Pelosi Children Using Air Force Jets For Personal Travel

If you aren’t already angry at the arrogance of the current Democrat administration, this will get you there.

Meet the Pelosi family! Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Judicial Watch uncovered thousands of pages of travel documents related to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s use of military aircraft.

What hasn’t been revealed so far is that military aircraft are being used to shuttle Pelosi’s kids and grandkids between DC and San Francisco without any Congressional representatives even onboard! Put simply, the United States Air Force is serving as a multi-billion dollar chauffeur- and baby-sitting service for Nancy Pelosi’s kids and grandkids — presumably because commercial travel is beneath the families of the autocrats.

But this couldn’t be a waste of resources because the U.S. military really isn’t engaged in any other significant activities around the world.

The quoted website has the documents to prove it – the Pelosi children have been jetting around the world in US military aircraft. Not even with their mother, the Speaker of the House. Just themselves. Stylin’ at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Check out the original post and get mad.

Spying The Mommy Blogs

I’m kind of loving the Mommy Blogs lately. I don’t have a damn thing in common with any of the women who write them, and I find the kids frankly annoying, but I just love their appreciation for the moments. The fractions. The days. The hours. They remind me to breathe. And they remind me that there are lives, some of them quite happy, in the houses that I pass every day on my way to run, or wherever I’m going that seems so important.

My favorite right now is Joy Unexpected. If this woman came up to me and slapped me, I’d have no idea who she is, yet I know her daughter farted and told her to upload it to YouTube, which is just awesome. There’s something just hilarious and post-modernly strange about that. Knowing the details but not the big picture, which I think is the opposite of how we get to know each other in real life.

And by the way, does anyone even meet in real life anymore? Frankly I’m starting to wonder. I went to Starbucks the other day and honestly did not notice even another person in the place. But if someone leaves a comment on my blog, I know. This, plus the fact that I’m just terribly anti-social these days, makes me wonder if human beings maybe were not meant to be all up in each other’s faces. Maybe safely behind a keyboard is where we belong.

I think the reason I started reading the Mommy Blogs is because I was beginning to feel like there was no such thing as real life anymore. It was all political opinion and argument. I love political opinion and arguing, but there must be more. Of course, people have families and real lives. Since I don’t, I sort of forget that is the thing that is missing. That’s why catching bin Laden is important and why jobs numbers are more than a chart in some bureaucrat’s office. And that life is nice to glimpse, sometimes, even from far away.

There’s a stupid side to the Mommy Blogs too. Some are just ridiculous – just as there are ridiculous political blogs – and some are lame. It is silly to see 36-year old women fighting on blogs about whose kid did what at the soccer game. That, I can skip. But the good ones manage to make me smile, even through a little envious sadness.

I will never have what they have. I don’t mean children, exactly… or “just” children. I mean something larger. That life – the life we’re taught to expect.

I have something else. In many ways, what I have is better than anything they have. But sometimes, when the light strikes the golden memory chords of my psyche and I suddenly remember I’m supposed to have a family, a house on a suburban street, a husband.

It is so easy to forget, to simply become someone for whom those things are not accessible. It happened so gradually to me that I didn’t even realize it. I do not dream of that life – it is like dreaming of being a cat. It’s too foreign to me, I don’t even know where I would start.

In my day-to-day existence, I forget that people actually have that and that I am supposed to want it. I even forget that I was, in fact, built to want it with chemicals and body parts and propensities for caregiving hardwired into my body, factory-installed, right out of the box.

I just forgot to live that life. It is as far away as a mining outpost on Mars. I can call to it but it would never hear me.

I have this life.

I am content here. There is good air to breathe.

But once in a while, I allow myself to peek in on the other kind of life, the kind that is more common and better understood by most people: the sweetness of it is instinctive. To glimpse and wonder what happened to the girl who grew up thinking that would be mine, and was replaced by the person who can only experience it like looking through a snowglobe.

A dazzling, beautiful snowglobe. I just can’t get inside it.

I thank the people who share, who so graciously attempt to communicate with someone who is fundamentally an outsider. Such graciousness, in other times, would be called a blessing.

My Old Business Card

Missing The District

I’m working on my second novel, a sequel to the one on submission. I’m 140 pages in, but since I don’t write chronologically, I’m not sure exactly how close to finished I am. The book, like the first, takes place in Washington, D.C., and as I write, I’m reminded of all the little things I loved about the place.

I miss it terribly. I miss it every day.

Oh pretentious swamp of a city, with it’s silly cobblestone roads and the snoots of Georgetown. The 25 year old men and women with impossibly serious jobs. The snow. The sun. The humidity which actually rivals Houston’s.

I remember playing frisbee with a group of friends at the Washington Memorial – one of my favorite places to be. I remember driving to Manassas often, and walking through the sodden ground of a bloody Civil War battle. I remember the Metro – and how clean and small and cute it looked compared to New York’s subway. So many small things come back to me now. As I write, I’m remembering, and missing, and shifting between fiction and reality. I think one of the great pleasures of fiction is you get a chance to do things differently, to correct the past. You get to remember the smell of fresh, clean Atlantic air, and the snow… the people. Lastly, the people. Some I’d rather forget forever, but whom I can not.

I remember I dated a guy – one date – who was a Top Gun pilot. He was an insufferable jerk. I asked him, “what was it like to fly a plane like that?”

“Busy,” he answered.

I always remembered that. I plan to use that in fiction somewhere. Busy. It was the perfect answer.

He’s one of the people I’d forget if I could – but he gave me “busy” and I guess it was worth it.

For someone like me, who does not have a family, the idea of a “hometown” makes up for so much. It gives me a place to miss, to return to for my fiction. It is the place I became the person I would write about.

I revisit the ones I miss in fiction. I draw them with words, and they do all the right things, and I respond in all the right ways.

Dark wind crosses the wide spaces between us. They were once real, and now they’re people I manipulate on the page. All that space between us… it allows for such easy text.

My love was real. It lasts. It crosses the dark planetary coast. And light…well, light does travel.

SOTU Predictions

“Let me be clear” will be uttered at least a dozen times.

The word “I” will be uttered more than 100 times.

The camera will lovingly fawn over Michelle Obama’s arms.

The word “win” or “victory” will not be uttered at all.

“Terrorist” will not be said at all.

Obama will take credit for “saving the economy” more than ten times.

Obama will introduce a second stimulus.

Obama will refer “the past eight years” at least twice.

Obama will reference the win in Massachusetts but will not speak Scott Brown’s name – and he will completely miss the point of the win.

Obama will mention Haiti as an example of America’s generosity.

Obama will mention “sacrifice” at least twice.

Obama will vilify the banks.

Obama will mention “health care reform”.

And I will need a drink.

iPad… At Last

And the angels did sing.

iSlate More Anticipated Than SOTU

I am more eager to see the iSlate this afternoon than Obama’s State of the Union address. In fact, I do not know if I will be able to sit through the First Poser’s address at all (and speculation mounts: will he be wearing a necktie for this occasion?) He seems to feel that one can “pivot” to populism, like it’s a position one can claim despite having no credentials at all.

The iSlate or iPad or whatever they’re going to call it, however, will live up to its hype. I’m dying to see it. And I’m dying to buy it. Steve Jobs for President! Jobs, at least, knows how to give a speech.

Geaux Saints

Here in Houston, we are fortunate to have a great cajun restaurant, little more than a crawfish shack, actually, named Ragin Cajun. The food is so good – perfectly, lightly fried shrimp po boy sandwiches, scrumptious efftoufe with thick, complex roux, dark bayou-worthy gumbo, hush puppies with jalapeno peppers mixed in the batter, corn on the cob spiced with pepper and paprika…and for those who eat crawfish, giant, heaping plastic buckets of them. I’ve never eaten them, but people spread out newspaper over the picnic tables and sure look blissed out as they eat.

I was craving the shrimp ettoufe and hushpuppies. It’s my thing – I treat myself when I need to taste home. I was raised in the New Orleans, and I know my Cajun food. Shrimp ettoufe is just the thing to take me back. While waiting for my order to go, I was sitting at one of the picnic tables, writing an email to my boyfriend. An older gentleman was
talking to someone else about the Saints, and I searched my brain, trying to remember if the Saints were football, basketball… or perhaps some combination? As I was typing, the gentleman, who was the manager, approached me. “You know how to use those?”

I said, “Yes, sir, I sure do.”

He said, “My grandson is always using those and I don’t know how.”

I decided to be friendly. I am rarely friendly. Usually I plug my iPod into my ears, keep my glasses on, and make sure I convey the fact that I am not really looking for new friends, or even just a polite hello. But today, being at the Ragin’ Cajun, I felt happy, so I said, “Those Saints you were talking about…”

“Oh yeah, the Saints!” His face lit up.

“Those are football?”

“Yeah they were playing for the Super Bowl!”

The joy in his face was just adorable. I was smiling like an idiot, loving his enthusiasm. “So, that was the Super Bowl? With the… Vikings?”

“No, they play one more for the Super Bowl.”

My number was called, meaning my ettoufe was ready. I got up and grabbed it from the bar. The man was speaking with another customer.

“Good luck to your Saints,” I called on the way out of the door.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, “Geaux Saints!”

“Geaux Saints!” I said just as the door closed.

I think I am a fan now, just based on the quality of their other fans. I felt like a million bucks walking out of there.

Amanda Knox Prosecutor Thrown In Jail

The prosecutor in the Amanda Knox trial has been throw in jail. Giuliano Mignini was convicted of abuse of power and bugging the telephones of journalists in cases unrelated to Amanda Knox. Legal experts are now asking if Mignini’s conviction help overturn Knox’s conviction.

I will update as details become available.

Stupids On The Right

I don’t usually turn on my own kind, but something disgusted me and I need to talk about it. A certain segment of pro-life people on the Right can be a little… how do you say… insane? I am pro-life. I believe strongly in adoption and prevention, and never in abortion. That being said, the people who have had abortions, regret it, and then create websites for their “little angel”, I’m sorry, you’re whacked. That’s creepy. And sad. And you should get counseling to deal with your decision. Along the same line, those jagoffs who post pictures of abortions? That is horrible – which is why you post them. But they offend those of us who would never in a million-bazillion years get an abortion. They offend everyone. It is what is it: lurid, horrific pictures of a murdered person. I don’t need to see that. Nobody wants to see it; it is too sad, too awful, too violent. I agree with your position, but not your tactic. In fact, your tactic makes you an emotional terrorist. Also: those morons who preach against homosexuality. It’s none of your business. Period. Find a new hobby.

Since I care about the issue of abortion, I feel it is necessary to speak out against the creeps who dominate that discussion.

I don’t care about homosexuality; those who do are just insufferable.

I care about conservatism as a whole. I’m not suggesting we should be a “big tent” party (I always hated that phrase). I’m suggesting we become a smaller tent party. Have those idiots on the fringes move closer in. Quit being the excuse the Left uses to criticize all of us.