(don't forget you can click on pics to enlarge them... xoxo)

Trying to get my brain around the sense of paralysis I detect across the nation so far: you see the signs of decay and despairing disrepair everywhere, hear it in the bitter tone of voice on the radio and in roadside eateries, the listlessness and fatigue in the faces of older people in Cracker Barrels. You see it in the sheer size of rotund americans, killing themselves with bad food, a slow suicide of sorts. You can't call it anything else really as the information is clearly out there, how to be healthier. So the paralysis, mental and physical, is willful, voluntary, and heartbreaking.

The smug, cutting voices on talk radio, like the lash of a whip, as they diss the president (and you do sense they wouldn't be so bold in their disrespect if he were white) and insist that government is the problem... still offering up that as the answer... counting on the fact we've forgotten that we are the government ("by the people, of the people?) or are supposed to be, and that if the government isn't performing to our liking that it's our fault for not paying closer attention for the last 30 years. The talk radio people are confident their audience isn't awake and informed enough to connect the dots, to blame themselves for voting for these millionaire clowns, especially those on the right, although blame for ineffectuality certainly lies on both sides of the isle.

The radio mendacitors know their listeners are tired, scraping by (thanks to Reaganomics, RHINOplasty in Congress -few real Republicans left - and ridiculous, costly war mongering and profiteering by the few) and use people's faith in a reward in the afterlife to manipulate them. It is unforgiveable. I actually heard one talk show host claim "the American people don't want" the president's proposals (single payer or a public option) for health care reform (yet Obama was clear that was his first priority if elected -- and they elected him!).

So this is just a baldface, shameful lie. According to every poll taken (and it does depend on how you ask the question) nearly 3/4 of the country thinks a single payer, government sponsored system like the VA or quasi-single payer like Medicare would be the best, most cost effective thing for all of us. So if you listen to that lie on the radio in rural ARkansas, trusting that a person who had a radio show, loves his momma, and goes to church wouldn't lie over our airwaves, and what are you to think? That you are not mainstream if you aren't against your own president; you aren't a real american, part of the majority! This is the opposite of what constituted a real american during the Bush years, isn't it? Then we were told to believe anything he told us or we were unpatriotic. And here's the thing: a well informed person doesn't need anyone else to tell him or her what constitutes patriotic behavior.

I didn't vote for this president (I have voted for the same guy for the last several elections to no avail, but he was the only one I felt consistently told me the truth), but I wouldn't dream of disrespecting him. I might make fun of him, and I think political satire is essential in a democracy, but I wouldn't diss a man or woman who held that office in earnest, because then you are dissing the office, and then you are in dangerous, in this case racist, territory. Obama should probably get some award for patience. It is a virtue after all.

The long and short of it is: I just despise a lie. It's the one thing that will infuriate me beyond reason. Like Carlotta sez: "If you have to lie to make your point, your point ain't worth takin."

Ok, i'll get down off my soap box now and get back to the business of breakfast here at Mary's Lonesome Dove Inn. Oh, Larry, we do love you so, we girls. One thing, your last couple books did seem inordinately preoccupied with one particular activity, as were the Loop Groupers. Now I'm as lusty as anybody, but what's with that? A rage against the dying of the light? Trying to shake things up with the readers? Put them off? Turn them on? Is that really what's on your mind, or is it just your take on what's on America's mind when they should be paying more attention to what's goin on in DC?

Just wonderin....