What Is Going On?

Well. The day has come. Lily goes back to work today. She's only working part-time but still, this means that she'll have to put on that uniform and go to work and leave those boys with me. I know that this is going to be one of the hardest things she's ever done in her entire life. She doesn't have the slightest desire to go back to work. But. Pay check. But. Insurance. But. 
Life.

How did we come to this place where it takes two paychecks to support a family, even if they live close to the bone, even if they don't have luxuries, even if they work so very, very hard?
These days you either have to be pretty well off or else really, really poor to be able to stay at home with your babies and Lily and Jason are neither.
Jason takes all the hours they'll give him at his work but it's still not enough.

And mostly? It boils down to the insurance.

But. Again. But.

I read an article in the New Yorker yesterday (no, I don't JUST read the cartoons) that made my blood boil. It was about a man whom none of us had probably ever heard of and I hadn't until I heard an interview on NPR with the author of the article, Jane Mayer. The guy's name is Bryan Fisher and he's a pastor of sorts although he keeps getting kicked out of even the most conservative churches because of his hard-line view on what woman should be allowed to do and not be allowed to do and he rabidly hates homosexuals and claims that homosexuality is a CHOICE (which always leads me to believe that the person who claims this is at least bi-sexual and has made the choice not to follow his or her own inborn inclinations but live a life of a LIE but that's just my own belief) and he's a conservative radio talk-show host and so what? Right?
Except.
He is wielding huge influence on the Republican party right now.

That whole thing about Mitt Romney's national security spokesman? Richard Grenell? An openly gay man? He resigned after a public attack on him. Here's Fisher's take on why Grenell's sexuality would be a national security risk:

"What if he's traveling for Mitt Romney on government business? He's overseas somewhere...he's got top-secret information in his hotel room and he just can't help himself? He's gotta have an anonymous tryst with some homosexual?"

Oh yeah. That makes so much damn sense.

Fisher and his followers want to remake the entire government of the United States of America over in what they perceive to be a Biblical manner. And none of this would make one damn bit of difference because there have always been lunatics spouting their hatred but in this case, these people have influence. And it's not just homosexuality. It's birth control and it's abortions (of course) and it's even taxes and education and all sorts of things that these people have decided are Biblically wrong.

"Fischer says that progressive income taxes and estate taxes violate the Eighth and Tenth Commandments because the government 'steals' and 'covets' other's wealth."

But it's really the gay marriage thing that this guy can't let go of. Homosexuals. They're the ones destroying this country.

It makes me sick. But because this guy has followers and because these days a presidential candidate will whore and blasphemy himself to get elected if that's what it takes, Fisher has influence. Romney needs Fisher's followers who are people who believe that evolution is an evil teaching, that people who believe in environmental science are worshipping a false religion, people who, well, let's face it- are ignorant and intolerant and filled with hate.

Meanwhile, calling themselves followers of Christ.

All right. I have to get ready to go take care of my grandchildren. Because health care in this country is unaffordable unless you have insurance which is also unaffordable unless you work for a company that offers it.

And it's not that I don't want to take care of my grandchildren. I do.
But as a mother, I know how important it is to be able to stay at home with babies, especially nurslings.

Gibson is three months old. He has never once wanted his mama and her milk and not had it. Today, she'll be at work, pumping her milk when she can and probably crying.
She'll race home on her lunch break so she can nurse her baby and wolf down a sandwich and then race back to work.

I don't have a pretty red bow to wrap this one up with. I'm just saying that we live in crazy times. Oh, we always have lived in crazy times but somehow, things just seem to be getting crazier. And the inmates ARE running the asylum and we've let them and I just can't help but be afraid for the world my grandsons are going to grow up in.