From the right-wing side of the aisle comes this absolutely fabulous quote (wonder how long his staff worked on this gem?). It’s off-the-charts hyperbole, infinitely untrue, but a classic, nonetheless. Is this really what you Republicans are reduced to?

“You’ll be getting your pre-natal care from TurboTax!!”

Awesome.

I was the first registered Republican in my family. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Ronald Reagan, the second for George H.W. Bush. I listened to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, thought I was a Dittohead, and was one of the few who watched and liked his television show. I actually cried when George Sr. and Barbara left the White House to Bill and Hilary in January 1993.

And then the Republicans lurched to the fringe, became immoderate, aggressive, in-your-face, and triumphal, became harnessed to extremist religious philosophy. They attacked anytime President Clinton breathed. Limbaugh yelled (in 1992) that he was happy to be in the opposition; it’s more fun, you can snipe and bitch and moan and not have to actually do anything. The Republicans launched their Contract on America (er, I mean for).

And then, in 1994, came Harry and Louise. Corporate money flooded in, and the Republicans steamrollered and destroyed health care reform, dooming hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to premature death over the next 16 years. The militias and ti-foilists, precursors to the Tea-baggers, came out. And all that culminated in terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s murder of 168 people in my own backyard in the service of a right-wing political philosophy.

I mourned the loss of health care, as well as the Murrah Building, and ranted and railed against my party. In 1996, I registered as a Democrat, voted for Bill Clinton and then watched the Republicans continue to make war, year after year, against the middle class, and especially against gay and lesbian Americans like me.

I’ve been trying to remember exactly what the turning point for me was. And I’m almost 100% certain it was health care reform. When the Republicans attacked and destroyed the possibility of a saner, more humane health care payment system, they also attacked and destroyed me. I returned to the Democratic fold where my family had originally been for the better part of a century.

I didn’t turn on the Republicans, as the saying goes, they turned on me.

Their behavior right now, as we wait for the final House vote, is beyond disgusting. No lie too big or too outrageous to read into the Congressional record or give to the cameras at CNN.

But to me, it doesn’t matter what happens in November; I realize the Democrats will probably pay a price. And I don’t care. It takes courage to do the right thing, they’ve finally grown a bit of a pair, it’s the right start. And if they lose control, fine. The resulting nastiness will, once again, prove to Americans who too easily forget history, that the right does not have our best interests at heart, only those of corporate boards and religious charlatans.

Will watch the final vote and the president’s statement following. And be finally relieved that 100 years of obstruction of a basic fundamental human right has finally ended.

From the right-wing side of the aisle comes this absolutely fabulous quote (wonder how long his staff worked on this gem?). It’s off-the-charts hyperbole, infinitely untrue, but a classic, nonetheless. Is this really what you Republicans are reduced to?

“You’ll be getting your pre-natal care from TurboTax!!”

Awesome.

… to keep up a blog like this one, which has, at various times in the past, been chock-a-block with details and observations from our lives. Living two years back in California, with the attendant extreme stresses, drained the blogging impulse from both of us. Plus, there was the whole medical drama on my part.

It would be great to have all kinds of observations about Nashville here, just as we did in Ann Arbor, but … well, we’re older and tired-er than we were in Ann Arbor. But still, we’ll try to do better.

Two things: Voters of Maine, except the quarter million who voted to stand up for marriage equality last Tuesday, … well, they suck. Marriage equality is coming to the United States and you will be embarrassed by this travesty of justice, this orgy of discrimination and hate, when the day arrives. I’m holding fast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” As the LA Times reported:

“It is “one of King’s most riveting lines, spoken in Montgomery, Alabama after the long and dangerous march from Selma in March, 1965. King said he knew people were asking how long it would take to achieve justice. “How long?” he asked, over and over, making listeners desperate for an answer — and then he supplied the answer. “How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It was a refrain King came to use often, sometimes referring to the “arc of history,” sometimes to the “arc of the moral universe.”“

The arc is bending toward marriage equality. It will come, probably before my I leave the planet. And that, I will hold to fastly.

Secondly, I finally summoned the will and physical ability to return to the classroom and do a half-day substitute teaching, first time in six months. I have another assignment lined up for next Tuesday. It was exhausting and it was my limit (I’m not ready for full days yet), but it was also fun and reminded me why I like teaching kids. I’ll get more and more into the daily grind until the end of school in May, then have some rest time and will start a second master’s degree program, to become certified in the early childhood autism special education and applied behavior therapy. That program at Vanderbilt starts in August, and I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, the beagles are fat and happy and having fun in the leaves. I found a largish tick on Fergus yesterday, that had to be removed before going to work; it was probably a souvenir of our tramps through the woods on the battlefield of Chickamauga last weekend. Otherwise, the boys are doing great.

And Nashville … an awesome place to live. We’re coming up on the first anniversary of the flight out of California to safety and haven of Tennessee. And don’t regret for a minute the decision. Plus, our landladies and neighbor and neighborhood and schools are far superior to what we left behind in Brentwood.

So, it’s all good.

They led us on a merry chase, but cold, dark, and snowy meant that they were soon back and wanting inside to their warm, priviliged lives.

After a dispute of a couple weeks, I’m finally rid of Facebook and all of its horrible, horrible design, navigation, usability, corporate snobbery, etc. It feels so good!

• In Minneapolis, the New York Times turns up «a fascinating, heartbreaking, and ultimately, important story» of povery, terrorism, Somalia, teenagers, Facebook, and oddly enough, the building used to depict Mary Richard’s later apartment on the Mary Tyler Moore Show back in the 1970s, all of which may add up to the “most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11,” 2001.

• On PBS, «Bill Moyers has a bull session with the former corporate communications director of Cigna Health Care, Wendell Potter», who describes his come-to-Jesus moment in Wise County, Virginia, where he was faced with the truth about his industry and what it has to American health care. A full video of the session, plus word-for-word transcript, is available and should be watched by every American, especially Barack Obama.

i• In Washington state, «brother and sister recant» 20-year-old claims of sexual abuse that sent their father to prison; brother tells judge “he made the allegation after months of insistent questioning by now-retired Clark County sheriff’s detective Sharon Krause just so she would leave him alone.” Krause allegedly gave the sister ice cream; that cone put daddy in prison for 20 years and slapped a sex offender label on him that is proving hard to scrape off.

• In Anchorage, the Crazy Train continues puffing up the tracks as soon-to-be-former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin «announces she will campaign for anyone who will have her» (including conservative Democrats) and that even her own son is not a Republican (he’s “unaffiliated” like his daddy, meaning, one assumes, a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which, among other things, “advocates an in-state referendum which includes the option of Alaska becoming an independent nation,” according to its website).

• In Washington, D.C., it was revealed that «Dick Cheney ordered the concealment from Congress of a CIA counterterrorism program» and that Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating opening a criminal probe of possible CIA torture. President Obama is sticking to his “let’s move forward stance” and appears worried that healthcare reform will be “derailed by partisan bickering over torture.”

• In Los Angeles, «LaToya Jackson believes she knows» who the real killers are.

• Yale University Press produces a book called Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which reveals that «Ernest Hemingway was “for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America”». The book is co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, and is “based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.” The book apparently has no definitive answer to the main question posed in the article: “Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?”

Another fabulous summer week in America!

I’m reading, and enjoying, a new book:«Dog On It». I usually confine my mystery reading to James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books, but I made an exception for this one, because the twist is that it’s told from the private eye’s dog’s perspective. Chet is a police dog helping his buddy find a missing girl. It appears to be the start of a series.

I know that bad things happen to the hero in detective stories; he gets mussed up and beaten up and cut up and all, but then he solves the case, gets the girl, and everything’s cool. But when the hero is the dog, it’s a little tough to read about him getting … well, mussed up and beaten up and cut up and all. We’re kinda weird, we humans; we don’t really wince when this stuff happens to other human characters, but if they’re animals and we get all soft and squeamish and junk.

In the first half of this book alone, Chet the hero gets dog-napped, sliced with a knife, attacked by a cougar, caged up by evil Russian mobsters, choke-chained, shot at, lost in a mine and stuck all over with cactus needles. And he comes through all of it just dandy. Sorry if that’s a spoiler for those of you intending to read the book.

But. There’s a part where he escapes the dognappers and ends up in a three-day kill shelter and is strapped onto the gurney to be put down. (Again, sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it should also be obvious that Chet will survive … there wouldn’t be any more story if he was killed off, right?) He’s rescued literally at the last second (okay, I’ll leave that part a surprise).

Woooosh. That’s a relief. But the point I’m getting to, and I do have one, is that I read this part of the book tonight, almost exactly two years to the moment after we lost our beloved Bayley Murphey Beagle, who was put down after being poisoned by tainted Chinese pet food.

Frank and I both had shed some tears this evening over this sad anniversary. So reading the scene in the Chet book was quite jarring. And the most disturbing part is probably that Chet (fictional though he is) gets to get up and walk away and be reunited with his guy. Bayley did not. And that stinks.

Now, Bayley was very, very sick. Suffering a bit and in need of the relief, kidney functions gone. He was 12-and-a-half, getting way up there for a beagle. So, it had to be. But I still beat myself up about it even two years later. What if I hadn’t switched his food to the Petsmart house brand when we moved to California? What if I had recognized he was sick sooner than I did? What if I had given him a few more days to see if things turned around?

All pointless, but these are the thoughts you have.

I realize I’m kind of a silly ol’ fool here. Still whining about a dog who has been dead for two years. But Bayley was special, and a special part of our lives. I really don’t want to be the kind of person who is unaffected and unmoved by anything, even a dog and his impact on your life.

I still miss Bayley. I always will. I love him and am grateful for all the great love and laughter and joy and warmth that he gave us. Everyone should have companions like Bayley, human, dog, or otherwise. We were blessed.

Rest in peace, sweetheart.

P.S. On a happier note, Chet the Dog has his own «blog». Check it out!