Plants

So, it's begun. The annual planting and insanity of buying said plants. We usually buy our annuals at our local Home Depot, but this year their selection is...well it sucks! Yeah, they have your basic petunias and impatients, but other than that it's no good. The only daylilies they had were HUGE and $15. I'm a patient gardener. I'm happy to pay $5 for a smaller perinneal because guess what? They grow. I guess next weekend I'll be heading to a different store. I did get a few things.
The main thing that I got was my Mother's Day roses. I love getting rose bushes for Mother's Day. That way I get to enjoy the roses all summer. Unfortunately, I think we are about out of space so these may be the last of the new bushes I'll get for awhile. Even so, I have all the beautiful plants to remind me of how much I'm loved.
Alright, I have some holes to dig and pots to fill.

update

I was just sitting here watching "The Highlander" and thought that I should write a blog post. No correlation really. I actually have been thinking I should blog more often. Like weekly or even maybe daily when it occurs to me.
On my way to work this morning I had a number of thoughts on what I should write. Most of them were things that annoy me so I think this time I'll refrain on posting my brains ramblings. (This is such a bad movie. I don't remember it being so bad.)
O.K. Maybe this is a good start. Truman just galloped in and wants to play. Who knew that my new boxer would be a horse in disguise?

sick day

The cat and the dog are sitting close sharing a sunbeam that is streaming through a high window. The cat is perched on a bare spot on the TV stand. The dog sitting next to that. Generally, they don't share space, but on a day where the thermometer has yet to break 0 degrees it seems appropriate that oddities like this will happen.
My daughter is home with strep throat. She's just hitting the 24 hour mark on antibiotics so I thought it best to keep her home. My activity to this point has consisted of folding multiple loads of laundry, helping my daughter pack for her upcoming visit to her dad's house, and half way cleaning the kitchen. The cat and dog distracted me from the last one. And that is my day to this point. A sick day although I am not sick.

I passed!

For a good portion of my working life I've been working in Human Resources on some level. It's been a goal for awhile to get my certification, because as with any profession you can become certified through an amazingly hard test given by the oversseing regulatory body of that profession.
September 3rd I began a class to help me prepare for that amazingly hard test. The class was 3 hours a week for 10 weeks with about 10-15 hours of prep between classes. After the class was over I had 4 weeks to study and stayed on the 10-15 hours a week of study time. Not an easy task with all of the activity that my kids seem to generate. After all of the study and work- yesterday I tested. I'm very, very pleased to report that I passed. At least that's what the piece of paper said. After studying, for what seemed like an eternity, I actually passed! I won't know my score for a few weeks, and really at this point it's just sort of a bonus. The point is I am now a CERTIFIED HR Professional. Woohoo!

Let America Be America Again!

This was sent to me by a very dear friend. I think it really embodies what this campaign was about and what we as a nation need to remember in the victory. Yes, we can!



Let America be America Again
by
Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

President Obama

That sounds exactly right. Congratulations, Mr. President-Elect.

Well Wishes

I think one of the things that I recognize in Barack Obama that I see in myself is that we both had grandparents that were key figures in our upbringing. In particular, I was very close with my grandmother. She was, as Sen Obama has described his grandmother, a key element in later success. So when I heard that he was flying to Hawaii to be with her on Thursday I was particularly touched by his action. This late into the election he's decided to do the right thing and go be by his grandmother. Despite what the talking heads have to speculate about the whole deal, I for one am wishing Senator Obama and his grandmother the best. I hope she can recover to see him through the election and beyond.

Redeemed

I used to really admire Colin Powell, and then he endorsed the war and stood up for the false evidence that we went to war on. I am not fully convinced that he knew it was false intelligence, but I have never really cleared my mind as to how he couldn't have known. This clip, in my mind, redeems him a little bit.
Here is the clip from Meet the Press where Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama. I'm not posting it soley because of his endorsement. I'm posting it because at about the 5:10 mark he says something that we all need to take to heart.

A Brighter Day Will Come- please vote November 4th

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

A Reasonable Request...

Guilty by Association? No, just Plain GUILTY!

Ethics investigation finds Palin abused power

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain."

Now, I'm gonna make it real simple. If she was willin' to violate state ethics rules as a gov'na, what do you think she might do as Vice President. Can y'all say WATERGATE? What about IRAN-CONTRA? This is down right unethical. A pitbull that's bit someone once WILL bite agin'.

Reject the invitation of fear!

The attempt at character assassination against Barack Obama have hit an all time low and it's disgusting. What it tells me is that the McCain camp has nothing better to do. They don't have to worry about our economy, the war, or anything else of substance because they JUST DON'T GET IT! McCain's plan is to hit below the belt instead of showing us his substance.

Barack Obama is out there talking about the immediate issues and what he proposes to resolve them, and John McCain is out there telling us to be afraid of the candidate with solid ideas. In the words of FDR:

WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF



Mr. McCain, I'm not accepting your invitation to be afraid. I am voting for Obama!

Guilty by association? No.

I've been watching the new, the pundits, etc. and everyone is talking about Governor Palin talking about Obama's association with William Ayers. Two things disturb me about this whole game of playing association.
The first being that Mr. Ayers has become a good citizen since his radical days in the late '60's early 70's. Chicago thought well enough of him that they named him citizen of the year. The University he teaches at has him listed as a Distinguished Professor. The point being that people can make bad choices out of their passions and then live another day to make up for their errors. People should be given second chances to redeem their bad behavior and I think in this case William Ayers has made good. So, while he did some really awful things in the past, his life of education and working for his community has certainly made a positive impact today. If Mr. Obama is guilty of working with Mr. Ayers on education and helping the youth of Chicago so be it. It has nothing to do with the mistakes Mr. Ayers made as a youth.

Secondly, if we are going to make people guilty by association then McCain has a long list of associates that don't reflect well on him. Keating for starters, but it goes farther, and I'm not the only one who is talking about it.

Why Ayers case is risky for McCain-Palin- by Rollin Martin

"Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside people with virulent bigoted pasts like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?

Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African-Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation.

Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 with a platform of maintaining segregation. Based on Helms' policies, he didn't see blacks as full Americans.

Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venomous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then trying to oppress them, is just as indefensible.

So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate?"

So, while Palin is out on the stump trying to use fear to win people over (Rovian tactics at play again) perhaps she should reflect on the associations of her running mate. And by the way, this doesn't even begin to touch on her guilty by marriage association to the Alaskan Independence Party.

The Real John McCain

"John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench.

"On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."

What would you say if there was a whole article of past and present Republicans saying loud and clear why John McCain doesn't deserve the White House? Well, there is one. It's a Rolling Stone article that really lays it out and really deserves to be read from the first word to the last.

So, why are you still reading here?! Go read that article NOW!!! It's really that good.

Do the math.

So, we've all seen the ads saying that Obama is going to create a higher tax burden for the middle class. Well, if you are wondering if that's true then do the math.

Estimate your Taxes has a handy dandy calculator that will estimate how much more or less you will pay under both administrations. Go for it. Test the candidates against what they say.

I did it and based on my current single status and then after the wedding next year I come out better. MUCH better with Obama. Strange how McCain thinks I'll be paying more.

From Golden Parachutes to BlackBerries

From ABC news:

UPDATE: Obama has co-sponsored a bill with eight other Democrats that is currently before the Senate Banking Committee, S.1181, that would amend the Securities Act of 1934 to include a separate shareholder vote on executive compensation. McCain is not a co-sponsor.

I guess McCain is working on that "commission" to evaluate the not so dire economy so he can't help out on that one. In addition to this bill Obama has a 6-point plan in place that you can actually read!! Yes, an economic PLAN!! Even better it's not an economic plan devised by this guy, Phil Gramm. (scroll on down to Enron Loophole, Banking Deregulation and 2008 Financial CRISIS while you are there). But then despite his lack of knowledge about economics McCain is familiar with financial crisis and deregulation.

Just to refrain from being accused of being sexist by Carly Fiorina I do have news on Sarah Palin. Here's the quote:

"John McCain and I we're going to put an end to the mismanagement and abuses and on Wall Street that have resulted in this financial crisis," Palin said Monday. "We are going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust."

Would it be hypocritical to say that if your point person on business and economic affairs is one of those CEO's that broke the public trust by taking a multi-million dollar payout? Or since she's a woman is that sexist?

You know, trying to figure out the political ramblings of the Rethuglicans and particularly McCain Palin is like trying to invent the BlackBerry. I'm going to stick with what makes sense and vote Obama.


OBAMA/BIDEN '08

The line was blurred some time ago.

I was just checking my Black Berry to see what messages I had. Yes, it is 8:40 p.m. on Sunday evening and I'm not technically on the clock. That being said having this silly little device helps me gt ready for my days. I know what I'm walking into the next morning. I can communicate in a few minutes information to people so that I don't have a line of people at my door when I show up (hopefully).
The reason I bring this up is because I think this line between on the clock and off the clock was erased for a long time. Even more so for public figures. Celebrities and politicians certainly have not had a clear, set line since I can remember. What they do in their private lives (from checking a BlackBerry on to having an affair) counts. This includes who they marry, how much money they have, etc. I don't know if this is fair or not, but it is what it is. So, when a politician refuses to answer a simple question about his monetary standing by claiming that it's private information I call bullshit. If you didn't want us to know your personal business and how it contradicts with your party line and platform then you shouldn't have thrown your name into the hat. Period.

Fall...

Well, it's definitely fall here in Denver. The temperatures are in the 70's and lower and the chrysanthemums are all abloom. It's really lovely, but I find myself wanting to sleep more and ugh..eat more. Fortunately, despite my inability to ride my bike to and from work now (school schedules don't allow it) a good friend gave me an ellyptical they weren't using. I've been working out every morning on that. Fun!

Bronte and Geoffrey are fully immersed in school and doing great! It's awesome to feel like we are getting into the swing of it all. Although after school stuff starts this week so that might give a bit of a kink in things. We'll see.

We are going to start on the back brick paver patio soon, I think. I told Dan we couldn't until the 18th of September because I wanted that month to get the kids into a schedule. It's going to be right around 400 sq feet more to our back yard. Woohoo! I hope that's enough for our reception. It's going to have to be.

Lastly, I have bony fingers. Bronte wears the same ring size as I do now. No wonder I don't have much strength in my hands...they are the size of a 10 year olds.

Just imagine...

I received some info in my e-mail today about the importance of having leaders with a good education. It wasn't really well written so I rephrased it a bit to better illustrate the point. So, just imagine...

You are the board chair of a major international company that has many specialties- security, contract negotiations, finance, and law. Despite a really solid reputable past your business has really suffered in the bad economy and due to some public relations fiascos fallen out of favor of former clients. Profits are down, costs are sky rocketing and your competition is at an all time high. Even worse, you are looking for a new CEO and their being an intelligent, well respected, go getter is critical or your business is done.
You have two candidates to choose from both of which want to bring one person with them to get the business back in line. Let's look at the educational background of your two options:

Mr. O –
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Mr. O’s right hand:
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

OR

Mr. M :
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 of 899

Mr. M’s right hand:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire?

Enough about them. Obama should WIN!

Alright. Enough talking about the competition. Here's why Obama should win.

1. He's smart! He was the editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review based on his grades and his writing. That means he KNOWS the law. In addition he taught the law (constitutional law, actually) so he understands that the Constitution is more than "Just a piece of paper".
2. I believe what he says, because he has a record of doing what he says.
3. He's well travelled and understands that not every country is wealthy.
4. He knows what it's like to not have a lot of money. He grew up in a family that didn't have a lot of money and has worked with folks that didn't have much of anything except their willingness to work.
5. He was a state legislator representing a large district in Illinois. That's right folks- he was RESPONSIBLE to the people in his district. They even liked him so much that they re-elected him as their representative. (population 210K)
6. He's been a U.S. senator since 1/05. That's right. THREE years representing the people of his state and looking out for their best interest on a Federal level. The state of Illinois has a population of 12 MILLION.
7. He's got good plans and he's focused on how to make them work. A plan for the economy, for the war, education, healthcare, etc. and he understands that these are not independent of one another, but rather very much tied together and need to be dealt with as such.
8. He knows how to LISTEN. Not just hear what people are saying, but how to listen to what they've said and ask questions about it so that he fully understands the situation.
9. He isn't afraid to take action. This is who he is. He is a doer. He does stuff. His record proves that he is a doer. That is what we need.

So yeah, you should vote for him. He really is the best candidate. His resume might not have war torn scars all over it or 28 years of inaction, but it's solid in proving that he is the smart choice.