Dixiecrats

When I was a child, my grandmother, who raised me, along with my mother, were staunch Republicans. They expressed their Illinois heritage “The land of Lincoln” as one reason for their loyalty. My mother actually voted for Truman for her first Presidential vote in 1945. They laughed about that and how my Grandfather Henry “Heine” Schafer threatened her with expulsion from their house for her mortal sin. Henry was the sole reason for their loyalty to the Republican Party. He was born and raised in Chicago. The Schafer side of the family, came from Germany in the 1840’s. His loyalty to the Republican Party stems from his grandfather and other male relatives who fought for the Union in the Civil War. They were fierce Abolitionist, Lutherans, and Lincolnites. That trinity of loyalty, based on the philosophy that slavery was morally wrong, was passed down to my Grandfather and everyone in the family. That is why they were Republicans. My Grandfather moved the family to New York City in 1936 and became a loyal New York Republican. The move reunited my Grandmother Regina Guilfoyle, to her birthplace and her Irish heritage. The dirty little secret was that the Guilfoyle side of the family was Irish Catholic Democrats. My family voted for people like Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater. I have no idea how many times they voted for William Buckley or Vito Batista against the Democratic political machine of New York City. They lived in the melting pot of melting pots, Brooklyn, New York. They were Brooklyn Dodger fans. They loved Jackie Robinson. My Grandfather was a tough German, lifelong ironworker, shipbuilder, steel worker, boilermaker. He drank hard, and played hard. He was a lot of things, but he was not was a bigot. The Republican Party stood for the defenders of the Union, child work laws, environmental issues, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and yes, Big Business. As conservative as Barry Goldwater was, he was not a bigot, nor was William Buckley. Being a Republican meant you cared about social issues. Senator Jacob Javits would have supported a public option in any Health Care Bill presently coming out of the Senate. The look of the Republican Party today is not my Grandfather’s Republican Party. This once coast to coast Political Party now resembles the Dixiecrats of the post reconstruction South. The voice of Republicanism is obstructionist, racist, anti gay, anti worker, anti woman, anti environment, war mongering capitalist. I once saw a bumper sticker while driving through Ohio in the summer of 2005, someplace between a GM plant and a Chrysler plant in mid America. Family farms dotted the highway. The sticker read “Voting for a Republican is like the Hens voting for the Fox to be Mayor of the Hen House.” Well America, what you see is what you get. Every Republican senator, except one brave woman, Olympia Snow of Maine, voted NO on five Senate Sub Committees potential health care bills. That’s 39-1 if you are keeping track. One Republican Senator had the guts to stand up to the health insurance industry. A NO vote was a vote for the Health Insurance Industry and a vote against the American people. A NO vote was a vote for the status quo. A NO vote was a vote for 455% profit for the Health Insurance industry over the last decade. Health Care should not be an industry. There should be NO profit in either Heath Care or Heath Insurance. The Republican’s of today are retrenched in stagnation. Not one Republican Sub Committee Member has produced a response to any of the Democratic Party Bills. The Republican version of Health Care Legislation is NOTHING. Did you know Health Care cost 1/6 of our GNP? One frigging sixth of our GNP and the Republicans have no ideas of their own. The Republican strategy is to oppose whatever Barack Obama is for. The New Dixiecrats want nothing to do with Black Presidents, Immigrants, or anyone else that’s not white and does not practice their form of Christianity. In a recent town hall meeting, in South Carolina, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was screamed at by a rabid Republican, because Graham is working with John Kerry on Air Pollution legislation. This outburst is very representative of how the Republican Party has been hijacked by the breeders of hate and divisiveness. The Tea Party members, who have marched on Washington and other cities, are so hypocritical. It was OK for George Bush to run up the deficit to $2 trillion dollars, but now they are outraged over spending any Federal money on a Public Option or health Care reform.

As I Lay Alone in My Bed

As I lay alone in my bed

I started thinking

Of our day today

Our phone calls and text messages

The wide grin on my face

The laughter in your voice

How intently

We listened to our stories

The change in us

Connecting

Smelling you around me

My leg over yours

My arms around my pillow

As I lay alone in my bed

mscourby2009

Broken Glass

Broken Glass


The crystal was just a dime store trinket
Nothing fancy
Nothing expensive
A symbol more than anything

It sat on the counter
For such a long time
Collecting dust
Never moving, never touched

Most days the couple moved past it
Day by day
It just sat
In limbo it seemed

Then one day the earth shook
Vibrations splintered the air
Voices shrilled like banshees in the night
A tornado of movement created by the pair

Shattered in a million pieces
Like the lives of the couple
Scattered feelings
Haunted by slivers of glass

mscourby 2009

Empty walls

The room looks so barren without her stuff
Some how looks so empty when I stair past the dust

Like looking past idle talk when your mind is on something else
Like only seeing what you want to see

Empty walls
Empty floors
Empty hearts
Empty souls

Feelings of hopelessness fill your head and despair fills your heart
Reality sets in and the loss is magnified by the hurt and the pain

Once where there was love, is now filled with cold steel
Once where there was want, is filled with disgust

Empty walls
Empty floors
Empty hearts
Empty souls

Honey I’m home, is met by silence
Baby I love you, is turned away

The truth will never be answered
The truth will never be known

Empty walls
Empty floors
Empty hearts
Empty souls

mscourby 2009

Minds Eye

Minds Eye
I was thinking
The other day
How we see people
In our mind
When they are
Not in your presents
What do we see
Do we see in Black and White
Do we see in Color
Is it a picture
Of the last time
We saw the person
Or is it a photo
Of another time
Casual images of
People in the course
Of a day
Mailman
Checkout girl
Postman
Butcher
How do we see them
The last time image
That is formed
Over time
And what about people
You care for
A special person
A lover
A friend
A spouse
A daughter
A son
I see in color
A woman so fine
Like rose petals
Her smile
So broad
So excited
To see me
I see this image
When we are apart
Smiling

mscourby 2009

Magic

Magic


Electrical energy flowing
Sheer magnetism overwhelms my mind and body
Her picture etched in my head
Who is she?
Is she enchanted?
I think so
This spell is wonderful
I feel her next to me
I see her face and absorb the vapors
Sensual vapors of
Lust, want and affection
Radiate
Silently engulf my essence
Creating this connection
This bond
This pulse
Magical in its substance
Like a dense fog over marshland
Birds singing
Flood the air
Water flowing
The aroma of love lingers
Permeating the fabric of life
Entwined as one
Breath injected on skin
Exploring

mscourby2009

Obama's Viet Nam

I have been following the accounts of the fierce fighting going on in Afghanistan. The battle at a remote outpost and the attacks on other outpost over the last year are right out of Hollywood. But instead of Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. fighting Bedouins some place in the Middle East pin downed and outnumbered by relentless native fighters. Our heroes are unidentified American solders pin downed like their make believe British cousins. The battle this past weekend was 12 hours of relentless firepower aimed at our heroic troops. From all reports our boy’s camp was breached and we held on till the air force could come to the rescue. 8 brave men died. In last summer’s attack at another outpost, the camp was overrun. That camp was dismantled days later because our men were sitting ducks. Battles like this have been going on in Afghanistan since we started setting up outpost camps there. This year has been the deadliest year since our invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The battles are deadlier and deadlier. General Stanley McChrystal says we need more men or the Taliban may retake the countryside. We have been in this new assault on the Militants since before the Afghan elections. Militants that’s the new name the Department of Defense now calls the people who want to kill as many Americans as possible. These are the same “militant” fighters who fought the Russians in the 1980’s. They were called the Mujahedeen then and the weapons the current Afghan rebels are using against us were probably given to them 29 years ago by our own Government so the Mujahedeen could fight the Russians. That would have been the Reagan and Carter administrations. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. My gut reaction when I read these reports is “send more troops! ” That visceral emotion of revenge takes over my mind, like when I first saw those old action movies. I want the Afghan fighters dead. But, then I think of the Russians and the British before them and I say to myself “Why are we still in Afghanistan?” I know why good old George W got us there to begin with. Too bad he lost sight of the real reason we went to war. Instead he listened to Cheney and after driving the Taliban out of Kabul we stopped chasing Al Qaeda and the Taliban after they retreated into Pakistan. I'm not sure, nor do I believe our Military knows who these militants are. I just read a European report on Afghanistan stating many Militant fighters are actually coming from Uzbekistan via Pakistan. The war in Iraq was so successful in creating new militants out of presents they are coming out of the woodwork to fight the infidels and defend Islam. I also know there are some suggesting we should finish what we started. That is exactly what hawks said in 1968 to Nixon. It is really time to bring the troops home. Not in two years. Not next year. The troops need to come home now. Start the pullout now and have all of our troop’s home by spring. Get the boys out of harm’s way and pull up stakes in the remote areas. Winter is coming the “militants” will be hunkered down in villages in Pakistan or in caves in the region. Perfect timing; just come on home. No one will notice. We won’t tell anyone. One day we are there, one day were not. Now you see us, now you don’t. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Take a ride on the Reading and proceed to the nearest C130 personal carrier and get out of Dodge as fast as we can. It seems our puppet government in Kabul is as corrupt as another puppet government we propped up 40 years ago in Saigon. Richard Nixon told Americans we would be out of Viet Nam in one year. The war played on and on and we lost another 25000 men and women. It took us 6 more years to finally come home. We are not going to be in another Viet Nam, we already are in another Viet Nam. Richard Nixon inherited Viet Nam from Lyndon Johnson. Barack Obama inherited Afghanistan from George Bush. Just like Nixon, Obama told us he would end the war. I sure hope history does not repeat itself and President Obama has the guts to cut bait and get out of Afghanistan. We have seen so much death, so much destruction this decade. It needs to stop now.