of that split vote didn't teach us that elections do have disastrous consequences, I don't know what will.

We have got to stop pretending that Congressional and Presidential politics are like modern marriage; that our feelings matter and that we need to dialogue about them.  Lyndon Johnson was a son of a bitch's son of a bitch but his presidency will forever rank as one of the most pivotal to the lived lives of Americans, particularly African-Americans.  (Him and Lincoln.)  Graze through Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate" or Taylor Branch's "Pillar of Fire"  to understand the kind of Congress that Johnson was up against.

Before November 2nd I will be making calls on behalf of Dan Malloy who is running for Governor, Rosa DeLauro (to return her to the House) and some more for Blumenthal.  As much as I love it and read it avidly, this is no time to sit back and hurl snark.  This is a time to step by step, vote by vote, elect people who have made peace with the down and dirty of politics (and the accompanying criticism).  They stay in the game and they get things done.  Wherever you are I hope you'll do the same.

This Keeps Up I'll Need Support Hose

This is the problem with a blog, you have to feed it.

I resumed my weekend subscription to the Times what with the summer being over and whatnot, so I've been trying desperately to get the papers read before the next week's arrive.  A losing battle that, but I mention it because you'd think that I'd have something in the political or cultural world to rant about, declaim on because I'm reading.  But I don't.  Others do it so well anyway, and one of these days when I take the next lesson in How to Blog, I'll start adding sites I really really like and they can say it for me.

I called this Dispatches From Middle Age because this middle age is a time like no other.  Not dead yet, but you take life for granted at your peril.  One of the the things settling into middle age causes you to do is fret about physical calamities large and small.  (Add a dash of not having health insurance and whoo-whee, more's the fun.)  For now my greatest pre-occupation is my amazing feet which are starting to resemble ham hocks.  You see, I have had hypertension for longer than I've had children.  Sometimes it's up; sometimes it's down.  I can no longer control it with diet and exercise alone.  Believe you me, that train has left the station.  I need diet, exercise and expensive meds.  Lately I've been lazy in my diet and it shows.  I've been lazy with my exercise and my body knows it.  But, I still had my 2 meds -- one relaxes my veins, the other causes my body to immediately siphon off water and direct me to the nearest bucket.  So, when my feet began swelling so badly that they looked like a couple of watermelons with toenails I got concerned.  It's happened before, but only if two conditions existed:  1) the temperature is 90 degrees or more or 2) I run out of the aforementioned diuretic.

Lately, the weather's been lovely -- just another perfect September in the northeast.  I always think of these days as a reward for having survived another summer.  And, unless the last few pills in the bottle were placebos, I was still taking my daily diuretic.  Yet my feet kept growing so that by day's end my skin was taut.  The logic of the damned always kicks in for me in moments like this and I went on a mini-bender of pretzels and processed food (which by definition has tons of salt in it).  And guess what?  Down the feet went from size 666G to a mere size 100D.  That lasted for a day or so and up they went again.  I haven't had this much fun walking since I was in the end-stages of pregnancy.  Each morning I weigh myself and each morning I am 2-3 lbs. heavier than the morning before.

Before Metro North makes me pay for 2 seats I'm going down to New York to see the very same internist I so blithely told I wouldn't be seeing anymore because I'd find someone here and that I'd have insurance.  (My last insurer only covered New York residents.)  That was six months ago and neither assertion is even close to being true.


In middle age, correction, in life, we learn:  It's always something.  Once I have some kind of answer to the latest something I'll turn my attention outward.

American Patriots

 No long dissertations on American politics or ethics today.  I don't have the skill or the time.  I did want to introduce two thinkers whose work I follow.  Like disheartened lovers, Bacevich and Power are having passionate arguments with the United States:
 
I first heard Andrew Bacevich in 2008 or 2009 speaking about his book, The Limits of Power:  The End of American Exceptionalism.  I consider him a historian specializing in American foreign policy.  I read The Limits of Power, agreeing with much, misunderstanding much.  An introduction to his theses (developed over several books) is this recent Salon essay, The unmaking of a company man.

I recommend that his work be read in tandem with Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide.  It's been several years since I read it but I thought of it because I see Power as an adherent of American exceptionalism (at least as it pertains to humanitarian actions).