So, what could POSSIBLY be worse than the political posturing during this time of grief? Well, the Westboro Baptist Church has decided to enter the fray. While parents are crying over their babies, Fred Phelps will be holding up his “God Hates Fags” signs, as if God would allow innocent children to be gunned down because there are gay people in the world. And to add to the craziness, the KKK will be counterprotesting the Westboro group. Did you ever think you’d side with the KKK on anything?

What media group is reporting this story? The Huffington Post. That makes it worse.

I know that the Westboro group has the right to do this. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor on this very issue. Here’s what I want to know: Why is the Klan of all groups the only one standing up to them? Why does the Christian community not denounce them? You know why the media loves to cover this evil group of cretins? Because they call themselves the “Westboro Baptist Church.” If they called themselves the “Friends and Family of Fred Phelps Whacko Hate Club” – which is what they are – nobody would pay them any attention. But the media just LOVES to publicize this group and seethe in righteous indignation because they can be assured of general public agreement (anybody out there think it’s good to protest a soldier’s funeral?) while painting Christians as being evil and intolerant. And bonus points for being right!

As a Baptist myself, I find is grossly offensive that this group calls itself a Baptist Church. They are not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Nor are they affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance or any other recognized church. They are “Independent.” Apparently, any whacko group can CALL itself a Baptist church whether they are or not. But when the average low information voter sees the name “Westboro Baptist Church” in the headlines, they assume it’s a real church. And why wouldn’t they? I haven’t heard the SBC refudiate their protests, have you?

Somebody in authority needs to make it clear to the public that Christians do not agree with the “God Hates Fags” loonies. If we can’t stop them from using the name “Baptist,” we can at least make it clear that real Baptists think they’re wrong. God loves everybody. God loves dead soldiers. God loves gay people. God even loves Fred Phelps, although I don’t think He is really happy with him right now.

And God certainly loves these precious children that we’re all mourning today.

The first one hit my company yesterday.

Apparently, our HR has put off our benefit enrollment to the last minute. 2 days ago, they had a big meeting up in the home office to go over all the changes. You’ve been in these meetings before. Some boring person from HR drones on about a bunch of stuff you don’t care about or understand. You shrug your shoulders, sign the forms, and go back to work. But apparently, there’s one big change for us that nobody anticipated and once they realized what was happening the panic started.

If your spouse works for a company that provides them with insurance, you are no longer eligible to be covered under ours.

So, if your wife is staying home with the kids, you don’t have a problem. If your husband has insurance through his employer, you don’t have a problem. If your spouse works for a small business that doesn’t have insurance, you don’t have a problem. If your spouse works for a big company that DOES offer insurance, but you’ve decided to add them to you policy because ours is better, cheaper, or you just make more money – then you have a BIG problem!

I realize the company is trying to cut its costs. And really, why should they pay for my coworker’s wife’s insurance when she works for a big bank? Let THEM pay for it! Fortunately for me, my husband and I worked for our current employers before we got married and just never saw a benefit to changing policies. Some of the guys in my office are not so lucky. And to make it worse, most companies did all this last month and their benefit enrollment periods have closed.

So, who thinks a bunch of people are going to end up uninsured in January? Who thinks my employer made this decision because of the changes mandated by Obamacare? Who thinks that next year, they’ll decide to cut off ALL dependent coverage to save more money?

And who thinks this is just the first of a series of changes that we’re all going to find as the rest of Obamacare unfolds? Who thinks we’re going to be happy with any of them?

Yeah, me neither.

Is there any truth to this? Can anyone on this site that actually KNOWS what goes on behind the closed doors of the GOP verify?

Regardless, after the embarassing election night meltdown on Fox (that liberals are using to highten their own schadenfreude) Rove needs to go. We’ve listened to him to the detriment of our party and our country.

It’s not like I didn’t know any veterans. Every living male in my family was a veteran. My father and uncles all served in World War II. But they never talked about it. I think that’s typical of men from that era. They did their service then they came home and lived their lives. They didn’t brag about their heroics. They didn’t bore their kids with long tales about “when I was in the service….”

Or maybe that was just my dad. I knew he’d served in the Navy. He saved the coins he brought back from the Phillipines. He used to tease me that I spent money like a drunken sailor on leave and I would shoot back “Well, you would know!” Once he told me about riding the train to San Francisco before being shipped out to sea. They warned him not to open the train windows, but didn’t tell him why. He ignored them, and at night as the train went through tunnels, the smoke would come in through his open window. He woke up covered in black soot that he couldn’t wash off until he reached his destination. That’s all I know. I don’t know if he had old Navy buddies. I don’t know what he did, where all he went, what he saw. I don’t know because it never occured to me to ask. I was a snotty know-it-all as a teenager. It never even occured to me to ask. But he died when I was only 20, before I matured enough to realize how important his service was. Now I would give anything to be able to sit down with him and ask, but it’s too late. I have his discharge papers from the Navy, but I know so little about it I don’t know what they mean. And anyone who knew him then is also gone.

My mother later told me that my father didn’t take his studies seriously, so his father pulled him out of school and marched him down to the recruiting office and enlisted him in the Navy. He was 16. World War II was peaking. That totally astounds me. Can you imagine a parent doing that now? When I was a child, young men were burning their draft cards and leaving for Canada. Now I read letters to the advice column letters from liberal mothers who can’t imagine why their sons want to enlist in the military when they don’t have to. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re more worried about their sons or explaining it to their friends.

So, I apologize. To my dad, for not taking an interest in his service. To my teacher for whatever snide remark I made about the military academy. And to each one of you who served our nation. I still don’t think I would have been good in the military. I wasn’t disciplined enough and I’m still not good at taking orders. But I thank God every day for those of you who were. Thank you for your service.

And I’m sorry it took me so many years to appreciate your sacrifice.

I kept thinking about the old joke McCain repeated to Leno after his loss. “I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours crying.” For the first 24 hours, I was seriously depressed. Apparently, I’m not alone. We spent all day Wednesday at my office in a funk. The phones are barely ringing. By yesterday, some of my fellow Republicans started to climb out of their bunkers. A lot of us are thinking this is the end of America. The moochers outnumber us and they’ve finally won. The ship of state is going down like the Titanic. I personally keep imagining my worst fears about Obamacare coming true: every private insurance company in America goes bankrupt, the government is “forced” to take over health care, the rationing starts and I end up being set adrift on the ice floe when I get sick or too old to contribute to the collective (on the plus side, this might be the liberals’ solution to the Social Security and Medicare crisis.)

It’s not that Romney lost. Quite frankly, I don’t think anybody could have beaten Obama. Maybe the dreaded Republican establishment that we’ve all come to hate saw the writing on the wall and that’s why so many of the “good” candidates we kept hoping for chose not to run. Anyone who thinks Gingrich or Santorum could have done better is delusional. The left would have wiped the floor with either of them. I had high hopes for Herman Cain, until all the crap about “sexual harassment” came out. And if we had to pick a sacrifice to toss into the great electoral volcano, then Romney was an excellent choice.

But it wasn’t just Romney that lost. Nobody should be surprised that Todd Akin lost. Richard Mourdock losing was bad. Mia Love losing was worse. But Scott Brown and Tommy Thompson (our 2 most moderate candidates) lost. Good grief people! Wisconsin put a lesbian in the Senate! Gay marriage won for the first time ever when put on a ballot for the voters to decide. And two states voted to legalize MARIJUANA!!!!! If that cause some serious rethinking nothing will.

America has changed. We know the demographics have changed. Maybe the values have too. That’s what the NY Times is trying to tell us anyway. All we know right now is that we lost.

My husband came home Wednesday night and told me “Honey, I need you to step back from the ledge!” So, I’m consoling myself with how lucky I am. I still have a job (for now) and I work for a company that rarely fires anyone. If we’re still in business I can keep working until I die at my desk. My home is paid off so I don’t have to worry about foreclosure. I’ll never be able to sell it but that’s another story. I have a great husband. We don’t have kids so we don’t have to feel quite so bad about leaving another generation to suffer life in post apoclyptic America. And I never wanted to live past 80 anyway.

But seriously folks. Eric’s right. It was a close election. Maybe it wasn’t even about ideas. Maybe too many people were invested in reelecting our first black president and they didn’t even care about the facts. I personally know a lot of people who think Obamacare was a fabulous idea because their 26 year old son is on their insurance and all those poor people with preexisting conditions will no longer be left to die in the streets. The horror will start hitting them next year as the bad stuff is actually implemented (note to Republicans: we need to figure out a way to implement some of our diabolical schemes in such a way that the goodies come first and the punishment comes after it’s too late to repeal.) Romney definitely ran a bad campaign. We have a while to sort through it before the next election.

While we argue amongst ourselves as to how we go forward (sorry! How we continue on from this point…..) there are some good things. First, Obama is done. We never have to campaign against him again. His bad policies are fair game. Second, ideas never die. Raise your hand if you thought socialized medicine was dead in the water after Hillarycare? Third, the people are fickle and in 4 years they’re most likely going to be tired of the Democrats. I can’t think of a president in my lifetime that we haven’t been glad to see leave Washington. Except for Reagan.

Go ahead and work your way through the grief. Swear off politics for good. Set fire to your Romney/Ryan sign. Defriend all those liberal jackasses on Facebook that have been gloating for the last 2 days. Delete Fox News from your cable favorites. Send a nast email to Dick Morris telling him you’re never going to listen to him again. Get it all out of your system.

But we have to regroup. I personally can’t afford to move. Can’t sell my house in this market. I don’t speak a foreign language. Couldn’t survive a winter in Canada. Besides, where are we going to go that’s any better than this? So, we can give in and let the liberal utopia become a reality or we can at least go down fighting.

Personally, I plan to fight again. Just as soon as I finish licking my wounds from this time.

One of the first things I read this morning was the insipid Susan Estrich praising Christie. Usually, if Susan Estrich agrees with a Republican, he must have done something wrong. Later, the guy who passes for a conservative over at the WaPo is criticizing Christie for the exact same statements.

Seriously people, get a grip?

Is Christie sucking up to Obama to get more aid for his state? Maybe. Is he positioning himself to win the 2016 nomination? I doubt it. For one thing, he probably could have won the nomination THIS year if he had run. For another, I’m pretty sure Christie reads the polls and realized Romney has a pretty good shot at winning this thing. Is Christie just a craven opportunist boosting his own reelection campaign? Well, he’s a politician so I guess that’s always a possibility.

But to me the important issue is that we have apparently completely lost our ability to put aside partisan sniping during even the worst tragedies. Is this really what we want? So, no Republican governor can ever praise a Democratic president over disaster response? What kind of response do you think the next Republican governor will get then when he requests help? Then when we get our next Republican president, the Democrats can refuse to acknowledge he ever does anything well and he can ignore THEIR states. Now no politician on either side can ever say a kind word about the other side without being tarred and feathered by his own party and used as a campaign ad by his opponents. That’s gonna do a lot for legistlating (not to mention good old fashioned civility.)

So according to Chrisite, Obama has had a good response to the storm damage? Great. I’ll put that at #2 on my list of things I think Obama did right (behind “gave the OK to kill Osama bin Laden.”) Was that so terrible?

It was over in two minutes.

It was four years ago and now you’re ashamed to admit it to anyone.

You thought it was going to be like totally awesome but in reality it was disappointing.

He didn’t keep any of the promises he made to convince you that he was the one.

You look at all the others who did it and realize you’re in bad company.

You get stuck with the check afterwards.

I know Gary Trudeau is a leftist and is out to get Romney. But I thought some things would be off limits out of human decency. Silly me. This week, Doonesbury’s plot line is mocking Romney for his missionary work in France. Seriously? This is supposed to be FUNNY? I’m not a Mormon and I disagree with a lot of their beliefs. But most religions believe in missionary work, both to help the less fortunate and to convert the unbeliever. After all, if you really believe you have the path to salvation, you want to share it, right?

The only thing more disappointing to me than the fact Doonesbury thinks mission work is to be ridiculed is that once again, my Facebook friends agree that his is hysterical. One even said it was OK to mock Romney because she disagrees with me politically. Just wow. So, if I disagree with your political views it’s OK for me to disparage your religion? And isn’t mission work to be admired even in other faiths?

I guess not.

OK, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Don’t want to subject myself to any unnecessary medical procedures. If the name of this panel sounds familiar, they’re the same ones that announced in 2009 that women under 50 don’t need to have mammograms. Oddly enough, their reasoning for that is the same as their reasoning for avoiding the ovarian cancer test: risks outweigh benefits. I’m on board with that too because I really don’t want to have to go in for a yearly mammogram anyway. If I can put that off a few more years, I’m good with it. Although, my doctor still wants me to have it done and my insurance DOES currently cover the procedure.

I had some time to kill this morning so I checked on the internet, and this is the same group that LAST year stated that men do not need to be screened for prostate cancer because – guess what? Benefits don’t outweigh risks.

Again, generally speaking, I can accept this at face value. I think we have way too many medical tests in this country and spend too much money having unnecessary medical treatment. But what if there’s another reason for these studies? What if it’s not a coincidence that they’re all coming out now? What if they’re just preparing us for the day when we aren’t ALLOWED to have these tests that we’ve been told all our lives we have to have? What if insurance companies stop paying for them? Will we be better off? Worse off? The same?

And what if something really sinister is going on here like – Oh, I don’t know – a secret plan for the government to take over our health care and start rationing it?

Never mind. That could never happen here.

But here’s what really put me over the edge: I shared a comment Mike Huckabee made about the abortion issue. I don’t remember the exact words but essentially, he pointed out that men who support abortion don’t usually treat women well. I thought that was a great point. This week’s “Vagina Monologues” illustrated this pefectly. Ted Kennedy supported abortion? Yeah, of course he did. He also left a woman to drown. He treated his first wife like dirt. Bill Clinton? Remember how the exact same women who wanted Clarence Thomas tarred and feathered thought Monica Lewinsky should have been grateful for the opportunity to sexually service Bill Clinton since he was keeping abortion legal? I’m sure Bill Maher is a HUGE supporter of abortion. And these guys all use their support of abortion to convince women that they’re “on our side” when in reality, they’re using it to duck their own responsibilities.

One of my friends took issue with this. That’s fine, I realize others see this differently. But I really like this man, think he is highly intelligent, and was under the impression that we were having a spirited exchange of ideas. Right up until he unloaded on me and turned it from a disagreement on an issue to a personal vendetta.

So, now I’m sad because I realize that if 2 intelligent people can’t even discuss this rationally, we’re sunk. The “pro choice” side thinks anyone who disagrees with them is a sex-o-phobic prig that just wants to control women and they just will not accept that maybe someone actually cares about the lives of the unborn. And some of those on the pro life side might actually fit that description. But the rest of us just can’t understand why we’re still having a million “suprise” pregnancies in an age where Walmart carries about 400 different contraceptive products. And despite what my friend said, this is not “settled law.” A supreme court decision invalidated the settled laws. As a result, every Supreme Court appointment comes a do or die battle on BOTH sides. It’s even spilled over to the lower courts. A lot of benches are sitting vacant because no Senator wants to approve the appointment now of somebody he’s later going to have to oppose down the road.

But the really depressing thing for me is that I no longer see these people as having an honest disagreement with me, I now see them as idiots. I have 2 friends who are constantly posting little jibes from the “We survived Bush you WILL survive Obama” page. They’re both unemployed, lost a house to foreclosure, and they’re still going to vote for Obama. My brother-in-law is still disappointed that his Republican governor killed the high speed rail that was going to carry him to a city he rarely visits when he already has a car to drive him there. And don’t even get me started on all the twits that are elated about the “free” healthcare they’re going to get now. I just find myself hoping I live long enough to see them put on the ice floes first so that I can at least say “I told you so” before it’s my turn.

The only thing holding our country together at this point is the $16 tillion in debt we’ve accumulated. If a bunch of red states decided to secede today, I’m doubting the blue states would be sorry to see us go. Others have said this before, but maybe they’re right. Maybe we should all just go our separate ways. We can all move to the state and district we agree with, watch our own news stations, defriend each other on Facebook and never speak again. We can watch Fox news, they can watch MSNBC. We’ll keep Chik Fil A and they can have Starbucks. We’ll take all the military (they won’t use it anyway) and leave them all the abortion clinics. As for the moderates, they’ll have to pick a damn side.

On the plus side, this means I’ll never have to eat Thanksgiving with my inlaws again. But I’ll miss some of my favorite TV shows.

So, am I totally overreacting? Or was Rodney King wrong? Maybe, we just can’t all get along.