...Or at least until the conventions.
...But we'd like to state it loud and clear:
No way, NO WAY are Obama and Clinton a Dream Team.
They are, in fact, a Nightmare Team.
Because teaming these two is the easiest, fastest way to join everyone who doesn't want an African-American president with everyone who doesn't want a female president, and sending them scurrying over to McCain (that dillweed).
Remember 2004? Remember how everyone was completely fed up with George Bush and just wanted him the hell out of there? And remember how he WON????
News for you: most of the people who voted in that election are still around and voting. And it was the great "undecided" who put Bushie over that time--not dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. (There are plenty of Liberals and Conservatives around, but not too many of the party loyal on either side. The parties have just partied us out, and most people would rather vote their own opinions and not any party platform.
So those great Undecideds (who outnumber registered Republicans and Democrats put together) are going to decide this one too. And, in the aggregate, they're an impulsive crowd. They hear one thing and it sticks with them.
They know that Barack Obama is African-American. They know that Hillary Clinton is a woman. Those are pretty solid points; they don't need to hear any more.
And, while a conservative African-American would definitely vote for Obama, they might not want to vote for Clinton. A staunch feminist might be so unhappy about Hillary's treatment by the media (it hasn't been good, even here in New York) that they blame Obama and just stay home.
And then the Undecideds will vote for NotaBlackGuy AND NotThatBitch.
And welcome back to 2004. And all the hard work to do over again.
Herewith, a link to an essay in today's New York Times.
It's about abortion before Roe V. Wade, by a gynecologist who is now in his 80's.
It's not for the faint of heart. Women will lose their appetities. Men will curse me out and be unable to finish reading.
Yeah. Still. If you vote and you love women, you must read http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/views/03essa.html?ex=1370232000&en=a866eb4f19d8a37e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Here's where candidate McCain stands on abortion:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm
This from the editorial page of the New York Times, published today, Memorial Day 2008. The boldface is or own:
Mr. Bush and the G.I. Bill
President Bush opposes a new G.I. Bill of Rights. He worries that if the traditional path to college for service members since World War II is improved and expanded for the post-9/11 generation, too many people will take it.
So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.
Thankfully, the new G.I. Bill has strong bipartisan support in Congress. The House passed it by a veto-proof margin this month, and last week the Senate followed suit, approving it as part of a military financing bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Senate version was drafted by two Vietnam veterans, Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. They argue that benefits paid under the existing G.I. Bill have fallen far behind the rising costs of college.
Their bill would pay full tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for veterans who served in the military for at least three years since 9/11.
At that level, the new G.I. Bill would be as generous as the one enacted for the veterans of World War II, which soon became known as one of the most successful benefits programs — one of the soundest investments in human potential — in the nation’s history.
Mr. Bush — and, to his great discredit, Senator John McCain — have argued against a better G.I. Bill, for the worst reasons. They would prefer that college benefits for service members remain just mediocre enough that people in uniform are more likely to stay put.
They have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying — as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are — to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.
Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits — by 16 percent. The chance of a real shot at a college education turns out to be as strong a lure as ever. This is good news for our punishingly overburdened volunteer army, which needs all the smart, ambitious strivers it can get.
This page strongly supports a larger, sturdier military. It opposes throwing ever more money at the Pentagon for defense programs that are wasteful and poorly conceived. But as a long-term investment in human capital, in education and job training, there is no good argument against an expanded, generous G.I. Bill.
By threatening to veto it, Mr. Bush is showing great consistency of misjudgment. Congress should forcefully show how wrong he is by overriding his opposition and spending the money — an estimated $52 billion over 10 years, a tiniest fraction of the ongoing cost of Mr. Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
As partial repayment for the sacrifice of soldiers in a time of war, a new, improved G.I. Bill is as wise now as it was in 1944.
And now, Annie again.
Our first point is: the GI Bill is solid American gold, as great an achievement in its way as Magna Carta and running only slightly behind the Emancipation Proclamation (which latter was a way of destroying a system which never should have existed, so it's not quite the same thing).
One of the things which made the "Greatest Generation"--the generation which fought in World War II--as great as it was, was the way in which so many veterans managed to use their wartime experiences to advance the aims of this country. Having served as soldiers, the college training which they had earned outfitted them to serve again as scientists, clinicians, writers, builders, dreamers and financiers--you need both of those last two groups to make a society work.
So much of what we have today, the best parts of it, came from men and women who went to college (or vocational school or, like our Dad, graduate school) on the GI Bill.
64 years later, may people will tell you that a college degree is not what it used to be. It doesn't guarantee employment, much less financial success. College graduates need to work at least one job even if they are married to a person who is employed. Sometimes--frequently--when not?--you'll find your college graduates working behind the counter at Wal-Mart's or McD.
All right, it's tougher than it was. But we still don't know anyone who is able to move ahead without a college degree. Up where we live, people work for about ten to twelve dollars an hour if they don't have college. If they do, they earn fifteen to eighteen. And that's at the start of a career.
Some degrees have more earning power than others. It's still tough to open a Philosophy Store once you graduate with your BA in Philosophy. But we don't know of any RNs who are finding it hard to make a living. Same for plumbers and builders of all sorts. Physician Assistants are a growth industry, as are EMTs. And, although we cross our fingers and spit between our teeth when we say it, degrees in Social Work, from ASW to BSW to MSW, will have you picking up a paycheck every two weeks like clockwork.\
Higher education occurs during a time in your life when you're feeling hopeful, exploring new skills, and usually a school (college, university or whatever) will supply support and information,. The whole process of higher education should make you feel like you've got strengths and use can use them to improve your life. It makes you concentrate on your own skills and on what you really want to do with your life.
Many of the people who are now on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan chose the armed services because they felt they had no other choice. When they come home, the deserve all the choices and support they can get. The new GI Bill is the cornerstone of those choices, and we cannot lose it.
(PS--If you, like me, are less than a solid Democrat, and you've been looking at this-here weasel fight that's been going on between the man from Illinois and the--woman--from New York, and you've been saying Oh well, McCain was funny on SNL and any change is good as long as it isn't Bush--please note the boldface in this entry. McCain's an entitled, privileged, old white man who never sweated the rent even once in his life, and he doesn't understand or want to help anyone excepted entitled, privileged old white men who can do him a favor. So let's not do him one.
Look at us. It's a beautiful day, we should be doing all kinds of important things, and yet we are caught in a quandary.
Many people can get quandary-caught but we can waste more time at it than anyone we know.
We heard that Dwayne Johnson, AKA "The Rock" is going to appear in the new "Get Smart" movie. Now, Mr. Johnson (we only call him Dwayne in our dreams) is one motherlovin' handsome guy.
So we were wondering, will he follow in the footsteps of '60s Handsome Guy Dick Gaultier and play Max's sometimes-sidekick, Hymie the Robot?
We mean, would that be a riot or what?
It would COMPLETELY be a riot.
Because we said so, that's why.
Also, we started thinking about Victor Buono, because we saw Robin and the Seven Hoods the other night and it was a blast but we began questioning about Buono, who is in the movie. By 1964, when this seminal Sinatra flick was lensed, Victor B. was pretty much a running joke. Had he ever had a serious career?
No--Imbd tells us that he was always just funny for being funny. Like, big fat guy laughs at self. Just plain funny.
We also learned that he was gay. Now, tell the truth--are you really surpised?
(And we don't mean "strange" as "something other than missionary position with oral before".
We mean "strange" as in "with a woman who has bigger/smaller tits/cunt/waist/ass than your usual partner".
Maybe "who didn't go to college."
And possibly even "who smells different". Because all this is highly anthropological. We suppose.)
The problem is, we have lived in the subscription area of New York Magazine for almost our entire life (50 years, in case you're keeping track).
During this time New York has demonstrated its hyper-intelligent marketing plan over and over. Viz.: No New Yorker ever turned away from a magazine article about sex, health, sex, your child's possible intelligence, or sex.
For that reason, we have seen decades of articles like "Is Your Kid Having More Sex Than You Are?" and "Is Your Doctor Having More Sex Than You Are?" and it really just goes on and on.
In fact, we hate ourself for getting pulled into this thing. It's always the same, and it has as much to do with actual psycho-social research and current phenomena as Letters to Penthouse has to do with the sexual experiences of the average 15-year-old man living in Utah.
But here we are again and here we are, we mean ourself, Annie, getting all upset. Because, as per usual, the article is written from a pseudo-apologetic male point of view; the point of view which never has to ask what Elliot Spitzer was thinking, because it's constantly thinking the same thing itself.
It turns out that (according to the writer of the article and a highly-select group of slobs who acted as his source of quotations) men fantasize about having sex with women other than their wives. Turns out, too, that even men who love their wife and wouldn't be able to find their way out of the bathroom without her, would still enjoy spending every Wednesday night with Ashley Dupre or perhaps Beyonce, or just plain Other, anyone Other.
Personally, we feel that monogamy is a tight fit at the best of times and it doesn't come naturally to men or women. And it's no surprise that men wail about it louder than women, because a horny guy is an acceptable, manly guy, so there's no particular shame in being hard-up. (It is still really shameful for a woman to be horny. Anyplace except a sports bar an hour before closing.)
And anyway, according to this article, it's all the fault of women because women don't want sex.
This idea seems kind of poisonous to us. True, some people (men and women) need less sex than others, or want it less; hormones? Lack thereof? Whatever. But every time we go through the various responses on our LavaLife account, we read it over and over: "My wife stopped our sex life. My wife is no longer interested in sex. My wife hates sex, and she thinks there's nothing wrong with that."
If this is true, we're afraid it means that marriage very, very frequently--almost always?--makes a woman so angry, so enraged, that she has to stay out of her husband's bed (or keep him out of hers) lest she wring his neck for him as he sleeps.
Meanwhile, men pine for more sex, but honestly, we think they really just want fantasy. What middle-aged married man wants to listen to another woman talk about her mother, her children, her period or her peri-menopause? (And we don't think the fantasy is just woman-as-deaf/mute receptacle, either. She still has to talk enough to talk about him).
And now we, like every other woman in subscription range of New York Magazine, will take another handful of m&m's and settle down to watch "Gossip Girl". Which is one subject about which the magazine is always, astonishingly right.
We just left our internship (in the glow of a job well done, thank you) and now we are setting up our home office to give us all the quotidian comforts to which we are used.
No, we cannot recreate Rhonda's penetrating, though positive, daily scan of our wardrobe and personal grooming choices ("that top's really cute but the headband has to go!") nor can we conjure Regina's funny quips ("If this 'social work' thing doesn't work out for me, do you think I'd do okay at pole dancing?")
And we aren't even going to try to reproduce Mr. B's lessons in psychological warfare ("Come into my office, please." "Did I do something wrong?" "Do you THINK you did something wrong?")
We're going to miss them terribly, and the whole little family on the corner of Hot and Mess in downtown Newburgh.
But we did manage to set up our office computer to give us daily reads on our favorite comic strips, and this we manage to do on our own laptop, and it looks pretty good.
The funny thing is that we found this in one of the strips. It's a very minor character but it looks just like our ex-husband, Bruce Newman:
And we just felt like sharing it with you.
Run, Bruce! Run!
We went to see Iron Man with our Beautiful Daughter yesterday. It was a terrific movie, well worth the $6.50 (matinee in the hinterlands) we paid to see it.
Perhaps you know that the plot hinges, as much as it actually does hinge, on the exploits of a playboy/munitions manufacturer named Tony Stark.
(One way you know this is fiction is that no one, in real life, is a playboy/munitions manufacturer. We meet lots of people who are adjunct professors/probation officers or telemarketing operators/poets, but that's really different.)
Anyway, Tony gets the crap ripped out of him with shrapnel and a kindly coronary specialist who happens to be wandering around the place hooks him up to an electromagnetic device which keeps the shrapnel from working it way into his heart. At first the device has to be hooked up to a car battery, which is one of the heaviest plot devices we've heard of anywhere, but then Tony has a go at it (with a box of lug nuts and the tweezers from his Swiss Army knife) and before you know it he has this little round thing which screws into a sort of drain pipe in his chest. As such:
The round thing is actually seen as the little circle of lights on his chest
We found this very distracting because it reminded us of something we paid for last week. The plumber called it a Chromium Sink Strainer
But if that's all it was, why did it cost at least as much as Tony's electromagentic shrapnel thingie? Huh? Huh?
The trouble with plumbers is, they never expect us to read their bills.
"Peaches" to his pals
We don't really mean to say anything against General David Howell Petraeus, who is what the British used to call "Supremo" of the American forces in Iraq.
By all accounts, the General is as intelligent and conscientious as a scholar, as sensitive as a therapist,and as brave and courageous as a career soldier ought to be.
Also, almost nothing in his speech or bearing makes the hairs on the back of our neck stand up and wave in terror. And really, that's more than you can say for most of the Army people, not to mention the political conservatives, we know.
But the name. Maybe we've read I, Claudius one time too many, but doesn't "Petraeus" sound like the jumped-up plebe who, through plotting and conniving and a little old-fashioned poisoning, becomes Chief Big Shot of the Senate and drops his old name of Ameus Probiscus and demands to be called (intake of breath) PETRAEUS?
Possibly even PETRAEUS the PROTECTOR or PETRAEUS the TALL or even PETRAEUS the Eater of Rhubarbs? Something self-boosting like that.
We might also be thinking of the kind of fellow generally played by Burt Lancaster or Orson Welles, who everyone thinks is perfectly splendid and one-hundred-percent American except for that funny name, and then he turns out to want to RULE THE WORLD???
Or a minor Star Wars character? "Ah, Commander Petraeus. We're so glad you stopped by for Anakin's bris. What news from Romulus Metro?"
We're a lottle nervous.
Not every horse understands our sense of humor.
Start spreadin' the news. We're leavin'...around the middle of August.
"Did somevun mention California?"
Yes, friends, it's true. La Sknolnique, our lifetime BFF and Santa Cruz's fairest citizeness, has finally found a place in her busy schedule to hang out with us and play hostess in her ravishing two-bedroom home. We added to the fun by figuring out that we can actually leave New York a week before this, and stay in San Francisco, a thriving "city" as they measure such things in the state of California.
(On a completely other subject, our Dad used to refer to this guy as "Cohen, the Barbarian.")
Anyway, this ought to be very exciting. The last time we went to Cali, in was in the mid-80's and we went to Los Angeles on business. We were just beginning to get into sushi and we ate so much of it we actually went into sodium shock from an excess of soy sauce. All the way back across the continent we cried salty tears down the front of our neon-colored minidress with matching tights (we were a firm adherent of business-appropriate dress, NOT) and made our spiky gelled hair stand on end even more than it did already.
Come to think of it, that was also the last time we were on a plane. 1988. Because after the baby thing and the divorce thing and the nervous breakdown thing and oh, just in general the way we spent the past twenty years of our life, we needed air flight and exotic vacations as little as we needed recreational drugs, and for the same reason: why pay for big, colorful, destructive FUN when it keeps happening right in your own cerebellum? Chronic depression, the struggle to find the right anti-depressant and an abusive former spouse can all tire a girl out, and we just never needed to leave our own area code to have a good time
We hear air travel is very unpleasant now. From what JC tells us, it is every bit as much fun as impetigo, but conducted entirely in business clothes. That is where we have the laugh on him. Ha! Ha! Because we intend to travel in a bathing suit. A bathing suit with pockets. And ever so many anxiety meds.
We're getting ahead of ourself. The other thing about going to California is that we get a chance to travel with La Skolnique again. 
Ourself when young. Or possibly la Skolnique. We looked very much alike.
Our old friend, hailing as she does from the La Chow tribe which once camped in its plenitude on the shores of Sheepshead Bay, is ready-made for life on "the road". No sooner had her mother, Daughter of the Moon Nakomis (or, in her native tongue, "Poil") taken an itinerant trapper named Fast Harry la Skolnique as husband, then the two set out foraging and eventually wound up in Hewlett, Long island, where they raised cats for fun and moccasins. 
The home-folks come out and wished us Bon Voyage. Front Row, R-L: Phil, Phil's girlfriend, "Maw" Berrol, unidentified Galitzianer cousin. Front row: JC thought it was a costume party and came as a sheep. Or was that Phil's girlfriend?
Skolnique herself is no different, being the sort of person who is never happy unless losing her luggage in a train station which has no bathroom or English-speaking personnel.
A kind of mad glint enters her eye when travel is proposed..."There's no real hotel there, you understand, but you can address 3000 itinerant shepherds on The Work, and at night you just wrap yourself in a bit of old lanolin and gaze at the stars!" some organizational type will murmur, and, before you know it, guide books are being bought, money is being exchanged, and La Skol has three different letters of introduction to prominent local craps players.
"Is there a latke in sight, Skolnick?" we would ask, hopelessly. "A dairy restaurant? What are we going to do for television? Do they get 77 WABC?" "Oh, don't be such a TOURIST!" she would shout, and before we knew what was happening we were schlepping a fifteen-pound rucksack and a duffel bag big enough to hold the entire Von Trapp family down some misbegotten tunnel in the Paris sewer system. Come to think of it, the Skolnick always did carry a Sound-of-Music vibe in our European travels. "The hills are ALIVE!!!" she would trill, pointing at an odd Alp or two in the distance. "Doe a deer, a female deer!" she sang merrily as we slogged through various parts of the Black Forest. And if every tray of pastry in Paris did not get a chorus of "These are a few of my favorite things," we knew she was running a fever.
Even now she's talking about getting her passport renewed. We haven't used a passport (in our right name) for anything since 1976.
We're getting nervous.
