Barbara

For those of you who haven’t heard the sad news, the Clinton’s cat, Socks, died the other day. I would have mentioned it sooner, but I was in the middle of my own drama—finishing a novel.

 Socks lived in the White House for eight years of his life. He was a very important feline for that reason and that reason only. What other reason would the media have of actually mentioning it? It’s a cat, for heaven sake! A creature that slinks around and ignores you when you call, eats rodents or Fancy Feast if someone will serve it in a crystal bowl, and coughs up hairballs. Not attractive traits.

Cats do not wag their tails, jump up and down when you get home, or even look cute. They just stare at you like they’re waiting for you to die so they can eat your face. I believe each of them has a little tiger inside screaming to get out—and it isn’t Tony.

But if cats could talk…Socks would certainly have had stories to tell. If only someone had thought to ghost write a memoir for him before his demise. He had firsthand knowledge of Bill’s escapades. Slinking through the Lincoln bedroom or hiding behind a couch in the Oval office, he heard and saw things no one should have to be privy to. If Kenneth Starr had gotten him on the witness stand that trial would have been over in an hour.

But although he never wrote a memoir, Socks did have a fan club. Hillary also cashed in on his celebrity by having a book published that was supposed to be made up of letters children wrote to him during his eight years in the White House. I’m not so sure I believe there were that many children in America who thought a cat could read, but perhaps they were all children of Democrats.

The cat hasn’t actually lived with the Clintons since they left office though. Apparently, Socks—like Chelsea, or old Mrs. Clinton, was only around for photo ops. As soon as they were out the front door they tossed Socks to Bill’s secretary, Betty Currie, and said, “Hey, we’ll pay you to take this thing!” Without the White House staff to feed it and clean the litter box, the poor thing would have ended up in a homeless shelter—which is where they picked it up in the first place for the Governor of Arkansas photo op.

I’m not saying the cat didn’t have it good living with Betty. In fact, he lived pretty high on the hog. He went to social events to raise money, traveled the country, and was treated like royalty, rather than the Arkansas Tomcat he really was. Just like Bill, he never really left his roots behind.

So long, Socks. You lived nineteen years on this planet, which would be one hundred thirty-three in dog years. Good thing you weren’t a dog.        

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Happy Valentine’s Day

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In keeping with the celebratory President’s day coming up next monday, I thought I would give you all a bit of history. Our new president seems set on making himself the next Abraham Lincoln. His life story does parallel our sixteenth president in many ways.

 Let’s see:

1. he gives great speeches

2. he’s a lawyer

3. he won the war between the red and the blue states

4. his face is on just about everything you can imagine.

What he doesn’t have is a beard, a top hat, and an assassin.

Abraham Lincoln, as you’ve probably heard, was shot at the Ford Theatre by a man named John Wilkes Booth, (obviously a very dramatic & temperamental actor). What you probably don’t know, unless you’re a history buff, is the name of the Union Army soldier who shot Booth. He never gets any attention.

Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett was born in London, England, but his family immigrated to America in 1839. Thomas took on the trade of a hatter in Troy, New York. Yes, a hatter was a maker or seller of hats. Sounds like a great career move, right? Well, the term, “mad as a hatter” wasn’t pulled out of thin air. Some say the mercury used in the making of felt could be absorbed through the skin and cause Korsakoff’s syndrome.

Corbett was married for a short while but his wife died in childbirth, and after her death, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts. There he became a born again evangelical Christian and changed his name to “Boston” because he wanted to reform his whole life. Apparently his given name had negative connotations, such as “doubting Thomas”. The newly named Boston was also the first Jesus freak. He decided to grow his hair long in imitation of the Lord.

 In July of 1858 he must have been having some real problems with lust, because in order to avoid the temptation of prostitutes he decided to castrate himself with a pair of scissors. (That is taking the Bible verse “if _____ offends thee, cut it off” way too literally) Now such an act would probably fell the best of men, but Boston had a will of iron and a lack of nerve endings. He went out for a meal and a prayer meeting, and then took a walk before coming to the conclusion that he should see a doctor. He ended up at Massachusetts General Hospital.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, he eagerly joined the Union and actually reenlisted three times. He was a Sergeant in the 16^th New York Cavalry and was captured by the Confederates in 1864, and held at Andersonville prison until an exchange was made and he was returned to his unit.

On April 24^th, 1865, he was selected with 25 other cavalrymen from his unit to pursue the assassin John Wilkes Booth. After cornering Booth and his accomplice David Herold, in a tobacco barn on a Virginia farm, the soldiers set the barn on fire to force them out. Herold surrendered, but Booth didn’t budge. Boston Corbett was known as a sharpshooter; he aimed through a crack in the barn wall and shot Booth in the neck. Since the soldiers had been ordered to take the man alive, it didn’t go over well at first. Boston stated that he saw Booth raise his pistol after being told to surrender and point it at their commander, so he shot. Other eyewitnesses disagreed, but the American people wanted justice and Secretary of Justice Stanton said, “The rebel is dead. The patriot lives.” And Corbett received his share of the reward money. Later when asked why he really shot Booth, Boston Corbett replied, “God Almighty directed me.” Could have been the mercury talking, but I don’t know.

He returned to being a hatter. Probably not a wise idea but its what he knew. In 1875 he attended a soldier’s reunion in Ohio. Like most reunions it was filled with jerks and pompous windbags trying to appear more important and successful than the next guy. Several men joked that Corbett didn’t really kill Booth, and Boston Corbett drew his weapon and pointed it in their faces as though to say, make my day. There is no record of him actually shooting any of them, so I guess they backed down.

He moved to Kansas and lived in a dugout, keeping to himself except on rare occasions when he happened into town. One Sunday he saw some boys playing baseball and being a very religious mad hatter, he pulled his .38 and waved it in the air, putting an immediate end to the game. The sheriff came to tell him he was to stand trial for threatening youngsters. He dismissed the sheriff with the barrel of his gun, but still showed up for trial because the Lord told him to. In the middle of the hearing, he yelled, “I’ve fallen in with a den of liars!” and dismissed the meeting with another wave of his gun.

Corbett’s friends offered him a job as assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas Legislature and he became a sort of tourist attraction at the state house. After another incident of threatening folks with his trusty sidearm, he was judged to be insane and sent to the State Asylum. Not one to let things happen to him without a fight, he stole a pony and made his getaway. He stayed with a friend for a short while and then took off bound for Mexico.

The funny thing is, Boston Corbett ended up in Hinkley, Minnesota. Or at least that is one of the rumors. No one really knows for sure, but after the Great fire that took place there on September 1, 1894, his name was on the list of the dead and missing. Not only was he mad as a hatter, he had a terrible sense of direction.

Well, there you have it. The history of another great American hero. 

Happy unBirthday President Lincoln. I’m sure you’d be proud to know your image is being put on the penny once again, while your reincarnation, President Obama, prints his on a pile of thousand dollar bills two miles high and pushes it down the government’s rabbit hole.

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This past month there’s been a see-saw of media opinion on single motherhood. Articles are often written praising single motherhood as the new norm. They go gaga over Hollywood celebrities who manage to keep their star polished and shining bright while raising illegitimate offspring, conceived with some rock band member or other, alone with only a housekeeper, nanny, personal trainer, and maybe one of Dr Phil’s books. 

But a few weeks ago when Ann Coulter’s new book came out, they adamantly blasted her notions that single motherhood was actually a scourge on society. Ann stated rather vehemently that single motherhood costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year and produces prison inmates and strippers. She argued that poverty doesn’t produce criminals, single mothers do, because they choose to have children without a primary breadwinner. (I’d clarify breadwinner as a father who leads, loves, and provides for them, but that’s just me.)

This week the media is hysterical about a woman who chose to have fourteen kids without a father. Apparently if you have a litter of babies, you’re no longer considered brave and virtuous, but rather mentally unstable and possibly sucking the last dollars of welfare money from the State of California.

Does the number of children change the facts? If a single woman has one child without a father she is held up as a role model, but if she has an addiction to children, like the potato chip commercial says, you can’t eat just one, she is psycho.

The facts are that most single mothers (women who have never been married. I am not including widows or divorced mothers in this diatribe) choose to get pregnant with no regard to the future of their children. Like the babies they bring into this world, they are immature and selfish. They want something and instead of counting the cost, monetarily, emotionally, or morally, they think only of right now this moment.

With condoms and other means of birth control flowing freely out of high schools and clinics, there is really no excuse for out-of-wedlock pregnancies in America, even for the poor. We no longer live in an “unenlightened” society where women have children until they can’t any longer or they die in childbirth. But with this freedom also comes stupid choices.

The government can throw condoms at kids all they want but they can’t force them to put them on. That’s where a national spay & neuter day for stupid people might come in handy. I’m sure Obama has thought about it. But how to enforce it? Hmm.

Of course, I do not condone this method of birth control, but abstinence seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird in our society. Without God in the mix, people live for the moment and that obviously does not include self-control or purity. 

Back to the woman in California who had octuplets this past week. She admitted that she has no husband, no job, and lives with her parents. That isn’t the worst of it though. She already had six children under the age of seven that were also conceived through this wonderful scientific procedure called, In Vitro Fertilization. No daddy required.

The woman said in an interview, “All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That’s all I ever wanted in my life.”That’s a lot of wanting.

Well, she definitely got what she wanted. Fourteen children collected like an eight-year-old collects Barbies. I wonder if she has Malibu Barbie yet? 

She told the reporter in the interview that “it turned out perfectly.” Perfect: Fourteen children for her poor parents to worry about while she lives in a bubble of insanity. Fourteen children without a father’s influence on their lives. Fourteen children for the state to feed, clothe, and raise. 

So, yes she compounded the cons of single-motherhood fourteen times over, but they’re still the same cons. Where are the pros in all of this? Sorry-can’t think of one.

With fourteen children she’ll never have to be alone. She may want to, but it ain’t gonna happen. With fourteen children she gets to hear “mommy” 24 hrs a day, non-stop. With fourteen children, who needs sleep?

Yes, I believe she is mentally unstable, and suffers from a lack of moral clarity, but that doesn’t mean she’s crazy. That will come later when she brings the octuplet litter home. Let’s hope she has a lot more patience and love than she has common sense.

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After a couple of mild, melting winter afternoons, the freezing fingers of death have returned. I went to the store today and nearly died before I could load the groceries in my trunk, shove the cart in the nearest snow bank, and jump back in the car.

Yes, I am one of those people that sometimes doesn’t return my cart to a designated corral. Not because I’m lazy, mind you, but because I can’t find one! If you have to walk further to put the cart away than you did filling it up in the store, the corrals are too doggone far apart.

Today is Groundhog Day, and of course that fat little rodent came out of his house and announced, through the telepathic powers of an old man in a top hat, that there would definitely be six more weeks of winter.

I was not surprised by this event. I was surprised at the time limit. Six weeks sounds a lot shorter than I’m expecting. But I guess Phil the Groundhog is just about as reliable as our own local weathercasters.

I took Willow (puppy) in today to be Spade. The Webster’s dictionary says spay means to 1. Cut with the sword (or) 2. To sterilize by removing the ovaries. Either definition sounds painful. She came along in the car, innocent and fluffy, oblivious to our true destination and probably hoping for a stop at the DQ. She was sadly disappointed. The Vet is not a “good smell” place.

My dogs usually try to pull in the opposite direction when I tug them through the door. They aren’t interested in the free treats or stepping on the scale to see how big they’ve grown. They just want out of there as quickly as possible. I don’t blame them. I feel the same way about the dentist.

If you have a Humane Society calendar like I do, you probably know that February 24^th is national Spay day. Until they sent me this free calendar because they no doubt believed me to be a very humane sort of person, I did not know that there even was a holiday for Spaying. Are dogs supposed to celebrate this? In the same month that humans get heart-shaped cards and chocolates, puppies get surgery and a plastic cone around their head. Doesn’t seem fair. But there you have it, National Spay day in black and white.

I know I took Willow a little early, but I thought given that every dog in the neighborhood would want to get spade on the 24th, I thought I’d beat the rush. So, I have to pick the little evil one up in about an hour. Hopefully, she won’t hold a grudge. I do have leather couches and she does have very sharp teeth. Maybe if I share my chocolate.

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This coming Monday is Groundhog Day and I’m thinking, shadow or not, we’re in for a lot more winter. That’s good for snow-removal businesses or ski hills, but not so good for Mr. Gore and his entourage of crack sciencefictionists. Someday soon the people of this world are going to figure out that weather changes are normal and using those new-fangled curly lightbulbs won’t keep the icecaps from dripping.

Groundhog day is a favorite holiday of mine. Mostly because government employees don’t get the day off. Government employees tend to gripe about their jobs and their pay more than the average American, and yet they have more paid holidays, more benefits, and manage to work a lot less even when they’re on the clock.

It’s not surprising to hear recent news stories of Postal workers stuffing mail in storage lockers or dumpsters just so they don’t have to deliver it. I’m sure the thought of performing their job to the best of their ability must stress them out. The ones that actually do deliver quickly and efficiently park their trucks somewhere inconspicuous and hide for the rest of the day. They wouldn’t want their delivery route lengthened so they actually have to work the whole eight hours they’re getting paid for. It’s a conundrum. If you work hard, you get more work. If you’re lazy, you don’t. Postal workers don’t get fired. They get bigger attitudes. 

I know you’re probably saying, like my husband always reminds me, that the United States Postal Service is not actually an entity of the Federal government. Really? Then why the name? Why do they get all the same benefits? Why is it a federal offense to tamper with the US mail? Why does it never make money but always runs in the red and has to raise the price of stamps yearly? Why are they contemplating cutting mail delivery days instead of canning deadweight employees? Sounds like government to me.

Then there’s the Internal Revenue Service. If they actually hired competent people, anger wouldn’t course through the veins of accountants all over the country when they have to call and ask a question. When the IRS doesn’t know something they blame-shift, and when you press them for an answer they put you on hold and take a coffee break. They might come back on line and they might not. 

And last, but certainly not least in the gimme socialist state of D.C. are our own special representatives and senators who know how to spend like there’s no tomorrow. They give themselves raises even while telling their constituents that they “feel their pain” in this economy slump.

The Big O gave himself and his cohorts a grand old party with martinis and $100 a serving steaks after getting the “stimulus package” passed through the House of Reps. The next day he reprimanded those evil CEO’s on Wall Street who gave themselves bonuses while Americans suffered. Then he sauntered off to his two-hour exercise routine to contemplate what he would have at his next celebration when the Senate cow-towed to his wishes. But he is the king after all, so  “let us eat cake!”

There are some holidays government employees have no business getting paid for.  Labor Day is one of them. It’s ironic they feel they deserve such a day. Here is a quote from the president of the American Foundation of Labor: “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.”

Has any government employee contributed to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country? 

We have more people employed in government than in manufacturing and construction combined. Now Obama wants to “create” more government jobs for people who think getting paid to do as little as possible is the American dream. People who care more about themselves than the people they serve. It’s the Big O’s way of “redistributing the wealth” and turning our country completely into a socialist state.

Groundhog day is actually a special holiday for those of us not employed by the government. When we stick our necks out of the hole we’ve been pushed into, if the enormous shadow of government falls upon us, it means another thousand years of winter. Oh for that Global Warming to take effect. 

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