I haven’t written any posts for a while. Two reasons: one, I was recovering from the election madness, and two, my husband and I were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a wedding. I’ve been to several foreign countries, but for both my husband and me this was the first time south of the border. To be honest, Mexico was never on our “must-see” list. Now, however, it is definitely on our “must-return” list! This trip was amazing, and it was not at all what I’d expected. I learned so much, and we had a fantastic time. The biggest surprise, though, was not what we learned about Mexico, but what we learned about the U.S. and ourselves. Suddenly, I have a very different perspective on my homeland.

Language:

Spanish is the most user-friendly of any language I’ve studied (English, French, Russian, Italian, Japanese). That’s probably because the people who speak it are so friendly and are just so delighted when foreigners try to pick it up that they give you as much encouragement as they can.

One of the most often-repeated phrases I heard from my fellow American tourists was, “Isn’t it great that so many Mexicans speak English? I haven’t had any trouble getting around at all even though I don’t speak Spanish.” I wonder how many people who visit the U.S. go home saying, “Isn’t it great that so many Americans speak Spanish/French/Chinese?” Hah! I highly doubt that any foreign tourist to the States as ever said anything like that.

If knowledge is power, then just about every foreign country I’ve ever visited has power over the U.S. because so many more of their citizens are multi-lingual. We should definitely NOT make English the official language of the U.S. because it will just give Americans another excuse not to learn a foreign language and put us even further behind the rest of the world educationally.

Environment:

We were in the jungle, and my tree-hugging heart was relieved to see that the jungle is still a formidable force. The people of Puerto Vallarta are fighting a constant battle with the rain forest and the ocean just to keep their buildings standing. As much fun as we had in the developed areas of Puerto Vallarta, we also enjoyed the many places where the jungle and the ocean are definitely winning the battle!

Food:

I thought I hated guacamole. I just hated the stuff that passes for guacamole here. Fresh guac is awesome!

Taco Bell, Don Pablo’s and the other “Mexican” chains are a joke. Real Mexican food is fantastic.

Money:

Money cannot buy happiness. We saw so many poor people in Mexico living in “structures” that make our American homeless shelters look plush. And yet they have a joie de vivre that is infectious. They are friendly and polite and know how to have a good time in spite of what they don’t have. When we got on our plane home and heard our fellow Americans griping to the flight attendants about EVERYTHING, it really struck me how spoiled rotten we are. We have so much, and all we do is whine. Poor people in Mexico were smiling and laughing on the front steps of hovels that looked as though they might fall down at any minute; Americans live in luxury and spend most of our time trying to figure out how to keep everyone else from having more fun than we are.

Activity:

For five days, we were outside constantly – swimming in the pool, snorkeling in the ocean, zip-lining in the canopy, parasailing on the beach, hiking through the rain forest. I cannot do a single one of those things in Indiana. No wonder we’re all overweight.

Mexican men can dance! “Cool” American men won’t even try, but the truly sexy ones try even if they don’t do it very well.

Conclusion:

Americans are very lucky. Most of us didn’t really do anything to live in the nice conditions we inhabit; we were just fortunate to be born in this country. Instead of enjoying our good fortune, however, we just complain about all the things we don’t have and try to keep everyone else from taking what we do have. One of the waiters at our hotel was a super-nice Mexican man who was married to an American woman in California. Because of “paperwork problems,” he was deported last year as part of the INS crackdown. How unfortunate and stupid. Here is a hardworking, polite man married to an American citizen who cannot live with his wife because of a bunch of arbitrary, paranoid, xenophobic rules. I know a whole bunch of lazy, drunk Americans who get to stay in their comfy conditions just because they were born north of some subjective line in the sand drawn a couple hundred years ago. I’d take our waiter over the whole lot of them any day.

Anyway, we had a great time. I highly recommend Puerto Vallarta to anyone. Still, I’m glad to be home. I just hope we won’t forget what we saw. It’s so easy to take American life for granted, but we are truly privileged. Sometimes you need to see things from the other side to recognize just how lucky we are.

It has been a wild 48 hours, and my brain’s just buzzing. Here’s what I’m thinkin’ tonight:

I’m so glad this country sent such a decisive message to our government. It makes me proud to be American again. Not because the Democrats won, but because the system still works. If the leaders in Washington DC let us down, we knock ‘em out. Amen.

Jon Stewart is so sexy.

I don’t care if he is on my side; Chris Matthews is a jerk. I could not have been happier that Rick Santorum lost his Senate seat; however, Matthews’ snide remarks about Santorum’s little girl crying onstage were really unnecessary. A seven- or eight-year-old does not have the emotional maturity to “grin and bear it,” nor does she understand much worse things could happen to her like losing her father to war or gang violence or terrorism. Even the best-behaved children cry over much sillier things; she was, quite naturally, sad that her father had lost his job. Sure, they won’t go hungry, but she realizes that this was a big disappointment. What was he supposed to do? Tell her to stop being a big baby or just kick her off the stage? We won the election, but let’s be gracious winners and at the very least, allow the children of the losers their tears.

Bye-bye, Donald Rumsfeld. Wait! Is that the “Hallelujah Chorus” I hear?

A female speaker of the House! Doesn’t that make her third in line to the Presidency? Does the President have any plans to go hunting with Dick Cheney?

I wonder how many times Ann Coulter voted this year?

I wonder what really won the Missouri Senate seat for Claire McCaskill - Michael J. Fox’s support for her or Rush Limbaugh’s spectacularly insensitive impersonation of Fox?

After watching President Bush’s press conference this morning, I actually liked him better than I have in six years. A little humility makes him much easier to take.

Okay, the conservatives are out. Can liberals do any better? Is it even possible for them to do worse?

Thank God the elections are over!

The holidays are coming! Argh.

Poor Kevin Federline.

For over five years now, I have been a reluctant soldier in a constant war. I am an unlikely combatant. I’m not a doctor, dentist, or nutritionist. I’m not a vegetarian or health food fanatic. I’m just a mom who sees her children under daily attack by an array of surprising and diverse adversaries: Madison Avenue, my hair salon, the post office, the grocery store, even my parents and in-laws.

Many of my opponents have only the purest intentions: they want to see my kids smile. So they offer them a sucker, a Tootsie Roll, a cupcake, an ice cream cone, a soda pop. These people are the hardest to deal with because they really have my children’s best interest at heart, and I know they are offering these things out of kindness. And if they were the only people I had to worry about, I wouldn’t be worrying at all.

The problem is that my parents, in-laws, friends and family are not the only folks offering my children sweets. They get it from everyone, everywhere, all the time. Every event is an excuse to splurge on sugar: holidays, birthdays, Saturdays, a trip to Disney World, a trip to Grandma’s, a trip to the post office.

Today, for example, I took my 15-month-old daughter and 5-year-old son for a checkup at our family doctor’s office. After the appointment, my son got a sucker. Then he went to kindergarten. Because he had been a good boy all week, he got another sucker which he sneakily popped into his mouth after I had strapped him into his car seat. After picking him up from school, I headed to the bank. The teller offered him yet another sucker, but I stepped in and politely declined because, as she could plainly see, he still had the one from school in his mouth. Safely back home, I told him we would not be having any more sweets today. After dinner, though, we had to go to the grocery store.  And sure enough, our grocery store offers suckers. While I was busy glancing over my shopping list, my little charmer very sweetly asked the elderly greeter if he could have one, and of course, she was delighted to oblige such a cute boy. Before I realized it, he had his third sucker of the day in hand. I did manage to stop him from opening it, though, and tucked it into my purse to add to his ridiculous stash of candy back home. After all, Halloween was just a week ago, and he brought home POUNDS of sweets from his trick-or-treating venture.

So now we’re at the grocery, and I’m astonished by how effective Madison Avenue is. It’s quite a tribute to American marketing that my kid recognizes the Trix Rabbit even though we have never purchased Trix. As a matter of fact, I avoid the cereal aisle whenever he’s with me because he goes stark mad, running around and pointing to all the boxes he recognizes from the commercials on Nickelodeon. The cookie/cracker aisle is also tough, especially because the food companies do all these promotions with kids’ movies such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Cars,” and “Happy Feet,” and my son gets so excited about the cookies that have “Captain Jack” or “Lightning McQueen on them. I feel like the meanest mother in the world whenever I have to say no. Fortunately, my son is pretty good about taking no for an answer, but we’ve seen lots of kids who are not. My heart goes out to all the mothers whose kids throw screaming fits because Mommy won’t buy the Oreos with the green “Shreck” filling.

Then there’s the soda. My mother, my sister and my husband’s best friend live on Coca-Cola, so they think I’m an utter food freak because we rarely buy soda of any kind. I see soda as a treat. It has no nutritional value, and even the diet kind is bad for your teeth. Even without having it at home, my kids get plenty of it. Whenever we go out to eat, they get diet soda. They get it at my parent’s house and at friends’ houses.

Truth is, I’d love to be able to offer my kids a soda or other sweet treat now and then, but I never get a chance because the rest of the world is constantly pelting them with sugar. So I’m the bad guy, refusing to buy junk food, declining the offers of candy from various businesses we frequent, monitoring the consumption of their holiday treats. Is it worth it? I suppose time will tell, but so far, it seems to be. My daughter’s yet to visit the doctor for an illness (knock on wood!); my son has been just twice, and they are both at very healthy weights. For two children with a family history of obesity, diabetes, and bad teeth, they’re doing really well.

My mom had my son over to her house to play on Saturday. When she brought him home, she told me that he had asked her a snack at one point. She’d offered him a cookie, and he asked if she had anything “without sugar.” She was impressed. I was pleasantly surprised. I might be losing battles here and there, but I might actually be winning this war. And if any war is worth fighting, it is a war in which my children’s health is at sake.

For six years, millions of right-wing conservatives have been vilifying gays. “Homosexuality is a sin!” they cry. “God hates fags!” their banners scream. “Ban gay marriage!” they insist.

Millions of people shouting for years.

And in one day, one gay man has made a statement louder than all of them.

Mike Jones, a homosexual from Denver, revealed that Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and advisor to President Bush and Karl Rove, paid him for sex and methamphetamine. According to Jones, he decided to tell his story because he was upset that Haggard and his New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage. “It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex,” he said (thestarpress.com, 11/3/06).

At first Haggard denied Jones’ claim completely. A day later, after learning exactly what proof Jones had to support the claim, Haggard amended his denial to admit only those parts Jones could prove. So at the very least, Haggard’s a liar. He claims now that he did purchase illegal drugs, but he didn’t take them. Still a felony, right?

As a liberal Christian, I am pleased that Mr. Haggard’s followers are finally being forced to face their own unwarranted (and un-Christian!) hatred of gays. Most of these conservative evangelicals have never met a real, live homosexual. It is much easier to detest a group in which you have no personal investment. Now, however, they have their very own experience with homosexuality - a man they have trusted and liked and believed in turns out to be gay. If Haggard finally comes clean and his followers get over their denial, perhaps they’ll learn something: gay people are not the bogeymen that right-wingers have painted them as for the past few years. Most of them are nice people who love God and their families and friends just like most heterosexuals.

As a former “paid escort” and methamphetamine dealer, Mike Jones is not the best representative of the gay community. But his single statement has shaken an entire population. And I think the most ironic thing is that that population gave him the power to do it by maligning homosexuals for so long. They turned gays into monsters. They empowered him by demonizing him. Face it. If Haggard had been a Unitarian Universalist, Jones’ news wouldn’t have created a ripple.

So here we are four days before elections, and things just keep getting weirder for conservatives. Foley and Haggard are gay; Limbaugh is an insensitive jerk; Coulter, DeLay and others are facing criminal charges. The hypocrisy is staggering. If things don’t change on Tuesday, one of two things will have happened. Either Karl Rove and his cronies will have successfully rigged the election (again) OR Americans will have gone completely insane. And either way, I’ll be moving to Canada.

Has anyone else noticed that the Republican Party’s leaders and spokespeople seem to have more trouble with the law than a bunch of fraternity boys on homecoming weekend?

Let’s run down the list:

1. Tom DeLay - Indicted by a Texas grand jury for conspiring to deliver illegal contributions into state elections. Also investigated for ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, criminal conspiracy, and money laundering. The former House Majority Leader resigned his seat in June, 2006.

2. Karl Rove - Arrested by FBI for making false statements about Jack Abramoff’s political and business dealings. Investigated for illegal disclosure of CIA classified information.

3. Dick Cheney - Investigated for illegal disclosure of CIA classified information. Investigated for the accidental shooting of his hunting partner.

4. Rush Limbaugh - Arrested and charged with one count of fraud — concealed information to obtain prescription. Detained and investigated in Florida for carrying a prescription under his doctor’s name.

5. Mark Foley - Under investigation by the FBI and Florida officials for exchanging sexually explicit messages with underage Congressional pages. Resigned his Congressional seat September 29, 2006.

6. Ann Coulter - Currently under investigation about whether she voted in the wrong precinct in Florida (a voting irregularity in Florida? NO WAY!).

7. Bill O’Reilly - Sued for sexual harassment. Settled out of court in October, 2004.

8. Lewis “Scooter” Libby - Currently on trial for lying to investigators in the case of “outed” CIA officer Valerie Plame.

9. Jack Abramoff - Convicted in 2006 of multiple felonies, including conspiracy and wire fraud.

10. Dennis Hastert - Probed for accepting money from Turkey. Also investigated for receiving money from Abramoff. Currently facing the House Ethics Committee for his role in the Foley scandal.

11. James Tobin - Convicted of telephone harassment in the GOP phone line jamming scandal during Sununu’s 2002 campaign in New Hampshire.

12. George W. Bush - Investigated for criminal conspiracy in divulging the identity of covert CIA agent. Investigated for illegal warrantless surveillance program.

This is the party of traditional values? I was not aware that traditional values included breaking the law whenever it was in the way of your agenda, your sexual urges or your greed. Are Democrats perfect? Nope. But here’s some homework for you (sorry, I’m a teacher): do a couple quick Google searches on “criminal Republicans” and “criminal Democrats” and see what you get.

Midterm elections are just a few days away. Hopefully, Americans are not so enamored of their “party” that they have forgotten their values. Respect the law, respect the system - show the GOP that they cannot get away with breaking every law that gets in their way.

Sources:

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/gopscorecard.htm

MSBNC.com

CBSNews.com

Google.com