I Came Back And Everything Was Still the Same

I have ignored this blog for a while in order to finish up a book (which will be published next week). When I finally lifted my head from the seventh in the Rafe series of novels, I discovered a lot had happened in the world when I wasn't paying attention.

- For one thing, here we go again with Syria. It seems that no matter how poor we are supposed to be, no matter how much their mantra is "cut, cut, cut", even if that means children go hungry and the unemployed lose benefits and cancer patients go without treatment and students miss school, the Republicans are always happy to find the dollars for another war.

- Meanwhile, they are beside themselves because Obama is going to Africa. No one ever minded when any other president took foreign trips or went on vacation or had White House events but now that it is Obama, the R's believe all that should stop immediately. Barack should keep his ass home and Michelle should shop at the Good Will store and do all her own cooking and housework. I mean, isn't that what black women were born to do?

- Meanwhile, Virginia cancelled its primaries where rational people might actually help choose their candidates and instead, went with a caucus of the farthest of the far right. Not surprisingly, they came up with a slate of total losers. For Governor, Ken Cuccinelli, the guy who wanted to re-institute the sodomy laws in Virginia (and who may be in trouble for taking bribes, along with the current governor).

For Lt. Governor, E. W. Jackson, who called homosexuals "sick and perverted" and stated that when you "empty your mind" as in the practice of Yoga, Satan comes in to fill the void.

For Attorney General, State Senator Mark Obershain who once proposed a law that all Virginia women who suffered a miscarriage had to report it to the police within 24 hours.

And, last but not least, The Right Reverend Doctor Joe Ellison, Jr. for Director of African American Outreach, no less. Yep, the very same Reverend Joe who agreed with Pat Robertson that voodoo was responsible for the earthquake in Haiti.

In Wisconsin, the legislature practically had a riot when the Republicans passed their new "no abortions after 20 weeks" bill with the leader banging his gavel like a furious tin-pot dictator.

And in Iowa, the Republicans gave their (Republican, of course) governor the responsibility to personally have to approve each and every Medicaid-funded abortion request. Well, hell, what else do governors have to do, right?

Do you remember the agonizing second-guessing the Republicans endured after their crushing losses in 2012? Do you remember how they decided they must change their tone in order to appeal to more mainstream and minority Americans? Well, this is what they came up with in their very first attempt at statewide elections since 2012. It doesn't seem to bode well for the future, does it?

- All of Darrell Issa's hysterical scandals seem to be coming apart. He hasn't produced any evidence that anyone did anything deliberately wrong during Benghazi. In fact, the released e-mails seem to prove the Obama administration was not involved in "shaping" the talking points.

Ditto, the IRS fiasco, about which Issa has refused to release the relevant transcripts which leads me to assume that they also exonerate the White House because you can damn well bet they'd be splashed all over t.v., internet and the front pages newspapers if there was material that indicted President Obama.

The AP phone records. In light of the number of leaks coming from the government, I think it is pretty understandable that the White House wants to hit this one hard. There is something terribly wrong when Senator John McCain received information from a source and went public with the administration's new strategy on Syria before they released it themselves! Both McCain and his source should be ashamed. The Republicans seem to have lost any sense of patriotism and belief that Americans stand together on foreign policy, something that used to be one of their driving forces.

- But never fear, with all that bad news, we still have Rick Perry, thank God. He signed a law in Texas, surrounded by Santas, making it legal to say Merry Christmas in Texas! Whew, what a relief that was! Oh and he also vetoed a pay equity bill, passed by both houses of the legislature.

And we still have Marco Rubio, who said he'd kill his own immigration bill if the same rights it extended to straight immigrants were also extended to gays. And we still have Ted Cruz. A lot of the Republicans worship at the altar of Ayn Rand but Cruz models himself after his idol, Joseph McCarthy. I could go on....

So, now that I've caught up after being gone from the political world for a while, I see that nothing much has really changed after all. 



 

Things I Don't Care About

- I don't care about Syria. I don't care if they blast each other to kingdom come. I'm sorry for the innocent bystanders, mainly the children, but if the people there are determined to annihilate one another, I don't think there is a damn thing we can do about it. We talk about how we must stop the brutal genocide that is happening there. It's our moral duty - but of course, our moral duty has more to do with oil and other geopolitical considerations than it does with people. Else why have we stood without lifting a finger as African country after African country wiped out whole populations of their people? Where was our moral duty then?

We have no clue who the various factions of rebels in Syria are, despite John McCain's faith in "his guy". But his guy appears to be no more likely to emerge as the ultimate winner than any one of several other rebel groups, some of whom are allied with Al Qaida, others with Hezbollah.

To tell you the truth, I don't care about the rest of the Middle East either except Israel. It would be different if I thought we could have a serious impact but I don't think we can. They don't like us and they'll never like us. We could help "Faction A" prevail in Syria and as soon as they'd consolidated their power, they'd start hating us again. Like Afghanistan. We provided weapons in their war with Russia. Afterwards, they protected Osama bin Laden, and then turned those same weapons on us.

If they don't like us, well, I don't much like them either. We sacrificed our children and our economy for Iraq. Did we create a democratic society there? Not so's you'd notice.

To make it even worse, we're being overtaken once again by a cold war mentality. We threaten to impose a no-fly zone; Russia threatens to send anti-aircraft missiles. War in Syria would be two wars at once - involvement in a civil war and a proxy war with another super-power. Isn't that how Vietnam began?

So, I say we get the hell out of the Middle East. Spend the money we're spending on war now on quickly developing alternative sources of energy so we don't need their oil. Let them duke it out on their own. Screw'em.

 - I don't care if the IRS targeted Tea Party groups and made life inconvenient for them -though you notice they all got their tax exempt status in the end. This is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats talk a good game but they always pull their punches. They just don't have the stomach for going for the throat like Republicans. I don't care because I don't even think there should be such a designation as a 501(c)4. They are a farce. Does anyone seriously believe Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS was designed to be an "educational" organization and not a blatantly political one? Ditto, many others, on the Democratic side as well. 

- I don't care if I never hear another word about Jodi Arias!

- I don't care what you think your Bible says about gay sex and/or marriage. Your Bible is only applicable to you, it doesn't get to dictate to the entire country.

- I don't care that the sequester caused delays for important people who fly. They should have to suffer at least a little for the hardships they imposed on other people. If we were going to re-visit the sequester consequences, it should have been in Head Start, food stamps, cancer research and treatment and the like, not whether Senators had to spend an extra hour in an airport.

- I don't care how much reverence anti-choicers say they feel for fetuses. Until they follow that up with an equal amount of reverence for the children who are already born, I don't believe them.





 

Half-ful or Half-Empty?

Here's what I see as the difference between the two parties today. Democrats see America's glass as half-full, maybe even a little more than half-full. Meanwhile, Republicans don't just see the glass as half-empty, they see it is containing, at most, a few murky drops at the very bottom. Democrats are optimists. They believe our problems are somewhat easily solvable if only we would compromise and get to work. Republicans are pessimists. Their world consists almost exclusively of  conspiracy and cover up, of scandal and deliberate deceit and disloyalty. They seem to have been overtaken by a roaring case of clinical depression.

It isn't enough that they disagree with Barack Obama on various issues (even some on which they used to agree before he agreed with them), he has to the worst president ever!  He has to be Hitler! He has to be a secret Muslim! He has to be a constitution-shredder, and a gun-grabber! And besides that, Michelle is ugly! When the Obamas do the same things other First Families have done - play golf, go on vacation, wear designer dresses, have state dinners at the White House, these all become awful things. If the president travels to show his sympathy and support for hurricane or tornado victims, he is excoriated for showboating. Of course, if he didn't go, he'd be crucified for not caring.

Today's Republicans, or at least, conservatives, believe anyone who disagrees with them is a) stupid or b) deliberately unpatriotic. They recognize no middle-ground. They live in an either/or state of constant political warfare. They do not give the other side so much as credit for good intentions. They are all about "my way or the highway". No, not one single piece of gun control legislation, even the most innocuous, such as background checks. NO gun control regulations whatsoever! NO abortions under any circumstances! NO tax increases for any reason!

You'd think the party of no would want to say yes to something now and then, just for the sake of  variety, but it doesn't seem as if they ever do. NO on gay marriage, NO on immigration reform, NO on a jobs bill, NO on Equal Pay, NO on closing Guantanamo..... Their needle is stuck on a permanent NO.

Read their Facebook posts and you'll see that they live in a world that is uniformly brutal and ugly and oh-so-negative. They are surrounded on every side by moronic kool-aid drinkers and traitors who are out to snatch their stuff, most especially their guns. They recognize no positive signs that the U.S. is on the economic mend. If unemployment is down, it's because the Bureau of Labor is lying. If polls show Americans have more confidence, the polls are skewed. If the stock market is up, it's because of exactly the opposite reason you probably think - the big companies are all dumping their stock in anticipation of the coming depression, revolution, whatever. On the Bizarro conservative planet, the president and secretary of state wanted those people to die in Benghazi because, don't you know, they are secretly turning the country over to the Muslim Brotherhood. And Michelle visited the Saudi who really did the Boston bombings in the hospital, then helped him get out of the country. And, you know, of course, that Sandy Hook didn't really happen, it was all a fake out to act as a catalyst to stimulate calls for gun control.

What is their ultimate goal? Well, it appears to be impeachment, but failing that, perhaps they'll have to start a New Revolution. Because they are the only ones who love their country, the only ones who see the truth - that America is standing on the brink if we don't "take our country back" now.

How unutterably miserable they seem to be.

And I say, "cheers, Americans" - I'll toast you with my glass half-ful.

What Will America Look Like After The Revolution?

I have recently come to the conclusion that the conservative side of America's body politic has been taken over by mass psychosis. Debating issues with them is like debating with the residents of a mental ward. It used to be we discussed things like whether Mitt Romney should pay more taxes or whether gays should be allowed to marry or the best way to resolve the immigration issue. Both sides tried to marshal their facts and conclusions to present to the other. No one's mind was probably changed but it was interesting and informative to see alternate views. All of us tried to be relatively courteous and respectful. That was before conservatives moved farther and farther in the direction of radical extremism.

I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened but somewhere along the line, I began to notice that my right-leaning debating partners no longer accused me of being simply wrong-headed in my thinking, now I was a retard or a moron or an idiot. Or even worse, I was a traitor who was in league with that Nazi (or that socialist or that Muslim-sympathizer or that Constitution-shredder or that ....) Barack Obama in wanting to destroy the country. Treason on the part of anyone who disagrees with them is now one of their favorite adjectives.

It didn't matter that I own guns, that I have guns in my house, that I have a gun permit, that I believe in the Second Amendment - the slightest deviance from the N.R.A. line means that you're a gun-grabber who believes in a repressive government. If you do not support guns in schools, in church, at athletic events, if you do not support more guns for everybody, regardless of criminal history, then you're on the side of the disloyalists. There is no middle ground. The newly-elected president of the N.R.A said that ALL Americans should have military style weapons and be taught to fight tyranny. But tyranny is in the eye of the beholder. ALL Americans include me too and I guarantee you that if they forced me to shoot, I'd aim for Ted Nugent.

If you do not believe that Benghazi is a worse scandal than Watergate and Iran-Contra and lying about weapons of mass destruction to start a war all rolled into one, then it is obvious that you want to to turn the country into the 21st century version of the Third Reich. If you do not believe Barack Obama is shredding the Constitution and threatening the very fabric of our society, then you have blinders on.

If you do not believe that Michelle Obama is too ugly (and black?) to be our First Lady or that 11 million immigrants should be deported or that gays should have the grace to go back in the closet where they belong like the Bible tells them to, then you're not a "real" American.

And what I find the strangest about all this is that these are not voices coming from ultra-right-wing websites. Some of them are personal friends. They are middle-aged women who live in middle-class houses in small town America. They work regular jobs. Some of them work for the government! They are mothers and grandmothers. None of them were ever political activists.

And yet, here they are, seemingly ready, eager even, to join the New Revolution. They truly believe America has to be saved from people like me. The fact that people like me constitute a majority of the population of the country sways them not at all because we are kool-aid drinking fools if we don't know about Obama's death squads and the black helicopters and the agenda of the "gun-grabbers" in anticipation of overpowering the population and turning us over to the Muslim Brotherhood (or whoever).

I've asked them to articulate the future they foresee if it all comes down the way they espouse. Ironically, conservatives are especially prone to posts revering soldier and cops. I've asked them if they realize that it would be those same soldiers and cops they would be firing upon if we engage in another civil war and not some shadowy Muslim army. Yes, the military and police contain some of the same political divisions as the rest of us. Some would undoubtedly join the rebel forces, but my guess is that most of them would remain loyal to the current government. So, it might very well be brother against brother (and sister) as it was during the last War of Northern Aggression, as the new president of the NRA calls it.That one lasted 5 years and cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Do my friends anticipate the same for their new war?

Honestly, none of them seem to have thought very far ahead to what "taking America back" means in real life rather than Facebook posts. If they won, would we still be a democracy or have those of us who disagree with them proven our unworthiness to participate in the political system? Would they put liberals on reservations or in concentration camps? I know that sounds ridiculous but how do they see the country in their New American Order? None of them ever tell me.

One of my friends asked me, "aren't you afraid of what Obama wants to do to the country?" My answer: "no, I'm afraid of what you want to do."

Disasters - Deliberate and Negligent

Ever since 911, Americans have been terrified of terrorism. Well, that's understandable. It was one of the most tragic disasters that ever befell our country. It was perpetrated deliberately by people who hated us and wanted to inflict brutal wounds on our nation. Because of 911, we went to war in two countries, one of them totally blameless in the 911 attack. We compromised our national principles by engaging in torture and extraordinary rendition, locking people up in Guantanamo for years without benefit of counsel or proof of guilt. We reveled in humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib by smearing them with feces and leading them on their hands and knees with dog collars and leashes, behavior that was even more humiliating for us, a supposedly civilized nation, than them. We initiated a huge new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, that costs a fortune to operate and seems to have little oversight in what it allowed to do. Even today, our shadowy drone program is at least an indirect result of 911.

There have been several attempts at terrorist attacks since September 11 but until the Boston bombers, few successes resulting in deaths. When something like Boston happens, the media goes into over-drive, spending 24/7 on this one event, repeating the same news, re-playing the same videos, often getting the information wrong in their rush to be first, sometimes not even attempting to get their facts straight before making accusations as in the shameful case of the New York Post and several conservative bloggers.

And while we get caught up in the hysteria of terrorism, corporate America goes on its merry way, subjecting our country and our citizens to even more savage injury, albeit, not deliberate, unless you call extreme disregard for safety of the people and the land, deliberate.

The most recent case of corporate malfeasance is the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. No one is suggesting that foul play was involved. No perpetrator set out to hurt people, so far as we now know. Nevertheless, 14 people died, most of them firefighters. Over 200 were injured, some severely. Others are still listed as missing. Fifty homes were destroyed as was an apartment complex. A nursing home was damaged as well as a school only 1/5 of a mile from the plant.

We know this plant did not report to the Department of Homeland Security the massive amount of ammonium nitrate it had stored there....or if DHS would have done anything about it if they had known. We know that although there were seven governmental agencies supposedly responsible for overseeing the plant, it underwent its last full inspection 25 years ago and its last partial inspection in 2006. We know that it was cited for having no risk management plan at that time. We know that the owners declared it a "no risk" facility. We know OSHA last visited the West Fertilizer plant in 1985! 

All this, despite it being common knowledge that the ingredients for making fertilizer can be extremely volatile and dangerous if not handled properly. There are a lot of other plants just like the one in West, Texas, presumably receiving the same lax inspections.

A plant explosion isn't as sexy as terrorism so the media provided only minimal coverage of the Texas disaster although almost 5 times as many people died and much more property was destroyed.

Shortly before that, we had the rupture of a 60-year-old oil pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas, which released thousands of barrels of tar sands oil into an upscale residential neighborhood. The pipeline, owned by Exxon-Mobile, carries oil from Illinois to Texas. Its rupture forced the evacuation of two dozen families. Most of the residents had no clue that an oil pipeline ran under their neighborhood.

In typical Exxon fashion, the company rushed in with their own people, reassuring and cleaning and cutting checks for relocation expenses in an effort to placate the victims of the spill. They even sent their own doctors to assure parents of sick children not to worry, heavens no, there was absolutely no cause for alarm. I don't know about you but I'd want a second opinion if it was my kid.

In 2010, a pipeline, owned by Enbridge, Inc., that carried tar sands crude from Canada ruptured and spewed oil in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, despoiling 40 miles of previously pristine water. That's been almost 3 years ago now. A million gallons of oil have been recovered at a cost of $1 billion but the EPA says there is still more.

Because, you see, bitumen, which is its actual name, is the dirtiest and stickiest oil of all. It begins as a thick substance the consistency of peanut butter, steamed or strip mined from sandy soil. It is then thinned with several chemicals, including benzene, a known human carcinogen. At this point, it is known as dilbit. It is now thin enough to flow through a pipeline.

If that pipeline ruptures, however, dilbit doesn't float like regular crude oil. Instead it sinks, clinging to rocks, plants and animals.

Enbridge, Inc. has a history of corrosion problems with its pipelines. In 2008, it identified 140 defects. These are supposed to be reported and repaired within 180 days. Within 180 days, Enbridge had fixed 26 of its defects. It applied for a year's extension to decide what to do about the others and then another extension after that.

The very defect that finally caused the Kalamazoo River rupture had been detected at least 6 times previously.

The company's vice-president of U.S. operations had assured Congress that they were prepared to leap into action immediately in the event of an emergency. They had fail-safe alarms in place. In fact, when the alarms actually sounded, employees believed there was a bubble in the line that would eventually fix itself and ignored them.

Enbridge's handling of of the Kalamazoo River oil spill was a comedy of errors although perhaps not so humorous to the 150 families that had to be permanently relocated from their homes.

Turns out, the oil companies have never researched and developed methods for quickly and efficiently cleaning up tar sands oil spills. But are you surprised? They haven't researched and developed quick and efficient methods for cleaning up regular crude oil spills either.

Which brings us to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly the worst ecological disaster in our country's history. April 20, 2010 - an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig - 11 employees killed and 17 injured. A mile down the well had blown apart, releasing a seemingly endless fountain of water into the gulf. BP attempted many times to heal the breach and failed, one time they had the bright idea of using golf balls to block the pipe! Yeah, that worked about as you'd expect it to. Eighty-seven days and 210 million gallons later, the well was finally capped, leaving behind despoiled wetlands, dead marine life, oil-soaked birds, filthy beaches and jobless fishermen.

Meanwhile workers in the area had begun experiencing various ailments, much like gulf war soldiers - skin problems, pulmonary problems, respiratory problems, headaches, memory loss.

We will see what the BP trial brings now that our recollections have faded and we've moved on to newer and even more dramatic disasters. Whatever they have to pay I expect it will be a miniscule portion of their profits.

There are other examples. In 1989, hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil from the damaged Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaskan waters.In 2005, an explosion in an oil refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 15 and injured 170, despite numerous safety citations. More recently, Shell Oil received approval to drill in the arctic but after both its rigs ran off course, they abandoned the plan, admitting they hadn't a clue how to do it safely.

Some industries are inherently more dangerous than others. That would include oil rigs and fertilizer plants. We can never stop every tragedy from happening but we can at least try. We'll go to any lengths to catch a terrorist, as we should, but when it comes to corporate destruction our attitude seems to be "ho hum". Meanwhile the companies appear to consider the penalties they pay simply part of the cost of doing business.

Trying to stop terrorism doesn't preclude us from also trying to make employees and the environment safer by forcing companies to exhibit consciences they don't appear to have on their own.

Crucifixion and Love

 Easter Sunday.

I was raised in the Catholic Church but it never took. Even early on, I could not bring myself to believe in a God who thought the way to prove to his people that he loved them was to crucify his son. To me, there was a huge disconnect there. I guess everyone else took the statues and pictures of Jesus on the cross with a crown of thorns on his head for granted, as most Christians do, but I could never see them without a sense of horror. I still feel that way.

I looked through many pictures to decide which one to include in this post. Oddly enough, most pictures of Jesus on the cross don't show any blood or the wounds of his scourging. What? We can handle seeing someone nailed to a cross but we don't want to see the sight of the blood that would have been streaming down his body as a result? In this picture, Christ's arms are in a relatively unstressed position rather than drawn down in agony as they actually would have been. In many of the pictures, Jesus looks relatively serene and pain-free, although I doubt that would have been the case. So, we accept the crucifixion but we whitewash to make it  seem not so torturous as reality would have been?

I call myself an agnostic because I don't know the answers. I lean toward reincarnation simply because it seems like a more just system than the roulette wheel Christians believe in. ("You, Baby Girl, you'll become Malia Obama and you over there, you'll be molested, beaten, hungry, cold before being killed at age 13 in a drive by shooting. Sorry, Kid, luck of the draw." I'm not adamant about reincarnation though. I don't try to convince anyone of its truth. Maybe when we die, everything just goes black. There may even be an afterlife, roughly analogous to heaven. I don't believe in hell though.

There again, the only kind of God I could believe in wouldn't send people to burn unto infinity for the most minor crimes anymore than he would consider nailing his son to a cross to be an example of love.

Republicans, NASCAR fans and Alzheimer's

Republicans and NASCAR fans remind me of my mother, who has Alzheimer's. We drove down to the Florida Keys to visit my son and his wife. I had a great time visiting with the kids. I gorged on grouper and yellowtail and shrimp po-boys and blackened mahi-mahi. I sat on their balcony and reveled in the 80 degree temperatures, the clear turquoise water, the red and yellow and purple flowers, the palms swaying in the breeze. I watching the pelicans diving and the seagulls circling and crying. I saw a baby Iguana and a Frigate bird, like a flying Batman logo in the sky. We went to the Hard Rock Casino and I came out a couple hundred bucks ahead. I shopped for Key Lime stuff (you can get Key Lime-flavored everything in the Keys) and sandals and straw bags. I mostly avoided the negativity of the computer and the television.

Unlike me, Mom was ready to head back to  Indiana the day after we got there. Like a little kid, she kept asking, "are we leaving today? I'm ready to go home."

The thing is though that home is no longer this house where we've lived for the last 22 years. Home is a time and place in the past. A time when she was younger and self-reliant. It was a time when she still drove, when she was renown for her cooking. It's when all her sisters and sisters-in-law were still alive to go out to lunch together before hitting the garage sales. It's a time she now sees through rose-colored glasses. It wasn't really as perfect as she remembers but compared to her life now - when she can no longer be trusted to turn on the stove and can't get dressed without my help and totters to the bathroom hanging on to furniture for balance - perhaps it was.

When we made it back home, the first thing she asked me was, "where am I going to sleep tonight?", as if she hadn't been sleeping in the same bedroom for the last two decades. The second was, "how long are we going to stay here?"

So, she's just as discontented now that she's back home and she was in Florida and that isn't going to get any better because the "home" she dreams of no longer exists.

Upon my return to Indiana, I hopped back on Facebook. I began watching the news again. That's when I noticed that NASCAR fans and Republicans (who are most often one and the same) have a lot in common with Mom. They too are unhappy with the present. They too see the past through rose-colored glasses. NASCAR bends over backward to please its fans, probably more than any other sport. At the current time, that manifests itself in the new race car NASCAR and the auto manufacturers spent years and millions of dollars to develop. It is sexier and the three brands are different from one another unlike the generic Car of Tomorrow. It is lighter and racier. Of course, at the time I returned from Florida, we were only three races in. The new car is a work in progress. The teams and drivers have to learn how to tweak it to get the most out of it. The racing has been great this year but you'd never know it if you listen to the sour grapes coming from the comments on the NASCAR websites.

Because none of that counts for many, many NASCAR fans who already have their minds made up. The racing sucks, the drivers suck, the new car sucks, the tracks suck and most of all, NASCAR itself sucks. Stock car racing, they say, isn't exciting like it used to be. This simply isn't true. You can go back to the archives and see that the winner in those old races finished laps ahead of their competitors compared to today when the cars are often separated by 1000ths of a second. NASCAR fans revere those old-time outlaws like former bootlegger, Junior Johnson, who used every trick in the book to gain a competitive edge but they hate the crew chiefs who do the same thing today, scorning them as "cheaters". Drivers back in the day were rough and tough, whereas today's drivers are wimps. Compare any current driver to Dale Earnhardt to a old-school NASCAR fan and you'd probably get a punch in the mouth.

Like my Mom, NASCAR fans want something that no longer exists and probably never did. It's not NASCAR's changes that make them so dissatisfied, it is their own, and nothing will cure that because time moves on no matter how much we try to stop it.

And then to politics....Republicans are much the same as NASCAR fans. They hate today. They hate our president, and yes, judging from the comments and posts I see on Facebook, race has a lot to do with that. They hate the fact that America is changing and whites are no longer the dominant ethnicity. They hate that women are more independent than they used to be. They hate that the majority of Americans believe gays should have full equality. They hate that they are probably going to have to accept a comprehensive immigration plan...not because they want to but in order to remain a viable party. They hate science and scorn the belief in climate change.

They want to go back although I'm not sure when their ideal era was. The Fifties when most people were white and men worked while women stayed home and had babies a la Leave It To Beaver? When the vast majority of our legislators were rich white men? When gays stayed in the closet, blacks kept a low profile and non-Christians kept their mouths shut?

Hell, judging by the CPAC conference some of them want to time travel to an even earlier age - before Emancipation and women voting and child labor laws.

The party of no and negativity is stuck in some idealized past and they are fighting tooth and nail to hold back the future. They won't be able to do it, of course, anymore than NASCAR fans or my Mom can. Mom's behavior is explained by Alzheimer's. I don't know what the rationale is for Republicans and NASCAR fans.