Draft #1
Old Lady Rap-Back
I see you
don’t see me
see you dismiss
the miss I used to be
my softness sagging now
my curves
gone to middle thick
I see your gaze
doesn’t stick
on my face
heavy with time’s lines
life’s lies
fate’s tricky licks
you think you got it
rough never enough?
you think that’s new?
my skin went tough
haulin’ my mother lode
up those Sisyphus hills
and as for fuckin’?
I was mouthing it
long before your sorry ass
first passed a gas
but I see you,
hear your fast talk
and I walk
from your easy lines
to make a choice of voice
that says more, more
than you
think
you
know
© Elaine Frankonis 2/05

I’d like to retire there and do nothing,
or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms:
look through binoculars, read boring books,
old, long, long books, and write down useless notes,
talk to myself, and, foggy days,
watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light.
Elizabeth Bishop from “The End of March”

There’s hope on the horizon with Howard Dean at the helm of the Democratic National Committee. The first thing we have to do is stand up for what we believe in, Dean asserted in his acceptance speech.
And, at the recent DNC convention, Nancy Pelosi pretty much laid out the difference in what the Democrats and Republicans believe — as the following, taken from DailyKos— reports:
To see the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, just look at the budget the President sent to Congress this week. Democrats believe that the budget should be a statement of our national values. But does the President’s budget keep faith with the values Americans hold dear? [delegates: NO!] You be the judge.
Is it a statement of our American value of fairness to give tax breaks to people making more than $500,000 a year while drastically cutting children’s health care? [delegates: NO!]
Is it a statement of our value of opportunity to give tax cuts to the wealthy few while underfunding Head Start, No Child Left Behind and student loans and grants? [delegates: NO!]
I didn’t think so.
Is it a statement of our commitment to security to give those tax cuts while severely cutting funding for the community police and local firefighters who are vital to our homeland security? [NO!]
I didn’t think so.
Is it a statement of our respect for those who serve in uniform to give tax cuts to the wealthy while restricting health care benefits for veterans? [NO!]
The President’s budget is not only financially reckless; it is morally irresponsible. Instead of being a statement of our values, it is a blueprint for financial disaster. When President Clinton was president, we had three years of surpluses. Those surpluses allowed us to save Social Security first. President Clinton, under his leadership, we repaid nearly $400 billion back into the Social Security Trust Fund. By contrast, President Bush’s reckless tax cuts for the wealthy have driven us deeply into debt, and his answer is to raid Social Security first.
Much discussion has been going on about how we strengthen Social Security; well, you can begin by paying back the money you took out of Social Security to give tax cuts.
Now, he wants to make matters even worse: he wants to privatize Social Security. The President knows that privatization isn’t popular, however, but instead of changing his plan, he just changed the name: now, he’s calling it personal accounts. He can soften the language, but that doesn’t soften the blow to seniors, the disabled, widows and orphans. Democrats recognize that Social Security does face a challenge. We are prepared to meet that challenge with ideas that are entrepreneurial, innovative, and will indeed strengthen Social Security. But we will not let President Bush turn this proud legacy of the New Deal into a raw deal for millions of Americans. Democrats insist that any changes to Social Security must not add to the deficit, must be fair, and must not slash benefits.
So, the big picture begins to glimmer with hope.
Not so much for the little picture, however, as I sit around trying to get rid of a bout of bronchitis and sinus infection while my mother goes through bouts of panic, paranoia, and plaintiveness.
I’ve got a massage appointment for next week — a little help for the little picture.
Meanwhile, a better big picture, for me, depends on Dean and the Democrats.

Even though I have a million things to take care of now that my mom is back across the hall from me and our lives continue to deteriorate, I just have to share some stuff about the Social Security debate that I unearthed in response to comments from Tim here.
The following are exerpts, and it’s worth reading the entire acticles:
From the Chicago Tribune:
Q: So how would Bush’s plan be different from traditional Social Security?
A: Bush’s plan, like Social Security as it originally was envisioned, seeks to maintain an income floor but at the same time give workers choices that might generate wealth. In 2011, when the plan would take full effect, workers who were born after 1949 would have the option of annually investing as much as 4 percent of their wages, to a maximum of $1,000, in an individual account. The other 8 percent of their wages would be invested in the current system. Workers 55 and older would remain in the current system. (Under the gradual phase-in, workers born between 1950 and 1965 can participate in 2009, and those born before 1979 can participate in 2010.) Over time, the amount that could be invested in the accounts would grow slowly, by a little more than $100 a year.
Q: Can I use the money for any kind of investments?
A: No. Under the plan, you would choose from a small number of diversified funds, all relatively conservative. They would be administered by the government and modeled after the Thrift Savings Plan now available to federal workers. The standard option would be a “life cycle” fund, which reduces the percentage invested in stocks as you get closer to retirement.
Q: What happens when I retire?
A: Upon retirement, workers would be required to trade in their investment portfolios for an annuity so that a combination of traditional benefits and their annuity payments would meet the poverty level, which was about $11,400 for a couple older than 65 in 2004. But if that income stream is higher, under Bush’s proposal, retirees could use the additional money in their accounts as they wished, such as continuing to invest, increasing the size of the annuity payment or taking a lump-sum payment.
Q: What if you decide that you don’t like individual accounts after you started investing?
A: You can choose to redirect the money to Treasury bonds, which are the investment vehicle of the traditional Social Security system. They currently earn about 3 percent a year. A worker opting for individual accounts gains if he makes more than that 3 percent rate and loses if he falls below that level.
Q: Would Bush’s plan give me more in benefits than the current system?
A: That’s unclear. It would depend on whether the performance of the investments over time exceeds the benefit reductions necessary to bring the traditional system into balance. Under a variety of scenarios, the benefit cuts could be dramatic, but administration officials also say that the current level of benefits is unsustainable in any case. Workers can choose to stay in the traditional system, but the White House has said those benefits will be reduced by an unknown amount.
Q: What if the stock market swoons and my total benefit is below the poverty level?
A: The administration has not addressed that scenario. Under some proposals, there can be a poverty benefit. But at the same time, officials do not want to reward bad investment choices.
Q: Wouldn’t creating individual accounts require more government debt?
A: Yes. If the accounts are funded out of existing payroll taxes, as the president proposed, then creating the accounts would require Social Security to tap the trust funds even sooner. That is because the system would need to keep paying current beneficiaries while also funding nascent accounts for people who probably will not retire for decades. The borrowing costs of Bush’s plan would be more than $1 trillion in the first 10 years of a fully phased plan, and then $3.5 trillion in the next 10 years. The White House believes the costs will even out over the next 75 years–that any debt incurred will be balanced by gains later–but in the short term the country’s debt burden would rise. The costs would really begin to soar about the time Social Security is projected to begin withdrawing money from the trust funds.
Q: Are there other ways to deal with a financing gap in Social Security?
A: In the past, payroll taxes have been increased and benefits have been reduced (such as raising the retirement age). Bush has ruled out any increase in taxes. Participants in an individual-account program would be required to accept some benefit cuts to help reduce the transition costs, but the administration has not revealed the size or scope of those cuts. Administration officials acknowledge that individual accounts themselves would not solve the long-term financing gap in Social Security, so other, still-unannounced steps would be needed…
And, I suspect, that’s only a hint of the landmines that will be buried and waiting if Bush’s plan succeeds.
From CNN:
For two decades, the Social Security system has been creating a “surplus,” and that reserve is widely thought to be available to make up for shortfalls projected to begin in 2018, when more money has been promised to beneficiaries than will be taken in through payroll taxes.
But that surplus isn’t a pile of cash waiting to be used. In fact, the money — $1.5 trillion plus interest to date — has already been spent.
In accordance with the law, the extra money Social Security takes in is loaned to the U.S. Treasury, in exchange for which it receives special-issue Treasury bonds. The actual cash goes into the government’s general revenue pool.
The bonds are special because, unlike other government bonds, they can’t be bought or sold on the open market, and they can be redeemed at any time at face value.
But just like other government bonds, the special-issue Treasurys pay interest and are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, which has never defaulted on its debt.
When Social Security looks to tap those special securities, starting in 2018, the government will have to come up with a way to pay the money….
SO, AGAIN, IT’S NOT THE WAY SOCIAL SECURITY IS SET UP. IT’S THE WAY CERTAIN ADMINISTRATIONS SHORT-SIGHTEDLY MISDIRECTED THE SUPLUS FUNDS MEANT TO SUPPORT IT THROUGH THE BOOMERS’ RETIREMENTS.
[And now, back to dealing with immediate crises. Stay tuned for a report on how Alice Walker’s new novel is keeping my spirit fueled — despite the Publishers Weekly review.]

just got home after a week and a half at daughter’s (to help her after surgery) and then grandson got very ill with high fever (waiting now to hear what today’s blood tests show) and I had to stay longer than I planned and my mother wasn’t happy staying where she was staying while I was away, so I leave daughter and sick grandson and go and get her and bring her home where the Crone is welcomed home by over a THOUSAND emails, 183 noted as Spam by Norton, 15 automatically deleted by my Message Rules, and, I’m sure, another 750 sitting in my inbox that are Spam and that I’m going to have to deal with — after making my mom supper and the having a shot or two of Absolute.
bleh!

SpongeBush SquarePants!

SpongeBob, as his song goes,
“lives in a pineapple under the sea/
absorbent and yellow and porous is he!”
SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./
absorbent and shallow and porous is he!
Love that Maureen Dowd, quoted from here, which I can’t get to, but I can get to here — where she ends her Op Ed piece with:
Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the worst-case scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.
Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Cheney and the neocons seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn’t Richard Perle remind you of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward Tentacles?)
The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of trouble spots.
Even if he’s a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.
Her clever comparison is in response to conservative Christian leader and gay marriage opponent, Dr. James Dobson, claiming that a “pro-homosexual video” — starring SpongeBob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy — was set to go to elementary schools to promote a “tolerance pledge,” including tolerance for differences of “sexual identity.
Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob beats the pants off the competition, was flummoxed: “It’s a sponge for crying out loud. He has no sexuality.”
Then there’s the one about the guy that the Bushies put into a high-level position regarding the issue of climate changes, in order to replace the previous such person who was viewed as too strident in support of science saying climate change is real. The new guy installed by those drivel and dung Bushies just made public a statement saying that climate change is real and in need of
immediate action.
As reported on Common Dreams,
A memorandum from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 specifically asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr Robert Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank, “replaced at the request of the US”. The Bush administration then lobbied other countries in favor of Dr Pachauri – whom the former vice-president Al Gore called the “let’s drag our feet” candidate, and got him elected to replace Dr Watson, a British-born naturalized American, who had repeatedly called for urgent action.
But this month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former head of India’s Tata Energy Research Institute, himself issued what top United Nations officials described as a “very courageous” challenge.
He told delegates: “Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.”
Actually, we have four more years during which we’re going to keep losing on just about every American front. All going down the drain, except, of course, what SpongeBush soaks up for his (and his friends’) own benefit.
Maybe it’s time to think about moving to the Urkraine.
His face still deeply scarred from massive dioxin poisoning during the presidential campaign, Mr. Yushchenko said that he would work toward making Ukraine an open and honest nation. He also said Ukraine would now be a country in which its leaders serve the people, rather than rule them.

But before I get to explain the packing, I discovered that if you Google “Kalilily Time,” you get access to 8,240 references to something I wrote here. Holey Moley!! (as we teach my grandson to say instead of what we say when he’s not around). I guess that’s because I’ve been blogging now for three and half years, with only breaks for short vacations. That’s a lot of words. A lot of dissent. I might well be the oldest living, longest/continuously posting blogger in the world. Or maybe not.
I went and Googled myself because I sent an email to an Albany blogger whom I just discovered via b!X. (I don’t know why he keeps track of his former home town bloggers, but there’s a lot I don’t know about that offspring of mine.) Anyway, I figured that since I don’t know any Albany bloggers, I’d send an email — which I did. Then I wondered if that Albany blogger might just Google me to see who the hell I am. Heh. I guess I do get around the blogosphere!
Oh, and the packing. I am the poster child for the Sandwich Generation. On Tuesday, I take my mother downstate to my brother’s, where she will stay for a week while I go to my daughter’s in Massachusetts to help out for a week while she recuperates from surgery. Packing up my mother is like packing up a toddler, only instead of toys, it’s meds. (And toddlers — especially if it’s one’s grandson — are a lot more fun.) Then, before we leave I have to go through..”got your glasses?….got your cane?….got your gloves?….bottle of water?….keys?….. yadayadayada
I also have to set up everything for my cat and make arrangements from a friend to come over and check to make sure that chubby familiar hasn’t freaked out from being totally alone for so long a stretch.
I know that there are women who do all of these things and still hold down jobs. I don’t know how they do it.
I probably couldn’t do it even now without this blog in which to rant, pant, and decant.
Back to packing. After I make supper. Mom doesn’t eat unless I make sure she does.
(Groan. As I write this, I think of my two retired friends now in Myrtle Beach, where it’s a whole lot warmer than Albany’s single digits. Feh!)

From Factcheck.org (a non-partisan consumer advocate effort)
President Bush and Vice President Cheney have told audiences that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if nothing is done to fix the current system. But they fail to mention that this is over the course of the “infinite future.” Over the next 75 years — still practically a lifetime — the shortfall is projected to be $3.7 trillion.
The “infinite” projection is one that the American Academy of Actuaries says is likely to mislead the public into thinking the system “is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated,” and therefore should not be used to explain the long-term outlook.
Heh. And even better than that, the following from an email:
The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of sexually transmitted disease. This disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhea lecthim (pronounced “gonna re-elect him”).
Many victims have contracted it after having been screwed by the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Ashcroft administration for the past four years and failing to have taken adequate measures to protect themselves.
Cognitive sequellae {sic — and I couldn’t find a definition] of individuals infected with Gonorrhea lecthim include:
Antisocial personality disorder traits; delusions of grandeur with a messianic flavor; cognitive perseveration; inability to incorporate new information into a rigid idie fixee; xenophobia; inability to accept responsibility for actions; and a strong propensity for categorical, all-or-nothing thinking.
This epidemic is out of control. MMWR reports it has already resulted in brain death in over 59,000,000 Americans. Excessive exposure to trailer parks, country gospel music, and yellow ribbon asphyxiation are thought to be contributing factors. New CDC Director Archbishop Burke has ordered a halt to research into the disease after determining the disease is incurable and is merely God’s will.
Apparently, however, at least 55,000,000 of us have natural immunity and are poised to lead a brief, but exciting life right after the rapture begins and our afflicted fellow Americans ascend to their eternal reward.
[Editor’s Note: I put in the links. I also apologize for the negative associations overlayed on trailer parks, country gospel music, and yellow ribbons, but the whole piece was just too good to ignore. And it sure does seem like those associations with the recent election are valid nonetheless.]

b!X and his Portland Communique made the Wall Street Journal!

I’m refusing to watch the ritual ending the America I have known and loved.