Soapbox

Dear GOP members of congress-

    I have been hearing a lot of talk from many of you lately about federal food assistance to hungry people, and frankly, it has me amazed. It may seem presumptuous for someone like me to lecture a member of congress about a federal program, but you seem to have a lot of crazy ideas that need to be set straight.

    After the GOP first reduced the amount of money budgeted for the SNAP program, then cut it entirely from the Agriculture bill,  those of us who believe feeding hungry people is a good thing for a wealthy nation to do were understandably upset.  Some members of your party tried to justify this callous disregard for the poor and struggling by saying that if no money at all were spent on 'food stamps', no deserving people would be denied assistance… implying that the millions of citizens getting temporary assistance are ALL undeserving!
   It has also been suggested that children shouldn't get food unless their grades are good enough, and that people with cars and telephones clearly should not have food stamps.
   Another said that he knows for a fact that the program is "100% fraud" because he saw two people buying food with a SNAP card and they were healthy and had nice sneakers on and obviously 'should be working'. And many of you, including Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, have said that there must be a strict work requirement for food stamps because otherwise it enables people to be lazy.
    And one even tried to justify it by saying that God doesn't want them to eat.

    Allow me to clear up a few things for you.
    First of all- SNAP not the same as unemployment. Just because you see someone using a SNAP card doesn't mean they are not working. Sadly, a significant portion of food stamp recipients actually have jobs- it's just that their jobs pay poverty wages, because people like YOU refuse to raise the minimum wage. Talk to your friends the Walton family about gainfully employed people who still cannot afford to feed their kids: millions of them work for Walmart!
    It also is not a program only for crippled people, though many disabled people do get food stamps. Healthy-looking people can be unable to afford enough food to eat. There is also no requirement that people stop exercising or sell all their worldly goods and  wear grass tied around their feet instead of shoes while they get temporary food assistance. If they sell their car to qualify- how will they get to the job you insist they must have? Or do you suddenly plan to support mass transit?
    Additionally, sometimes people who have a serious illness or accident and no insurance end up needing food stamps for a while to feed their kids. This situation is unlikely to end anytime soon as long as your party keeps trying to stop them from ever getting insurance.

    Studies show that actual fraud in the food stamp program is about 1%… which I'm pretty sure is much less than the fraud that goes on in Washington.
 
    Forgive me for thinking that your work requirement is simply a convenient, 'tough-love' excuse for cutting money for poverty programs in general so that you can give yourself another tax cut. How exactly would this even work? The majority of people on food stamps are children: will you make them work? (Or like your guru and spokesman Rush Limbaugh, do you think they should dumpster-dive instead?)
    Another large demographic getting assistance is the elderly. Must a 70 year old get a job at a drive-thru to satisfy you that he is not 'lazy'? What about the people who want to work but cannot find a job- like those put out of work by your stupid sequester? If they're not able to find a job, will it please your puritan work ethic if they go hungry in a land of plenty? And the ones who already are working- what more can they do? Go to Washington and lick your boots?
    I also find it highly ironic that a congress which seems to be chronically on vacation and cannot find the time to pass a single jobs bill or even a simply budget for themselves should get all self-righteous about the work ethic and footwear of hungry people. Some of them might be able to find a job that supports them IF you would do your job!
     Further, it is the height of hypocrisy for a party that wants to deny poor women access to contraception to refuse to feed their children when they are hungry.
    And hiding behind a man who said "Feed my lambs" to excuse turning your back on hungry people is wrong on so many levels that I am not even going to address it except to say~ Shame, shame, shame!

   In closing, please remember that you cannot judge a book by its cover, For instance, just looking at all of you with your nice suits and your luxurious homes, I would assume you are intelligent and honest people who care about the constitutional mandate to 'promote the general welfare'. Yet clearly you are none of those things.
   Once upon a time, America declared a 'war on poverty'. In 2013, the Republican party has declared a war on the poor. Your motto seems to be " Let 'em die: there's more for us that way!"

Sincerely-
     A caring democrat who probably pays more taxes (with a lot less whining!)  than you do.

I wonder if they look as beautiful from above
as they do from my front porch,
these clouds that billow and sail through the evening sky
like miles-high clipper ships or
cosmic tributes to Marie-Antoinettes wigs.
Born in some more tropical clime
they venture north, gorgeing themselves all day in a sea of humidity
until they arrive, rotund, towering and stately
each trying to outdo the other in their lush, pearled curves
and coquettish, indigo depths.
And when the Van Gogh of evening
paints them in a thousand impossible, manic hues,
like strumpets they stroll the sunset skies
flashing vermillion skirts
making me wish I could rise
and fly among them.

    I try not to make sweeping assumptions about people's motives, try not to presume that I can know from someone's words what their character and intentions are. It may be fair to judge their actions, but not their hearts. Just because a person says something racially insensitive, for instance, doesn't necessarily mean that they are a racist. Maybe it's been their misfortune to have been so long with racists in their family that they don't even realize the insensitivity of what they are saying.
    It's possible. I can't read minds, so I don't actually know how they feel inside.

    But I don't know how else to interpret the new Republican (do I even need to say that anymore?) anti-abortion bill pushed through the Ohio house except to assume they just hate people. I have tried and cannot come up with any other motivation except plain old-fashioned  mean.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/20/2185821/doctors-ohio-abortion-bill-disastrous/

    As I read about it, I can just see them hitching up their belts and nodding in grim, smug satisfaction: That'll teach those sluts! Because every word of this piece of legislative garbage shouts their belief that  every woman who has an abortion, for any reason, is a baby-killing slut.
    This is not pro-life, it's "Faux-life" in the truest sense. Doctors would be forced under penalty of law to give women incorrect medical information. Women will be required to pay for and look at an ultrasound of their fetuses heartbeat (trans-vaginally, if necessary)… as if they might not realize that it's a baby in there and they think they're getting a tonsillectomy!
    But mere humiliation, lies  and  burdensome expense are the basic foundation of every piece of anti-abortion (aka 'Jobs? What jobs!' ) legislation that is being proposed today. That's not what's new. In Ohio, now they're ready to kill you.

     Under this bill, a woman past 20 weeks pregnancy who suddenly needs an abortion for emergency health reasons CANNOT GET ONE for 48 hours. It doesn't matter if an entire  team of doctors swears her life is in danger unless the procedure is done immediately. The (mostly) men of the Ohio Faux Life coalition have decided that a woman has to wait 48 hours for an abortion no matter what. Because…  they do not care. I'm sorry, but it's not possible to care about people and to vote for such a horrible bill.

   Imagine a man being in a car accident, getting rushed to the hospital where the doctors say he needs an immediate splenectomy so he doesn't bleed to death and being told by the legislature, "Relax… in 48 hours, we'll let the doc fix you right up. For now just hang in there. We want to make sure you aren't making this decision in haste."
     It doesn't matter what your doctors say about the danger to your life, because We, the esteemed members of the Ohio Republican House of Representatives, we lawyers and real estate brokers and car salesmen, who have never met you and know nothing about your medical condition or what brought you to this terrible moment in your life… WE have decided that society would somehow be best served if you wait 48 hours before we allow you to have your 'emergency' procedure. And the potential consequences to you, including death- are entirely secondary to the triumph of our political ideology.
   I guess that's no surprise, given that this is the same political ideology that on a national level also wants to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny abortion for rape victims,  yet refuses to even debate a law that would guarantee a reasonably safe work environment to protect the health of  pregnant women! (You know, the ones with those solid gold, heart-beating fetuses!) 
No can do kids: too busy putting  "Right To Life" sticker on our Town Cars to care about your actual life!

    So I don't know what you could possibly say about a person who would write such a bill or vote for it to become the law of the land, other than "they hate you." They just fundamentally do not give a shit about humanity, and are willing to stand by enjoying fine aged whiskey and a good cigar with their lobbyist pals while you go into convulsions or bleed to death on the Emergency Room floor, if it gets them an A+ rating with the Right to Life Coalition. Bonus points if it pisses off a lot of feminazis and pointy-eared liberals!
    I have tried, but I can't think of any other motivation for such indifference.

     The bill as written is unconstitutional in multiple areas and will never become law. But it is far worse than unconstitutional: it is unconscionable. It is utterly lacking in compassion and humanity.

   Welcome to America. Please check your extra "X" chromosome at the door. Because when the rubber meets the road, they really don't care if you have a job, can afford medicine for your kids, are able to vote, or whether you and your family Live. Or. Die.
    We would all do well to remember that!

      I wonder if they know what's coming?
The birds still act the same, but riding the wind as they do, with existence depending on the ability to judge thermal lift and downdraft, I just think they must know.  But what can they do? What will come will come and they have no hatches to batten down.
    The robin on the fence eyes me, unworried.

    The day is hot with just enough breeze to ruffle my hair, sun shines placidly in a sky that has drifted from blue to pewter. If I could drag my nail across the metallic sky I think it would screech in protest. Makes me wonder what it's like, looking up at the underside of a hammer's head, poised to drop.
    It's going to be a rough night. And as the hours spool off the day my anxiety grows, but the dog still sniffs at that same spot as we round the corner. Surely he can smell the storm approaching but he doesn't whine or pace just lifts his head and enjoys the cool of the suddenly freshening breeze as the leaves turn, hiding their faces.
     The smiling weatherman, gesturing happily in front of his charts assures me that the word for today is 'severe'. 200 miles away still, but coming on fast: extreme winds, large hail, tornadoes.
      "Be prepared to take cover" he says, but with scenes of Oklahoma and Joplin like dioramas of desolation in my heart, I wonder how to shelter my garden, my car, my house. My tomorrow.

     With my blind human senses I would sniff the air and only think "huh… Bit of a storm this evening" But the trees must know. They wait, solid and accepting, still whispering their dreams of rock and water. I lay my hand on the bark of one trunk and wonder if this tree will still be standing tomorrow? Surely, like the birds, it tastes danger in the breeze better than any doppler weather radar, must know that their llifetime partner is about to turn their dance into an abusive relationship. But it waits quietly for what comes. It has no choice, Nowhere to hide.
    What is there for any of us to do with this curse of knowledge? the Derecho is coming: now what? There is no way to turn aside the locomotive, and we are tied to the railroad tracks by our jobs and our homes and our lives.
     And so we hunt for bugs, sniff the stone walls, do the laundry and cut the grass, keeping busy in the big red dot on a bullseye.
     I pause for a minute, standing in the yard wishing that worry had a purpose, could harden me like a protective carapace, like Iron man donning his suit, keeping me safe. I wish worry could keep us all safe, instead of only wasting this summer day.

    I bring in the lawn furniture and go to buy more batteries.

Don’t you worry about me-
I’ getting used to it.
I’m getting used to the way the house sounds
when I walk in and no one’s home,
used to sitting down to dinner all alone,
meeting the steady regard of the pepper shaker across the table.
I've gotten used to how it feels
when something happens and I want to tell you
and I remember I’ll never tell you
anything again.