interesting day in the world...

I usually keep politics out of this blog.  It's not that I'm embarrassed of my leanings.  I'm a liberal, Jersey girl, and I'm proud of that, but usually it doesn't affect the things I'm battling in my day-to-day life.  So I keep it out of the blog and leave it to my twitter and such.  


But I have to comment on how happily surprised I am by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, including the mandate.  I definitely did not expect Chief Justice Roberts to be the one to uphold the 5-4 ruling.  Again, pleasantly surprised.  I partially think part of it was that when he was confirmed, he spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of separating politics and the judicial branch.  And it's also been rumored that he's been upset by the views the American public currently have of the Supreme Court (that it is, in fact, majorly political), so I wonder if that affected it?  I'm sure there are many scholars who will talk about this ad nauseam better than I could, so I'll leave that to them.  I'll just say that I'm glad it was upheld and all the crazy tea party people (who I still maintain don't understand history or the real tea party) swearing we now live in a dictatorship sure don't seem to think that way when it comes to a woman controlling her own body.  I think this is good for the country.  It's good for the people to have health care and it's good for the economy.


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In other news, building on yesterday's wischasting, I received this daily email as a reminder:

On this day of your life, Mare, I believe God wants you to know...

...that it is never safe to look into the future with eyes

of fear.

Edward H. Harriman said that, and he was right. Nothing

is fearful lest thinking make it so. I can honestly say that

probably 95% of the things I was afraid of, it turned out

I had no reason to be. 

And even if the thing you fear happens...so what? Again,

95% of the time your world is not going to fall apart, your

life will not be in danger. So drop fear by the wayside.

Just... let it go. Then make way for a surprising tomorrow.

I'm trying not to let fear reign over my daily life.  I know fear will never completely go away, I think it's just part of the genetic make-up of most of us, but I can learn how not to let it control everything.  It's hard, but I'm working on it. 

writing prompt - opinion piece - another evil of BP

http://www.mamakatslosinit.com/

This week's prompts both elated and terrified me.  I knew it would push me out of my comfort zone.  And not because I'm not often telling jokes that don't go over well - I have a twisted sense of humor at times and it's always been my coping mechanism - but because to relive such things in an easy way seemed near impossible.
 
I decided to go with prompt 1:  Choose a headline from The Today Show website and write up an opinion post based on the story you chose.
 
I avoided all things Mel Gibson as I don't find it funny so much as sad.  The man is obviously crazy and this woman and her child could be in serious harm.  So many women go through these struggles behind-the-scenes and I fail to see the humor in that at all.
 
And then I spotted the headline, BP to drill for Libyan oil despite Lockerbie bomber furor, and immediately it had my attention.  I had a friend who died on that flight.  She was thirteen years old, same as me.  And to let a terrorist go under false pretenses for profit and oil makes my normally pacifist self want to go all crazykakes on these people.  I just don't understand how anyone can reach that point in life where money tops the value of human life. 
 
I'll be the first to admit, even if it were true, I don't care that the man, this terrorist,  was dying.  I don't think he deserved a peaceful death when he offered anything but to his victims.  I guess it was nice of the Scottish authorities to take compassion on someone who couldn't provide it to others, but I wouldn't have done it. 
 
But now, BP won't even answer the questions arising about the whole situation.  I'm not saying medicine always get it right and the man could possibly be one of those who lives way longer than expected (my mom-mom did that).  However, call my cynical, but when I read things like this:
 
BP signed a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya in May 2007, the same month that Britain and Libya signed an agreement that paved the way for al-Megrahi's release from a Scottish prison.
BP has admitted that it lobbied the British government over a prisoner transfer deal with Libya in late 2007, but denied playing any role in the actual decision to release al-Megrahi nearly two years later.

I am much less likely to believe what has gone down.  And after everything with the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I think it only drives home further how much big corporations/businesses don't seem to care about anyone or anything that gets in the way of profits.  And then they try to guise it as something else when finally called to task on it (barely).

I think it says so much about the world, or at least the United States (as that's all I can really speak for) that more people aren't up in arms, pushing their senators and congressmen to do something, to fight harder for us.  Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything good.

Book Review: Game Change

I had signed up for the Non-Fiction Five challenge a little while ago and it seems to be serendipity because most of the books that have come in from the library in the past few weeks have been nonfiction books.  Let's start with book one, a hot book of the year that goes behind the 2008 Presidential Race.  Yes, that book.

Title: Game Change by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin

Summary:  In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton—and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin. But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage of this spellbinding drama, remarkably little of the real story behind the headlines has yet been told.

In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country's leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. How did Obama convince himself that, despite the thinness of his résumé, he could somehow beat the odds to become the nation's first African American president? How did the tumultuous relationship between the Clintons shape—and warp—Hillary's supposedly unstoppable bid? What was behind her husband's furious outbursts and devastating political miscalculations? Why did McCain make the novice governor of Alaska his running mate? And was Palin merely painfully out of her depth—or troubled in more serious ways?

My Review:  I am an admitted political nerd/junkie, so I know that probably affects my outlook on this book. But I loved it. It's like a mix of Gossip Girl meets the 2008 Presidential Election and I found the whole thing fascinating. And after reading it, I think it's a great book that could appeal to anyone, just for the sheer humanness of the whole thing. The psychology going on with the candidates and their messages.

It's broken up into three parts. Part one was the democratic primary, the largest section of the book, which is no real surprise as the the whole primary season was so different than anything my generation had ever witnessed. Part two is the Republican primary, which is the shortest section of the book, because aside from John McCain's "surprise comeback" there wasn't much to the Republican primary. The final section was the general election and focused a lot on Sarah Palin being chosen and how not only the Obama campaign would have to deal with it, but how the McCain camp would have to "handle" her.

Highly entertaining at parts. Highly enlightening...and mostly, for the most part, Each of those portrayed was exactly how I felt they came across in public.

Overall:  5 stars