what happened today and what didn't?
my forehead's sweating like crazy which probably means i caught a cold from ella. ella calls me up groaning to say she can't come to the lunchean i'm throwing tomorrow. she's never sick but she sounds like hell. her voice was so tortured you'd think albie gonzales had been in her throat.
so like the good friend my mother taught me to be, i whipped a batch of chicken soup and headed right over.
she looked as pasty and color drained as the photo i'm pretty sure i saw online today of michael powell. chairman mao, er powell, is stepping on down from the fcc. looking like a sweaty, teary scott peterson, his face was splashed all over the net today.
poor little titty baby. wonder which corporation will hire him as a lobbyist?
you know he's not going to do anything noble. he's no jimmy carter. there's no habitat for humanity in his future.
while ella was coughing up phlegm and running through a thing of tissues, i asked, 'ella, what happened? you never get sick.'
this gal at work, donna bush -- of course it would be a bush, that family will infect us all sooner or later -- called in thursday: 'i'm sick. i'm coughing. i'll try to come in.' the boss is saying, 'no, ella. stay home. we don't need for every 1 to get sick.'
but living up to her surname, she shows up at noon determined that if she's going down, she'll take every 1 else with her. i told you her surname was fitting -- that family will surely sink us all unless we remain vigilante.
so ella, who was neither elderly or high risk, wasn't able to get a flu shot. remember that 'crisis'?
remember how basically no 1 could get flu shots last october?
is any 1 else outraged that so many of us were denied those shots and now it turns out that there's actually a surplus because of poor planning and poor crisis management on the part of the administration?
well little miss donna bush hung around her cubicle for an hour, coughing spreading germs, before she decides she will take 1 of the over 30 sick days she has saved up.
ella called off friday and the boss said, 'you too?' seems half the office was infected.
ella looked so bad. honestly though, she may have had more color in her face than michael powell. but she still looked bad.
i cleaned up her apartment a little, made sure she downed some chicken soup and listened as she muttered about that 'damn bush' -- a conversation that's going on all across the country in different forms, i'm sure.
after all that what's a gal to do but come home, kick off her shoes and put on otis blue. did any 1 ever do 'i've been loving you too long' better than otis redding did on otis blue?
and isn't that song close to a national anthem at this point?
between the policy of torture and the patriot act alone (but there's so much more) aren't we all looking at our country with a little sadness but thinking 'i've been loving you too long, i don't want to stop now?'
it's our country. it's still our country. the bush family will make us all sick, but we can weather this storm and we can reclaim our country.
our country cares about humanity. bush implemented torture, america didn't. if america had, albie gonzales wouldn't have kept saying 'i don't recall' over and over at his non-hearing. condi rice wouldn't have had to play dumb at her confirmation -- okay, maybe she wasn't playing. but these very unamerican things they do, they get away with them because we have a lazy press more interested in sucking up to power than in protecting the country. when something does leak out, we need to show our moral outrage. i said moral outrage because those of us who voted against the bully boy showed true values. we said no to unjust wars, we said no to torture, we said no to pulling the safety net out from under our elderly and handicapped. (what, you think social security only serves the elderly?)
we are the snow ball rolling down the hill and i believe we will grow larger as we continue to roll, picking up others who maybe were too scared to speak out or maybe too unaware of what is going on. we may not have pulled the rug out from under the bully boy in november, but we are a movement now.
that's right, a movement. we stand for justice and equality. and no matter how dark it might seem right now, we are a part of something larger and we will find others joining us. in 40 years, our grandkids won't ask, 'why weren't you able to defeat the bully boy in 2004?' they'll say, 'grandma/grandpa, tell me about how when the country seemed to embrace evil and criminal behavior, you were able to turn it back?'
we're making history. when we get discouraged, we'd do well to remember that women weren't given the right to vote. it was a long struggle. african-americans weren't given rights, it was a long struggle. gays and lesbians, the environment, any issue you want to pick, to help the country move towards progression, we all had to struggle and keep pushing.
we're part of a movement now. and we will take back our country. and like otis is singing right now 'what a wonderful world this could be.'
