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The UN: Sloppy or criminal? Would someone make the call, please?

Posted in Adoption, Cambodia, Celebrities, Children, International Adoption, The United Nations, tagged , , on February 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Getting back to the tens of millions of dollars the UN has wasted in Sudan that I mentioned yesterday, but had neither the time nor the stomach for, I find it more than a tad disingenuous that the same day this story came out in the Washington Post, the “UN News Centre” had only this to say … a long, drawn out whine from Ban Ki-moon as he “strongly condemned” Janjaweed militia attacks killing 200 people in West Darfur.

Mr. Ban “stresses that all parties must adhere to international humanitarian law, which prohibits military attacks against civilians,” according to a statement issued by his spokesperson.

First … Yeah, Ban. Like that’s gonna work! (Gee, whiz … slap forehead … Let’s just explain that genocide is “prohibited”! Wonder why Kofi didn’t think of that … )

And, second … Why the hell should the Janjaweed listen to the UN talk about obeying laws?

From the WaPo:

A U.N. task force is examining the United Nations’ handling of nearly $300 million in contracts for food, transportation and fuel for Sudan, including a $200 million contract with Eurest Support Services, a Cyprus-based subsidiary of the Compass Group, a British catering company. ESS also has been charged with rigging bids in Liberia, Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to what a “task force” not under UN employ might find?

But back to the UN news that goes on to sing the praises of something called the Status of Forces Agreement … unfortunately, but probably prophetically abbreviated to SOFA … that was signed recently.

A couple of points to make on this.

First, on this:

SOFA covers the activities of the military, police and civilian personnel of the mission, known as UNAMID, which seeks to stem the violence in the war-ravaged Darfur region, where over 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million others forced to flee their homes since fighting began in 2003 among Government forces, rebel groups and allies militia groups known as the Janjaweed.

Yep. Those same damned numbers they’ve been trotting out for the past five years … 200,000 dead, 2.2 million displaced.

When and why did the UN stop counting? Counting the dead and displaced is one of the few things the UN can actually do, but not in Sudan. There were 200,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced way back during GW’s first term and way before George Clooney ever went to Darfur … and now he’s not only been back for ages, he’s working for the UN. (Talk about a powerful PR machine!)

The other thing in the UN News:

Mr. Guehenno, who recently visited Sudan, emphasized that UNAMID operation is “severely under-resourced for the tasks which it was mandated to perform” since it lacks the necessary troops, police and equipment, including military aircraft and ground transportation, to provide protection to Darfurians.

No mention there what 10s of millions of wasted dollars could have provided on this front, is there? No. There wouldn’t be.

Back to George Clooney for a moment …

Last September I wrote a post responding to a question he asked during his testimony before the UN where he said:

We were brought up to believe that the U.N. was formed to ensure that the Holocaust could never happen again. We believe in you so strongly. We need you so badly. We have come so far. We’re — we’re one yes away from ending this. And, if not the U.N., then who?

I looked around a bit at the time and came up with:

In 2005, UNICEF received over $53 million in contributions for Darfur, meeting approximately 43 percent of total requirements. As of April 2006, UNICEF has received about $1.85 million in contributions from government donors, while UNICEF’s National Committees have raised approximately $966,000.

This means UNICEF has a total of just over $2.81 million in donor resources against its Darfur target of $89 million in 2006 – so its programmes in the region are just 3.1 per cent funded moving into the second quarter of the year.

Pointing to this as, “the UN’s own justification for doing squat!” led me to compose another post I called “If not the UN, why?”

Today, as last year, as the year before, what I said then holds true now:

Lack of funds … lack of will …

Where does it make sense, however, that this body … the UN, I’m taking here … would CHOOSE to sit back once again and allow a genocide to happen and happen and happen?

Which brings me to the real why?

Why does the UN exist at all?

A very quick look at stories from the past couple of days could be taken to prove the utter uselessness of the organization without even having to mention Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, or more stops along the genocide trail that’s been well traveled without hindrance from those folks in the big building with all the flags around it.

With a recent article in Newsweek addressing the UN’s creeping agenda on international adoption that does so much damage to so many and now seems to have the children of Haiti ready to serve up on a plate that doesn’t include adoption as an option, I do not feel any inclination to judge gently what the UN calls waste.

When 10s of millions of dollars disappear, that’s not just sloppy, it’s criminal.

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Ack! The UN strikes again

Posted in International Adoption, The United Nations on February 10, 2008| 3 Comments »

Why are no heads rolling?

Heads? Heck … there are hardly any eyeballs rolling, as this sort of crap from the UN is now common as designer muck in baby blue berets and pretty much expected as business as usual.

U.N. officers in Sudan have squandered millions by renting warehouses that were never used, booking blocks of hotel rooms that were never filled, and losing thousands of food rations to theft and spoilage, according to several internal audits by the U.N. Office for International Oversight Services. One U.N. purchasing agent has been accused of steering a $589,000 contract for airport runway lights to a company that helped his wife obtain a student visa, while two senior procurement officials from the United States and New Zealand have been charged by a U.N. panel with misconduct for not complying with rules designed to prevent corruption.

Hello?

I’m too mad to even write about this tonight.

Read the story, let me know what you think. Perhaps we’ll rip them a new one in the morning.

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Cambodian news update has moved … again

Posted in Adoption, Cambodia, International Adoption on February 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The regular feature that is the wrap of news from Cambodia tailored to families with connections to the country through adoption has moved for the last time. It is now firmly and happily ensconced in its new home, right where it belongs … Under One Roof in OUR house.

This week’s is here and covers everything from a new honor for Kari Grady Grossman to development and reports of increasing press freedom in the country.

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What’s comic about racism?

Posted in Adoption, American thoughts, International Adoption, The USA from the outside in, tagged , on February 7, 2008| 2 Comments »

According to this article in the Washington Post, not a lot.

It would be nice to claim that comic strips are the last bastion of racism in American media, but that really would be funny. It’s simply one more example of carte blanche being lily white in the realm that exerts influence over the thinking of millions of people every day, and most people don’t even bother to notice that it happening.

After all, who knows what the person drawing a strip looks like?

(I have friends who vacationed in Mexico a number of years ago and didn’t realize that the Gary Larson who was their beach buddy of a couple buddy of a few weeks, who shared many a meal with them was actually THE Gary Larson of “Far Side” fame.

Yes, he was a fun guy and his name did ring bells, but no connection was made until he signed the hotel’s guest book as he checked out and drew a little cartoon as a memento of his stay.)

To draw attention to the fact that the number of non-white cartoonists is an embarrassment in a country as racially diverse as America demographically is, this coming Sunday those sitting down to read the “funnies” will find a protest, of sorts.

11 cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it’s a “Boondocks” rip-off and blaming it on “tokenism.” “It’s the one-minority rule,” says Lalo Alcaraz (“La Cucaracha”). “We’ve got one black guy and we’ve got one Latino. There’s not room for anything else.”

Read along, smile if you are so inspired, but understand there is no little power in humor, and comic strips have long been both an indicator of and an influence over popular culture.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our kids could all spend their Sunday mornings hovering over a two-page spread that would represent them more fully and clearly? I’m not suggesting that every paper needs to have a special section for transracially or internationally adopted kids, but we’re a multicolored world, and the funnies haven’t been printed in black and white for many, many years. It’s time they caught up with themselves.

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Why the world needs a new website on adoption

Posted in Adoption, Adoption News, International Adoption on February 5, 2008| 6 Comments »

So, big changes in the online adoption world, as you can see from the press release here.

Because I am one of the eight bloggers founding the site that is Adoption Under One Roof … ouradopt.com … I will be moving most of my adoption-related writing over there and leaving this blog for personal stuff, general opinions, politics, information on Seychelles and whatever else I feel like writing about that has less to do with adoption and more to do with other aspects of life I find interesting.

I encourage everyone to visit what we know as Our House, to come in for a look around, then wander all over and get to know the place and the people.

We have put a great deal of thought and work into Adoption Under One Roof, determined to make the site easy to navigate in a way that allows everyone interested in adoption, from whatever angle, opportunities to learn and to teach, to share and to listen, and even to fight when that seems a possibility for resolving conflict.

Years of softly-softly, please-excuse-me-for-having-opinions-but … communication in a population segmented into tidy groups of the like-minded stifled not only disparity, but also originality of thought as a byproduct, have produced only limited success, if that, in bringing about needed change in the adoption world. With each POV pulling against the other, often with almost irreparable results, forward progress has been near impossible, and as the community became more fractured it also grew more fractious, therefore less able to coordinate any efforts toward reform.

As the environment came to view the standard of separation as a given, bad habits developed and discussion between those with differing, although very often valid, views became progressively more rare and people stopped listening to entire populations simply out of reflex. Rules of engagement within neighborhoods of the adoption community grew less flexible and exclusion became more and more the common method of dealing with dissent.

At the same time, within cozy climates of agreement-at-all-cost the inclination was to support without question or debate ideas that couldn’t possibly hold water, being so full of holes and without enough real fabric to stick together, and this allowed much of the irrelevant and invalid to take on unwarranted gravitas and leak into discussions without ever having been subjected to the light of rational critique.

Allegiance became obligatory based on whatever version of shared point of view dominated a segmented population, and honest evaluation and demands for accountability took a back seat to comradeship-at-any-cost.

Although everyone has heard of adoption, only a small percentage have any real information, and most of those who think they understand adoption are actually way, way off the mark by just about everyone’s perception, so most of those finding themselves making an approach to the adoption world come with the great handicap of no information or a load of misinformation.

The key to reforming systems to the point that no child is unnecessarily relinquished, no mother is coerced into placing against her will or better judgement, no family adopts without having demanded the highest ethical practices, no agency over-charges or misrepresents, no government facilitates ease of adoption for reasons of profit or felonious purposes, no child is denied the hope of a loving family when needed and one can be provided, and no children are put or left at the mercy of the horrors of abuse and neglect is education and information; putting everyone as close as possible to the same place on the same page with access to ALL the information.

Whether a starry-eyed couple dreaming pastel dreams of parenting in spite of the odds against or a terrified woman trying to figure out how to make it from one day to the next, having access to all sides of what adoption is, and what it isn’t, will go a long way toward putting power in their hands, the power to make informed decisions based on here and now and tomorrow and fifty years from now.

It’s with this in mind that OURadopt.com began, and why those of us dedicated to the idea put Adoption Under One Roof.

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Blogging Staff Resigns to Launch More Inclusive, Relevant Site.

Posted in Adoption, Adoption News, International Adoption on February 4, 2008| 12 Comments »

Press release:

Adoption dot com Blogging Staff Resigns to Launch More Inclusive, Relevant Site.
Adoption Under One Roof: covering adoption from every angle, every view, for everyone, at ouradopt.com.

In reaction to a narrowing focus and dwindling support for quality writing tackling the big issues related to adoption, more than one-third of the remaining blogging staff of Adoptionblogs dot com resigned last week, and in conjuction with former colleagues today launched the realized vision of a totally new concept in online adoption communities.

Dedicated to providing information, provoking thought and promoting positive progress toward ethical adoption practices through education, exchange and cooperation between triad members, eight talented and dedicated bloggers have joined forces to build a new, relevant and totally inclusive site.

Never before have all aspects of adoption been presented under one roof … a one-stop reference for anyone coming to adoption from any direction … the goal of the site, as is made clear by the title: Adoption Under One Roof — Covering adoption from every angle, every view, for everyone.

Areas of the site will offer platforms for birth parents, adoptees, prospective adoptive parents and adoptive families, from enthusiastic advocates to staunch opponents. Individuals and families of every stripe — married, single, gay, straight, pro, con, LDS, atheist … and everyone else with adoption in their life — will be able to access valid information, participate in discussions, laugh, learn, rant, rave, share and enjoy in an atmosphere created specifically for the purpose of bringing about positive change in the adoption world.

Through a vision for a world in which every woman in a crisis pregnancy is fully informed and ethically treated, every hopeful adoptive parent demands a process that ensures any child coming to a family comes as the result of strict following of the laws and as the best of best options available, where rights of every adopted child have been protected along each step of the journey, and the hope of a family remains for the children of the world who have no others, Adoption Under One Roof … ouradopt.com … casts a new light over adoption that will illuminate all dark corners and brighten the lives of many.

An arm of Adoption dot com, once the world’s largest adoption-related website, Adoptionblogs dot com was launched in October of 2005, going live the following February with twenty-six bloggers covering thirty-one categories. The site was an immediate success, filling a need for real information from honest and talented writers.

Management support and leadership, however, began to flounder, and by late last year it was apparent there was no committment to move forward and a rapid slide toward irrelevancy began. With more than two-thirds of the blogs abandoned, and that list growing longer every month, reader’s needs were not being met and the demand for a new, dynamic and dedicated site presented itself.

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Gay adoption: my take

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, Family on February 1, 2008| 5 Comments »

I had an interesting email in response to the post of the other day, “Gay backlash and presidential candidates” that included these questions:

In your years of writing for adoption dot com, did the company’s anti-gay stance rub off on you?

Were you censored?

To answer the second question first: yes, I was censored. One post early on was removed completely, and I was told that if I did cover anything to do with the subject I was to keep within the confines of reporting news about gay adoptions without ever taking a position … and to go light on even that sort of thing. Or else. (I did slide in as much news as I could on gay adoption and linked to EBD Institute reports on research, however.)

As for the first question, let me begin by saying that there is no way I could care less about what consenting adults do within the privacy of their private places with their private parts … that all being PRIVATE … and that I find it more than a little perverse when others focus on such things.

I am less interested in the sex lives of others than I am in their toilet habits … and that would be not at all … and will never understand where anyone gets off (pardon the expression) letting their mind wander into such territory, then spend any time or energy forming opinions, much less spreading those opinions around. As I said, this strikes me as a strange, though common in every sense of the word, perversion.

I am educated enough to understand that a percentage of most any mammal population could be classified as “gay”, and having had a “gay” dog when I was a kid, that information didn’t come as a surprise. I’ve seen “gay” monkeys and “gay” goats, and whole populations of “gay” chimps … Bonobos, pygmy chimps, our closest relatives, are notorious for their homosexual activities … and know of “gay” couples of penguins and flamingos raising families.

(An exhibit at a Norwegian gallery a couple of years ago displayed photos of “gay” sex between everything from giraffes to whales.)

Since homosexuality is a part of the natural course of life for many, it presents no more barriers than shoe size or skin color, other than those resulting from basic biology, and that’s were adoption comes into the picture.

Obviously, although any two can tango, reproduction takes some more difficult steps that can’t be accomplished without some extra dipping that requires two genders. Unless or until cloning becomes a way to make new people, a gay couple will not be able to combine bits of DNA and come up with chips off the old block. Biology does not, however, make a parent.

Parent is as much a verb as it is a noun, and many people who have the nounish bit cornered are crap at the verby part. From the other angle, some who don’t noun verb beautifully.

Perhaps in a perfect world every child would have a loving mommy and daddy in a cozy house with a three car garage, two Volvos and an Irish Setter, but we don’t live in that world. (And I, for one, am happy about that! How bloody BORING!) The world is full of children who either have no family or family that is worse than no family at all and in desperate need of someone to love and care for them.

That being the case … and, really, that IS the case, and there’s no use arguing about it … I am fully in favor of loving people caring for children in a safe climate of compassion and nutrition.

Is gay parenting any different? Well, DUH. It’s different in the same way that older parenting is different and transracial parenting is different, and adoptive parenting is different, and parenting five kids is different than parenting one, and city parenting is different from country parenting, and Buddhist parenting is different from Catholic parenting, and my parenting is different from your parenting.

Are there some homosexuals that shouldn’t be allowed to adopt? There’s another DUH for you that I’ll place alongside any list of people of every persuasion that should never get within ten miles of a child … most of those having made the poor kids themselves. (See yesterday’s post.)

So, those questions answered, I’ll share this article from Time about the European Court of Human Rights overturning a French law preventing adoption by gays.

Franck Tanguy, spokesman for France’s Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents, says “this ruling is a step in the right direction” in that it “requires countries that, like France, allow singles to adopt children to treat unmarried homosexual and heterosexual applicants in exactly the same manner.” Failure to do so in any country with such legislation, Tanguy says, means they’d “find themselves condemned again and again for discrimination by the many single homosexuals who’d use this precedent to base a legal defense on”. However, Tanguy regrets the ruling “won’t change anything in countries that don’t allow any singles to adopt, nor force nations that don’t allow homosexual couples to adopt to change their laws”.

Seeing the pertinent detail is that the law allowed adoption by unmarried straight folks, this bill introduced in Utah recently would permit singles to adopt, straight or gay. People might want to weigh in on this.

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Step up for The Sharing Foundation

Posted in Adoption, Adoption News, Cambodia, International Adoption on January 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Not much time on this one, so I’m just cutting and pasting:

We have 24 hours to Turn $10 to $50K for the Sharing Foundation!
Posted by: “Beth” beth@bethkanter.org harry_sarak
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:54 am ((PST))

If you’ve already donated, thank you. We have a little more than 24
hours to go and we’re in third place. We can win this contest with
your help!

We need you to donate $10 or more and ask your friends and family to
do the same. Please distribute this message to your networks.

The Sharing Foundation is participating in the America’s Giving
Challenge sponsored by The Case Foundation, GlobalGiving and PARADE
magazine to see who can motivate the most people to give at least $10
to their favorite charity online by January 31, 2008 (3 PM EST). The
top four charities in Global Giving will each win $50,000 – and we can
be one of them with your support!

The Sharing Foundation cares for more than 1,500 Cambodian children
each and every day. $50,000 would cover the annual expenses for our
English Language School, attended by over 450 children in Roteang
Village and the Khmer Literacy School attended by more than 140 of
Roteang village’s poorest children. It would also help support a
portion of the operating costs for the Sharing Foundation’s Roteang
Orphanage, home to over 70 children; nearly half of whom have serious
disabilities.

With $10 and 10 minutes of your time you can help improve the lives of
over 1,500 children in one of the world’s poorest countries. Please
make your donation online now and invite your friends to do the same!

Donate online here:
http://www.sharingfoundation.org/america.htm

Thank you for your support of the Sharing Foundation and helping us
care for the children of Cambodia.

All Best,

Dr. Nancy Hendrie, President
Beth Kanter, Executive Board Member

P.S. Important Contest Rules:

You must donate to the Sharing Foundation through the online donation
page set up here: http://www.sharingfoundation.org/america.htm or it
will not count towards the contest.

The winner is based on the number of unique donors to the charity. A
unique donor is a unique name, email, and credit card number.

You can watch our progress at the leaderboard – look for the charity
that says “Route out of Poverty for Cambodian Children”
http://www.parade.com/givingchallenge?source=pressAGC

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What the hell is wrong with people?

Posted in Adoption, International Adoption, The United Nations, tagged , , on January 31, 2008| 7 Comments »

Maybe it’s because I’m not feeling well this week that the news seems to be all snotty and headache-inducing. Does my miserable cold rule the world, or does the miserable world make my cold feel worse? Mox nix, as the truly jaded would suggest … or those with as nasty a bug as I’ve been full-frontally assaulted by.

Anyway, let’s start in Kenya, shall we? My neck of the woods, and all …

OMG! How few fractions of a millimeter under the surface has all this tribalism hatred been bubbling away? Not many, apparently.

For any not following, all hell has broken loose in “Africa’s greatest democracy” … as if that title ever meant anything other than “Well, there’s an African nation that knows what hoops are for!” … and looks to continue to spiral hellward for some time to come.

No worries, though, for in the usual style of the ways of the world, help is now at hand. Okay, it’s in the form of Kofi Annan, one of the more useless individuals on the planet, but he is there, and apparently has already figured out that things will need at least a year of yacking at before any calming down can commence. Wonder how many dead Kenyans they can chalk up in the amount of time it will take him to admit that nothing can be done without some real consequence from outside …

Yes, this is the same Kofi Annan that managed so well to get the Darfur situation under control.

Whose idea was it to bring HIM into this?

For a look at the Darfur mess through the UN PR spin machine, here’s the “News Center”. Look around and see if one positive thing the organization has done in Sudan presents itself, then understand just what a mess Kenya is in.

Not alone, of course, as checking out this story on a kidney-selling ring in India well proves.

When a place is so poor that stealing the kidneys from people becomes a common enough, if reprehensible, way to make a living, what possible hope is there that something like adoption could be protected. After all, people only have two kidneys, but children? Hey … those come by the dozen with hardly any effort at all.

This is the sort of reality people must accept when they go all misty-eyed over supporting children in birth countries rather than allowing adoption and insisting that everything can be made better enough soon enough to make a enough of a difference to children who are children now.

India is just getting around to thinking about regulation of legal organ donations, and this one “doctor” they’re after has been known to be a kidney thief for 15 years. How long do you figure implementation will take? And where on the list does this rank against female infanticide, child selling, trafficking, etc? (Keep in mind that it’s a lot of men getting their kidneys snatched. That makes it a bigger deal in some circles than if the same happened to women.)

Of course, horror isn’t reserved for other countries. The US gets it’s share, but in more individual doses, which seems better unless you happen to be up-close-and-personal with whatever the horror seems to be.

This one, a graphic example of one family gone to the dogs is about as disgusting as it gets, and from all the way around.

WASHINGTON, Pa. — A woman in southwestern Pennsylvania locked her 10-year-old grandson in a feces-filled dog crate for about 90 minutes because he told his family he had been spiking their drinks with lamp oil and household cleaner, police said.

Rhonda Lehman, 51, also called Washington County’s Mental Health/Mental Retardation office and said if someone wouldn’t come for the boy, she would bury him alive in the back yard, police said.

Apparently the family … mom’s in jail, by the way … doesn’t see anything wrong with any of this; all par for the course, I suppose.

And if you’re wondering about the dogs that are obviously kept in the crate when the boy is out and busy poisoning his relatives … well, that issue isn’t addressed in the report, but I’m thinking it’s not pretty.

(I’m not even going near the story about the Texas father who apparently threw his baby out the window of his car.)

Sometimes, however, animal abuse gets quicker action that bad things happening to kids. This story, for example where two slaughterhouse workers have been fired for mistreating cattle on the way to their death as a hope of getting around some very important health requirements related to the meat people eat.

The abuse, shown in videotapes shot with a concealed camera by an employee who was working undercover for the Humane Society of the United States, included zealous use of electric prods to get ailing animals on their feet; chains to drag live cows down a ramp toward the killing room; and repeated jabs with the prongs of a forklift, which was also used to roll ailing animals along the ground.

What the hell is wrong with people?

I’m going to back to bed.

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Gay backlash and Presidential candidates

Posted in Adoption, Elections USA, The USA from the outside in, tagged , , on January 30, 2008| 16 Comments »

Back in the days when I was still working for Adoption dot com, when a new and enthusiastic editor carved out yet another blog for me after noting my news-houndyishness and created the “News” blog, word came down from On High that I should take on the task of examining Presidential candidates and their positions on adoption.

Having worked with politicos during my news days, this seemed an easy assignment; after all, who in a big race would turn down a chance for free press on a topic so much less loaded than weapons of mass destruction and genocide, and to shine with some merciful light radiating from some innocent child?

Turns out, all of them.

After researching who was who and where, I sent emails to the people in charge of getting press for their candidates, for answering questions and sending out miles of column inches of controlled blather in hopes that someone, somewhere, will pick it up and publish at least something, but to no avail.

Yes, I did get on everyone’s mailing list and spend too much time trashing rah-rah bandwagon mail, but any direct adoption-related contact or offers to send position papers my way?

Nope. Not a one.

I was puzzled, to say the least, and since I still have a few contacts in and around the US political scene, some of whom have moved up the power ladder in the years I’ve been away and now hang with hopeful Presidents, I asked around.

In America it’s a ten foot pole, while the Brits say barge pole which must be about that long, but whatever you call it no one was touching me.

I’d been instructed to play the Adoption dot com card … huge Web site, thousands of hits per month, blah, blah, blah … which, it happens, slammed the door faster than if I’d showed up in black leather and asked to give spankings.

Seems the lawsuit the company had recently lost to a gay couple they refused to do business with put the kibosh on getting cozy for anyone with an eye toward not being associated in any way with homophobes.

A representative from one of the company’s advertisers even started a boycott movement, so apparently enough attention had been focused to staple a big “keep away” sign on anything coming that might look like a tie.

This all happened some months ago, and the field of candidates has narrowed a bit, and because of my early attempt at contact … and all the mailing lists that plastered me to … I’ve been following bits from the campaign trail I wouldn’t normally be paying much attention to.

I will vote in the general election when it finally rolls around … You bet I will! … but all the run-up hoopla usually ebbs around me like creek water around a midstream boulder. I’ve not lived in the US since the year after Bill Clinton came into office, so too many of the early posers are so new to me that I’d rather wait until it looks like I really should know about them.

I don’t vote in the Primaries, so it’s all done but the shouting by the time I get to say my bit, so burning extra energy on losers isn’t a hobby I take on.

I did see a tiny bit of CNN this morning, however … a tiny bit is all I get before Chinese State TV in English takes over to spout the wonders of the regime and the overwhelming joy of the people of China … candidate-related, as Florida was just finishing the voting there.

It was Mitt Romney on, spouting to his cheering and oh-so-well-groomed crowd, and I was very surprised to hear that his whole theme was change.

Change to healthcare. Change to education. Change to taxation. Change to war … and on and on. Rousing chants of something like “They didn’t fix it” followed each proclamation of what had badly needed change, but hadn’t been addressed.

Excuse me … but haven’t we had a Republican President for the last almost 8 years? And wasn’t, until recently, Congress also dominated by the GOP? So, wouldn’t they be they?

What am I missing? Really. I would love someone to explain to me how a Republican candidate can be running on a platform of change. (Not why … that’s clear … but how.)

Because he’s never held office in the federal government? Because he’s been a governor and businessman his GOP connection has been without pull … just a regular Joe hanging at the club and demanding better education for the poor?

Okay, you’ve probably gathered that I don’t usual vote the GOP ticket, although I am not a lock-step voter by any means, and I would be cutting him more slack if I thought more like he does, but even if that was the case, one line that got a huge and deliriously agreeable response stood out and had me suspecting that this guy hasn’t had an original thought in a very long time:

We will teach our kids that before they have babies they should get married!

.

Yeah. That’s new.

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