Courage Under Fire

 I really meant to read a less stressful book after the last one.  In fact, on a friend’s recommendation, I requested Homer’s Odyssey. Going to the library just to pick up one book is challenging for me. As I walk in, there are displays of books everywhere. I found four more I wanted and one of them was Courage Under Fire by Steven A. Sund.

 

What happened on January 6, 2021, is forever etched in my mind, just as are other traumatic dates. It was my husband’s birthday, and we were enjoying watching TV when suddenly the show was interrupted by coverage of the insurrection at the Capitol building. We watched with growing horror all afternoon and into the evening, wondering WHERE was the National Guard and why didn’t they show up until after the traitors departed? Last August, I read Representative Jamie Raskin’s book Unthinkable and experienced what it was like for the legislators, staff, and family members inside who were protected and safely evacuated by Capitol police.

 

Steven A. Sund was the Capitol Police chief that day. I wanted to read his book because I still had so many questions about what happened that day and wanted the viewpoint of the man in charge.  One of the first things I learned is how complicated security is within the Capitol. I would have thought that Sund would be in control of implementing all the plans and would have the authority to call in all the help he needed. But, no. In order to request the National Guard, he would have to get permission from the two sergeants at arms (one for the House, one for the Senate). And THEY have to go talk to their people (Speaker, Senate Majority Leader).

 

Based on reports Sund was getting from Intel across all the federal police sources, there was only a “remote” chance of violence because all six protest groups were supposed to stay in place. However, when they began advancing on the Capitol and becoming increasingly menacing and violent as they began fighting with the Capitol police guarding the outside perimeters, Sund called the sergeants at arms. The House Sergeant didn’t like “the optics” of having soldiers at the Capitol, but he’d go ask Speaker Pelosi and get back to Sund. The Senate Sergeant suggested that Sund call the Guard and see what they might have available.

 

The protest turned into a full scale coup attempt. No one got back to Sund about calling in the National Guard, and so he began calling other agencies with a police force: Supreme Court, FBI, Secret Service, and nearby police forces from Virginia and Maryland. Even New Jersey sent troopers to help at the Capitol, which was rapidly overrun by the insurrectionists.  Sund was in a near panic, watching his police force being attacked with all kinds of weapons and noxious sprays.

 

At about the time Capitol police within the building began escorting legislators, staff and family members to safety, Sund finally got permission to call in the National Guard. But they didn’t come. There were some units within sight of the Capitol, directing traffic, but they were not permitted to deploy to help the struggling officers.

 

Why? And this was my biggest question: why wasn’t the National Guard deployed earlier?

 

Sund explained how the Army was giving him the runaround about deploying soldiers to the Capitol even though the general Sund spoke to could see how dangerous the insurrectionists had become.  Sund does give a reason why the response was so horribly delayed, and it’ll raise the goosebumps in you as it did to me.  You’ll have to read the book to find out why and other hairy details unknown at the time to us viewers.

 

This is the scariest part: there was a massive intel communication failure before January 6^th. Over two years have gone by and not much has changed. Analysts and other intel agents haven’t been replaced; the procedures haven’t been changed. Steven Sund and the two sergeants at arms were both forced to resign before being fired. They were the sacrificial lambs and the world went on.

 

It could happen again. Without any changes, it will.

 

January 6th is important for a couple of reasons

 

Today is my husband’s birthday. We are having a family celebration tomorrow so that his mom and the mine part of “yours, mine & ours” kids can be here.

Two years ago, right at this time, we were frozen to our seats in horror as we watched the Capitol being stormed by violent right wing tRump supporters. We were witnessing a coup attempt and never ever dreamed something like that could happen here. Today, the Repugs are still trying to elect a Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy has tried 12 times now and has been an epic failure. I’m half afraid that one or more of the QAnon reps will start pulling out their guns and start shooting.

But I set that aside. It’s Ted’s birthday and he is the love of my life now. We both lost our first spouses the same year. Rich died of cardiac arrest which was a result of having Marfan Syndrome. Ted’s wife Audrey died after a procedure went wrong in a hospital she went to because fluid accumulated in her lungs. She had pulmonary hypertension.

We didn’t know each other then. As the sad, lonely months passed I knew I had the support of my best friends, but I missed a male voice. I would call Rich’s work number just so I could hear his voice. When that went away, I thought it might be nice to be pen pals with a widower from out of state.

There was a method to my madness when I signed up with Match.com for a trial membership. I wanted to connect with a widower, no one else, because I felt we would share the same issues of grieving and have a better understanding of what we felt and why. It had to be someone from out of state because I didn’t want to date.  I was sure that Rich was my one and only, even though he’d often said he wanted me to move on if ever he should die.

I had a few widowed pen pals, but it felt superficial. I wanted someone who would open up and talk to me and it wasn’t happening. I continued to receive a few profiles and one stopped me cold. The man reminded me so much of Rich—hair style, glasses, Van Dyke beard. I sent the profile to trash without reading it. I was completely unnerved.

At the end of my trial period 2 months later, I decided not to continue. It just wasn’t working out. I got one more profile. It was him again! I went to delete it but then I swear I heard Rich whisper, “Give him a chance.” My hand froze. Instead of deleting the profile, I read it.

Ted lived in New Jersey. That was cool. I lived in New York. He liked to read (me too) and mentioned he liked cats. I’m a cat person. He was a family man. Other little details appealed to me. He could be a friend, I thought. I decided to go with that whispered voice and sent Ted an email.

Ted responded right back, and we struck up an email conversation. What really attracted me was how well spoken he was and the fact he’d include funny little gifs in the text. The gifs made me laugh. I would respond to him at night after work; he’d write back in the wee hours before he had to leave for work.

Our emails progressed to phone calls. My, how we talked! We would spend hours chatting on the phone about all sorts of topics. I learned he was a union sheet metal worker. He had a large family. He was the eldest of five sons and a daughter. I learned his biological father abandoned his mother and the five boys when Ted was young. Later his mom remarried, and that wonderful man adopted all the boys. Sister Pam was born when Ted was about 12 or 13. I learned all about his life. I shared as much of mine as I dared, still hesitant to speak freely of my childhood.

I’d decided to take my three kids (then 14, 12 and 9) to Disney World in Florida to do something really fun for a change. I’m afraid of flying so I decided to drive down in our new van. It occurred to me that we would be going through New Jersey on the way down so I suggested to Ted we would meet at a place to eat just off the New Jersey Turnpike.

Ted was all for it, suggesting a McDonald’s near Great Adventure Amusement Park. So, on the way down, we pulled off the Turnpike and stopped for lunch and to meet Ted at McDonald’s. We met in the parking lot, and I sensed Ted was nervous, so I took his hand. After that, we enjoyed our lunch and just talked and talked. Finally, I realized we’d better get back on the road. On the way back to our cars, Ted and I stopped and kissed.

The rest is history.

In June, we’ll celebrate our 21^st wedding anniversary. We are so blessed.  It’s a rare gift to find true love just once. It’s a miraculous blessing to find it twice. Happy Birthday to my dear Teddy Bear.

Things That Made Me Smile This Week

Five things that made me smile this wee.

1.   I got the most smiles from our weekly visit with our daughters.  They live about 40 minutes away and have been coming over to have dinner with us on Saturdays.  We’ve also been watching series together.  We watched all four seasons Fargo, which I totally loved.  The dark humor was awesome.

I didn’t think I would enjoy Castle Rock as much; I was totally spoiled with how great Fargo was.  I was a bit confused at first watching the first season episodes and it didn’t really make a lot of sense to me until the episode before the last one.  I had a big aha moment when I realized what was happening.  It took me back to my old favorite series, Dark Shadows.  The end left me wondering if The Kid was the devil for sure or was, he trapped in a world in which he didn’t belong?  I know how I wanted it to end; it didn’t go the way I wanted.  That’s okay.  We’ll start watching Season 2 next time we’re together.

Watching series together has been a great way for us all to relax and unwind.  We’re all pretty much home bound so we don’t have a lot of news to share.  When Bill has evenings off, we watch series together.  We watched all of Roots and Stranger Things.  I saw Roots when it aired originally in the 1970s and wow! In 2022, it’s still powerful.  I totally love Stranger Things and have enjoyed watching those kids grow up.  Season 4 was the best ever and I’ll be very happy when Season 5 is released.  Now the three of us are watching the Centennial miniseries.  That’s another show that is very well made.

2.  The next thing that made me smile was working the phone banks for Democrats running for office.  I absolutely adore and respect our Representative Andy Kim.  He is so down to earth and wants to help us regular people.  He’s not as progressive as, say, AOC, Bernie or Elizabeth Warren but that’s ok.  He looks out for us and lives in NJ (not Washington) to be with his wife, family and people.  He should have been a shoe-in again but the census caused redistricting.  Our district lost one county and gained parts of two new ones.  We’ve been calling voters in those two near areas mostly.  Most of them were unaware of the districting changes.  None of the people I talked to have been mean to me.

I’ve also done a couple of phone banks for AOC and the Democratic NY state senate candidate she’s supporting, Kristen Gonzalez.  I’d never heard of Gonzalez but she sounds like she at least leans progressive.

I smile because I feel like I’m doing something to stop tRump and the GQP from destroying our democracy and replacing it with authoritarian fascism and “Christian” nationalism.

1.     3   I signed up to be an election worker.  Again, I felt like I was doing something positive.  I’ve been reading about how tRump, the GQP, and other domestic terrorists have been harassing and threatening election workers to the point they don’t want to do the job anymore.  But we can’t let the bad guys win by intimidation.  That’s what organized crime figures do, terrify and threaten people to get what they want.  It can’t stand.

2.     4.  It’s been a busy week for the FBI and DOJ.  Finally, after such a long wait, there may be justice for the kingpin plotters of the coup attempt.  The FBI raided tRump’s Mar-a-lago because he continued to keep files he should have turned in when he left the White House.  Some of these seemed to be nuclear information files.  A lot of them were top top secret.  What was tRump doing with them?  The wheels of justice grind very slowly but also surely and hopefully tRump will finally be indicted for all his crimes.

All of tRump’s henchmen are beginning to fall too, like dominoes.  All of that made me smile.

3.      5 Last, but not least, after a year of bickering, dickering and betrayal, Congress finally passed the Inflation Reduction Act.  That was the name given it so that all the Dems would vote for it, including Smanchinema.  The act will pump a lot of money into trying to reduce climate change.  I smiled and smiled about this one.  I’d been writing about all the damage our recklessness has caused by abusing the Earth and its resources.  Now we have dirty air and water, intense heat waves, more powerful storms and drought.  Without making changes, we would make ourselves extinct along with all the other animals, birds, fish, and sea creatures.  Another big benefit is that Medicare will be able to negotiate with suppliers for the most expensive drugs.

Hoping to have a post like this again next week.

 

Goodbye Temporarily, Liz Cheney

Last night there were election primaries in Wisconsin and Alaska.  Liz Cheney lost, sadly to a tRump based right wing nut Harriet Hageman.  Liz Cheney has been an outspoken, almost lone Republican, trying to stop TFG.  She voted to impeach him and is serving admirably on the insurrection investigation committee.  TFG still has an unbelievable stronghold on the Rethuglicans and backed the screwball who ran against Cheney. 

In fact, any Repub who opposed TFG faced his wrath and either lost their primaries or decided to retire.  Adam Kinzinger, the other Repub on the committee, also voted to impeach and wearied of the threats on his life and on his family, deciding not to run again.  In Alaska, Senator Murkowski went up against TFG’s candidate.  TFG had a boner for her because she voted to impeach him.  What saved her is that, in Alaska, the top four contenders advance to the general election.  She was one of the four.

All of this goes to show how much influence TFG has among his party and his voters.  After all he’s done, people are still entranced with him.  It’s mind boggling.

I wanted to focus on the environment today but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.  There is just so much about Liz Cheney and her possibilities for the future.  What could they be?  After her loss, Cheney told NBC that she wanted to do whatever she could to see to it that TFG is stopped with “whatever it takes.”  For the now, she formed a new PAC and donated what was left in her war chest. 

The new PAC is called “The Great Task.”  It is great in more than one sense of the word.  To begin with, because tRump’s tentacles are so deep and because other quivering GOP members are too chicken shit, it’s not going to be easy to stop tRump unless he’s finally indicted.  It’s also a great task in that we need to get rid of the tRump malignancy sickening this country.  Maybe the other quivering GOP chicken shit members will join her in the effort.  It would be nice.

And what about running for the Presidency in 2024?  Cheney says she’s “thinking about it.”  Robert Reich mentioned that possibility in his column today.  Personally, I hope she does run.  She is just what the old “Grand Old Party” needs to bring it back to a sane, more humane track.  Or, the party could split in two: GOP and GQP/Thuglicans.

Would I vote for her?  Nope.  The reason why is this: she has voted with the rest of the Rethuglicans against every single piece of legislation that would help the American people.  She didn’t need to be loyal to them.  After all, after TFG disowned her, the party basically tossed her out on the street.  She was stripped of her powerful title in the House.  The fact that she still voted lock-step with the Rethugs says to me that she is just as cold bloodedly capitalistic as the rest of them.  Her family is rich and powerful in Wyoming and I don’t get the idea she knows anything about being in the middle or lower class.

So, no, I would never vote for her.  However, I think she’d run a more ethical campaign than TFG ever did.  I still admire her dedication for and determination to protect our Constitution.  So goodbye to the House, Liz Cheney, but I know this is not the end for you.