April 23, 2010

Don’t watch porn at work on work computers, and don’t store said porn in your desk drawer. Someone always finds out. And if you work for the public, it makes you look like an ass.

Lisa

* Actually, anyone who has a paying job, since there’s millions of other people who don’t and would love to have yours and NOT watch porn.

February 2, 2010

Thank you for your bravery today. I’ve never been so proud to be an American. Britain and Israel have both had gays serving opening in their military forces for well over a decade. I don’t think anyone would call those forces weak or their national security any less than ours. Indeed, you could argue that Israel has better national security than we do.

To see a young West Point graduate, Lt. Dan Choic, an Arabic speaker, and Iraq war veteran sit in those hearings and worry about being tossed from the military he loves is sad. He said the first day at West Point they were taught the code: that lying and liars should not be tolerated. So why should we encourage our fighting forces to lie in order to serve?

It’s estimated that more than 65,000 of our armed forces are gay or lesbian. Should we turf them all? You don’t think so, and neither does anyone who is concerned about national security.

The world has changed, and it’s nice to see our military brass change with it. You made me proud today, gentlemen.

Lisa

PS: Hey John McCain: you said in 2006 that if the military brass said Don’t Ask Don’t Tell should go, you’d support them. What happened? Today you said the exact opposite. Shame on  you. Really. Shame.

December 27, 2009

As you start your historic — and no doubt childish and hysteria filled — discussions about healthcare reform in conference committee, I’d like to share a story about my insurance company with you.

As you read this please keep in mind that I have great insurance. I get better care, more care, with fewer hurdles than most people — than I’ve ever had before — courtesy of my husband’s employment with a certain large software company based in Redmond, WA.

I have had rheumatoid arthritis for seven years. My care is coordinated by a world-renowned rheumatologist. I am a hard case, and have gone from drug to drug trying to find one that lets me get out of bed for more than four hours a day. Most of these drugs have been new and therefore expensive. But the same expensive — about $22,000 per year regardless of which biologic I’m on. My doc has me on a new one now. Because it’s new, the pharmaceutical company is footing the bill for it for six months. Still, I got a letter from them a couple weeks ago telling me that they were approving my use of this drug, but only for three months. After that I’ll have to get approved all over again.

The moral of this story is that it doesn’t matter whether healthcare is run by a company or the government: there is always going to be someone between me and my physician, between me and the care he or she thinks I need. The only way that won’t happen is if I win the lottery and self-insure. Then I can ask myself if I really need something, make my doctor provide me with proof that I’m really sick (faxed, please — we don’t do electronic medical records yet), and try to talk my doc and drug companies into accepting less money than what they bill for my care.

Good luck and try to be civil. There are children watching.

Lisa

October 26, 2009

My questions are multitude and I don’t know where to begin.

1. If you can use a laptop safely in a cockpit to surf the web — and I’m assuming if they were checking their schedules, they were online — then why can’t we use our cell phones?

2. Why isn’t there a method for contacting the flight attendants? One of those stupid Air Phones with a number for dialing into it; an attendant with a satellite phone; or one of those cell phones that don’t really impact air flight at all — these all seem like options to me.

3. An hour plus and you didn’t hear beeping? Didn’t look up? And you call this “innocuous”? Really?

4. And for the flight attendants: you didn’t decide to check on the flight status until you were already an hour past your destination? No one said anything before then? You didn’t think anything before then? Wow.

Lastly, to the pilots, who likely have lost their licenses and their livelihoods, I hope your wives (if you have them) beat you soundly with a big stick.

Best of luck to you all in explaining this to the public.

Lisa

June 24, 2009

Please switch “Appalachian Trail” to “Argentina” in the letter below, and any reference to “what” you were doing to “who” you were doing.

I don’t care if you had an affair — that’s something for your wife, your children, a good counselor, and a lawyer with very sharp teeth to handle. But I’m still interested in knowing if you left without anyone having any information about where you were and if they were unable to reach you, or if you just hired a bunch of people who were covering for you and decided the best thing to say was, “gee, we don’t know where he is”. In either case, I think your judgment is too skewed to make a good president, governor, and certainly husband.

Lisa

June 23, 2009

If you decide to run for office and are blessed enough to be elected, please understand that your job is probably not a simple 9-5 gig. You are on call all the time. So it’s probably not okay to head off on a hike of the Appalachian Trail so you can get away from your four kids (and miss Father’s Day) and do some writing and NOT TELL ANYONE, including your wife, the lieutenant governor, your chief of staff or your boss — that is, the people who put you in office.

This is particularly true if you have aspirations to higher office, say the presidency, in the next few years.

Seriously, what were you thinking, Gov. Sandford?

Lisa

February 2, 2009

What would happen if every one of you had to go through the vetting process that proposed cabinet officials go through? How many of you would have cars and drivers you didn’t pay taxes on? How many of you gave a speech and got some money you “forgot” to include on your taxes several years ago?

Maybe there should be a law that every single incoming government official, elected or appointed, should have to have their lives minutely disected. Then, when something comes up with someone like Sen. Daschle — widely respected on both sides of the aisle as a man of integrity committed to public service — you’ll think twice before making comments about the president’s cabinet being full of tax cheats. For all we know, the entire Republican caucus is full of tax cheats, too.

You all can open your mouths when you open your lives for us to check out in such an intimate manner.

Lisa

January 1, 2009

Please just stop it. What you’re doing isn’t working. For sixty years you’ve both been fighting for your existence. Just agree you both deserve to exist and move on.

Peace leads to longer lives, happier children, and more money to spend on devices like iPods. Peace gives the space for energy to be devoted to learning, to poetry, to art. Stop with the killing. Stop bombing civilians. Stop sending your sons to die. Send them to school instead.

Just stop it.

Lisa

November 30, 2008

Safe concentrations of melamine? In baby formula? Would you actually feed the stuff you tested to any baby in your care?

Try again, please.

Lisa