Another light gone out

He left the day after Christmas. The father of eight was always devoted to the kids. I am sure he wanted to see them and all the grandchildren at Christmas and leave after that.

Of course, we won't really know because the dementia had taken his beautiful, loving mind a while ago. Gone were the days when he could read and write, savoring the turn of a phrase, the events of the days and the memories. All the memories were gone.

The house had always been a jumble of eight children, shouts, laughter, meals seated at long benches with powdered milk served with lots of love. Of course it wasn't just their kids, it was the friends, the cousins, the grandparents all those who were enveloped in the arms of this household.

There were the weddings, the coming out, the birth of babies, the graduations. There was the great tragedy when one of the grandchildren died at 16 months. All the chapters of a life, of a family, were all there in the house.

And now the gentle man with the kind eyes, the ready nicknames for all of us, the man who was always willing to listen and laugh, has left us on the day after Christmas. He was so considerate up to the end.

The hole is great in all our hearts, the ones he touched. The sorrow will be there for a long time because we won't see him again with the apron on in the kitchen, washing out all the big pans after making tamales, cooking up the ham for a feast to share. We won't hear his lovely laugh, nor be able to just say hi.

But he is with his grandson who left us too soon, with his beloved father who taught everyone to smoke cigars and be able to defend our opinions, he is with my father and petting my departed dogs. He has gone ahead now.

No more suffering, his mind has been restored in another place. He is holding his grandson, together again.

What a legacy to leave, so much love, so much laughter. So many hearts touched by his life. We know the world has a little less light with his passing. Thank you for your life well lived and loved.

From the front row in Kabul

This is a letter from a friend who is working in Kabul. She has an extraordinary view from where she sits.

Dear Glo,

Every year we spend billions of dollars working to restore a nation’s dignity, yet with that noble purpose we often fail to separate the needs of a people from the cultural wants of the west. With neither side receiving what it needs or what it wants. In turn we have created almost a vicious cycle of abusive giving that is comparable to force feeding a diabetic sugar or giving a bottle of vodka to an alcoholic. Our nation for its greatness is missing the point and the Afghan people who are dear to my heart continue to suffer because of it and the western need for instant gratification and the notion that money solves all problems continnues to fail.

This is not the fault of the men and women in uniform, the average Afghan going about their daily lives or even many of those involved in legitimate aid endeavors. Often it comes from pressure from large companies who use donor money to put their employees up in $20,000 dollar a month poppy-palaces with a security firm that carries an even larger price tag. Security people who tell everybody the sky is falling in order to keep their contracts and thus their jobs. These companies receive money that they must ‘burn’ in order to keep their contract. In many cases are talking about millions of dollars a day total.

Case in point the Afghan Supreme Court has a budget this year if I remember correctly of eight million United States Dollars it has only been able to burn nearly 800 thousand of that. One international donor wants to commit to 300 million over the next three years. Seriously, the court because of lack of capacity brought on by a thirty-year interruption in the education system does not have the capacity to absorb that amount much less burn it at the donors desired rate. If that 300 million was to be committed over the next thirty years that may be a more appropriate amount of time to allow the proper roll out and evolution of the judicial process. It would also give time for the educational system to catch and capacity to be slowly built. With this in mind using the current burn rate the west is trying to purchase three hundred years of judicial tradition in three years, to me that does not seem logical.

Western donors fail to look at their own history to guide them in the financial process of nation building. 200 years ago the United States was an even younger nation and it had its own set of issues that it has been trying even to this day resolve. The French and the Spanish at that time did not come in and try to retro fit and purchase our system. They for the most part left us alone to build our nation giving appropriate aid when needed and a cadre of well qualified and committed expertise. We need to stop trying the instant soup approach and realize that money builds roads, schools and utilities, but only the hard work and determination of people against advisories great and small truly build a nation.

We The People are frustrated and the Afghan people are frustrated. In order to help bring justice to the people of Afghanistan we must take a cold hard look at how we distribute aid. We must demand a break in the status quo of the apparatus of the major international donors first by looking at our own foreign aid distributer USAID and its underlying, unjust, and abusive funding and reporting polices. More small projects need our support where the Afghan people are involved and not subjugated to the agenda of large ‘ for profit aid organizations’ who are nothing but a front of the corporate machine. Paying off people only creates socio-economic disparities, humiliates the ones who have not and fuels insurgencies.

The aid must be long term because YES the people of Afghanistan need it but they need it for the next thirty years and in more careful and just amounts. Our role as a nations should be that of a steward and not of a company trying to hush the situation by throwing money at it.

Liberation for me

I need to liberate myself. I have been involved in liberation movements for the majority of my adult life – lgbt immigration, race, living wage. But today I need to liberate myself from me.

I am 55 years old. I have not had a job for the better part of the last three years so I have no more unemployment. The two federal legislators I talked to at netroots had no idea that there is a group of people who have run out of unemployment.

This terrifies me.

There are now people in the movement who are making gigundous amounts of money for work that I have done for free for decades. This pisses me off. I feel pushed to the side and all the work I have done amounts to nothing because a new generation apparently just invented activism. So all the lessons learned, battles won and lost mean nothing. We are pushed to the side, living in poverty and wondering what will come next. The streets, starvation, stress of unknown proportions?

The truth that liberates me though is this: there is nothing I can do about it. I am completely and totally powerless.

The movement will continue without me and others who have come before who have won and passed laws, won and made lives better, won and gave hope. I can’t do anything about it.

Except tell the truth.

I am afraid.

So with this confession, I have to say that whatever amount of money people are making in whatever large amounts those are, all of that is none of my business. When I get obsessed with what other people are doing it is because I am afraid for my own future and what will become of me. When I focus on others I don’t have to look at what has become of me.

But the truth is also that this hurts my feelings, a lot. I am friends with a lot of people around the country. It really makes me sad that so many things are happening and no one invites me and my peers anymore for our thoughts or ideas. I am old news, literally.

Those of us in the 50+ age range can’t get jobs, are losing all we have built up over the years and are struggling with the world as it has become. Nothing is fair. (Not that life ever was fair. When we lost so many of our brothers we were very clear that life wasn’t fair.)

So now that I am liberating myself, I hope to breathe a little easier, think a lot more about those around me and less on people and things that are none of my business.

In the meantime keep your fingers crossed that there are more jobs for people everywhere. All our ships will rise together.

From Netroots Nation

This includes a video taken by the folks who staged an action at lunch at Netroots one afternoon. The action was effective and showed an ugly side of the progressive movement that many of us know already, white privilege. The video includes lgbt people.

More of the same

On June 30, the Department of Labor released new, state-by-state numbers on how many workers have been cumulatively affected by Congress' inability to extend long-term unemployment benefits. As of July 3, an estimated 1.7 million workers will lose their benefits. If this drags on through July, a total of 3.2 million workers will lose their benefits. – Center for American Progress

Independence Day weekend is for many people a long, leisurely time off to enjoy the bounty of employment. Barbecues, going to the beach (if they are close enough), swimming, boating, picnics by water are all on the menu this holiday weekend. Maybe not so much for the millions of Americans like myself who are out of work and with no unemployment coming in the near future.

Millions of Americans, millions includes LGBT Americans with no safety net. As I have written before, this still includes me.

This is obviously a frustrating situation for the country and all the people affected by this hideous financial situation. Depression, anger, hopelessness are all obvious traits of the unemployed. Those around us are also impacted, watching family and friends struggling, creating an even larger sense of hopelessness and frustration.

I have spent some time looking at the considerable amount of information available about this Depression. (I am done saying it is a recession. Time to call it what it is, a depression.) I am not an economist but I am an unemployment statistic. I wonder if I am wondering if I fall in the “given up looking for work” category even though I look every day. But apparently large numbers of people fall into that category weekly because of the amount of time we are jobless.

This is the big light bulb for me about this depression. If people like me don’t have money, we can’t spend something we don’t have. Duh, right? But this impacts all the small businesses who usually create jobs because no one is spending money. Therefore they cannot hire people like me.

It is a seesaw. There is no balance where both parties sit level. It is seesaw that has stopped either seeing or sawing. It cannot move because as Krugman has pointed out, our Congress is full of “the coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused.”

These same people have the same attitude toward us as LGBT people in this country. They vote against us every chance they get, they have no desire to meet let alone befriend an lgbt person. And the confused, see Mormon Church, separation of church and state. Also thou shalt not lie.

And now this same administration who does not take the battle of the unemployed to the Congress to fight for us is doing the exact same thing for us as lgbt people, nada. Oh yes, there have been a couple of cocktail parties in the White House, a small media klatch for those who could afford to go to DC on short notice and an lgbt round table at Labor with no unemployed lgbt people present. Yup, that is a long list of token efforts. Well, not really.

Since Barack Obama was elected, I have lost my home, gone over a year without a job and now have no unemployment insurance, no income. I am on food stamps. More of this is coming without anyone breaking a sweat about it in the White House except for the fact that it is sweltering in DC right now. Fierce advocate? Not even.

So I am going to connect the dots that seem obvious to me. We are depending on the same people for our equal rights who have not come even close to providing the promise of this country. If we worked hard and made some contributions to our communities there would be an agreement of security when things went bad.

Thanks to “the coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused”, who all went home for bbq’s in their home states while leaving millions unable to pay their bills or maybe even eat, let alone barbecue, the anxiety level of all Americans went up.

Many moons ago when I worked at a non-profit in the barrio, a family came to us with their baby. The baby had a bread bag for a diaper because the family didn’t have money for diapers. They tried to give the baby to us because they were so sure their poverty would be the end of their baby. They loved this little girl so much they tried to give her to people who they though could take care of her.

I wept that day and I weep today thinking about how many families in this, the richest country in the world, can have a government that can be so heartless to leave us all without any hope.

Where is our President, he of the golden oratory but lack of drive? Where is the hope from the White House? Where is the pressure to deliver hope and equality from this administration? Missing in action.

I know what it looks like for a person to be working for our greater good. I haven’t seen it. I had such hope in 2008. Now all I have is hope that my food stamps come through this week.

An Open Letter to My Senators

May 2, 2010

Dear Senators Boxer and Feinstein:

My last unemployment check came the first week of April.

Yesterday I went out to talk to someone about some work and I could not find her. I almost ran out of gas trying to find her.

After putting a little bit of gas in my car so I could continue looking for work this week, I now have $7 left.

I have been unemployed for over a year. Despite what lots of nasty people say, I do not sit around waiting on that check to come. I have interviewed on numerous occasions only to finish second every time.

Maybe I am too old to work again, after all I have hit the magic number of 55 where apparently employers draw the invisible line. All my peers without work are experiencing the same phenomenon, we are all too old. Of course no one is going to come right out and create a law suit for themselves by admitting this.

However, look at the fastest growing age group and they we are. Friends in IT tell me they are terrified of losing their job if they have gray hair.

I make a lot of effort to give back to my community. Last weekend I volunteered with the local La Mesa Verde program to assist a family planting a garden in its back yard to produce their own healthy food.

But Senators, where is the understanding from Washington that so many people are hurting? We need another unemployment extension. It is time to act on our behalf, without fear, the same way we have to face each day, despite rejection after rejection.

We, the unemployed, are staring over a precipice, looking at loss after loss. Our homes gone, our lives destroyed through greed, avarice and an uncaring system that has spit us out as collateral damage, unneeded any longer. We need you to listen to the pain, the anguish. the cries of us weeping from all the loss.

That was me crying in my room last night, maybe you heard me? No one in DC seems to hear those moments of terror and pain and loss. Did someone hear us?

I was wondering what I was going to do on Monday with $7. Eat maybe? Probably not.

Perhaps someone could see into my room last night as I lay weeping on my floor, asking for someone to believe in.

Please do something to help. Really, our lives depend on you.

Sincerely,

Gloria

AZ part 1

“It is open season on the Latino community in Arizona. In Phoenix, Tucson, and across the state, people in Latino neighborhoods are afraid to leave their houses, afraid to be apart from their children for even a minute, and afraid to walk the streets because they feel their arrest on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant could happen at any moment. It is a horrifying glimpse at what our future holds across the country if we continue down the path the Obama administration is leading us on immigration.” – Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Huffington Post

This election season has seen the return of the scourge of the Mexican immigrant, the identified source of all problems in the United States. The state of Arizona has seen fit to pass a clearly unconstitutional law giving law enforcement virtually unlimited power to question and detain any person they want, demanding ID’s birth certificates, green cards. The bill, SB 1070, while not signed by the governor yet, sits as a sword of Damocles over the head of the Latino community in Arizona.

So, can’t they do that anyway? Well, yes police should be able to question “suspicious” people, monitoring people with criminal records, acting suspiciously not just because that person is brown.

Law enforcement used to do the same things to gay and lesbian people many moons ago. There were the laws that prevented two people of the same gender from dancing together. We could not gather in places for socializing without fear of police raids. Anyone remember Stonewall? Our forefathers and foremothers always faced the threat of arrest for gathering in a public place.

Many of us sit at that intersection of being brown and queer. We are either immigrants, children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants. In a country where grown men are parading around in wigs and funny hats, packing guns, with brown people the target of their concern and their guns it is absolutely a moral imperative that queers of all colors recognize this for the social justice issue it is.

We have been targeted by laws and elections, made to be the identified problem, the others, the outliers who don’t deserve equality nor civil rights. Latinos and queers, queers and Latinos, Latino/a queers, queer Latina/o we live outside the circle of normal people in the US.

We live in cities with Spanish names, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, El Paso, Santa Fe, San Jose, in a Spanish named state, California and Texas. We eat at restaurants where the staff is Latino/a, they wash our dishes, our cars and sometimes clean our houses.

The argument that undocumented people have broken the law and therefore cannot have a path to citizenship is a red herring. In years past, it was illegal for two people of the same gender to have sex. It was illegal to gather and dance together. And it is still legal to discriminate against us in our relationships, work and public accommodations in many states. We can make some people uncomfortable just by our presence. That doesn’t make us criminals. We are all the outliers.

For us as queer Latinos, it is our families in Arizona that are under attack. Since we all have different priorities and for many of us, this immigration battle in Arizona takes precedence over DADT or ENDA. Hopefully we can chew gum and be activists on many fronts all at once.

For us as queer people of this land, we have a history that many of us have drilled into our heads.

We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us.

Si se puede, egualidad en nuestras vidas.

Real lives in Arizona

I want to tell you another story. I want to tell you about my friend Greg who lives in Arizona. He works at a major university and moved there for love. He and his partner own a home, pay their taxes and are part of their community. Nice men, they have come to visit us and we had a rollicking time in Santa Cruz with them.

The Governor of Arizona doesn’t feel these two men should be equal citizens. One of her first acts as the new Governor was to take Domestic Partnership benefits away from state employees like my friend. They lose their combined insurance on Oct 1.

This is a problem to begin with for any family that loses insurance – but it is especially relevant to them because my friend’s partner has Alzheimer’s. And he is the one losing the insurance.

We cannot change who we are anymore than we can change our diseases. I distinctly remember a time when gay men were blamed for getting AIDS. It wasn’t that long ago. As the shrillness ramps up here and on the net, I will point out, that there are still people who think we should be able to change and therefore should change who we are. I can’t change being a Chicana anymore than I can change my queerness. Neither can my undocumented queer brothers and sisters change who they are.

This attempt at law, as it is written and passed now, will not survive the court challenges. This is a blatant move to bypass the constitution. In Sunday’s New York Times the point was obvious:

One night last week, Grant Woods, the former state attorney general, spent more than an hour on the telephone with Gov. Jan Brewer, a fellow Republican who was considering whether to sign into law the nation’s toughest immigration enforcement bill.

The governor listened patiently, Mr. Woods recalled, as he laid out his arguments against the bill: that it would give too much power to the local police to stop people merely suspected of being illegal immigrants and would lead to racial profiling; that some local police officers have been abusive toward immigrants; and that the law could lead to costly legal battles for the state.

When he hung up, Mr. Woods knew he had lost the case. “She really felt that the majority of Arizonans fall on the side of, Let’s solve the problem and not worry about the Constitution,” he said.

The same people who passed that immigration law, took away DP benefits.

There are queers among the undocumented who had to leave in a hurry because they are gay. There are people from the US who are in relationships with undocumented people.

LGBT groups, cities, human rights commissions all over the country are mobilizing a boycott of Arizona.

Many people in the country think of us as LGBT people as freaks, less than equal, illegal. If we were all legal and equal we wouldn’t need to protest inequalities like DADT, ENDA, adoption laws, gay bashings. We are all the “others”, we are the outliers that continue to be unequal.

Sacrificing our souls

His name is Stephen McCarthy.

He was a classmate at St Justin's Catholic school from the 4th to the 6th grade. His hair was red and he had loads of freckles. His face was a virtual map of Ireland. I am sure his parents sent him him to Catholic school to get a good education. They didn't send him there, I am guessing, to be paddled in front of his 49 classmates every year.

Last night I lay awake thinking about my classmate. The look on his face when he was ordered to the front of the classroom. When he had to bend over so the nun could take a PADDLE to his butt, the back of his legs. The tears in his eyes, the red of his face all on display for the rest of us. The message was clear. Don't mess with the teachers or this will happen to you.

This physical and spiritual violence is not the same as being sexually molested. It is not the same level of disturbing behavior. I don't pretend to make them equivalent. But ask yourself this, if this was your child, would you allow a teacher to touch them in any way like this? Would you deem it acceptable that your son or daughter was marched to the front of the classroom and told to bend over to get whacked?

Last night I cried as I remembered the pain of Stephen and so many others who were taught through a church hierarchy that allowed nuns and priests to behave in any way they wanted. Out.Of.Control. Protected by god and the greatest religious institution on the planet to be virtually infallible.

well they are not infallible, they are barely human. In 2008 the Church involved itself in the Prop 8 vote. I am baptized Catholic but I didn't count in that vote. It was about the married couples I would terrorize in the church with my, I don't know cooties. I keep hearing how this is about protecting the sacred institution of marriage. Funny, I thought the confessional was a sacred place and confession was a sacred institution. Now the revelations in Wisconsin show the offending priest who was never held accountable by the Vatican, violated children in the confessional. I guess some things are more sacred than others and some priests are more disgusting than others.

Look around the globe and see how many children have been fathered by priests. So much for that celibacy thing. How about the former archbishop of New Mexico who fathered a child and placed known pedophile priests throughout New Mexico after completion of their "pray away the problem" treatments in NM. When asked by a grand jury why he had allowed the pedophiles to remain priests and placed them throughout a mostly rural, Catholic state the answer was priceless. Apparently he was of the understanding that an abortion or hitting a priest was a bigger sin than pedophilia.

Once again, during the supposed holiest week of the year, the Vatican seeks to portray its victims as liars. The children it abused (now there are allegations of flogging by priests visited on children) have bravely stepped forward to tell their truth. Once again the old familiar claim that they are making it up from the Prada clad types in Rome.

If you are witnessing a massacre, people being hurt and maimed in front of your eyes, would you not want to save the children? The Vatican has answered that question, they are trying to save themselves.

My family is still waiting for that apology from the 1968 slapping of my sister. I am not holding my breath.

Stephen McCarthy if you ever read this, I am sorry for not trying to stop the abuse. You didn't deserve it. None of us did. We were just kids.

Enough!!!!

Warning!!! If you think the Pope is infallible, don't read this. If you think the church is being attacked for its inability to protect children in its care, don't read this.

I went to a Catholic school in Santa Clara, Ca. So did my siblings. My sister was pulled out of that Catholic school the day after she slapped by a nun in front of her entire class. The nun then told the entire class they could not tell their parents what happened. Violence followed by an order from a nun to lie.

She was in public school the next day. I remained in the same school simply because I was a few weeks away from graduating from the eighth grade. Thankfully, many of her classmates did not obey the order to lie to the their parents and the phone was ringing that night with parents calling to talk to my parents about the violence my sister suffered in public that day.

Now I see the church has enlarged its ability to violate children. Not that this has been a big secret for a long time. But each day over the last few weeks we continue to see the centuries old pattern of the catholic church. Blame the victims, absolve the church members. I find it ironic that with the current Pope a German they have responded with a classic Nuremberg defense.

I find the violations visited on the 200 boys at a school for the deaf to be particularly revolting. No one believed them then that a priest was violating them in every way imaginable, even in the confessional. Yet, it is the child, now an adult, who is at fault. One deaf man, in particular, continues to stand brave in the face of attacks. Arthur Budzinski continues to ask for answers and accountability. In sign language. I applaud his bravery and commitment to telling his truth.

All of these secrets, lies and obfuscation are vulgar, in my mind. Having gone through the process of receiving all the sacraments, including the little slap on the cheek for confirmation, I will continue to believe in what I was taught in Catholic school. Lying is wrong. Cheating is wrong. Our jobs are to feed the poor, clothe the unclothed and act as if being a child of God means you act with integrity and honor. I don't see that coming from the Vatican nor did I see that from St Justin's school in the 1960's.

That is a span of over 40 years. What will it take for the Vatican to be accountable to its "flock" and really take care of the children and not just its power?

The only time I will return to the church will be for a relative's funeral. Until then (and I hope it is a really long time) I will follow the teaching to help those who need help. To bring kindness into the world and see the work of a spirit greater than myself in the animals, flowers and people who seek peace in the world.

BTW, Jesus never said a word about gayness so I am going to keep telling the truth of my life.

The World has changed, again.

I have added a correction, in bold to a comment Speaker Perez made about repealing Prop 8. This is my mistake and not him walking back anything.

The world has significantly changed this week for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population. Some significant events to note:

Wedding licenses were issued to same sex couples in Washington D.C.

Mexico City allowed same sex marriages to begin there.

John Perez was sworn in as Speaker of the California State Assembly, the first openly gay person to occupy this top of the food chain position not only in California but in the country. Add the Latino part and you have a Latino gay man leading the Cal Assembly.

The world has changed.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Speaker Perez talked with LGBT media about his priorities as Speaker this year. He obviously is making efforts to make the Assembly more transparent by limiting texting while lawmakers are on the floor.

Education is a priority for him and he wants to take advantage of his new positions on the UC Regents board as well as sitting on the CSU board of Trustees to review fiscal policies and the impact of those policies on students. Rising tuitions and over crowded classrooms have a significant impact on the accessibility of all California students to advanced studies.

Today (Thursday) there are statewide protests by students regarding these very issues. Speaker Perez (that looks so awesome) is concerned about the breadth and depth of financial resources available and what cuts will mean to grants such as CalGrants for students in California.

Also among his priorities in the upcoming budget he said "AIDS is a real priority for me." He did lead the charge last year against the Governor’s attempts at cuts that turned out to be illegal. With the Governor having slashed all prevention money, the Speaker will be coming to the budget talks with a different set of priorities this year. He said this will be a "new relationship with the Governor."

The world has changed. A gay Latino is leading the Assembly.

When queeried about his position on repealing Prop 8, the Speaker was unflinching in his analysis. He felt "there was no practical way to overturn Prop 8 this year." The lack of signatures and funding were fatal to any efforts this year.

In terms of the past Prop 8 campaign, he said that all the Latino electeds were on board with us. All his colleagues in Southern California supported the No on 8 campaign. We must "invest in education" and talk to people we didn’t talk to last time, Latinos, African Americans, working people.

Speaker Perez feels the ultimate solution to the problems plaguing California is to work in greater coalition. "We must invest in a broader approach" to coalition work and problem solving.

Many moons ago, my family, my Latino community was very excited about the new world that awaited them, not working in fields, getting educations for themselves and their children, having people represent us in different places. When well known singer Eydie Gorme started singing older Mexican songs with the famous Trio Los Panchos on the Ed Sullivan Show, we knew we had arrived. A real star was embracing her roots and singing in our language. No hiding, no changing the subject about Mexican roots but luxuriating in her browness.

I won’t say Speaker John Perez is the Latino LGBT Eydie Gorme (wait I just said it!) but it is a big ceiling that he has cracked. And just like Pete Wilson said, "They just keep coming and coming." You betcha, si se puede, adelante we are right behind you John!

The world has changed for the better..

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nieto/detail?blogid=94&entry_id=58456#ixzz0j8M5IslT

Someone Didn't Get the Memo, Meg

I watched the 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock news while wading through seed catalogues. Besides the usual depressing murders, unemployment and impending educational cuts was the story of Meg Whitman's tour of Southern Pacific train yards at the Port of Oakland.

This was not your usual press gaggle following a candidate on a tour of a key component of California's economy. No this was in fact a punishment of the media. While the press had been told they were going to go on the tour with the candidate, they were in fact, sequestered because of an apparent break out of cooties as determined by MEGabucks' staff.

The media were put in a holding room for, hmmmm, two hours? Then she had a sit down with Mr Southern Pacific but wouldn't take questions. WHAT???? Why invite the media???

As I said, someone did not get the memo on campaigns. In the film last night, Whitman's campaign people were scolding the media for asking questions as if the press,who I will remind again,were invited to this, were still cootie covered and must be rushed out the door lest the contamination spread to those who would rule one of the largest economies in the world.

In October I heard Madeline Albright say "The hottest places in hell are for women who don't help other women." So rather than disappointing all those nuns who put so much effort into disciplining my sister and I, I will offer some unasked for advice. No hot place in hell for this gal.

Madam Candidate, I have no idea why you want to be governor of California. I am also at a point where I don't care why. What ideas you have offered as a cure all for this debacle we are living in except to cut the size of government? As if this has not already been done by everyone. And that is what we need, more unemployed.

The memo should say that you must go out and find out what people need. Your ideas must be conveyed in an adult manner, not preceded by nannernannernanner, Steve Poisner has cooties.

So I will point out this campaign is your job interview. So far you seem to have no grasp on what the issues are for the millions of people in this state who are struggling, having to make a decision between food and medicine, wondering if they will ever get a paycheck again. We will be the ones voting in November and guess what??? This may come as a surprise to both you and your staff but my vote counts the same as yours. My sister, my mom, my aunt, my neighbors all those people you are ignoring, we all have one vote. Funny, that democracy.

That lame apology on tv last night too, when you were sorry that the event didn't turn out the way you thought it would, well it was lame. Who is in charge at your campaign then? Aren't you? If you are not, who is in charge, let me talk to them. Remember this is your interview.

Looks like you are as qualified to run the state as I am to run ebay. Neither of us have the experience to do a good job.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nieto/detail??blogid=94&entry_id=58854#ixzz0j8LeLpkT