rants

It’s ONLY been 364 days.

(My random political rant… still bubbling over with disbelief how is this happening…)

What did we do that we went from the educated oratory of JFK, to incoherent Tweets from the Accidental Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? When did we decide the person in charge should be the one with the LEAST knowledge, and the LEAST interest in learning? Shouldn’t we want our leaders to be heads and shoulders above us in intellect, vision, empathy, and ideas?

The person who represents us across the globe…shouldn’t that person be able to think on their feet, extemporize on a wide variety of topics and provide backup for their statements? What caused us to end up with someone who believes that TV ratings outrank policy? Who GETS his facts from one news channel–one that isn’t known for it’s truth-telling.  As president, he has ACCESS to the greatest minds of the world, yet he chooses cable TV to inform him.  He believes the Constitution is a False Flag when it doesn’t benefit HIM  but needs to be followed without question when the words can be manipulated to SUIT him?

How many of the .015% of people in this country do YOU know who will benefit from the repeal of the “death tax?” How many will be harmed by Trumpcare?

eligiblevoterpie

There is small comfort in knowing that the MAJORITY of Americans saw through his smoke and mirrors and elected someone else. Hillary received more votes than any candidate EVER—(except for Obama). Trump got THREE MILLION LESS VOTES THAN HILLARY.  These are FACTS. Or worse, decided to sit this one out in a pique of moral superiority that couldn’t have them vote for the least worst.

Despite his obsession with the electoral map, it is obvious he doesn’t understand even THAT aspect...that while the maps look red, the POPULATED areas went blue..  He got more square miles, not more people. He “rules” on the assumption that people like him; in truth he is the naked emperor. MOST of America doesn’t have the wool pulled over their eyes.

It’s been a year. No, I am not over it.  

13781934_10210590582744736_2260827268672719815_nI think that I have voted for the winning side about half the time since I started voting.  I would lament, read about the new guy, and move on.  Better luck next time. Never before did I truly feel we may not make it out of this alive, or whole, or as AMERICA. No, that is not overreaction. Have you been paying attention??

Even if you agree with all of his public policy, (and HOW can you?) how can you agree with his personal behavior,  his public presentation of the office?  Accepting his behavior as the price you need to pay for getting the things you hope he will get you? That is NOT GOVERNING. It is being complicit in the abdication of the office of president to a lunatic.

Show your work. Your responses to ANYTHING here cannot– I REPEAT CANNOT– be “Yes but–The Democrats, Hillary, Obama…” Two wrongs don’t make a right. You don’t let your son off the hook for staying out late and lying about where he was because he tells you that your daughter took $5 from your wallet last year when he gets caught.

–If one more person says to “stop dredging up history”… Should we STOP celebrating the Fourth of July then? That’s just “history”… or Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day? Only racial/ethnic minorities are told to forget the history of their oppression, and to move on….the victors may continue to celebrate apace.

–For ANY government official to declare that the price of protesting should be losing your job is 100% opposite of the intent of the First Amendment. Period. It is SETTLED LAW that you do not have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. If, as an employee of a company, you do something that is against your company‘s policies, yes,  you can be reprimanded in a variety of ways including lose your job. That is in the employee handbook. It is up to the managers, the unions, the CEO. For a government official, one who is NOT your employer  (indeed, YOU EMPLOY THEM) to say that you should lose your job because you speak out about injustice is wrong. For goodness sake, haven’t you ever heard of whistle-blower rules?

What of all the people on line, buying beer when the anthem starts. How about those people in the john? All those watching on television who get up and go feed the cat while the anthem plays instead of standing in front of the television with her hand over her heart? You want to FORCE allegiance? That is NOT the land of the FREE then, is it? Move to North Korea.

–If the alternative to the ACA is to allow 32 million people to not have health insurance then we stick with the ACA and fix it. “There but for the grace of God” and all that Christian stuff, remember that? All the carrying on about Christ, and Christian behaviors that ALL are expected to follow, and yet “Do Unto Others” doesn’t make it out the door of church on Sunday morning.

–How many of you have salaries OVER $200K?  Congrats to you. You will NEVER have to choose between the electric bill and the rent. Or the rent and a doctor visit for your kid’s ear infection. When we start getting to the billionaires—ANYONE who has to PAY in taxes more than most people will EVER EARN should sit down, shut up and thank their lucky stars. You actually can’t take it with you.

–How many of you are reading about the new tax proposal and ignoring the end date of the one little crumb left to the majority?

–How many of you plan on retiring before you get too old to enjoy retirement? How many of you have aging parents?  How many of you were planning on taking them in when they can’t still live on their own? Because once health care isn’t a right, and SS is decimated and Medicare is destroyed, and all the immigrant women who will work as home health aides have been deported, you will need to have the man-cave become the MIL suite, and one of you will need to stay home to tend the aging parent who can’t afford nursing home care; which in turn will cut your household income and the hope of retirement. Whoops.

—-> How many of you can’t see that once he finishes allowing this government to screw over the dark people, the funny-accented people, the people who were born in a country that scares him, that once all those people are done for/gone, that once they become irrelevant and unable to impact change or be the boogeyman any longer,  that then he and his goons will be coming after YOU??

We are standing and shouting, protesting against injustice, kneeling (oh, KNEELING! ) against the silence of justice mismanaged… whistle-blowing, loudly, to the universe, that we are AWARE of your maleficence and will not let it go by silently. This man will not let us simply move on. It is a dereliction of duty as an American to sit down and shut up this time.

Truth, justice and the American way —this administration has members who are picking fights with the Statue of Liberty and whether or not the correct and proper intent of the Statue of Liberty is to welcome immigrants.??? Think about that for a second; think back to your third grade civics when you learned about the Statue of Liberty (if you didn’t grow up in New York and see her every day.)  “Bring your tired your poor…” All the things that MAKE America the place people want to be, he and his band of thieves is trying to destroy.

–Be honest when you answer this question.  Why is it more important that Hillary say something about Weinstein when Donald Trump BEHAVES like Weinstein? Ask yourself why the media is more concerned with Hillary‘s reaction than with Donald’s behavior. That, right there, is white male privilege; that is misogyny.

It has been a year since the least issue-oriented presidential campaign ever.  HOW is it it wasn’t about issues? The same way that the actions of the Current Resident aren’t about issues… he is all about face time and ratings and manipulation.

In LITERALLY less than 365 days from being declared president, the office has turned into CHAOS, lies, and worse.

I started this little essay of wandering thoughts about two weeks ago. How naive and silly the topics I started writing about appear. See them up there? Little snippets of thoughts about something so esoteric as the reason for Lady Liberty… Now, we have one conviction, two indictments and so so much more about to happen. 

There is only ONE other answer. The man is senile, mentally deficient or has dementia and his caregivers are committing elder-abuse on a grand scale so that they may steal power and money from him. This is my most generous read on what is happening, having spent my early 20’s care-giving for someone with dementia. The other choice is he and his are committing high crimes and misdemeanors against our country.

I want to link a dozen different articles–would you read them? Or do you believe HIM and HIS more than actual factual reality? I am not crazy or ranting. I am scared. If you are not scared, you are not paying attention.

I had no IDEA that the dismantling of a country was so easy to get to… but the way we are going, we might as well be singing “How to Get to Sesame Street” Because, people… the pot is on the stove, you were dropped in the cool water, and someone turned on the burner.

Instead, I will leave you with this article, and this plea. VOTE TUESDAY. The candidate need not be perfect–they are human.  But choose the saner one.

Hypocrazy

If I am following the latest outrage du jour properly, I am to understand that Ted Cruz allowed (used/permitted/agreed to/suggested/didn’t refuse) his young girls to mock our current government and other people running for president, in search of campaign contributions. This is an acceptable use of an actual minor child.

And then,  a political cartoonist inferred that his children were being used to collect money by performing, a la the organ grinder and his dancing monkeys. This is not an acceptable use of pen and ink, or pixels. (Do people understand the reference –that the organ grinder is out begging for money, using the monkeys to ‘entertain’ in exchange for cash?) or are they just offended because they were told to be offended?)

And THEN, he sent out the offensive cartoon to many, many more people who would have never otherwise seen it, and begged for the money himself.

Let’s leave all the kids out of it all, how about that? Politicians–Don’t parade them out for votes or for warm-fuzzies photos. Reporters and photographers–Don’t stalk them, or try to sneak photos, or use them in the news cycle. What they wear or where they vacation or had for dinner? Not part of the campaign.

 

Is sex only for the well to do?

It’s been a while since a political /social studies rant. Here we go, on random recent events (One, epic length post versus me getting worked up on a more regular basis. Kind of like a cork, under pressure, that finally pops, and then, peace and bubbly for all.  Understand that the “YOU” and “I” and “WE” is of the royal variety; I am not picking on any one person, but if the hat fits your head…)

Non-pro-choice  is a form of misogyny, to be sure. But what about these thoughts, as well?

HETROSEXUAL relations are the cause of ALL Abortion, bar NONE (well, ok, add IVF as a cause of pregnancy, but most people are planning that occurrence).  That’s right, boys. You put your pecker where babies happen, and viola, pregnancy. No gay couple can pull that one off.

What is the rate of married women having abortion? What is the rate of single but oh, say over 25 year-old women? Over 40 years old, married or unmarried? What is the racial and financial breakdown of this collection of women? How many children do they already have? What is the rate of abortion because of incompatibility with life? What about finding out that the fetus you carry is dramatically deformed? What about the idea that the legally allowed birth control DID fail or that the couple in question might be human and made a mistake and had unprotected sex? Or, as the old saying goes, “You do know what they call people who practice Natural Family Planning, right? (Parents)”  What about incest and rape victims?Although men some in government seem determined to continue redefining rape so that only battered, bloodied corpses will be considered rape victims and everyone else had a change of heart or is out to get the guy. (I am not about to go do the digging for these figures; someone can if they want.)

Some people don’t have the strength to handle what will be a very sick child. Some don’t have the medical coverage, thanks to our odd belief in this country that health care isn’t a human right, but something you have to be smart enough to earn. (Which by the way doesn’t mean you will KEEP your medical insurance, or that your very sick child won’t top out in a year on lifetime costs and you will still go bankrupt) Some people have a house full of children already here that HAVE to be cared for, and they know they will suffer the loss of parenting while you live for doctors visits and hospital stays for this terminally/chronically ill child. And who will care for them? And how many families can simply drop the income of one of the parents but still need the daycare? Add to that the number of people who know that, say, two children was the emotional and financial limit they could bear, and find themselves faced with the fourth pregnancy, healthy or otherwise.

When people start talking about abortion being used as birth control and that is why they abhor it—(because they don’t think women should be able to have sex and not worry about the consequences, those sluts)  why (I really want horns and blinking lights here) are we ignoring the male who got them pregnant? It takes two to tango. If the woman is having illicit sexual relations and should have to pay for it with pregnancy and childbirth, then what about the guy? (Or should we just go back to stoning the woman to death for unmarried sex? Would cut down on abortion) Wasn’t the sex he was having just as illicit?  Then why in the world are we not handing out free condoms on street corners, providing free and easy access to birth control pills AND making sure every child/teen/young adult/grown-up understands EXACTLY how it is that a baby is conceived? And what of the married women having abortions? What of the abused woman who is trying desperately to get out of that situation, yet finds herself pregnant? (Because, you know, being in an abusive relationship means forced sex, or tolerating it till you can find the strength to walk)

I hear the it’s a baby from the moment of conception. It’s not. It’s a  freeloader, a sponge out to suck the lifeblood from it’s host. If you are willing to be the host for the next 40 weeks, great. (Editing: someone whom I have no respect for carried on about how horrible I am because I call a fetus a freeloader. I was going to use the word Parasite, but I felt it too inflammatory, despite the first definition of the word being almost exactly correct, the only difference being that it is the same species

PARASITE__noun
1.
an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

It can not survive outside the womb. The moment it arrives at around 40 weeks, all the ROL(Right-to-Lifers) are finished. Before birth, it was a BABY. Now, it’s just one more deadbeat taker, sucking on the teat of big government, it’s mother nothing more than a welfare queen out to game the system, and to hell with medical care, or Head Start, or day care, or living wages, or anything resembling the Christian faith that forced it into the dreary existence it must now survive. And there are too many actual, born children languishing in foster care, to say just let this new child be adopted.

You know what? Pregnancy isn’t like giving a pint of blood.  No matter how you ended up that way, everyone you see knows. And wants details, and wants to congratulate you. And you know what else? Pregnancy can cause you illness, up to and including death. It is a hugely physical experience that lasts for the better part of a year. How can a rape victim heal if her very body rebels against her and reminds her for three seasons of a year?

So, to summarize, ladies. You should think before you act, or keep your legs closed. (The man trying to get them open is totally blameless)  If you can’t afford contraception for whatever reason, you have no business having sex. If you are married, you still have no business having sex if you can’t afford a (another) child…so,wait. Hold up a sec. See the slope? Be careful, it’s slippery.  The only people who have any right to have sex are married couples who have the financial and emotional stability to support a new child every 11 months or so.  So. Explain to me how it is so many upper income, religious, or educated families have 1 or 2 children, max? Guessing the little lady has cut you off?

No? Oh, you can afford the health insurance that provides the birth control you don’t want to allow for those who can’t afford the children. (Because after all if you can’t afford health insurance, you shouldn’t have sex. And you can’t get low cost birth control without health insurance because you have tried to close all the women’s clinics.) Right. What of your religious convictions now?

Seriously, it wasn’t my intent to bring articles or charts, percentages or anything more than thoughts into this little bit of self-expression. However, I posted a meme on FB the other week, and got a response that, well. Yeah. Thankfully, no one else responded after the one, and I have removed it, because I really want this to be about what I am saying, yah know? But it went like this:

1069271_280433142101676_1230393775_n

One response to the meme was this—-

“thats a lot of assumed dots your connecting. If abortion were not so readily available (except when medically needful for the helath sake of the mom), some might pay closer attention to what is taught in sex-ed and use the condoms, or wait till marriage.”

I resisted the urge (quite strong) to continue this thread. Because the problem is THIS—

A state the size of Texas (over a quarter MILLION square miles –268,000+ square miles) –will have FIVE clinics after the government played it’s latest games. THAT doesn’t sound readily available.

A state like North Dakota could have theoretically reduced the ability to have an abortion performed to ONE DAY of the entire pregnancy! (Had their smaller-government games actually passed muster) –one clinic in the state–have to fly in an out of state Doc, who comes once a week, and abortion couldn’t be performed until a pregnancy test confirms (at about 5 weeks) and no abortion after six weeks…TOTALLY not readily available.

Another problem is that so many of the lawmakers out there are NOT for sex-ed! And are NOT willing to provide condoms. And not all people WILL wait for marriage, because it is not your morality or religion they follow, but theirs. So, again. Legal. Safe. Rare.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/a_kid_is_not_a_luxury_item/

http://nation.time.com/2013/07/24/personhood-movement-continues-to-divide-pro-life-activists/?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/meet_five_of_the_most_extreme_anti_abortion_lawmakers_in_the_u_s/

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/22/judge-blocks-north-dakotas-restrictive-abortion-law/

(And yes, they are liberal sites. Can’t stand to read things like Faux News, sorry.)

Randomly moving on. I’m also tired of the relentless beating down about homosexual marriage, as if once allowed, all of us will be forcibly removed from our spouses side to marry someone of the same gender. Now, if  that was what was going on? Damned sure I’d be all over stopping it. I am rather attached to my husband. But short of that? What. Does. It. Do. To. You? HOW could it possibly affect you in a negative way? (Ok, competition for secular catering halls, booking the baker and the photographer, etc. might get a bit more challenging, but really??)

I can hardly even express how giddy I was that Wednesday as 10 AM approached. I was nervous, unable to focus, hitting my refresh button on the phone, holding my breath, anticipating, positive that the only way SCOTUS could rule was the way they did, but so fearful they wouldn’t anyway. The exhalation of breath was part of a communal relief around the country, I am sure.

If your faith causes you to believe that some people are less equal, that same sex marriage is wrong, then by all means follow your conscience and avoid marrying someone of the same sex.  But leave alone these other people. It is past time to accept that there is love in the world, and that love is good, and if more people love, the world is better.

No one is asking you to deny a portion of your being to satisfy a social construct.  If that is too hard to get, think about standing around the coffee maker at work and how you don’t think twice about mentioning you need to run by the store to pick up something for your wife on the way home. How when people ask casually what you are planning for the weekend, you say your husband and kids are heading to the lake. You aren’t rubbing your heterosexuality in someone’s face, simply sharing your life.

Would you expect to be fired for saying so? Passed over for promotion? Told you can’t live in this building? Beaten up? Dragged to your death? I watched my Facebook page, and I was gratified. I see that the majority of my friends (many of whom I have known in real life forever, and many who I have been connected to via mutual experience and habit to my great joy)– these people are of a similar belief—that the true religion is that of acceptance and love, not divisiveness and hate and fear of “other”.

I realized too, just how many of my Facebook (and real life)  friends are affected by the challenges of our world and how many of them have now had one burden lightened. Not removed, that will take the LOVE part of things to get stronger, the acceptance part to get stronger.  But so many of my friends will now find the world a better place.

I have found very few indeed, who are willing to post much that is outright hate, (on this topic at least) and for this too, I am gratified, because I know that surely, hate is floating around.  Point taken. Be assured, you are being ignored, blocked or unfriended. Love is not in your heart.

I have been married for 11 years. I am so enamored of this institution that I got to participate in simply because I loved someone that I can’t imagine holding it back from two other people who love each other the way I love my husband. That is what we were demanding that others not enjoy, simply based on the person with whom their heart has fallen in love.

When I married my spouse there was no agreement or understanding we would procreate if married. Indeed in the marriage vows, and in the marriage license, nowhere are children mentioned, inferred or implied. Nor did anyone say we couldn’t marry because there was no possibility of procreation.  We didn’t have to undergo medical testing to prove our ability to have children was intact. Our marriage wasn’t predicated on the idea we would raise children, or rear the children we already created as the results of failed formal and not so formal relationship, as they were adults. Yet no one person anywhere at any time suggested we not be allowed to avail ourselves of the myriad legal and societal opportunities provided us by that little civil paper from the County Clerks office. We call ourselves a family. Of Two. (Now, plus the cat and the adult child who came back)

But your faith — yes, I get it. Your God, blah blah.  You don’t KNOW, you believe. No one knows.  This country is not founded on any one religion. (Really, no matter how much you try to make it so, it’s just not. Even if the founders themselves were of a particular religious bent, they didn’t want the two mixed up.)  You did not need to approve of my marriage in order for me to marry. I didn’t need to approve of the person you chose to marry. (Goodness knows, if we all got to get involved in THAT particular circle of hell, there would be very little marriage at all.)

We hear these phrases every day. There but for the grace of God go I.  Walk a mile in my shoes. Live and let live. (How about Live and let Love?)

What is happening to YOUR marriage if more people can marry? What benefits are being taken from you if ANY other two people marry?

This is like the ultimate round in the have and have not,  ME-tality that seems to exist. I somehow ended up born in this country (but you can’t come here.)  I somehow found a company willing to provide medical insurance (but you can’t have any.) I somehow ended up on the correct side of a convoluted, gerrymandered redistricting line so my vote counts (but yours, not so much.) I somehow arm allowed make medical decisions for my spouse even over his family’s desires, (but you don’t get to do so.) Me me me.

And so the argument goes. As a country, we seem more concerned with sticking our noses into other peoples most private lives, lest someone get away with something. We don’t want big government, that is for sure. We want it small enough to set itself on the headboard of our beds. Rather than making sure there are jobs, rather than having our elected officials do their jobs and maybe get the interest rates straightened out for college students, or worry about the air we breath and the water we drink, we let them try to (repeatedly) repeal a law that provides medical care for (almost) all.  We allow Wall Street and big business to be the largest abusers of entitlement programs and tax abuse, while cutting a poor child’s school lunch. We are so concerned that some woman (who, I have to add, had heterosexual sex with a man) be punished because she is unwilling to continue with a pregnancy (and she knows her circumstances well enough to know she can’t afford another child) ….Or that two men want to live a quiet life of love together and not be ostracized.

If the bible is THE word of (your) God why on earth are there so many versions of it? That there are hundreds of English translations  and interpretations on bookstore shelves seems to indicate to me that it is not the word of God, but the words of many men. If the bible my great grandmother read is different by even one word from the one you read now, then how is the word of God?

And as for Paula Deen? Shame for defending her! If you say something, OWN it. To use as an excuse your generation for your poor behavior? I get other people say things, vile things. And they aren’t right either. But to defend one wrong because other people do worse? How does that make any sense.  If you say something stupid, as a non-celebrity, well, you are an ass. When you are a public figure, you should accept that as part of the the social contract you make with your fans; the trade off you make for all of the benefits you enjoy is that people hear and listen and react. Rappers aren’t little southern grandmas who are expected to be soft and friendly. What they say isn’t good, it isn’t nice, but it’s more or less contextual  (and not acceptable to me.)

No Child Left Behind  (told you it was a random list of rants) Today’s high school graduates pretty much made it through 12 years of NCLB. And I work with them, out in the real world. And holy crap, they have no ability to THINK. The questions they ask. The things that they can’t connect the dots on? The inability to infer, extrapolate? It’s more than laziness. It’s that they lack the ability to think creatively.

And by the by, this lapsed Catholic is thoroughly enjoying Pope Francis.

Can we at least all admit that  the law is sometimes wrong? Can you swear that your child would never be caught in a circumstance like Trayvon and that they might not run, which might cause someone to follow, which might mean you throw a punch which might mean you deserve to bleed to death in the rain because you don’t have the right to defend yourself from him with your fist, but someone else can defend himself from you with a gun?

Oh, and Of COURSE drivers licenses aren’t covered in the Constitution. We didn’t have cars back then.

http://youtu.be/4A6Bu96ALOw

I think I am done. Watch this clip, (which I can’t seem to embed prettily) and yeah.

So, back to photos next time, ok?