Nana Tillie Rants

This Is Not About the Iowa Caucus

Every year I visit my poor Marty’s grave on New Year’s Day. I bring a fat cannoli, an old CD player of our favorite songs, and some homemade vino so strong it will keep you toasted through February. I also bring a love letter to plant beside his grave. Not always possible when it’s minus ten degrees and the ground is frozen.

The letters were a sappy mess for the first few years, but I’d almost made it to Acceptance, the final stage in the grief process, until several months of media saturation coverage of the Iowa Caucus kicked me back to Anger where I’ve been stuck since Halloween. 

Dear Marty,

      God help me but you’re a stinkin’ bum for not staying alive long enough to get me through the politics of 2011. Happy New Year.

Your devoted wife,

Tillie

Many media types and pundits are twisting their boxer shorts into wedgies over the Republican caucus in which only about 120,000 folks participated in 2008. Poll after poll after poll.  Attack ads followed by counter-attack ads. Months, weeks, days of this polenta, and now hours and hours of “Live from Iowa!” while many of us sit here broke, jobless, and frustrated.

Someone needs to take a poll about how many people don’t give a flying fig about who wins in Iowa.

GOP Debate Fatigue

Okay you media monkeys, Nana has a nit to pick with you, and I’ve been scratching at it for a long time. Basta! Enough with the GOP Debate-a-rama. We’ve now lived through fourteen FOURTEEN right-wing, debates and so many months of this polenta disguised as news that I’ve shrunk another 1/8 of an inch in the meantime. Change the subject. Please.

I usually enjoy political programs – they’re my soap operas, but this constant din of debate drama is making me so angry I’ve started throwing rotten tomatoes at cardboard cutouts of the candidates. Pundits are next.

We have hours of pre-debate speculation. Who will be the deer in the headlights? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Will Mitt Romney’s hair go rogue?  (Not if he has the same stylist as Callista Gingrich.) Who will be the front runner this week according to the meaningless polls? Does anybody pay attention to John Huntsman?

Then we get live debate commentary which I don’t listen to because I’m afraid I’ll hurt myself.

Rehashed post-debate analysis goes on until the next debate approaches. Newt leads in the polls this week. Will it last until Tuesday? Romney made faces at Ron Paul. Why don’t people like Mitt? Rick Perry didn’t have an “OOPS!” moment. Good debate for Perry. Herman Cain didn’t experience brain freeze.  Good debate for Cain. Michelle Bachmann didn’t speak in tongues.  Good debate, etc. Did anybody pay attention to John Huntsman?

This goes on until the pre-debate phase for the next round. Will Mitt Romney make faces as his other opponents? Will Newt demand that retired nuns be put to work rebuilding the infrastructure? Will John Huntsman be there?

Rejoice I’m almost done. That’s what I did when the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wasn’t pre-empted by analysis of the post-debate analysis.

Here is where we need the relentless focus: How much damage has Citizens United done to our democracy to date? Will every one of the GOP candidates continue to lie about the economy and the President and get away with it? How many crooks and friends are now busy rigging the voting machines to bend to the right in time for 2012?  Why was it okay for Tea Party folks to show up at health care town meetings with loaded guns strapped to their thighs, while peaceful protesters at Occupy sites get arrested, pepper-sprayed and beaten with billy clubs by police in full riot gear?

Finally, why do the Republicans get to have so many debates and so much free air time to trash President Obama?

Basta!

Saluto!

Nana Tillie sends her love to all the good folks who participated in the Move Your Money day of action on 11/5. Nana joined about forty neighbors outside the local big bad Bank of America. My late Marty was there too. I brought some of his ashes in a zip lock bag. What the hell. We heard lots of honking horns and saw many thumbs up and fist pumps in the air. Some passersby joined the demonstration. The only negative reaction came from a guy with a thick head who rolled down his window and yelled, “You kids should get a job!” Guess he didn’t see me.

Check out www.boldprogressives.org for the Banxodus site. Great tool for finding a good bank in your area.

You Should Want to Move Your Money

Back when my dear late Marty was courting me with stale chocolates that tasted like joint compound and cheap perfume with names like Weekend in Wasilla, we thought the banks gave us a fair shake. Now the bankers have turned into banksters and its shake-down time for the 99%.

It’s past time to give the bankster bullies a knuckle sandwich – so to speak – sweet old nanas don’t promote violence. What we can do is fight back with our collective power.

November 5^th is national “Move Your Money Day” so warm-up now.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee at www.BoldProgressives.org  will tell you what you need to know about the bad banks and the “good-guy banks” in your area. You can also sign the “I want to move my money” statement.

So, make Nana Tillie’s week and give a bankster a big swift kick in the cuolo. So to speak.

Share Your Campaign Donations with the People

Now that is something we can call shared sacrifice!

The idea came to me when I was at my poor Marty’s grave reading him the Sunday paper.  I like to make myself comfortable on the Lord’s Day: roll my stockings down to my ankles, bring a picnic lunch with some nice Italian sausage and a hunk of Asiago cheese on Scali bread. I pour my vino into a thermos and slurp it with a spoon so it looks like soup. Too many nosy people around, especially when I start to read aloud with expression.  “There’s that crazy old lady!” To Hell with them. What do I care?

Now that Marty’s gone I don’t have to read the sports section, but I give him a quick summary.  Shouldn’t have told him about the Red Sox. It’s bad enough being dead.

So you get the picture: Sunday afternoon with The Boston Globe and the dead people.

I get inspired. It happened last Sunday as I was reading Marty a story about the 2012 elections. I fell on the ground, rolled around, and levitated when I saw the light. No, I didn’t, but that’s when the idea came to me. We should demand that half of all campaign donations go straight into federal, state and local budgets to fund social programs like Medicare for all.

The big brains are predicting that the 2012 election cycle will be the most expensive in history. I did some googling and found out that the 2008 presidential race cost about $5 billion. How many more billion will 2012 cost?  We the people could use the money. No?

We should demand that all politicians, especially Republicans, donate half of their campaign treasure chests to help The American People they’re always talking about.

Billions, billions of dollars will be spent on the 2012 elections, while The American People lose their homes, their jobs, their health care, their life savings, their civil  rights, their democracy. Just think what we could do with the money.

Hey big shots – donate the donations! Time to show us your love.

Breaking Bread with the Super Congress

I really need to focus on the Super Congress, but I keep fantasizing about kissing Ryan Gosling in an elevator. Don’t worry, I always pretend to be thirty years younger before puckering up. No cougar-Nana here.

There it is. I’m not ashamed, just distracted, and very nervous about this bipartisan gang from the ruling class.

Gives me agita just thinking about them: twelve privileged politicians surrounded by lobbyists who were staffers and staffers who were lobbyists with the power to tear into our social safety net. Holy crap excuse my language.  

The entitled get to play with our “entitlements” all in the name of reducing the deficit that some privileged politicians created in the first place. If my Marty were still alive, he’d be rolling bocce balls down the middle of the street.

So what am I going to do? Invite the whole gang over for a nice Italian dinner some Sunday. Show them how the rest of us live.

We’ll start with a nice antipasto and some bottles of my Cousin Pauli’s homemade wine. Then I’ll bring out the family album. Show them photos of my Marty and our Francis. I’ll have to cover up the ones with that woman Francis married because I jabbed pen points in her eyes. It was a bad day.

We’ll go down the cellar to see the old boiler that’s ready to croak. Back upstairs, I’ll show them my swollen ankles from having to walk so far to catch the bus. They’ll probably be ready for more wine.

We’ll return to the table for warm scali bread and a platter of homemade manicotti made with fresh ricotta from Ricco’s. More wine. I’ll make them look at a few bank statements before they get seconds. They need to know what it really means to live on a fixed income.

Here’s the best part: twenty to thirty Italian Americans will arrive for dessert and coffee. They’ll bring pastry, cheese, wine, and their truths. They’ll tell them to stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes; that we may not have much money, but we have the right to vote; that it’s way past time to show some courage and do the right thing for the people.

Then I’ll go see Ryan Gosling in Drive again.  Just for the elevator scene.

“I Never Thought It Would Happen To Me”

But it did and he found himself standing in front of CVS holding a sign made out of a cardboard box. A little rough around the edges, but his message makes a powerful connection. I watched too many people breeze past him so I grabbed some money from my wallet as I headed his way. He didn’t see that, but he did see me struggling to get the wheels of a shopping cart over the curb. People breezed past. 

He immediately put his sign down to help. He called me Ma’am and I called him Sir. We thanked each other.

Sweet dignity.

Staying Postal

Spent yesterday afternoon at my Marty’s grave giving his ashes an earful about the mess this country is in.  We didn’t agree on everything when he was alive, like how long to cook the pasta sauce. Marty expected me to do like his mother, the saint, and simmer the sauce for five days. I exaggerate, but you get the point. One thing we almost always agreed about was politics. There was that one time when he sat on his brains and voted for a Republican for governor, so I made him sleep on the sofa for five days (no exaggeration).  He never strayed again.

 I couldn’t wait to tell him what the pain and suffering creators in Washington DC want to do to the post office. The words shot out of my mouth before I reached his plot on Row DD. I was spitting saliva. “Bastardi! They want to do away with the post office!”

That’s not what they say of course. Not from the pain and suffering creators who love to yap about “shared sacrifice.”  What’s their share of the sacrifice? Our jobs, our unions, our retirement savings, our health, our families, our schools, our roads and bridges, our social safety net and our institutions like the U S Postal Service.

The Postal Service, which does not use taxpayer funds, has a debt crisis, partly because of Congress. During the Bush administration, the pain and suffering creators decided that the Postal Service, and only the Postal Service, should put about $5.5 billion dollars a year (for 10 years) in a fund for future medical benefits for retirees. These funds get added to the federal budget as income. Big surprise. Postal Service funds reduce the federal deficit!

 Makes my toes curl, which, at my age, do a little of that on their own.

The crisis: the Postal Service can’t make the next payment. We know that help is not on the way from the pain and suffering creators. They probably want to privatize the service so that a post card you send from Cape Cod to Cambridge will go by way of Bangladesh.

Check out www.postalnewsblog.com/savingthepostalservice.org for more information.

I’m still spitting saliva.

Get Lost!

It’s what I do.  According to that woman my Francis married, I can’t find my way out of a paper bag. Very funny, but true. GPS or no GPS, I usually end up sweating like a wrestler and driving in circles in unfamiliar territory. Swearing too, lots of swearing.

Like yesterday, when the plan was to march in the Marlborough Labor Day parade with some fine folks to promote the Contract for the American Dream. It calls for those radical, socialist, (inhale) liberal/progressive (exhale) ideas like fair taxes, strengthening democracy, good jobs, investing in infrastructure and public education.

I was ready: big foot sneakers with orthotics, SPF 30 smeared over my liver spots, and the GPS my Francis and that woman (with a smirk) gave me for Christmas.

Never made it.  Casper, my British GPS voice, directed me to a street close to the parade route. Casper doesn’t do events. So he sent me to a two-way traffic jam, a no parking restriction, and an officer of the law blocking entrance into every right turn Casper told me to take.  He was recalculating like crazy. I swear he got snippy.  RECALCULATE!

I yelled back and, after twenty minutes of getting nowhere, hit the “Go Home” option. Dressed for a hike, and itching for a march, I decided to walk a few laps around my neighborhood track waving a “Medicare for All” sign. There were about a dozen joggers, walkers, and crawlers on the track. No reaction.

Made me cranky.  I’ll tell you one thing, Francis’ wife better not call to ask about the parade. I might have to tell her to get lost. Vaffa Signora!  Right before I tell her it’s time for her to go a little easy on the pasta.