Is Bill Maher also an idiot?

How disappointing. Bill Maher's new rule is all about how we should pit the young against the old, because the old get so much from the government; children almost nothing! Hello. What about the military. I'm quite willing to bet they get a helluva lot more than any age group per se. And I know that congresspersons get a lot more money than I do. Plus, we oldsters supposedly paid in advance for all of this--there was social security insurance and medicare insurance as I recall, taken out of my check when I was working. Oh fuck you Bill Maher. You do not know what you're talking about.

FAMILY VALUES VS. COMMON DECENCY

It's hard for me to understand how the Republican Party can lay claim to high moral ground when they clearly are monsters of sadism--consigning children, old people and the disabled to a category called "takers," for instance. But as to the Democrats, most of them voted to deny billions of dollars worth of food stamps to needy families when they voted for the farm bill. Apparently, no one in office speaks for simple decency any more. Surely somewhere in the Bible, there are words that urge us to take care of those who need our help. Something about Do Unto Others... and certainly even more. Don't these people swear oaths on the Bible? And of course, the Constitution, which is not on the whole a mean-spirited document.

Thought for the Day

Imagine there's no countries, / It isn't hard to do, / Nothing to kill or die for, / No religion too, / Imagine all the people / living life in peace. -John Lennon, musician (1940-1980)

Matt Tiaibbi in September Roling Stone on the vicious, cruel looting of state workers' pensions

Kee-rist! This makes me want to die sooner rather than later. How can a Democracy survive such evil? I don't think it can. But I'm also thinking reading stuff like this has a definite masochistic element. Actually, I'm still reeling from the news that google and Facebook have joined ALEC. And then I think how can I be a party to this (which I am--see email address etc.)? And then I look at the members of ALEC and I realize one would need to live off the grid to avoid them. Carrier pigeons, as my son said. Maybe EarthLink is guilt-free. Is it? Maybe I'm just too sensitive to it all. Maybe I should just give it a rest. Anyone have any ideas?

New York is a Summer Festival

Does anyone else remember that phrase? I can't be here in July w/o thinking of it. And then immediately and w/o fail I think of the swimsuit fashion spread I did with Anna Wintour (yes, before she was famous) for Savvy, when she introduced me to David Hockney's swimming pool pictures. Which always reminds me that, cold and rude as Anna can be (she once cut me dead on 57th Street), she was worth knowing at that point, anyway, when she was making $1,000 for doing that month's fashion (everything but the copy for the pictures) for Savvy magazine. Halcyon days. Note: This was written a few years ago, when I happened to be sweltering in a New York July. Since then (this year), my editor at Savvy has died--Judy Daniels. She was a wonderful editor and she gave Anna Wintour her start in New York.

Ah, New York, ah bagels

The video/story in the Times today about Russ and Daughters and bagels and lox, here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/dining/setting-out-the-bagels-and-lox.html?src=dayp reminded me of what I learned when we moved to New York from Chicago when I was 12. In those days, Chicago was a wasteland as far as Jewish food was concerned, so of course my father was delighted to be in the vicinity of bagels. Not lox, because he thought it was too salty. So that's when I first heard of nova (well, I'd never heard of any of it, really). Every Sunday, my dad would go out early in the morning (we lived on the Upper West Side) and get several papers (there were so many then)--the Times, the Herald Tribune, and I don't know what others--and bring them back, with bagels, cream cheese, nova and sometimes sturgeon or sable. What a treat, and one I've tried to continue even in Mexico, where I live now. The smoked salmon and the cream cheese are easy, but the bagels... well, it varies. If I can get to Costco, sometimes use their what-I-call "everything bread" instead, because my favorite kind of bagel is "everything" and those are hard to find.

Republicans and Other Thugs

What is wrong with these people? I refer not only to Congresspeople who voted against food stamps (28 of them Democrats), but also to the latest attacks on Disability (SSI and SSDI I think is what it's called). So-called "journalists"--Kristoff apparently was the first, then the others joined in--Klein and others, especially NPR--talking as if Disability were just a scam. These people don't have any idea of what they're talking about, they just blather on and ON. First of all, it's very hard to get on Disability; second of all, you can't just get a job instead, since the whole problem is you cannot work, thirdly, it's very little money and hardly a scam. This whole culture, talking about the people who don't pay taxes, don't have "any skin in the game." As Jon Stewart said, all they have left is skin. Work doesn't pay enough to live on in our country. Don't they get it? Like the people on Fox News, deploring women working. One salary doesn't support a family anymore, guys, get a clue. They won't be satisfied until we're all serfs--that's clear. Just watched Park Avenue, Independent Lens, PBS. It's so outrageous, one can only feel that the US citizens are total idiots, which is just what the rich want. Maybe it hasn't quite happened, but they're determined to make it the rule. I don't know who they think their consumers will be when no one has any money but them. I think they'll be sorry, actually. But it will take a long time to turn things around.