091109

September 11, a day that will live in infamy.

And yet another day, another wait for a Comcast repairman.

So, who's started their Christmas shopping?

I think I'm going to give up on my seat weaving project without ever starting it. I spent too much money having my grandmother's ladder back chair refinished to screw it up with a bunch of ill placed tack holes and missed tack hammer marks. The kit came with very poor instructions including only a few crappy illustrations that look as if they were drawn by a 5 yr old.

Since I bragged all about Deanna's school accomplishments let me lament over Katie's lack thereof. Unbeknownst to me 5th grade had a state/capital map quiz on 11 Northeastern states on Tues. Katie made a big fat "0". The teacher sent an email out to all the parents, apparently many had not studied so there's a retake today and the grades will be averaged. And if you are keeping up you know that even if she gets 100 the final tally will still be failing. Anyway, we did the whole flashcard and practice test routine all week so I hope 1) she does well and 2) she will make an effort to prepare for all future tests even if she makes me do it with her.

On the plus side, all this geography should really help me on bar trivia night.

I think I may have just inadvertently ended my oldest friendship over an email.

This is what reconnecting with people via online networking will get you. My childhood neighbor was a couple of years younger than me but as she, my sister and I were the only kids in the near vicinity in addition to our parents being friends at the time..we naturally spent a lot of time together. They moved across town before we were out of school, but small town, same school, yada yada. We were never best friends again but did socialize, as much as I socialized with anyone which meant only occasionally.

We would bump into one another over the years, exchange Christmas cards when I had her address. Last year when I went to see my parents we met for breakfast on my way out of town due to connecting online. 1st time I'd seen her in person in a decade or more.

She's an email forwarder. Household tips, amber alerts, virus notices, friendship claptrap, you name it, including political fodder. And, you guessed it, she is a right winger. So what, most everyone I've ever known back home is and I felt no more annoyance at these emails than all the others.

But today....today I responded to one filled with lies and propaganda about the healthcare issue. And I hit "reply all". In fact, I was pretty restrained. But don't take my word for it - this is what I said.

Quote :

More bipartisan Republican scare tactics funded by big money preying on the ignorant. Don't believe everything you read in fwd emails ~ find the truth about the healthcare debate issues. Educate yourselves.
Rose Dawkins ~ Liberal Independent

She responded that what I did was wrong and she can't believe it and she won't email me again.

*shrugs* I guess I finally reached the age where I will say what I want, when I want and to whom I want.

Another plus side, I won't have to get any of those stupid emails anymore.

But I still feel bad about the whole thing.

I can empathize with your situation more than you can know..

You would have said the correct 'partisan' instead of the incorrect 'bipartisan' like I did. *grump* Glad to know I'm not the only one making enemies.

Yeah, this whole being your real self online thing is all fun and games until someone puts their eye out.

But really, isn't it better to really know someone and choose to like or dislike them based on that knowing instead of having superficial meaningless relationships that are no more than polite exchange of niceties.....like "cr".

Whenever I get a request to add some old classmate or acquaintance to my Facebook friends, I have some faint glimmer of hope that maybe their INFO won't list the usual "Christian" and "Conservative" under their "religion" and "politics" fields, but it seems like 90% of the time, that is what turns out to be there. Now, they are all good people, but I disagree with them on many things, obviously, since I cannot honestly list myself as either of those affiliations. Therefore, I have to put up with biting my tongue on all their prayer requests for any and all situations small or large and the constant praising of God's name in even the most benign of "miracles" that happened that day. I know my views would not be exactly welcomed, so I don't see any need to rock the boat. I try to do the same with politics. Especially hard when it seems like EVERYTHING is some lightning rod for controversy now, even seemingly inarguable subjects like having the president tell kids to stay in school or maybe people shouldn't have to sell everything they own to stay living and keep all their organs working). My best friend from high school is now one of the most strident, vocal, PAC running, partisan, Conservative Christian zealots in the country today, but I just hide his feed and everything is cool. He only posts on my page to make smart remarks about photos and things and I do the same to him. We never get into any arguments about the other stuff, as we never discuss it. It would be pointless to and we both recognize that.

Emails, on the other hand are another matter, since they are sent directly to me and though I ignore most, I have more than once corrected what I knew to be outright lies with the facts and links to back them up. I haven't lost any friends over it, but it has resulted in fewer of these types of things, mostly from relatives who don't really know me, which is fine with me. Politics aside, I don't like ANY of those chain mails whether they are unfunny or just maudlin treacle. The more people who take me off the CC list (and don't have the netiquette to put all those addresses on BCC in the first place) the better.

So my friend responded that she was having a bad day and that we were still friends.

I also got an extremely irate response from someone who did not have the good sense to appreciate the wisdom I imparted, lol. He/she (all I saw was initial) made the assumptions that I was without an education while he/she had 'a four year degree!' and also that I 'lived off the government welfare' while he/she worked for a living. Funny what a kneejerk (or maybe just jerk) reaction these 'compassionate conservatives' have to the word "liberal".

That kneejerk response was completely wrong about you. (It was spot on concerning me, but wrong about you!)

I highly doubt that.

Whew! No more angry emails this morning, what a relief. I take comfort in the idea that my President would be proud of me. I also called my state senators and house rep's office to let them know I support the President's agenda of health care reform. Sad that I'm not even sure if the Republican run office will even document my calls. But, I did what I could do. Other than going to a town hall....but I don't think I can face all the hate in person. The emails are bad enough.

Ideally, I could get on board with the President's agenda for health care reform, but I just see more cost for the working man (hey, that's me) in new taxes to pay for administration of the plan, and forced buying into the plan - with the government more or less deciding how much you can afford and then making you pay it. And in the end, I don't believe I will get more or better health care than I currently have -- which is pay as you go, so don't go.

I think of myself as a soft-edged conservative who has no alliance to any political party since they are all corrupt. I really just try to stay out of it because it doesn't make a difference what I think anyway.

And I love you all, even if I don't agree with your politics.

Well, there are legitimate arguments against some of the proposed issues on healthcare. Cost is a legitimate concern. Death panels are not.

There hasn't been any real debate on fixing a broken system, only histrionics from extremes on BOTH sides.

The thing is, all the screaming about "socialism" and paying for the healthcare of deadbeats and illegals does not take into account that the CURRENT health care system already works that way. All those unpaid bills racked up at the ER by people who don't have any insurance; all those expensive procedures performed on the young person who was too healthy to need to pay for insurance but ended up paralyzed by a car accident; all the hundreds of thousand of dollars in costs of treating the cancer that the middle-aged woman who did not know her limited health care plan at work would NOT cover, these bills need to be paid by SOMEBODY and so, the price of care and procedures is simply raised for the people who can and do pay. Then, the insurance companies raise their rates too and the cycle of you paying more to subsidize other people's care continues.

Nobody likes that FICA and medicare tax taken out of their paycheck, but it's also nice to not have to work forever until you drop dead because you can't risk losing your employer-provided health insurance and then risk having your life savings for retirement wiped out by one life-changing accident or contracting an expensive chronic or terminal illness. It would be nice to take the peace of mind that people over 65 on have with Medicare (which was also fought against tooth and nail before it got passed, yet somehow capitalism and democracy survived) and apply it to the rest of the population. With the costs of health care already at levels that no non-millionaire could afford to pay for an extended time and more and more employers foisting more and more of the burden of paying escalating premiums on their employees, the future of the status quo does not look any brighter than the present reality of it. SOMETHING has to be done and it has been put off for too long by scare tactics and obstruction fomented and put in place by the many powerful institutions in this country that have the most to lose if they are suddenly taken out of the equation. If people truly are scared reform might happen, they should be more scared if it does not.