Wrinkled yes, but not fully sure that I'm a feminist.  I do like the definition provided by Rebecca West, so I'll settle there until something better comes along. The purpose of this blog is many, to discuss aging women and the trials that are directed our way simply because we are women (at times I may even  acknowledge that aging men also have issues). I have always been interested in politics so comments, perhaps even essays, on politics, will be one of this blog's many purposes.  The life of women of all ages will also intrude.  After all, we start off somewhere and where we start frequently dictates where we end. More than anything this blog is about me.  No matter how hard we strive to be open and accepting of other viewpoints, we are sealed forever in our own cocoons.  I've always believed that we read biography and fiction because we want, rather hopelessly I think, to force our way into the cocoons of others.  In simplest terms, this blog is about everything and anything but it's mainly about me, the wrinkled feminist.

This is not my first blog.  A decade ago I started a blog called "Looking for Trouble," dedicated mainly to politics, with a very definite left-wing slant. I hope that doesn't drive you away if you are to the right.  I will try, not with total success I'm sure, to leave my prejudices and sarcasm at the blog's front door and to express my opinions and their underlying premise in reasoned, non-offensive language.  You can always disagree in the "comments" section.

Can one plagiarize from oneself.  I hope not as I may recycle some of my previous thoughts. The elections are upon us with a mere eighteen months until the polls open and if there's one piece of advice that I want to pass on, it's something Chris Hayes. 

No longer confused!

Much thanks to Chris Hayes of MSNBC for straightening me out.  Like so many New Hampshire primary voters I've been searching for a guarantee that whomever I vote for in the primaries will insure that we never have to see or hear from Donald Trump again.  I even contemplated supporting Michael Bloomberg, a man that I intensely disliked when he was mayor of New York, primarily for his stop and frisk policies.

But tonight after the polls had closed in NH and I was listening to the pundits/analysts/bullshitters on MSNBC, one woman was denigrating the voters who had put Bernie Sanders first, suggesting that they had an obligation to consider how moderate voters, democratic and republican, would view Sanders and should have cast their vote for someone who can beat Trump.  As if she could know who that is! It took Chris Hayes to correct her, and thankfully me, when he disagreed.  Voters, he said, have no idea what will happen in the future and their only obligation is to pick a candidate who represents their values.  Whew!  Such a relief to no longer torture myself worrying about Trump.  My preference has always been Elizabeth Warren, with Bernie second.  And now that it appears Elizabeth won't make it to the end (sigh!) I will support Bernie without worrying about what those in the south or midwest will do, or not do. 

Go for it Bernie!

Salted with Hypocrisy, Email Scandals

I promised yesterday to talk about Hillary Clinton's so-called email scandal.  I write "so-called" because those who have made a huge deal of this have let the much more shocking email scandal of the Bush administration alone.  I suppose we can coin a new expression, "No Democrats, no foul."

Rather than rewrite what a number of journalists have covered extensively I will take the liberty of copying one of the articles presented by Snopes.com about the on-going email investigation of the Bush Administration:

ORIGIN:The specter of "missing e-mails" loomed large throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle because of a scandal arising from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's mishandling of electronic communications while serving as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. The issue was twofold, according to Clinton's critics: one aspect was her use of a private e-mail server to send and receive official messages, laying open the possibility that classified information could have been exchanged in an insecure environment; the other was the deletion of approximately 30,000 e-mails from that server (messages Clinton claimed were personal and unrelated to official business) prior to an FBI investigation of the case.

The FBI concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing or intent to violate laws concerning the handling of classified information on the part of Clinton or her staff, but FBI Director James B. Comey issued a statement calling Clinton's actions "extremely careless." The deleted e-mails remained an issue because only Clinton's lawyers were involved in deciding which messages would be culled as "non-work-related." GOP candidate Donald Trump brought them up repeatedly in speeches and debates, at one point joking that he hopedRussia could help find them.

Given all the criticism directed at Clinton, it was only a matter of time before an incident involving a large number of e-mails that "went missing" during the Republican George W. Bush administration was revived and injected into the 2016 campaign. On 12 September, Newsweek ran an article by Nina Burleigh entitled "The George W. Bush Administration 'Lost' 22 Million E-mails," which explicitly compared the State Department e-mail fiasco to the one that occurred in the Bush White House and suggested that the latter was infinitely more serious:

For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations — all of it still unsolved and unpunished.

Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

The comparison is apt in some ways, not so much in others. One similarity is the use of private e-mail servers in lieu of government ones. During the course of a Congressional investigation it was found that many Bush White House staffers (including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove) had conducted official business via private e-mail accounts on a server owned and maintained by the Republican National Committee. Then it was revealed that as many as 22 million e-mails sent and received via these private accounts "were not preserved" in accordance with the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that all official communications be archived and accounted for:

The Bush Administration admitted that in reviewing documents requested by Democrats for their investigations, it discovered that as many as 50 of its staffers may have violated the Presidential Records Act. The staffers, the White House said, were using e-mail accounts, laptops and BlackBerries provided by the Republican National Committee for official executive branch communications rather than the exclusively political work for which they were intended. Because the RNC had a policy until 2004 of erasing all e-mails on its servers after 30 days, including those by White House staffers, and because some of those staffers may have deleted e-mails on their own, the White House said it could not assure Congress that they have not violated the PRA, which requires the retention of official White House documents. The White House officials who may have broken the law include senior adviser Karl Rove, his deputies and much of their staffs.

The White House says it is trying to recover the e-mails. "Some official e-mails may have been potentially lost," says Scott Stanzel, a deputy White House spokesman, "We will do everything practical to retrieve them." Stanzel and other Administration officials, speaking on background, say the accounts were established in an attempt to stay on the right side of the Hatch Act, which requires rigorous separation of official government activity from overt political work, like fundraising. "[Some] White House staff members have duties that require them to interface regularly with political organizations," Stanzel says, and therefore they needed separate equipment to stay on the right side of the law.

In plain terms, some 22 million e-mails had been deleted, though the White House described them as "lost" or "missing" — another apparent point of comparison between the Bush and Clinton e-mail scandals. However, at least some of the 22 million "lost" Bush administration e-mails (unlike Clinton's 30,000) were eventually "found."

To put it more accurately, a large number (it's unclear exactly how many) of the messages were recovered from backup storage systems by technicians as a result of a deal struck between the federal government and two nonprofit groups that sued for release of the e-mails via the Freedom of Information Act. It may be impossible, ultimately, to restore all of the deleted e-mails due to funding limitations, and to date none of the recovered messages has been made public because they're still under review, but the fact remains that not all of them were permanently lost.

As in Clinton's case, the Bush administration e-mails were sought as evidence in government investigations. No no charges were filed and no criminal wrongdoing was found in regard to Clinton's handling of e-mails. Bush aides were found in contempt of Congress for not complying with subpoenas in the U.S. attorney firings investigation, but no punishment was handed down.

LAST UPDATED: 19 October 2016

Okay, Trump voters.  You claim you're not racists, but that you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton because of her 30,000 lost emails.  In addition, we know from evidence gathered by the FBI, that the two Republican Secretaries of State who came before Clinton also used private servers and that Rice and Powell told Clinton of this, and that Powell may have even advised Clinton to use a private server.  This email scandal is absolutely nonsense, but it gave our 60,000,000 million racists the opportunity to blame Clinton for an honest, but stupid, mistake.  Not a word about the 22 million missing emails, and now under the Trump Administration we can be sure we will never get to read the ones that were found.  

Tomorrow, Benghazi. 

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." —Groucho Marx

The quote from Groucho Marx which I used to justify the title of my blog, "Looking for Trouble" seems particularly apt today.

Finding it Everywhere

Many who voted for Trump say the current state of the economy is the reason they did it, and this includes those who are doing well in the Obama economy, which improved considerably from the day he took office in 2008 after the Bush wars and other misdemeanors drove us into a deep recession,  They refuse to acknowledge that through his economic policies, Obama kept the United States out of a depression of the type we had in the 1930"s.  Would it be overkill if I mentioned that it was also the Republicans in the 1930's who caused the worst depression in United States history and it was FDR that took us out of it.  "It wasn't racism stupid, it was the economy."

And if they concede on the economy they'll point to the Affordable Health Care Act.  Now let's get serious here.  I totally agree that Obamacare, as it is also known, was, and is, the worst possible solution to the worst possible health care system in the Western World.  We rank 37 (please implant this number in your mind) of countries viewed as part of the First World.  There is only one solution to our health care problems and that is some sort of single payer system.  I didn't vote for Obama in the primaries in 2008 for just that reason.  Unlike John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, who supported some type of single payer system, Obama did not.  Why?  I can only assume he was catering to his inner Republican.  But let me ask of Trump voters, did any Republican propose a different or better solution.  If as Trump has promised, Obamacare is gone on January 21, and we again have the largest number of citizens without health care in the world, what will he and the Republicans offer in its stead?  Sorry, but pointing to Obamacare is just another excuse to let your inner racist run free.

My favorite, mainly because I love absurdity in most forms, are those voters who claim to have voted for Trump because of their Christian values.  So, they rejected Hillary Clinton, who married once, a regular church goer, and as far as I know has never posed naked in her life--well, perhaps for Bill.  So to represent their Christian values these people voted for a man who has been married three times, cheated on his first wife while he was still married, married a woman who has not only posed naked for men's magazines but naked with another woman, simulating sexual activity. The same man who represents their Christian values was recorded many times over the years, not just in 2005, bragging about sexually assaulting women.  He also made two soft-porn films for Playboy. Ten women have come forward to accuse Trump of sexually assaulting them.  Many more are out there.  Perhaps because I was raised in an Irish Catholic home where strict modesty, even with five children, two adults, and one bathroom, was strictly adhered to,  I have to ask what Christian values are these people practicing in their own homes?  What indeed?

Some of the many other troubles these people found in the Obama administration:

• Obama had the audacity to try to promote clean air and water, regulations which Trump has promised to dispense with.  No doubt none of the Trump voters live in Flint, Michigan.
• Obama supported the Dodd-Frank act to overhaul our banks in light of the 2008 financial crisis.  Trump will, if he can, get rid of Dodd-Frank.  This is particularly interesting.  They complain about the economy and then they complain about the things Obama did to prevent another recession brought on by the greedy banks.  
• Trump will not support the Alternative Minimum Tax, although personally I wonder why he cares since he doesn't pays taxes.
• Trump will get rid of the estate tax, which today after many Republican tax cuts, applies to only 5,300 families in the United States.  Need we ask if the Trump family is one of those families.
• Gun free zones in schools and military bases will be abolished if Trump has his way.  One can only hope that the killing of school children weighs on the consciences of Trump voters.  It won't, I know, as they are without conscience. What the rest of us call conscience, they call Christian values.
• Trump refuses to support the Paris agreement on climate change.  As they all know there is no such thing as man-made climate problems.  Trump voters: most of you won't be around when your children and their descendants have to cope with the radical changes that are coming.  Will they even know that this was a legacy from their grandparents and great grandparents.

Sorry readers, I haven't yet arrived at "diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." I thought this would be easy and short but when I contemplate the numbers of problems that have been placed on Obama's head and the lies that support them, I am exhausted.  

I suggest the answer to all of the above is,  "Yes, Trump voters you are racists," and of the worse kind.  At least we know where the KKK stands but when we see you on any given day we think of you as kind loving people and have no clue how much hatred you hold in your hearts, all 60,000,000 of you.  

My next blog will be on Hillary's emails, the number one reason Trump voters give for their votes.  That one so reeks of hypocrisy.  Here's a clue:  22,000,000 emails purposely destroyed and against federal law.  Take a guess!

See you tomorrow, I hope.

As We Knew It!

I have been very conflicted since Tuesday night when Donald Trump was declared President-Elect.  My first instinct was to leave by whatever means available, my second to stay and fight back.  I had announced my intention to stay and fight back but I realize now that it was my personal fear of going it alone, to a foreign country where I speak little of the language and where I will have limited emotional support and little money.

My second instinct was the right one, to leave for another country and fight from there.  As some philosophers tell us, history repeats itself.  And although there are many in denial, even those who voted for Trump and now say that he really didn't mean it! He did and his appointment of Steve Bannon is the proof. Bannon is a white nationalist, an anti-semite, a racist, a homophobe, a sexual predator, a wife beater, and Trump's newly-appointed chief strategist.

During the 1930's many Germans who hated everything that Hitler and the Third Reich stood for left the country to work from outside.  Those who stayed to fight--there were many, were killed, some sent to the same camps where Jews were gassed, and others were killed outright, either shot or hanged.  Those who stayed accomplished nothing, not even an underground railroad of the type we had here in the United States.  Staying, at least for me, is the coward's way out.  Nestle in, keep your mouth shut, and they won't find you.

I am neither a nestler nor someone who can keep her mouth shut when she sees racism taking over our government and our country. It will be difficult to leave family and friends at my age, but I cannot stay.  The ugliness that is forthcoming will be blinding in its intensity.

Let me tell a brief story.  Shortly before November 8, someone on Facebook, a family member, posted a link to a Mike Pence story, where Pence called Michele Obama our most vulgar first lady.  Today, I saw a picture posted on Facebook of Melania Trump posed naked with another woman, also naked, pushing up against her with the suggestion of some type of sexual activity.  I am open-minded to an extent, but I do have to ask how someone who voted for Donald Trump could support such an accusation against Mrs. Obama yet claim he is not a racist.  It would appear that the only vulgarity Michelle Obama committed was being born with dark skin.  This same person voted for a man who's wife is shown simulating sex with another woman and who himself made two soft-porn films for Playboy.  Vulgarity, they name is Republican.

One more story.  I visited a neighborhood bar tonight and the bartender, a mixed race woman from France, and I suspect not legal, talked to me about the election. We discussed Trump's declaration that the first thing he would do after taking office would be to deport 3,000,000 illegal immigrants.  She asked, naively, but they will all be Mexicans, won't they?  It was obvious that she would be more comfortable if she knew they would be Mexicans, that they weren't coming for her.  But they will come for her, and ultimately for me. But I won't be here.

I will retire tonight to my tears for this country and its future.

Pin it!

The "safety pin campaign" started in England after the Brexit vote.  You wear it visibly so that others can see it.  Its point was to reassure minorities and immigrants that they had friends who would look out for them. It is now catching hold here for the same reason, since the election of Trump.

I ordered 30 large silver pins from Amazon and plan not only to wear one myself, both on outer clothing and inner clothing, but I will carry a few with me wherever I go.  If someone acts interested I will tell them the reasoning behind it and offer them one to wear, and another if they promise to give it to someone else.  You can get thirty large silver safety pins from Amazon for a bit over $10.00.  If you want to join the "Pin it!" campaign order some or just use the plain small ones that you can buy just about anywhere.  It's a visible display of our disgust at the bigotry and misogyny celebrated by Trumpism.

Do it!  Pin it!

Too much to say, too little time

On Tuesday I thought I wanted to die I was so devastated by the election results.  The United States had elected a self-declared racist to its highest office.  I wondered if there were any reason to be alive in a world that, frankly, had totally come apart for me.  I went through all the scenarios of what would happen:  appointments of other racists to high office, Latinos and Muslims cowering in their homes and jobs waiting to be deported, chidden wailing as they saw their parents imprisoned.  And I'm not just talking about those who are illegal.  

What I imagined is already happening and Trump has not yet taken office.  The bigots are out there threatening anyone who doesn't look like them.  They wave signs in schools and on the streets, telling people to go back to where they came from, even if where they came from was in the hospital down the street.

So why am I still alive.  In some deep part of my being I have always been an optimist.  I have always believed that anyone I liked personally thought as I did and was always shocked when someone who appeared to be kind had hatred for others unlike them.  Well,  the optimist is still here and I have decided that I must work hard to insure that Donald Trump is our president for the shortest possible time, that the plurality of voters who wanted to see Hillary Clinton as our president are not going away, that we will win because we're the majority and because we're on the right side of history.

All those who feel as I do have much to do in the next few months and years.  On my next post, I will list what we can do to bring about real change.  But first get out those safety pins and pin one to your coat where everyone can see it.  It represents many things but most of all it tells others we believe in inclusion and that we won't accept the Trump agenda of racism and hatred.  

Tomorrow, more.  But now I have to get ready to visit a cataract surgeon.  Goodbye for now, but as Scarlett said, "tomorrow is another day."

Francis 1 brings scandal to the Church

When I attended Catholic schools, grammar and high school, I learned a fair amount of Catholic theology.  One thing that I learned is that "scandal" in Catholic terms is a grave sin against God:

Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it or the weakness of those who are scandalized.  It prompted our Lord to utter this curse:  "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."  Scandal is particularly grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others.  Jesus reproached the scribes and Pharisees on this account, likening them to wolves in sheep's clothing.

Francis 1 in his recent visit to the United States gave scandal in two ways.  The first, when he praised the bishops in the United States for their handling of the sexual abuse issue.  Later, he tried to justify what he had said, but to praise the same men who were responsible for the ongoing abuse by transferring priests to other parishes after it was known that these same priests had abused young boys and girls is "scandal" of the worst sort.  What worse sin can a man of God commit than to abuse children, the majority of whom were boys. The irony, of course, is the Church in its current teaching is against all homosexual acts committed by adults, yet by its actions excuses the same acts by its priests with young boys.  Perhaps Francis was thinking of himself while a bishop in Argentina when he refused to meet with those who had been abused by priests.  Perhaps he himself transferred such priests from parish to parish where they continued to abuse children.

The second is the audience he gave to Kim Davis.  Davis has been married four times, had two children out of wedlock, and is not a Catholic.  For Francis to have given this woman a private audience, as she now claims, is also a scandal.  Francis seems to be telling the world that so long as you are against gay men and women marrying, that is more important than respecting the institute of marriage.  Divorced Catholics, even those who don't remarry and remain celibate, are not permitted to receive communion but Kim Davis is given a special audience with Francis.  He has in effect declared that some sins are worst than others, that having children out of wedlock and that multiple marriages are not as grave as two people of the same sex marrying, and thereby consecrating their love for one another.

I often wonder how Republicans can call themselves Christians, which the majority of them do, because of their stands against helping the poor, against immigration, and their support of executions.  How is this Christian I ask myself.  And how is Francis a Christian when he supports someone like Kim Davis but not members of his own Catholic flock.

What gets me so angry about the story of Davis and Francis meeting is that I know if my own mother, perhaps the best Christian and Catholic I've known in my life, would not have been given a private audience with Francis if she had asked for one.  She's dead now for more than a decade but she, like so many Catholic women, followed the dictates of the Church to the letter, and in Francis's meeting with Kim Davis he showed his contempt for Catholic women.  A pox on him and his house.  

Republican Debate: September 16, 2015

There's been a lot published in the last two days on the recent debate at the Reagan Library.  It was a night filled with lies, innuendoes, nasty comments about each other, Barack Obama, and Hilliary Clinton.  Oh, and let me not leave out John Roberts, head of the Supreme Court.  Apparently, Ted Cruz will never forgive his vote on the Affordable Health Care Act.  And Jed Bush agreed with him--let us remind you that it was Jed's brother who made the appointment.  But it's almost impossible to write about every silly remark and every outright lie, so I'll focus on the ones I thought the most egregious:

Bush:  Whatever you may say about my brother, "he kept us safe.  WHAT?  was what I screamed at the TV?  How could he say something so outrageous on TV when everyone knows 9/11 happened during his presidency, and when everyone should know (but then most Americans don't read) that there had been warnings for months that something was going to happen and Bush and his neo-cons ignored them.  And then, he made special arrangements so the Bin Laden family could get out of New York City after the attack.  If he gets the Republican nomination, then I must conclude that Republicans are perhaps the stupidest people on the face of our planet.

Fiorini:  She had the audacity to announce on TV that there were videos of Planned Parenthood with a "live" fetus on a table with its heart beating and legs pumping, trying to keep its brain alive so it could sell the fetus tissue.  First, there is no such video, never has been, and never could be one, as the concept of a fetus with beating heart and pumping legs lying on a table not connected to anything is not feasible.  Yet none of the other candidates, including the two doctors, challenged her on this outrageous statement.

Christie:  The me, me, me, me, and more me New Jersey Governor lecturing Fiorina and Trump because they kept talking about themselves and their careers.  That's about equal to Trump wanting his presidential code name to be "humble."

The biggest blooper of the night was that of Bush when asked which woman's picture should be on the $10 bill.  He said Margaret Thacher.  I think that will be what absolutely keeps him from getting the Republican nomination.  Can you imagine TV ads constantly showing his response, in effect telling American woman that there is no American woman worthy of recognition.  I'm still amazed about that--how could he have said something so ridiculous and that on top of his saying that there was too much money in women's health care.  Wow.

Lots of other silly stuff went on, including Hucklebee suggesting his wife's picture so she could spend her own money.  Not in the least funny and very denigrating to women as well.

I could go on for pages but you'll have to catch me on the next debate, when I intend to do live commentary.

Well, I'm back and I do hope I haven't lost my readers.  It's been a long time.

The Genius Bar: Steve Jobs Huckster

I've always had difficulty understanding why so many computer nerds admire Steve Jobs.  He had some technical knowledge, of course, but he was not a computer genius by any stretch. I disliked him for his arrogance and his plagarism, and particularly took a dislike to him when he jumped the line to get a liver transplant, using, of course, his wads of money.  He gave little, if anything, to charity until he was diagnosed with pancretic cancer and then only to pancreatic foundations.  He was a selfish man with a huge ego who stole much of Apple's technology from the real computer geniuses, including the developer of the Unix operating system who died the same week as Jobs, with a small mention in the New York Times.  Granted, Jobs was a brilliant huckster, but then I've always been negative about Madison Avenue hucksters, most of whom do more harm than good.  I'm writing this because I had to bring my MacBook into Apple this week--again spilled liquid (ugh!) and as anyone with an Apple knows, spills and Apples, at least the Jobs kind, don't mix.

What rankles is the term Genius Bar, no doubt one of Jobs' hype ideas before he died.  How many of the technicians who work at Apple have developed huge egos as a result when they are, in fact, simply hardware technicians, and not always good ones. The genius to whom I was assigned lacked even the requisites of a good technician.  My Mag DC-in port has been acting up for quite a while and it finally died after the spill.  I salvaged the remainder of the computer by getting most of the liquid out, turning it upside down, removing the back and hard drive (couldn't get the battery out as it needs a special tool--Apple designs these things so you have to take it into their shop and pay mega bucks to replace a simple battery).  I wiped the boards down with alcohol then packed the whole thing in a bag of arborio rice (collects excess moisture) and tried it 24 hours later.  Yeah, it worked fine but I let the battery lose a good bit of power before trying the power adapter, which had finally, and mercifully I hope, died.

Back to my genius.  He said Apple won't fix a machine that has had liquid damage, I would have to take it somewhere else.  When I asked if I could change the  port myself, he said it was soldered to the mother board (which it is not).  I've ordered the part and keeping my fingers crossed that I can fix it.  Otherwise, I'm reclaiming my old IBM Thinkpad with windows XP.  Ordered some more RAM to jazz it up as it's very slow.  Never again will an Apple darkened my door!

Back to Jobs--I resent his and Apple's offenses against the English language (see Orwell's "Politics and the English Language").  Can't we please reserve the term "genius" for the Albert Einstein's of the world--and me, of course, if I actually fix the damned thing!

I salvaged most of the Arborio rice as I'm planning to make an apple risotto.