As I have said, I have not agreed with President Bush’s policies all the time, but I do think that he is genuinely a good person and has done his best in a difficult time period in our country’s history. The thing that most people don’t seem to understand is that a President’s legacy is kind of like the NFL draft….you can’t really rate how well teams did in the draft until a few years have gone by so you can look back on the drafter players’ performances. A President’s legacy is the same way…..you can’t really judge it while it’s happening…..you have to give it a few years to see its effect on history. People like to criticize Bush constantly but I’ll put this question to you…..would you have wanted to be President for these last eight years? I highly doubt many people will answer “yes” to that question.

But here is something that Obama supporters should really think about…..how will the Bush bashing from the “McDonald’s Fast Food Mindset” public and the ultra-liberal media (I dare anyone who watched any of the major-network coverage of the election last night to try to contradict me that the media is completely biased to the far left) hurt Obama? Here’s what I mean……I want to give Obama a fair shake. I really do. But I know that the aggravation I’ve felt over the completely over-the-top disrespect shown to our current President by Hollywood morons, the biased media, and a public that seems to think that our government consists of one branch rather than three will lead me to scrutinize Obama’s every move and will lead to the temptation to criticize him at every opportunity. As I have said before, you will never see a personal attack on Obama’s intelligence, etc., as I believe in respect for the office, but I won’t say that I will not attack his policies if I don’t agree with them. I really hope that this doesn’t happen, though…..I really hope I can forgive and forget and keep an open mind on Obama. But I can tell you that there are a lot of conservative people out there that will not do so. They will give Obama the same treatment as Bush has received over the past eight years. I just don’t see the ending of partisanship that the Democratic leaders are declaring. If anything, I see it getting worse. I could be wrong and hope that I am and will readily admit it if I am. But I still think that if Obama struggles early and/or goes back on any of his campaign promises, it’s going to get ugly. If/when this happens, all I can say is that I hope all the Bush/Republican haters had fun bashing over the last eight years because you are about to reap what you have sown. It’ll be your turn to see how it feels.

“I lose all respect for celebrities when they back a candidate,” she said. “It’s saying that the American public isn’t smart enough to make their own decisions.”

You can read the original story here. You may have to scroll down a bit, but it’s worth checking out.

My selection for this Melancholy Monday is a song that makes me think of my little girls and of the sadness I feel seeing them growing up so fast and realizing that someday they won’t need me around anymore.  It is “Winter” by Tori Amos.  Hope everyone makes it through this Monday and the rest of the ensuing week OK.  Just remember, Thanksgiving is only about three weeks away…..and that means an extra day or so off for most of us.  Got to have something to look forward to!

Well, hopefully this Monday morning finds everyone well-rested and gearing up for Halloween this weekend. We’ll be heading down to Atlanta on Thursday night to spend the weekend at Crafty Momma’s parent’s house. We’re all going to dress up and have a great time….can’t wait to show off all the pics I’m sure we’ll take.

Anyway, my Melancholy Monday song choice for the week is one of my favorite Radiohead songs, “Fake Plastic Trees”. Have a great week!

Anyway, I discovered this song earlier this week and just fell in love with it. It is called “Maggie Mahoney” by a band called Seabird. Hope you like it. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

We placed the final item into the cart and headed to find a check-out line that wasn’t a mile long. We found one that only had one older lady having all her stuff checked out, but she had quite a lot of stuff, so we had some time to stand around in line. I looked at the covers of all the gossip mags while Sweet Pea played with some of the cheap toys and candy that generally populate the check-out aisles to entice all the impulse buyers and their children. It was around this time that I looked up and noticed the small boy in the back of the shopping cart ahead of us in line.

He was a cute little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy of around three or four years of age and was sitting in the little seat of the cart where little children typically sit while their parents push them around the store. I noticed that Crafty Momma had noticed him as well. He was giving us this coy little smile while he stretched his legs out to see if he could touch the front of our cart with his feet. He couldn’t quite get there but Crafty Momma gave him a smile and pushed the cart closer. He smiled triumphantly as his feet touched our cart. Suddenly, the older lady that he was with grabbed him by his right shoulder and pulled him back, slamming his back into the back of the seat. His mouth gaped open in surprise and hurt and then he immediately hung his head as if he had just been caught doing the worst thing in the world.

“Get your feet down,” she hissed at him. “You don’t put your feet on other peoples’ baskets!”

She looked at Crafty Momma who said, “It’s alright.”

I heard the lady say, “No, it’s not!” but then missed anything else she was saying as I just felt this enormous amount of sadness for the little boy. I just had this feeling inside that what I had just witnessed was the norm for the poor little guy. I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to smile at him and for him to see me smile at him. I wanted to somehow let him know that it was okay and that not all people in the world were as mean as his mother or grandmother or whatever she was. He continued to hang his head and in my mind I tried to will him to look at me. After a couple of minutes he carefully peeked up at me and I gave him the biggest, kindest smile I could manage. He immediately perked up again and began swinging his legs singing the “ABC Song”. He knew it, too, every last letter and every last word of the song. I vaguely heard the lady he was with talking to the cashier and in the back of my mind I knew she was talking about him…..and in a not-very-nice way. But I was too busy watching him happily singing to pay much attention.

Finally, all of the lady’s stuff was scanned, bagged, and piled back into the cart. I watched the little boy as he was rolled away in the cart and hoped that I had been wrong and that incidents like this were not the every-day occurrences that I imagined them to be. The cashier scanned our items and chatted us up as cheerful as could be. Finally it was all bagged and I payed. We walked out into the warm sunshine and loaded all the bags into the back of the truck. I put Sweet Pea in her seat, buckled her in, and then got into the driver’s seat.

“That was awful,” Crafty Momma said as soon as I started up the truck. “Did you see that little boy’s face? I almost cried.”

I told her that I had seen it and I told her about the bad feeling it gave me that that sort of thing happened all the time. She said that she felt even worse because it was her fault.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I pushed the cart up so he could reach it with his feet. I saw him stretching to try to reach it so I pushed it up so he could. It’s not like he was hurting anything. And did you hear what she said?” she asked me.

I told her I had heard her tell the lady that it was OK and that I heard the lady tell her it was not OK. Apparently when I turned my attention away from her and onto the boy, I missed the biggest shock of the entire incident.

Crafty Momma said, “No, she told me that it was not OK. She said that he’s a foster child and we’re lucky that that’s all he was doing.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, “she said that? What does him being a foster child have to do with anything?”

Crafty Momma then went on to tell me about how the lady told the cashier that she had three foster children, ages two, three, and four, and that the little boy didn’t know how to act. She said that him and his sister were always hitting each other like it was OK. All of this while he innocently sang his ABCs……but I’m sure he heard every word.

The only thing I could think was, God help those poor little kids. She said all those things about that little boy right in front of him. If she did it out in a public place, I feel pretty safe in assuming that she does the same or worse in private. Then she wonders why he doesn’t know how to act. I only hope she realizes how hurtful that is to a child’s self-esteem and stops before any permanent damage is done. Plus, who even knows what the little guy went through before he was entrusted in her care?

The whole situation made me feel so helpless. Writing this and reliving it in my head, I still feel so helpless. I still cannot get the picture of the little boy’s face out of my head when she jerked him back like that. It was truly heartbreaking and something I will probably never forget.

Today I have chosen a heart-rending tune from Butch Walker called “Joan”……a great song. Hope everyone has a great week!

1. Politics tend to be a very touchy subject (along with religion) and stir up mostly negative feelings and reactions. I have friends and family that don’t agree with where I stand on politics at this time and it makes me almost dread being around them for fear that the dreaded “P” subject will come up in conversation and an argument ensue. I, like a lot of people, feel passionately about my beliefs and though I know I won’t really change anyone’s mind, I cannot seem to resist making the attempt anyway.

2. I don’t think I have much to say that someone else out there hasn’t already said…..and probably said more eloquently.

But at this time, I have so much bouncing around my head that I feel if I don’t get it out I’m going to explode. So, here goes:

I am so tired of hearing about “Change”. This guy is for “Change”! This guy is going to make a “Change”! I’m sorry, folks, but waiting for a politician to change things is like waiting for a rock to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Politicians in today’s two-party system don’t make changes….people do. Do you attribute the success of the Civil Rights movement in the 50′s and 60′s to politicians or to regular folks like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Malcolm X, etc.? Sure, politicians eventually passed the bills but it was through the actions of regular folks like the ones I just named that moved them to do so. Politicians may take certain aspects of government in a different direction, but not enough to qualify for getting credit for “Change” in my book….well, except that you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that Reagan doesn’t deserve the credit for ending the Cold War and bringing down the Berlin Wall. You can try, though.

Anyway……that’s the problem with our government today, in my opinion. I’m tired of having to choose the lesser of two evils. I know, as most people do, that both the Republican and Democratic parties are really only interested in one thing……obtaining and then maintaining power. Sure, there is a difference in opinion or two between the parties and they may be pretty big differences, but ultimately they are the same and share the same goal. Most of those really interested in making a “Change” don’t have a “D” or an “R” next to their names and therefore have no real shot at even getting in the game. It’s all about the money these days and if you don’t have it you can forget it. McCain is rich, you say? Well, so is Obama. Who is richer? Doesn’t matter. Prove to me that there is a member of Congress not rolling in dough along with your name and address and I’ll do my best to find you a Bozo button and mail it to you. We’ve let things regress in national politics so badly that there’s no way Mr. Smith could get to Washington today but that is exactly what we need……regular men and women who love this country and want to make it better. We don’t need all the Thomas Jefferson Johnsons and Dick Dodges we have today and as long as we keep electing those kinds of people, please don’t mention “Change” in the same sentence as a politician to me.

But the reality of things is that I will have to choose what I perceive as the lesser of two evils. I definitely feel that the country is better off when the parties each control a branch of the government. A lot of people can’t see past the here and now, but if they’ll look back into fairly-recent history, they might remember that during the Clinton Administration, Democrats held the majority in Congress and corruption was widespread. The public got fed up with it, and ushered in a Republican President and gave the Republicans the majority in Congress. What happened? A few years later corruption was widespread, the public got fed up with it, and we now have a Democratic majority in Congress once again. Now many people are all for adding a Democrat for President again and many people think that the Democratic majority in Congress will grow (despite the fact that Congress has about a 10% approval rating)……anyone else see the road we are heading down? That’s the great thing about history….we study it so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. More people need to break out their textbooks and then maybe we can break the cycle of corruption.

I have mixed feelings about the way more people have become more politically aware in the last few years. It’s great that people are educating themselves on the issues and becoming more aware of important events happening in their own country. But at the same time, we are becoming bitterly divided. Look at the comments after a news story on the election, on message boards, or even at comments in politics-related blog postings. It gets really nasty really quickly. There’s not a whole lot of discourse involved…..mostly arguing and trading links to news stories about how this candidate did something bad or the unsavory character that that candidate is associated with. I admit that I read some comments that really piss me off and get my blood pumping and it’s all that I can do to not post an angry or cynical comment or put forth a counterpoint but I usually calm down and remind myself that most peoples’ minds are made up, so it’d be about as effective as trying to punch the wind. I know a lot of this has been brought on by a lot of peoples’ intense hatred for President Bush. I have stated my stand on President Bush several times before but will re-state it now…..I thought (and still think) that he was the better choice in the last two elections. I do not agree with everything he has done, however. I don’t think anyone who considers themselves a true “Conservative” can agree with everything he as done (especially when it comes to spending). I had (and still have) an intense dislike for President Clinton but I think that the office of the President is to be respected, so you never saw me sporting a bumper sticker or T-shirt or anything else disparaging him. The disrespect shown for President Bush has really sickened me. The stickers I have seen on some peoples’ cars are nothing short of reprehensible. I had to laugh when cruising through the Cool Springs area and saw a car with a Middle Tennessee State University Alumni sticker on it next to a sticker that criticized the President’s intelligence. Now, I know that MTSU is a good school, but Yale it is not. Just because you see someone on TV doesn’t mean you know them. I know I said Matt Damon wasn’t a genius because he played one in a movie, but that’s not the same as calling someone an idiot. Anyway, rest assured that if Obama becomes our next President, you’ll not see a “Buck Farack” sticker on my car.

So, basically, I cannot wait for the election to be over. I know that all the unpleasantries won’t end there but at least they will dissipate a little. I am nervous over the outcome of the election, but I know that it’ll be OK no matter what…..as I said, the parties aren’t really that much different. If Obama gets elected, I know I’ll survive. I made it through the Clinton years and everyone seems to have gotten through the Carter years OK, so I’m sure I’ll make it through the Obama years as well. I’ll have to bite back my anger at smug Liberal comments but as history has shown us, it’s only a matter of time before the tides go back the other way. I just hope that in the future I’ll have what I consider more suitable candidates to choose from.

Have a good weekend, everyone! I’m hoping to have internet at the condo so I can get that promised post up on the concert we attended on Monday.