Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?: The Pro-Obama Argument From A Younger Generation.

In order to make ends meet in these challenging financial times, I have begun tutoring kids and teaching SAT prep classes on the weekends for a company in San Diego. This weekend I worked with a very bright fifth grade boy on his writing (I have no idea why his parents are making him go to tutoring on the weekends– it just makes his bored in class for the rest of the week– but that is a discussion for another time). When I gave him the “opportunity”  to write a paragraph about anything he wanted, he chose to write about why Barack Obama is a good leader. His father is an Obama supporter and they have been watching the news coverage and debates together. Once he had decided on that topic, he was considerably less sullen about the task and I was pleased as well. I tried not to let my politics show too much, though; I’ve been running into people of various political leanings in my work and life lately and I figured it may be unprofessional. So, I resisted the urge to pull out my “Hope”, “Change”, and “Obama/Biden” stickers to help him decorate his paragraph and let him do it on his own. Here are his thoughts on why Barack Obama is a good leader.

“I believe Obama is a good leader. He is friendly and a peace-builder. Plus, he voted for wealth for everyone. Also, he is a great rolemodel. He is a self-confident man that is able to explain problems or things so easily even a baby could understand. He also wants to stop the useless war (that Bush started) in Iraq. But the problem with both candidates is that they do not explain who Joe the Plumber or Joe Sixpack is. If Obama wins he’ll be a great leader.”

Sounds good to me! I’ll see you all on November 4th.

Libraries

Recently, I have renewed my passion for libraries.

During college, I appreciated them, but more in a utilitarian sort of way. I liked them because they were an easy place to study or nap on campus. I also came to enjoy the fact that by borrowing your text book from the library you could avoid paying for it at the bookstore. But all of these things were very practical.

Now I that studying and text books are no longer part of my daily life–at least not for the time being– I have rediscovered some of the more enriching aspects of these fine literary establishments.

As an economically challenged avid reader, I love the fact that I can check out book after book and entertain myself for weeks on end without paying anything (as long as I turn my books in on time). This guesture of good faith toward the community is touching to me. Knowing only a person’s address and name the library is willing to give you free access to all the books you could possibly want. I look up and down the aisles filled with worn books like a hungry child in a bakery examining pastry. It is literary grace.

After having rediscovered the wonders of the library, I have expanded my literary horizons. Now instead of only reading what I have to, or what I know I will like, I am able to experiment with genres and authors learning more about myself and the world around me. Some of the time I end up reading something that I don’t like or agree with, but there is no loss of money, only time and at this point I have plenty of that.  Libraries in this way allow people to discover themselves within their walls and pages. And for that I am incredibly grateful.

LaBruzzo’s Immodest Proposal

After seeing the suffering of the poor in the low income areas of Louisiana after Katrina and recently with Hurricane Gustav, Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo was moved to action. Now this action does not involve offering fiscal aid, rebuilding homes or businesses in affected areas, or even providing health care to the recently displaced. LaBruzzo looked out on this impoverished area and thought “We have far too many poor people.” And instead of considering how to help these people rise from their current financial circumstances, his proposal suggests just to get rid of the poor people as best we can. Since it would be tricky to get rid of them in one foul swoop we will have to stop them from reproducing. To be fair, he is offering a monetary incentive for sterilization, so the recipients will be slightly less poor once they have been sterilized.

I hope that Representative LaBruzzo means well, and perhaps he never read Swift’s, “Proposal”. At this point it sounds as though Swift might have had at least a more inventive and opportunistic idea. If we were eating the low income offspring then we would be contributing to their livelihood and creating a market for something only they have the means to produce (well not the offspring’s livelihood, because they would be lunch, but you get the idea). But I digress.

This was not LaBruzzo’s only suggestion on how to ease the strain on the welfare system. On what seems to be a completely unrelated note, he suggested that college-educated, high-earning couples should receive monetary incentives to procreate. While this seems like a good idea, considering that college-educated couples tend to reproduce at slower rates than people with lower levels of education, it really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with welfare. If people who are not on welfare have more children I don’t get the impression that it will somehow stop people currently on welfare from having children. This is not a zero sum situation; it’s not that high-earners are thinking “Well I’d like to have kids, but Suzy from the projects just had one, so I don’t see how we can right now”. It seems as though LaBruzzo sat through half of a sociology lecture on current family issues and chose to create policies based on this experience. Half listening to statistics and creating policy from that brief experience. This suggestion serves to illuminate his feelings about the poor population of Louisiana. LaBruzzo’s mind-set of cultural superiority ooze through his proposal and taint his suggestions.

Hopefully, someone in Washington will come up with better solutions to our economic crises, like perhaps having a lemonade stand or a huge bake sale, I’m sure that will help.

 

Anne Lamott: A Call To Arms

If anyone else is as frustrated with the current media frenzy around a certain vice presidential nominee as I am, then you will love this article from Anne Lamott.

We truly cannot afford to lose this one, especially not now. McCain, our oldest presidential nominee, has chosen as his running mate a woman who admitted to not following the war in Iraq and whose policies are awash with bad judgment. Along with that I simply don’t like her. She does, as Lamott states, seem to “take pride in her ignorance,” which is a character trait that we have had to put up with during the last eight years and I would rather not repeat.

Anyhow, enjoy the article. And if you feel proactive afterward, I’m joining forces with others in San Diego to bombard Nevada with phone calls and voter registries on behalf of Obama.

Oh and if the woman running for vice president had named me, I would be Comando Coalfire.

Sept. 16, 2008 | I had to leave church Sunday morning when it turned out that the sermon was not about bearing up under desperate circumstances, when you feel like you’re going crazy because something is being perpetrated upon you and your country that is so obscene that it simply cannot be happening.

I sat outside a 7-Eleven and had a sacramental Dove chocolate bar. Jeez: Here we are again. A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise — lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world — are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what’s left of our precious freedoms.

When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, “Don’t you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?”

And he said, “Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian.”

I have been in a better mood ever since, and have decided not to even say this woman’s name anymore, because she fills me with such existential doubt, such a sense of impending doom and disbelief, that only the Germans could possibly have words for it. Nor am I going to say the word “lipstick” again until after the election, as it would only be used against me. Or “polar bear,” because that one image makes me sadder than even horrible old I can stand.

I hate to criticize. And I love to kill wolves as much as the next person does. But this woman takes such pride in her ignorance, doesn’t have a doubt in the world about her messianic calling, that it makes anyone of decency feel nauseated — spiritually, emotionally and physically ill.

I say that with love. As we say in Texas. (Also, we say, “Bless her heart.”)

We felt this grief and nausea during the run-up to the war in Iraq. We felt it after the 2004 election. And now we feel it again.

But since there are still six weeks until the election, and since the stakes are as high as the sky, which should definitely not be forced to endure four more years of the same, we have got to get a grip. There are millions of people to register to vote, millions of dollars to be raised. We really cannot go around feeling flat and defeated, with the need to metabolize the rotten meat that this one particular candidate and the media have forced upon us.

One of the tiny metabolic suggestions I have to offer — if, like me, you choose not to have her name on your lips, like an oozy cold sore (I say that with love) — is to check out a Web site called the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. There you can find out what she and her husband would have named you if you had been their baby. My name, Anne, for instance, would be Krinkle Bearcat. John, her running mate, would be named Stick Freedom. George would be Crunk Petrol. And so on.

First of all, go find out what your own name would be. Then for one day refuse to use the name of these people who are so damaging to earth and to our very souls — so, “I don’t have to understand anything, it’s all fuzzy math. Trust me. I’m the decider.” From now on, when working for Obama, talk about Obama, talk about his policies, the issues, the economy, the war in Iraq, poverty, the last eight years, Joe Biden. You don’t have to mention Crunk Petrol, or his sidekick, Shaver Razorback.

And you sure as hell don’t have to mention Claw Washout — she is absolutely, hands-down the most ludicrous person ever to be nominated. She’s a “South Park” character. There was a mix-up. Mistakes were made.

Everything you need to know about how to bear up during these two months is already inside you. Go within: Work on your own emotional acre. Stand still, and hurt, and feel crazy. Then drink a lot of water, pray, meditate, rest. Rest is a spiritual act. Now, I am a reform Christian, so it is permissible for me to secretly believe that God hates this woman, too. I heard God slam down a couple of shooters while she was talking the other night.

Figure out one thing you can do every single day to be a part of the solution, concentrating on swing states. Money, walking precincts, registering voters, whatever. This is the only way miracles ever happen — left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe. Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe. The great novelist E.L. Doctorow once said that writing a novel is like driving at night with the headlights on: You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey this way. It is the truest of all things; the only way to write a book, raise a child, save the world.

As my anonymous pal Krinkle Bearcat once wrote: Laughter is carbonated holiness. It is chemo. So do whatever it takes to keep your sense of humor. Rent Christopher Guest movies, read books by Roz Chast and Maira Kalman. Picture Stick Freedom in his Batman underpants, having one of his episodes of rage alone in one of his seven bedrooms. Or having one of his bathroomy little conversations with Froth Moonshine. (Bless their hearts.) Try to remember that even Karl Rove has accused him of being a lying suck.

Reread everything Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower ever wrote. Write down that great line of Molly’s, that “freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right.” Tape it next to your phone.

Call the loneliest person you know. Go flirt with the oldest person at the bookstore.

Fill up a box with really cool clothes that you haven’t worn in a year, and take it to a thrift shop. Take gray water outside and water whatever is growing on your deck. This is not a bad metaphor to live by. I think it is why we are here. Drink more fluids. And take very gentle care of yourself and the people you most love: We need you now more than ever.