Kerfuffles

Why Can’t the Poor Be More Like the Rich?

What a novel idea that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has for ending poverty in America. Government incentives. After all, Bloomberg pointed out, the government already offers incentives to the rich to stop planting corn or tobacco, or to drill for oil or not drill in certain places. “You can argue that a lot of the things Congress subsidizes, people should do anyway,” Bloomberg said in an interview with National Public Radio. “But the truth … is, when you have a bonus, you tend to work harder and do more.”

So once we start offering government incentives to poor people “to do things that can benefit them, such as attend school, get a library card or go to the doctor“, they will start, a hum, “behaving” as well as the rich, according to Bloomberg logic. Does anyone except the Mayor really believe that turning the poor into masses of Paris Hiltons, OJ Simpsons, et al would be a good thing?

Who Knew? Not me, however some nice person seems to believe it be true. That someone is my blog heroine, the very lady-like Nan at American Daughter blog. It is she who has honored Neddy Kerfuffles with … TA DA … the Nice Matters Blog Award. Neddy is humbly honored, Lady Nan. Nan wrote about The Nice Matters Award:

“The Nice Matters Blog Award is for ladies who have not only great blogs, but also who have more to them, there is caring, friendship and inspiration too.This award will be awarded to those that are just nice people, good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!

Nan at American Daughter blog nominated, in alphabetical order:

• Suzy at BIRD
• Norma at Collecting My Thoughts
• Christi at Common Sense America
• Pat at Dr. Sanity
• Neddy at Kerfuffles
• Sunnye at The Sunnye Side of the Web
• Flora at United Conservatives of Virginia

But Not Out of The Closet. Is He Or Isn’t He? Only His Bishop Knows For Sure.

Poor Senator Craig. For the last two days the country and the state of Idaho, not to mention the good Senator’s wife and children, discovered for the first time that their Senator, husband and father pled guilty months ago to something or other that dear Kerfuffles finds a bit too icky to explain. Said icky nastiness happened in the men’s restroom in a Minnesota airport, far from both Idaho and Washington. The good Senator Larry Craig has been hither and yon defending himself and claiming that he is NOT nor NEVER has been “Gay”. In addition, he has made it quite clear that he is totally innocent until “proven” guilty by a jury of his peers. HA - Where oh, Where will Minnesotans find a jury of Larry’s peers? Yes, yes, yes, he did “plead” guilty, but remember legally that a “pled” is not the same as a “proven” guilty.

Is Larry Craig a Closeted Mormon?

Not content with having a Republican Senator involuntarily outed, this time by the police and not by other Gays, the liberal Democrats have gone totally berserk and are accusing him of being a Mormon to boot. After all, Craig is a mucketty muck big time supporter of presidential wannabee, Mitt Romney. And Idaho is out there somewhere near that expanse of wilderness that Brigham Young claimed 150 years ago or so. Ta da! One plus one equals Mormon! This has spun the one man spin-machine of Larry Craig so fast and hard, that he has been turned into a pink fluff of stick-icky cotton candy. Now he is really mad, as evidenced by the following press release:

Now, I can understand some people, such as the entire Republican Senate and that vicious news rag “Idaho Statesman”, concluding falsely that I am homosexual, as after all there have been a number of hints and clues throughout the years, and now there is my Minnesota guilty plea to Gayness. However, to tar and feather me as a Mormon is beyond the pale. I am not now nor have I ever been a Mormon. This is the most disgusting slur that has ever been hurled at me during all of my decades of public service. I want to make this perfectly clear. I am an innocent victim, and there is NO way any liberal Democrat is going to trick me into pleading guilty to Mormonism.

Senator Craig claims to be NOT Roman Catholic either, however his spin staff released the following image of him attending confession:

Is Larry Craig a Closeted Mormon? He must be, as only the Liberal Democrats know about it.

Ruffles and Flourishes to “Left ‘Toon Lane” for the cartoon.

How hypocritical that the news media of fashion-conscious New York City are the prime critics of Judith Giuliani’s apparel choices. The New York Daily News gave the dreaded “Down Arrow” to the wife of America’s mayor just because she gets a separate airplane seat for her Louis Vuitton handbag.

Vanity Fair reports that Sunny Mindel, communications director of Rudy’s Giuliani Partners, “spoke of the need for providing an entire plane seat for Judith’s ‘Baby Louis’—a reference to her Louis Vuitton handbag, which sits in solitary splendor on her travels.”

The New York Times not only criticizes the separate campaign airplane seat for her ‘Baby Louie Bag”, but “sharply” condemns her as “an imperious striver who shops extravagantly.” Hello, New York Times. Is anybody home there anymore in The Big Apple? Or have all the other “imperious” strivers and extravagant shoppers moved South?

Now let’s get real about Louis Vuitton handbags. If Mrs. Giuliani owned a genuine “Baby Louis” she would never dream of parking it upon a seat where have sat other less elegant seats. Every genuine Louis Vuitton handbag comes with its own carrying bag, just for such purposes as travel amongst the hoi polloi. See a picture from Wikipedia of a genuine Louis Vuitton handbag’s handbag. A genuine Louis Vuitton cannot risk having its rare and specially treated exotic leather exposed to public contaminants, such as non-Vuitton owners, and must be properly enclosed in its supplied carrying case. Otherwise, its warranty becomes null and void.

Considering that only 1% of all handbags bearing the distinctive Louis Vuitton trademark monogram are authentic (Wikipedia), what are the chances that Judith Giuliani’s bag is a genuine one? There is little chance; only one out of a hundred. If Judith Giuliani’s fashion choices are to be ridiculed, it should be because she chooses to sport a handbag that is so widely counterfeited and imitated that even her maid would be embarrassed to be seen carrying one.

From China With DANGER
What can be done to protect American children from lead jewelry? The American government regulatory agencies are unable to prevent the unnecessary exposure of youngsters to the hazards of lead in their environment.

In 2005, 95 percent of all recalled toxic jewelry in the United States were products imported from China. Unlike the toxic pet food, tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and lead-painted toys from China that have been sucessfully recalled, getting the lead filled children’s jewelry and trinkets out the hands of children has not been resolved. And it isn’t just fly-by-night, mom and pop manufacturers who have been sending these hazardous trinkets into American nurseries; it is the big names like Mattel, Juicy Couture and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Purchasers are not safe from lead even when buying non metal toys. The 746,621 “bonus charms” in a Shirley Temple DVD were contaminated with lead. Last year a 4-year-old in Minneapolis, swallowed a “free” heart-shaped lead charm that had come with Reebok shoes. He died after suffering vomiting, seizures and respiratory arrest. The Minneapolis health official who investigated said: “It’s just outrageous. How can we be allowing products that are targeted and marketed to children that have such a potential to poison them?”

Get the Lead Out!

Various enforcement standards specifying what percentage of lead is allowed in this imported product or that imported product have been announced, however the same governement agencies doing the “announcing” are unable to enforce the tauted standards. For whatever reason, considering an outright formal ban on lead in children’s jewelry, toys and clothing fasteners seems to be unacceptable to them.

Many letters have been sent to the product safety commission urging the immediacy of just such a ban. Only one letter has been found to oppose the ban and it is dated March 2007, from the government of China:

Jewelry with lead is not a danger, Guo LiSheng, a deputy director general at China’s General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, wrote in a March letter to the commission, as long as it is covered by a protective coating. The regulation, he argued, was unnecessary and would “increase the cost of producing and inspection of the manufacturers of children’s metal jewelry, and bring unnecessary obstacles to trade.“

Heaven forbid, that we increase the cost of any children’s trinkets just to get the lead out. Since neither the government of the United States, nor the government of China are giving children’s safety much priority, American parents are on their own if they want to prevent the ingesting of toxic materials by their young charges. Stop buying these dangerous trinkets from abroad. Be more vigilent - buy fewer of the more expensive and safer toys for children. When it comes to kids, cheaper is not necessarily better.

New York Times: Bid to Root Out Lead Trinkets Falters in U.S.

Now that it is time for the Back-To-School buying clothes ritual, parents are being warned about certain gang or drug symbols which are appearing on kids clothing. If your child is pleading for a shirt which displays stars and crowns with a certain number of points and hearts with wings, you need to read further. “There are lots of symbols that mean something to gang members and parents don’t know what it means,” said a sheriff’s detective in Florida to the “Tallahassee Democrat”. They appear on T-shirts, bandanas, belts and bookbags of arrested gang members.

It is not only symbols, but colors and certain numbers that are are used to display messages. A plain everyday T-shirt can display a gang-related message when certain letters are manipulated. For example, the letter “B” crossed out, means that the wearer doesn’t like Blood gang members.

Signs of Gang Membership, from FGIA.com

• Stars and crowns with a certain number of points and hearts with wings.
• A child is obsessed with one particular color of clothing or shows a desire for a particular logo over and over.
• Wears excessive jewelry with distinctive designs and may wear it only on either the right or left side of the body.
• Peculiar drawings or language on schoolbooks, folders, walls, doors, etc. Usually graffiti-like, hard to decipher and characterized by crossed out and upside-down letters and symbols (may later appear as tattoos or brands).

Now, if you are not a parent of 14, 15 and 16-year-olds, you may be wondering how in the world these kids can be displaying gang symbols on their clothing, when most of them, these days, seem to be going about in public wearing the minimalist style. That is to say that their clothing consists of very small amounts of cloth, as in “half-naked.” Young teenaged girls wear shirts that cover little, if anything, and their jeans are little more than belt loops. No wonder none of them wears underwear anymore, as their clothes will not cover it.

This leaves us non-parents a-wondering. If parents today do not notice that their daughters are walking off to school dressed as Hoochie Mamas, who with a brain thinks any of them is going to notice if their children start wearing gang paraphenalia. In fact, if some parents do notice, they may just breathe a sigh of relief that their child is showing a bit of personal modesty.

The image, Winged Heart with Roses and Dagger, is subject to copyright by FireAngelDesigns. It is posted here with permission via the Flickr API by Kerfuffles.

Yes indeed we do. Who are we? Why, we are none other than the Moonbat Kossacks. Although we hate the military, we do indeed LOVE those military regs of theirs.

No contrary voices allowed, as WE ARE PROGRESSIVES!

At the Yearly KOS Convention, during a “progressive” panel about the military, the moderator, John Stoltz, shouted down a young man in uniform when he rose to opine that the surge was indeed working and lowering Iraqi casualties. Mr. John Stoltz went absolutely moonbattingly berserk. Other members of the panel tried to answer the soldier’s question, however the boss KOSSACK ordered them to “stand down.” He then demanded the name, rank and serial number of the American serviceman and threatened to take him outside and whip his camouflaged rear KOSSACK. “Let me make this real clear to you Sergeant. Listen to me. If you use the uniform of our country to say something political … I will see to it that you never again wear the uniform of MY United States!”

To the rescue rode that white-maned progressive Army General, Wesley Clark, who took the reigns and rambled on about General Douglas MacArthur’s ramblings of many years ago about soldiers and politics. “We progressives silenced the soldier for his own good. We saved the sergeant from the long arm of military justice. More importantly, we saved his sorry hide from the wrath of our John the Bouncer-Moderator. To protest the war in his military uniform, as did our hero John Kerry a generation ago, is one thing.” (Picture Reminder) “But to ‘SUPPORT’ the war while in uniform is quite beyond the pale, and cannot be tolerated at our aptly named KOS Convention: “The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different?” … because, We Really Are That Different!”

Although it is quite a hoot indeed to have Daily or Yearly Kossacks enforcing DOD policy, Kerfuffles thinks that the Moonbats were probably correct in their interpretation of the military regulations. From them we learn that there is something labeled “DoD Directive 1334.01″ which emphatically states that it is against DoD policy for the wearing of military uniforms at meetings of totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive organizations. Case closed, Kossacks. You win!

3.1. The wearing of the uniform by members of the Armed Forces (including retired members and members of Reserve components) is prohibited under any of the following circumstances:

3.1.1. At any meeting or demonstration that is a function of, or sponsored by an organization, association, movement, group, or combination of persons that the Attorney General of the United States has designated, under Executive Order 10450 as amended (reference (c)), as totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive, or as having adopted a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny others their rights under the Constitution of the United States, or as seeking to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means.

Here is the “official” video from KOS, which turned off the microphone of the Sergeant. Start at the 41:00 mark: Yearly KOS Video.

Oh My God — “Cryin’ Bob Butler” is Still Sending “My Wife Left Me” E-mails! Cannot somebody at his “institution” find a straight jacket to keep his fingers away from the keyboard? Won’t somebody please buy this Pulitzer-Prize-Winning author a copy of the instructive book “Send”, which is a guide to email etiquette:

“Can you please give voice to this at your site?” reads the subject line of a new e-mail from Pulitzer-winning author Robert Olen Butler to the Internet blog “Gawker.com.” OH BOY … can we ever, replies Gawker.

You see, my primary concern, was to protect dear Elizabeth Dewberry of course, and that is why I sent the e-mail to the community that “she and I lived in. If I had said nothing, the naked facts of the events would have meant that Elizabeth would be savaged by the rumor mill.” See … I’m not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, I am a saint to boot!

“And the email was never a mass email. I chose five trusted grad students who know us both the best. I chose half a dozen faculty members who know us both the best. And they were asked, when the rumors reached them, to tell the appropriately nuanced story. Or to tell the fuller story on their own initiative–because everyone would soon know anyway. Yes, I sanctioned the use of the email I sent them in order to explain the circumstances to the people in our community who were hearing about this. Why should I avoid vagueness myself and then force them to be vague? Without that sanction to use the email, the explanation vacuum would have continued to form and be filled with lies. And this process worked exactly as I had hoped. That email went out six weeks ago. And faculty members and students alike have told me that all of the talk around campus and around town has been sympathetic and generous about both of us.”

Not a Mass Email? It is now!

“And I tell you absolutely that Elizabeth did not do this for money and Ted did not do it lightly as conquest. They love each other deeply. And given what they’ve both been through in their lives, I expect them to be very good for each other. I love Elizabeth and her remarkable writing talent. I admire the wide-ranging good works Ted does to preserve the earth and prevent nuclear war. These are admirable people doing important work in the culture and in the world. I sincerely hope they have the rich happiness they deserve.

“In spite of my previous chiding of you and your readers, I wish that happiness for all of you, as well. It’s dangerous to live too deeply in a world of glib judgmentalism. And man, there is some truly legitimate short-burst writing talent among you all.”

I am taking this well, aren’t I? My therapist gave me the above thoughts and I penned them in my Pulitzer-Prize-Winning manner. The following prose is from one of my novellas written in 1995, coincidentally around the same time that I married the most fortunate Elizabeth Dewberry. Already, I was having premonitions about that Georgia cracker Ted Turner:

And then the cracker [as the parrot has dubbed the lover, who is also described as having “a thick Georgia truck-stop accent” ] comes around the corner. He wears only his rattlesnake boots. I take one look at his miserable, featherless body and shake my head. We keep our sexual parts hidden, we parrots, and this man is a pitiful sight. “Peanut,” I say. (”JEALOUS HUSBAND RETURNS IN FORM OF PARROT” by Robert Olen Butler)

WaPo ‘understands’ in “The Affair Of an E-mail Gone Wild”: “We understand that writers are notorious gossips. We understand the bitterness of divorce. … But the main thing we understand is that rarely has being one of Ted Turner’s girlfriends looked so good.” Bob Butler is not only sending mass e-mails, he’s podcasting to the world via NPR. Listen to the Pulitzer Prize-Winning-Email Author as he ’splains his E-Mail Chronicles of the Butler-Dewberry Love Triangle with Ted Turner.

With apologies to Johnny Ray’s “Cry” …

If your sweetheart leaves you for an older man,
It’s no secret you’ll feel better if you slam … her.
When waking from a bad dream,
Don’t you sometimes think it’s real?
But it’s only false emotions that you feel.

If your heartaches seem to hang around too long,
And your blues keep getting bluer with each song,
Remember hope can be found at the end of your hand.
So pour your vengeance into an e-mail and click “SEND.”

Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, has found the Internet way of dealing with a broken heart. When his wife, Elizabeth Dewberry, left him to join the Ted Turner Collection, he poured his feelings into an e-mail and sent it only to his university’s department. They would need to know the details of the break-up of his marriage. The thoughtful academics and young students should be warned that marrying a woman young enough to be one’s daughter is no guarantee that she will NOT leave you for a grandfather surrogate. It’s not so evil, as before clicking “SEND”, he showed the e-mail to his weepy wife who weepingly agreed that the world needed to know all the personal details of her twelve year marriage to him, plus her sexual and medical history from childhood onward. It was not like he disclosed her social security number or anything bad like that.

HI ALL - FROM BOB (PS - Forward this e-mail to everyone you know. If you need more details, just write me.)

Rumors will soon be swirling around the department, so I want to tell the full and nuanced story to the five of you among the graduate students and ask that you clarify the issues for any of your fellow grad students who ask. This sort of thing can get wildly distorted pretty quickly. You can feel free to use any part or all of this email to do so. I really appreciate your help.

Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it.

Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner.

She and I will remain the best of friends. She also knows about, endorses, and even encourages that I tell this much detail of the story:
She has spoken openly in her work and in her public life of the fact that she was molested by her grandfather from an early age, a molestation that was known and tacitly condoned by her radically Evangelical Christian parents. She then went into a decade-long abusive marriage. I met her when she was in a terminally desperate state from this lifetime of abuse, and we married and we truly loved each other.

I was able to help her a great deal. She says I saved her life. But de facto therapy as the initial foundation of a marriage eventually sucks the life out of a relationship. And it is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers. Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive. From all that I can tell, he is kind to her, loyal, considerate, and devoted to his family, and perhaps, therefore, he can redeem some things for her.

Further, Elizabeth has never been able to step out of the shadow of the Pulitzer. As you know-and she knows-I have been an avid admirer and supporter of her work. Everyone has heard me proclaim my sincere high regard for her as an artist. I often did this publicly. But she has published two brilliant novels since she’s been with me and neither has gotten anywhere near the recognition that they richly deserve. That made it harder and harder for her to live with the ongoing praise and opportunity that flows to a Pulitzer winner. Not because of jealousy. She has always been very happy for me. But the multitude of small reflections of regard that came my way inevitably threw a spotlight on the absence of those expressions of regard for her. She felt as if she was failing as a writer.

Then, in March, she nearly died from an intestinal blockage in Argentina while on a trip with Ted. The trauma of that led her further to profoundly question her own identity. It became clear to her that the only way she can truly find herself is by making this change in her life.

She will not be Ted’s only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and he gives them his absolute support when he does. And Elizabeth’s leaving me is as much about the three weeks a month she is alone as it is about the week a month she is with Ted. She will find her own space and her own light in which to create the great works of art she is destined to create.

I will keep my house. I will keep my dogs and cats. I will keep virtually everything. She is being characteristically generous about that. But I will lose Elizabeth. And that is very sad. But the loss has been happening through many years of our shared struggle to make her whole. In that, I’ve done all I can do, as has she. I wish her the best. I ask you not to think ill of her in any way.

Elizabeth and I will now conduct ourselves as if this is public knowledge. So as I suggested at the outset, you need not keep this to yourself, if the occasion arises to speak of it to someone. This is best anyway, since I am not up to the task of telling this story over and over.

I have a high regard and affection for the students in our program. I hope this will help them sort out this rather intense story in an appropriate way.
Best,
Bob Butler

As you know, MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING, and it will compensate poor little Elizabeth for those twelve years she endured living in the shadow of “MY” Pulitzer. RB