Life and Times of AlieMalie

I know the guy had a lot of skeletons in his closet, but the way he stood up for social justice in this country has yet to be matched by any other legislator in recent memory.

I dare the republicans to stand in the way of health care reform now.

Rest in Peace, Teddy Kennedy.

Barney Frank is an American hero. Definitely follow that link and watch Jon Stewart give Frank props and snaps for calling out the wingnuts!

I wrote this as an email to a friend this morning and I think it shows just exactly how exhausted I really am:

So I’m handing out fliers to my event tomorrow at this local mental health worksite (to the workers) at 7 effing AM this morning after 5 hours of sleep and only 2 yesterday so you can imagine that I’m not exactly present and engaged. It’s a little slow and I’m looking around, surveying the site and kinda wandering around la la land when all these sparrows catch my eye. They’re hopping around cheerfully, having a great time, and I’m all, “They’re so happy, I wish people would be happy about healthcare reform. Hey, maybe I should invite THEM to my picnic, I wonder if they’d come?!”

And then I realized I was seriously debating whether or not to actively recruit BIRDS to my event.

BIRDS!!

This is real lit for the event we’re having tomorrow.  A rock-n-roll health care RV tour.  My job rocks.  Literally.

This is my thousandth post and I wish I had something more profound to write, but oh well.

It’s all healthcare reform all the time right now. Next week is shaping up to be the most intense week of my life to date, and that’s really only including Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

We have 6 town halls, two tea parties, 6 anti-healthcare reform bus stops, a pro-healthcare reform press conference and a MONSTER pro-healthcare reform rally. The last two are mine, if you couldn’t guess. And I have to turn out folks to the town halls in support of our member of congress and in support of reform. Should be interesting – I’m sure you’ve seen the news of the insanity going on across the country where people are refusing to allow a public discourse and simply shut the entire discussion down by screaming.

The best part of next week? The first town hall will be held at … drumroll please …

The Angry Beaver Lodge.

That’s not a joke. I want to look a teapartier right in the eyes as they start getting steamed and in a very patronizing tone say, “Are you an angwy wittle beavwer?” Because that? Would be awesome. Also, I make a motion that all teapartiers from here on out be referred to as Angry Beavers.

Anyway, what I really wanted to post about was this:

Sarah Palin returns, Death Panel in tow. My only question is this: Will the Death Panelists be required to go through Senate Confirmation? Talk about having some awesome hearings!! Those would be FILLED with fireworks. Hellz yes!!

My only response is the following graphic courtesy of Jon Stewart. He had this up in response to Senator Grassley’s Debt and Deficit Dragon which is well worth watching if you are in serious need of laughter that will leave you rolling on the floor for hours. So this is my response to Sarah Palin:

It’s August and the high for today is a wickedly HOT 71F. I know, almost unbearable, right? Not only that but the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and there’s a nice breeze. I can’t deal with this! And the humidity?! A whole 54%! How do people deal with this? The heat! The humidity! The sunshine! It’s too much!

So far this summer I have yet to see 90F. This is a good thing, I hate the heat and humidity that makes me feel so sticky and gross and to feel the need to take two if not three showers a day. I feel kinda like a cat that gets scared and immediately poufs out a cloud of fur, except I feel gross and immediately get drenched in sweat. Did I mention it’s gross? Anyway, hi to all my San Antonio friends who have just experienced not just the hottest July on record bu the hottest MONTH on record. Hope you enjoyed it. We had snow in June and it stayed in the upper 70s for nearly all of July. I hope August continues this trend. And yes, I’m probably going to eat my words come winter but I’m enjoying North Dakota’s weather for now!

So in the past couple of weeks I’ve put a few thousand miles on my car. I made trip around North Dakota, quite literally around the whole state. I drove down to Omaha to meet up with the one and only Tina Casagrand and coincidentally it was the Wild About Omaha (to celebrate 100 years of Mutual of Omaha) weekend which was a lot of fun, too. We stumbled into a great Farmer’s Market, made our way to the zoo and had an awesome automobile adventure with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad dead battery.

I’ve also made weekly trips to other parts of the state because there are lots of meetings to be held regarding health care reform and one our illustrious senators as well as our congressman. They’re, um, a little off target. Anyway, August will be an interesting month, to say the least. There is a LOT of activity here revolving around our congressional delegation and their stance on the legislation being crafted in DC.

Suffice to say, North Dakota is being renamed The Thunderdome for the amount of activity that is going to be seen from our Members of Congress, our Health Care Coalition as well as the obstructionists who are standing in the way of real reform. And the fact that two members of our three person delegation have made some, shall we say, interesting comments? As well as the fact that they hold a lot of power in their respective chambers? Yea, The Thunderdome is more than appropriate. If you happen to hear of a massive game of chicken involving two RVs on tour that are taking to the streets from opposing sides, just don’t mention you know me. I’m probably involved. Ahem. The lengths I’ll go to to ensure we get real reform.

ANYWAY, moving on. Let’s talk about something everyone can agree on. FRESH PRODUCE!

While we were at the Omaha Farmer’s Market we came across some incredible produce that smelled so good and looked absolutely delicious; we also discovered a two foot long cucumber. TWO FOOT LONG CUCUMBER. What do the use to water the produce in Iowa and Nebraska?!

I also have a National Security update: CORN is taking over the world. Don’t believe me? Just go north from Kansas City all the way to Fargo. There are HUNDREDS of miles of CORN. I can only imagine that traveling east to west you’d find the same thing. CORN CORN CORN. Beware.

Anyway, we’ll close this out with some photos.

Have a great weekend, all!

Remember this:

Now it looks like this: