Friends, per the ridiculous pace of my schedule as of late, I'm not as attuned to current affairs as I like to be. In fact, that's an understatement. I read about 15% of the paper each day which is hardly satisfactory, but it is what it is. And I'm pretty tired. Disclaimers noted, I still find the Republican party to be such a silly, out of touch, cynical group. They are less popular than head lice, Fox News has its lowest ratings in ten years (does this mean sense has filtered back into some majority of the American populace?), the gun violence and homicide rates are horrific (Chicago? AZ during Giffords' testimony?) and still, the discussions on immigration reform are pie-in-the-sky to say the very least, there was that whole idiotic "retreat" thing, Wayne LaPierre is actually insane, and Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are still being taken seriously, for reasons I fail to understand. What the eff is up with Rand Paul's wiry hair? Jesus man. Is government against a brush? Some product? This immigration shit really makes me mad. Certainly there are folks taking advantage of the maze that is the INS path to citizenship. Yet for every one of the dishonest, I bet there are 10 non-citizens living here as legally as they can, paying what they can, staying in the system missing family/funerals/friends as they must, working their asses off as many of us should. I have a housekeeper come twice a month. She's a Mexican citizen with a legal work visa which she renews faithfully each year. She's been in the INS system for eight years, missing her father's funeral and her sister's many surgeries because she's been warned that if she returns home to Mexico, she can't come back without having to start all over in the citizenship process.

She's given thousands of her hard-earned dollars to lawyers and "lawyers" who seem to do nothing but file her papers in a horrible purgatory drawer of "maybe she'll just stop trying." This woman is incredibly kind and hard-working. She takes pride in what she does in a way I hope my children ultimately do. She is generous even when she can't be. She lives on the edge all the time, never complaining, never asking but, the edge looms, way too close for anyone's comfort.

No wall should have impeded her path, that offensive, ugly, hate-built wall on our Southern border. If we're too lazy to enact any substantive legislation to assist people who want to come here legally -turning away those who refuse to follow fair rules- work hard and contribute to our country, how on earth can we justify some horrible concrete barrier? What is this? Post-war Germany? I think not. I should hope not.

All this BS niggling in Congress about small-scale stuff, it's sickening. Guns. Education. Environment. Jobs: let's grow a pair and take care of this stuff. Who really gives a crap about the penny (worthless)? We're a great country but weak in many ways. Proud but scared, strong but shaky. When I hear Glenn Beck talk about his ludicrous idea for a new city based on "patterns," I am disgusted. Man, you grossed $80 mill last year; do something positive with it. Don't draw up blueprints for some phony-ass town that bans the GAP and Ann Taylor so as to support the community-based groups and call yourself "American." That's Brooklyn, peeps. It's been done. By liberals.

Catholic church, seriously. Sooner or later you're going to have to face the music in a real Biblical way, and it's not gonna be pretty for you. How do you think you can keep records of all this grotesque covering up of years and years of abuse, of children, of your power, of your position and not ultimately be brought, rightfully, to your knees? You should feel such shame that you crumble under its weight. And since you don't seem to be, wow, how damning and troubling. What's next? You offer to take in Jerry Sandusky as a lay-priest in charge of outreach?

I'm a pretty positive person, and I try to live each day hoping that the next will be better, wiser; that our little mistakes won't snowball into something irreparable and Sisyphean. But good lord is it disheartening sometimes, to watch the news, to see what's highlighted, to see what's not.

Meanwhile, did you see that Germany just ruled against bestiality but not, primarily, for anything dealing with sexual mores? We would just be ALL UP IN ARMS about the sex component but no, the Germans, so pragmatic, considered this issue in terms of animal welfare. Now, this is definitely an odd'ish sort of issue, rather fringe. But I do admire the remove here. What's the crux of the issue -the animal- and how can we manage this fairly -no sex with them-, judgments against people not relevant.