Beach music–really great beach music. There’s about a 30 second buffer and then some of the best beach music you will ever hear. It will change your perception about beach music. It’s wonderful.
And to certain friends of mine who can’t stop laughing about me living in South Carolina and going to clandestine Democratic party meetings–I should let them tell the jokes but I have a kind of rule in Courting to only talk about my own stupidity–two words–Barack Obama. While we’re all bitching about the economy, I will be bitching in comfort as you take dwindling subways, buses, and have all the old problems come back
It’s been pretty obvious since Bloomberg became mayor he had to take monies from one place to cover another. Did Hillary try to get money for the city? I didn’t hear her screaming for the aide we were supposed to get–that came three years after 9/11.
.Caroline Kennedy on why she supports Obama.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.
Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.
Here’s Bob Herbert, the columnist closest to my heart after Frank Rich on some questions for the Clintons.
Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.
It’s time to truly think outside the box and only Barack Obama seems to be able to think that way.
The next president is going to inherit the biggest mess, arguably since The Depression. Obama has grace, style and substance. Yes grace and style are damn important. The President has to be a healer. I hate losing respect for the Clintons. After the presidents of my lifetime, Clinton brought fresh air. It’s not the same Bill and Hill. They have changed.
I was an SSI claims rep in The Bronx then. Our zip codes included some of the poorest in the country and some middle class–we were the second most diverse area after Jackson Heights. People would tell me stories…they had done everything right and found themselves in deep debt because of sickness.
The real 90’s of easy money hadn’t happened yet, but I always felt those two years at SSI–then I became a social worker. While everybody else seemed to enjoy the ease my life became mired in other peoples sicknesses, dementia, poverty, sadder than sad stories. My background is one of privilege. I felt compelled to work in these worlds.
I live among the very affluent. I feel comfortable in this world, but random events happen that we have no control over. Including a president beginning a very immoral war. We need a president who can look at the war, economy and health insurance with unjaded analytical eyes.
The more I hear Obama and read about him I know he’s going to age 30 years in eight but he can pave the way back to a great America.
I’m psyched that I’m finally going to be a real American–I stopped feeling superior because I’m a New Yorker sometime ago. I will never forget the state of Iowa again and what it now stands for.
If we’re to regain confidence in ourselves and hence be respected by the rest of the world we need Obama.
Stumble it!
I wrote an earnest first person account I used to be known for, but didn’t feel like putting it up as I have many other more pressing fights today.
I’m not saying that this is a generational issue. I am saying that along with many other women and men I fought for passage of abortion rights bills. I know the seriousness of the issue
I don’t think many young people today do. I think they think there will always be a pill, abortion will always remain legal for such and such reason.
Yes and America will always have fair elections and a president who is so crazy he set off a world wide panic last week.
When I was 20 I went to a worker student demonstration that was demonstrating against capitalists, the war in Viet Nam, abortion and ageism. It was a one size fits all demonstration. I left when I realized I was demonstrating against my father and hence my own interests.
I will always be pro choice. I will always have stories to tell about the girl who died before abortion was legal and the like
Right now that’s one part of a much bigger fight. A fight to make the US a country where people can live in freedom, peace, health and prosperity.
My stock broker who is older than I am said he could never imagine feeling the way he does about this country and its government. I welcomed him to my world. For a brief moment there was Carter but he was too intellectual and then there was Bill but he was Bill.
I think people who grew up under Bill grew up spoiled and always expecting more. Again welcome to my world.
We have to come together. We have to put our own issues aside and work for a united America. Until I began to blog I had no idea how wonderful the people really are. We have fought many fights since I began blogging three years ago and some months but now there is only one real fight
The fight to retake America. There is one candidate who has the potential to unify America–Barack Obama. I was for Edwards but one day it hit me. I truly like Obama. i was scared for him. I still am. But I know he can do it. America needs a healer I’m a First Amendment absolutist and I believe it needs faith. True faith. The kind that comes from believing in something bigger than yourself. In this case the USA.
I have to go back to being cooly hysterical. Everything I predicted is coming true. My friends, family–broker–all laughed at me–and they’re not any longer.
I have to admit I still don’t believe the people and I know a few who believe we’re headed into a depression. They’re all my age and have been laid off, have huge mortgages and no way of paying them. Nobody comes to look at their large homes that are for sale. I had to cut them off. Too negative. I couldn’t take the constant whining. It left a mark.
I’m not in that position. But everything in my life depends on Wall Street. And one day many of you will realize the same thing. It might not happen the way it did to me–at a demonstration. That was a big turning point in my life– I was 20. I went to many more demonstrations, fought many fights but never again felt that sense of invincibility and wonder. I only believed that I was doing the right thing
I hope some young women laugh at me and go about being vehemently pro-choice today. We need idealists. I can’t be one anymore. Idealism can only happen when you either don’t care about consequences, purposely face consequences or are just too innocent. I have fallen into all three groups.
I will make out alright. Well I say that too fast. How I make out depends on how this country does. And we’re in deep shit to put it crudely.
I understand what Obama says when he says that Reagan gave people, not me or my friends, optimism. After a long time of not believing that America was the great country we had been raised to believe it was–or older people just had believed–people began to believe that anything was possible in the land of the great, home of the free.
Bruce Springsteen captured the irony perfectly in “Born in the USA” but too many people took it at not quite face value. Reagan made me depressed. I believe the America of today began in his administration. But hey, who am I?
Be pro choice, be anti the war in Iraq. Do everything youth is supposed to do. Don’t expect too many people my age at any rallies today. It’s not that we don’t care we do desperately. We could bring Blackberries. We don’t want to stand behind barricades. Been there. Done that. We will if we have to. Our future–our savings, our pensions, social security, homes and everything might depend on it. We have taken nothing for granted for too long now. We came into adulthood during stagflation. Nobody talks about that anymore. Everybody seems to think that baby boomers had a free ride.
We’re the most educated generation for a reason. There were few real college grad jobs around when we finished college. Grad school began to become an imperative. We came into true adulthood during a recession. We want to enjoy our older years as many of our parents did. We don’t see that being a reality right now
I just really want to see people under 35 understanding that the liberties they take for granted could be taken away from them. Don’t ever take legal abortions for granted. Because soon I will start rehashing my old stories and I’m sure you’re as sick as them as I am.
Vote in your primary. Vote for Obama. He can help change this all around
Here’s an article about RudyG that quotes many people who worked for him.
Isn’t it amazing that the Fed just did an emergency .75% rate decrease to offset the panic Bush spread? And the Dow went down 500 points immediately. If you think it doesn’t affect your life, you’re delusional. it can affect your job, your pension, everything about your life. I was born into this world, and I don’t understand it. Don’t tell me you do. Nobody can truly understand what’s happening other than we’re a country in deep deep crisis.
Vote in your primary and vote for Obama Barack.
Stumble it!
I realize my reaction to the article I quote is a direct reaction to experiences that I had as a child, and to the “adoptees movement” of the 70’s and 80’s who never met an adoptive parent they liked, and felt that all adoptees were hurt by the mere act of being. But if a celeb dies and their children or one child was adopted, the obit still mentions that. If an adoptee kills or rapes, it’s always mentioned. By that thinking if an adoptee accomplishes anything it should be mentioned. But why would adoptees bring it up? I wouldn’t if I didn’t have a blog. My ex-husband found it much more fascinating than I did. He found my matter of factness about it intriguing. The constant use of the word “adoptee” might by itself bring its own set of problems.
I was going to write a warm and fuzzy post about David Berkowitz’s capture on August 10, 1977 as he had held the city hostage, and now it was no longer in fear. Then I read this:
Scott Weinberger, a WCBS-TV reporter, interviewed Mr. Berkowitz recently to make the 30-year anniversary of the killings. Mr. Berkowitz, who was adopted as an infant, said that as a young man, he felt guilty after he was told by his adoptive parents, incorrectly, that his birth mother died while he was born.
David Berkowitz was a sick person. His adoptive parents sound like idiots but that’s not the point. He and he alone was responsible for his actions. He might have inherited “bad” genes; he might not have been nurtured properly.
I feel oh so earnest and stupid when I get into one of these things but I remember going to “adoptee rights” meetings where people would totally negate their adoptive families.
“I met my birth mother. She’s in a mental hospital for life and I have seven half-siblings all with different fathers but now my life is complete.”
Yes that’s simplistic thinking. I had to listen to it without throwing up. I did walk out. I went to a meeting when thinking was supposed to be a bit less simplistic. A woman asked a panel what to do as she had found her birth mother but her adoptive mother was old and sick and she didn’t know whether to tell her or not.
A valid question? Not to that panel who went on and on about how they never had liked their adoptive families and how wonderful their birth families were. I’m not going to go into my reaction. It’s in the archives.
I wrote published article on meeting my birth mother that I should scan in. It wasn’t a great meeting.
But neither she nor my parents are responsible for any problems that I might have. They’re mine and mine alone. Yes my Dad was hard on me. But we always loved each other immensely and I was a rather wild teenager.
Not because I was adopted but because of the times I grew up in, and because maybe I did have my birth mother’s rebel streak. My parents weren’t exactly conformists and at times encouraged my rebellion.
Fortunately life isn’t in black and white but many shades of gray–and pink, blue, green….
This was the day from hell. I reached a place in my book where I’m revising, taking out, editing and adding. Today I added a story about my nine year old self fighting with my 45 year old father.
My book isn’t really, Pia, the very early years but sometimes explanation in dialogue is needed. It wasn’t fun to write and I probably shouldn’t have on a day I had no AC, it was in the 90’s and the city was at a standstill.
I probably should have gone to bed and read magazines, but uh, I would have felt guilty
While I don’t think fighting with my father was the most fun I had, I knew even then how much he loved me and cared about me.
All families are screwed up. It’s the families that work out their differences that produce functional members of society.
Being adopted doesn’t make a killer. Genes, nurture, and ones self do. With the emphasis being on the last.
I shouldn’t personalize. I know that. But I am a staunch believer in a woman’s right to choose and one of those choices is adoption. I don’t understand people who are so vain they have to have their own egg or sperm. Yet when they read things like the above quote it gives validity to reasons not to adopt.
Most “satisfied” adoptees never talk about being adopted. I find that sad also. Maybe if more people talked about their “happy” home life, statistics about too many adoptees being in mental hospitals wouldn’t be bandied about so much.
David Berkowitz wasn’t the only adopted serial killer. So were Ted Bundy and Joel Rifkin for two that come to mind quickly. Maybe they had horrible upbringings that fostered their “bad” genes.
Maybe Berkowitz’s parents should have told him he was adopted when he was an infant or small child and not lied about his mother. Maybe he would have been a serial killer had he remained with his birth mother and she was in that most perfect of all situations, married.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a stigma to adoption if records were open and families made every effort to talk to their children about their roots.
Maybe if the word “adult” didn’t have to be put in front of “adoptee,” things would be different.
I am an adoptee. I am an adult. I would rather die myself than kill another human being unless they were physically attacking somebody that I love. Most adoptees feel as I do. We are a true silent majority. That’s sad.
Stumble it!
I just pre-ordered my copy of Diesel’s book. Even the pre-order form was funny–as Sage said: a hoot.
Sage has some great photos. He’s a person who does. Unlike those of us who take a million pictures of the beach. The Boat Basin at Riverside Park has new lights. There are entire new parks on the river.
But whenever I go, I get into walking or socializing and forget to take pictures.
I’m allowed to blog because it’s Saturday. My blog. My rules to be broken.
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I am focusing on my book–when I can focus. I don’t want my obit to say: She had so much potential but she wasn’t organized and had ADD. I don’t want to go on meds for it. When I move I want to get health insurance without hearing about pre-existing conditions. If you get help, insurance companies hold it against you. If you don’t get help they say the condition existed and you neglected it.
It has been suggested that I move into a tank for the duration of the book. That’s very appealing to me, especially if it overlooks an ocean. I would put a paypal donation thing but that’s so not me. I could ask for people to design one, but I wouldn’t trust any design by anybody I know. Especially if it involves confined spaces and re-circulated air. Even more if it involves electricity. And I don’t want to think about electricity and water Continue Reading »
Stumble it!
