Democratic Convention - Days 3 & 4

Hi, readers!

Sorry for taking so long to get this up! It's been a busy few days and so I'm just now finally catching up!

Let's get started...

Democratic Convention, Day 3

I missed seeing this day live, because I was at the airport picking up Chris from his Canada trip. I did tape it - er, DVR it - however, so here are my thoughts on the two speakers I was watching for: Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.

Bill Clinton

It is sickening to me how long the applause lasted for this fraud of a man. I guess it just proves my point all over again - people are sheep, and will follow along blindly time and time again. Here are some of my reactions to individual parts of his speech:

• "Sit down." (Funny! I wish Bill had taken his own advice and gotten off the stage. Yeech.)
• I will grant Bill this - his global warming joke was funny.
• The American Dream is apparently under siege. (Oh, Lord. It begins.)
• We have a perilous dependence on foreign oil. (As opposed to when he was president...?)
• Diplomacy is the answer. (I thought interns were the answer...)
• Obama will rebuild a badly strained military. (Uh, wasn't it CLINTON who decimated the military in the 90s?)
• Why should Clinton have to convince his own party that their candidate is ready to be President?
• Nations around the world should be "impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power." (Why are we trying to impress anyone?)
• Military families are "pushed to the breaking point by multiple deployments." (Follow me closely on this one, folks. We have a VOLUNTEER military. Military forces are used to defend interests both domestically and abroad. Ergo, people volunteer and as a natural course of their job, are deployed. If you're going to complain about it, you shouldn't have joined. People who join the military just so they can get a guaranteed salary and education and training piss me off. Being a part of the military is about serving others, not having them serve you.)
• Let me express this one more time for those apparently slow folks in the crowd: the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was not responsible for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Get the hell off it.

Joe Biden

Apparently, I should be proud of this hometown Scranton boy. But although I find his mom to be cute as a button and him to be far more believable than Obama, I wish to hell he'd stop gratuitously mentioning Scranton every five seconds. He lived there until he was ten. Let's look at his speech:

• "Sitcheration." (Ok, anyone who makes fun of Bushisms should check out the way Biden said "situation." Hilarious.)
• "That's not change...that's more of the same." (Wow. Great line. Too bad it means nada.)
• McCain voted against the minimum wage X amount of times. (I would, too. It's already too high. It's called the MINIMUM wage for a reason.)
• Obama will cut taxes for 95% of the ple who draw pay checks. (My ass. When's the last time a democrat has lowered taxes? And exactly how will this even be facilitated?)
• Obama will invest in the next generation of teachers. (What about, uh, our CURRENT teachers?)
• The average family will save $2500 in healthcare. (But what will be the cost in the quality of care? And how will the government subsidize that savings?)
• Obama will put more cops on the street. (Riiiiight.)
• Talking is the best way to ensure security. (Say hello to my little friend...)

Obama's appearance with Biden at the end of day 3 just seemed pointlessly gratuitous.

Democratic Convention, Day 4

The All Obama, All the Time Show. Yeehaw. Here we go...

• Ted Kennedy embodies the spirit of service. (I'm still choking over this one. Just not the service of calling the police and reporting that he'd been in a car accident that killed someone else. Snort.)
• Many of the issues plaguing us today are not of the government's making but their failure to respond is a problem. (So...the government should respond to problems outside of their concern. Rah rah for big government.)
• We need to stop offshoring. (By interfering with the free market system? Sure, sounds great...if we were, say, in China.)
• The Republicans claim we have become a nation of whiners. (Well, if the shoe fits...yes, yes, it's true. We, as a nation, completely lack personal responsibility and instead whine and complain about what everyone else should be doing for us.)
• The Republicans expect people to make it on their own. (Yep. It's called taking care of yourself. Period.)
• We need to restore the American Promise. (Um, or the American Dependency on the next handout. Hey, whichever works.)
• We need to create opportunities for everyone who is willing to work. (Again, this is a socialist concept. And the fact is, there are a lot of people not willing to work. They'd rather just get their monthly government check. And before anyone dares to call me an out of touch elitist, I have had repeated personal experience with people like this. And there are many more out there. And I wish they'd all spontaneously implode. I don't work my freaking ass off just so someone else can get something for nothing.)
• Lobbyists wrote the tax code. (Um, this is too absurd to even contemplate.)
• We will cut taxes for 95% of all working families. (Tell me another one.)
• In ten years, we can end our dependency on foreign oil. (So...Obama wants us to be big players in the international community, but not in trade with the Middle East. Yet another example of the democratic hypocrisy that makes me sick.)
• Obama will help the automobile companies retool and spend $150B on renewable energy. (And the money for this will come from...where?)
• Obama will hire an army of new teachers with higher salaries to fix education. (What about our existing teachers? Who in most locales get damn good salaries already? I'd love a job where I have several months off every summer but still make twelve months worth of paychecks.)
• For people with healthcare coverage, Obama will reduce premiums. For people without healthcare coverage, they will be guaranteed the same levels of coverage as the members of Congress. (No, thank you. I don't want what Congress has, and I don't want the government involved in any way, shape, or form in my healthcare.)
• Obama will stop insurance companies from discriminating against the sick. (Wow.)
• Obama will ensure more paid sick days and better family leave. (Again...asking employers to pay people more money to do less work. Ye Gods.)
• How will Obama pay for all of these grand plans? By closing corporate loop holes and tax haves. By going line by line through the budget and eliminating non-functioning programs. (Good. Have fun. I'd guarantee that 95% of those non-functioning programs are Democrat sponsored.)
• It cracks me up to hear a Democrat lecturing on personal responsibility...
• It also cracks me up to hear a Democrat talking about rebuilding military strength.

All in all, this speech had a lot of rhetoric and no substance.

On to the land of rationality and the Republican Convention!

Mindnumbing Disney

We spent yesterday afternoon hanging out with Chris' aunt and cousins. One of his cousins has a baby boy who is about to turn 1. During the afternoon, the Disney Channel was on the boob tube, with some kind of animated Mickey show on. The kiddo was entranced. No matter where he crawled or who was holding him or if he was in his play pen, he had to have his head turned towards the TV, which was playing episodes of the show back to back to back to back to back to back to back...

I came home feeling a bit mindnumbed. Chris' aunt, the child's grandmother, posited that perhaps Disney used subliminal messages to keep the attention of the kiddos. I think she's on to something, there.

What kinds of shows did you all watch when you were little? Did you even watch a lot of TV? I didn't. First of all, even though I was raised in the 80s and cable existed, it didn't exist in my rural hometown. We had a TV that had a VHF and a UHF dial. The only time anything kid-like or animated came on network TV was Saturday morning cartoons. PBS did have some shows on in the afternoons that my mother put on for me occasionally, though. So if I was exposed to TV when I was a really little kid, it wasn't anything like Mickey's Crackhouse on the Disney channel. (I could, however, give you the roster of characters and the complete story lines from about 4 different soap operas by the age of five. Which may explain why I now refuse to watch soaps and in fact rarely watch TV in general.)

I'm a little scared with Catherine coming and finding ways to keep her little mind occupied. Granted, throughout the day, it'll be her Dad who determines what's going on - I'll be at work. But at night, when I'm home and Dad is at work, I'm a little scared at the prospect of going stark raving crazy after watching 70 episodes of an animated show in a row, even if it gives her some kind of valuable knowledge or keeps her quiet or captures her attention.

What are all ya'lls thoughts? What shows do your kiddos like? How do you avoid going nuts when watching shows that just make you want to scream but your children adore?

Sneakers are Shoes

Good Tuesday morning to everyone, and welcome to the 6th edition of Tuesday Travel Tips with Tiffany! To read previous editions, you can find them here.

Like last week, I'm going with the overly obvious for a title this week. Unfortunately...the overly obvious is somehow not obvious to some of our fellow travelers!

Consider a situation I recently encountered at the airport:

While in a long line of passengers waiting to clear security on a busy Tuesday morning, I noticed that the woman in front of me was not even making an attempt to take off her shoes as she prepared her belongings to go through the X-ray. Let me tell you...they really completed her running suit.

In any case, I've learned my lesson about offering advice to fellow passengers while in line, so I decided to simply watch the show. Ms. Sneakers shoved her bin through the machine and queued up to pass through the human part of the scanner. The TSA agent on the other side gave her the once-over before motioning her forward. When one is wearing bright pink sneakers, they don't typically escape notice.

"Ma'am," he called. "You'll need to remove your shoes and send them through the security device before you can come through."

"These aren't shoes," she snappily retorted. "They're SNEAKERS. They have RUBBER soles. I'm not taking them off."

"Ma'am," he began again, with a weary note in his voice. "You wear them on your FEET. Therefore, they're SHOES. Please remove them."

D'oh. That's really all I have to say. Folks, this isn't the Bill Clinton show - we're not defining what "is" is, here. If you cannot comprehend what the category of shoes encompasses, I'm not sure you should be getting weekend passes from the home to travel!

During any of your upcoming travels, I'd highly advise you to have basic wardrobe concepts straight in your head before entering the security line. Then again, this woman did provide much hilarity to the rest of us!

Until next time...

Safe Travels!

Manic Monday # 21

How in the HECK did it get to be September already?

Even though it's a holiday today here in the US of A, it's still a Manic Monday!

If you were to name the one thing you have the most compassion for, what would it be?
Children who fall through the cracks and do not have adequate parenting or even necessities and are forced to survive through miserable situations.

It's been said that, "The best things in life are free." Do you think this is true?
My checkbook begs to differ. It would like to know what this "free" is and where one finds it! :-)

What is the most valuable thing you own?
My home. Although, with 28 years to go on a mortgage, I believe it owns me.

Happy Labor Day Manic Monday, ya'll! Leave me a comment and I'll come visit you back - too lazy to get up a linky right now!

School Year Start

Man, Catherine isn't even here yet and I'm feeling rushed by the new school year. What will it be like in a few years when she's in school??

You see, I judge speech and debate tournaments for a handful of local high schools. Yeah, mumble-mumble years past high school myself, and I'm still a debate nerd!

I had a tournament this weekend and it threw off the nice little rhythm and routine I thought I had built for myself to balance my job and my writing and oh yeah - life! I got home way later both Friday and especially Saturday nights and have felt like I'm rushing to get everything else done around it!

Come Monday, Labor Day, a day when I was trying to avoid having any work to do in favor of an all-day relaxation fest...and I have to bang out some writing for a client because I didn't get it done last night; because last night I had friends over and computer issues besides and was working on something that should have been done earlier in the day; because earlier yesterday I was working on something that should have been done Saturday night; because I got home like 4 hours later Saturday night because I was guilt-tripped into judging out rounds; and on goes the cycle.

It's a Manic Monday for sure - and I know there'll be many more to come!

Happy Labor Day, ya'll!