#and also about abortion but she's wasting her time on talking about how bad trump is

[i-merani]

Harris bestie, stop talking about why Trump is bad, talk how you are better! So far this debate is all about Trump (bad or good), talk about yourself and your plan for your country.

[uncloseted]

tw: transphobia😭 hi I'm a radfem cisgirl (I hate using "cis" and "trans" words but here I need to for the sake of the story) I've got a friend from ny highschool (we're in college now) who's also a radfem and is always sharing great feminist stuff. Yesterday, she shared the comment of a girl saying "this fight for abortion (it is illegal in my country) is for men/people with vaginas too!" and mocked it. I preferred not to make up any opinions about her because of one single post. But today, she shared a picture of Miss Spain 2019 (a trans girl) who talked about her experience with sexism, and mocked her too. This time, it was obvious to me she was just being transphobic trash. She received lots of backlash and deleted the post, but instead made a new post complaining about people caring about transphobia but not about sexism (a very stupid post, if you ask me). This time, along with some comments from other girls respectfully telling her to stop being cruel and mocking towards trans women, she received a lot of support from other TERFS (although these TERFS said they hate being called TERFS just for being honest and brave lmmfao). They said that transwomen don't belong in radfem because they just suffer from discrimination, not oppression, and listed some reasons why: according to them, trans girls don't suffer: obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, feminicide, child marriage, genital femenine ablation, glass ceiling barriers, being implanted "maternal sense" while kids, getting their ears perfored while babies, among other stuff, and that differentiate ciswomen biological reality from trans women biological reality isn't transphobia. Other girls said they knew transwomen who were mean to them, using derogatory terms to refer to ciswomen and they were mean and cruel, using this argument to generalize about all transwomen smh.

I'm just so stoned that people could be so cruel to transwomen and set them aside from the feminist fight when they suffer from already being excluded from so many things. It sickens me that some people don't belive trans people exist and treat them that bad, specially trans girls. I wish I could debunk the info this TERFS are spreading because it's so dangerous and enables transphobics to keep harming transpeople and I find that unbearable, but I am not as informed as I should be to debute all their lies at once. Could you help me?

So starting with the question of transwomen in radfem spaces, I don’t think many (if any) transwomen would say that they experience the exact same type of discrimination that cis women do.  There’s often this idea that “trans people don’t believe in biology”, but that’s a bad faith argument.  Trans people understand biology very well, often more than their cis counterparts do, because it’s such a big part of their identity.

Yes, transwomen don’t suffer obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, child marriage, genital feminine ablation, etc. (I can’t even find any articles on the ear thing).  They do experience femicide, at way higher rates that cis women do. Transwomen are women, and they’re discriminated against in their own way; sometimes that’s because they’re women, and sometimes that’s because they’re trans.  Transwomen are largely supportive of fighting with cis women to rid the world of discrimination for all women, cis and trans alike.  

By contrast, TERFs seem to think that because transwomen sometimes suffer a different type of discrimination than cis women, they can’t be “real women”.  But that argument makes no sense to me.  The vast majority of affluent, white, straight, cis women will never suffer the violence that is apparently so central to the cis female experience.  They’re extremely unlikely to experience femicide, child marriage, genital mutilation... and yet they can acknowledge that those issues are feminist issues, even though they’re not universal to all women.  Why shouldn’t the discrimination that transwomen face also fall under that umbrella?  And if they can accept that women who have had hysterectomies, or women who have chromosomal differences, or women who are intersex, or women who present butch are all women, why shouldn’t transwomen also fall under the umbrella of womanhood?

Further, is that really all that womanhood is to TERFs?  Experiencing the trauma and discrimination that so often accompanies being a cis women?  I don’t think inclusion to a group should be predicated on the amount that one has suffered or how many “oppression points” they’ve amassed. And I don’t think being a woman should be predicated solely on biology, especially given that we never really know what kind of biology a person has just by looking at them.  What “being a woman” is is a metaphysical question that derails the discussion of trans feminism, and it’s a question that I don’t think a lot of TERFs actually have a good answer to.  It’s just an easy way to put the burden of proof on trans people and trans allies and waste our time (but if you’re interested, I do have an opinion on this. I just think it’s best saved for a different time).

In terms of trans people being oppressed, there’s all sorts of data to suggest that trans oppression is very real.  In the US, trans people were banned from serving in the military under the Trump administration, a decision that was only overturned a few days ago, and the Trump administration also reversed the Obama- era Title VII policy that protected trans employees from discrimination.  Trans people are overwhelmingly lacking legal protections- there are no federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity, and in some states, debates over limiting the rights of trans people to use public bathrooms are ongoing.  

About 57% of trans people faced some type of rejection from their family upon coming out.  Around 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 11% in the general population and about 22% in the lesbian and gay populations), and that number is higher for trans people who are Black (39%), Latinx (48%), or Indigenous (35%).  27% of trans people have been fired, not hired, or denied a promotion due to their trans identity.  90% of trans people report facing discrimination in their own jobs.  Trans people face double the rate of unemployment that cis people do (about 14%) and about 44% are underemployed. This is despite the fact that a reported 71% of trans people have some level of post-secondary education- actually higher than the general population, which is about 61%.  It’s often cited that women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, but that statistic doesn’t even exist for trans women.

54% of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence (compared to about 24.3% of cis women), 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted (compared to about 18% of cis women), and about 10% are physically assaulted in a given year. 

About 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color in the US have no health insurance (compared to about 11% of cis women), and 55% of trans people who do have insurance report being denied coverage for at least one gender affirming surgery.  29% of trans adults have been refused healthcare by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity.  In one study, 50% of trans people said that they had to teach their medical providers about trans care.  Trans people are four times as likely than the average population to be infected by HIV.  41% have attempted suicide at one point in their lives, compared to 1.6% of the general population.  

20% of trans people have been evicted or denied housing due to their gender identity, and trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be homeless.  Only 1/5 of trans people report that they have been able to update all of their identification documents, and 41% have a driver’s license that does not match their gender identity.  22% of trans people report that they have been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, 29% reported police harassment, and 12% reported having been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.

75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression, 60% are forced to use a bathroom or locker room that does not match their gender, 50% were unable to use the name and pronouns that match their gender, and 70% of trans students say that they’ve avoided bathrooms because they feel unsafe.  78% of trans students report being harassed or assaulted at school.

And these are all statistics that focus on trans people at large.  The discrimination is worse for transwomen and especially transwomen of color.  All of that certainly sounds like systemic oppression to me.

Every person who chooses to be a TERF perpetuates this discrimination.  It’s just bigotry towards trans people, plain and simple.  And for what?  A reactionary fear that all transwomen are secretly sexual predators and all transmen are confused girls who don’t know better?  Unfortunately, men can be sexual predators just fine without having to jump through the convoluted hoops trans people go through to be recognized as their true gender identity, and transwomen are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be sexual predators.  There are no reported cases at all that transwomen are dressing up as men to assault women in bathrooms.  There aren’t even statistics on how frequently trans people are sexual predators. And transmen are just as capable of making informed, thoughtful decisions as cis women.  

TERFs shouldn’t be pitting themselves against trans people.  There’s just nothing to be gained from doing that.  They should be working alongside trans people to fight the patriarchy and the discrimination that cis and trans women both face, regardless of what that discrimination entails.

Last thought.  Not to be a stan or anything but if you’re interested in learning more about these issues, Contrapoints has a number of really good videos on the topic of TERFs (including one that just released today!). They delve a bit deeper into the actual questions that TERFs often bring up and provide some nuanced answers.

[cksmart-world]

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

February 2, 2020

WHY REPUBLICANS NIXED WITNESSES

1 - He did it, but it's not an impeachable offense.

2 - He did it, but let the voters decide in November.

3 – This is a hoax lynching, so F-off.

4 - The House didn't have any first-hand witnesses, so it's Nancy Pelosi's fault.

5 - Jon Bolton is a disgruntled, rabid, angry man who had a bad childhood.

6 - We can't waste time on this, because if we do, we can't waste time on other stuff.

7 - The whistle blower is a subversive communist who must be unmasked and hanged, or at least given a pantsing by Rand Paul.

8 - He did it, but if I vote for witnesses, I'll be disinvited from CPAC and be reduced to drinking milkshakes with Mitt Romney in the cloakroom — I could even wind up with my head on a pike.

9 - He did it, but if we call witnesses, Americans will get an up-close account of how to run a criminal enterprise from the White House and that would hurt our democracy.

10 - He did it, but Congress has given up its constitutional mandate to check the power of the president. Long live Trump.

DUCK AND COVER, LEGISLATURE IN SESSION

The staff here at Smart Bomb has loaded up on emergency supplies: water, trail mix, flashlights and toilet paper — everything needed to survive a cataclysm. That's right, the Utah Legislature is in session. One of the slimiest and oft-used ploys on Capital Hill is something called a “boxcar.” That's when a legislator puts up a bill that is blank. Cagey lawmakers then wait until the last minute confusion of the session to sneak in language out of the Old Testament and have it voted through before anyone can say, lights out. But the staff here at Smart Bomb has cleverly embedded moles in the Republican caucus to get the skinny. One boxcar would amend Utah liquor law to mandate that fine wine be served in beer mugs. This would dissuade people from drinking wine. A companion boxcar would mandate that beer be served only in champaign flutes. Imagine that at the Twilight Lounge. Another boxcar would force pregnant women to watch a fetus grilled on the spit of a Weber Barbecue before seeking an abortion. This is when some new residents call back the Mayflower Movers. Our intel has it that another one would require everyone over 18 to carry a firearm. The legislation is labeled, “The Safe Utah Law.” Wilson and the band have loaded up on California bud and Pabst Blue Ribbon — it's going to be a long, strange haul to March 14.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' IN FINALND

The American Dream is a lot easier to achieve in Finland. So says Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister. “We have a very good education system. We have a good health-care and social welfare system that allows anybody to become anything.” These are probably some of the reasons Finland gets ranked the happiest country in the world.” The United States is ranked 17th. Nordic countries are at the top of the World Economic Forum’s “Social Mobility Index,” that evaluates how citizens from all walks of life fare in health, educational achievement and income. The United States ranks No. 27. Don't tell that to Donald Trump (not that you could). But that's not all. In Finland health care is free — for everyone. The Finn's spend about $4,000 per person per year. The U.S. health-care system, by contrast, spends more than $10,000 per person per year. And no surprise, Finns are healthier. Finland also has one of the lowest poverty rates in the world — 6.3 percent compared to 11.8 percent in the U.S. All of that may be true, but the Finns don't have the Super Bowl and pelvis-grinding half-time shows. So put that in your kalakukko and smoke it.

SUPER SUNDAY IS AS AMERICAN AS GUACAMOLE

The nation's big celebration is in the books for another year and many people actually know who won the game. By Easter, few will remember the come-from-behind spectacle of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. But, hey, the important thing is that Americans all got together in front of a TV and didn't talk politics. We were united by chicken wings and guacamole. Americans ate 1.38 Billion (with a 'B') chicken wings, according to Food & Drink magazine. (We did not make this up.) But that's not all. Americans devoured an estimated 153 Million pounds of avocados for guacamole on Super Sunday, along with 14,500 tons of chips. To wash it all down, we drank an estimated 162 million gallons of beer. On average, each American consumed 2,400 calories. Football, of course, is a dangerous sport — for spectators: Since 2013, avocado accidents  (removing the pit with a knife) have accounted for 27,059 trips to the emergency room — the majority of which occurred on Super Sunday. There is no reliable data on hangovers, but a potentially record number of people took Monday off. It's the god's honest truth.

Post Script — There it is, another historic week here at Smart Bomb. And when we say historic, we aren't just whistling “Dixie.” This will go down as the time when unabashed Republican senators tied themselves up in integrity pretzels that even they found embarrassing. Can't you just see Lindsey Graham years from now in his rocking chair gazing out at yesteryear: “The Devil made me do it.” Right. Closer to the present, Michael Bloomberg has drawn first blood in our never-ending presidential campaign: “Trump is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.” Ouch. That hit the Insulter-In-Chief right where he lives.  And speaking of Trumpness, Brian Wilson has called for a boycott of The Beach Boys over their upcoming engagement at a trophy-hunting event featuring Donald Trump Jr. Mike Love is the only remaining member of the '60s California band, who sang about surfing, cars, girls and big-game safaris. WTF. The original quintet (The Wilson brothers, Brian Dennis and Carl and their cousin, Al Jardine) wouldn't  be caught dead posing with a leopard carcass. “Help me Rhonda, help me Rhonda now, shoot that big ol' rhinoceros...” Yecht. There ought to be a law. But what are you going to do?

OK, Wilson, wake up the band and take us out with a little feel-good for Punxsutawney Phil's early spring: Well, she got her daddy's car / And she cruised to the hamburger stand, now / Seems she forgot all about the library / Like she told her old man, now / And with the radio blasting / Goes cruising just as fast as she can now / And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away...

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #23

Redwing must have been furious when she didn't make the Birds of Prey roster.

The good news is that I'm almost done reading all of the Team Titans comic books I own. The gooder news is that I'm almost done reading all of the New Titans comic books I own! The most goodest news of all is that I'm still alive somehow. Although that's only good news in the sense that, by being alive, I can appreciate being alive. The news that I were dead would be just fine with me as well because I wouldn't have to hear it. The good news about the bad news of my death is that none of you would hear of it either! You'd all just believe that I got bored of writing comic book reviews and went off to live on a beautiful tropic island full of kittens. After I finish reading Team Titans and New Titans, I'll have to dig out another old series to reread. I'm excited to find out what it will be! I was on Twitter earlier and was perplexed by this person's response to a Tom King tweet. If a smarter reader than me could explain what he meant, I'd truly appreciate it!

My current theories: 1. He's just a Trumpist and knows Tom King isn't a white supremacist asshole so he simply assumes this tweet is somehow mocking Trump. 2. The Tweet didn't delve inside the mind of the protagonist thus relying too much on the reader using their own mind to form conclusions of the protagonist's intent, making it a 'difficult' read. 3. The person replying probably just responds this way to all of Tom King's tweets because Batman isn't punching enough villains these days.

This issue begins with Jensen practicing some of his beat poetry.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Audience nods smartly while puffing nonchalantly on long cigarettes.

Redwing has transformed into a woman with the head of a bird and huge talons on her hands. If any of these Team Titans had a romantic interest in her, they'd probably be thinking, "Did her anus, vagina, and urethra just merge into a cloaca?" But apparently none of them do have that kind of interest because none of them are currently throwing up the way I am after having that thought. But now I'm also thinking of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's sex talk. "Let's kiss cloacae, baby!" While everybody tries to pretend Redwing is still the same person she's always been (except grosser), Chimera reminds the Team Titans that other totally-not-monsters-just-because-they-look-like-human/animal-hybrid creatures are trying to kill them. For some reason, Redwing attacks the other Team Titans. Maybe she's just trying to get them to admit that they all think she's a monster now. If that was her plan, it works because Lapidus is all, "If you're intent on proving you're as much a monster inside as well as out, then you'll have to go through me!" Idiot! You're not supposed to say she looks like a monster to her face! You're supposed to act more like her brother Prester Jon and avoid eye contact and tugging at the inside of your shirt collar and mumbling things like, "Yikes!" At least that allows you to deny your true feelings when she confronts you about why you're acting so weird.

Me at prom.

Sometimes I completely understand that I'm reviewing comic books that never wanted me as an audience. I don't care what young person is infatuated with what other young person, or how much bullshit drama one member of the team can create for no reason at all. If I was, I would be a fan of the Legion of Super-heroes. So if I hate this comic book with such passion that I've certainly spontaneously created at least five kidney stones within me, it really shouldn't reflect on the comic book at all. I'm sure somebody cares that Killowat has a crush on Mirage but he's also a racist piece of shit. I'm sure somebody cares that Terra has littered the Troy Family Farm with stone dildos because Changeling won't fuck her. I'm sure somebody cares that Prestor Jon has an issue with his sister because she doesn't look as human as she used to (while it's okay for him to look like Stretch Armstrong). But that someone is not me. I don't think it ever was me. Half the comic books I own were purchased because of simple momentum. I bought the first issue and felt compelled to buy the second issue and, well, fuck it? Why not just keep buying them no matter how terrible they were?! I know that doesn't say anything positive about my decision making but then I've also never claimed to be good at making decisions. The fact that I read every comic book of The New 52 for six or seven years proves that! Prester Jon refers to Qurac as "hell on Earth" which Chimera has opinions on.

"Hell! What a western concept! But, I mean, you're right and I'm going to go along with that characterization so I don't even know why I pointed that out!" I didn't say she had strong opinions on it.

Chimera mentions that she last met the Team Titans in Team Titans Annual #1. Fuck! I didn't review that issue! I'm sure I own it but it might be stored with all of the Bloodlines Annuals. Well, I guess I can review it whenever I find it during my reread of all of my thousands of comic books from the last forty years!

It's true that I never expected Peter David's Aquaman but I certainly wasn't waiting for it.

Prester Jon tries to discover what caused Redwing's transformation (as well as that of the human/animal hybrids outside) while a young Quraci girl looks at Redwing and cries. I think it's supposed to be touching how the little girl can't communicate but she can feel emotions. Although it would be better if she could communicate because, for some reason, she knows the entire backstory as to how and why people became mutant animal monsters. Something about how aliens crashed in the desert and Circe saw they could be used to make human/animal hybrids but some of the aliens died in the desert and when Cheshire nuked Qurac, the aliens were atomized and everybody breathed in cremated alien space DNA. It's totally the kind of thing a little girl would know all about. Chimera shows Killowat and Terra that the Americans have come to Qurac to save the oil and not the people. That sets off Killowat's Angry Right Wing Logic Centers.

Oh? Is criticizing America's foreign policy of protecting investments considered politically correct? Although doesn't this anger and argument seem tame from a 2019 perspective?

Anybody who begins an argument with "I refuse to believe" is a person with whom I immediately stop arguing. It's a great opening tactic because I appreciate your desire to not waste my time by immediately revealing that you won't be listening to facts and evidence. Also, "I refuse to believe America would rape a country of its resources at the expense of saving the people" may as well be a declaration that you spent most of your time in history class yelling, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you!" Not that America's public educational system was particularly great at exposing America's imperialistic abuse! There's definitely a reason right wing thinkers believe college educations turn people into leftists. Because it does! Leftists are just rational people who aren't viewing the world through the lens of preconceived opinions! College educations are less about broad generalizations and more about trying to put history in as much context as possible. Patriots are often as blind as people of faith. One of the conditions of being faithful is to not question your faith. It's right there in the word! So any examination of your faith is questioning that which you shouldn't question. Being a patriot is the exact same thing. If you question our government, you're against our government. There's no belief in trying to improve our government because it's an acceptance of flaws in the United States. Of course now that's simply become a way to not ever question anything a Republican does because obviously everything any Democrat does is completely wrong. It's believing in tribe over anything else. I am not a Democrat because I believe whatever the fuck every Democrat believes. Hell, I'm not even technically a Democrat! I am liberal, sure. But I don't support any idea or belief from what would be considered my tribe. And neither are a lot of liberals which is why you have trouble with Democratic voter turnout. Every Republican nominee is practically interchangeable. As long as they spout the handful of talking points important to the accepted base (2nd amendment, anti-abortion, Christian values, white supremacy...I mean states rights!), they'll do. But Democrats have the constant fight over whether a candidate will lose voters if they move left away from center while hardly ever acknowledging how many votes they'll gain as they move left. I've always said they should abandon all those assholes at the center. If you're only voting Democrat because you support their social views but don't want higher taxes maybe you're actually a Republican. Because if the Democratic party moves further left and you abandon it because of taxes to side with the gun toting fetuses who support locking up refugees on our southern border, who the fuck wants you at that party anyway?! Back to the comic book, the Team Titans speculate that the cremated alien DNA has combined with the tainted oil in Qurac and the metagenes in certain individuals to transform them into monsters. So now they've got to destroy all of America's profits by making sure the oil isn't sold all over the world. Killowat is all, "I can't believe we're going to save the world at the risk of America's profits!" I mean, he doesn't say that explicitly. But I can read between his racist and xenophobic lines.

Finally an argument that wins him over!

Look, I get being resistant to truth! Whenever I brush my teeth, I can't help thinking about the Barney song where they mime brushing with huge toothbrushes and sing, "While I'm brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run!" And then I just let the water run! I know, I know. I'm a fucking monster! Terra and Killowat solve the problem by putting the contaminated oil back into the ground. That seems scientifically sound enough that I won't bother questioning it like a college-educated leftist. But Killowat assures Chimera that she hasn't won the argument even though her argument was simply, "Maybe you should question your government sometimes, idiot." Meanwhile the animal people attack the other Titans upstairs. The Titans can't kill them because they were once people (although I guess if they had always been sentient monster people, it would have been okay to kill them? Sometimes I'm not entirely sure of comic book superhero rules). They solve their problem by sending them into a Fairy Land via one of Chimera's portals. She was hesitant to do it earlier because she didn't know if what transformed them was catching. But now that Prester Jon somehow did science and figured out what happened, everybody agrees it's okay to banish them to a world where they'll never see their loved ones again and nobody will work out how to save them and they'll probably just turn on each other when they get hungry. Superman throwing every villain into the Phantom Zone has left a terrible example for young heroes to follow!

Oh the 90s! When every time anybody said anything, you had to wait a few seconds to see whether or not they really believed what they just said!

Later Killowat acts like a total jerk. But he acts like a different kind of total jerk than he usually acts like. So after he's done, he says, "Whoa! What just happened?! Is that shadowy person on the ground hiding behind the tree controlling me?! And who might it be?! ZERO HOUR!" Team Titans #23 Rating: B-. They sure used to pack a lot of story and words into comic books, didn't they?! And for only $1.95! That's two dollars less than the crappy comics DC puts out today that have four less pages and far less story every month! And it's three dollars less than Marvel books! No wonder Marvel is more popular. People probably look at the price and think, "Whoa! I'm getting a whole dollar more quality out of this comic book than that stupid DC comic book!" It also might help that Marvel doesn't mind having synopses of the story to help new readers or old readers whose memories aren't that great anymore. DC refuses to do the same, instead relying on the writer wasting two or three pages of actual story where characters think about what happened in the previous issue. A lot of DC books suck in collected formats!

[newagesispage]

                                                            OCTOBER                2020

PAGE RIB

 The Stones opened Rolling Stones # 9 on Carnaby St.** Bill Wyman auctioned off many unique items for the Prince’s Trust.**Wyman’s bass used for groundbreaking records in ’69 and ’70 broke a record at $384,000. The famous amp that got him into the Stones went for $106,250 and the most expensive toilet seat cover sold at auction with the tongue logo went for $1,142. Brian Jones Rock and Roll Circus guitar sold for $704,000.

*****

VOTE!!!!

*****

In San Francisco people can order dinner and drinks delivered with a drag queen performance.

*****

Joaquin and Rooney had a baby that they named River.

*****

Real Time has been renewed thru 2022.

*****

The new film, No Sudden Move about 1955 Detroit will star Don Cheadle, David Harbour, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta and Kieran Culkin.

*****

Shep Smith is back with Just the Facts on CNBC.

*****

The Presidential debate: Well, Good Biden moments-“You don’t panic, he panicked.”  “It is what it is cuz you are what you are.” “Everybody knows he’s a liar.” Wouldn’t know suburbs unless he took a wrong turn.”  “Will you shit up man?” “Get out of your and trap.” Imagine if Bernie or a younger candidate with real energy were there. Imagine someone quick on their feet because we need that.  The bully style of scary clown 45 does fluster a normal person as it supposed to. Joe held his own and had real dignity though. It is hard to not respond to the President’s ridiculousness but he needs to be ignored.  Trump and son both seemed like they were about 8 Red Bulls into the day with all that pent up anger.  Who should be drug tested? Biden?  Trump went on about forest management but most of that land belongs to the Federal government.  ** I have never seen my mailperson trying to sell ballots.** Trump said that bad things are happening in Philadelphia. Biden should have showed some love for the state. He is on a tour of it now though. ** Chris Wallace said, “Why you not?” Was that a real question?  45 said, “I was a private business people.” They all had a little trouble talking. It is exhausting the way people put up with his manners.  **As soon as the debate was over, the Trump army wasted no time reaching out to goons to be poll watchers. Do they know that you just can’t show up randomly for that??**Apprentice insiders say Trump abuses Adderall.

*****

The other day when Trump took the podium for a rant, an open mike caught a someone saying, “Oh shit” On Fox.

*****

For those who insist Trump is a religious man, I’ll grant you he pays taxes like a church. –Stephen Colbert

*****

Letterman is ready with My Next Guest Needs no Introduction. This season includes Robert Downey Jr., Lizzo and Dave Chappelle.

*****

There are about 9 million feral swine in this country known as super pigs.

*****

There is talk of Levar Burton replacing Alex Trebeck when he retires. YES!!!!

*****

Cigar Afficionado magazine has named CBS Sunday Morning the greatest show on tv.

*****

The U.S. built tunnels under Trump’s wall to let water, garbage, DDT and other toxins flow thru. Millions were spent for nothing and now millions more will be spent to address this problem that empties into the Pacific Ocean.

*****

Days alert: Melissa Reeves is being replaced. Is it that she does not want to commute from Nashville or that she is a bit too conservative or something else? Is it an end of Days with old side characters and replacements of the stars??** Ava is coming back, JJ is back, Eric and Sami are gone. ** Absolutely loved the pic of Abigail 1 that confused Abigail 2. Funny!!!! It reminded me of the OLTL moment during Asa’s funeral when Blair saw the 1st Blair in a flashback.

*****

“Smaller than expected” would probably explain a lot about the proud boys. –Andi Zeisler

*****

Why does anyone listen to Christie or Rudy??

*****

Looting isn’t part of protesting just like murder isn’t part of arresting.

*****

A judge has said that Florida has created an “unconstitutional pay to vote system.” This has now been overturned. What are the things that can be termed felonies to keep one from voting? The list includes releasing helium filled balloons, driving without a license, catching the wrong lobster and disturbing turtle eggs. Amendment 4 was originally put into effect to stop freed slaves from voting. But SB7066 makes sure that felons complete the terms of their sentences. The fines, fees and restitution can be hard to navigate. There must be proof before they can vote but all counties keep their own records and there is no organization statewide.  Mike Bloomberg, John Legend, Michael Jordon and others are paying off millions of dollars in debt for felons in Florida so that they can vote if they can unravel some of the puzzles. Now Florida Republicans are saying that that is also illegal.

*****

Two thirds of the world’s wildlife has disappeared in the last 50 years.

*****

At our own peril, we have to step up or everything is lost. –John Batiste

*****

Michael Jordan will start up a Nascar team with Bubba Wallace.

*****

Laraine Newman signed up to be a poll worker. How do you get people to vote? Celebrity poll workers? Hey whatever works as long as the masses don’t gawk and hold up the lines.

*****

A refrigerator sized asteroid is headed to earth and may arrive about the time of the election.

*****

So the coronavirus relief funds were funneled by the pentagon to defense contractors.** What kind of a selfish fucking world do we live in? At least we know which people in this world give a flying fuck about the rest of us. Rally and fair participants, relief money scammers and mask protesters, we hear you loud and clear!!

*****

The Emmys went on thru the week of the 14th thru the 20th. Winners included RuPaul, Don’t fuck with Cats, Leah Remini, The Apollo, Eddie Murphy, Last Week 2nite, SNL, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Crown, Better Call Saul, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Archer, Hollywood, Maya Rudolph, Dan Harmon,  Bad Education, Cherry Jones, Regina King,  Julia Garner, Mark Ruffalo,  Uzo Aduba, The Last Dance and Stranger Things. Schitt’s Creek (and practically the whole cast), Dave Chappelle and Succession took home the big ones. Norman Lear became the oldest Emmy winner ever. Letterman ‘hitchhiked’ to the Emmy’s to present an award. I was really rooting for Amy Sedaris!!

*****

Bill Murray and Rashida Jones will star in Sofia Coppala’s On the Rocks.** The Doobie Brothers want Bill Murray to stop using their music to sell his golf clothes.

*****

Danny Trejo and Jessica Tuck will star in ‘The Shift.’

*****

Illinois is pulling down statues including Chris Columbus. Woo Hoo!!

*****

13 mummies have been discovered in a well, stacked one on top of the other. The Egyptian discovery from about 2,500 years ago has been well preserved.

*****

Hysterectomies on immigrant women in detention camps?? Really??

*****

Scientific American mag is 175 years old has never endorsed a candidate but Joe Biden id their man.

*****

Word is that in Indonesia the anti- maskers are forced to dig the graves of the Covid 19 victims.

*****

The Breonna Taylor case continues with a settlement and too few charges.

*****

Scary Clown 45 announced he will call in to Fox and Friends every Monday or Tuesday but a host told him that they were not committed to that.** The Scary campaign put up ads with “Support Our Troops” but the problem is they are Russian troops and jet fighters.** Trump did a phone interview on Fox Sports and talked about golf.

*****

It is a shame that Hillary lost the election and many more of us would be alive if she were running the show. But, I can only imagine the shit they would have given her.

*****

Brad Pascale, Trump’s former campaign manager, went to the hospital after being taken into custody in Florida after threatening suicide.

*****

Just remember , 1619 Project: Good   1776 Commision: Oh my! Why do these rich old fucks want us to stay as stupid and uninformed as they are? Haven’t we been in the dark long enough? They are the fake news masters.

*****

Jim Carrey will play Biden on SNL. Chris Rock will be host the season 46 opener on Oct. 3. New players will be Lauren Holt, Punkie Johnson and Andrew Dismukes.

*****

Gulf War Syndrome is a chronic and multi symptomatic disorder that has affected military personnel from the Persian Gulf War. The DOD is resisting the strong evidence and needs more of a spotlight. The possible exposure to chemical weapons may even have been passed on to their partners through sexual contact. All of this came to light in the mid 90’s thru complaints that were told to Ross Perot. Let’s hope Tammy Duckworth looks into this further.

*****

Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated to the Supreme Court. Her previous statements tell us she believes the ACA is unconstitutional, abortion is always immoral and the country should undo marriage equality. She is a member of People of Praise.** If she was a Muslim and everything else was the same regarding her beliefs and associations, Republicans would call her a religious extremist and never let her step near the Supreme Court. –Wajahat Ali.** Notorious A.C.B. ?? Do they have one original idea other than new ways to cheat and steal??

*****

Finn Wittrock has a funny little Emmy Uber ride on Funny or Die.

*****

Breonna Taylor’s neighbor’s wall got more justice that Breonna herself. –Jordan Uhl

*****

Go Stevie Wonder!!!

*****

Dax Sheppard went off the wagon for a while.

*****

A Giant Gundom? Really?

*****

A fun prank would be if we stopped this from becoming a dictatorship on Nov. 3rd and whatnot. –George Wallace

*****

Sen. Kevin Kramer has been acting a little crooked on building the Wall.

*****

The Metropolitan Opera has cancelled the whole season.

*****

Happy Doomscrolling

*****

Can dogs be trained to detect the coronavirus?

*****

Rand Paul is an idiot. Birx and Atlas have ruined reps. Give ‘em Hell Fauci!! ** Everything Atlas says is false. –R. Redfield

*****

Eric Trump must testify in court about the Trump business’s a judge has decreed. The Trump biz has made about 19 billion in the last 3 years.** The world is gobbling up the news about the Trump tax returns with tales of debt, the $72.9 milliion refund and foreign influence. How does the IRS let a refund like that happen? How bad of a businessman do you have to be to lose that much $? National security threat. One of his fans will probably bail him out.

*****

Bet we’d all own houses if we stopped eating so much avocado toast and committed tax fraud. -Kashana

*****

Mary Trump has sued The President and his siblings for fraud.

*****

Ellen is selling off $10 mil in art.

*****

61% say we should abolish the electoral college.

*****

The Netflix series, Challenger :The Final Flight reminds us that like The Titanic, the arrogance of man can change so many lives.

*****

Wilderness of Errors is a great doc. It proves just how right the book and mini -series got it.

*****

The remains of the 1644 warship, Del Menhorst have been found off the Danish coast.

*****

Everybody is talking about Jeff Daniels in The Comey Rule. The actors were upset when Showtime was going to push back the release until after the election. The actors said they wouldn’t promote the film so the film has premiered.

*****

David Tennant gets better and better and now he is giving us DES on ITV. Quality AND quanity.

*****

Independent prosecutors are not going ahead with a case against NE Patriots Robert Craft for soliciting prostitutes.

*****

America has no memories. –Wallace Shawn

*****

Tyler Childers has released ‘Long Violent History”. Give it a listen.

*****

Does it seem like the administration gets a word of the week and they really push it? Caravan-Herd-sedition-looters- Antifa. It is like they all share a brain and do not have a thought of their own.

*****

Chris Petrovski `will star in ‘Listen’ about a young Israeli soldier.

*****

On a personal note, I love the way that Autumn makes my brain feel. The spring allergies are gone, the hot muddled summer thinking fades and everything opens up.

*****

Gubler is back and in the video for Future Islands ‘Moonlight’.

*****

Niecy Nash wed Jessica Betts.

*****

Check out the Curious life and death of… on the Smithsonian channel.

*****

Conan is looking hot with his grown out hair.

*****

I just love Mel Rodriguez and Weijia Jiang. Some people just don’t get enough credit.

*****

Vet’s crisis line: 1-800-273-8255

*****

Donald Trump is taking page out of Charles Manson’s playbook. Start a race war, then convince the public you alone can end it. He’s a lying racist piece of garbage. –Rob Reiner

*****

Serious Question: Would good Christian conservatives have mounted a Go fund me for Timothy McVeigh? –Michael Mckean

*****

Old Navy will pay employees to work the polls on Election day.

*****

Trump is the most effective anti -liberal in my lifetime. –Newt Gingrich

*****

Tommy Chong does not seem too happy with Joe Rogan.

*****

Anna Faris is leaving CBS’s Mom as it heads into its 8th season.

*****

Q Anon should take advantage of the ACA. –Joe Biden

*****

Word is that the White House told Federal agencies to ban race based sensitivity training.  The thinking is that Un American propaganda training sessions have no place in Federal Government.

*****

I wish I lived in a country where John Kelly, James Mattis and John Bolton had at least half the balls of Sally Yates, Maria Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, Reality Winner, Christine Blasey Ford or Stormy Daniels. – Andrea Junker** If only Mad Dog Mattis had the balls of Olivia Troye – Michael Mckean

*****

38 million Americans live in poverty.

*****

80 year old Sam Little with a possible 93 murders has now been called the most prolific serial killer in the U.S. and he has a photographic memory. Whoever takes this on, please let David Alan Grier play him in the movie.

*****

You must check out the album, the Angel Headed Hipster.

*****

Everybody is talking about Cottage Core.

*****

The Trump campaign can’t help themselves with things like playing ‘knockin’ on Heaven’s door’ and ‘Fortunate son’ at rally’s. It was like the time my Grandfathers young wife brought a purse to the funeral that boldly stated ‘Jackpot.’ True Story.

*****

Glenn Howerton and Seth Meyers should play brothers on something.** Also Meyers and Larry Wilmore wondered if the cancellation of Wilmore’s show was a reason for the racial unrest and terrible results of the last election. Hmmm.

*****

Can we remember this election enthusiasm for all future elections?  We need to take things seriously EVERY time.** So many say that even with our divide, we all want the same things in the end. I do not think that is really true. It seems that in this divide, we have different ideas about what we want this country to be.

*****

Harry Styles has replaced Shia LaBeouf in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling.

*****

Cat Cora has filed for a restraining order against her ex- wife, Jennifer who it seems has been stalking her.

*****

Showtime’s The Comedy Store sounds interesting with stories like Jimmie Walker who claims that Freddie Prinze wanted to kill John Travolta.

*****

Maplecroft, Lizzie Borden’s last house sold for about $890,000.

*****

A woman ref in the NFL?? It’s about time!

*****

Doc Martin will end after its 10th season.

*****

Kelly Clarkson is being sued by her management firm.

*****

Pope Francis refused to meet with Mike Pompeo.

*****

R.I.P. Tom Seaver, Sophie Farrar, Kevin Dobson, Toots Hibbert, Stevie Lee, Bruce Williamson, Ben Cross, Diana Rigg, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Rev. Robert Graetz, Ron Cobb, Gale Sayers, Dan Dettman, Kevin Burns, Mac Davis, wildfire casualties, Covid victims and Helen Reddy.

[binsofchaos]

‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Introduction by Garance Franke-Ruta. Jump to the start of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay here.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel was best known for her memoirs and essays, especially Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, but after attending Yale Law School in her late 30s she also enjoyed having a voice in the political arena. She was as much an original there as everywhere else, and between 2010 and 2012 she wrote a series of pieces for me at The Atlantic.

A feminist and a New Yorker who had really lived, she looked at the world in a different way from all the boys on the bus in Washington. And she was funny. She would send long text messages written on her smartphone while she was walking through Washington Square Park, an emissary from a more vivid and creative world than the boxy K Street buildings I would pass en route to my office in the Watergate. Sometimes her stories would come in like that too, texted in graf by graf, and I’d knit the passages together in what seemed like the right order and ask for some connective language. The thoughts were always razor-sharp; the understanding of human nature acute.

Over time our editing relationship moved into a long-distance friendship. We met for dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, outside of course so her dog could be nestled at her feet. She had somehow managed to find a lipstick with my name on it — Guerlain’s Garance — and purchased us two tubes encased in elegant silver that sat heavy in the hand. She wore hers to dinner, and when I went to the restroom, I changed my color too, making us lipstick twins. It was how she was and in many ways the secret to her success: In addition to being wildly talented, she overcompensated for being so difficult and never totally in control by being astonishingly thoughtful, and kind, and, well, seductive. She was a seductive personality; hard not to love even as she could be hard to be close to.

When I started working at GEN this fall and living in New York full time, I reached out to her. “I’m in remission!” she’d said brightly when we first reconnected, three years after last seeing each other and nearly five years after she first learned she had the BRCA gene and breast cancer. We drank red wine on her balcony overlooking a giant earthen pit in the ground: The future NY offices of Netflix. We went to dinner at Il Buco on Bond Street (her suggestion); I could feel she was lonely. She and her husband Jim Freed had separated and were in the process of divorcing, a not so happy ending to the happily ever after story she had been astonished to stumble into in 2015, and something she was still figuring out how to write about. She started sending me things she had written as we talked about her writing a piece about Gen X politics and the 2020 race.

“I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

Very soon the piece she’d wanted to write about Gen X politics started to slip. The cancer was back. There were so many tests and scans to undergo. I told her not to worry about writing it and was surprised when she filed. She said it was a good distraction from having cancer. She badly wanted to interview Beto O’Rourke, but by the time he arrived in New York City where they might have had a face-to-face — the Gen X skate-punk candidate and the Gen X icon — he was already getting ready to drop out of the race.

She sent me a long piece about her past year, about her impending divorce and her marriage and her mother and Donald Trump. It was from something longer she was working on, she said.

We talked about her writing an additional passage when she recovered from brain surgery and running the piece on Medium. “I suppose I have to add something about this, since so much of the piece is about cancer,” she texted. “You know, of all my failures of imagination, I never wondered what a brain tumor is like. So I could not have guessed it was this atrocious, the dizziness and the pain.”

Her recoveries from the relentless march of the disease during her final, dreadful month would prove to be brief.

After her first brain surgery — she had two to cope with her metastatic breast cancer and subsequent complications — which she described as a “brain resection,” she was astonishingly herself. She was funny and poetic and articulate and in good spirits. Still dizzy and unstable — the tumor had impacted her balance center and left her clutching the furniture as she walked during her last night in her own home — but also still herself. She laughed with her mother, who took video and pictures of her in the hospital and helped coordinate, along with Jim and some of her oldest friends from college, a parade of sun-up to way past winter sundown visitors so that she would never feel alone.

And the night before the surgery, Jim was the one she stayed with. He was the one who took care of Alistair, her dog, and her black cat, Arabella. When I saw him in the hospital, he was entirely attuned to her and what she might need so that she could recover and have, in the unspoken best-case scenario, another year.

“I can’t get over how great my husband has been with this. He has made it possible for me to get better and not worry about anything,” she wrote in mid-December, after the surgery. “He loves you so much it’s clear,” I texted back, thinking of how attentive he had been, how he was arranging visits with so many people, that look on his face that you cannot fake. “I think so,” she texted back. “It’s good you see. I love him so much.”

But the past year had been a hard one. This is what she had written about it. She had shown it to Jim too, and he agreed, as did a number of her oldest friends, that she’d want it published. She loved to be published.

I Believe in Love

By Elizabeth Wurtzel

Greetings from the chaotic land of marriage come undone.

The caravansary is dismantling, toothpicks flying everywhere, the bubblegum that held it together is unstuck.

Everything is falling.

My husband moved out at the end of December [2018], as the calendar flipped from last year to this [2019], while I was in Miami Beach, strolling the walkways in the shocking morning sun and under the nighttime Van Gogh sky, away from it all.

I knew he was moving out, but still: I was surprised.

I did not see that the game was over. I did not know the clock was running. I never lose, but I do run out of time. It turns out this was basketball and not baseball.

While I looked away, my marriage fell apart.

I fell off my keel. I lost my kilter. I was a kite without a string.

Maybe it’s better.

It is a peaceful purple without him here. But psychedelic with disarray.

Marriage is an organizing principle. It is flow. It is coffee in the morning. It is who walks the dog. It is HBO at night.

And love. Don’t forget that.

Now I am an ombré mess of a person. I am missed appointments and canceled meetings. I am the thing I forgot to do. I am hanging on by a strand of Drybar dry-shampooed hair.

All day long I have to ask people to forgive me, I am flailing and failing at it all. Forgive me, I beg, as I hope my untweezed eyebrows will. Maybe soon, I will even tug at a few strays.

Or maybe wild is the way.

🖤🖤🖤

I still think of Jim as this sweet person I married. He is my trust fall. He is my emergency contact. He is my next of kin. He is my valentine. He is my birthday dinner. He is my secret sharer. He is my husband.

I do not know him anymore so I do not know myself. Who are my friends? Where is my family? I have fallen into a crevasse of nobody nowhere.

I am estranged and strange, strangled up in blue.

I do not want to feel this way. I am going through the five stages of grief all at once, which Reddit strings have no doubt turned into 523. They are a collision course, a Robert Moses plan, a metropolitan traffic system of figuring it out.

I feel bad and mad and sad.

Is this a festival of insight or a clusterfuck of stupid? I change my mind all the time about this and about everything else.

I got married because I was done with crazy. But here it is, back again, the revenant I cannot shake. I feel like it’s 1993, when my heart had a black eye all the time.

26 is a boxing match of the soul.

I did not expect bruises at 52.

🖤🖤🖤

I have blamed myself. I have blamed my husband. I have blamed cancer. I have blamed marijuana. I have blamed sexism. I have blamed Charlottesville. I have blamed my in-laws. I have blamed several men named David. I have blamed my mother who lied to me my whole life about who my father is.

Who would I be if I did not blame Donald Trump?

I am angry all the time since the election of 2016, like it happened to me, like I was gang-raped by Michigan. I don’t want to be angry, but so there, I am.

Who don’t I hate?

Who won’t I blame?

If you are standing there, I blame you.

It is not conservative against liberal.

It is everybody against everyone. Here we are, in it together, alone.

The problem is not arguments I have with people who voted for Trump, who I don’t know anyway. The trouble is the way all of us who agree about everything are bickering. Oh, the narcissism of small differences.

I remember not that long ago when the world was not political. I was part of landmark litigation that was all about a team of Republicans and Democrats working together. I loved everybody. We were all on the same side.

What Alamo did I not forgive? What Masada did I not get over?

Now there is no microaggression too small for me to scream about so the next four neighborhoods can hear.

My husband does something and I am affronted like it matters.

I am sure he does not know how I feel.

And maybe he doesn’t.

But what does any of this have to do with why we got married? We got married to be in it together. Polarization has even invaded love.

I have anger fatigue. I am sick of sick. Like everyone.

The emotional toll of the world we live in is going to do all of us in.

But politics is not about conflict.

Politics is about making the world a better place.

🖤🖤🖤

How could my mother keep a secret for 50 years? What makes someone do that?

She buried herself in it. She grew a wild Victorian garden with thorny bushes of rose and purple larkspur and red snapdragon. There was a lush meadow of lavender that gave a whiff of Aix-en-Provence en été. The dandelions ran rampant and the daffodils glowed yellow like Big Bird.

But underneath it all, beneath the lilies of the valley and the rows of geranium, there is dirt.

There is a secret.

I am a bastard. I am her bastard daughter.

There are things that come along that are a shock.

I believed something for nearly half a century. It was a lie.

I was conned.

I was wrong about myself.

I did not know who I am.

My mother told no one.

It was a lie she told for so long it became true and the secret faded to no-memory. She misremembered who my father was. She did not think it mattered.

When it all came out in 2016, not long after I got married, just after my real father died, my mother could not see what my hysteria was about. She did not understand why I was stunned.

All the while I was trying not to feel the worst way ever, trying not to be overwhelmed by the explosion, my mother could not figure out what was bothering me.

After all, she is the nuclear physicist.

My mother is like everyone else. She thinks she is normal. She is sure her behavior makes sense. She believes she does the right thing. Since she cannot imagine that this is not the case, she is surprised to find out that, yes, she makes bombs.

I scream at my mother, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I do that and she does not know what I mean.

She says, “Oh get over it.”

Her eyes widen until they look like goggles on an herbivore. She is put upon. She cannot believe we have to discuss this yet again.

“Omigod yet again!”

When will I quit badgering her?

I say, “You lied to me.”

She says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Then what?”

“It was a decision!”

Any relationship founded on a lie is doomed. Or not a lie, according to her, which is another lie, a lie about a lie.

That is how it is between us. We are living in the doom.

And yet, we are still at it. My mother and I refuse to give up. She is my only parent. She is all I have.

She made sure of that.

This is the most painful thing ever.

She has made so many inexplicable decisions over the years that I know about, and now I see the ones I did not know.

And yet I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is it for me. She is in the way of everything. I should be interested in my husband, but how can he compete with how much I want to figure out the Once that started all that is upon a time?

🖤🖤🖤

I was a welter of emotions.

I was so emotional.

When I found out that my father is not my father, that my mother lied to me my whole life, that there was so much I did not know, a bomb dropped in my life. Bombs, really, aerial bombardment. It was the Battle of Manila: bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades, tanks, cannons, howitzers, banzai charges, kamikaze tactics, I was shocked and stunned with feeling.

I did not know what to do.

I became a raging lunatic.

I was a mettle of rage.

My rage is my retinue. My rage is a filthy velveteen train I drag around with me, carelessly. It is my ruby tiara. It is my rainbow and my pot of gold.

My rage is cream. It makes Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee that my grandmother brewed in a percolator on the breakfront in the dining room taste not half bad.

It is the coloratura harmony to my singsong days.

My rage is my conscience. I insist on my right to feel.

But I got caught in a Möbius strip of emotion. I was gone round the bend of scream.

It was stuplimity.

🖤🖤🖤

My marriage is crushed beneath the weight of so much. It is delicate, like all relationships. It is not one of those fine elms that blows with the gusts and does not snap.

We are a scattering of branches on the lawn. We are deadwood.

Oh, there is a lot that holds us together, the love and the hours. We got married during chemotherapy. We are bound.

But my husband is not who he was.

Yes, I know: It is always like that. The sorrow of unraveling is the stranger you are facing. What happened? I want to scream. Where did you go?

My husband had a softness. I will not compare it to the feel of cotton balls or the touch of silk charmeuse, because it is better. He was new to love. I could tell. I could see. He was surprised. He did not see me coming. He did not know I was interested. He was alone in a room. His life was small. He had the same six friends he always had. He was shy. He was not brave. He had no expectations.

He was lovely.

The beginning is always like honey, liquid and sweet.

But he was open.

He was not wounded by a million heartaches.

He had not been through it all.

He did not have a wretched past.

He was 34, which is not young. Younger than I was, but a lot could have happened by then.

It had not.

He was fresh.

There was nothing I would not do for him.

There was nothing I did not want for him.

We met in October and got engaged in May.

We knew.

And now he knows he has had enough.

It has been too much.

🖤🖤🖤

Most of all, it is not easy to be married to someone with cancer.

I feel for my husband.

Cancer is so big. Everyone is prostrate before its deadly enormity. It is the answer to every question. It is the reason why. Is it an excuse or is it real? Who is anyone to argue? Cancer is a bully. It is an elephantine disease of body, mind, soul. My husband moved a half a mile away from it. I would love to do the same.

I am stuck until the end.

I do not know what he expected when he married me when I was ill. I am sorry that it has not been what he wanted. I am sorry that I hurt him.

After I got cancer, I was not the same.

I wanted to be.

I wanted my life to go back to what it was.

I was so lively. I was so lovely.

I was so busy. I was so social.

But I could not do it.

No surprise, I changed.

I was withdrawn during chemotherapy and my world became small. It contracted like starvation. It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

I tried. So hard. I called. I emailed. I texted. I showed up.

But there was a diminishment.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

Things broke. My radius. My fibula. My tibia. My spirit.

My cancer came back a year after it went away.

You think people are nice about it? No.

Cancer is misunderstood.

Everyone says the wrong thing. Which is what they do so much anyway.

Then I say the wrong thing back.

There we are, bumper cars of mismatched words.

I can’t believe the stupid things people tell me in an effort to be kind, about something hard they had to deal with that is not the same as having cancer.

The worst thing anyone can do is tell me they are sorry about my cancer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don’t apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

Mostly sorry is just a thing to say. Anything else would be better, including I don’t know what to say.

It is always people who are the problem. What else? Our suffering is small compared to our misunderstandings with others, how they fail to give us a break, know what it’s like, judge us fairly, see the world the way we do. It is not even cancer or especially cancer. It is especially this and even that. If you are looking for absolution, you are going to have to forgive yourself.

I have chainmail from years of frustrating conversations, of people who think something bad has happened to me.

I don’t see it that way.

You could tell me everything that’s bad about cancer, like that it’s cancer, but you could not convince me that cancer has been bad for me.

Cancer has made me optimistic.

These are the days of miracles and wonders, of biopharma fireworks, of immunotherapy wow.

I have been saved.

I am miraculous me.

I will skate figure eights into infinity.

I am all claws I am all fangs.

I am not afraid of cancer. I think cancer should be afraid of me.

This past October [2018], I had a tumor in my shoulder bone that was 5 inches: big! It was threatening to break it.

And worse.

My cancer antigens were at 205, when 25 is as high as the level can go.

I had meetings in the World Trade Center while all this was going on. I hate it down there. Skyscrapers as grave markers. It is an ominous place.

When I went for help in Philadelphia at the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, only Alistair, my service dog, was with me.

My husband said he had to work.

My marriage had already come undone.

I had stereotactic radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It took only three sessions to zap the tumor away. The treatment saved me, but I have a five-inch hole in my bone that looks like a cave in the Thai jungle.

When my husband moved out, I was still healing. I have a rotator cuff tear and pain from the long way home.

🖤🖤🖤

This is a love story.

Every marriage is a love story.

People who run off to Vegas after knowing each other for 10 days and find a drunk outside the Sands casino to be their witness — they really mean it. Marriage is a big gesture. There is no reason to do it except: love.

It is effusive.

I am sorry I failed.

I am sorry for this confederacy of catastrophe.

I am sorry for it all.

I think that my husband can’t believe I hurt. I know what I’m like: I have a powerful personality, it’s true. But he got me.

He made a vow to love me in sickness and in health.

There was great love between us.

And love is hard to stop.

We made a commitment for when we could not remember why we did.

He decided enough.

I am a monotheist. I am in it for life. I am in everything for life. If you don’t stop me, I will not stop myself. I have the kind of faith that you can only have if you have talked your way out of trouble all along.

I feel so much and too much. Deep in my radiated bones.

I cannot believe it is like this with my husband and not like it was that long ago on Halloween, our first date, which he did not know was a date, maybe it was maybe it wasn’t, he showed up at my door not knowing anything at all.

We were resting on our future arms, we were like people who have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, have never seen City of God, have never heard Exile In Guyville, oh what lay ahead.

I remember my husband in the beginning, I know the man I married, I insist he is still there somewhere.

I keep peeling for the pentimento.

Or has this all been a fraud?

Love gone wrong feels like a confidence crime.

That is the worst of it.

Do I have an electron microscope or am I blinded? Do I see more clearly now or is this a distortion? I could ask that about the whole wide world.

Sex and race look different since Trump was elected. We know all the things that we never knew. We were living in a world of trust, we believed we were on a righteous path, that things were incrementally improving, so we did not look so hard into sunlight.

All anything ever is is another way of seeing.

I thought my husband was on my side.

I thought I knew him.

I did.

I don’t.

He changed.

I do not know how to help him.

I do not know how to reach him.

Anything is possible.

I believe in so much.

I am just that way.

I believe in love.

What matters more in this crazy world?

Shame on Casablanca’s ending! I will take the hill of beans.

(This is Garance again.)

Love. Sometimes in our lives when we feel most bereft it turns out that we are not alone at all. It is the kind of cloying Disney sentiment Lizzie might have scoffed at, but it was also the truth with her. She affected a toughness that was both real and a coping mechanism, but which also led her to downplay how sick she was. Even as she was telling me she was in remission in September, spots of cancer had already returned, I have since learned.

“The people who know us when we are not our best selves — what would we do without them? I am so grateful right now for even my mother coming through for me,” she wrote after her first surgery in December. Her mother Lynne Winters and she had a famously complicated relationship, but it was Lynne who took her home to recover both times she was released from the hospital, and who had the difficult burden of having to bring her back, and who sobbed in the sparkling clean MSKCC neuro ward hallway where other parents of too-young-to-die adult children paced forlornly.

“Jim has been the best,” Lizzie texted after the surgery. “I wish you a great first husband. That might be all you need.”

They had, in fact, not divorced. The papers were signed, but not filed. He was her husband until the end, during the final days after it was clear no further interventions would work, when she lay still in bed in what was by then her at least fifth different hospital room, for all the world the image of a big-eyed Renaissance pieta looking heavenward.

“Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer,” she had texted after the first surgery. “And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight.”

She spent her whole life fighting — fighting her parents, society, the patriarchy, social conventions, addiction, depression. But man, did she live big. She had a gift for building love into her life and at the end, her friends built a cocoon of love around her.

And on the morning of January 7, 2020, she was, as she had prayed, released.

[bloojayoolie]

Alive, America, and Another One: 51% 1:01 PM Replies Try watching her live and not propaganda u can't be serious Like Reply 2h I've seen her live, what's the problem? Give me specifics to what makes her bad. 2h Like Reply she nodded her head to eating babies Haha Reply 2h I'm not going to entertain this argument ur clearly insane bro Like Reply 2h I'm insane for asking for source backed facts? Like Reply 2h I'm not going to waste my time on this. She insane and will lose her next election because people aren't stupid Like Reply 2h solid arguement, I now see the error of my ways and will change my stance and views. 2h Like Reply u agree with a baby killer 3rd trimester abortions? 2h Like Reply Congratulations bro I'm happy for u Like Reply 2h One day I hope u look back at ur idiotic views when u have children and be as disgusted as we are with u. When u see that growing human inside ur wife just think of ur views then give me a call. When u feel that baby moving inside her, u come talk to me and tell me u stand for this 3rd fucking trimester abortions. That's disgusting. 2h Like Reply I'm pro choice and you clearly didnt read her stance or understand others'. 3rd trimester abortions are some times required because the health of the baby and mother is at risk. I hope no one ever has to go through such a horrible situation but if they do I hope they have the choice to decide instead of people like you shunning them for personal beliefs and restricting them through the... See More Like Reply 2h u know who the founder of ur pro choice views is? The same woman who wants to eliminate you. She invented planned parenthood to kill Hispanics blacks all minorities yet all u do is promote it, and u will "never" make me feel bad for supporting a baby's life. I don't care what u say woman's rights blah blah blah in my eyes ur all disgusting killers. A woman deciding she has the right t... See More Like Reply 1h Don't worry I got propaganda too 1h Like Reply so you're not pro choice? Or you're against 3rd trimester abortions? Like Reply 1h I'm against a program that was designed to kill minorities. I believe life starts at the heart beat of 6 weeks if it takes a woman longer then that to change her mind it's too late. I believe in the day after pill and I'm not a complete nut job people make mistakes but u don't get to decide after the baby is living Like Reply 1h Go watch a video of abortion survivors and listen to there stories Like Reply 1h I've listened to abortion survivors talk about how they had to get illegal abortions because their state outlawed them. I've also listened to abortion survivors talk about the extremely difficult choice they had to make when they had to choose between their own health or the CHANCE of their baby being born. Like Reply 1h no I'm talking about survivors the fucking baby Like Reply 53m Not the mothers Like Reply 53m U use these word to justify murder it's okay whatever makes u feel above everyone elseI don't care it should be illegal and the mother should rot in prison Like Reply 50m dude if I had been aborted you wanna know how many fucks I'd give? None. I would have zero recollection of ever being born or anything ever happening. I also dont feel above anyone for any of my beliefs but sure go on with your empty accusations. Like Reply 45m That does not justify abortion 44m Like Reply Im defending a defenseless baby ur defending what? Like Reply 44m Because u don't remember it it's okay? Like Reply 43m So mean I don't remember being 2 yrs old? So who cares if my parents killed me then? Like Reply 42m This ideology is murder. There's no argument u can ever make Like Reply 41m there is actually a large arguement I can make. You act as if I'm the only one that is pro-CHOICE Like Reply 40m No one is pro choice Like Reply 40m Ur pro-MURDER Like Reply 40m say it and be proud Like Reply 39m I've already said it... I'M PRO-CHOICE 38m Like Reply One day u will see, more and more people are changing away from ur ideology it's okay only time will tell Like Reply 36m I hope u never get robbed of ur child 36m Like Reply is there actual evidence to prove that people are changing their ideology on abortion or is this another one of your "facts. Like Reply 35m the polls Like Reply 34m California and New York don't run America pal Like Reply 34m http://www.pewresearch org/topics/abortion/ PEWRESEARCH.ORG Research Center Abortion Like Reply 32m what polls are you talking about? Like Reply 32m U believe every on the internet? Like Reply 31m A Democrat will not be president in 2020 because ur all insane 31m Like Reply If u truly believe life doesn't start after a heart beat idk why I'm talking to u 30m Like Reply that's funny because I think trump has a huge chance to win because you're all inside. This picking and choosing of what is and isnt a fact is hard to follow. Who amI supposed to believe according to you? How is it that everyone has the wrong information but you somehow found all the right one? 28m Like Reply You enjoy ur pro-murder life style and one day it will effect you and destroy you But no it's not effecting u now so ur pro choice it's okay Like Reply 28m I think for myself not the bias internet 28m Like Reply I get my facts from .gov not paid off websites 28m Like Reply ok so you do have sources? Why dont you ever share them when I ask? Like Reply 27m I can clearly see from personal experiences that the baby is alive Like Reply 27m I don't need the internet to reassure me that my son is alive Like Reply 27m I'm happy that you had a healthy baby and pregnancy but not everyone does. Also, I was talking about your .Gov sources. Why don't you ever share those? Like Reply 25m Ur not going to turn this around on me over a website source l just stated I don't need the internet to reassure me. My sources use is bls.gov and Congress.gov but that's not for abortion I don't need a website to tell me it's wrong I have common sense. BLS.GOV U.S. Bureau of Labor EN Statistics 23m Like Reply Margaret Sanger is who ur backing, I'm not the one defending a woman who made a program to kill my own people Like Reply 21m It's okay to get an abortion but no it's not okay to drink liquor or do drugs? But pro choice it's her body who cares let her shoot heroin while carrying a baby. Who cares if the kids mentally disabled now it's not me. It's not my child. It's her body Like Reply 19m That's fucking insane. And u keep repeating that the woman could die from the birth. Special situations don't justify every situation Like Reply 17m you see how you're not listening but instead creating your own argument? I never said any of those things. I'm pro-choice because understand that there are situations in which women have to make unthinkable choices. Some of those are medical some are personal. We definitely believe life begins at different times so we'll just have to disagree there. But if someone decides to have an... See More Like Reply 13m when does life begin? Have u seen pictures of abortion? Do u know how it's done? Like Reply 8m This is okay? Like Reply бт бm Like Reply U stand witha congresswoman who supports that Like Reply 5m if there was something medically wrong then yes I'm perfectly fine with that. Did you miss my comment about abortion time frame? Refer to that. Like Reply 1m Someone is writing a comment... Write a reply.. GIF He deleted everything after I asked if I could could post it for internet points.

[randoreviews]

DEMOCRATIC DEBATE

     “Hello, America... I’m Ted Todd... Good evening...”      “And I’m Savannah Carolina.”      “Hi, Savannah, good to see you, by the way.”      “Hi Ted...”      “Let’s get right to it. The candidates will be asked questions of today, for which they will be given ten seconds to respond.”      “Yes, since we have twenty-seven candidates on the stage tonight...”      (Shows group of candidates milling around on the stage, a small hoard of them)      “... the jerseys they’re wearing are so that we can just say their numbers and not waste the time using their full names.”      “Right you are, Savannah.”      (Each candidate is seen in the same navy blue jersey and shorts, with American flag logos and differentiating numbers... a few of them are wearing headbands... one candidate in the back gives another a piece of gum)      “With each of the candidates please keeping brevity in mind, first question from me, Ted Todd... Howwouldyousolvetheissuesontheborderifyouhadtwomonthstodoit... Number 4, the lady from Minnesota, go!      “Thankyouforthatquestion... ahh, ahh... as you can see from my track record I’ve proven that I can reach across the aisle...”      “Time’s up! Stop talking!”      “... and make those really hard decisions together.”      “I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH! Number 17! From Ohio! How would you solve global warming in the next two years?! GO!”      “Thank you. I can appreciate that question because my father, who served in the navy, died of global warming, and my mother had to try to make ends meet for two young kids, me and my brother. She worked in a button factory...”      “Shush it!”      “She always made sure we had enough buttons.”      “Ohio! Shoosh! Number 8, from New Mexico, you have three days to turn Mitch McConnell into a person with a conscience. Go! Now! Talk!”      “Thank you for that. I like your necklace, by the way, Savannah.”      “No compliments of any kind! Go!”      “Mitch McConnell...”      “End! You used your ten seconds complimenting Savannah’s necklace!”      “Number 1! How will you beat the evil Trump and swing some of those misogynistic male votes and self-loathing female votes your way this election? Speak your piece!”      “That’s a great question, and you know, may I say...”      “No you may not! 26! Is Time’s Up for Me Too? Go!”      “Like what does that... you mean like...”      “IS TIME’S UP FOR ME TOO!?”      “I thought they were tryna... work together...”      “You’re out!”      (Candidate jogs off crowded stage)      “Number 27! The gentleman from Washington! How super easy would you make it for women to get an abortion? Now!”      “Thank you.”      (Another candidate starts talking)      “I’ve actually personally given an abortion, as the Mayor of New York...”      “No, Number 19! NO! Not your turn! Bad! Bad you!”      “I’m sorry Ted Todd” (he says quickly and quietly)      “Number 27! Look alive!”      “Thank you. I believe in a woman’s biological freedom of truth...”      “Full stop! All right, we’re gonna swing it over to our two colleagues at another table thirty feet to our right!”      (Camera goes from one table to the other, all the candidates change from one direction to the other, in a herd)      “Hi, I’m Rachel Maddow.”      “And I’m Pete Pot. Hi, Rachel, how are we tonight? Good to see you.”      “Good to see you, my friend Pete Pot.”      “Hi Rachel.”      “Let’s begin. Number 3. Don’t you think it’s a bit hard to believe the Trump administration didn’t collude with Russia?”      “Do I have time to respond, Rachel?”      “You now have four seconds, Number 3.”      “Ah! Then my answer is yes! Also go to my website, stamps dot com! We have all the stamps for you, and you’ll see me elaborate on my positions in a way that I don’t really say anythi..!”      (Security guard-type guy walks onstage and tases the candidate, who falls to the ground... the other candidates make a small space for him while still looking at the two question-askers)      “Your time was up.”      “Yes, it was, Rachel. Number 5! The lady from Hawaii! You have a military background and a stern face and are pretty! How would you fix healthcare in five days!? And will you have a drink with me after this?! Oh, are our mics... can you hear our..”      “I’ll trade you a HJ for your vote” (comes through garbled from Number 5)      (Pete Pot snaps his head up to look at her while still holding his hand to his ear piece)      “Are we... can we... can you...”      “Is this Russian collusion?”      “We’re gonna take a quick break to fix our audio issues, we’ll be back in fourteen seconds...”      (As they’re going to break, Pete Pot is heard saying, “How the hell do we put a person on the moon and this happens”)      (Coming back from a Stamps.com commercial)      “Hello... Sorry about that... Rachel Maddow here... Trump, was that you doing that? Messing with our mics? Suck my balls, Garfield.”      (A candidate is seen going through the shorts pockets of the tased, felled candidate)      “Joe Biden! Number 10! I see you!”      “Turpentine!” (pops up)      “You mind your manners back there!”      “Feldspar, I say!”      “Number 10! Now stop!”      “Beta O’Rourke, huh? Beta O’Rourke. Just cuz he’s got a weird name he thinks he can win. Well you can’t stop the sun from shining, and you can’t stop a teapot from spouting...”      (A sad candidate looks at him)      “Number 10!”      (A giant screen comes on behind the candidates, showing a giant Trump face... They all turn and look, awash in orange light)      “Democrats...”      (Rachel Maddow spontaneously combusts with rage, her glasses falling onto the table)      “I will eat you... badly... more...”      (Trump hand adjusts the camera to beside him and shows Kim Jong-un’s face, eating popcorn)      “Uh-huh-hoo-ha-ha-ha-ha!”      “Ahhahaha!” (they laugh together)      “MUA-HA-HOO-HAHAHAHAHAHA!”      (Screen ceases... after an instant the room falls into a riot... Biden wraps himself in the American flag and makes a grand gesture before disappearing into the secret tunnels of the theater, a la Phantom of the Opera)      “This is Pete Pot! Reporting from Miami!” (he’s being tossed around on top of the crowd, hand now gripping onto his ear piece, people tearing at his clothes and untying his shoes and socks) “We’ll be right back here tomorrow night with twenty-nine more Democratic candidates! Same rules apply! And if I don’t make it... Oh god, oh god... tell my kids I love them and that the future belongs to them!”      (Broadcast cuts out)

[itsfinancethings]

October 13, 2019 at 10:01AM

(BATON ROUGE, La.) — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ quest for a second term as the Deep South’s only Democratic governor will stretch over another month, as voters denied him an outright primary win Saturday and sent him to a runoff election.

The incumbent’s inability to top 50% of the vote in the six-candidate field raised questions about his reelection chances against a national Republican offensive that includes President Donald Trump. Trump made a last-minute appeal to Louisiana’s voters to reject Edwards.

Edwards will compete in the Nov. 16 runoff against Eddie Rispone, a Baton Rouge businessman and longtime GOP political donor making his first bid for public office. Rispone largely self-financed his campaign, capturing second place after outspending fellow Republican contender U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham 5-to-1.

“We’ve got a little more work to do,” Edwards told supporters Saturday night. He added: “My fellow Louisianans, we are not going backward. That is exactly what Eddie Rispone would have us do. He wants to put us right back on the path that led us into the ditch.”

Rispone said Abraham called to congratulate him and offer his support.

“With your prayers, we’re going to win. This is just the first step,” Rispone told cheering supporters. “We’re going to turn this state around.”

Five Republican statewide elected officials on the ballot won reelection: Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, Attorney General Jeff Landry, Treasurer John Schroder, Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain and Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin was forced into a runoff.

Trump took credit for keeping Edwards from an outright victory, saying in a tweet that Edwards “has done a poor job. NOW HE IS IN A RUNOFF WITH A GREAT REPUBLICAN, @EddieRispone. Thank you Louisiana!” He claimed Edwards’ support fell “after I explained what a bad job the Governor was doing.”

National Republicans bombarded Louisiana with advertising and get-out-the-vote events to keep Edwards below 50%, with Trump making a last-minute, in-person appeal to Louisiana’s voters. Three other lesser-known contenders also ran.

The Republican anti-Edwards onslaught is expected to intensify.

“Prepare yourselves,” Edwards told his supporters. “Over the next five weeks, the partisan forces in Washington, D.C., are going to pull out all the stops.”

Republicans are seeking to prove that Edwards’ longshot victory in 2015 was a fluke, aided by a flawed GOP opponent, David Vitter, who was hobbled by a prostitution scandal.

Democrats want an Edwards reelection win to show they can compete in a state Trump won by 20 points.

But the 53-year-old Edwards isn’t exactly a Democrat in the national mold.

The West Point graduate and former Army Ranger opposes gun restrictions, talks of working well with the Trump administration and calls the U.S. House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry a distraction to governing in Washington. He signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans.

Edwards sought to make the election a referendum on his performance.

He contrasted three recent years of budget surpluses with the deficit-riddled terms of his predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal. Edwards and the majority-GOP state Legislature passed a tax deal that stabilized state finances and allowed for new investments in public colleges and the first statewide teacher raise in a decade.

He expanded Medicaid, adding nearly a half-million new people to government-financed health care and lowering the state’s uninsured rate below the national average. A bipartisan criminal sentencing law rewrite he championed ended Louisiana’s tenure as the nation’s top jailer.

Barbara Bacot, a retired state employee, said she voted for Edwards.

“He has done a very good job in the teeth of opposition from people who should know better. You can’t lower taxes and run a good state,” she said at her Baton Rouge polling place.

Republicans said Edwards raised taxes too high, stifling economic development and chasing people from Louisiana. The GOP contenders said the Medicaid expansion was rife with abuse, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, and they sought to tie Edwards to national Democratic leaders.

Rispone, 70, founder of a Baton Rouge industrial contracting company, presented himself in the mold of Trump, describing himself as a conservative outsider who would upend the traditional political system of Baton Rouge.

“We need a CEO, someone with serious business experience,” Rispone told supporters. “Both sides of the aisle have failed you. It’s time to do something different.”

He pledged to hold a state constitutional convention to rewrite provisions dealing with the budget and taxes, state employee protections and education, though he provided few specifics. He promised to cut taxes, though it was unclear how he would balance the budget with less money even as he talked of new spending on early childhood education and roadwork.

Voter Barbie Edwards said she supported Rispone because “he’s a good businessman. He’d be a good businessman for the state like Trump is for the country.”

Rispone ran a nontraditional campaign, with less parade-going and handshaking. The multimillionaire instead focused on digital and TV advertising, pouring $11 million of his own money into the race.

The effort successfully drowned out advertising by Abraham, a doctor and farmer in his third term in Congress.

[wetrumpfeed]

Afternoon MAGAthread: YOUR WEEKLY PRESIDENTIAL RECAP!

HAPPY SATURDAY PATRIOTS!

This is u/Ivaginaryfriend here and I'm back with all things spicy and dank from the past week! For those that missed any past recaps you can check those out here!

Sunday, January 27th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID! @foxandfriends

We are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country. So ridiculous! DHS

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, just stated that because of me NATO has been able to raise far more money than ever before from its members after many years of decline. It’s called burden sharing. Also, more united. Dems & Fake News like to portray the opposite!

(Retweeting ChatByCC) Strong people stand up for themselves—but stronger people stand up for others. Thank you President @realDonaldTrump for standing up for America.

Thank you to Brit. This is a very big deal in Europe. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!

(Retweeting Ken Paxton) VOTER FRAUD ALERT: The @TXsecofstate discovered approx 95,000 individuals identified by DPS as non-U.S. citizens have a matching voter registration record in TX, approx 58,000 of whom have voted in TX elections. Any illegal vote deprives Americans of their voice.

(Retweeting The GOP) “300 people are dying from heroin overdoses a week in this country, 90% of it is coming over the southern border… We’ve got to stop it.”—@KellyannePolls

#HolocaustMemorialDay

BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL!

Never thought I’d say this but I think @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner @FoxNews have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC! Look to final results! Don’t know how my poll numbers are so good, especially up 19% with Hispanics?

After all that I have done for the Military, our great Veterans, Judges (99), Justices (2), Tax & Regulation Cuts, the Economy, Energy, Trade & MUCH MORE, does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL? Done more in first two years than any President! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Aaaaahaha, Wikileaks putting NYT in their place.

r/politics is propaganda. Their target is us.

Kamala Harris literally prostituted her body to obtain positions of power within the United States government. Then she joined the #MeToo movement and accused Kavanaugh of being a rapist. Now she’s running for President

This is an actual tweet by an actual congressman.... Mark Dice throwing a little shade

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

In Their Heads. 24/7. Rent Free.

Leftist Are Trash.

Interesting

saw this on the pole of a stoplight down the street from my house, right in front of the elementary school

Monday, January 28th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Executive Order on Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency with Respect to Venezuela

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Tariffs on the “dumping” of Steel in the United States have totally revived our Steel Industry. New and expanded plants are happening all over the U.S. We have not only saved this important industry, but created many jobs. Also, billions paid to our treasury. A BIG WIN FOR U.S.

Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

“In the Media’s effort to destroy the President, they are actually destroying themselves. Given all of the tremendous headwinds this President has faced, it’s amazing he has accomplished so much.” DEROY MURDOCK @foxandfriends I agree!

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam. An embarrassment to our Country!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

'We don't want open borders': Hispanic pastors back President Trump on immigration

NATO increases spending by $100B due to Trump calling them delinquents

'They Treated Me Like El Chapo': Roger Stone Recounts 'Over-the-Top' Arrest | This arrest is such an outrage... Mueller must go!!!

BOOM!!!!! Federal Panel Of Judges Dismisses All 83 Ethics Complaints Against Brett Kavanaugh!

State of the Union address rescheduled for February 5

Border Patrol Wife Invites Speaker Pelosi to See Why Walls Are Needed

PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:

Press Beating

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Just a reminder that Reddit intentionally silences the political speech of 700,000 supporters of the President of the United States

Has anyone seen Ruth?

Accurate as hell

This is why I like a small federal government.

Tuesday, January 29th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction. He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is a mess!

“Our economy, right now, is the Gold Standard throughout the World.” @IngrahamAngle So true, and not even close!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

GOOSEBUMPS

Soon to be Fired Johns Hopkins Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry: Transgenderism is a “mental disorder”, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.

Tucker Carlson: Roger Stone raid shows that CNN is no longer covering Robert Mueller. They're working with him

Twitter Says Advising Fired Journalists to 'Learn to Code' Is Hate Speech. But when reporters were mocking out of work coal miners and manufacturing workers the same way it was okay

LMAO - Nancy and Cryin' Chuck's choice for the Dems' SOTU response is a tax delinquent with nearly $200k in unpaid college debt.

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Al Gore's 10 year Climate Change Challenge

WHERE'S RUTH?

Total disaster

Yikes

Where in the World, is Ruth Bader Ginsberg?

Wednesday, January 30th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Two Nominations Sent to the Senate

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Judicial Nominees

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Maduro willing to negotiate with opposition in Venezuela following U.S. sanctions and the cutting off of oil revenues. Guaido is being targeted by Venezuelan Supreme Court. Massive protest expected today. Americans should not travel to Venezuela until further notice.

When I became President, ISIS was out of control in Syria & running rampant. Since then tremendous progress made, especially over last 5 weeks. Caliphate will soon be destroyed, unthinkable two years ago. Negotiating are proceeding well in Afghanistan after 18 years of fighting.. ... ....Fighting continues but the people of Afghanistan want peace in this never ending war. We will soon see if talks will be successful? North Korea relationship is best it has ever been with U.S. No testing, getting remains, hostages returned. Decent chance of Denuclearization... ... ...Time will tell what will happen with North Korea, but at the end of the previous administration, relationship was horrendous and very bad things were about to happen. Now a whole different story. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un shortly. Progress being made-big difference!

If the committee of Republicans and Democrats now meeting on Border Security is not discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time!

“Three separate caravans marching to our Border. The numbers are tremendous.” @foxandfriends

The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but.... ... ....a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!

Dow just broke 25,000. Tremendous news!

Spoke today with Venezuelan Interim President Juan Guaido to congratulate him on his historic assumption of the presidency and reinforced strong United States support for Venezuela’s fight to regain its democracy.... ... ....Large protests all across Venezuela today against Maduro. The fight for freedom has begun!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

JUST IN: Woman who sexually assaulted Infowars reporter has been arrested.

Brad Parscale on Twitter: "Where it counts @realDonaldTrump is stronger than 2016. The fake news establishment media is not fooling these voters."

NO SHIT SHERLOCK ...

This is insanity. Seems like advocating for Post Term Abortion AKA MURDER by any standard I’m aware of. The only thing worse than what the Democrat Governor of VA said was the fact that there’s zero pushback from the host.

Trump slams Virginia Democrats over 'terrible' abortion stance

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Book burnings don't always look like this...

Lion King (NY Progressive Remaster, 2019)

I'm afraid that 2019 is the year that the Supreme Court is going to be RUTHLESS

Judge Orders Release Of Sealed Records From BuzzFeed’s Dossier Lawsuit

Anytime some media company tries to run some sensational headline about MAGA being violent..new rule..always wait 3 days to get the real story.

Thursday, January 31st:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Appointments for the Executive Office of the President

Executive Order on Strengthening Buy-American Preferences for Infrastructure Projects

President Trump's Message on Securing our Border

President Trump Meets with American Manufacturers and Signs an Executive Order

President Trump Meets with the Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

So great to watch & listen to all these people who write books & talk about my presidential campaign and so many others things related to winning, and how I should be doing “IT.” As I take it all in, I then sit back, look around, & say “gee, I’m in the White House, & they’re not!

Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!

Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!

With Murders up 33% in Mexico, a record, why wouldn’t any sane person want to build a Wall! Construction has started and will not stop until it is finished. @LouDobbs @foxandfriends

China’s top trade negotiators are in the U.S. meeting with our representatives. Meetings are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides. China does not want an increase in Tariffs and feels they will do much better if they make a deal. They are correct. I will be...... ... ....meeting with their top leaders and representatives today in the Oval Office. No final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future to discuss and agree on some of the long standing and more difficult points. Very comprehensive transaction.... ... ....China’s representatives and I are trying to do a complete deal, leaving NOTHING unresolved on the table. All of the many problems are being discussed and will be hopefully resolved. Tariffs on China increase to 25% on March 1st, so all working hard to complete by that date!

Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are wasting their time. Democrats, despite all of the evidence, proof and Caravans coming, are not going to give money to build the DESPERATELY needed WALL. I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!

Democrats are becoming the Party of late term abortion, high taxes, Open Borders and Crime!

More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large Caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also. With a Wall it would be soooo much easier and less expensive. Being Built!

Looking for China to open their Markets not only to Financial Services, which they are now doing, but also to our Manufacturing, Farmers and other U.S. businesses and industries. Without this a deal would be unacceptable!

Schumer and the Democrats are big fans of being weak and passive with Iran. They have no clue as to the danger they would be inflicting on our Country. Iran is in financial chaos now because of the sanctions and Iran Deal termination. Dems put us in a bad place - but now good!

Very sadly, Murder cases in Mexico in 2018 rose 33% from 2017, to 33,341. This is a big contributor to the Humanitarian Crisis taking place on our Southern Border and then spreading throughout our Country. Worse even than Afghanistan. Much caused by DRUGS. Wall is being built!

(Video)

Just concluded a great meeting with my Intel team in the Oval Office who told me that what they said on Tuesday at the Senate Hearing was mischaracterized by the media - and we are very much in agreement on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, etc. Their testimony was distorted press.... ... ....I would suggest you read the COMPLETE testimony from Tuesday. A false narrative is so bad for our Country. I value our intelligence community. Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!

Our great U.S. Border Patrol Agents made the biggest Fentanyl bust in our Country’s history. Thanks, as always, for a job well done!

Just out: The big deal, very mysterious Don jr telephone calls, after the innocent Trump Tower meeting, that the media & Dems said were made to his father (me), were just conclusively found NOT to be made to me. They were made to friends & business associates of Don. Really sad!

Nellie Ohr, the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was long ago investigating for pay (GPS Fusion) members of my family, feeding it to her husband who was then giving it to the FBI, even though it was created by ousted & discredited Christopher Steele. Illegal! WITCH HUNT

This Witch Hunt must end!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

President Trump warned us 2 years ago that the Democrat party would push for late term abortion.. watch Clinton accuse him of using "scare tactics"

"nO vOters, wE wOuLD NEVER dO tHAT" - 2 YEARS LATER ...

And they wonder why we call them NPC. Behold, the womanoid robot.

House Dems Reject GOP Proposal to Block Raises for Federal Employees Guilty of Sexual Misconduct. Vote was chaired by Democrat Tony Cardenas, who is accused of drugging teenage girl

Graham: We’re Getting Trump’s Ninth Circuit Nominees Confirmed

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Press that button!! You know you want to!

Roger Stone Explains How to Dress for Court

Ohio Passes Heartbeat Bill Which Bans Abortions After 6 Weeks

White people in Chicago at 2AM...

Friday, February 1st:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration Posts

President Trump Meets to Discuss Fighting Human Trafficking on the Southern Border

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

I inherited a total mess in Syria and Afghanistan, the “Endless Wars” of unlimited spending and death. During my campaign I said, very strongly, that these wars must finally end. We spend $50 Billion a year in Afghanistan and have hit them so hard that we are now talking peace... ... ....after 18 long years. Syria was loaded with ISIS until I came along. We will soon have destroyed 100% of the Caliphate, but will be watching them closely. It is now time to start coming home and, after many years, spending our money wisely. Certain people must get smart!

Best January for the DOW in over 30 years. We have, by far, the strongest economy in the world!

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!

Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!

(Retweeting The White House) "We added 304,000 jobs, which was a shocker to a lot of people. It wasn't a shocker to me."

Thank you to Senator Rob Portman and Senator Cory Gardner for the early and warm endorsement. We will ALL WIN in 2020 together!

National African American History Month is an occasion to rediscover the enduring stories of African Americans and the gifts of freedom, purpose, and opportunity they have bestowed on future generations..

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Governor Who Endorsed Infanticide Received $2 Million From Planned Parenthood

EMBARRASSING - Elizabeth Warren apologizes to Cherokee Nation over taking DNA test to prove Native American roots

Virginia Governor on Blast!!! @GovernorVA Are you the one in blackface or the one in the KKK hood?

Very Fake News CNN falsely labels Northam a Republican.

REMINDER: Cory Booker Groped Someone In High School and Wrote an Op-Ed About It. Then Tried to Destroy Kavanaugh's Life. Fuck Him.

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

If Fake News Journalists need help coding, I know a guy.

YUGE difference between President Trump and Ralph Northam!

u/Daniel_Wat posted this in r/dankmemes

Northamsgone

New Planned Parenthood Ad Campaign is looking lit 🔥👽

Saturday, February 2nd:

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

(D)Ralph Northam now claims he is neither the blackface or KKK person in his yearbook photo...ok...so why was his nickname “Coonman”?

Planned Parenthood receives about $500,000,000 a year in taxpayer funds. In the most recent election, Planned Parenthood helped contribute $30,000,000 to Democrat’s campaigns. Democrat politicians are buying campaign contributions with your hard-earned money. It’s a corrupt money laundering cycle.

The greatest jobs President America has ever seen! MAGAnomics – January Jobs Report, Massive Wage Growth, Manufacturing Report and Overall Economic Numbers Stun Financial Media…

Don Jr. is a certified spice dealer

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

The two parties in a nutshell.

Quick Shills are up early. Post pics that make them realize they have no charisma or class

“And I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling Republicans!”

Definitely not the most convincing apology I have ever seen.

WHAT A SPICY WEEK!

Of course no recap is complete without some tunes for your jamming pleasures:

I'll Keep You Safe

World On Fire

One Dance

It's Strange

Right To It

Imagine

MAGA ON PATRIOTS!

submitted by /u/Ivaginaryfriend [link] [comments]

[robgrayofficial]

HAPPY SATURDAY PATRIOTS!This is u/Ivaginaryfriend here and I'm back with all things spicy and dank from the past week! For those that missed any past recaps you can check those out here!Sunday, January 27th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID! @foxandfriendsWe are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country. So ridiculous! DHSJens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, just stated that because of me NATO has been able to raise far more money than ever before from its members after many years of decline. It’s called burden sharing. Also, more united. Dems & Fake News like to portray the opposite!(Retweeting ChatByCC) Strong people stand up for themselves—but stronger people stand up for others. Thank you President @realDonaldTrump for standing up for America.Thank you to Brit. This is a very big deal in Europe. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!(Retweeting Ken Paxton) VOTER FRAUD ALERT: The @TXsecofstate discovered approx 95,000 individuals identified by DPS as non-U.S. citizens have a matching voter registration record in TX, approx 58,000 of whom have voted in TX elections. Any illegal vote deprives Americans of their voice.(Retweeting The GOP) “300 people are dying from heroin overdoses a week in this country, 90% of it is coming over the southern border… We’ve got to stop it.”—@KellyannePolls#HolocaustMemorialDayBUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL!Never thought I’d say this but I think @johnrobertsFox and @GillianHTurner @FoxNews have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC! Look to final results! Don’t know how my poll numbers are so good, especially up 19% with Hispanics?After all that I have done for the Military, our great Veterans, Judges (99), Justices (2), Tax & Regulation Cuts, the Economy, Energy, Trade & MUCH MORE, does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL? Done more in first two years than any President! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Aaaaahaha, Wikileaks putting NYT in their place.r/politics is propaganda. Their target is us.Kamala Harris literally prostituted her body to obtain positions of power within the United States government. Then she joined the #MeToo movement and accused Kavanaugh of being a rapist. Now she’s running for PresidentThis is an actual tweet by an actual congressman.... Mark Dice throwing a little shade🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:In Their Heads. 24/7. Rent Free.Leftist Are Trash.Interestingsaw this on the pole of a stoplight down the street from my house, right in front of the elementary schoolMonday, January 28th:TODAY'S ACTION:Executive Order on Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency with Respect to Venezuela🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Tariffs on the “dumping” of Steel in the United States have totally revived our Steel Industry. New and expanded plants are happening all over the U.S. We have not only saved this important industry, but created many jobs. Also, billions paid to our treasury. A BIG WIN FOR U.S.Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!“In the Media’s effort to destroy the President, they are actually destroying themselves. Given all of the tremendous headwinds this President has faced, it’s amazing he has accomplished so much.” DEROY MURDOCK @foxandfriends I agree!In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam. An embarrassment to our Country!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:'We don't want open borders': Hispanic pastors back President Trump on immigrationNATO increases spending by $100B due to Trump calling them delinquents'They Treated Me Like El Chapo': Roger Stone Recounts 'Over-the-Top' Arrest | This arrest is such an outrage... Mueller must go!!!BOOM!!!!! Federal Panel Of Judges Dismisses All 83 Ethics Complaints Against Brett Kavanaugh!State of the Union address rescheduled for February 5Border Patrol Wife Invites Speaker Pelosi to See Why Walls Are NeededPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Beating🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Just a reminder that Reddit intentionally silences the political speech of 700,000 supporters of the President of the United StatesHas anyone seen Ruth?Accurate as hellThis is why I like a small federal government.Tuesday, January 29th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction. He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is a mess!“Our economy, right now, is the Gold Standard throughout the World.” @IngrahamAngle So true, and not even close!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:GOOSEBUMPSSoon to be Fired Johns Hopkins Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry: Transgenderism is a “mental disorder”, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.Tucker Carlson: Roger Stone raid shows that CNN is no longer covering Robert Mueller. They're working with himTwitter Says Advising Fired Journalists to 'Learn to Code' Is Hate Speech. But when reporters were mocking out of work coal miners and manufacturing workers the same way it was okayLMAO - Nancy and Cryin' Chuck's choice for the Dems' SOTU response is a tax delinquent with nearly $200k in unpaid college debt.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Al Gore's 10 year Climate Change ChallengeWHERE'S RUTH?Total disasterYikesWhere in the World, is Ruth Bader Ginsberg?Wednesday, January 30th:TODAY'S ACTION:Two Nominations Sent to the SenatePresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Judicial Nominees🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Maduro willing to negotiate with opposition in Venezuela following U.S. sanctions and the cutting off of oil revenues. Guaido is being targeted by Venezuelan Supreme Court. Massive protest expected today. Americans should not travel to Venezuela until further notice.When I became President, ISIS was out of control in Syria & running rampant. Since then tremendous progress made, especially over last 5 weeks. Caliphate will soon be destroyed, unthinkable two years ago. Negotiating are proceeding well in Afghanistan after 18 years of fighting.. ... ....Fighting continues but the people of Afghanistan want peace in this never ending war. We will soon see if talks will be successful? North Korea relationship is best it has ever been with U.S. No testing, getting remains, hostages returned. Decent chance of Denuclearization... ... ...Time will tell what will happen with North Korea, but at the end of the previous administration, relationship was horrendous and very bad things were about to happen. Now a whole different story. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un shortly. Progress being made-big difference!If the committee of Republicans and Democrats now meeting on Border Security is not discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time!“Three separate caravans marching to our Border. The numbers are tremendous.” @foxandfriendsThe Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but.... ... ....a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!Dow just broke 25,000. Tremendous news!Spoke today with Venezuelan Interim President Juan Guaido to congratulate him on his historic assumption of the presidency and reinforced strong United States support for Venezuela’s fight to regain its democracy.... ... ....Large protests all across Venezuela today against Maduro. The fight for freedom has begun!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:JUST IN: Woman who sexually assaulted Infowars reporter has been arrested.Brad Parscale on Twitter: "Where it counts @realDonaldTrump is stronger than 2016. The fake news establishment media is not fooling these voters."NO SHIT SHERLOCK ...This is insanity. Seems like advocating for Post Term Abortion AKA MURDER by any standard I’m aware of. The only thing worse than what the Democrat Governor of VA said was the fact that there’s zero pushback from the host.Trump slams Virginia Democrats over 'terrible' abortion stance🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Book burnings don't always look like this...Lion King (NY Progressive Remaster, 2019)I'm afraid that 2019 is the year that the Supreme Court is going to be RUTHLESSJudge Orders Release Of Sealed Records From BuzzFeed’s Dossier LawsuitAnytime some media company tries to run some sensational headline about MAGA being violent..new rule..always wait 3 days to get the real story.Thursday, January 31st:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Appointments for the Executive Office of the PresidentExecutive Order on Strengthening Buy-American Preferences for Infrastructure ProjectsPresident Trump's Message on Securing our BorderPresident Trump Meets with American Manufacturers and Signs an Executive OrderPresident Trump Meets with the Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:So great to watch & listen to all these people who write books & talk about my presidential campaign and so many others things related to winning, and how I should be doing “IT.” As I take it all in, I then sit back, look around, & say “gee, I’m in the White House, & they’re not!Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!With Murders up 33% in Mexico, a record, why wouldn’t any sane person want to build a Wall! Construction has started and will not stop until it is finished. @LouDobbs @foxandfriendsChina’s top trade negotiators are in the U.S. meeting with our representatives. Meetings are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides. China does not want an increase in Tariffs and feels they will do much better if they make a deal. They are correct. I will be...... ... ....meeting with their top leaders and representatives today in the Oval Office. No final deal will be made until my friend President Xi, and I, meet in the near future to discuss and agree on some of the long standing and more difficult points. Very comprehensive transaction.... ... ....China’s representatives and I are trying to do a complete deal, leaving NOTHING unresolved on the table. All of the many problems are being discussed and will be hopefully resolved. Tariffs on China increase to 25% on March 1st, so all working hard to complete by that date!Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are wasting their time. Democrats, despite all of the evidence, proof and Caravans coming, are not going to give money to build the DESPERATELY needed WALL. I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!Democrats are becoming the Party of late term abortion, high taxes, Open Borders and Crime!More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large Caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also. With a Wall it would be soooo much easier and less expensive. Being Built!Looking for China to open their Markets not only to Financial Services, which they are now doing, but also to our Manufacturing, Farmers and other U.S. businesses and industries. Without this a deal would be unacceptable!Schumer and the Democrats are big fans of being weak and passive with Iran. They have no clue as to the danger they would be inflicting on our Country. Iran is in financial chaos now because of the sanctions and Iran Deal termination. Dems put us in a bad place - but now good!Very sadly, Murder cases in Mexico in 2018 rose 33% from 2017, to 33,341. This is a big contributor to the Humanitarian Crisis taking place on our Southern Border and then spreading throughout our Country. Worse even than Afghanistan. Much caused by DRUGS. Wall is being built!(Video)Just concluded a great meeting with my Intel team in the Oval Office who told me that what they said on Tuesday at the Senate Hearing was mischaracterized by the media - and we are very much in agreement on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, etc. Their testimony was distorted press.... ... ....I would suggest you read the COMPLETE testimony from Tuesday. A false narrative is so bad for our Country. I value our intelligence community. Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!Our great U.S. Border Patrol Agents made the biggest Fentanyl bust in our Country’s history. Thanks, as always, for a job well done!Just out: The big deal, very mysterious Don jr telephone calls, after the innocent Trump Tower meeting, that the media & Dems said were made to his father (me), were just conclusively found NOT to be made to me. They were made to friends & business associates of Don. Really sad!Nellie Ohr, the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was long ago investigating for pay (GPS Fusion) members of my family, feeding it to her husband who was then giving it to the FBI, even though it was created by ousted & discredited Christopher Steele. Illegal! WITCH HUNTThis Witch Hunt must end!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:President Trump warned us 2 years ago that the Democrat party would push for late term abortion.. watch Clinton accuse him of using "scare tactics""nO vOters, wE wOuLD NEVER dO tHAT" - 2 YEARS LATER ...And they wonder why we call them NPC. Behold, the womanoid robot.House Dems Reject GOP Proposal to Block Raises for Federal Employees Guilty of Sexual Misconduct. Vote was chaired by Democrat Tony Cardenas, who is accused of drugging teenage girlGraham: We’re Getting Trump’s Ninth Circuit Nominees Confirmed🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Press that button!! You know you want to!Roger Stone Explains How to Dress for CourtOhio Passes Heartbeat Bill Which Bans Abortions After 6 WeeksWhite people in Chicago at 2AM...Friday, February 1st:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration PostsPresident Trump Meets to Discuss Fighting Human Trafficking on the Southern Border🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:I inherited a total mess in Syria and Afghanistan, the “Endless Wars” of unlimited spending and death. During my campaign I said, very strongly, that these wars must finally end. We spend $50 Billion a year in Afghanistan and have hit them so hard that we are now talking peace... ... ....after 18 long years. Syria was loaded with ISIS until I came along. We will soon have destroyed 100% of the Caliphate, but will be watching them closely. It is now time to start coming home and, after many years, spending our money wisely. Certain people must get smart!Best January for the DOW in over 30 years. We have, by far, the strongest economy in the world!JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!(Retweeting The White House) "We added 304,000 jobs, which was a shocker to a lot of people. It wasn't a shocker to me."Thank you to Senator Rob Portman and Senator Cory Gardner for the early and warm endorsement. We will ALL WIN in 2020 together!National African American History Month is an occasion to rediscover the enduring stories of African Americans and the gifts of freedom, purpose, and opportunity they have bestowed on future generations..SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Governor Who Endorsed Infanticide Received $2 Million From Planned ParenthoodEMBARRASSING - Elizabeth Warren apologizes to Cherokee Nation over taking DNA test to prove Native American rootsVirginia Governor on Blast!!! @GovernorVA Are you the one in blackface or the one in the KKK hood?Very Fake News CNN falsely labels Northam a Republican.REMINDER: Cory Booker Groped Someone In High School and Wrote an Op-Ed About It. Then Tried to Destroy Kavanaugh's Life. Fuck Him.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:If Fake News Journalists need help coding, I know a guy.YUGE difference between President Trump and Ralph Northam!u/Daniel_Wat posted this in r/dankmemesNorthamsgoneNew Planned Parenthood Ad Campaign is looking lit 🔥👽Saturday, February 2nd:SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:(D)Ralph Northam now claims he is neither the blackface or KKK person in his yearbook photo...ok...so why was his nickname “Coonman”?Planned Parenthood receives about $500,000,000 a year in taxpayer funds. In the most recent election, Planned Parenthood helped contribute $30,000,000 to Democrat’s campaigns. Democrat politicians are buying campaign contributions with your hard-earned money. It’s a corrupt money laundering cycle.The greatest jobs President America has ever seen! MAGAnomics – January Jobs Report, Massive Wage Growth, Manufacturing Report and Overall Economic Numbers Stun Financial Media…Don Jr. is a certified spice dealer🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:The two parties in a nutshell.Quick Shills are up early. Post pics that make them realize they have no charisma or class“And I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling Republicans!”Definitely not the most convincing apology I have ever seen.WHAT A SPICY WEEK!Of course no recap is complete without some tunes for your jamming pleasures:I'll Keep You SafeWorld On FireOne DanceIt's StrangeRight To ItImagineMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray

[democratsunited-blog]

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8088

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

CONWAY, Pa. — The rules are workable enough in the right hands, in the right corner of a right-leaning region of a state like this one.

Avoid the jacket-and-tie look, so voters — wary enough of Democrats — do not think they are looking at a Jehovah’s Witness. “That happened,” recalled Representative Conor Lamb, now in a polo shirt.

Pivot to safe subjects. After a local here loudly mocked the idea of “Russian collusion” with President Trump to a peer, Mr. Lamb, 34, moved in to introduce himself, telling the man (who said he was Russian) about falling in love with Russian cuisine when he was in the Marines.

And if all else fails — and it will, often — there is always prayer.

“I was reading a little Isaiah this morning,” Mr. Lamb said at a town festival recently, approaching Paul Strano, 69, whose hat read, “F.B.I.: Firm Believer In Jesus.” The two bowed their heads.

“A man of faith, backing the party of abortion, homosexual promotion,” Mr. Strano, a Trump supporter, said afterward. “But the man sold himself.” Mr. Lamb had his vote.

In his 2016 victory, Mr. Trump swiped several states that Democrats had assumed were theirs: Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida. But perhaps no outcome matched the psychic toll of losing Pennsylvania, where the past Democratic coalition of city-dwelling liberals, racial minorities and white working-class voters in union towns had long defined the party’s identity as a big-tent enterprise.

Two years later, a return to power — winning the House in November, winning the presidency in 2020 — will hinge in large measure on how effectively Democrats can peel off voters who migrated to Mr. Trump. The challenge is real: Unemployment in the state is below 5 percent, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating, while underwater over all in Pennsylvania, remains high among the Republicans who populate districts like Mr. Lamb’s. But in candidates like him and others across the state, national Democratic officials believe they have found a model, with a curious signature feature: Democrats in no rush to remind certain audiences that they are Democrats.

Best known for his special election victory in March in a district that the president carried by nearly 20 points, Mr. Lamb has sought to reach both college-educated suburbanites dismayed at Mr. Trump’s excesses and union workers who defected to Republicans in 2016, when the president won the state by less than a percentage point.

The balance is delicate. Mr. Lamb speaks of labor rights and economic fairness, in the Democratic tradition, but stakes out more conservative ground on social issues like guns. He begs off questions about national politics, but makes clear that he wants to see Nancy Pelosi replaced as the leader of House Democrats. He observes that “heroin kills both Democrats and Republicans,” the only mention of the D-word on his campaign website’s home page.

He claims to have few strong feelings about Mr. Trump’s job performance.

“I’m not real concerned about it,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview. (After the chat was over, he wanted another pass at the topic. “It’s not that I’m not concerned about job performance,” he clarified. “It’s that I don’t think it’s my role to be a speculator or analyst.”)

Other Democrats in Trump-supporting areas have tested their own modulated message. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Representative Matt Cartwright, whose district Mr. Trump won by 10 points, is quick to recall Democratic triumphs of generations past, like Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Social Security into law. Like Mr. Lamb, he emphasizes the need to secure affordable health coverage and tend to moldering roads and bridges. Unlike Mr. Lamb, he won his office by initially challenging a conservative incumbent Democrat from the left in a 2012 primary, declaring himself a member of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

But direct criticisms of the president have been relatively sparse. Though Mr. Cartwright, 57, said in an interview that he wished Mr. Trump would “act more presidential,” he reached for empathy when explaining his own constituents’ choices in 2016.

“They voted for the change candidate, and you do that when you are hurting,” he said. “And I try to remind them that it is the Democratic Party that cares about the people who are hurting more than any other party. And I say to myself, I have to redouble my own efforts because these are my people who are hurting.”

Across the state, candidates have been similarly introspective. Perpetually a bellwether — with bipartisan representation in the United States Senate currently and seesawing control of the governorship for decades — Pennsylvania has assumed an especially prominent place in the present political moment. Not only are Gov. Tom Wolf and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats, fighting to keep their seats this November, but congressional districts have been rendered more competitive under a redrawn map, making the state central to any Democratic path back to a House majority in Washington.

Mr. Wolf, a businessman from south central Pennsylvania, will face Scott Wagner, who owns a waste-hauling company and served in the State Senate. Mr. Casey — long an understated senator, now emitting more fire in the Trump age — is running against Representative Lou Barletta, an immigration hard-liner and early Trump supporter. Polls have shown both Democrats with double-digit leads, buoyed in part by deep antipathy toward Mr. Trump in urban areas — enough to make Mr. Casey entirely comfortable opposing Mr. Trump’s recent Supreme Court pick before his identity (Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh) was even revealed.

And under the redrawn map, several Democratic women are running in congressional districts that are either leaning in their favor or are solidly blue, including Madeleine Dean, Chrissy Houlahan and Mary Gay Scanlon in suburban Philadelphia, and Susan Wild in the Lehigh Valley. Democrats see at least a half-dozen potential pickup opportunities in the state this fall, when they will need to flip 23 seats nationwide to take back the House.

This jumbling of the boundary lines has also coincided with a wider upheaval in the state — demographically, economically, socially. Democrats have clustered ever more tightly in major cities. Pittsburgh, so synonymous with steel that the word lives in the name of its football team, has transformed into a haven of “eds and meds,” with greener medical complexes, a Google campus and a test track for autonomous cars.

A surge of immigrants has spawned resurgence and resentment in equal measure in some long-flagging labor towns, where blue-collar white voters have often felt left behind, their grievances reflected back in the racially-hued message and zero-sum populism of Mr. Trump.

“Two things can be true at the same time: There is xenophobia and nationalism and racist undertones,” said John Fetterman, the longtime mayor of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh, and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. “But there’s also people that are reachable.”

Often, success is as much a matter of emphasis as policy. Rick Bloomingdale, the president of the Pennsylvania A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that despite a “great economic plan” from Hillary Clinton in 2016, the piece of her platform that broke through most was “how awful Trump was.”

“People don’t want to hear you tell them how bad Trump is,” Mr. Bloomingdale said. “They either know or they don’t care.”

Though Democrats hope to erase the memory of Mrs. Clinton’s race statewide, regions like Mr. Lamb’s and Mr. Cartwright’s have been a particular focus of the political reclamation project. The party once ruled many of the labor strongholds of the southwest, where the river’s edge is pocked with brownfields and shuttered taverns and roadside sunflowers that tilt backward, like a boxer dodging a punch, when a truck cuts a curve too sharply.

And northeastern Pennsylvania has long carried particular significance for Democrats as a point of electoral pride in an increasingly cosmopolitan party. Mrs. Clinton’s father came from there, as she liked to tell her Pennsylvania crowds. She learned to shoot a gun, she said, at her family’s cottage on nearby Lake Winola. Mr. Casey is another Scranton man, like his father — a two-term Democratic governor — before him. So is former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., from whom Mr. Lamb said he learned a crucial lesson about grip-and-grin hustle at parades.

“I watched him do it once,” Mr. Lamb said. “He had to change his shirt afterward. That was the metric of success.”

So perhaps nowhere was Mr. Trump’s success more striking than across the northeastern ZIP codes where Democrats had long held firm. In Luzerne County, which includes Wilkes-Barre, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by five points; Mr. Trump won it by 19. In neighboring Lackawanna County, which includes Scranton, Mr. Obama won by 27 points; Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump there by only three.

Mr. Cartwright’s Republican opponent in the area is John Chrin, a former investment banker who has pumped more than $1.3 million into his campaign. Mr. Cartwright is seen as the favorite, but he is one of a small number of incumbent House Democrats nationwide whose races are viewed as competitive. A recent ad from Mr. Chrin’s campaign accuses Mr. Cartwright of supporting so-called sanctuary cities and “protecting criminals,” while also voting in lock step with Ms. Pelosi.

But the congressman has strained to avoid such typecasting as a liberal shill. Among other flourishes, he has been eager to share word of a new hobby with prospective voters: deer hunting.

“My job is to get to know people and learn about their passions,” he said in the interview.

There is another upside. “It helps me talk to Republican members of Congress, too,” Mr. Cartwright said. “It’s a nice way to say, ‘You know, I don’t hate you.’”

Some skeptical voters have commanded extra care from Mr. Cartwright and his team. Outside the bingo tent at a church bazaar in Tannersville, Mr. Cartwright encountered Duane Grady, a Trump voter who owns a home heating oil business and expressed fondness of the Republican tax cuts. He said he used to support Democrats.

“You heard it from Uncle Matt: We want you back, man,” Mr. Cartwright told him.

Soon after, a Cartwright campaign worker offered his own pitch to Mr. Grady. The congressman, he noted, does not support “open borders” or abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an idea that some liberal Democrats have embraced. (Last month, both Mr. Lamb and Mr. Cartwright voted for a symbolic resolution supporting I.C.E.)

“Don’t let that far left-wing fringe, like antifa and stuff like that, make you think that they control the entire party,” the worker said. “Don’t think that we all belong to that side.”

Mr. Grady, it turned out, lived outside of Mr. Cartwright’s district, but he is the sort of voter Democrats need just the same. And he remained ambivalent. “I’d love to go back,” he said of voting Democratic. “But they got to get a whole new wave in there.”

Mr. Lamb’s campaign has likewise required a hard sell at times. At a neighborhood parade in Bairdford — where a State Senate candidate passed out Steelers schedules with his face on the top — Mr. Lamb drew a mixed reception.

“Gripping and grinning,” a man grumbled from his folding chair as Mr. Lamb passed.

A baby began to cry. “I get that reaction from a lot of people,” Mr. Lamb said.

But Mr. Lamb, prone to sports metaphors and coaching wisdom, does not discourage easily. He recalled a quote attributed to Bill Russell, the basketball legend: “Hustle is a talent.” And often, voters seemed to remember him from the ubiquitous advertisements during his special election. This has made him at least as recognizable as his Republican opponent, Keith Rothfus, a three-term incumbent whose new district lines are far less favorable. (A recent poll showed Mr. Lamb with a solid lead.)

Some fellow Democratic candidates, eager to emulate Mr. Lamb’s performance in conservative-leaning districts, have reached out in recent months for advice. There is little to give, Mr. Lamb suggested.

“There really is no playbook or master plan or strategy,” he said.

But Mr. Lamb has pursued a hobby of his own, as needed.

When two seniors began dancing beside an inflatable bounce-house at the festival in Conway, Mr. Lamb joined them — all limbs and peer pressure — twisting and kicking to the beat.

“Are you allowed to just do whatever you want with your hands?” he asked, mid-shuffle.

Yes, he was told. There was no playbook or master plan or strategy.

Matt Flegenheimer reported from Conway, Pa., and Thomas Kaplan from Tannersville, Pa.

Read full story here

[theliterateape]

(micro) Chips On The Shoulders of the Collective and The Increasing Problem of the Moral High Ground

by Don Hall

I’m on the Blue Line, heading downtown to get to Millennium Park. I’m tired — it’s been a long week so far — so I’m standing amongst the other commuters, my shades still on, staring blankly toward the floor. I’m not really focusing on anything at all and I’m sort of just drifting into my brain when I hear:

“They’re legs.”

Not assuming it is directed at me, I stay focused on nothing in particular.

“Hey! They’re legs! Surely you’ve seen legs before! Stop staring at me, you creep!”

I look up and she is directing it at me.

Maybe 25 years old, wearing a skirt, and she has come to the conclusion that I was giving her the once over or the long stare at her uncovered gams. I’m caught slightly off guard (and I’m fucking tired) so I mumble, “…No. Sorry. Uhm, I wasn’t…”

“Do you know what it’s like to be a woman on the train? Do you even care?”

She goes into a tirade about being harassed every day by assholes like me. For 20 minutes she drones on and on about her level of discomfort and the toxic masculinity she has to endure. Because I’ve decided to just stay quiet — I could never even come close to explaining that I wasn’t even aware of her until she started barking at me let alone convince her otherwise — she gets angrier. I turn away. 

“I’m talking to you! Don’t turn away from me!”

I turn back around to face her. “Don’t LOOK at me!” she yells. She’s now yelling. 

According to her, this is yet one more brick in her #MeToo shithouse. She calls me a stalker. She calls me predatory.

The people in the closest range are all looking into their phones as if the fucking secret recipe to Popeye’s Chicken lies within and then it’s my stop. I walk past her without saying a word and head to the street.

I get it. We’re in what we call a “corrective phase” in society. The pendulum has been stuck in the Male Gaze is Normal and Women are Fodder for the Dick for so goddamned long that we are pushing things hard to the other side. While tired and kind of checked out on the ‘L’ I’m not dense. I’m also not one of those unicorns out there who miraculously changes his behavior because I was barked at about it on a train.

On that note, I’d love for anyone reading this who is one of those unicorns to chime in and tell me how and why because I legitimately don’t know how that works for someone.

From a recent Faceborg thread:

“Republicans are going to mop the floor with us if this keeps up... valuing anger-release over effectiveness & impact is toxic.”

“Right, right, it will be our fault. Your somewhat lazily-constructed, blanket statement encouraging us all to be quiet yet somehow effective little mice, betrays your desire to cower in the corner when they finally come to knock at *your* door looking to take your last crumble of cheese.”

“Anger is like fire - we can use it to burn ourselves, or we can use it to build. Stuff like this puts it in the wrong place & doesn’t work, so it’s a question of valuing real impact vs. cathartic screeching. I prefer effectiveness.There’s a huge space between hysteria & silence.”

“Couldn't agree less with you, sir. Unfortunately I don't have the time this afternoon to give you the history lesson you seem to so dearly need. The answer is to be loud about EVERYTHING. Until he is gone, and his swine fucking base sobers up. 

Yes, be effective, but as soon as Tyranny reveals itself, there is no more discussion. Only resistance, and only at the top of your lungs. Trump has an end goal; your quiet efforts of compromise and bargaining are not only pointless, they serve him, as they divide us. There is no passive resistance to Tyranny.”

“Do what feels good or do what works - your call. And I’m happy to hear what you have to say at pretty much any time, as long as it’s well-reasoned. Even if I disagree with ideas, they can still be valuable, so feel free to write yours down at some point - I’d be curious.”

“Also, if you keep talking out your ass, I am going to embarrass you here, because people like you, that clearly don't know what the fuck they are talking about, yet act like they do, really, really get on my bad side. You clearly know nothing, or refuse to understand, the mechanics of Fascism and Tyranny. Your uneducated opinion on what our course of action should be, offered in vague platitudes I might add, are what will get us all killed.”

“hahaha ok, will do. As long as it’s not all nazi hitler nazi, it’s cool. Some hitler, ok, but maybe a Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, or something else thrown in there.”

“You're a monster, sir. Also, my apologies ahead of time, for what I may or may not say further on down this rabbit hole of a thread.”

The whole thread (rabbit hole, indeed) was like this. It reminded me of when liberals go to Ben Shapiro or Dave Rubin lectures to ask him a question as a "gotcha" and look stupid for trying because, of course, stridency in the face of calm looks stupid.

Yes, she has a valid point that is worthy of a genuine conversation but she looks like a complete asshole in her angry attempt to school him. What I'm wondering is why? Why confront him at all? It isn't like her refusal to stop talking at him is going to change his mind. It isn't as if the women chanting is going to shut him up. What's the goal? What's the strategy?

The simple answer is that there isn't a strategy. It's moral posturing and wasted energy. It's an attempt to confront someone on the opposite ideological side of the questions and goad them into admitting some sort of hypocrisy. It's people barking "you lie" at President Obama in hopes that the moment will become a rally cry. It's someone throwing a shoe at George W. Bush. It's theater without a goal. It's a photo op in a YouTube world.

I remember the eighties. I mean, that decade was my Coming of Age time so I hope I still remember them.

One aspect of the eighties and specific to Wichita, KS, was Operation Rescue. As far as I can surmise, it is an extremely rare thing for a mentally stable human to wake up and shout out “Abortion is AWESOME!” The best we can do is to say abortion is a sometimes necessary thing and should be a right for women to utilize but, even then, I can’t imagine anyone adding it to their Disneyland trip as a lark. “Honey! Let’s go to Space Mountain and then go get that abortion — if we time it right, we’ll catch the fireworks!”

The thing is, Operation Rescue (with the help of the Ultimate Warrior in creating Moral Distinctions, the Church) decided that abortion was murder in the eighties in Wichita, KS.  And they protested. And when that didn’t do the trick, they stood outside of clinics and screamed at people. And failing to effect the kind of change they sought, some took to shooting and blowing up doctors.

Can you blame them? Once you’ve assigned a legal activity as a morally reprehensible crime you don’t have a lot of wiggle room in terms of context. If you saw a government gunning down second graders like they were taking out the trash, you might protest, then scream, then get some guns and TNT.

From their ideological zealotry, that’s what they saw.

As we’ve seen, you really can’t reason or compromise with a zealot convinced they are on the moral high ground. It’s almost impossible.

From a note to a professor friend of mine:

“I felt the words you used to address me was infantilizing and I want to express my discomfort of you labeling me a “young lady” thus shaming me in front of my classmates.”

What fresh hell…?

How does someone navigate this? In order to avoid any sort of offense, the ability to read minds is required. I'm of a type of white, heterosexual male who is not looking to run around and offend random strangers in normal discourse. Yes, I believe that offense is subjective and I've spent time creating art designed to shake that tree a bit. That said, I'm not the kind of person who engages in shock value tactics (anymore) or shaming individuals because I believe shame to be a pernicious societal tool that mostly suppresses the bad shit rather than providing a pathway to change.

Catcalling guys are idiots. Stalkers and sexual predators are criminals. The 50-something professor who refers to a 20-something woman in his class as "young lady" isn't either. Infantilization is the process of assuming people are too fragile and inexperienced to handle anything but the least of what society has to offer. So, who, in this case is infantilizing her?

It is a failure of strategy.

#MeToo, that vast and disembodied and ongoing protest march, has been subject to similar dynamics: the big tent, flinging its flaps ever wider; the entropic impulse as both a matter of promise and a matter of peril. Does being about everything, though, mean that the movement runs the risk of being about nothing? Has #MeToo, reconfigured as a broad attempt to rectify a broad host of wrongs, lost the plot? Has it dilated to its detriment?

Tarana Burke says, emphatically, yes. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, Burke pointed back to Milano’s October tweet—which was not, Burke noted, about pay equity, or representation in the workplace, or power dynamics in a misogynistic culture … but about sexual violence, full stop. “Part of the challenge that we have right now,” Burke said, “is everybody trying to couch everything under #MeToo.”

SOURCE

It's as if, anytime there is a large gathering of eyeballs or people in the name of any progressive cause, everyone must have some equal time and must try to shift the focus to them. It is both narcissism and desperation to be heard. #MeToo was about victims of sexual violence until it became about Hollywood actors until it became about black women in Hollywood until it became about equal pay until it became about being offended at a teacher referring to someone as "young lady."

Moral high ground and the assignation of labels like “monster,” “human garbage,” and, with the court of public opinion’s scorched earth approach, “racist,” “Nazi,” and “misogynist,” it all starts to feel strangely like religious fervor and more in tune with Operation Rescue than Civil Rights protestors. A witch hunt, at it's core, was about scaring the shit out of anyone who decided to live a different way from the norm and was ultimately about establishing an agreed upon morality. The Puritans believed that by singling out and "trying" women who didn't fit their moral narrative (and the trial killed the innocent ones) the rest of the flock would fall in line.

The McCarthy Anti-Communist hearings were the same. Any affiliation and any lack of sincere and enthusiastic repudiation was met by wholesale destruction. And protests without strategy don't effect these sorts of cyclical trends.

Conservative witch hunts are well documented against drug users, women, gays, transgender persons, blacks, pretty much anyone not in the white male club. These witch hunts are almost always marked by the moral righteous inherent in the hunt and the moral depravity of those being hunted. As they try to weed out (and scare the shit out of) their targets, others with less patience and less to lose take up the cause and, like the extremes of Operation Rescue, turn to violence.

The protests of old that were most effective (or effective at all, arguably) were non-violent and strategic. In a time when we equate hateful words as real violence, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner in that there is no longer the possibility of non-violent protest. If calling our opponents names is violence, society is as blocked a a colon filled with cheddar cheese.

When everyone is scrambling to claim the moral high ground, there is none left to claim because morality, in order to exist, has to be founded on common understandings of behavior. We don't have that anymore.

“There is no passive resistance to Tyranny.”

So many assumptions made in seven words. That avoiding a moral argument, reasoning with those on the sidelines of the process and resisting by example rather than reaction is passive. That a legally elected asshole who has a very different worldview than you is a tyrant. That his actions will inevitably lead to Nazism. That tyranny only comes in one form. That by labeling something tyrannical makes it so and the need to demonstrate the aspects of tyranny is erased by the charge.

It makes sense, though. In the most Operation Rescue sense, if you have decided that Trump is Hitler and distrust the rest of the country so completely to not see it, of course it makes perfect sense. I mean, if you throw them in the well and they float, they’re guilty, right?

Ask a strident anti-abortion activist to defend their position. If you don’t immediately agree that it is murder, the sparks of obstinence fly, the labels of “evil” and “monster” are thrown out and the barking becomes indecipherable. 

“Let's be clear: "Innocent until proven guilty" is for a court of law to decide, if that's where this story eventually goes. The court of public opinion operates under no such constraints, and in the post-Harvey Weinstein days of 2018 we believe the accuser.”

https://mashable.com/2018/06/16/chris-hardwick-nerd-culture-conversation/#PWbjglPnJmqq

Seriously?

The internet is an extraordinary tool. It has provided us with almost limitless communicating possibilities. I can see what friends thousands of miles away are up to and call my mother face to face. We can promote our ideas to more humans in one message than at any time in history. Can you imagine what havoc would have wreaked if Faceborg had been around in the eighties in Wichita, KS? Holy fuck!

I believe we need both the Malcoms and The Martins, the Magnetos and the Professor Xs. It’s just that right now, this magnificent technology has given the truly hysterical and morally righteous a louder megaphone than ever in history. It’s difficult to hear anything else when 10% of the population is screaming their own version of bloody murder and condemnation and it's 5% of morally outraged Trump Supporters vs 5% of morally outraged Identity Politicians leaving the rest of us to run, covering our ears.

The democracy is in rough shape but it is far from over, broken, or destroyed by a single president. Our flailing about is due to the fact that those who do not believe the way we do control all three arms of the federal government and protests aren't doing anything to stop it. Like Operation Rescue, we are doubling down on escalation and it will not go well for us.

Speaking again of Operation Rescue, once it became apparent to them that their protests were wholly ineffective, they changed their strategy. They started running anti-abortion candidates for local office, then state office, then Congress. And, what do you know? Not only have many states placed unconstitutional barriers to abortion over the past ten years but it looks like they're going to get Roe v. Wade overturned.

I’m on the Blue line. Headed to the park. I’m wide awake and in a great mood. I see across from me a genuinely beautiful woman. I take a look — not a stare but a healthy look. She sees me looking and she smiles.