This is what it will be like someday.
I had to take mom to the emergency room tonight and there I sat for six hours, in hospital purgatory. They admitted her to keep an eye on a patch of cellulitis on her leg. I was drained when I got to her apartment and I forgot what was waiting for me on the other side of the door.

"This is what it will be like someday," he whispers in my ear as I stand frozen in the dark. I was twelve and she was in the hospital the last time he spoke these words to me. I couldn't stop crying and I never went back to our apartment until she came home. "This is what it will be like someday." I'm twelve again as I stand in her apartment and I can't reach the light switch because my hand weighs a thousand pounds. He makes me look at her things through sickening yellow street light. This is her life and I can see remnants of her everywhere, but she's nowhere to be found. There's only the absence of color and the absence of her incessant talking, punctuated by laughter. She never seems to stop talking, but tonight there's only him mocking me. "This is what it will be like someday." My throat is tightening and my eyes begin to burn. I slap at the wall until I'm blinded by fluorescent light and he is quiet.

I throw her things on the desk and dash back to the door as he stands in the corner, smiling at my back. I hear him calling after me as I put the key back into the lock, "This is what it will be like someday."

New Independence Day
Here's my speech for the Nashville Tea Party on April 15, 2009. No, I'm not speaking, but if I were...

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." I say to you, Mr. Obama, the sleeping giant has awoken again and he is filled with a terrible resolve. Blindsided by the threat of Socialism, disguising taxation without representation as stimulus, and betrayed by our legislative branch, yes, he is awake. You have our attention Mr. Obama and our resolve to cast you from your spurious throne of Socialism in the name of a new world order. If you would like to do the honorable thing and tender your resignation for your reprehensible assault upon our Constitution and the sovereignty of this nation, the American economy, and your treasonous behavior with our enemies in a time of war, please come to Nashville, Tennessee today, April 15, 2009 and witness America's New Independence Day. We're having a little Tea Party in your honor.

And to Mr. and Mrs. Congress, it might do you well to remember whom you serve and to whom you must ultimately answer. I'd begin updating your resumes, because come November 2, 2010, all of you are going to feel this recession first-hand, the same as we do, here on "Main Street".

I would, in conclusion, ask that you look around you right now at the faces of these patriots, these statesmen, and, dare I say it: your brothers and sisters in Christ, and encourage you with great forcefulness, as Peter admonished the Thessalonians, to "Pray wihout ceasing". This will only get worse before it gets better, but through our faith in both God and this Republic, we will become a stronger, wiser nation. Thank you and may God bless you.

The more things change...
The more they stay the same. My son, Christian, found this 1934 political cartoon from The Chicago Tribune on Digg today. I was amused and absolutely speechless. I forget how long this battle against the ignorance of Socialism has been raging. We are just it's latest players.