#louisiana express pharmacy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cloama · 3 years ago

Text

Hurricane Ida Update

We are out of the hotels. Safely back in Louisiana close to home and work, staying in month-to-month furnished housing. Because of everyone's help, I was able to fight for time until I could secure real housing instead of putting my folks up in terrible lodgings that would have cost so much they we ended up in the street in 2 weeks.

We came home to a horror show. Our place was the only apartment complex that didn't tarp the roof. So it rained on our things for a week after the storm. They let it continue to flood on purpose so they could claim the damages in their insurance. The whole house is mildewed. We couldn't turn the lights back on or run the AC so we had to move all our stuff out of the house in the heat. We moved the clothing and a few personal items to storage but we lost all furniture. We wore kn95 masks but I've been really sick since we did it. Like tonight, I feel horrible and can't sleep. My stomach is upside down and my sinuses are giving me the blues. My parents are older and aren't really capable of carrying a lot so I did most of the moving. Everything hurts and Aleve can only do so much. Speaking of hurt...

Then they got the car stuck in a flooded muddy grassy field. I had to push the car out of the mud. I've injured my shoulders doing that and yesterday, couldn't move at all without wincing in pain. It's slightly better today but I am physically and mentally broken by all this.

The community is doing its best. There are no refrigerated foods, the lines for everything from the bank to the pharmacy are so long that it scares me. I did the shopping for us and saved all the canned food from the old apartment. We spent 2 days laundering and sanitizing what we could save from the storm. We have food and some comforts so we can stay inside until it calms down out there. We'll be fine.

I want to say thank you to everyone who donated, shared my posts, and talked to me as I tried to keep my family safe. Words fail to express my gratitude. I will no longer be asking for donations. I believe others need it more right now as they continue to recover. I’ll share them as I find them. We're safe. Hopefully we'll be back to work by October. Thank you all.

Even with all my preparations and savings, I still wasn't financially able to get my family through the storm on my own. It has shown me that I can't live here anymore. I was resolved not to let gentrifiers push me out... But climate change is a way badder bitch and I'm not rich enough to survive her. I will be saving every penny to afford a move up north. I'm shuffling up to Buffalo. I can’t believe I’m being run out is my home but it’s okay. I’m accepting it.

#hurricane ida #etrange melange #cloama

9 notes · View notes

ascnsion · 4 years ago

Text

▋ 𝑾𝑯𝑨𝑻 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑪𝑨𝑹𝑫𝑺 𝑯𝑶𝑳𝑫 . . . . . ❝ get down! ❞ 𝙁𝙍𝙊𝙈 @nigermviduam . . . ( get down meme ) ┘

❝ Belle day, non ? ❞ Hefty heels of heavily used boots thudded against the concrete of the sidewalk though noise accompanying casual gait was mostly muffled by the bustle around the duo. Ah, New York City, supposedly one of the greatest cities on Earth; art museums adjacent to discount pharmacies, couples dressed to impress in name brand clothes visited their local deli for an Italian sandwich. Remy missed Louisiana. . Even an X-Man or Avenger had difficulty navigating the city unless on foot or via a helicopter. Irritated drivers honked at one another, and the mutant shot an amused expression to the Russian. ❝ How ‘bout Central Pa — ❞ Remy had turned his head to speak to Natasha, and as the words fell from his lips, he caught the reflection of armed gunmen poking through the windows of a dark colored SUV in the reflection of store front windows. He didn’t have enough time to react, and fortunately for him Natasha had a view of the street. Hands were on him in an instant, throwing him to the ground, and her shout reached the ears of all the civilians nearby. It was an aftermath of broken glass, bullets, screams, and adrenaline. Despite the heavy traffic, the vehicle managed to navigate through the streets in a speedy getaway. Gambit rolled out from beneath Natasha, reached into his trench coat, and pulled out a playing card to to charge with kinetic energy. It was too late however; the car was out of his field of vision. He shifted the energy built up within the card, and it disintegrated within his digits onto the ground. Body sat up, eyes quickly peeling over to Natasha, then to the scene around him. Was it typical New York crime or had they been the targets all along? ❝ You okay, mon ami? ❞

#𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒄 └ ♠️ ANSWERED ┓#𝒘𝒊𝒅𝒐𝒘❜𝒔 𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒆 └ FT NATASHA ┓#nigermviduam

1 note · View note

freedomartspress · 5 years ago

Text

Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.

3 notes · View notes

diabetesdepot · 4 years ago

Photo

Louisiana Express Pharmacy: Diabetes Depot FREE Corona Virus (Covid-19) Care Pack for Medicaid Recipients Available Diabetic Supplies with Free Shipping Call NOW!!! 1 800 988 7448

#Diabetes diabetes Diabetes Depot Louisiana Express Pharmacy Health Covid-19 Corona Virus Supplies Medical Pharmacy Louisiana Medicaid Lancet #diabetesdepot louisianaexpresspharmacy LAEP diabetes louisiana medicaid free supplies diabeticsupplies https://www.louisianaexpresspharmac

1 note · View note

subscriptlaw · 4 years ago

Text

Freedom of Speech and Expression

Offensive Speech • Unprotected Speech • Permissible Government Restrictions • Levels of Scrutiny • Political Speech

What are freedom of speech and expression?

The Constitution’s First Amendment gives individuals the right to express themselves. Freedom of speech is a basic form of expression, but the First Amendment covers much more than just speech.

An individual can express herself through religious practice; through political speech or actions; by associating with others; by petitioning the government; or by publicizing written speech. Even certain “speech actions” like flag burning are considered protected speech.

Free speech and expression are rights against the government. They are not rights against other people.

The government — whether federal, state or local — cannot prohibit an individual from expressing herself. That means all laws and policies must treat people equally based on their views. Government agents, from police officers to school board officials, must do so as well. Freedom of expression might also require the government to set an environment that enables individuals to speak, or to ensure that certain views are not inhibited from being expressed. The First Amendment may prevent President Trump from blocking certain views on Twitter, but it does not prevent non-government individuals from restricting their social media feeds based on viewpoint.

Offensive Speech May Still Be Protected Speech

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech or expression, even if many people would find the speech offensive. For example, flag burning is a form of protected speech. Likewise, speech for mere purposes of entertainment, vulgar speech, hate speech, and violent video games are all protected speech.

What Speech Is Not Protected?

The government is allowed to censor speech in certain circumstances. When the speaker has a certain relationship with the government, the government may restrict it. For example, the government can restrict speech by its employees if necessary to the employment role. For example, a public school teacher can be prohibited from promoting religious theory to students, and a national security employee can be prohibited from sharing confidential information.

In contrast, in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968), the Supreme Court ruled the government employer’s interest was not strong enough to overpower the free speech right of a public school teacher. The teacher had published a criticism of the school’s allocation of funds between educational and athletic programs. The Court ruled the teacher’s statements “were neither shown nor could be presumed to have interfered with [his] performance of his teaching duties or the schools' general operation [and] were thus entitled to the same protection as if they had been made by a member of the general public.”

Categories of Unprotected Speech

Certain types of speech have “low” First Amendment value. This list from the National Constitution Center identifies several types of speech that have low or no First Amendment protection:

a. Defamation: False statements that damage a person’s reputations can lead to civil liability (and even to criminal punishment), especially when the speaker deliberately lied or said things they knew were likely false. New York Times v. Sullivan (1964).

b. True threats: Threats to commit a crime (for example, “I’ll kill you if you don’t give me your money”) can be punished. Watts v. United States (1969).

c. “Fighting words”: Face-to-face personal insults that are likely to lead to an immediate fight are punishable. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). But this does not include political statements that offend others and provoke them to violence. For example, civil rights or anti-abortion protesters cannot be silenced merely because passersby respond violently to their speech. Cox v. Louisiana (1965).

d. Obscenity: Hard-core, highly sexually explicit pornography is not protected by the First Amendment. Miller v. California (1973). In practice, however, the government rarely prosecutes online distributors of such material.

e. Child pornography: Photographs or videos involving actual children engaging in sexual conduct are punishable, because allowing such materials would create an incentive to sexually abuse children in order to produce such material. New York v. Ferber (1982).

f. Commercial advertising: Speech advertising a product or service is constitutionally protected, but not as much as other speech. For instance, the government may ban misleading commercial advertising, but it generally can’t ban misleading political speech. Virginia Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council (1976).

The Government Can Make Reasonable Content-Neutral Restrictions

The government cannot discriminate against someone based on her views. The government creates laws to maintain peace and order in the country, but the government cannot use its powers to enforce a particular view or to try to silence certain views. First Amendment challenges against laws have alleged that a law appears to apply equally to everyone but it tends to silence certain views.

The First Amendment says that the government may make reasonable speech restrictions, but the government may not favor or disfavor a certain idea over others.

For a speech restriction to be reasonable, the government must have a good interest for regulating or censoring speech. In 1939, the Supreme Court ruled a “law prohibiting all demonstrations in public parks or all leafleting on public streets” was unreasonable (National Constitution Center, citing Schneider v. State).

In 1992, the Supreme Court invalidated a criminal ordinance which prohibited the display of a symbol which “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender” (R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul). The Court said the government cannot prohibit speech based on the ideas expressed, and by restricting racist speech (and not positive speech), the ordinance violated the First Amendment.

Government regulations often require businesses to follow certain procedures or to provide certain notices in going about their business. Some cases have argued that business regulations require them to speak against their views in violation of the First Amendment. For example, in NIFLA v. Becerra (2018), pro-life women’s health clinics argued California regulations requiring them to provide certain notices about abortions violated their speech rights. The Supreme Court ruled the notices were likely in violation of the First Amendment because they regulated based on the content of the speech.

Recently the Supreme Court struck a rule of the Patent and Trademark Office that barred trademarks on “immoral or scandalous matter” (Iancu v. Brunetti, 2019). The Court also ruled against a content-based exception to a reasonable regulation against robocalls for purposes of debt collection. The government could not exclude calls for the collection of government debt from the general rule (Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants).

Levels of Scrutiny

View our graphic explainer!

When a court determines that a government law or policy restricts speech based on its content or viewpoint, the court will scrutinize the law to determine whether the purpose it serves is important enough to justify the speech restriction. The court will determine which level of scrutiny to apply based on the type of speech restriction, or the type of speech being restricted.

When it comes to a viewpoint-based speech restriction, the government must pass a high bar. A court will apply strict scrutiny. To pass strict scrutiny, the government must have a compelling interest to restrict the speech and the law must be “narrowly-tailored” to restrict the speech and only that speech. Similarly, if the government is restricting political speech, it must pass strict scrutiny because political speech deserves a high level of First amendment Protection.

Some types of speech get less First Amendment protection. Commercial speech -- speech aimed to sell something -- is one type of speech that is not as highly valued by the First Amendment. Thus restrictions on commercial speech usually get intermediate scrutiny when evaluated by courts. See this report from the Congressional Research Service for a listing of categories of speech and the treatment they get from courts.

Political Speech

Freedom of speech and expression are necessary to democracy because they encourage a diversity of views and debate.

A person should be able to promote her political views. Political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment because hearing and debating a diversity of views is necessary to a properly functioning democracy. The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting political speech. This includes one’s right advocate politically, petition the government, rally others towards a cause, and especially one’s right to vote.

The First Amendment may also protect one’s right to spend money on a political cause. The value of money as speech — and whether the First Amendment protects it — has become a large and controversial topic. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can impose limits on the amount of money an individual can contribute to a political campaign and a candidate because monetary limits protect our democracy against unscrupulous practices. However, in the same case, the Supreme Court ruled that various limits on expenditures in campaigns were invalid speech restrictions. Buckley v. Valeo (1976). In a controversial 2010 case, the Court ruled that corporations qualify for First Amendment protection and that they can spend unlimited money on political broadcasts in candidate elections. Citizens United v. FEC.

In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court determined that flag-burning is protected political speech and invalidated a Texas law outlawing flag desecration.

Recent Supreme Court Rulings, Political Speech

Recent Supreme Court cases on political speech demonstrate the diversity of issues coming under its banner. Janus v. AFSCME was the most controversial of recent cases. In Janus, the court addressed whether a state could require public employees to pay union collective bargaining fees. An Illinois employee argued that requiring him to support a union’s activities by paying the union required him to support a political idea in which he did not believe. Janus won in a 5-4 ruling with the support of the conservative wing. The case highlights how the First Amendment can prevent the government from providing what it determines is a public benefit (i.e. collective bargaining).

Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky invalidated a rule prohibiting people from wearing political insignia at polling places. Thompson v. Hebdon remanded a case regarding the validity of an Alaska limit on campaign contributions, requiring the lower court to conduct a proper review of First Amendment concerns.

Rights of assembly, association and petition

The First Amendment also includes the rights to assemble, to associate with others, and to petition the government. These rights ensure that people have the opportunity to speak out and to rally others in support of their political views.

On October 5, 2020, the Supreme Court will hear Carney v. Adams, in which someone seeking a position on the Delaware judiciary claims a Delaware constitutional rule violates his right to freedom of association. The Delaware Constitution requires that positions on the state’s highest courts are split between the two major political parties. Adams, an independent, argues the law pressures him to associate with one of the two major political parties, or to give up his candidacy. Stay tuned for our reports on this case and other Supreme Court First Amendment issues.

More information:

For more information on free speech and free expression, see:

National Constitution Center, Freedom of Speech and the Press, Interactive Constitution (last visited Aug. 17, 2020).

Congressional Research Service, The First Amendment: Categories of Speech (Jan. 2019).

ACLU, Free Speech (last visited Aug. 17, 2020).

ACLU, Freedom of Expression (last visited Aug. 17, 2020).

History.com, First Amendment (last updated Sept. 25, 2019).

More First Amendment Reports:

fromSubscript Law Blog | Subscript Lawhttps://https://ift.tt/3hvUvFP Subscript Law 4 Curtis Terrace Montclair NJ 07042 (201) 840-8182 https://ift.tt/2oX7jPi

0 notes

remembertae · 8 years ago

Text

Murphy Brown “Uh-Oh” Part 1 - 3

(Photo: CBS)

S3 E26 May 20, 1991 / S4 E1-2 Sep. 16, 1991

WRITTEN BY: Diane English & Korby Siamis

SYNOPSIS

42-year-old national news anchor Murphy Brown is shocked when radical activist ex-husband Jake shows up at her Washington D.C. office. After spending decades abroad, Jake has returned to D.C. so he can work within the political system. He wants to settle down and remarry Murphy. She and Jake spend a romantic week together, during which he proposes several times. Just when she’s about to accept his latest offer, Murphy’s ex-boyfriend Jerry shows up at her door, also looking to rekindle their past affair. Murphy struggles to choose between the two men over the next several days, all while complaining of an incessant headache. One day she accidentally invites both guys to lunch. When she gets fed up with their quibbling, she abruptly leaves the restaurant. Later at home, Murphy examines a home pregnancy test and looks extremely stressed out.

When Murphy next appears at work wearing goofy slippers and a frazzled expression, her coworkers worry. Best friend Frank confronts her privately and she reveals she’s pregnant. He panics and doesn’t know what advice to give. Murphy recognizes this might be her only chance to have a baby. But she wonders how it would impact her career or if she would lose her journalistic edge. She tells Frank, “I know I have the right to make this decision. I just didn’t expect it to be this hard.” Hoping the first pregnancy test was a fluke, Murphy heads to the pharmacy to purchase more test kits. Unfortunately, she runs into boss Miles, who spots the kits in her shopping basket. He immediately melts down, wondering how an unmarried pregnant anchor woman could survive on primetime news. Murphy tells Miles she’ll let him know the results in the morning. Later at home, we see all her tests have come back positive.

Jake returns to Murphy’s place that night. She tells him she’s pregnant with his child and not sure what to do. He assumed she’d called him over to refuse his marriage proposal and admits he was a bit relieved by that prospect; turns out Jake isn’t really cut out for D.C. He wonders if they could make a family work, but she can tell neither of them have changed and they’d face the same marital woes they encountered before. Murphy wonders aloud if she could raise a child alone, which makes Jake laugh. She becomes defensive, and though she hasn’t made a decision, Jake can sense she’s seriously considering having the baby. He affirms that the choice is hers but admits he can’t be there as a father. Murphy says she understands. Jake thanks her and leaves.

The next day at work, Murphy tells the news team she’s pregnant with Jake’s baby but that he’s left the country. Corky offers to escort her to a doctor who will “take care of things”, but Murphy says she’s decided to have the baby and raise it alone. Again, all of the men panic.

Out at lunch, Murphy confides her situation to restaurateur/father of eight Phil, who tells her she has a tough journey ahead but that she’ll be alright. When Jerry shows up to meet her, he doesn’t believe her pregnancy news at first. As she suspected, he’s no longer interested in getting back together now that there’s a baby in the picture. But he offers to help her out however he can as a friend, which cheers her up.

Murphy later goes home to find housepainter Eldin (who’s been working on her place for three years) packing up to leave for good. He assumes she’s chosen either Jake or Jerry, and he doesn’t want to be in the way when her new man moves in. Murphy reveals that the only new addition to the home will be a baby, to which Eldin reacts with unmitigated joy and hugs. Pleased that he’s actually happy for her, Murphy asks Eldin, “Do you think I’ll make a good mother?” He replies, “No, but I will,” and gets to work painting the nursery.

KEEPING IT REAL QUOTIENT

I loved this program when I was a teenager* and probably watched these episodes when they first aired, but I had no recollection of Murphy ever contemplating abortion. This story arc is more memorable for what happened after she gave birth to son Avery at the end of season 4, when U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle famously took her character to task for, “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.” In the season 5 premier episode, audio from Quayle’s speech was used in the show to make it appear as if the Vice President were targeting a national news journalist as opposed to a sitcom character. All this real life debate about conservative “family values” vs. a more liberal concept of what makes a family – not to mention the meta goodness of incorporating Quayle’s comments in the storyline – completely overshadowed any memory I had of Murphy seriously considering termination at the outset.

But what I love most about the beginning of this pregnancy arc is that abortion is treated as the obvious choice for her character. The assumption is subtle, so subtle you kind of have to look for it. It’s implied in her initial conversation with Frank, who frenetically tells her, “I think you should definitely not have this baby… No, have it… Have it, but look into adoption. Is any of this helping you?” Though no one ever utters the word “abortion” during this three-part episode, there’s no doubt what a phrase like “definitely should not have this baby” means. There’s also that moment when Corky says she’ll take Murphy to a “back alley” doctor for the procedure, leading to the episode’s most pointed joke -

Murphy: Corky, there is no back alley. Women in this country legally have a choice. At least I think they still do, I haven’t checked the paper today.

Corky: I’m sorry. I’m from Louisiana.

I found that joke a bit corny (also sad, as it is now more relevant than ever). Perhaps at the end of the Reagan/GHW Bush years, a TV character vaguely stating “women legally have a choice” with regard to her own unplanned pregnancy seemed more bold than stilted, but it falls pretty flat now.

But Murphy herself isn’t flat. She’s a wonderfully complex character, which is what makes her set of choices so complicated and interesting. Before she knows she’s pregnant, she already has a tough choice deciding between a leftist guy who’s romantic, dedicated and aligned with her politics (Jake), and a funny conservative guy who challenges her while also offering the less-daunting prospect of a non-marital relationship (Jerry). After she learns of her pregnancy, there’s this great dream sequence in which she walks down a hallway, peering behind different doors. Behind one she sees Jake, behind another is Jerry. Behind the third door is a nursery full of babies; Murphy’s grimace in response to that sight is probably the funniest moment in the whole story. As she admits to both Frank and Jake, she really doesn’t have any maternal instincts yet. For her to fear what the onset of those instincts might do to her career makes so much sense for her character. This is a staunchly independent woman who clearly never intended to breed.

The way the men in her life react to her situation creates more pressure in a way that’s both very maddening and very believable. The guys at work make her pregnancy all about themselves and their sense of panic. It isn’t fair that her very personal decision should have so much impact on their careers, but realistically, it would. (Can you imagine how conservative politicians and TV viewers in the early 1990s would react to a real-life unmarried newswoman getting knocked up?) It would be best for her mostly-male coworkers if Murphy quietly aborted her fetus and everything went back to normal. Choosing abortion would also improve her chances with both Jake and Jerry, neither of whom want anything to do with a baby.

But seeing how all these dudes disappoint Murphy just makes her change of heart more believable. The “last chance for a baby” trope already rings true to me in most cases, even for a character as unsentimental Murphy. You also get the sense that she really doesn’t want to grow old alone, hence her entertaining Jake’s marriage proposal even though marriage scares her. So instead of choosing to be in a long-term relationship with either of these inconsistent romantic partners, she chooses a child. Given who she is and what she desires, her choosing motherhood over abortion ultimately makes sense to me.

GRADE

B+ I love this episode for clearly demonstrating that parenting is a way more complicated and fraught long-term decision than termination, especially for single women. I think the writers could have been clearer about abortion being one of her options. The choice to abort is implied, never explicitly examined. But neither is it stigmatized. I appreciate that.

*The Monday night Murphy Brown/Designing Women comedy block on CBS had a big impact on my budding feminist worldview

- by Tara

#Abortion #abortion episode #murphy brown

31 notes · View notes

ffdfsvdsvsdv · 5 years ago

Text

Three Poems — Tongo

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

0 notes

blockheadbrands · 6 years ago

Text

Patients Left in Limbo as Louisiana Experiences Medical Cannabis Delays

Tyler Koslow of High Times Reports:

Despite medical marijuana legislation passing back in 2015, patients in Louisiana are still waiting for a timeline on when cannabis treatment will become available in regional pharmacies.

Now approaching the fourth year since Louisiana lawmakers passed medical cannabis legislation, patients have been stuck in a frustrating and painstaking wait as treatment remains unavailable.

On Monday, patients and medical cannabis advocates received another disappointing update on the lengthy regulatory and testing process, potentially leaving the recently purported summer 2019 start date in jeopardy. Still unable to obtain treatment from regional pharmacies, there is still no definite timeline for when medical-grade cannabis products will finally come to the Bayou State.

Gathered at the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry’s public stakeholders meeting patients, regulators, state-sanctioned growers, and the universities overseeing the process convened to discuss the current state of the stymied medical cannabis program.

Louisiana Patients Grow Weary of More Delays to Medical Cannabis Access

Katie Corkern, a mother and medical cannabis advocate, has pleaded for years with Louisiana lawmakers to make treatment available for her 12-year-old son, Connor, who’s been suffering from debilitating seizures.

At the most recent meeting, she said her son has been to the hospital 15 times since lawmakers passed medical cannabis legislation. Despite Connor’s neurologist recommending that he use medical pot to help control his seizures, Corkern has been unable to get him treatment.

“We’re waiting, and Connor doesn’t deserve this,” she said at the meeting. “Neither do the citizens that you all don’t get to see.”

Passed back in 2015, these frustrating delays are due in part to the particularly restrictive medical cannabis framework that Louisiana lawmakers have implemented. For instance, medical-grade marijuana is only allowed to be grown at the agricultural centers at LSU and Southern University, leaving the entire system in the hands of only a couple of cultivators.

Over 1,300 days have passed since the law was put into place. So, the frustration expressed by patients is certainly warranted. Several attendees at Monday’s meeting pointed fingers at the regulatory hurdles that the agricultural department must follow, particularly regarding the decision that all medical cannabis products must be tested in-house.

Louisiana’s Restrictive Medical Cannabis Framework Leaves Patients in Limbo

Despite the repeated pleas from Corkern and other patients in need, lawmakers don’t seem to be searching for an immediate solution to this dire impediment.

Ilera Holistic Healthcare, the grower operating at Southern University, hasn’t started growing its product yet. And the initial estimate of having medical pot available by summer or early fall is now being questioned as too optimistic by state agriculture officials.

While GB Sciences, the research and biotechnical development company growing out of LSU, has already started production on its therapeutic cannabis crops, they’ve refrained from giving an estimate on when treatment will be ready for patients.

Just last week Dr. Richardson, LSU’s Vice President of Agriculture, expressed cautious hopefulness that the first batch of medical cannabis products would be ready for patients by this summer. That optimism seemed to have waned a bit during the public meeting on Monday, however.

“To give you a particular date, we’re unable to do that,” said John Davis, president of GB Sciences Louisiana. “There are so many different factors that are outside of our control.”

Lab Testing Isn’t the Only Issue

Shifting the burden of testing from the agricultural department to a private lab would almost certainly help streamline the process. But Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said his agency must ensure all products are safe for patients, adding that he couldn’t find a private testing lab that could meet the state’s strict criteria.

“We are doing all that we can as quick as we can, “said Strain. “Keep in mind, there are no clinical trials. We must make sure it’s as safe as it can be.”

The agriculture department’s lab supervisor admitted the first round of testing has taken longer than expected, but that subsequent testing should go much more smoothly. Testing isn’t the only obstacle preventing Louisiana patients from receiving treatment, however.

GB Sciences is currently operating out of a temporary site while it waits for approval to move into the main facility. According to Davis, this has limited production capabilities and stopped the company from setting up a proper supply chain. He also stated that the company wants to ensure that refills will be available to patients once the first batch of products are rolled out to regional pharmacies.

It’s abundantly clear that state regulators have taken a cautious, molasses-like approach to implementing its medical cannabis framework. Unfortunately, while they continue to drag their feet, it’s patients like Connor who will continue to suffer at the expense of this restrictive and bogged down system.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/news/frustration-mounts-over-louisiana-medical-marijuana-delays-as-patients-left-in-limbo/

0 notes

weedconsortium2 · 6 years ago

Link

Now approaching the fourth year since Louisiana lawmakers passed medical cannabis legislation, patients have been stuck in a frustrating and painstaking wait as treatment remains unavailable.

Louisiana Patients Grow Weary of More Delays to Medical Cannabis Access

“We’re waiting, and Connor doesn’t deserve this,” she said at the meeting. “Neither do the citizens that you all don’t get to see.”

Louisiana’s Restrictive Medical Cannabis Framework Leaves Patients in Limbo

Despite the repeated pleas from Corkern and other patients in need, lawmakers don’t seem to be searching for an immediate solution to this dire impediment.

“To give you a particular date, we’re unable to do that,” said John Davis, president of GB Sciences Louisiana. “There are so many different factors that are outside of our control.”

Lab Testing Isn’t the Only Issue

“We are doing all that we can as quick as we can, “said Strain. “Keep in mind, there are no clinical trials. We must make sure it’s as safe as it can be.”

The post Patients Left in Limbo as Louisiana Experiences Medical Cannabis Delays appeared first on High Times.

The post Patients Left in Limbo as Louisiana Experiences Medical Cannabis Delays appeared first on CBD Oil Vape Liquid Spray - Cbd Pain Relief Capsules - Weed Consortium.

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2FZzZya via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

growlegalweed-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Legal Weed Resources

Check out... http://legalweed.gq/420/patients-left-in-limbo-as-louisiana-experiences-medical-cannabis-delays/

Patients Left in Limbo as Louisiana Experiences Medical Cannabis Delays

Now approaching the fourth year since Louisiana lawmakers passed medical cannabis legislation, patients have been stuck in a frustrating and painstaking wait as treatment remains unavailable.

Louisiana Patients Grow Weary of More Delays to Medical Cannabis Access

“We’re waiting, and Connor doesn’t deserve this,” she said at the meeting. “Neither do the citizens that you all don’t get to see.”

Louisiana’s Restrictive Medical Cannabis Framework Leaves Patients in Limbo

Despite the repeated pleas from Corkern and other patients in need, lawmakers don’t seem to be searching for an immediate solution to this dire impediment.

“To give you a particular date, we’re unable to do that,” said John Davis, president of GB Sciences Louisiana. “There are so many different factors that are outside of our control.”

Lab Testing Isn’t the Only Issue

“We are doing all that we can as quick as we can, “said Strain. “Keep in mind, there are no clinical trials. We must make sure it’s as safe as it can be.”

The post Patients Left in Limbo as Louisiana Experiences Medical Cannabis Delays appeared first on High Times.

#Cannabis #Delays #experiences #Left #Limbo #Louisiana #Medical #patients

0 notes