Brilliant

"The silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."  How perfect.  This was coined by Rudyard Kipling, the brilliant Bombay-born writer, 1865 to 1936.  Wondering what other splendid bon mots he uttered, I googled his witticisms.  Here are a few more:

"God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.

 

"A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

 

"A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

 

"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

 

"I have struck a city -- a real city -- and they call it Chicago....I urgently desire never to see it again.  It is inhabited by savages.

 

"Asia is not going to be civilized by the methods of the West.  There is too much Asia and she is too old.

 

"It is clever, but is it Art?

 

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by man."

 

 

They just don't make 'em like that anymore.

_________________________________________

Note:  Writing about writing, here's an expression that has gone viral and which I hate:  "going forward".  What does that mean?  For example, "Those are a few of the measures we'll be implementing to improve service........going forward."  You don't need the "going forward" part.  Just put a period after "service".  Start listening, you'll hear it everywhere.  Drives me crazy -- almost as much as "is-is" and "was-is".      

Takes a lot of you-know-whats

They steal planes from under the noses of owners who have not met their financial obligations.  These guys are absolutely, totally and completely cool.  'Airplane Repo' is the show and I am hooked.  The suspense is unbelievable, as these guys case an airport, find the hangar and grab the plane -- all the while being chased by security, owners and police. 

Up, up and away.  They're off to collect paycheques anywhere from $15,000 to $200,000, depending on the value of the bounty.  And sexy.  These guys ooze it simply because of the nerve they have.  No one is particularly good-looking, but that is never what sex appeal is about.  It's all about courage and nerve -- oh yeah, and brains. 

Love this show.  Here are the coolest guys around:

    

So annoying

If I have to look at one more grimace from Tom Selleck on 'Blue Bloods' I'm gonna scream.  Never having watched it in the past, I now occasionally do and am growing increasingly annoyed with Selleck's facial expressions -- or should I say "expression" because he has only the one. 

The guy never cracks a real smile, just sort emits a teeth-clenching grimace in reaction to all the weighty and serious issues he confronts in an hour as NYC police commissioner.  Then he stares meaningfully into space for a while, pondering the gravity of what just took place -- be it a turkey dinner or a murderous rampage -- as the scene fades to commercial. 

All so annoying.  The other thing that has always bugged me are Selleck's suits.  What police commissioner is that precious that he wears $2,000-dollar three-piece suits you might oogle in GQ?  These guys are usually tough as nails and wear garments that reflect it. 

Moving on to other stuff, the casting of Len Cariou as the father is completely ludicrous.  Not only is he a terrible actor (yes, he's Canadian, unfortunately), he's not credible in other ways -- such as his age.  I always thought there was something wrong with him as Selleck's father.  Turns out there is.  He's only six years older than the guy who plays his son.  Man, talk about child marriages!

I guess I watch to see what other annoying quirks will emerge.  One thing's for sure:  no one's as in love with his wife in real life as Wahlberg is with his on the show.  Just does not ring true.  Detectives under that kind of pressure usually behave like Harvey Keitel in 'Bad Lieutenant'.  Really, really badly.    

  

Man, were we stupid

With only a three-foot guardrail between us and the racing cars, we'd pitch a tent and proceed to crack open the beer.  This was in Mossport, where Formula One, Two and Three zoomed and screamed. 

It all came back to me this evening as I enjoyed 'Rush', the movie about James Hunt and Niki Lauda, directed by Ron Howard.  What a great movie -- especially if you had actually been there in the pits, smelling the gas and oil and thrilling to the high and delicious snarl of those engines as they screeched and took off.  What were we thinking?  Camping right beside the track, vulnerable to.....whatever?!  But we were invincible.  That's what your twenties do for you.   

It was either Mossport or St. Jovite, those were the Canadian racetracks that featured the biggest and fastest drivers and cars in the world.  Back in the early '70s, safety was....who cares?  It was speed, speed and speed.  Those weekends were crazy.  And peeling out on Sunday afternoon?  Every guy thought he was Jackie Stewart, turning the 401 into a ridiculous death ride.  Seriously. 

But I survived.  James Hunt died at 45 of a heart attack.  Lived fast, died young.  Niki Lauda is still going strong and fathering children.  But Hunt had the most fun, if the movie does him credit, which I believe it does.  Wine, wine, wine, women, women, women and song, song, song. 

Why else would you risk your life?         

More on booze, slut-dressing and rape

"Don't get drunk.  Don't binge-drink to the point where you pass out -- especially if you're with a bunch of men who are drinking too."  That's the always-sage -- but not politically-correct -- advice of Globe and Mail columnist, Margaret Wente. 

T'was ever thus.  Get drunk, lose the inhibitions and have sex.  University frollicking back in the sixties, when I was there, was full of incidents like this -- not that they necessarily happened to me, but they happened.  All the time.  To lots of girls.  We knew which parties and which guys to avoid because we knew what might befall us.  If we wanted that sort of evening, we went; if we didn't, we didn't  But don't ever tell a feminist the girl played any part in her sexual "assault".

"These people are so invested in the victim narrative they don't believe young women have a legitimate responsibility for what happens because they fail to protect themselves."  Wente adds.  Such women also ignore the obvious, that alcohol disinhibits both men and women.  "It impairs their judgment, sometimes ruinously, and makes it harder for people to get out of situations they'd rather not be in."

Couldn't agree more.  She points out that rape culture never blames sexual assault on booze culture; it's always the man's fault.  But obviously blotto boozing and sexual impropriety go hand-in-hand for both men and women.  Always have. 

Which brings me back to "slut-dressing".  There's a reason Amish, Mennonite and Muslim women cover themselves.  It's sexual.  North American women expose themselves -- often excessively -- and then wonder why men hit on them?  As my readers know, I heartily disagree with undue covering because it demeans and degrades women.  But I also don't agree with letting breasts fall out and derrieres flash.  That too is demeaning and degrading.

It's all about behaving reasonably, protecting and respecting yourself. 

         

She looked so damn good

I was in grade 10 when I saw the movie.  'Lover Come Back' was one of a series of romantic comedies starring Rock and Doris -- Obviously, we don't need last names. 

It was 1961 and Doris was 37, Rock 36.  Both absolutely gorgeous.  She looks as if she were in her early thirties, but that's probably because she insisted in all her movies that the camera be smeared lightly with Vaseline to hide her wrinkles.  Did you know that?  Brilliant.  What a body.  Stunning.  The hair?  Not so much, it was blonde/white and sprayed to death into a concrete helmut.  Rock died at 59 of AIDS, but good old Doris is still hanging in there at 91. 

Speaking of movies, watched a classic last evening, 'Separate Tables', starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, Rod Taylor and Wendy Hiller.  What a cast and what a great movie, although very dated today, given the sympathy the David Niven character is accorded for sexually assaulting a teenaged girl in a movie theater.

Rita was 40 when she made the film and was considered "over-the-hill".  G-d, what does that make me?!  Way over, down the road and out of sight.  Nevermind, Rita was still absolutely gorgeous.   

Forget the Sisterhood

"It's dead," writes Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail today.  Yes folks, the Sisterhood is definitely dead.  Why?  Because it didn't do anything for women except make them envious of men.  And, by the way, none of the "sisters" morphed into men.  They simply created a pathetic ghetto and stayed in it.

Wente was writing about the "alpha woman", elite, highly-educated, independent and closing in on the heels of -- or passing -- the most successful men anywhere.  In fact, this class of woman has pretty much surpassed your average guy and has definitely pulled ahead of any "sister" you'd care to mention.  In this class are women such as Hillary Clinton and Beverley McLachlin -- and many other less-famous characters in all walks of life.  "Alpha females make up 15 - 20 percent of women in the developed world, enough to exert a lot of clout.  Every field is open to them.  But the world hasn't evolved as feminists foresaw.  These woman have far more in common with alpha men that they do with the other 80 or 85 percent of the female population," says Wente. 

She's right, of course.  I have never bought into the "sisterhood".  I have always competed with men.  I often won.  But was I any less a wife and mother?  Absolutely not.  I take great pride in both those roles.  Apparently, alpha women are dedicated women who...."do everything to make sure their children have the same opportunities they've had".  They are also intensive, super-conscientious parents who invest huge time and resources in their children.  Yes we do. 

"People wonder why alpha women don't choose to marry househusbands.  The answer is simple:  Women don't like to marry down.  Successful women want men who are as high(ly)-achieving as they, especially as fathers of their children.  The truth is that no matter how open-minded we think we are, most of us secretly regard men without paid work as slackers."

I have news for Wente, alpha women also regard women without paid work as slackers.

"Less-educated women are still more likely to drop out of work when they have their kids and after that, they'd rather work part time.  They're far more likely to have children out-of-wedlock and be divorced.  Alpha women stay in school longer, marry later, postpone kids until they're over 30 and don't stop working when they become mothers.  Even so, they spend more time with their kids than less-educated mothers."

Hear, hear.  Hurrah for the alpha woman.      

There is a line

A close family member said the other day, "You have no friends.  Why is that?  It must be your fault.  Have you not noticed a pattern?" 

She was right.  I have many "acquaintances", but few friends.  Maybe none.  To me a friend is someone I could call at 2 a.m., ask for $1,000 or $10,000 with no explanation, and get it.  No questions asked.  Who has many of those?  I certainly don't.

My deal is I have a line and if you cross it, that's it.  B calls it "standards" and I have to agree.  Maybe mine are too rigid for a lot of people, but not for me.  When people don't step up, they pay the price.  Here are a few "friends" who have fallen by the wayside and the reasons why:

• A colleague for 20 years who, with no legitimate reason, did not show up for a $15 community fund-raiser to help someone close to me travel to a world athletic championship -- and this is someone for whom I secured a good government job when she was flatter than piss on a plate;
• Another colleague for 29 years who did not show up for my mother-in-law's funeral, despite living in the same city and agreeing weeks before she would be there "for sure";
• A brother-like cousin and his wife (her decision, but he went along with it) who refused to let me and my son stay with them on a visit to Ottawa;
• A loved one and her partner who don't like me; by the way, I don't like people who don't like me;
• An ex-hairdresser, to whom I poured out my innermost secrets for more than 20 years, but who has dropped me; **and
• An old male friend (my age) who tried to hit on one of my daughters.

Yes, there is a line. 

** He's back on my "friends" list, just heard from him and now understand why he dropped off the    face of the earth for a while. 

    

That's the problem

"The United States is not a democracy," said a Republican senator into the camera last night.  "It's a representative republic."  I was floored.  To hear someone proclaim that the US was not a democracy was a first for me.

He was defending Boehner's refusal to allow a free vote in the Senate.  But it explains a whole lot about the rigid and unmoveable attitudes in Washington that have caused this ridiculous stalemate -- which by the way, cost the country $28 billion and will again in a couple of months.  As one talking head on CNN just pointed out, that's the country's entire school lunch program for a long, long time (can't remember how long, but you get the picture).

The thing that kills me about Americans is that they are now wondering whether crazy Ted Cruz might be the Republican nominee down the road.  They don't even realize he can't be because he was not born in the US.  He was born in Canada.  Duh.  That's the kind of research the lazy, American mainstream media doesn't do.

It's all so ridiculous.    

You Could Not Make This Up

African political leaders are demanding immunity from international prosecution for as long as they remain in office.  Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?????!!!!  See, that's the problem with Africa.  They overthrow corrupt governments and then immediately become corrupt themselves.  It happens over and over again.

The African Union, i.e., themselves, thinks the International Criminal Court is corrupt because, hey, they want to prosecute leaders, such as Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, for orchestrating mass murders.  "The ICC has been reduced into a painfully farcical pantomime, a travesty that adds insult to the injury of victims," said Kenyatta recently in a completely self-serving statement.  "It is biased and race-hunting, the toy of declining imperial powers," he ridiculously added.

Wake up.  You are the mass murderer.  And the "imperial powers"?  Long gone.  The result of this travesty will be that criminal leaders will hold onto power forever to escape prosecution.  "The notion that sitting heads of state should have immunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is not just appallingly self-serving, it's repugnant," said Daniel Bekele, head of the African division of Human Rights Watch.   

That is why I never give a penny to Africa.  I also never give a penny to Haiti.   

Re-reading Alice

The professor was "nothing to write home about", as my darling late mother used to say about a lot of things, but the course material was excellent.  Three years ago, I took an on-line short-story course -- not to brag, but I probably could have given it, so mediocre was the teacher.  Sorry, but I do not subscribe to the vanity of false modesty. 

One of the books I read was 'The Art of Short Fiction, An International Anthology'.  It featured excellent writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar All Poe, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Anne Porter, Doris Lessing, Mavis Gallant, Flannery O'Connor, Margaret Laurence, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, Bharati Mukherjee, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Neil Bissoondath...............and Alice Munro.  If you wanted to learn how to write, these were the authors you read.  I devoured them. 

This afternoon I pulled the book from a shelf and re-read Alice Munro's 'Lives of Girls and Women'.  Yes, she certainly deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature.  This was an excellent story, beautifully written.  Composed in 1971, it so very accurately depicted the shifting mores and morals of women in both my mother's generation and mine.  In the former, nothing sexual ever happened; in mine young girls were subjected to sexual abuse, but did not recognize it as such.

Basically, the plot revolves around a young teen, who lives with her mother and vicariously explores sexuality in secret with her school chum -- both of whom get no information from their mothers about the perils that surround them.  Needless to say, one of the girls is assaulted by a grown man, but feels nothing but curiosity about the bizarre encounter. 

Linking the generations, Munro's "mother" character says to her daughter at the end of the story:

"There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and woman.  Yes.  But it is up to us to make it come.  All women have had up till now has been their connection with men....No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals.  He shall hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, a little closer than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.  Tennyson wrote that.  It's true.  Was true. 

"But I hope you will -- use your brains.  Use your brains.  Don't be distracted over a man, your life will never be your own.  You will get the burden, a woman always does.....It is self-respect I am really speaking of.  Self-respect."

How perfect was that in 1971.  How perfect is it today. 

   

More from Montreal...............

A few shots of the fabulous dinner at the Sir George Williams Homecoming dinner last weekend............

I love evening gloves!  The pink ostrich boa was bought in London a few years ago.  Too bad you can't see my beautiful pink stilettos!  The earrings are rhinestones, but gorgeous.  Bought them at Shepherds in Ottawa a long time ago.   

With old friends at the dinner

Going on about the outfit because after all, this is a blog about fashion, although I rarely mention it!



 



 





So young

'Cancan' was a pretty dumb movie, but featured a great cast.  Watched it last night and I think the star who stole the movie was the beautiful and talented Juliet Prowse.  Man could she hoof it.  And she had the original full lips, but pre-collagen.  Could have given Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie a run for their money.  How many women to we see today with botched lip jobs.  Awful.  Googled Prowse because I had a feeling she had died young. 

She had. She died in 1996 at the age of 59.  Born in Bombay and raised in South Africa, she had that very English/Colonial sophisticated mien which set her apart from the usual Hollywood tarts.  Louis Jourdan, also the movie, was an absolutely gorgeous man and is still alive and at 92, married to the same woman he had wed in 1948.  Now, that's amazing.   Never been a huge fan of Shirley MacLaine.  To me, she overacts -- still doing it on Downton Abbey.  Couldn't stand Frank Sinatra and didn't really like that old letch Maurice Chevalier.

But Juliet Prowse at 23 in that role?  Fabulous.    

Back to the Future

I guess that's where we're headed.  Margaret Wente had a great column in The Globe and Mail the other day.  It was about Victorian values, the ones on which I was raised:  discipline, conscientiousness and diligence. 

Yeah, that's about right.  "The more a society progresses, the bigger a problem self-control turns out to be.  In the new hyper-meritocracy, people with temperate habits and Victorian values will do better than ever -- and people who can't resist temptation will do worse."

Apparently, self-discipline is a far better predictor of university grades than IQ.  Well, I could have told you that.  I remember girls who scored very high on IQ tests -- much higher than I -- but who were basically dummies and didn't do well overall.  My problem was that I did not possess a "math" brain.  Rather my talents were in "language", which did count much back then.  Self discipline is the key.  I remember my mother telling me I didn't really feel the way I told her I was feeling.  "Oh, you don't really feel like that," she would say, when I indulged myself.  She was so right because even if I did feel like that, who cared?

Self discipline, rigor and rectitude will overcome many faults and take one a long way. 

Being a writer

"Writing is something that goes on in your head all the time," said a famous writer.  Absolutely.  That's the way it is with me, not that I am famous, but when you are a writer, you have to write.  The funny thing is that when I have written what is in my head, I never give it a second thought. 

"What have you been blogging lately," said a man I meet occasionally.  I could not remember one single blog -- in spite of the fact that this is my 722nd.  How bizarre is that??!!

Blogging, I always try to write as writers I admire.  Would they say it this way, or that?  The other weird thing is that I cannot write without a keyboard in front of me.  This is a holdover from my days as a reporter and writer at Maclean-Hunter, when we faced typewriters every hour of every day and had to produce.  By the way, Roy McGregor was my seat-mate.  I knew he would go far.   

Off to watch 'Battle of the Blades'.  Yeah!

Another old boyfriend

"Oh look who one of the speakers is tonight," said B, reading the programme.  "Your old boyfriend 'R'."  I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't.  We were in Montreal for Concordia's 'Homecoming' last evening and yep, there was 'R', one of the big-cheese speakers.

I rose from the table and walked all over the room trying to find him.  Couldn't.  "I know him," said a woman at our table, "I'll go get him."  She did and over he came with his wife.  I would never have recognized him in a hundred years.  Giving me the once-over, he probably thought the same.  It was a weird and awkward moment.  The band struck up and we headed for the dance floor.  I have to admit, it was kind'a cool, dancing with a man who was once your serious beau. 

In fact, the whole weekend was very cool.  Montreal is still Montreal.  Steak tartare is everywhere on every menu and I indulged.  Absolutely love the stuff.  And "Montreal frites" are still "Montreal frites".  The best.  Although fluent, I refused to speak a word of French the whole time, thanks to that idiot Marois and her "cultural manifesto".

Looking down in the water, as I swam, I wondered what the view was?  It looked like the entrance to the hotel and I finally figured out that that's exactly what it was.  The bottom of the pool was a glass window, so I could see people coming and going, taxis and cars and doormen doing their thing.  I guess, had they looked up, they would have seen me swimming back and forth.  It was so "seventies".  Problem was the pool was extremely hot, but I did my laps.     

We had a whirlwind visit, but I am so glad to be home.         

The poor thing

I will never see this young woman again so I'm going for it.  The young woman to whom I refer was, unfortunately for her, my seat-mate on the flight to Montreal yesterday and I let her have it.  "Where were you born?" I asked, presuming it was not Canada.  "Edmonton," she replied.  Edmonton!?  "Why do you have to cover yourself?  This is Canada and you're a Canadian," I said.

She gave me the usual "modesty" speech, which never holds water.  She also told me she feels half Canadian and half Afghani.  "Put a period after the word 'Canadian' and lose the 'half'," I said.  "I realize you don't agree with it, but I am sure you respect my choice to wear it," she tried.  "Actually, I don't, I think it's shameful that you feel so inferior that you have to cover your hair."  She was speechless.  "We are all God and Allah's children and all equal in this world," I avowed.  Neither God nor Allah make mistakes when they create us.  It is the men in your culture who insist women cover themselves, I went on.  It's about sex and control.  Do you think if you reveal your hair someone will rape you in the public thoroughfare?  That doesn't happen in Canada -- at least not in broad daylight with a ton of people around, which is precisely where you wear the hijab.   

Hey, I'm part Irish and part Mohawk, but I am Canadian.  I don't go around telling people about my background because we're all immigrants in this beautiful country. 

It just got worse.  She kept going back to the modesty thing, but I kept at her, albeit it as nicely as I could.  You get the idea.  She told me her parents had given her the choice to convert and cover herself.  Yeah, right.  "So do any of your sisters or your mother go bareheaded?"  Well, of course not.  But she kept insisting it was her choice.  I told her that she was drastically limiting her options in Canada, be it boyfriends or jobs.

"I have daughters and there is no way I would permit them to cover their heads in shame and inferiority," I stated.  This poor thing was off to Afghanistan to "help" women.  Whaaaat???  "So, are you going to buy a few of them tickets out of there?" I asked.  "Because that's the only way you can help them."  She kept running out of answers.

I ended our happy chat with advice:  "Get off in Montreal, turn around and go back to your real life in Edmonton."  She confessed that her father would never take her back.  All I can hope is that he doesn't kill her.  She is nineteen years old.           

My thoughts on the Canadian Anthem

Sent the following letter into The Calgary Herald yesterday, in response to an excellent column by Naomi Lakritz.  We both agree it's just dumb to change the words.  Just really dumb.  Here is the letter:

Dear Editor,

 

Anyone who learned word-usage and ordinary English parlance knows that whenever “men” is used on its own, it automatically includes “women”.  Do we not have more to worry about than one word in our anthem which is actually used correctly?  It’s all a much-ado-about-nothing-tempest-in-a-teapot. 

Nancy Marley-Clarke

Sometimes I agree with Pauline Marois

Like this morning at the pool.  Spotting her, I presumed she was supervising her children as they changed.  I made this presumption because she had just walked in off the street, garbed head to toe in Muslim attire. 

I paid little attention when she waltzed out onto deck with her brood -- both girls similarly camouflaged.  So, imagine my shock when she actually and really and truly and honest-to-G-d jumped in!!^%$#^%&*&*!!!!  I stared at the lifeguards.  They shrugged and did nothing.  My friend D and I just stood there aghast.  "What the f.....??!!" we both said in unison.  Still nothing done.

Fear has gripped the lifeguards at the Crowfoot Y and it's appalling.  With signs posted everywhere about showers being mandatory before entering the water, it is beyond me that this woman just ignored them and leapt in wearing her soiled street clothes.  I got out of the water and approached one of the lifeguards.  "She did?" she exclaimed when I told her the woman had not changed or showered.  "They're not supposed to do that, but we didn't see it," she weakly answered.  Well, how could she see it when she was out on deck??!!  And by the way, no Muslim woman would strip naked in a public shower before changing into some sort of archaic bathing costume.  Just wouldn't happen, so what's the point of that meaningless regulation?    

But we have brought all this upon ourselves.  Societies have to be secular, with separation of church and state, to function democratically.  So why we are accommodating religious and cultural practice and dress in public facilities such as pools is beyond me.  Try going to Saudi Arabia and wearing a western bathing suit, or not covering yourself; you'd be arrested.  That's why we are secular, so women of other cultures can wear what they want -- but within reason and not in a public pool.  And that's why I agree with some aspects of Marois' doctrine because our permissiveness has been taken advantage of to the point where we have been intimidated into shameful cultural submission.

First-generation immigrants in years past clung to their traditions, but their Canadian-born children became, well, "Canadian".  Not the case for Muslim girls.  They are forced to cover up the minute they hit puberty.  They are never permitted to assimilate and be "Canadian".  And don't tell me it's modesty or religion.  It's purely a control and sexual issue, with men calling all the shots about how "their women" dress.  The logic to this covering-up must be that if a man glimpses even a square inch of female skin, he immediately becomes aroused and has to do something about it.  Face it, that's the logic.  What else is there? 

Women are children of God as surely as are men.  We should not have to cover ourselves in shame. 



      

Moronic

"We are doing this for the American people.  Obama care is taking money away from jobs."  These brilliant words just came out of the mouth of some broad named Jenny-Beth Martin, Tea Party activist and co-founder of something called the 'Tea Party Patriot's Group'.  She's was being interviewed by Carol Off on 'As It Happens'. 

So right-wing Republicans have actually shut down the American government -- not to help Americans, but to stop a health-care program that will benefit the poor and the sick.  That's the truth here, not some selfless move to help Americans.  Spouting double-talk, Martin kept repeating gobbledy-gook in the face of the facts, which are that Obama was elected on this platform with a huge majority, the law has been enacted, the program funded and enrolment up-and-running!  It's absolutely ludicrous. 

The shame for Canadians is that the hero in all this is a Calgarian.  That's where Ted Cruz was born.  Man, has he left the building!  I hope to G-d he's not still a Canadian.  The only saving grace is that because he was not born in the US, he can't be elected president.

House Speaker Boehner has lost all credibility, being led as he is by the minority Tea-Partiers.  In fact, the whole country is being led by these greedy scrooges who don't get the fact that a society must look after its neediest to be healthy.  Frankly, the Tea Partiers need to form their own country.  How about Texas?

And too bad it's been personalized into "Obama Care".  That makes it stickier in the craws of Republicans who just don't like giving their hard-stolen money to the less fortunate.  Our health-care system is not called "Douglas Care", it's universal health care, a much more sensible moniker.

It's totally outrageous.