Get a Freakin' Clue

It amazes me that one could be around average Americans for months at a time traveling throughout all of the major, and several of the minor, cities in the U.S. and still be completely clueless about the struggles of my fellow citizenry. This was the thought running through my head while I watched the local news recap of John McCain’s visit to Orange County.

He was endorsed by Madame Reagan, the wife of the patron saint of the conservative movement, but managed to bumble through his comments on the economy. Americans are truly suffering right now, and not just the folks who were considered “working poor” or “one paycheck away from disaster”, middle class folks like me who have honest-to-goodness careers. I heard the story of one woman whose husband abandoned her leaving her to raise two kids on her income alone. She worked in the mortgage industry for years making $70,000 annually (which, for reference, the average salary for a college-educated, mid-career employee in Southern California is $65,000). She was laid off and has found herself having to ask for help from a food bank, while her mother has moved in with her to help support the household.

John McCain’s answer to all this suffering is that he doesn’t know that much about fixing the economy. Instead he went on a tirade about how stupid people were to buy houses they couldn’t afford, and that the government shouldn’t be obligated to bail them out. (Even though they’ve faithfully paid taxes?!?) I half expected him to start talking about how in “his day” you had to walk up hill both ways to get to a one-room school in the snow with no shoes. Grandpa was on a rant that today’s generation is too spoiled.

I agree to a certain extent that people were very careless by taking these ‘too-good-to-be-true’ loans, but I also recognize where their desire came from. Having a nice home is the cornerstone of the American Dream. When you read profiles of success stories they always include info about the subject’s home. Since January, there have been 3,000 home foreclosures in my county. What’s McCain’s response to this (aside from his Grumpy Grampy tirade about lack of responsibility)? He wants to give government money to mortgage lenders, so that they can incentivize people to keep their homes. Yep, that’s right, when faced with a groundswell of human suffering and defeat, let’s give all the cash to the pigfuckers who got us into this mess in the first place.

Sadly, this was all he would say regarding the economic crisis. The rest of his speech was all about Iraq, and how it’s really cool that we’re there…and hey that asshole in Iran could use a good woopin’…and how the glorious surge was working…and, even though 4,000 American soldiers are dead you got to break eggs to make an omelet…blah, blah, fucking blah. I can’t believe this is the same guy who I would have voted for back in 2000 when he was running against Bush. I’m not sure what happened over the past 8 years, but much like a bad marriage, this guy is nothing like the one I met via regular appearances on The Daily Show exchanging verbal spars with a then (yet even more clueless) Resident Bush.

It’s disturbing to me that he is one of three possible people that might lead our nation, and if he winds up with the top spot, the suffering that has happened so far will be nothing compared to the dismal state of life in 2010.

Open Letter to the Dumbasses Who Graffitied My Synagogue

Dear Wannabe Graffiti Badasses,

On Wednesday night you decided to come onto the premises of my synagogue and do your best graffiti work. You wrote things on the parking lot where I drop my kid off at school, and probably thought you were pretty fucking rebellious. In fact, I bet you went home with your fellow badasses thinking that you were all the shit.

I guess the only problem with your rebel-rousing plan was that you forgot to read the name on the building whose parking lot you graffitied. You left a tirade of "666" and pentagrams, but here's the kicker; Jews don't believe in the devil. Sure, there is the belief in evil and an entity known to us as the yetzer hara, however, it doesn't have horns, a pitchfork, or a tail, and looks nothing like the guy on my Danzig albums. "666" and pentagrams are offensive to Christians, not to Jews, so you should have done your research.

Also, you may want to think about adopting another means of implementing graffiti, because pink sidewalk chalk just doesn't strike the fear into the hearts of men that it should. I hate to break it to you band of wandering dumbasses, but you basically wasted an entire evening when you could have been doing something more productive like watching paint dry.

Lastly, let a real punk give you some advice: you live in Irvine, so no one is ever going to be afraid of you. Irvine is basically a realized version of Stepford. Your parents are pasty-ass white people who paid way too much for a house that looks like the ones next door to you (and across the street, hence Stepford), they likely went to USC, and they work corporate jobs. Just because you grow your hair down past your ears, shop at Hot Topic, and make your teachers nervous by drawing pentagrams on your notebook doesn't mean people are afraid of you, they just think you are an asshole kid who may need prescription antidepressants.

For what it's worth, I do appreciate the laugh. And by the way, if you're thinking about coming back for a Round Two that involves swastikas or some Nazi bullshit, keep in mind that that kind of graffiti would be classified as a hate crime, which is also a federal crime, and there's no way in hell your spoiled lily ass would survive a minute in youth detention with those kids from Garden Grove.

Still Rolling Her Eyes and Chuckling,

Mel

$4,400 Sex & An Interesting Midnight Conversation

As someone who loves watching hypocrites go down in flames, I giggled with delight when New York Governor Eliot Spitzer got busted for buying sex after running on a reputation of being a superhero-like crime fighter with the nickname of "Mr. Clean".

I'm not a cold-hearted bitch, because I feel terrible for his wife and daughters. Hopefully, Mrs. Spitzer has already enlisted the services of her favorite Jewish uncle to take her cheating bastard husband to the cleaners in the divorce that should soon follow. However, this was only part of the conversation I found myself having at midnight with my husband earlier in the week when this story broke.

We fall asleep at night listening to talk radio. Jeff had heard the story earlier in the day, but at midnight, when I finally made it to bed after working way too long of a day, his mind was still trying to wrap around the concept of paying thousands of dollars for sex. I'm not sure what was more shocking to him: a guy actually paying $4,400 for sex or the fact that it was a Jewish guy paying $4,400 for sex.

He decided to ask me about this whole thing, since in my husband's mind due to the fact that I grew up poor, worked in the music industry, visited Seattle often during the whole grunge movement, and regularly listen to punk music, I am the ultimate authority on the seedy underbelly of society. Fortunately, for him, he's half right about that.

Jeff: "Do you think he really paid $4,400 for sex?"

Melanie: "Yes, or they wouldn't have busted him in such a public way."

Jeff: "For $4,400 is that just one time, or do you think it was for several meetings?"

Melanie: "I haven't meant too many hookers in my day who run a 'buy 3 get one free' program, so my guess it was $4,400 a pop, or a bang."

Jeff: "Well, for $4,400 he'd better have gotten a blow job with that. That's what I'd expect."

Melanie: "No, for $4,400, you expect sex and blow jobs for the next 10 years, and you'd want her to detail your car once a month for that same 10 years."

Jeff: "No, you're wrong."

Melanie: "Oh really?!"

Jeff: "I'd never pay $4,400 for sex in the first place."

This I truly believe; first and foremost, because Jeff is a moral guy who would never have such blatant disregard for his family the way that schmuck Spitzer did, and secondly, because my husband is cheap. We've gone rounds over his talent for frugality, but at least I have the comfort of knowing that it will never be me in Mrs. Spitzer's position. Not only, because of the whole cheap thing, but also because my husband would never likely run for governor since he hates politics, and I'd never stand by him in that kind of a scandal, because I'm nobody's doormat and why should I bear the brunt of enormous humiliation for his fuck up especially a fuck up where he made the decision to render a wife the harshest insult by taking up with another woman...and paying her.

By the way Republicans, don't act all high and mighty over this sex scandal. At least when a Democrat is caught sticking his schlong where it doesn't belong, it isn't in another guy's ass.

Why I'm Supporting Barack Obama

Everyone and their dog keeps crowing about Barack Obama's lack of accomplishments, so I thought I'd put this little list together.

Barack Obama Accomplishment List:

• First African-American President of the Harvard Law Review
• Practiced as a Civil Rights Attorney in private life
  
• Taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School
  
• 8 Years in the Illinois State Senate
• Created the Earned Income Tax Credit in the State of Illinois providing an enormous tax cut to working families
• Spearheaded the legislation necessary for the expansion of Early Childhood Education in the State of Illinois
• Worked with law enforcement and legislators to pass measures requiring that all interrogations and confessions be videotaped in capital cases
• Has done extensive charity work based around community empowerment
• Currently advocates for US involvement in ending the genocide in Darfur
  
• Married to a Harvard graduate who has spent several years running a non-profit leadership training program
• Opposed the illegal and immoral Iraq War!
  

While I acknowledge that Hillary Clinton may have more "experience" in terms of dealing with Washington, my question is, do we really want someone like that in Washington? We are standing at the crossroads where the next five years is going to matter greatly. There are economic, environmental, food supply, foreign, and infrastructure challenges that will require a staunch individual to stand up to very monied special interests. This individual will have to rally members of the government, who have been bought off and propped up by those special interests, to do the right thing for America. At this point, I don't think Hillary can do that, because she is part of that "purchased for the highest dollar" establishment.

Barack Obama stood in a room full of Detroit auto workers and told them they had to make more fuel efficient cars. The room went silent. He stood in a room in Texas and spoke out against racism, and the room went silent. Any other politician would have been crapping themselves had they said something that made a room of people go uncomfortably silent, and would have been scrambling to make an apology, but Obama didn't. He actually stood by what he said, and that speaks louder than any of the accomplishments listed above.

Barack Obama is the only candidate who doesn't tell us what we want to hear, but what we have to hear. He also hasn't had a problem telling us that we are all going to have to make sacrifices in order to put our country back in order. Nobody wants to have to sacrifice, but deep down we know we've all fucked things up, and now we've got to bite the bullet and go clean up our room.

I doubt that a law professor who lives in Chicago, grew up in Hawaii, and is a fan of R&B has that much inkling into the punk movement, but anyone who is willing to tell a Texas redneck that there's no excuse for his racism, is punk enough for me.