#Alabama Hit-and-Run Laws

[morrishaynes]

Legal Options For When I get Hit By A Car and They Drive Off

waiting for law enforcement. In Alabama, leaving the scene of an accident is a criminal offense, punishable by fines, license suspension, and even imprisonment. Unfortunately, hit-and-run cases remain common across the state, particularly in densely populated areas like Birmingham and Mobile.

Nearly 700,000 hit-and-run crashes occur annually in the United States, a troubling statistic that reflects the frequency of these incidents. You can learn more about these cases and their impact from AAA’s hit-and-run data.

Common Reasons Drivers Flee the Scene

While leaving the scene of an accident is illegal, drivers often flee for the following reasons:

Driving Without Insurance: Alabama has one of the highest rates of uninsured drivers in the country, which contributes significantly to hit-and-run cases. Explore how Alabama handles uninsured drivers to understand the legal challenges (Insurance Information Institute).

Driving Under the Influence (DUI): Intoxicated drivers may flee to avoid DUI charges.

Fear of Consequences: Drivers with expired licenses, outstanding warrants, or other legal issues may panic and leave the scene.

Emotional Responses: Some drivers flee out of fear or shock, not fully realizing the consequences of their actions.

Steps to Take After a Hit-and-Run Accident

If you’ve been involved in a hit-and-run accident, follow these steps to protect yourself and strengthen your case:

1. Prioritize Safety

Move to a safe location and assess injuries. Call for medical assistance if needed.

2. Report the Incident to Law Enforcement

A police report is critical for documenting the hit-and-run and may aid in identifying the driver. Provide details about the fleeing vehicle, such as its make, model, color, and any part of its license plate.

3. Gather Evidence

Take photos of the accident scene, your vehicle’s damage, and any visible injuries. Look for traffic cameras or nearby businesses that may have captured footage. Witness statements can also be crucial.

4. Notify Your Insurance Company

If you have uninsured motorist (UM) coverage, you can file a claim for damages related to the hit-and-run. This includes medical expenses, lost wages, and property damage.

5. Consult an Attorney

A hit-and-run case can be legally complex. An experienced attorney can help you navigate insurance claims, pursue compensation, and hold the responsible party accountable if they are identified.

Your Legal Options After a Hit-and-Run

Even if the at-fault driver is not found, you may still have recourse:

1. Uninsured Motorist Coverage

Alabama law requires insurance companies to offer uninsured motorist (UM) coverage, which can compensate you for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering. Check out how uninsured motorist coverage works in Alabama to better understand your rights (Alabama Insurance Department).

2. Identifying the Driver

If law enforcement locates the at-fault driver, you can file a personal injury claim to recover damages for:

Medical costs.

Property damage.

Lost wages.

Pain and suffering.

Punitive damages may also be available in cases of gross negligence, such as a DUI-related hit-and-run.

Challenges in Hit-and-Run Cases

Hit-and-run cases can be challenging due to:

Difficulty Identifying the Driver: Without clear evidence, tracking down the driver can be difficult.

Insurance Limitations: Even with UM coverage, insurance companies may try to minimize your payout.

Contributory Negligence Rule: Alabama’s strict contributory negligence laws mean that if you’re found even 1% at fault, you may not be able to recover damages.

These hurdles make it essential to have an experienced attorney advocating for you.

How Morris Haynes Can Help

At Morris Haynes Attorneys at Law, we are dedicated to helping hit-and-run victims recover the compensation they deserve. Here’s how we can support you:

1. Investigating the Accident

Our team works closely with law enforcement, gathers evidence, and reviews surveillance footage to identify the responsible driver.

2. Negotiating with Insurance Companies

We handle all communications with your insurance provider to ensure you receive fair compensation under your UM coverage.

3. Pursuing Legal Action

If the fleeing driver is identified, we’ll file a personal injury lawsuit to recover damages for medical bills, lost wages, and emotional distress.

4. Personalized Support

We understand the emotional toll of hit-and-run accidents and provide compassionate, personalized guidance throughout your case.

Seek Justice with Morris Haynes

A hit-and-run accident can leave you feeling powerless, but you don’t have to face it alone. At Morris Haynes Attorneys at Law, we fight for the rights of accident victims and work tirelessly to secure the compensation they need to rebuild their lives.

Call us today at (205) 324-4008 or visit our website to schedule a free consultation. Let us guide you toward justice and recovery.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Philadelphia Tribune

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 29, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 30, 2024

Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not. 

Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”

Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.  

The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia: “This is the worst event in our office’s history.”  

Faison’s implication that Democratic president Biden, rather than Republican governor Lee, was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them. 

In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.  

Republican presidential nominee Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance have been claiming that it was Trump who capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of lying when the Biden administration takes credit for it. Vance’s statement, itself, is a breathtaking lie. Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 establishing a temporary, voluntary program that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly insulin copayments at $35. The program ran from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2023. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 a month for all covered insulin products. All Democrats in the House and the Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, and all Republicans—including J.D. Vance—voted against it. 

As Republicans have lost the support of suburban women for their attacks on reproductive rights and embrace of the misogyny of the MAGA movement, they have tried to beef up the idea that they are the country’s true supporters of women and families. Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault, has been trying to assure women: “I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector.” With him back in office, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, women “will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Journalist Jessica Valenti noted that antiabortion activists are running advertisements blaming the deaths of women in states with abortion bans not on those bans or those who passed them, but on the Democrats trying to protect reproductive healthcare. Women have died when doctors would not give them lifesaving care out of concerns about prosecution under states’ abortion bans or were unable to access abortion care. But the ads, using the names and images of women who have died under antiabortion regimes, claim that lifesaving care is still legal but doctors don’t know they can use it because of misinformation from pro-choice activists.

Antiabortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district, has appeared in campaign photographs with a woman and children posed as if they are his family, but they are not. He is unmarried and childless, and the family is that of a friend. 

That last one is really weird, but the biggest lies from the Republicans concern immigration, especially as voters blame the Republicans for killing a strong bipartisan border bill earlier this year after Trump demanded they keep the issue open for him to campaign on. J.D. Vance was among those who voted against it. 

There were the lies Vance spread about Springfield, Ohio, of course, attacking the legal Haitian immigrants there who have been credited with revitalizing the city. On Friday and Saturday, Trump lied that Vice President Harris had let 13,000 or 14,000 convicted murderers enter the U.S. in the past three years, who “freely and openly roam our country,” a lie that Elon Musk called “true.” 

In fact, as CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed out, it is a lie. The Department of Homeland Security clarified that the data to which Trump appeared to refer lists individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years—including during his own term—committed crimes in the U.S. rather than their country of origin, and either are currently incarcerated or have served their sentences but can’t be deported because their country of origin won’t accept them. Such individuals are monitored. 

On Saturday, Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a woman in a Philadelphia suburb received a letter that looked like an official document from the fake “Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs” telling her that she was expected to provide living space to five migrants under a program “written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” 

As Terruso wrote, “No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam—and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.”

Lies establish dominance over people being lied to, because lies take away a person’s right to make good decisions about their own life. So what’s the purpose of the Republican lies? 

Former president Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, but his recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith and his attempts to sell watches for up to $100,000 apiece suggest he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations. At his recent events he is slurring his words, unable to answer questions, and seems consumed with anger and a desire for revenge against those he sees as his enemies. He has recently referred to Harris as “mentally disabled,” and today in Erie, Pennsylvania, he said that crime would end “if you had one really violent day…. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”  

He has, though, focused on painting a picture of the U.S. as a hellscape overrun with undocumented criminal immigrants. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who clips Trump’s speeches on social media, compared yesterday’s rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to the “Two Minutes Hate” against political enemies in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Trump’s attacks on immigrants were so extreme even he admitted “this is a dark speech.” 

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is also doubling down on anti-immigrant attacks. In that, they are echoing the language Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán used to get voters to support him out of fear of immigrants. Then Orbán took control of Hungary, undermined its democracy, and set himself up as a dictator.  

Once in charge, Orbán insisted that democracy was obsolete. The democratic principle that the law must treat everyone equally and give them a say in their government, he said, weakens a nation by treating women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as equal to white, heterosexual men. Immigration weakens a nation by diluting its purity. He set out to establish what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” enforcing religious rules and laws that reestablish patriarchy.   

Project 2025 was backed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has ties to Orbán’s Danube Institute, and to the extent he talks about policies, Trump echoes that game plan. He has promised, for example, that he would replace civil servants with loyalists and today again vowed to get rid of the Department of Education, both key items in Project 2025.

Vance has gone further, attacking secular American society itself. In 2021 he said in an interview that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said. 

On Saturday, Vance spoke at an event hosted by right-wing extremist evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a member of the New Apostolic Reformation movement that seeks to end the separation of church and state and put the United States under religious rule. At the event, Vance claimed that “American children… can’t add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders.” He claimed that schools are teaching children “radical ideas” rather than “reading, writing, arithmetic.” He called it “creeping socialism in our schools,” and called for cutting funding for public education. 

The White House today said that more than 3,300 federal personnel are deployed in the states impacted by Hurricane Helene and that at least 50,000 people from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada are working to restore power. FEMA has moved in food and is working to restore cell coverage; federal search and rescue teams are on the ground; the U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen damaged ports; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing damage and moving debris; the Environmental Protection Agency is working on water systems; the Small Business Administration has 50 people on the ground to support small businesses; the U.S. Department of Energy is monitoring power, fuel, and supply chains; the Department of Agriculture is extending credit to farmers who lost crops and livestock.  

At a campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said “we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.”

Wallnau has accused Harris of practicing witchcraft. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:

KRISTA HARDING’S DAUGHTER was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, but I’m coming in! Don’t panic. Harding’s registration tag was expired. She figured the officer would write her a ticket and she’d be on her way, but when he came back after running her driver’s license, he had handcuffs out. There was a felony warrant out for her arrest, he said: “Chemical endangerment of a child.” Harding used her most patient customer-service tone to ask the officer if he’d please check again. But there was no mistake, the cop confirmed: He was taking her to the Etowah County Detention Center, almost an hour’s drive away. “I’m in the back of the cop car just bawling my eyes out, like, ugly-face-snot-bubbles crying,” Harding remembers. She was worried about being away from her newborn, and she was confused: Chemical endangerment of a child? “I think of somebody cooking meth with a baby on their hip,” she says. 

She’s right to think that: The Alabama law, passed in 2006, was intended to target those who expose children to toxic chemicals, or worse, explosions, while manufacturing methamphetamine in ad-hoc home labs.  Harding says it took at least eight hours to be booked into a cell that night, and it was more than a week before she was finally allowed to see a judge. She was still leaking breast milk, and desperately missing her two daughters. Her family wasn’t allowed to bring her clean underwear, so every day she washed her one pair, saturated with menstrual blood, in the cell sink, then hung them to dry.

Harding says she eventually learned the warrant for her arrest had been issued because of a urine test taken at a doctor’s visit early in her pregnancy. Sitting alone in her cell, she conjured a vague memory of her OB-GYN warning her local authorities had begun to crack down on weed. The comment had struck her as odd at the time: Nine years earlier, when she was pregnant with her first child, the same doctor at the same hospital had told Harding, who’d smoked both pot and cigarettes before she was pregnant, that she’d rather Harding kick the nicotine than the weed. (Studies are unequivocal about the fact that cigarettes contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes, but the research on weed is less conclusive, with some doctors arguing it at least has therapeutic benefits, like helping with morning sickness.)

But in the years between her first child and her second, something had changed in certain parts of Alabama. In Etowah County, in 2013, the sheriff, the district attorney, and the head of the local child-welfare agency held a press conference to announce they intended to aggressively enforce that 2006 law. Instead of going after the manufacturers of meth, though, they planned to target pregnant women who used virtually any substance they deemed harmful to a developing fetus.

“If a baby is born with a controlled-substance dependency, the mother is going to jail,” then-Sheriff Todd Entrekin said at the time. Police weren’t required to establish that a child was born with a chemical dependency, though — or even that a fetus experienced any harm — a drug test, a confession, or just an accusation of substance use during pregnancy was enough to arrest women for a first offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. One public defender would later call these “unwinnable cases.” Over the following decade, Etowah County imprisoned hundreds of mothers — some of whom were detained, before trial, for the rest of their pregnancies, inside one of the most brutal and inhumane prisons in the country, denied access to prenatal care and adequate nutrition, they say — in the name of protecting their children from harm. 

[...]

In the past two decades, Alabama has become the undisputed champion of arresting pregnant women for actions that wouldn’t be considered crimes if they weren’t pregnant: 649 arrests between 2006 and 2022, almost as many arrests as documented in all other states combined, according to advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, which collected the statistics. Across the U.S., the vast majority of women arrested on these charges were too poor to afford a lawyer, and a quarter of cases were based on the use of a legal substance, like prescription medication.

Today, Marshall is the attorney general of Alabama, and just a few months ago, the state’s Supreme Court used the same logic — that life begins at conception, therefore an embryo is legally indistinguishable from a living child — in a decision that was responsible for shutting down IVF clinics across the state. The ruling was a triumph for the fetal-personhood movement, a nationwide crusade to endow fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses with constitutional rights. Personhood has been the Holy Grail for the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but outlawing abortion — at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason — is just the start of what legal recognition of embryos’ rights could mean for anyone who can get pregnant. Experts have long warned that elevating an embryo’s legal status effectively strips the person whose body that embryo occupies of her own rights the moment she becomes pregnant.

Across the country, this theory has led to situations like in Texas, where a hospital kept a brain-dead woman alive for almost two months — against her own advanced directive and the wishes of her family — in deference to a state law that prevents doctors from removing a pregnant person from life support. (The hospital only relented after the woman’s husband sued for “cruel and obscene mutilation of a corpse.”) Or in New Hampshire, where a court allowed a woman who was hit by a car while seven months pregnant to be sued by her future child for negligence because she failed to use “a designated crosswalk.” Or in Washington, D.C., where a terminally ill cancer patient, 26 weeks pregnant, requested palliative care, but was instead subjected to court-ordered cesarean section. Her baby survived for just two hours; she died two days later.

Or in Alabama, where, in 2019, Marshae Jones walked into the Pleasant Grove Police Department with her six-year-old daughter expecting to be interviewed for a police investigation. Months earlier, Jones, four and a half months pregnant at the time, had been shot by her co-worker during a dispute. In the hospital after the shooting, Jones underwent an emergency C-section; her baby, whom she’d named Malaysia, did not survive. Rather than indicting the shooter, though, a grand jury indicted Jones, who they decided “intentionally” caused the death of her “unborn baby” because she allegedly picked a fight “knowing she was five months pregnant.” The charges were ultimately dismissed, but Jones’ lawyer says her record still shows the arrest, and Jones, who lost her job after the incident, struggled to find work after her case attracted national attention.

The threat this ideology poses to American women is not contained to Alabama: Recognition of fetal personhood is an explicit policy goal of the national Republican Party, and it has been since the 1980s. The GOP platform calls for amending the U.S. Constitution to recognize the rights of embryos, and representatives in Congress have introduced legislation that would recognize life begins at conception hundreds of times — as recently as this current session, when the Life at Conception Act attracted the co-sponsorship of 127 sitting Republican members of Congress.

[...]

Taking inspiration from Black Americans’ fight for equal rights, the anti-abortion movement began thinking of its own crusade as a fight for equality. “The argument that the unborn was the ultimate victim of discrimination in America was really resonant with a lot of white Americans, a lot of socially conservative Americans — and it was vague enough that people who disagreed about stuff like feminism, the welfare state, children born outside of marriage, the Civil Rights Movement” could find common ground, Ziegler says.  By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, the idea that a fetus was entitled to constitutional protections was mainstream enough to be a central piece of Texas’ argument that “Jane Roe” did not have a right to get an abortion.  

The justices rejected that idea. “The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. But he gave the movement a cause to rally behind for the next half-century by adding: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”  Making that happen became the anti-abortion movement’s primary focus from that moment on. One week after Roe was decided, a U.S. congressman first proposed amending the Constitution to guarantee “the right to life to the unborn, the ill, the aged, or the incapacitated.” It was called the Human Life Amendment, and though it failed to make it to a floor vote that session, it would be reproposed more than 300 times in the following decades.  By 1980, the idea had been fully embraced by the Republican Party: Ronald Reagan’s GOP adopted it into the party platform — where it remains to this day — and in 1983, the Republican-majority Congress voted, for the first and only time, on the idea of adding a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That vote failed. 

After their 1983 defeat, activists turned their attention away from the U.S. Capitol and toward the states, where they sought to insert the idea of fetal personhood into as many state laws as possible: everything from legislation creating tax deductions for fetuses or declaring them people for census-taking purposes, to expanding child-endangerment and -neglect laws.  Activists pursued this agenda everywhere, but they were most successful at advancing it in states that share certain qualities. “You could draw a Venn diagram of American slavery and see that what’s happening today is in common in those states,” says Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor and author of the book Policing the Womb. “Some would say, ‘Well, OK, how is that relevant?’ Slavery itself was explicitly about denying personal autonomy, denying the humanity of Black people. Now, clearly, these laws affect women of all ethnicities. But the point is: If you’re in a constitutional democracy and you found a way to avoid recognizing the constitutional humanity of a particular group of people, it’s something that’s not lost in the muscle memory of those who legislate and of the courts in that state.”

Rolling Stone has a solid in-depth report on the war on women and reproductive health in Alabama, going into detail the fetal personhood movement.

[misfitwashere]

September 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 30

Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not. 

Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”

Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.  

The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia: “This is the worst event in our office’s history.”  

Faison’s implication that Democratic president Biden, rather than Republican governor Lee, was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them. 

In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.  

Republican presidential nominee Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance have been claiming that it was Trump who capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of lying when the Biden administration takes credit for it. Vance’s statement, itself, is a breathtaking lie. Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 establishing a temporary, voluntary program that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly insulin copayments at $35. The program ran from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2023. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 a month for all covered insulin products. All Democrats in the House and the Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, and all Republicans—including J.D. Vance—voted against it. 

As Republicans have lost the support of suburban women for their attacks on reproductive rights and embrace of the misogyny of the MAGA movement, they have tried to beef up the idea that they are the country’s true supporters of women and families. Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault, has been trying to assure women: “I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector.” With him back in office, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, women “will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Journalist Jessica Valenti noted that antiabortion activists are running advertisements blaming the deaths of women in states with abortion bans not on those bans or those who passed them, but on the Democrats trying to protect reproductive healthcare. Women have died when doctors would not give them lifesaving care out of concerns about prosecution under states’ abortion bans or were unable to access abortion care. But the ads, using the names and images of women who have died under antiabortion regimes, claim that lifesaving care is still legal but doctors don’t know they can use it because of misinformation from pro-choice activists.

Antiabortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district, has appeared in campaign photographs with a woman and children posed as if they are his family, but they are not. He is unmarried and childless, and the family is that of a friend. 

That last one is really weird, but the biggest lies from the Republicans concern immigration, especially as voters blame the Republicans for killing a strong bipartisan border bill earlier this year after Trump demanded they keep the issue open for him to campaign on. J.D. Vance was among those who voted against it. 

There were the lies Vance spread about Springfield, Ohio, of course, attacking the legal Haitian immigrants there who have been credited with revitalizing the city. On Friday and Saturday, Trump lied that Vice President Harris had let 13,000 or 14,000 convicted murderers enter the U.S. in the past three years, who “freely and openly roam our country,” a lie that Elon Musk called “true.” 

In fact, as CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed out, it is a lie. The Department of Homeland Security clarified that the data to which Trump appeared to refer lists individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years—including during his own term—committed crimes in the U.S. rather than their country of origin, and either are currently incarcerated or have served their sentences but can’t be deported because their country of origin won’t accept them. Such individuals are monitored. 

On Saturday, Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a woman in a Philadelphia suburb received a letter that looked like an official document from the fake “Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs” telling her that she was expected to provide living space to five migrants under a program “written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” 

As Terruso wrote, “No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam—and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.”

Lies establish dominance over people being lied to, because lies take away a person’s right to make good decisions about their own life. So what’s the purpose of the Republican lies? 

Former president Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, but his recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith and his attempts to sell watches for up to $100,000 apiece suggest he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations. At his recent events he is slurring his words, unable to answer questions, and seems consumed with anger and a desire for revenge against those he sees as his enemies. He has recently referred to Harris as “mentally disabled,” and today in Erie, Pennsylvania, he said that crime would end “if you had one really violent day…. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”  

He has, though, focused on painting a picture of the U.S. as a hellscape overrun with undocumented criminal immigrants. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who clips Trump’s speeches on social media, compared yesterday’s rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to the “Two Minutes Hate” against political enemies in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Trump’s attacks on immigrants were so extreme even he admitted “this is a dark speech.” 

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is also doubling down on anti-immigrant attacks. In that, they are echoing the language Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán used to get voters to support him out of fear of immigrants. Then Orbán took control of Hungary, undermined its democracy, and set himself up as a dictator.  

Once in charge, Orbán insisted that democracy was obsolete. The democratic principle that the law must treat everyone equally and give them a say in their government, he said, weakens a nation by treating women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as equal to white, heterosexual men. Immigration weakens a nation by diluting its purity. He set out to establish what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” enforcing religious rules and laws that reestablish patriarchy.   

Project 2025 was backed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has ties to Orbán’s Danube Institute, and to the extent he talks about policies, Trump echoes that game plan. He has promised, for example, that he would replace civil servants with loyalists and today again vowed to get rid of the Department of Education, both key items in Project 2025.

Vance has gone further, attacking secular American society itself. In 2021 he said in an interview that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said. 

On Saturday, Vance spoke at an event hosted by right-wing extremist evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a member of the New Apostolic Reformation movement that seeks to end the separation of church and state and put the United States under religious rule. At the event, Vance claimed that “American children… can’t add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders.” He claimed that schools are teaching children “radical ideas” rather than “reading, writing, arithmetic.” He called it “creeping socialism in our schools,” and called for cutting funding for public education. 

The White House today said that more than 3,300 federal personnel are deployed in the states impacted by Hurricane Helene and that at least 50,000 people from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada are working to restore power. FEMA has moved in food and is working to restore cell coverage; federal search and rescue teams are on the ground; the U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen damaged ports; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing damage and moving debris; the Environmental Protection Agency is working on water systems; the Small Business Administration has 50 people on the ground to support small businesses; the U.S. Department of Energy is monitoring power, fuel, and supply chains; the Department of Agriculture is extending credit to farmers who lost crops and livestock.  

At a campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said “we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.”

Wallnau has accused Harris of practicing witchcraft. 

—

[rickybowensfever]

28. “I should have stayed home”

@sicktember - Day 28

28. “I should have stayed home”

NEW CHARACTERS!!

I'm introducing my new characters in this fic. Meet Jessie and Luke!

Jessica “Jessie” Rose Baker (She/her): Fat; curly long blonde hair; Southern Belle from Alabama currently living in Maryland, bisexual; dental hygienist. She is fresh out of college. Age: 23

Luke Olsen (He/him): Trans guy; light brown hair and green eyes; slender; from Maryland; 2nd grade teacher at a public school. Age: 22

Bio: Jessie and Luke met at John Hopkin’s University in Maryland. They live together in a small apartment complex and have been together for three years. They met during their junior year of college.

OCTOBER 5, 2023

Sitting at their table in the dim light of the venue, Luke could feel his head pounding as the DJ announced Jessie’s sister and her brother-in-law.

“Everybody give it up for the first time as husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds!”, the room erupted with applause and cheering as the newlyweds made their grand entrance to the dance floor.

Meanwhile, Luke lay his head on the table dressed in a white tablecloth, covering his ears trying to drown out the sound.

What feels like twenty minutes later but is only a few minutes, he feels Jessie’s hand on his back. Her long blonde curls hitting his shoulder and the smell of her rose perfume was strong.

“You okay?” she whispered into his ear. Throughout the last two weeks, Luke had felt something coming on. With the seasons changing and a month into the school year, it was inevitable. Only two years into teaching and his immune system had yet to catch up with his germ-infested students. But he held out hope that the beginning of school sickness would hold out until after the wedding.  

He was very, very wrong.

“I should’ve stayed home” his voice muffled as he kept his head on the table. Jessie sighed at her boyfriend and immediately grabbed her purse from the chair beside him. She sat down and rummaged through it until she found her emergency pack of pain relievers.

Luke knew what Jessie was thinking since they had just had this conversation yesterday. Luke was feeling run down from a long week of rowdy (and snotty) second graders that he skipped the rehearsal dinner that night to rest on the couch and watch [redacted show because the SAG-AFTRA & WGA are on strike!]  for the fifth time.  

Jessie told him repeatedly he didn’t have to go to the wedding sick. But Luke was as stubborn as they came, and he wanted to support her. But now he wanted to kick Past Luke for not listening to her.  

Jessie nudged Luke’s arm trying to get his attention, holding onto the sleeve of his suit jacket. He slowly pulled his head off of the table and looked at her with his big glassy, green eyes. She pouted her lip; she wore rose red lipstick to match her maroon-colored dress.

As the DJ called everyone to watch the father-daughter dance, Jessie handed him the small white container shaped as a cylinder and directed him to take the medication. Luke shook out two pink tablets onto his palm and chase them down with the complementary glass of water he was given when they walked into the reception.

“Why don’t I give you the key to the hotel and you can go lie down?” she suggested, looking at him and back up at the dance floor.

Luke knew she was right. At his job, he was constantly solving childish problems that his seven and eight-year-old students thought were the end of the world so why was it so hard to let someone else solve his easy problems for once?

“I think I’ll be okay” he lied as his head continued to pound to the rhythm of the music.

Jessie had been looking forward to being a bridesmaid in her sister's wedding since the engagement back in Fall of 2019 which happened to be the same time she and Luke met at college. He wanted to be there for her to witness her brother’s big day.

Jessie smiled a thin-lipped smile and put a hand on his back. “If you start feeling bad, let me know and a car can drive you over to the hotel. Seriously,” she said looking into his eyes sternly.

Luke nodded his head in agreement. He would wait at least until dinner and head back to the hotel. He had at least attended the wedding, he told himself trying to convince his anxious thoughts he was doing good by her.

[kensaidthat]

Ken's Political Point

As we all know, November 5, 2024 will be the day that America decides its future. Its citizens will either choose to remain a democracy or follow a fascist into autocracy. Given what we know about the presidential candidates, there is one clear choice for those who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law, something that no one is immune to (the other candidate wants to "suspend the Constitution"). In a race where there's a former prosecutor running against a felon with 34 convictions and counting should be a no-brainer, yet the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race is statistically tied. I could literally list a hundred reasons why one of the candidates is unfit for the office but I know that it wouldn't sway anyone's opinion. Given that, I urge you to check out the political playbook for one of the candidates. If you believe that Project 2025 (aka Agenda 47) is something that you're cool with, then have at it (click the link to download the "Mandate for Leadership" pdf). For those who believe in bodily autonomy and the right to privacy without government interfere, then Project 2025 is not for you. If you believe that the police should be given carte blanche to stop-and-frisk (whether the accused "fit the description" or not) with impunity, then Agenda 47 is for you (by the way, if you're cool with that while allowing the president and his cronies to go hog wild with law breaking, then you're a hypocrite). If you want the government to keep you informed of the weather as opposed to abolishing NOAA (along with other government agencies) and privatizing the National Weather Service, then you should be opposed to Project 2025. As you can see, I could literally go on and on about the dangers of Project 2025/Agenda 47, but it won't matter to those who don't mind sacrificing America's essence for what they believe will be a better economy. They want to go with the guy who wants to impose high tariffs on all imports (including from Canada and Mexico), with China getting hit with 60% tariffs. Just about every economist who isn't "MAGA" says that tariffs will ultimately be paid for by consumers. Uh, DUH! That's everything from cars to TVs to avocados that you have to import because most of America's farm workers would have been deported (Alabama tried to deport its workers and got miserable results). Now if anyone has a problem with that or anything else regarding Project 2025, good luck in protesting against a president who is anxious to use the military via the Insurrection Act to put down any opposition. In the end, America will become a dystopian nightmare if Vladimir Putin's biggest fan (who also is a fan of that tiny mustache guy from World War II) becomes the President of the United States. I would much rather have the other candidate who, while far from perfect, is a much better and saner choice. I hope that the two-thirds of Americans who aren't "MAGA" will follow uber-conservative Dick Cheney's advice and vote for Kamala Harris. For those who are thinking about voting "third party" or not voting, you might end up helping Kamala's opponent (it would be nice if Harris and a filibuster-free Congress can enact reforms like Ranked Choice Voting so voters aren't stuck with two choices that they don't like). If she wins, America and the world can breathe a sigh of relief while drinking pineapple mimosas.

If you need more information about voting, go to vote.org. The website has information about polling locations, registering to vote (although Tennessee's deadline has passed), checking voter registration and other useful tools for voters. By the way, early voting in Tennessee ends October 31, so make a plan to vote soon. PROTECT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY!

[kensfoodfind]

Kens' Political Point

As we all know, November 5, 2024 will be the day that America decides its future. Its citizens will either choose to remain a democracy or follow a fascist into autocracy. Given what we know about the presidential candidates, there is one clear choice for those who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law, something that no one is immune to (the other candidate wants to "suspend the Constitution"). In a race where there's a former prosecutor running against a felon with 34 convictions and counting should be a no-brainer, yet the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race is statistically tied. I could literally list a hundred reasons why one of the candidates is unfit for the office but I know that it wouldn't sway anyone's opinion. Given that, I urge you to check out the political playbook for one of the candidates. If you believe that Project 2025 (aka Agenda 47) is something that you're cool with, then have at it (click the link to download the "Mandate for Leadership" pdf). For those who believe in bodily autonomy and the right to privacy without government interfere, then Project 2025 is not for you. If you believe that the police should be given carte blanche to stop-and-frisk (whether the accused "fit the description" or not) with impunity, then Agenda 47 is for you (by the way, if you're cool with that while allowing the president and his cronies to go hog wild with law breaking, then you're a hypocrite). If you want the government to keep you informed of the weather as opposed to abolishing NOAA (along with other government agencies) and privatizing the National Weather Service, then you should be opposed to Project 2025. As you can see, I could literally go on and on about the dangers of Project 2025/Agenda 47, but it won't matter to those who don't mind sacrificing America's essence for what they believe will be a better economy. They want to go with the guy who wants to impose high tariffs on all imports (including from Canada and Mexico), with China getting hit with 60% tariffs. Just about every economist who isn't "MAGA" says that tariffs will ultimately be paid for by consumers. Uh, DUH! That's everything from cars to TVs to avocados that you have to import because most of America's farm workers would have been deported (Alabama tried to deport its workers and got miserable results). Now if anyone has a problem with that or anything else regarding Project 2025, good luck in protesting against a president who is anxious to use the military via the Insurrection Act to put down any opposition. In the end, America will become a dystopian nightmare if Vladimir Putin's biggest fan (who also is a fan of that tiny mustache guy from World War II) becomes the President of the United States. I would much rather have the other candidate who, while far from perfect, is a much better and saner choice. I hope that the two-thirds of Americans who aren't "MAGA" will follow uber-conservative Dick Cheney's advice and vote for Kamala Harris. For those who are thinking about voting "third party" or not voting, you might end up helping Kamala's opponent (it would be nice if Harris and a filibuster-free Congress can enact reforms like Ranked Choice Voting so voters aren't stuck with two choices that they don't like). If she wins, America and the world can breathe a sigh of relief while drinking pineapple mimosas.

If you need more information about voting, go to vote.org. The website has information about polling locations, registering to vote (although Tennessee's deadline has passed), checking voter registration and other useful tools for voters. By the way, early voting in Tennessee ends October 31, so make a plan to vote soon. PROTECT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY!

[alawreck]

What To Do If You’re A Victim of Hit-and-Run in Alabama

Learn the essential steps to take if you're involved in a hit-and-run accident in Alabama. This guide covers legal options, reporting procedures, and how to protect your rights after the incident.

[brookstonalmanac]

Beer Events 10.1

Events

Albany Brewery bought James Boyd's brewery (New York; 1872)

Thomas May left Kaiserbrauerei Beck & May (1875)

Lewisburgh Brewery partially destroyed by fire (Kentucky; 1890)

Leopold Nathan patented the Art of Brewing Beer (1918)

Singapore's Tiger Beer debuted (1932)

Sacramento's Buffalo Brewery sold the brewery buildings and land to the Sacramento Bee newspaper (California; 1948)

Roger Maris hit home run #61 (1961)

Blitz Weinhard patented Barrel Loading (1963)

Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. established a holding company and corporate restructuring began (1979)

He'Brew released its 1st beer (1997)

Florida finally changed its beer packaging laws to allow odd-sized bottled to be sold (2001)

Breweries Opened

Fitzgerald Brothers Brewing (New York; 1866)

Army & Navy Brewery / Turtle Grove Brewery (Halifax, Canada; 1870)

Brasserie Amos (France; 1868)

Czech Share Brewery (Czech Republic; 1895)

Honolulu Brewing & Malting Co. (Hawaii; 1898)

August Schell Brewing (Minnesota; 1902)

Hilden Brewery (Northern Ireland; 1981)

Hillsdale Brewery & Public House (Oregon; 1985)

Hogshead Brewpub (California; 1985)

Wellington County Brewery (Canada; 1985)

James Page Brewing (Minnesota; 1987)

Pacific Crest Brewing (California; 1988)

Callahan's Pub & Brewery (California; 1989)

Whistler Brewing (Canada; 1989)

Gentle Ben's Brewing (Arizona; 1991)

Hill Country Brewing & Bottling (Texas; 1991)

Millrose Brewpub (Illinois; 1991)

Ragtime Taproom (Florida; 1991)

Ebeneezer Brewing (Utah; 1992)

Fish Brewing (Washington; 1992)

Al Frisco's (Canada; 1993)

American River Brewing (California; 1993)

Little Apple Brewing (Kansas; 1993)

Brimstone Brewing (Maryland; 1994)

Hart Breweries Ltd. (Canada; 1994)

Dalian Brewing (Hong Kong; 1995)

Hose & Hydrant Brewing (Canada; 1995)

West Berkshire Brewing (England; 1995)

Ballpark Brewing (California; 1996)

Barley's (Kansas; 1996)

Barrett's Brewpub & Eatery (Alabama; 1996)

Brasserie Frog et Princesse (France; 1996)

Buckley Brewery & Grill (Ohio; 1996)

Crooked Waters brewing (Illinois; 1996)

Cobblestone Winery & Brewery (New York; 1996)

Copper Dragon Brewing (Illinois; 1996)

Foundry Ale Works (Pennsylvania; 1996)

Four Peaks Brewing (Arizona; 1996)

Your World Brewery (Massachusetts; 1996)

Aukland Brewery (New Zealand; 1997)

Glacial Lakes Brewing (Minnesota; 1997)

La Barberie (Canada; 1997)

Mobjack Bay Brewing (Virginia; 1997)

Ninkasi Ale House (France; 1997)

Red Shield Brewery (England; 1997)

Rogue's Roost Ale House (Canada; 1997)

Three Rivers Eatery & Brewery (New Mexico; 1997)

Washington Brewing (DC; 1997)

Bertram's Salmon Valley Brewery (Idaho; 1998)

Fisherman's Beer Microcerveceria (Argentina; 1998)

Inchant Brewery (Australia; 1998)

Malt Shovel Brewery (Australia; 1998)

Tractor Brewing (New Mexico; 1999)

Alewife Brewery (England; 2000)

Brookhaven Brewery (Utah; 2000)

Santa Maria Brewing (California; 2000)

Brenham Brewery (Texas; 2001)

Monet's Bistro & Brewpub (Illinois; 2001)

New Albanian Brewing (Indiana; 2002)

Cerveses La Pirata (Catalonia; 2015)

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Late Friday night, Tennessee House Republican Caucus chair Jeremy Faison posted “President Biden has finally approved [Tennessee governor Bill Lee’s] state of emergency request,” making it sound as if the delay in federal support for the state during the devastation of Hurricane Helene was Biden’s fault. In fact, while Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina all declared emergencies and requested and received federal approval of those declarations before the hurricane hit, Governor Lee did not. 

Instead, in keeping with an April joint resolution from the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature calling for 31 days of prayer and fasting to “seek God’s hand of mercy healing on Tennessee,” Lee proclaimed September 27 “a voluntary Day of Prayer & Fasting.”

Lee did not declare a state of emergency until late on September 27, after flash flooding had already created havoc. President Biden approved it immediately.  

The extraordinary damage from Helene in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia continues to mount. At least 91 people have died, and search and rescue teams are at work across several states. More than 2 million people are without power, and western North Carolina is isolated after its roads washed out. A fire at a chemical facility in Conyers, Georgia, outside Atlanta forced the evacuation of 17,000 people nearby. The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, wrote to the residents of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia: “This is the worst event in our office’s history.”  

Faison’s implication that Democratic president Biden, rather than Republican governor Lee, was to blame for the slow federal response to Helene in Tennessee illustrated the Republicans’ attempt to create a fake world to motivate their base with fear and anger while leaving Democrats to come up with real world solutions. And since those solutions are popular, Republicans are claiming credit for them. 

In the past two days, Republican lawmakers who just days ago voted against funding the federal government and who have railed against government spending have been out front claiming credit for getting federal disaster relief.  

Republican presidential nominee Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance have been claiming that it was Trump who capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of lying when the Biden administration takes credit for it. Vance’s statement, itself, is a breathtaking lie. Trump signed an executive order in July 2020 establishing a temporary, voluntary program that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly insulin copayments at $35. The program ran from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2023. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 a month for all covered insulin products. All Democrats in the House and the Senate voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, and all Republicans—including J.D. Vance—voted against it. 

As Republicans have lost the support of suburban women for their attacks on reproductive rights and embrace of the misogyny of the MAGA movement, they have tried to beef up the idea that they are the country’s true supporters of women and families. Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault, has been trying to assure women: “I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector.” With him back in office, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, women “will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Journalist Jessica Valenti noted that antiabortion activists are running advertisements blaming the deaths of women in states with abortion bans not on those bans or those who passed them, but on the Democrats trying to protect reproductive healthcare. Women have died when doctors would not give them lifesaving care out of concerns about prosecution under states’ abortion bans or were unable to access abortion care. But the ads, using the names and images of women who have died under antiabortion regimes, claim that lifesaving care is still legal but doctors don’t know they can use it because of misinformation from pro-choice activists.

Antiabortion Republican Derrick Anderson, who is running to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district, has appeared in campaign photographs with a woman and children posed as if they are his family, but they are not. He is unmarried and childless, and the family is that of a friend. 

That last one is really weird, but the biggest lies from the Republicans concern immigration, especially as voters blame the Republicans for killing a strong bipartisan border bill earlier this year after Trump demanded they keep the issue open for him to campaign on. J.D. Vance was among those who voted against it. 

There were the lies Vance spread about Springfield, Ohio, of course, attacking the legal Haitian immigrants there who have been credited with revitalizing the city. On Friday and Saturday, Trump lied that Vice President Harris had let 13,000 or 14,000 convicted murderers enter the U.S. in the past three years, who “freely and openly roam our country,” a lie that Elon Musk called “true.” 

In fact, as CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed out, it is a lie. The Department of Homeland Security clarified that the data to which Trump appeared to refer lists individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years—including during his own term—committed crimes in the U.S. rather than their country of origin, and either are currently incarcerated or have served their sentences but can’t be deported because their country of origin won’t accept them. Such individuals are monitored. 

On Saturday, Julia Terruso of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a woman in a Philadelphia suburb received a letter that looked like an official document from the fake “Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs” telling her that she was expected to provide living space to five migrants under a program “written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” 

As Terruso wrote, “No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam—and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.”

THEY NEED TO FIND OUT WHO DID THAT AND THEN PROSECUTE AND JAIL THEM!

Lies establish dominance over people being lied to, because lies take away a person’s right to make good decisions about their own life. So what’s the purpose of the Republican lies? 

Former president Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, but his recent attacks on special counsel Jack Smith and his attempts to sell watches for up to $100,000 apiece suggest he is interested mostly in avoiding prosecution and gathering donations. At his recent events he is slurring his words, unable to answer questions, and seems consumed with anger and a desire for revenge against those he sees as his enemies. He has recently referred to Harris as “mentally disabled,” and today in Erie, Pennsylvania, he said that crime would end “if you had one really violent day…. One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”  

He has, though, focused on painting a picture of the U.S. as a hellscape overrun with undocumented criminal immigrants. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who clips Trump’s speeches on social media, compared yesterday’s rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to the “Two Minutes Hate” against political enemies in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Trump’s attacks on immigrants were so extreme even he admitted “this is a dark speech.” 

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is also doubling down on anti-immigrant attacks. In that, they are echoing the language Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán used to get voters to support him out of fear of immigrants. Then Orbán took control of Hungary, undermined its democracy, and set himself up as a dictator.  

Once in charge, Orbán insisted that democracy was obsolete. The democratic principle that the law must treat everyone equally and give them a say in their government, he said, weakens a nation by treating women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as equal to white, heterosexual men. Immigration weakens a nation by diluting its purity. He set out to establish what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” enforcing religious rules and laws that reestablish patriarchy.   

Project 2025 was backed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has ties to Orbán’s Danube Institute, and to the extent he talks about policies, Trump echoes that game plan. He has promised, for example, that he would replace civil servants with loyalists and today again vowed to get rid of the Department of Education, both key items in Project 2025.

Vance has gone further, attacking secular American society itself. In 2021 he said in an interview that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said. 

On Saturday, Vance spoke at an event hosted by right-wing extremist evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a member of the New Apostolic Reformation movement that seeks to end the separation of church and state and put the United States under religious rule. At the event, Vance claimed that “American children… can’t add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders.” He claimed that schools are teaching children “radical ideas” rather than “reading, writing, arithmetic.” He called it “creeping socialism in our schools,” and called for cutting funding for public education. 

The White House today said that more than 3,300 federal personnel are deployed in the states impacted by Hurricane Helene and that at least 50,000 people from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada are working to restore power. FEMA has moved in food and is working to restore cell coverage; federal search and rescue teams are on the ground; the U.S. Coast Guard is working to reopen damaged ports; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing damage and moving debris; the Environmental Protection Agency is working on water systems; the Small Business Administration has 50 people on the ground to support small businesses; the U.S. Department of Energy is monitoring power, fuel, and supply chains; the Department of Agriculture is extending credit to farmers who lost crops and livestock.  

At a campaign event in Las Vegas tonight, Vice President Harris said “we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.”

Wallnau has accused Harris of practicing witchcraft. 

[lboogie1906]

Arthur George Gaston (July 4, 1892 – January 19, 1996) was a businessman who established several businesses in Birmingham and who played a significant role in the struggle to integrate Birmingham in 1963. His companies were some of the most prominent African American businesses in the South.

His formal education ended in the 10th grade. After earning his certificate from the Tuggle Institute, he served in the army in France during WWI and then went to work in the mines run by Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in Fairfield, Alabama.

He hit on the plan of selling lunches to his fellow miners and then branched into loaning money to them at 25 percent interest. It was while working in the mines that he conceived of the idea of offering burial insurance to co-workers. He had noticed that mine widows would come to the mines and to local churches to collect donations to bury their husbands and he wondered if people would “give a few dimes into a burial society to bury their dead”. He formed the Booker T. Washington Burial Insurance Company, which became the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company.

He bought and renovated a property on the edge of Kelly Ingram Park in downtown Birmingham, where, in partnership with his father-in-law, A. L. Smith, he started Smith & Gaston Funeral Home. Smith & Gaston sponsored gospel music programs on local radio stations and launched a quartet of its own.

Realizing that there were not enough African Americans with sufficient training to be able to work in the insurance and funeral industries, he established the Booker T. Washington Business School. Other enterprises included Citizens Federal Savings and Loan Association, the first African American-owned financial institution in Birmingham in more than forty years. On July 1, 1954, he opened the A.G. Gaston Motel on a site adjoining Kelly Ingram Park. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[marvelcriminalhoe]

Sweet Home Georgia Peach

Sweet Home Alabama AU! Steve Rogers x Reader

Chapter 5

Uncomfortable Reunions

Word Count: 2,077

Series Masterlist

You’re in Steve’s kitchen, waiting for him to come home. When you hear the door open and Captain run in - in front of him, you smirk to yourself.

Show time.

“Where the hell did this come from?” You hear Steve say in the dining room, where the new table is.

You make your way to the pantry, wrapping the apron around you. You hear him open the new fridge, repeating the phrase he said about the table, “What the hell?”

“Well hello, darlin’.” You walk in with a big fake smile, “What are you thinkin’ about dinner tonight? Pork chops? Lasagna?”

“What the hell?” He looks over to you, “What are you doing here? Where did this stuff come from.”

“Well you want a wife, here I am.” You put your hands your hips, “Spending your money and nagging you.”

“You spent my money?” Steve’s eyebrows raise.

“What’s mine is yours honeybun.” You say innocently, really playing up your accent, “Isn’t that what you said? When you were making out joint account?”

“Joint account.” Steve’s eyes widen, connecting the dots. Soon he’s glaring at you, “Seriously?”

You shrug, “Just trying to make this a home. That is a wife’s duty.”

Steve looks around at everything you’ve bought. He smiles smugly at you, “Well thanks darlin. I might actually keep it like this.”

… that’s not what you expected.

Walking through the doors of the old bar, you’re immediately hit with nostalgia. You had stormed out of Steve’s house after your plan didn’t work. You spent the majority of your days at this bar growing up, helping out by delivering drinks. Playing pool with the boys at one of the tables. Sneaking shots of tequila to your friends when the boss wasn't looking. Dancing and singing on the dance floor.

“Look who finally decided to come see me.” You hear from behind you, making you spin around, “If it isn’t my favorite daughter in law.” You laugh, letting the woman pull you into a hug, “Hi Sarah.”

“Hi doll.” She smiles at you as she lets you go.

“And I’m your ex-daughter in law.” You remind her.

“Not from what I’m hearing.” She shrugs making her way behind the bar, wiping off the counter, “Some might say we’re still family.”

You roll your eyes at her antics, “Not if your son would stop being so stubborn and sign the damn papers.”

She smirks, looking up at you, “And here I thought you fell in love his stubbornness.” You huff, sitting down on one of the bar stools, “I’m serious, Sarah.” “Me too.” She sends you a pointed look, going back to cleaning. You watch her for a few moments, more memories making there way through.

“Steve!” You laugh, trying to push his hands away, “You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

“Oh, come on, darlin’.” He laughs, grabbing you around your waist and pulling your back to his chest, resting his chin on your shoulder, “How am I supposed to beat Buck if my good luck charms not by my side?” You roll your eyes, prying his hands off you, “Honey, you beat Buck every time you play. I’m trying to work here.”

“You know my Ma doesn't care if you slack off a little.” He tries to reach for you again.

“But I care.” You send him a pointed look, “Your Ma doesn't need to be carrying all those drinks by her lonesome.”

He sighs, defeated, but sends you a loving look, “Alright.”

You lean up, kissing his cheek before turning around to get back to work.

Buck makes a fake gagging sound as the blonde still hasn't taken his eyes off you. Steve rolls his eyes, turning to his friend, “Grow up.” “Ya’ll are so in love it makes me sick.” The brunette shakes his head, “You would think after being together so long you would get sick of one another.”

Steve laughs, “I wont ever get sick of that girl.” He shakes his head, looking back at you as you laugh at one of the customers jokes.

He looks backs to his friend, clapping his hands together, “You ready to lose again?”

“I’m gonna win this time.” Bucky shakes his head, “I feel it.”

“Sarah, I got those muffins you were askin’ fo—“ A voice from the door has you turning around. The red head stops talking, eyes going wide at seeing you sitting there.

Neither of you say anything, but after a few shocked seconds, the basket she’s carrying hits the floor and your tackled into a firm hug, “Oh my god I can’t believe you’re actually back. I thought for sure Sam was lying, just pulling one over us. But then Clint said something and I thought, ‘huh, he’s in on it to?’ But here you are.” All you can do is nod, still not really sure what to say. The still tiny as ever girl pulls back, smiling so wide your sure her face hurts, “It’s so good to see you, peaches.” “Yeah.” You try to smile, “You too, Wanda.” It’s different for you seeing her than it was to see Clint and Sam. You expected, after you left, to lose contact with the guys, but you never thought you would lose Wanda and Nat. You didn’t think they would choose Steve’s side too.

Wanda must notice your hesitancy to her, stepping back just a bit, smile faltering a little, “It’s— it’s been a long time.”

“Yeah.” You nod, “I’m just uh— here to see my folks and get some stuff done.” “Right, right.” She nods, “The divorce. Man, I can’t believe you two are still married.” Thankfully, Sarah walks back in from the back room, spotting Wanda and getting rid of the uncomfortable tension, “Oh, Wanda. Did you bring those muffins?” The redhead smiles at her, turning to grab the basket on the floor, “Yes, ma’am. Specially baked this morning for ya.” “Thank you dear.” Sarah takes it from her, smiling sweetly and leaving you two alone again.

Wanda turns to you, closed lipped smile on her face, “Uh, you gonna be here tonight? The gang comes on Fridays to play pool. We still do those dancing Saturday nights too. Whole gang still comes out every weekend to shoot pool and enjoy the music.”

“I’m here until this is over with, so, I’m sure I’ll see you there.” You nod.

“Right. Of course.” Her joy from earlier dwindling, “Well, uh, I gotta get back to the shop. I own the bakery in town now.” “That’s great, Wanda.” You tell her truthfully, “I’m sure you do a wonderful job. Your baking was always the best.” “You should come by and check it out while you’re here.” She tells you.

“Maybe, yeah.” You nod, “If I have time.” Wanda just nods, staring at you for a few more seconds before you both say goodbye, leaving out the door with a wave. You really hope you can leave this town without anymore uncomfortable reunions. But you know luck is not in your favor.

And you were right, luck was not on your side. The bar is packed with town folks, all of which have come to greet you when you’re spotted. You smile politely to all of them, entertain them with what you’ve been up to in New York. You excuse yourself from Mrs.Garrison when you notice a tall blonde man at one of the pool tables.

He’s surrounded by your friends, well, just his friends now, all of them laughing as they sip on their beers. When Sam spots you making your way over, he quickly gesture to everyone else, the laughing coming to an end, adding to the already unease in the air.

Sam, Clint, and Wanda, at least send you friendly smiles. Steve doesn't even look your way, keeping his gaze on the ground, as Bucky and Nat look at you with indifference.

“What do you want?” Nat questions as she studies you.

You nod over to Steve, “For him to sign the papers so I can leave.” Bucky scoffs, “You just got to town and you’re already dyin’ to leave? Guess you are good at that, though, huh.”

“Bucky.” You think Sam, reprimands him. You send a glare to the brunette, “This doesn't really concern you, Buck.” He stands up, a glare of his own on his face, “Only my friends can use that nickname, and we ain’t friends darlin’.”

You roll your eyes, ignoring the pang of hurt that shoots through you at that. Technically, he’s not wrong. you haven't seen or talked to him in 7 years, so, no, you aren't friends. But you used to be.

“Trust me, James, I’m well aware.” You snap, you look over to Steve who hasn't said a word yet, just watching the interaction.

“You really want to do this here?” Steve finally says something, “In a bar?” “Well I tried to do it last night, but you were more concerned with getting me in handcuffs.” You retort.

That earns a snort from Sam and Clint, the latter of which mumbles, “Kinky.”

Steve smiles wide, but it’s not real, “Well call it even, since you took all my money.”

You shrug, “What’s yours is mine. Right, darlin’?”

Steve just stares at you as Clint and Sam try to keep themselves from laughing, enjoying the show too much.

Bucky scoffs again, “What, leavin’ him not enough you gotta take his money too?” “He can have his money back when he signs the damn papers.” You shrug.

“Thats extortion.” Steve shakes his head.

You gesture over to Sam, “Sheriffs right there if you wanna complain about it.”

Steve looks over to Sam with his hands on his hips, the darker man pointing to the blonde, “No way, man. You handle this shit on your own.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, looking back to you, “Fine, keep the money, or spend it on more things for my house.” “I don’t want the money, Steven.” You throw your hands up, “I want to go home!” “Nobody’s stoppin’ you from leavin’!” He raises his voice, drawn attention to the two of you, “We all know being married didn’t stop you before, ain’t no way it’s stoping you now.”

“You are!” You point, “Your stubborn ass is.”

“You’re the one that left! Why should I have to do anything for you, huh?” Steve glares.

“You told me to leave!” You yell back.

“You what?” Wanda questions softly. Everyone looks to Steve, waiting for him say something, to deny the claim.

“You told me to leave, so I left.” You continue, not noticing the wide eyed looks from your former friends, or the fact the whole bar is now silent, listening to you and Steve air out all your dirty laundry,“I left, and I made something of myself. And now, now I have a man that wants to marry me, but I can’t do that because I’m still married to you. To the man who told me to leave. So please, sign the damn papers Steven! Then, I can leave this god forsaken town for good and we’ll never have to see each other again.”

“You’re engaged?” Sam questions with a whisper. He’s staring at you, a mixture of vexation and hurt on his face.

“Maybe y'all should do this some other time, when there isn’t a crowd watchin’.” Clint stands up, reaching out for you. Your chest heaving up and down as your anger leaves you. The bar is quiet, everyone waiting to see what will happen next. Clint gently grabs hold of your arm, “Come on, Peaches. I’ll take you home. You don’t want to do this here.”

As Clint takes you outside, Nat looks around the bar, “Shows over, folks! Go back to mindin’ your damn business.” Bucky steps up to Steve, laying a hand on his shoulder, “You good, pal?” Steve just shakes his hand off, stalking towards the back door and going outside.

Clint comes back in, a question in his eyes as he notices the missing blonde. Nat nods to where he left, “Outside.” Clint nods, looking around at his remaining friends. He turns to Bucky, “Did you know he told her to leave?” The brunette just shakes his head.

Wanda has sorrowful look on her face, her voice soft and low, “I thought she left on her own.”

“We don’t know she didn’t.” Bucky tells her.

Sam scoffs, “He didn’t correct her, did he?” He gestures to where the blonde man was standing moments ago, “He just stood there, not denying her claim.” Clint sighs, “Does anyone know what exactly went down between them?”

All of them shake their heads, no one knowing the truth.

“All he said that day was that she left him.” Bucky sits down, exhaling deeply, “I mean, we all saw him after. How distraught and devastated he was. That man was shattered.” “There has to be more to the story.” Nat shakes her head, “I mean, if it was just a fight, she wouldn't have left like that. Right?” “I thought she would come back.” Sam shrugs, “But after a few weeks, I realized she really left for good. I didn’t know what happened between them and I didn’t ask cause I was just worried about Steve. He was so distraught, walking around like a zombie.” “I didn’t talk to her.” Wanda says sadly, “I thought she left on her own accord, and I was angry that she could have done that to Steve, that she could break his heart like that, so I didn’t talk to her. Didn’t reach out. I thought she was the bad guy.” “Me too.” Nat nods, downcast.

“We don’t know that she’s not.” Buck retorts, but its pitiful.

Clint glares at him, “Give it up, yeah? We obviously have no idea what really happened.”

As the friends try to fill in new blanks inside the bar, Steve leans up against the back wall outside, looking up to the night sky. He never thought he would feel worse than that night he watched you drive, leaving him behind.

Boy was he wrong.

Next chapter

****************

Taglist: @theladybiers

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 4, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today seemed to mark a popular backlash against Republican lawmakers who have been downplaying the coronavirus pandemic. The Delta variant of the deadly virus is ripping through unvaccinated populations in the U.S. with an average of 85,000 new cases a day, numbers that rival those of February, before we had accessible vaccines. One in three cases in the nation comes from either Florida or Texas.

Lawmakers in South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Utah have prohibited schools from requiring masks, and South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Montana, Arizona, South Dakota, Texas, and Tennessee prohibit local governments from doing so.

Yesterday, President Joe Biden called out governors, especially Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for banning mask mandates and refusing to require the vaccine. At a press conference, Biden said “to these governors, ‘Please, help.’ But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”

Today DeSantis responded: “I am standing in your way.” After sitting on Biden’s criticism for almost a day, DeSantis could find as a response only an attack on Biden for allegedly ignoring the “border crisis.” DeSantis blamed Florida’s devastating virus numbers on immigrants coming over the nation’s border with Mexico into Texas.

The recent attention to the methods of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who rose to power by stoking anti-immigrant hatred and who continues to whip up a frenzy over immigration despite the fact that refugees coming into Hungary have dropped to unremarkable levels, shows the Republican fallback on immigrant caravans to distract from their own scandals in a new light.

In fact, our southern border remains closed because of public health directives put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unaccompanied minors are admitted so that they do not become victims of gangs or sex traffickers, and their numbers likely hit an all-time high of about 19,000 in July. Those children are processed and then transferred to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services, which then finds suitable foster situations for them while they await immigration hearings.

Interestingly in terms of the timing of DeSantis’s outburst, today the Mexican government sued a number of U.S.-based gun manufacturers for lax controls that permit illegal weapons to flow over the border. A 2016 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that about 70% of the weapons seized in Mexico came from the United States.

Back in the U.S., the president has mandated vaccines in the federal government and has asked private employers to require vaccines. Google, Walmart, Disney World, and Microsoft, among many others, including hospitals and more than 400 private universities, are requiring masks or vaccines. So is Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, who today issued a mask requirement for schools and a vaccine mandate for workers in state prisons and other facilities.

By Labor Day, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to give final approval to coronavirus vaccines, reassuring people reluctant to get the vaccine that it is safe.

Increasingly, people dying of Covid-19 or their survivors are publicly begging their friends and neighbors to get the vaccine. In addition to videos and facebook posts, a six-minute television segment on CBS This Morning featured Republican Representative Julia Letlow of Louisiana, who lost her husband to the disease in December. She is using her story to try to change people’s minds about refusing the vaccine.

Implied in these calls to ignore the disinformation out there about the vaccine is criticism of those Republican leaders who have pushed that disinformation.

Rising case numbers put lawmakers who have downplayed the virus in a tight spot. A new poll today from St. Pete Polls shows that DeSantis’s popularity has fallen behind that of a Democratic rival, Charlie Crist, in the 2022 governor’s race. Forty-nine percent of Floridians disapprove of DeSantis’s job performance, while only 44% approve. He is in positive numbers only with voters older than 70. In contrast to the older folks, most voters disapprove of his opposition to masks in schools.

Other Republican governors have expressed regret that they were so quick to outlaw masks. Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson today said he wished he hadn’t signed into law a measure banning state and local mask mandates. He has called the legislature into special session to change the law, claiming that he signed the previous measure because “I knew it would be overridden by the legislature if I didn't sign it.”

The new spike in infections has meant an uptick in vaccinations, with numbers matching those of early July. On Tuesday, Jeff Zients, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, reported that Louisiana has seen a 302% increase in the average number of newly vaccinated per day; Mississippi, 250%; Alabama, 215%; and Arkansas, 206%. On Tuesday, almost a month late, the nation met the goal President Joe Biden had set for July 4 of having at least one vaccine shot in 70% of eligible Americans. About 49% of all eligible Americans have been fully vaccinated.

Today, two parents of school-aged children in Arkansas sued the state over its law banning the use of masks in schools. They are seeking immediate “protection from an irrational act of legislative madness that threatens K-12 public school children with irreparable harm.” “Without immediate intervention by the Arkansas judiciary,” the lawsuit says, “the restrictions imposed on state and local officials by Act 1002 will result in many more Arkansas children becoming very sick, and some of them will inevitably die.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/08/02/press-briefing-by-white-house-covid-19-response-team-and-public-health-officials-47/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/02/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/04/florida-governor-ron-desantis-tells-biden-he-standing-your-way/5489876001/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s080221-southern-northen-land-borders-order-extended.html

https://apnews.com/article/health-immigration-coronavirus-pandemic-a361bb903e71011432012d11ac33f9fc

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/07/29/covid-mandates-trigger-a-new-clash-between-florida-officials-and-desantis-13891

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/08/02/florida-covid-hospitalizations-shatter-record-as-desantis-downplays-threat-1389356

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-guns-us-lawsuit/2021/08/04/181fdbaa-f52d-11eb-a636-18cac59a98dc_story.html

https://apnews.com/article/health-immigration-coronavirus-pandemic-a361bb903e71011432012d11ac33f9fc

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/us/politics/pfizer-vaccine-approval.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/04/1024939859/arkansas-governor-reverse-law-let-schools-require-masks

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/566301-letlow-describes-final-moments-with-husband-urges-people-to-get-vaccine

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-pritzker-school-masks-20210804-gdo7vctdgre4laxtk7kyfyfjfm-story.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/08/03/arkansas-parents-sue-state-over-ban-on-school-mask-mandates---could-other-states-be-next/amp/

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/445635-poll-ron-desantis-approval-rating-sags-as-covid-19-rages/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[iturmom]

thinking about how i am homeless bc my roommate attacked me and the police wouldn't do anything and denied my protective order so i had to flee my town bc he still lived there and we both walked everywhere for transportation and his best friend and his girlfriend were my neighbors so it was impossible to prevent running into him and i had no protection from him. my family didn't care to help bc they didn't believe that i was unsafe. i couldn't afford to move anywhere i looked for a place to live for a while but i couldn't find anything so i had no other option but to move in with my mother in the literal most nazi town in the country so when she tried to kill me of course i was arrested even though she was still on top of me when the police arrived. so i lost $5,000 to go back and forth from texas to alabama to deal with the court bullshit bc i had no choice if i had not gone i would have been fucked but i was desperate to get out of alabama bc it was an unsafe place for me to be homeless as it is incredibly fascist where i was living. so i moved to texas with a girl i met online who was incredibly abusive and ended up hitting me and threatening worse violence so i had to flee to the battered women's shelter where i was placed in a housing program for vulnerable women where i continued applying for disability for the intense trauma i have suffered all my life that has left me so fucked up with cptsd that i cannot function like a normal human. then they closed the program and left us all homeless. i am homeless because i have been a victim of multiple violent crimes that ruined my life multiple times over. and there is no help for me.

meanwhile my friend is homeless bc she got addicted to drugs and had a baby with a drug addict and bad things happened as they do when your baby daddy is a drug addict. and she gets so much help. she got all of this money for food while i have gone hungry. and she gets to leave me behind here at the homeless shelter out of sight out of mind. she gets all of this help because of the coices she made that ruined her life yet my life was ruined by the choices of so many other people that i don't even know all of them bc there was so much law involved. my life was ruined by people i knew who chose to ruin my life who all got off scott free for it and by corrupt government officials a lot of whom i have no names or faces for bc i assume things happened behind the scenes that i did not see. and i get no help. but most of the people here, not all but most, are here because of the choices they made and they get the most help while the people here who are victims of circumstance are left to rot forgotten by society. i am forced to suffer bc of other people's decisions. i went to school and got a degree. i didn't get addicted to drugs. i didn't have a kid bc i knew i could not prevent myself from becoming homeless in this economy and i didn't want to force another human being to suffer with me. i made all the right decisions and i am tortured by society for it but if i had gone and fucked up my life there would be so much help for me what the fuck is this backwards society i am living in? i need help. i can't live like this i can't stay at this homeless shelter when she leaves i can't be alone here this place is miserable i need help so bad god fuck me i need help

i'm really scared bc my friend who has been talking about moving in together is getting cold feet bc she could leave the homeless shelter sooner if she leaves without me and i knew i couldn't fully rely on her from the start and i don't want to hold her back but i am so terrified of being at the homeless shelter alone it's so miserable and she makes it a little less miserable. also she has to decide what she wants to do by tuesday and she has a lot going on until then and i won't see her much so i won't be able to talk to her about it again even though i've had time to sort out my thoughts about it and i'm worried my thoughts don't have any matter in the situation anyway she will choose what she chooses but i'm just so scared bc i don't think it's likely that she will choose to commit to moving in together. i'm so scared of staying at the homeless shelter alone. i want to talk to her but i feel like it would make my chances even worse if i try to kill her buzz by talking about it. by the time i get the chance to talk to her it will be too late. i'm so scared that i'm living such a miserable existence because i deserve it and it will never be less miserable. i'm trapped in this hell. i'm just really scared i need someone to talk to fuck

[girlsgonemildblog]

Seriously, What the Fuck Did I Just Watch? - Emily in Paris, Episode 8 Recap

Poster from IMDB

I literally cannot believe everything that happens in this episode happens. I honestly may not be able to even write this blog; that's how insane it all was. The episode begins with Emily leaving her apartment at the same time that Gabriel and Camille are leaving theirs, but Emily hides to avoid running into them, meaning we don't get to start our drinking game just yet. Camille then texts her asking if they can meet for lunch and talk about "something important."

At breakfast with Mindy, Emily is sure Camille knows that she and Gabriel kissed (for the second time). Mindy gives Emily some pretty good advice, "just don't kiss Gabriel," but Emily insists that "it's not that easy." It literally is, though? Like, just don't put your lips on his? It's really not that hard? You see tons of other people every day, and you don't kiss any of them, right? Or is Emily just going around and kissing literally every person she sees? I highly doubt it. The conversation moves on to Mindy, who has friends from her old life in China visiting because one of them, Li, is getting married. Mindy is nervous about seeing them again because they don't know that she's a nanny now.

For lunch (did she go to work at all or just out to eat?), she meets Camille at a sushi restaurant, clearly following Mindy's advice to avoid anywhere with steak knives. It turns out that Camille doesn't know about her kiss(es) with Gabriel and just wants Savoir to represent her family's champagne company. Emily says she will pitch it to her coworkers, and Camille invites her to her family's chateau for the weekend to learn more about the company. Gabriel will not be coming because he has to work and is still upset with Camille for asking her mother for a loan to help him buy the restaurant.

When she finally does go to the office, her coworkers are not very interested in the champagne company since it's so small. They then begin to roast Emily about the love triangle she's in with Gabriel and Camille. Without Sylvie, Luc, and Julien, this show would be completely unwatchable.

In the morning, while loading her belongings into Camille's tiny car, Gabriel shows up, and it's revealed that he is coming because he got the weekend off work. Emily is less than happy since she is still trying to avoid him. In addition, due to their bags, the three of them all have to squeeze in the front row, making Emily sit on Gabriel's lap. As they're driving, Camille asks, "everyone okay?" in a weirdly suggestive manner, and I again have to wonder if there's going to be a threesome at some point. It almost feels inevitable. But then, Camille also says she wants to set Emily up with her brother, so who knows.

At the "chateau", Emily meets Camille's mother, Louise, who is extremely cold to her and speaks French despite being fluent in English, and Camille's father, Gerard, who is naked by the pool, his genitalia covered by a very well placed champagne bottle. Louise sends Gabriel to the market, and he tries to get Emily to join him on the bike ride. Emily says no, as a bike ride on the French countryside to a farmer's market is way too romantic to do with someone who you are trying to avoid kissing, and then Emily and Gabriel get into a fight on whether they can be friends, Gabriel saying it's no big deal and Emily insisting it's best if they keep their distance.

Emily decides to go on a tour of the winery instead, where she chugs champagne like it's a natty light and she's an 18-year-old named Brad pledging Kappa Sig. She hits it off with the hot tour guide and discovers that he is Camille's brother, Timothée. Every Timothée is hot; this is only the second I've ever seen, but my point still stands. I also must point out how much he looks like Gabriel. But they're from France, not Alabama, so I won't say what I am thinking.

Gabriel cooks dinner for the group, and I have to say that making your girlfriend's chef boyfriend cook you dinner, in your home, on his weekend off, is rude. Let the boy have one night where he's not working. Gerard makes a lot of uncomfortable comments about the taste of Gabriel's coq and eggplant, and Louise lectures Emily that women aren't supposed to touch the champagne bottle at the dinner table, and you shouldn't talk business there either. Then Camille's parents start telling Gabriel that he should accept the money they've offered him, and it gets even more awkward than when Gerard was implying he sucked off his daughter's boyfriend. Emily posts a photo of her and Camille to Instagram, and we learn that her account has grown to 21.7k followers, which is only a 1.6k increase in 3 episodes, so it seems her meteoric rise is beginning to fizzle out.

Mindy texts Emily that they look very "cozy" and then tells her to check out her friend's livestream because she's about to surprise the rest of the bachelorette party. We then cut to Mindy in a jazz club with her friends, who announce that they're there so she can sing again. They reveal that they know that she's a nanny and don't care; they just don't understand why she's given up on her dream of being a singer. They finally convince her to get on stage. She insists she can't and tries to give the microphone back to the MC, but when he tells her no, she starts belting immediately.

Emily watches through her phone, and when the livestream ends, she can hear through the wall that Camille and Louise are fighting in French over the loan to Gabriel. To get away from it, she goes outside to sit by the pool. Timothée comes out to join her with a bottle of champagne. They have a heart to heart, and Emily says she left the US because "there were no decisions left to make, not even wrong ones."

Just when I was thinking this show is actually pretty good, the craziest thing that's ever occurred in the history of television happened. Emily asks Timothée about the difference between a Champagne flute and a coupe glass, and he tells her the coupe was designed using the shape of Marie Antoinette's breasts. Emily then takes the coupe glass and puts it up to her own boob. Timothée, without moving any closer or saying even a single word, reaches out and grabs Emily's other boob. Emily then guides his second hand to her tit that originally had the glassware on it. Seriously. This happened:

There's then a jump cut to Emily and Timothée having sex, and Timothée is bad at it. I mean, rapid jackhammering and weirdly intense concentration bad. Emily actually tells him to stop and repeats his own advice about drinking champagne back to him, "slow down. You're supposed to savor it." I threw up a little in my mouth.

The next morning, Emily wakes up with a hickey and then joins Camille's family for breakfast. There is a new man there, and Camille introduces him as the brother she wanted Emily to meet. Confused, Emily asks about Timothée, and Camille says Timothée is her younger brother and is 17. Just then, Timothée joins them, kissing Emily and apologizing for her hickey before sitting down. Everyone at the table realizes what happened, and Gabriel has to get up and leave to keep from laughing. Emily repeatedly insists she "didn't know," but I'm not sure how well that would hold up in a court of law. (For those curious, as I was, France currently does not have an age of consent but has a bill waiting to be passed that would set it at 15.)

Louise asks Emily to speak privately in her office. Emily immediately begins to apologize profusely, thinking Louise is going to yell at her over the whole accidental-statutory-rape thing, but Louise says she "doesn't care about all that" and just asks if her son is a good lover. I think Emily's face says it all:

Emily lies to Louise and says Timothée was sweet and gentle. She then uses the opportunity of having Louise alone to finally talk business since Louise had been dodging her all weekend. Emily comes up with an idea to get rid of their excess inventory, based on an Instagram that Mindy posted of her friends spraying a bottle of champagne over themselves in a club. She pitches the idea of "a bottle to sip, a bottle to spray," and says their champagne could be "the official 'spray' of Paris." I have to say; this is actually genius. Maybe Emily isn't completely terrible at marketing after all? Louise is worried about the legacy of her family's company since it's a little tacky of a pitch, so Emily proposes they create a second label and name it after Louise's husband's nickname, "Champére". Louise agrees, and the episode ends with Gabriel, Camille, and Emily piling into Camille's car to head back to Paris and Gabriel mocking Emily for being a cougar.

[brookstonalmanac]

Beer Events 10.1

Events

Albany Brewery bought James Boyd's brewery (New York; 1872)

Thomas May left Kaiserbrauerei Beck & May (1875)

Lewisburgh Brewery partially destroyed by fire (Kentucky; 1890)

Leopold Nathan patented the Art of Brewing Beer (1918)

Singapore's Tiger Beer debuted (1932)

Sacramento's Buffalo Brewery sold the brewery buildings and land to the Sacramento Bee newspaper (California; 1948)

Roger Maris hit home run #61 (1961)

Blitz Weinhard patented Barrel Loading (1963)

Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. established a holding company and corporate restructuring began (1979)

He'Brew released its 1st beer (1997)

Florida finally changed its beer packaging laws to allow odd-sized bottled to be sold (2001)

Breweries Opened

Fitzgerald Brothers Brewing (New York; 1866)

Army & Navy Brewery / Turtle Grove Brewery (Halifax, Canada; 1870)

Brasserie Amos (France; 1868)

Czech Share Brewery (Czech Republic; 1895)

Honolulu Brewing & Malting Co. (Hawaii; 1898)

August Schell Brewing (Minnesota; 1902)

Hilden Brewery (Northern Ireland; 1981)

Hillsdale Brewery & Public House (Oregon; 1985)

Hogshead Brewpub (California; 1985)

Wellington County Brewery (Canada; 1985)

James Page Brewing (Minnesota; 1987)

Pacific Crest Brewing (California; 1988)

Callahan's Pub & Brewery (California; 1989)

Whistler Brewing (Canada; 1989)

Gentle Ben's Brewing (Arizona; 1991)

Hill Country Brewing & Bottling (Texas; 1991)

Millrose Brewpub (Illinois; 1991)

Ragtime Taproom (Florida; 1991)

Ebeneezer Brewing (Utah; 1992)

Fish Brewing (Washington; 1992)

Al Frisco's (Canada; 1993)

American River Brewing (California; 1993)

Little Apple Brewing (Kansas; 1993)

Brimstone Brewing (Maryland; 1994)

Hart Breweries Ltd. (Canada; 1994)

Dalian Brewing (Hong Kong; 1995)

Hose & Hydrant Brewing (Canada; 1995)

West Berkshire Brewing (England; 1995)

Ballpark Brewing (California; 1996)

Barley's (Kansas; 1996)

Barrett's Brewpub & Eatery (Alabama; 1996)

Brasserie Frog et Princesse (France; 1996)

Buckley Brewery & Grill (Ohio; 1996)

Crooked Waters brewing (Illinois; 1996)

Cobblestone Winery & Brewery (New York; 1996)

Copper Dragon Brewing (Illinois; 1996)

Foundry Ale Works (Pennsylvania; 1996)

Four Peaks Brewing (Arizona; 1996)

Your World Brewery (Massachusetts; 1996)

Aukland Brewery (New Zealand; 1997)

Glacial Lakes Brewing (Minnesota; 1997)

La Barberie (Canada; 1997)

Mobjack Bay Brewing (Virginia; 1997)

Ninkasi Ale House (France; 1997)

Red Shield Brewery (England; 1997)

Rogue's Roost Ale House (Canada; 1997)

Three Rivers Eatery & Brewery (New Mexico; 1997)

Washington Brewing (DC; 1997)

Bertram's Salmon Valley Brewery (Idaho; 1998)

Fisherman's Beer Microcerveceria (Argentina; 1998)

Inchant Brewery (Australia; 1998)

Malt Shovel Brewery (Australia; 1998)

Tractor Brewing (New Mexico; 1999)

Alewife Brewery (England; 2000)

Brookhaven Brewery (Utah; 2000)

Santa Maria Brewing (California; 2000)

Brenham Brewery (Texas; 2001)

Monet's Bistro & Brewpub (Illinois; 2001)

New Albanian Brewing (Indiana; 2002)

Cerveses La Pirata (Catalonia; 2015)