Just Do It! Pleeez!

Tags

charity, Dick Cheney, food banks, gay marriage, gay rights, GOP, Karl Rove, OneIowa

Sorry I missed you all yesterday. I was gone the better part of the day working at our church library. We’re culling our collection and preparing for a nice gift from a former pastor who left us a sizable portion of his personal library. After working at that for several hours I met with my “soul partner” for a light lunch and some conversation.

Our church has paired up people who desire to delve deeper into their spiritual lives and figure that two heads together can be a real help. Our first meeting was lovely, and we both look forward to sharing more in upcoming weeks.

Tomorrow, the Contrarian and I are off to Iowa City for his appointment at the VA. It’s always something we don’t look forward to, but never takes long, but I’ll probably not get a chance to post. I need to stop off at the store on my way home for some charity ideas I’m trying to promote. Speaking of which. . . .

It’s beginning to sound like a broken record. “I was watching GMA this morning when I got this idea. . . .”

Well, I did. So listen up, and see what you think. Everybody is talking about how food pantries across the land are suffering in this economic black hole we are all suffering through. GMA has been hitting up big food companies and they bring their truck filled with whatever down, and say they are donating it to such and such food bank in such and such a state.

Nice, but look at the free advertising and good press they are getting. Well, I thought, gosh, most everybody who can afford a few cans a month would be happy to do the same. Problem is, lots of folks don’t know where the pantry is in their town or city, lots don’t “have the time” to run over to deliver, and well, you get the idea. People have lots of excuses why they can’t help.

The trick is to make it easy. I figured lots more folks will help out if you make it simple. So I thought, what if the grocery stores set aside a bit of space and put in a box where shoppers could drop in purchased cans and boxes as they left the store. The store would make the delivery once a week or so, as needed?

Well I called our local HyVee and Fareway stores. Both are localized operations so I thought they would be the better choice. I got reasonably good responses from both, though Fareway asked me to stop in “to discuss it further.” HyVee was all smiles and wow, great idea, but didn’t ask for my phone number or anything. They do tend to be very upbeat and then not do anything, at least that has been my experience in the past. The woman I talked to did say, “Well, I hope in the near future you’ll see a box in our store.” I’ll follow up I promise.

So, I’m calling on all you bloggers to consider doing the same thing where you live. It can’t hurt, it may help. Who knows. A phone call or a check with the manager next time you are in is easy enough.

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While I’m on my bully pulpit, let me ask you to consider a donation to OneIowa. I follow them on Twitter. They have been working tirelessly to fight off the religious right’s attempt to undo the Iowa Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage in Iowa.

Recently, as many of you know, NOM, (National Organization for Marriage) has been running a commercial trying to scare people that same-sex marriage will be the end of the world. OneIowa has been able to do it’s own commercial. Funds are needed to keep it on air. 

The link will link you to the donation site. If we can hold the line in Iowa, I think we will have gone a long way to break the back of the opposition. Oddly I ran into a short explanation of how marriage came to be the province of the Christian church. It seems that marriage always was a civil issue and the early church wasn’t even particularly keen on blessing them. Only after the collapse of the Roman Empire did the church get involved. They were among the few who could actually read and write, and thus record the contractual arrangements.

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Okay, it started with Limbaugh and Hannity and O’Reilly being the spokesmen for the GOP. That was bad enough. But no one really took that seriously. These are but guys who know what side of bread is buttered.

Then there was Michael Steele, but he proved to be just nutzy and could be shoved aside and left to his “message to da hood” silliness.

Newt reared his head, and started to bellow, and, well again, one can make allowances. The dude wants his own shot at the White house. I mean if Sarah can be held up as an icon of Republican virtue, then truly anybody has a shot.

But then we started to hear again and again from Cheney and Rove.  Rove, the architect of the GOP demise has found a new home at Foxy NO-News where he can attempt to resurrect his defunct reputation for singularly destroying the GOP product in but four short years. He doesn’t seem to be running for anything, and trying to recapture rep creds seems his only motivation.

What of Cheney? Well one could argue he is doing the same, but given his supreme arrogance, this seems unlikely. To a guy who responds with “so what” when asked how do you feel about 75% of the American electorate disagreeing with your policies, his reputation is well, not his concern. After all, he assumes that anyone who questions his reputation is just some minor bit of fluff the duster missed.

So what is he babbling around town about how Obama is such a disaster? Clearly he ignores protocol since it is unseemly for the outgoing administration to criticize the new one. Bush even got that, though Daddy probably had to sit him down in his jammies and splain it to him.

I think the rationale is quite simple. Cheney, in the rarefied world he lives in, quite simply believes that the world cannot go on without his fine hand at the tiller, or wheel, or whatever steering mechanism you care to use. I think he’s so full of self-importance he really, actually, truly, honestly, categorically, believes that he is the savior of America. He’s convinced that somehow he is still pulling strings and behind the scenes directing traffic around the Beltway. Worse, he believes it is essential that he continue to do so.

And if that don’t make you a wee bit skeered, you are mighty mighty brave!

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