SOCIAL Security, that is.
Many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and we are being taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the federal government to “put away” for us. As we approach the presidential election, it is as important as it is angering to review some crucial facts about the history of Social Security, which was instituted by FDR (D), and for which the premiums we pay were increased by Ronald Regan (R).
Q: Which party took Social Security from an independent fund and put it the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Richard Nixon and the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
Q: Which party put a tax on Social Security?
A: The Republican Party.
Q: Which party increased the tax on Social Security?
A: The Republican Party with Dick Chaney casting the deciding vote.
Q: Which party decided to give money to immigrants?
A: That’s right, immigrants moved into this country and at 65 got SSI Social Security. The Republican party gave that to them although they never paid a dime into it.
Then, after doing all this, the Republicans turn around and tell us that the Democrats want to take our Social Security– and the worst part about it is that so many People believe the Republican lies!

Little picture, big picture. They both suck.
I’m back from three therapeutic days with the cutest little guy in the world, as he lead me around by the hand and names all of the things in his world. Truck. Trash. Plant. Water. Elbow. Cat. Tea. Cup. Handle. Elmo. Tigger…… And, of course, his favorite thing in the world, vacuum cleaner, which, in his language, sounds like “mwaamuu.”

I’m back, in a better frame of mind but not much better frame of reference. I’ve contacted a Home Care agency to set up an evaluation and figure out what we need to make this work. Mom is on her feet, shaky tho’ they might be, able to get dressed and sit at the table and eat. I find that I’m distracted from whatever I’m doing at the time, whether it’s something for her or something for me. My own back is acting up — probably because I really want to “act up” and I can’t. I want to be bitchy and mean and self-centered. But there’s already one too many of those around here.
The Big Bush Picture gets worse and worse as well.
From BuzzFlash.
In his book, “House of Bush, House of Saud,” journalist Craig Unger lays out a compelling case that the Bush family is so inextricably bound up with the Saudi royal family that it could not hold them responsible for the role that many Saudi Arabians played in the 9/11 day of terror.
[snip]
In essence, the Bush Cartel has sold Americans a bill of goods. They have diverted our attention from the major nation state supporting Al-Qaeda because they don’t want to attack their own business partners, including the Saudi who bailed Harken Oil out. He’s the same guy that was deeply involved with BCCI, the corrupt bank that Poppy Bush and many of his cohorts were associated with. There are plenty more like him. Just read Unger’s book.
[snip]
It is hard to put your arms around the gravity of Bush’s betrayal of our nation. Americans just don’t want to believe that anyone sitting in the Oval Office, even if unelected, could be a traitor to the interests of his own country.
But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the Bush family’s business interests and personal relationships take precedence over our interests as a nation.
Remember, the Bush Cartel censored 28 pages in Congress’s 9/11 reports. The subject of those 28 pages was reportedly the Saudi financing of terrorist front organizations and “charities.”
Unger, a respected journalist, concludes that Bush must believe that “the billionaire Saudi royals are somehow more worthy of the government’s concern than are the victims of 9/11.”
“As above, so below,”.
Certainly seems so from where I’m sitting, so tired of sucking it up.

I left my mother’s house at 17 never to go back for a good reason.
A naracissist is a narcissist is a narcissist. Right to the end.
She’s finally tossed that back-breaking straw.
How much does one owe the person who gave birth to you and who, over the years, has probably given you somewhere around $150,000 to help you out with various life situations?
I think four years of the full-time and loving caregiving I’ve provided, only to have to endure the kind of emotional abuse only a life-long narcissist knows how to inflict, is enough. My debt to her is paid in full.
Now what?
My brother is coming up tomorrow and I’m heading out to my daughter’s for a few days. After that, who knows what.
Don’t expect anything here for a while.

I’ve been imprisoned in my mother’s apartment all day, while she vomits, sleeps, gives orders in inaudible mumbles, and clangs my lovely Tibetan bell (which is the only one we have) for my attention — and I start making phone calls to locate home health care aides and talk to her doctor. Actually, it’s the stupid Darvocet that’s upsetting her stomach and making her feel woozy. No more of that stuff for her!
In between, I read Mary Oliver.
From the end of “In Blackwater Woods”:
[snip]
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
From the middle of “Entering the Kingdom”:
[snip]
The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees —
To learn something by seeing nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.
[snip]
One of my close woman friends is coming over to stay with my mom on Thursday evening so that I can go to the first session of the Advanced Poetry Workshop into which I was accepted. Whether I will be able to continue after that remains to be seen.
Mary Oliver writes of wild geese and peonies and moonlight and snakes and stones and egrets and more moons. Despite what Rage Boy might believe or not believe, moons are not just for witches.
From the end of “Strawberry Moon”:
[snip]
Now the women are gathering
in smoke-filled rooms,
rough as politicians,
scrappy as club fighters.
And should anyone be surprised
if sometimes, when the white moon rises,
women want to lash out
with a cutting edge?
And now, back to life as I live it, hoping my words will come with time.

What I want to do is sit here and escape into the blog. But my mom has a severely pinched nerve and is on major pain killers and pretty much wheelchair bound for the duration.
Gotta eat. Clean up my messes. Make sure she eats, takes her meds, doesn’t cry too much.
Gotta hang up my clothes. Do my dishes. Eat. Try not to cry too much.
No escaping now.

How do you become……
best blog in the state
something Great
a valuable public service
must-read source
in other words,
How do you become theonetruebix?
I ponder this question as I study his photo, which appeared on the front page of The Oregonian kitty-corner from Condoleeza Rice’s.
According to my personal and precise recollections, among other imaginative things, you have to
— come into this world vocalizing before you’re even all the way out of your mother
— get accepted into a Montessori pre-school when you’re 2.5 years old because you’re already reading
— become addicted to comic books and sci fi before you even start Kindergarten
— want to be a space moving van driver when you grow up
— from age 6 on, never be without a book of some sort in your back pocket
— dislike school but love to investigate and create
— grow up in a room that a set designer painted to look like the Star Trek bridge
— manage to get an excuse from gym class
— use one of the first Macs to write, publish, and distribute an underground newspaper while in high school
— never get a driver’s license or learn to drive
— get arrested on high school graduation night for shooting off firecrackers
— apply to only one college and get accepted based on your application essay
— get written up in the NY Times while in college for helping to stage a kind of “art is for the people” protest on campus
— churn out an underground newspaper in college
— quit college and spend some time in Texas, Minnesota, New York City, and San Francisco and do all the traveling by bus
— get written up by Rolling Stone as one of the dozen twenty-somethings trying to change the world
— wear black and shave your head
— convince a couple of girls you meet over the Internet to rent a truck and move you from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon
— use money that your grandfather left when he passed away to buy an internet cafe in Portland and then realize that you’re not cut out for the business world
— try many times and without success to get a job at Powell’s books
— keep shaving your head and wear hats
— spend a couple of years earning some money being a “nanny” and father-figure to a little boy/child of a working single-mom friend
— discover the joys of weblogging early in the game and convert your mother to the cause
— find your bliss — although not your fortune — as a citizen journalist and get profiled by The Oregonian.
Oh. And also
— give your mother heartburn, gray hairs, bad dreams, and lots of reasons to be plenty proud, amazed, and teary-eyed.
Check out
The One True b!X’s PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE: Open Thread For ‘Oregonian’ Story

Citizen e-journalist b!X is profiled today in a lengthy piece in The Oregonian.
[snip]His real name is Christopher Frankonis, but everyone who’s anyone in Portland political circles knows him simply as b!X. And during the past year and a half, this college dropout with no journalism experience has become the must-read source for those who follow city government.[snip]
But unlike most bloggers, who typically link to previously reported material and then offer their own analysis, b!X is unusual because he’s going out and doing his own legwork. Armed with a black spiral notebook, a laptop and a homemade press pass, the admittedly shy and soft-spoken Frankonis has become a familiar face at City Council hearings, county task force meetings and news conference crushes, quietly forging something that is one step beyond the Fourth Estate. [snip]
In fact, what some fans love about b!X (who, when he could afford cable, watched C-Span and the NASA channel incessantly) is his painstakingly thorough coverage of meetings and hearings that would hardly warrant two paragraphs in most newspapers — what City Commissioner Erik Sten, a faithful “Portland Communique” reader (“Everybody at City Hall reads b!X”), calls the “tidbits of news you don’t get other places.” [snip]
By the time the debate finished at 8:40 p.m., he had logged an 11-hour day. He had ridden six buses, downed five cups of coffee, smoked about 71/2 cigarettes and written one story. He had made no money. [snip]
Ya’ gotta love him!
Now help us find someone who loves what he does enough to pay him to do it!!