Off to the Yearly Kos...Welcome to Vincent Bird...John Edwards for President... and my Limited Experience With the Other America

Welcome to Vincent!! he is a baby Indian Ring Neck parakeet who has just come to live with us from Parrots & Co.. What can I say? Some things just make sense....and Vincent did.



















Well, one good thing about this whole mess is that life goes on...Gonzalez, Iraq, and the Hitler Youth who have been running important programs in our government, like HHS, run by this guy who threw back important reports that didn't have the correct political angle.












What makes this guy able to change reports about the health of the American public, and isn't it rather Third Riech-ian to force department after department to mention the success of Bushco a certain number of times in each paragraph...? How can this be??


























Here we are poised on the edge of the week that will feature the Yearly Kos, complete with all the major democratic candidates sniping at each other while looking sideways, shifty eyes to try to figure how that looks on them, and repositioning their bustles to march away with their various entourages...however that works....and I am slayed by the huge and disgusting specter of what Bushco has made of this administration and our constitution. Every blog, every television channel, for Christ's sake!!...every person that I meet on the street who sees my impeach button is just in sputtering disbelief. At least there is community in that, and there will be community at the Kos in that we feel that somehow we can do something in that all of our voices together have become very loud no matter how tiny any one of us is (thats me...the tiny one!)

Never have I seen such dripping contempt for the law, the branches of government, and the people, as I have with this crowd. The Nixon Whitehouse was absolutely liberal and socially correct, law-abiding and ...um...sweet, compared to this crowd. I just wanted a little something to sink my teeth into, not the fall of the empire!

















I'm living in fast forward and as usual I have too many irons in too many fires, and too many feet in different worlds. I've not been blogging much this week because every time Ive made a draft, it seems that life moves past that place and it all seems quaint.
So, yes, as of today I am apparently going to the Kos, and I wish I could say that Ive got all my chickens in a row and parrots standing at attention, but I don't...and this big messy life continues its course towards the nearest iceberg...if those even exist anymore. Maybe that's why the basement keeps flooding.
















Jill did a fantastic job of encapsulating the democratic debate, as she has also been doing a great week-in-review thing at The Crone Speaks blog, and will have it up later on as an alternative to the reruns on 60 Minutes.
The thing that struck me was that Edwards is getting fed up; I like him when he is fed up. When he says things like "aren't you just SICK of this?" it really touches me....I was sick of this from the get-go, and I want Bush out of office...people are dying, people are suffering, and our country is falling apart.
But more to the point is that I have been trying to navigate some very difficult necessities with Ben's family, and it has given me full exposure to just a tiny part of what the day to day is like for people in the other America.
For those of you who don't know Ben, he is my son Will's best friend,and has been a wonderful addition to just about every day of our lives in one way or another for the past 5 years. Lately its every day because, thanks to welfare reform, Ben's mom has completed a course in being a home care companion and now has intermittent work that she has to take in order to secure her benefits, which takes her away from Ben (her 6th kid, and the only one still at home...the rest are grown up,) and the 2 grandkids that she is raising. I'm talking about a job that begins early Monday morning and goes till Saturday morning, 24 hours per day.
Who cares for the kids? Well, if Bill Clinton and the idiots who pushed this idiotic reform through ever asked that, maybe we would have less of a problem with kids in the inner city caught up in drugs, gangs, pregnancy, or just slipping through the cracks and unable to get their work done.
An older gentleman, who is just wonderful, watches the children during the week at this point and one of Ben's older sisters has been around with her 3 kids, but he is old and she is screwed up, and her kids are problematic, and the house is too small.
I take Ben because I want him and also because I don't want him to be there, doing nothing, and unable to read because its too noisy. Some of the kids go to the city camp, and some hang around.
In general the grownups seem to be careful about not letting anyone go to the playground alone...but, how long can that go on? One girl is a beautiful, tall 13 year old, and one kid is a troublemaker...one of the cousins is a tiny girl who has been known to kill small animals, and the last time I saw the responsible older sister/mom person, she was sitting next to an open bottle of rum with a pack of Newports on the couch next to her, braiding a kid's hair painfully, and slurring about how she has lost her housing and is moving to Florida in a couple of weeks.

This is welfare reform up close. Mom is working, the programs are limited and there are few supplies because the high school kids come into the community center once a week and steal everything. The public school puts out its supply list in a week or so, and each list contains items that cost roughly $100 per kid if you get the cheapest items at Staples. Mom is not around, and the local Supermarket moved from 1 block from the "complex," to 2 miles away, across the street from another huge supermarket! So, Shoprite opened a humongous market on rt. 1, which was needed, and then Stop and Shop proceeded to close their store and move directly across the street. Where is the city planning committee when these things are decided?
The "Village" which was built on the rubble of the high rise projects that used to be a fortress against the cops are cute little streets, like cul de sacs, carved into the inner city, with white houses and some low-rise apartments and condos for sale, but are only notable in that they look good in a driveby or a flyover, but are so shabbily constructed as to be made literally of plastic. The door jambs are flexible plastic that have taken on the dirt of a million little dirty hands and when you go to press the doorbell the entire piece bends in and then pops out. The carpeting inside is white; enough said....the blinds are the cheapest mini-blinds and have long ago buckled under their own weight, much less being opened and closed. These small houses are "rented" to low income families who are giving a portion of their benefit check for rent, and so there is no extra money for upkeep. The city has seemingly done none themselves, except to keep the streets clean. There are no garbage cans on the streets nor are there mail boxes. One has to walk off the compound to go to the post office, much less the store or market.
Going to the market used to consist of walking 3 blocks and pushing a cart back, but now it involves walking miles in the heat and pushing a cart back or taking a cab. Of course, one or two towers of the old projects still stand up the street, so these people are the lucky ones. The gardens are well tended and the residents of this place show alot of pride in their homes.

recently, the police came to the house next door to Ben's to find a guy who had an outstanding warrant for ...um...murder. he wouldn't come out and a bunch of guys came outside, a crowd gathered, and the new crop of Stamford police academy grads tasered a bunch of guys and threw some people around. This is the house next door that always has very loud rap music coming from it. The Bloods gang has a problem with certain Haitians and has shot guns in and around this area....and Ben feels like it is all very safe there. There is a strong Christian Haitian community down there, but Ben's family are not church members, so they keep to themselves and with their small group of friends and family.

In the time that this struggle has been going on with Ben's mother's work. I have continued to do what I have always done with them, which is to be their friend and to have Ben here as much as he wants to be with us. I also have, for the first time, helped them with doctors and groceries.
A social worker who had hooked Mom up with the schooling and job that takes her away for entire weeks at a time was supposed to help get the Husky health insurance forms in...and let me tell you, these are complicated forms for ME to fill out...so, she found herself too busy and out of money and blood pressure medication. The doctor wouldn't fill it unless she went in and that cost $90, not to mention the medication cost. So, she ran out of meds and became so sick that she couldn't work, get food, get out of bed...and finally she called me and asked if I could front her the money to see the Doctor.

I did, of course, and I also got some food because the cupboard was bare! I then set about filling out the papers to get Ben health insurance from the state, and realized that she is also eligible as a caretaker...not to mention that the two grandchildren that she has custody of are already on it, and she should have been offered it long ago for her and for Ben. The problem is that the forms are crazy complicated and even with a highlighter and little stickies, its nearly impossible to get it all done in reasonable time when someone is gone 100% of the time during the weekdays.
This is welfare reform....and I am keeping Ben up here while the others are left down there....I check the food, bring groceries, and hope for the best. I give the caretakers there my phone numbers and they lose them over and over...and finally we have a number of where the mom is working, so we can reach her. She got a cell phone but it is a pay as you go which is expensive, and she is only making $500 flat per week, which comes out to around $4 per hour....Oh, did I mention that this job is only temporary? Previously it was only the weekends, it may change again at the drop of a hat...who knows? Part of poverty and living in that other America is that everything is intermittent and everything costs more. Takeout or delivery food when the market is too far, taxis because you have no car, pay as you go phone at as much as 25 cents per minute because you cant guarantee payment in order to get an account with a cell phone company or don't have a credit card because you were offered many in the past and..... This is how it is.
















Our social services that were so handicapped by the Reagan administration in the days of Manhattan with streets covered with the homeless and AIDS patients, have been dealt such a blow by this horrible administration that it is impossible to judge budget feasibility or where we stand in the larger picture of what social security was supposed to be in spirit in this country, and it is unclear to me if we can have any focus group look at things against the current backdrop and make improvements or to assemble a panel of great philosophical minds and try to remember what it is that America is...what we were...why we were formed...and what we want to be.













































John Edwards is the guy to bring that conversation back to life. He has kept a consistent message since before this mess began, and even when the handlers got ahold of him, he has stayed on message.


Look, the majority of the country is on board with the anti-war, anti criminal behavior by our elected officials deal, and I'm not saying that we should let up in any way, but the important things to get done past that are diplomatic and having to do with how we will survive as a society if we don't honor the weakest among us. Wasn't the point of the formation of America so that everyone could have a chance at some sort of a life and the opportunity to achieve much more than that. Weren't these ideas formed by people who were fleeing a monarchical system that ensured a permanent upper class that one could only be born to, and a permanent underclass? Our constitution and laws are supposed to protect the rights of all people, and the aim of this government is supposed to be to perfect the original aim of the idea that everyone has the right to fulfill their potential in full while living with rights and dignity. I know that someone out there will bring up slavery and women's rights, but the point to me is that we are charged with the responsibility of working hard to perfect the tendency of humans to do what is the selfish, barbaric, and crazy thing. Isn't religion largely based on that? And isn't our government also based on that as well? Its the striving to overcome our own tendencies and to give everyone a chance...that would have to include putting a check on unfettered ...anything....we do not have the moral strength to do this internally...right?

I want to discuss the wealth factor in the Edwards equation, but I may save it for another post, because I am hoping that the issue evolves into the reality that they are ALL wealthy, and that the image of the slick lawyer who would take you to the cleaners is being exploited by the right here, and pasted on Edwards, with no real evidence that he has done anything to anyone...except to win against some large corporations. And since when does the average person care about large corporations being made to pay royally for mistakes that take people's lives? Especially when awards are decided largely next to a picture of how much a large corporation makes.
You would think that Edwards was taking grandma's farm away because she bumped someone's car at a red light! Now, that's good use of propaganda...but it has nothing to do with reality.
I hope that Edwards addresses this head on....and keeps up the good work like the great HAIR video: