Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Emotionally Naked: Stripped Of My Autonomy

I have been absent from this space for many weeks now.  I have been, and continue to be, toiling at my in-laws - getting them settled into their new care facility, prepping their home for sale, cleaning, thrifting, laboring daily.  Seven weeks so far.  I simply have not had time to dedicate to this blog space despite the news being made in our country and around the globe.

And while I still have mountains to move on this end in terms of work to be done, today cannot be allowed to pass into tomorrow without my typing.  If only to keep my own head and heart from exploding.

I sit here staring out a window at a space that has not changed much - aside from tree height - since my great greats broke ground and built this amazing house well over 100 years ago.  Funny how little has changed in the surroundings and in the politics of who I am, who I am allowed to be.

It was just over 100 years ago that women were given the right to vote.  That came about only after great struggle, abuse, uprising.  That so many then, and now, still do not believe I should be able to cast a ballot is staggering to me.  That whole notion of "the weaker sex" is fucking laughable.

Oh, sorry - should have warned you - NSFW incoming - gird your loins or hit the X and GTFO.

There is nothing weak about being female.

Being female means you start from behind in this world.  Immediately.  Right out of the vaginal gate.  All around the world, far too many people, places, and religions place a higher value on males.  That somehow that extra scrap of skin and regrettable looking sac between their legs make them more worthy, smarter, destined for some mythical greatness.

Give me a fucking break.  Most of them go cradle to grave without truly even knowing how to use that sad apparatus let alone scaling the heights of Olympus because of it.  

Sadder still are the females who buy into the whole lesser than, subservient, defer-to-the-men set of dynamics.  That we have one sitting on the Supreme Court is frightening because she is part and parcel of what happened today.

Coney Barrett, in conjunction with her Christofacist benchmates, overturned Roe v Wade.  Not that we didn't see it coming.  Once that draft opinion was leaked, the writing in blood was on the wall.  And just as predicted, once that trigger was pulled, legislative bullets in state after state have begun to be fired, essentially outlawing abortion.  Just this morning, South Carolina Governor McMaster stated he will file motions "so that the Fetal Heartbeat Act will go into effect in South Carolina".  Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri signed an AG opinion which will effectively end abortion completely in that state.  He tweeted "This is a monumental day for the sanctity of life."

Um, no, no it's not.  The sanctity of MY life has fuck all to do with any of it.  (Sanctity of life never has anything to do with it.  We now live in a country where it is illegal to require people to wear masks during an ONGOING DEADLY PANDEMIC, but we can now legally require women to carry pregnancies they do not want, or that will kill them.)

There are 13 states with trigger laws that have simply been waiting for SCOTUS to do what it did.  Over the next few weeks, they will each become their own Gileads.  

I am not gobsmacked by what has taken place.  Far from it.  Again, the writing was on the wall.  What I am is fucking incensed.

My rights to my own body, to any decision making about it, my health, my well being - all were taken away this morning.  A ball of cells that cannot survive outside my uterus was just given more rights than my 56 year old fully functioning ass.

Question for you gents - yes, even those of you who are allied:  Do you even have any remote inkling of what this day feels like?  No, no you don't.  You may see your sig other seething, crying, ranting, smoke pouring from her ears, but YOU DO NOT KNOW.

No one has ever come for your dick.  No legislation exists that targets your ballbag.

So try, for just a moment, to imagine what it would feel like if suddenly they effectively did not belong to you anymore, they belong to the state.  That you do not have autonomy to make decisions about them.  You can no longer masturbate because what you expel is half the components of life.  That should you get ball cancer or prostate issues, you cannot have them addressed, fixed, removed because you would be "killing" those very alive spermatozoa.  What's that?  Without treatment you might die?  Damn, that's really sad and regrettable, but NO.  No dice, dude.  Those sperm matter more than the sentient meat sack containing them.  (That would be you, you handsome side of beef.)

I have been sitting here thinking about what this means for my daughters, your daughters, to any person with functioning ovaries and a uterus.  And then I realized, that also still means me.  I may be 56, but my body still continues its monthly ebb and flow, meaning I am capable of getting pregnant.  And I have said it before- were I to turn up with a positive test?  THERE WOULD BE AN ABORTION.

I am 56.  My husband is 64.  We are done having children.  We have three amazing ones.  One of them is pregnant and we are thrilled to be on the precipice of becoming grandparents.  But to make another of our own?  Absolutely not.

What happened today affects everyone.  Yes, I'm looking at you, MAGAts, conservatives, uber pew warmers, hypocrites.  Especially you hypocrites.  You know who you are - the ones who so fervently prayed for this day, who are dancing in the aisles, but who have your own abortion hidden somewhere in your personal closet.  You Republican men who insisted on them, paid for them.  You conservative women who covered your face and entered a clinic for yourself or your daughter, only to return to your pew days later nodding your heads as your preacher railed against we demon Dems who just looooooooove us some baby killin'.

You know who you are.

But it affects everyone on more than just the abortion front.  And allow me a moment to inform you - ABORTIONS WILL STILL TAKE PLACE.  THEY JUST WILL NO LONGER BE SAFE.

But I digress...

In his concurring opinion, batshitted and compromised justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Allow me to translate for you.  He is clearly stating all that past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage should be reconsidered.

You do notice the one ruling he did not include was Loving vs Virginia?  Hmmmm, why could that be?

Contraception.  Same sex relationships, marriage.  Starting to chafe a little yet?  No?  You should.  And herein lies the problem.  This tendency to not care until something becomes personally uncomfortable.

I am not LGBTQIA.

I am not black.

I am not Asian.

I am not Muslim.

I am not Jewish.

I am not a mother with small children in school.

I am not uninsured.

I am not married to someone of a different color or origin story.

I am not immunocompromised.

I am not Ukrainian.

I am not poor.

I don't use birth control.

I don't need a wheelchair ramp or any ADA measures for my ease of movement.

I can walk into a public bathroom with ease when I have to pee.

I don't panic during a traffic stop.

I can afford to fill my tank and grocery cart up without worrying about the total.

I can eat when I'm hungry.  Or bored.

And I don't currently need an abortion.

But all of the above?  I care about.  Because there are real people behind each of those statements of luxury who are not cloaked in the same privilege I enjoy.

I care because my son is transgender.  I care because somewhere there are women who are pregnant finding out the fetus is not viable, is ectopic, is a pregnancy that is simply not wanted at this time.  I care because Black people are targeted right down the line - every fucking breath they take is filtered through risk and fear and uncertainty.  I care because Jewish people have been turned into some boogeyman scapegoats for every uneducated, bigoted asshole with an axe to grind about their lot in life.  I care because people are hungry, sick, scared, unable to buy gas to get to their three jobs.  I care because love is love is love is love and the churches and government should have zero say in who loves who, who commits to who.  I care because children should not be easy targets in their classrooms, because their blood should be from scraped knees on the playground, not from their faces being blown off as they try to hide under their desks.  

I care because I'm a human being.  A decent one.  I do not have to personally experience pain, indifference, racism, ostracism, targeting, terror, hunger, medical horrors, death of a loved one, or trauma to CARE DEEPLY about the fact that other people are experiencing these things constantly all around me.

But what happened today is the culmination of selfishness, self involvement, hubris, nonchalance, disconnect.  The result of not staying informed, of feeling safe in your white skin, your gender identity, your job.  The result of protest voting, not voting, joke voting in 2016, hell in local, state, and national campaigns for decades before.  The result of telling people like me that I was being hysterical, that my warnings were full of hyperbole.  That none of this would ever happen.

Well, here we are.  Today is where WE reap what YOU sowed, assholes.  When every self loathing woman who got into office; when every blindingly stupid male legislator who cannot tell you how many holes a woman has below, who has no idea how pregnancy occurs, who cannot spell clitoris, let alone find it - begins telling me and every woman you know what we can and cannot do with our bodies.  These same geniuses who think we can just "shut down" our reproductive systems in the face of rape; who think ectopic pregnancies can be surgically relocated to the womb; who think taking birth control pills is an abortion - these Densa Mensa candidates are fapping away at their achievement today. 

All they have achieved is endangering women everywhere.  Their wives, daughters, granddaughters, girlfriends, mistresses - all of us.  They have successfully relegated us back to incubator status.  That is what our primary role is in their world - we make babies.  And sandwiches.

And they are not done.  Expect LGBTQIA rights to be next.  Anything that makes them oogie will now be in their very real gun sights.  Anything that doesn't jive with their man made religious rulebooks will be hunted down and destroyed.

Here's the thing about that.  Your fucking chosen sky deity and companion book - and yes, they are choices, you did not come into this world with ANY knowledge of any religion, cult, creed, or bias - you were taught it all and chose to stay - have zero right to be telling me or anyone else what to do.  I obviously have some pretty deeply held beliefs and convictions here, but if I cannot impose them on you, who the hell are you to even deign to think you can impose them on me?  

If I cannot force you to have an abortion, why should you be able to force me to not have one?  If I cannot strip away your bodily autonomy, why do you get to take mine?  I don't care how uncomfortable the subject makes you; I could not give less than a wet shit that it makes you weepy; and I do not give a tinker's damn that your pastor/priest/preacher threatens you, me, us all with hellfire and damnation - your personal biases and preferences begin and end at your doorstep.  

And make no mistake - what happened today is solidly about Christians imposing their beliefs through law.  Because if there was true religious freedom, ALL religions would be considered, and Jews and Muslims would still be able to walk into an abortion clinic at will.  Their religions allow for abortion.  Hell, my lack of religion allows for abortion.

But we live in Murica.  Where a dividing ball of cells gets more care and concern than a real child who is starving, being abused, or killed in the classroom.  Where the right to a gun is expanded and protected at the federal level by SCOTUS (just yesterday), but the right to a medical procedure is parceled out to the states just salivating over the chance to make it all illegal.

We live in a hellscape.  We are watching the rights of our fellow citizens being stripped away before our eyes.  We are characters in The Handmaid's Tale now come to life.

What I feel is all encompassing.  I am livid.  I am seething.  I am raw.  But what I also am is WOMAN.

Republicans have no idea what they have just unleashed.  

We have not even begun to ROAR.

 

The Unfriendly Skies

It may have been done in a metal tube at 30,000 feet, but it was the announcement heard round the world.

Yesterday, in a ruling by 35 year old Trump appointed federal judge, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, the federal mask mandate for public transportation was struck down.  Mizelle, neither a public health expert or even a decent candidate for the lifetime appointment she now holds (she was described as "unqualified" by the American Bar Association prior to her placement), stated in her ruling, “Wearing a mask cleans nothing.  At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.”

Those words, and her ruling, were immediately spread far and wide and high, reaching up to pilots in flight who delighted in letting their passengers know that their heinous oppression, fabric slavery, and forced concern for their fellow man masks were no longer required.  The result?  In-flight videos filled social media, horrified passengers took to their Twitter accounts midflight to lambaste the airlines, and the sane portion of the populace stared openmouthed (behind our masks).

Leading the ignorance brigade was Delta.  Their official statement literally contained this verbiage:

What in the ever loving fresh fuck?  See?  This is why we can't have nice things.  Like life.

An "ordinary seasonal virus"?!?!  Please explain that to the 1,015,839 Americans left dead in its wake.  Or the 6,225,663 citizens globally.  Or better yet, how about to the more than 20 MILLION excess dead internationally?

Watching the videos was like watching monkeys throwing their shit at zoo visitors.  The glee on the faces of the majority in each video and photo is sickening.  And I will go on the record and state that if each of these petulant, selfish cretins contracted COVID and ended up in a grave, I would not blink.  They care so little for anyone besides themselves, then I care zero for them as well.

COVID has not dwindled down to some "occasional seasonal virus."  It is very much on the move, mutating, and taking its toll.  One look overseas is all it takes to see the wave rolling towards us.  Their hospital numbers increasing, hundreds of flights being canceled daily as airline crews contract the virus and cannot work.  Yet here we are, a society dedicated to its own Field of Schemes, determined to act like if we ignore it, it will not come.

What happened in flight was simply wrong.  Passengers boarded those flights under one set of conditions - that of masking being enforced - and had that minimal protection stripped away.  Children too young to be vaccinated, who still rely on vaccinated adults and the masking of those around them, immunocompromised people who boarded for their trips reliant on the same, and those responsible people who are fully vaccinated, boosted, and diligent about masking - all suddenly exposed.

And before anyone starts - miss me with your "they shouldn't have been flying" takes.  Properly handled, societally supported, we should all be able to be doing a helluva lot more than we are at this point.  But the juvenile, shallow, out-for-number-one horde simply will not stand for even the most basic of inconveniences to their person.  Again, if only ONLY they were the ones contracting COVID and dying from it.

Sadly, everyone pays the price for their self centered, epidemiologically mercenary attitude.

I am still fresh off the needle of my fourth dose of the vaccine.  I regret not a single jab.  I have people in my life who are compromised and I love them.  It it the least I can do to protect them, hell, it is the least I can do to protect total strangers.  Masking is no different.  Even without COVID, I have zero plans to ever travel again without masking.  Whether it is the common cold, the flu, or a deadly virus, wearing an approved N94 or N95 mask has kept me healthier the past three years than ever before, especially after flying.  

The whole aversion to masking still stymies me.  Even the dumbest of dumbfuQs would balk at their surgical team not wearing anything as they stand over their open body on the table.  Why is that logic about protection so difficult to apply to an airborne virus?  Masks are worn in surgical settings to protect your open carcass from coughs, sneezes, you know - DROPLETS - from those working on you.  And to protect them from anything that oozes, spurts, or splashes up from YOU.  Surgical staff wear them for HOUR after HOUR after HOUR.  So, seriously, retire your pathetic whining about lack of oxygen.

Delta was not the only airline to have pilots and flight attendants make similar announcements midflight.  Passengers on United, JetBlue and Alaska Airlines reported the same.  Including the same boorish, childish, narcissistic cheering.

Yes, the mandate was set to expire on May 3rd, unless additional federal intervention to keep it in place longer, but on any level of rational thought, this is not simply unwise, it is deadly.  But hey, the risk of long COVID or death don't seem to phase these imbeciles, so let's provide them a visual that does resonate:  INCONVENIENCE.  

PREVIEW OF NEXT MONTH AT US AIRPORTS—“Chaos” at @HeathrowAirport as hundred of flights✈️ got cancelled or delayed as airlines were hit by staff shortages due to #COVID19. 3 hour waits—some flights delayed 24 hours. How is ‘let it rip’ good for the economy? pic.twitter.com/CG3hZLR7CQ

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) April 19, 2022

That is what is coming, you willfully ignorant, mouthbreathing cretins.  Your summer plans, visions of amusement parks, beaches, cruises, visits to granny, honeymoons - canceled - because one power mad dimbulb in Floriduh decided she knows better than the experts and wanted to be famous among the red hats.  We already experienced hundreds of flights canceled because of COVID illnesses among flight crews a couple months ago.  It will be happening here again very soon.

All because you belligerent little belly achers cannot be asked to do the bare minimum and wear a goddamned mask.

Heads up - it's not simply airports and airlines.  Uber, Lyft, and Amtrak removed their masking requirements as well.  And save for some taxi services, a public transit system here and there (like MTA) and a couple airports like JFK, masks are now just an option.  What's sad is that one airline - Alaska - literally felt the need to use these words in their statement: "While we are glad this means many of us get to see your smiling faces, we understand some might have mixed feelings. Please remember to be kind to one another and that wearing a mask while traveling is still an option."   

Kind is the last thing these idiots are to anyone else.  They live to be sophomoric, mean, and bullies.  Evidence aplenty of their need to harass those wearing masks during the mandate can be found with a simple Google search.  Do you really think they will be kind now when someone in their vicinity is wearing one?  GTFO.

My husband and I are set to fly to Barcelona in three weeks.  We'll see.  The timing renders the entire trip up-in-the-air, as it were.  Will our domestic flights be canceled due to lack of crew?  Will Europe again be roiling under the weight of their bad choices?  I can tell you this - should our flights still be operating, our masks will be firmly in place.  DOUBLED, even.  Because the skies have never been less friendly.

(PS - Delta, shamed into dealing with reality, adjusted their statement this morning, now referring to COVID as "a more manageable respiratory virus."  Millions of citizens around the world could not be reached for comment.)

CuomOver and OUT

One of the subjects that hit the news while I was away was that of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the lengthy investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.

When the press conference took place a week ago, NY Attorney General Leticia James laid bare the findings:  after tens of thousands of documents and 179 witness interviews, it was clear, "Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and in doing so violated federal and state law."

A "hostile" and "unsafe" work environment that included unwanted touches, kisses, innuendo, and "inappropriate groping."  In all, 11 women had come forward with the details of what they had endured at his roving hands while they attempted to do their jobs, keep their jobs.

That same morning, he came forward with a prerecorded rebuttal denying every single instance, right down the line.  He blamed being Italian, as if that buys a pass for unwanted amore'.  He blamed his parents' shows of affection for his own that were now called into legal question.  He excused it all away - he was saint, they were sinners.

It was a sickening study in yet another man hoisted with his own sexual petard, who refused to own any of his behavior and the fallout it caused.

As a woman who has been on the receiving end of unwanted jokes, emails, touches, gropes, and a rape to boot, allow me to say right here, right now, to every man out there - KEEP YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS, MOUTH, DICK TO YOURSELF.

It stymies us all how you can see other men getting caught, called out, fired, put in jail, yet so many of you refuse to see your own repulsive, assumptive behavior.  You continue on into your workplaces behaving as if you are Don Draper in Mad Men - that your females employees are just there for the eye candy of it all, there to absorb your puerile advances, fake laugh at your dirty jokes.  You continue your predatory behavior in public spaces where you catcall, make sexual asides at, and dare to push up on, women in stores, bars, on the sidewalk as we pass, on an airplane while we sit trapped. 

And then when one of us raises our head, finally disgusted to the point of verbally or physically rebuffing, you immediately turn one of two ways:

Victimy, whiney, "Hey, whoa! Just kiiiiidddddingggg!  Jeez, lighten up!"

or

Aggressive, "Fuck you, bitch.  I wouldn't fuck you anyway."

Here's the thing, guys - neither is acceptable, because the behavior leading up to your rebuttal was never acceptable.  And getting menacing in the face of one of us daring to turn down your offer of whatever you think you're offering?  News flash - we are under no obligation to be grateful for your attention, your words, your cock.

Especially your cock.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - your cocks are not the be all end all you seem to think they are.  They are an odd looking flap of flesh that we are all more than aware you house behind your zippers.  If we are interested in entertaining it on any level, we will let you know.  And it certainly won't be when you holler "Nice tits!" on the street. 

Seriously, what in the fresh fuck do you think will actually happen when you do this?  That we will stop in our tracks, take in your too short Dockers, stained t-shirt, meat hook feet in dirty flip flops, and your backwards ballcap, and be overcome with lust?  That we will run to you and beg you to take us NOW, RIGHT NOW on the manhole cover, passersby be damned?

GTFO.  You've watched way too much porn.

These type of things are far too common in public spaces, and we endure them, ignore them, breathe deep through them, and walk faster to our destination to get the fuck away from you.  But when they happen in the workspace?  We are trapped.  Trapped in cubbies, copy rooms, lunch areas, walkways - trapped because we have nowhere to go.  And when the advances and gropes come from a superior?  We are well and truly fucked because the imbalance of power is scary, we need our jobs to survive, and must smile through your boorish, rapey behavior while we will the clock to move faster towards closing time.

Extrapolate that now to being the Governor of a state.  The power is undeniable.  And those women who have worked their way into positions in proximity of that power?  Yes, there are good men in top ranks, but there are far too many for whom absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And in corrupting the behaviors displayed and inflicted on the women, crimes are committed. 

Small aside here - yes, I freely acknowledge there are women in positions of power who sexually abuse their male underlings.  Of course there are.  And those women deserve every bit of comeuppance, outing, and courtroom time as their male counterparts.  But let's be clear here - as far as women have come in this world, this is still a predominantly male towards female issue.

Like so many larger than life public figures before him (Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Russell Simmons, Toby Robbins, Brett Ratner, Chris Brown, Brett Kavanaugh, Les Moonves, Steve Wynn, and on and on...), Cuomo abused his position of power, his proximity to so many women, and preyed on them constantly.  And with each successful and successive touch, fondle, grope, whisper, and word he grew more and more emboldened in his behaviors, his encroachment into their personal space, their lives, their nightmares.

Men - the women around you don't want to discuss their sex lives with you.  We are under zero obligation to share our fantasies, our desires, our out of office lives with you.  Don't ask.  We do not want your casual pass of a hand over our midsections or lower backs, as you test the waters of what we will tolerate from you.  Don't corner us in an elevator.  Don't follow us to the bathroom.  Do not call us sweetheart or darling.  Don't invite us into your office under the pretext of work and then push papers to the floor and ask us to bend over to pick them up. 

Seriously how many times did you watch 9 to 5 you sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot?  

Look, having another person like you can be a wonderful thing.  Even in the workplace.  The excitement, the anticipation, the lingering glances across the office.  If it is wanted, reciprocated.  And I promise you, men, we will let you know if it is.  Hell, I married my boss.  But our dance towards one another was based on mutual, understood attraction, absolute respect, and the common sense to keep it out of the workplace, even as it exploded into our private lives and off hours.

But when you boorishly make passes that are obviously unwanted, make jokes that illicit a cringe, move into our personal space and we move quickly backwards?  Take a fucking hint.  

We are under zero obligation to reciprocate.  We should not feel compelled to protect your feelings from harm.  It is not up to us to assuage your ego by sublimating our self esteem.  Your attentions are not some divine gift.  Your affections are not intuited by us as winning a prize.  And your dick is not some blessing you bestow upon us.  Have a little respect.  Hell, if not for us, then for yourselves. 

Women move through this world in a constant state of heightened awareness.  Because of you.  Women have plans and backup plans and backup, backup plans.  Because of you.  Women carry mace, rape whistles, guns.  Because of you.  Women fake phone calls in Ubers.   Because of you.  Women alert other women to their plans and movements and locations.  Because of you.  Women go with other women to the bathroom.  Because of you.  Women avoid male led workout classes.  Because of you.  Women change gyms to avoid walking past construction sites.  Because of you.  Women wear bulky clothes and put their hair up when they are on the street.  Because of you.  We avoid rest stops and gas stations when traveling alone, need to pee be damned.  Because of you.  We only wear one headphone so we can be aware of our surroundings.  Because of you.  

The list goes on and on.  Women constantly alter their behaviors because women are constantly aware we are targets.  That is not hyperbole.  81 percent of women in the U.S. experience sexual harassment, and at least 33 percent of women globally will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

These percentages are not secret.  These actions we take are well known.  And we are prepared to have to take them in the public sphere.  We should not have to endure poor behavior, brash intrusions, and scary sexual situations in our workplaces.  We just shouldn't.  But we do.

A week ago, in the face of incontrovertible evidence and witness interviews, Governor Cuomo defiantly blew off calls for his resignation.  In Tony Soprano fashion he denied everything and basically dared anyone to come for him.  

This morning, as the voices calling for his ouster have only grown louder, the list longer, impeachment an all but foregone conclusion, and his crimes referred for prosecution, he announced he will resign effective in 14 days.  Did he accept responsibility for his acts?  Of course not.  He framed it as so many men do when they have been caught with their dick in the wind.  He is doing the noble thing, the honorable thing, the greater good thing.

Gag.

"Given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government, and therefore that is what I'll do, because I work for you, and doing the right thing, is doing the right thing for you."

And then he did what so many also do, he hid behind the women in his personal life, in this case, his three daughters.

"I want them to know from the bottom of my heart that I never did and I never would intentionally disrespect a woman, treat any woman differently than I would want them treated, and that is the God's honest truth."

"Your dad made mistakes. And he apologized, and he learned from it and that's what life is all about."

Having daughters and being a sexual criminal are not mutually exclusive, Andrew.

Grabbing a woman's breast is not a mistake.  It is an intentional act.  Asking a woman about her sex life and partners is not a mistake.  It is an intentional, gross intrusion.  Telling an employee that if you were a dog you would try to mount her is not a mistake.  It is a boorish, sexually charged advance.  When you shove your tongue into a woman's mouth and she tries frantically to pull away that is not a mistake.  That is an overtly hostile sexual crime.  When you grab a woman's ass while posing for a picture, that is not a mistake.  That is molestation.

Methinks that if one of his daughters came to him complaining about their boss inflicting one or all of the above on them, Andrew may look upon that man with an equally Soprano-esque murderous gaze.  He needs to now turn that gaze upon himself.

He'll have plenty of time for reflection.  Cuomover and OUT.

Delta Dawn

For the past two weeks I have been traveling with my husband across this beautiful land of ours.  Driving from Phoenix to North Carolina to see his parents.  Mile after mile spent traversing Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina - what we found was disturbing, infuriating, yet not surprising in the least.

Masks were far and few between, while obtuseness was in rich supply.

Despite the dawn of the Delta variant that is cutting huge swaths of the populace down in the form of positive COVID tests and filling hospital ICU beds at an alarming rate, willful ignorance and prideful belligerence is on full display across this country.  States led by GQPers are the worst.  Science be damned, far too many have politicized this pandemic and there is, sadly, no going back.

As of this morning, our stats are as follows:

36,547,563 - number of positive cases since the beginning of this pandemic (that is 11% of our population)
     633,126 - number of dead (which by every metric and expert analysis is woefully undercounted)
     109,706 - number of cases per million
         1,900 - number of deaths per million (still feeling lucky?)
  4,312,896 - number of deaths globally (again, woefully approximate and undercounted/under reported)

Those numbers are disturbing to anyone with functioning gray matter.  Our deaths per million are again increasing at a steady clip, up 100 in the past two months alone.  Our number of cases per million up over 10,000 in the same time span.  And globally, that number has jumped by ONE MILLION since the end of May.

The last one should be compelling if for no other reason than it highlights how farcical it is to have COVID emerge as such a political football in this country.  This pandemic is not just happening here.  It is in every country on this planet.  It gives not one fancy fuck about left vs right, conservative vs liberal, Q vs IQ.  All it cares about is staying alive, continuing to spread, and mutating as many times as possible as we try to catch up.

Yet here in this country we have fully vaccinated talking heads like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Candace Owens sitting safe in their inoculation while espousing disinformation to their mASSES.  We have governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott gleefully watching their states implode with COVID while passing laws against any attempts to slow it down.  And we have politicians like Rand My-hair-is-styled-after-an-IKEA-bathmat Paul goading the experts and doctors and nurses with his verbal screeds against masking and vaccinations. 

He tweeted this morning (along with a four minute video): "We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom."

The level of hubris, the blinding irresponsibility here is staggering.  This is not about freedom, this is about freedumb.  But hey, as long as you're bringing it up, Rand, let's talk about the harm to our "society, economy, and children."

Our society is not simply fractured.  The crevasse revealed by the installation of the most ignorant sack of trash to ever occupy the Oval has become a Grand Canyon.  On one side, a political party buoyed by dark money, rabid politicians whose only concern is staying in office, and legions of easily led sycophants.  On the other, thinking, logical, science-appreciating, society minded people trying desperately to move this country forward from the devastation already wrought by COVID.

Our society and economy should be almost to the other side of this virus by now.  We could have been.  We have access to multiple FREE vaccines, we have the easy ability to mask up, and should have the common sense to avoid large gatherings.  (Yet here we are, still open mouthed at Lollapalooza and now aghast at Sturgis.)

Sadly, in the face of those three absolute blessings, we also have anti-vaxxers who believe anything they read on Facebook over actual experts in epidemiology.  We have careless dimwits who believe themselves to be "bulletproof", "protected by God", and "board certified in American freedom." 

I'm not kidding.  Those are real quotes.  That last one was proudly spouted by a COVID denying Qaren at a school board meeting about masks and vaccines.  "I have a bachelor's degree in logic, a master's degree in motherhood, and I'm board certified in American freedom."

As for the former?  The men who sputtered those gems did so from their ICU beds during their come-to-Jesus revelations shortly before they died.  From COVID.

But back to Qaren and her master's in motherhood.  Maybe I went to a different school for my mothering degree, but my graduation was dependent on my being fully fluent in placing my children's health and well being forever foremost in my mind, my actions, my protections of them.  But because of folks like COVID Qaren, pediatric cases of the virus shot up fivefold since the end of June, and up 84% in the past week alone.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said Tuesday it recorded almost 72,000 new cases of Covid-19 among children from July 22-29, up from 39,000 the week prior and a sum that comprises 19% of all cases reported nationally over that period.

More disturbing, ICU beds are quickly filling with children in state after state, obliterating the comfort we all took a year ago in the initial variant that was striking hardest at elderly and those with comorbidities.  But again, the dawn of the Delta variant changed the game.

The viral load is twice that of the original.  The transmission rate is faster and higher because, as is the case when a virus mutates, it does so to become more efficient (read: dangerous and deadly).  As of the end of July, Delta was responsible for 80% of the new positive cases.  

So what we are seeing now is, while heartbreaking and infuriating, not surprising.  Children are now the largest population of unvaccinated in the USA.  The vaccines have not yet been approved for those 12 and under, so they have been at the mercy of the adults around them to get vaccinated and protect them.  Enter the Qarens and Qevins who believe themselves to be bulletproof, believe the virus to still be a hoax, believe anyone who types a screed on Facebook, believes their red state politicians who bleat about freedom and choice, believe bullshit like the vaccine contains a tracking chip/makes you infertile/makes you magnetic.

Daily we are now subjected to stories of these blowhards dying with a ventilator tube down their maws.  We get their last words, texts, posts in which they now take it seriously.  We get their widowed spouses beseeching everyone to get vaccinated.  Frankly, I am as done with these stories as I was with the constant Jethro safaris to far flung diners to find out why they were voting for Trump.

The answer now is as simple as the answer was in those diner queries.  They are stupid.

Unkind?  I don't care.  Prove me wrong.  I am over being lectured to understand these people, to not talk down to them, about them.  Fuck. That. Noise.  These are the idiots who sold out hydroxychloroquine and are now emptying feed store shelves of ivermectin (horse dewormer).  They have had access to the exact same information as the rest of us from the very beginning.  The difference is they love the taste of liberal tears so they gleefully followed Trump and Company into the abyss.  Let them rot in their graves.  I save my sympathy for one group - those who cannot yet be vaccinated - the children and the immunocompromised.

As for the rest?  I'm done.  They are a cult hellbent on playing chicken with death.  They are not to be pitied, they are to be pilloried and ostracized.  Don't want to get the vaccine?  Fine.  One by one, city after city, they are going to find themselves on the outside looking in.  No vaccination?  No entry.  This liberal's tears you will be tasting will be from me laughing so hard at how desperate you are to get in a movie theater, a concert, a restaurant, on an airplane.

Vaccines are not new.  The concept of a vaccine "passport" - NOT NEW.  Vaccines have kept us alive for generations.  Proving a vaccination status has enrolled your children in school for decades.  Travel across this globe often depends on you acquiring various vaccines before being allowed entry into another country.

And let's put paid to that specious argument about the COVID vaccines not being fully approved, or that they were rushed and therefore suspect.

The vaccines were not rushed.  There are dedicated researchers, scientists, experts who inhabit labs around the world, around the clock working on vaccines, drilling down on viruses.  The speed of the vaccines for COVID were made possible by them already largely being in existence and having people far smarter than you and I adapt them to the specifics of COVID-19.  And as for the emergency use they currently exist under?  You whiners will simply word salad another excuse to not get the shots as soon as FDA approval is finalized (which is now within weeks).

They do not magnetize you.  Your fertility is not at risk - although, gents?  Your ability to oak up takes a huge hit if you contract COVID.  There is no tracking chip being magically injected through that miniscule needle of liquid.  JFC, that one takes the moldy cake.  The same dullards who embrace that scare tactic post about it from THE CELL PHONES IN THEIR HANDS.  The iPhones that can triangulate your location.  The Galaxies that know where you just ate dinner.  The cell phones we all would defend to the death before relinquishing our ability to Google, play games, source music, and stream TV shows at will.

But as I type these words, I am also reminding myself we are up against a segment of the populace for whom 1 + 1 does not = 2.   For them 1 + 1 = Deepstatebogeymen5Gshriveledovaries.  Oh, and we must not leave out the part where they are special.  SO, SO special that they will be tracked.  SO, SO special that only they have insider info gleaned from rabbit holing Youtube videos.  SO, SO special that they will survive and the rest of us will all wither and die as our vaccine chips are activated when <insert latest bullshit conspiracy theory>.

The reality is many of them will die.  They will not be remembered as heroes.  They will not be lauded as champions of freedom.  They will simply fade into obscurity after their tale of woe is turned into tomorrow's cautionary tale in the NYTimes.  They will leave behind families bankrupted by their hubris.  (The average hospital bill should you survive is $70,000.  And if you think insurance companies aren't crunching the numbers right now?  Well, we already know you're dim, so...)  Some will bury a child who is dead at the hands of their parents' stupidity and ego.  Some will watch their child contract COVID, have seemingly mild symptoms and then watch as their once healthy child is revealed to have long-COVID symptoms, forever thwarting their desire to play soccer, baseball, football, hell, play at all.

The two weeks we traveled were not eye opening.  They were simply verification of what we knew.  People are dumb.  No masks.  No precautions.  Just hubris writ large.

And far too many of them will soon be "a faded rose from days gone by."  Delta has dawned.  Get vaccinated or get ready for that mansion in the sky.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Post script -  Current COVID models are estimating 83,000-142,000 more deaths in the United States between today and December 1st. Those same models show that we could prevent 48,000-108,000 of those by simply wearing masks.  

The Pandemic We Ignore - Another Day, Another Deadly Mass Shooting

I don't sleep solidly at night, so my dark hours find me keeping up with news, reading recaps of shows I watch, and falling down rabbit holes of topics about which I wish to learn more.  As such, should news break in the night, I pretty much watch it happen in real time.  Last night was a prime example.

Police responding to reports of a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. 

That was the first blip to come across Twitter.  Quickly it morphed to four dead.  Then they added the shooter having killed himself.  As the night wore on, the full scope of the latest mass shooting revealed itself.  8 people dead.  The shooter dead as well.  Many more treated for injuries.

Just another day, or in this case, night, in scare-adise.  Just another set of stats in the ongoing, endless, bloody pandemic we choose to ignore.

It truly says something about us as a nation that in the face of a viral pandemic, we rallied (well, most of us), masked up, distanced, stayed home, and pharmaceutical companies stepped up to nail down effective vaccines as quickly as possible so as to quell the ever increasing death toll.

As of this morning, a full 10% of our population has tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began over a year ago.  32,256,982 positive tests.  From that number, 579,656 people have perished. 1,743 deaths per million in the United States.  A death rate of 1.7%.  Old, young, all colors, creeds, cultures.  COVID has been an equal opportunity destroyer. 

So we did something.  We are doing something.  Millions of people are stepping up, rolling up their sleeves, and gladly taking the vaccine injections.  202,282,923 vaccine doses have been injected so far.  Of that number, 127,743,096 (38.5% of our population) people have received one injection and are waiting for dose #2.  I am happy to count myself among the 80,609,818 (24.3% of total population) who are fully vaccinated.  

579,656 people dead.  We are still averaging 713 deaths per day, cases are again surging, and COVID remains the #1 cause of death in the United States.

With three vaccines being distributed, we have proven we are capable of seeing a deadly problem and doing something about it.  Hell, six people developed blood clots after receiving the J&J vaccine and it has been suspended.  We can do things fast.  

If we want to.

Sadly, when it comes to our guns - this nation where the number of firearms in our homes outnumber our population (not kidding - we average 120.5 guns per every 100 people, and 23 million of them were put into circulation in 2020 alone.  We are 4% of the world's population, but we have 44% of the guns.) - we have nothing but emotional ennui about the endless flow of blood.

The stats for gun violence are just as compelling as COVID.  Your chances of dying from a gun assault in this land are 1 in 315.  Dying in a mass shooting?  1 in 11,125.  Yet here we are, watching the aftermath of the latest mass murder, and we know, without a doubt, that absolutely nothing is going to change.

It is fairly common to state that when nothing substantial changed after dozens of 6 year olds were gunned down at Sandy Hook, that we have precious little reason to think any change will ever truly come.  I mean, if as a nation we cannot move our legislators to action after that?  Well, forgive the alliteration, but we are a pathetic, powerless, poor excuse for a populace.  We just don't care enough.

We sit back and watch Senators and Congresspeople offer rote "thoughts and prayers" that are absolutely meaningless.  Seriously, if there is a god, that entity rolls his/her/its eyes at us constantly.  (Just curious, Christian conservatives who love to bash their Bibles on everyone's head - what about that whole 'God helps those who help themselves' line?) We wearily accept that nothing will change because they are so afraid of their gun obsessed constituents, and so tunnel visioned on being re-elected - to continue doing nothing about gun violence.

That last part is important because they are capable of being moved to action when it suits their purposes.  Again, their main purpose being staying in office.  Republican lawmakers have introduced 361 bills in 47 states aimed at voter suppression.  This in response, of course, to their having lost the Senate, the White House, and still not having the main foothold in Congress.  As they all support the Big Lie spread by the flame colored former guy, they are hot to put forward as many changes as possible.

In terms of culture wars, their revolting legislative attacks on the transgender population has been equally relentless.  Bill after bill moving to make it possible for doctors to deny care, to label parents who support their trans child as child abusers, and the latest bill, headed to the desk of Floriduh's Ron DeathSantis would allow for genital exams of students who wish to play sports, but who make grown-ups oogy at the thought of what might be downstairs.  

Literally, bill after bill after bill written and submitted for problems that simply do not exist.  There is no widespread voter fraud - and the few instances that have been found have been perpetrated by REPUBLICANS.  And there is no sinister trans agenda in the doctors' waiting rooms, public bathrooms, or on the sports fields of this nation.

Yet there they are writing legislation and pushing for new laws.

But guns are sacrosanct.  They cower behind the 2nd amendment.  They cater to the dimmest, dumbest, least responsible creatures in the nation.  And as a result, we have endured 45 mass shootings since March 16th alone.  ONE MONTH.  Of the six that were very public, 40 people were killed.

 

But people are being injured and dying daily regardless of whether their involvement reaches the required four or more in one shooting.  In the first three months of this year, here are some very sobering, blood drenched statistics:

4,500+ gun deaths

8,100+ gun injuries

100+ mass shootings

200+ children shot

900+ teenagers shot

250+ incidents of defensive gun use

450+ unintentional shootings

~6,000+ suicides [CDC estimate] 

Last night we added 8 more people.  Last night 8 people went to work and were murdered.  Last night 8 families lost loved ones.  Last night aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers, friends, co-workers perished because they were simply in the wrong place at the right time.  The place shouldn't have been wrong.  They were at work.  Like schools, people should be able to go to their places of employment without fear of never emerging from them alive.  But because some 19 year old, former Fed Ex employee, waste of oxygen decided to take Call of Duty from the virtual to the real life, 8 people lay cold and dead all night, all morning - only now are they beginning to be removed by the coroner.

Imagine for a moment that someone you love is among that number.  Hell, imagine it is you.  Because there is absolutely nothing protecting any of us from being the next casualty face down in the grocery store, a warehouse, an office building, a restaurant, a concert, a school. 

Any of us could contract COVID and die gasping for air.  We understood that and stepped up.  (Again, the thinking, rational, non-pants shitting portion of the populace)  We are now participating in protecting not only ourselves, but one another, by getting vaccinated.  Hell, we don't even quibble about when we can nail down an appointment.  My first dose was at 11 am.  My second?  5 am.  And I was happy to get up, drive 35 minutes, and wait in the long lines of cars for my chance. 

Any of us could contract lead poisoning via gun violence.  We understand that, too.  None of us have some sort of magical cloaking device that will protect us in the Walmart when another murderer decides to open fire.  But today, just like after every other mass shooting, we sit, we fret, we feel angry and impotent.  And we will just let this one disappear in the rearview mirror knowing another is just around the bend.  And even when the next horror is meted out, regardless of how high is the death count, this will still be the GQP response:

Gun violence in the United States is every bit as much of a pandemic as is COVID.  Yet it is the pandemic we choose to ignore. 

Will you be next to die?  Will I?  It's a real question.  We do not have to simply accept participation in that perverse lottery.  We didn't do it with COVID, we don't have to do it with guns.  

We just don't.

Perhaps the message, the movement needs only be as simple as this:  We don't want to die.  Just like we did with coronavirus.  I'll say it first.  

I. DON'T. WANT. TO. DIE. BY. GUN. VIOLENCE.

Add your voice.

Disorder In The Court

It has been roughly 80 hours since we received a phone call from one of our daughters telling us about the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  We were away for a few days, happy to be masked up and holding hands, sauntering down the quiet, peaceful streets of old Sante Fe.  Suddenly nothing felt peaceful anymore.  We both stopped on the sidewalk and, heads down, were online in a heartbeat.

Glancing up as we walked, we were not the only ones glued to the information ether looking for details.  So many heads down...

In the hours that have passed since finding out, I have gone through many of the grief stages already. 

Denial - it was immediate.  No, no, nononononononononono.  Like everyone else, I knew how old she was, I knew the health battles of late, but the woman has always been a phenomenal life force.  5 foot 1 inch, yet larger than life.  Thinking of her in simple, human terms is difficult.  Thinking of how she battled for this nation - I cannot believe she is gone.

Anger - That came swiftly as the despicable, predictable GOP began making their glee known.  Anger at the hypocrisy.  Anger at the fact the news was still breaking yet they were dancing on a grave.  Anger because of everything her death telegraphs for our future, for the future of minorities, women, LGBTQIA, DACA, DREAMers, the disabled, the ACA, Roe v Wade, and on and on.

Bargaining - I don't know what I believe in in terms of what comes next.  Nothing can be proved, no one can prove a negative, but I found myself fervently wishing that there is something, some next stage to which that incredible woman has passed.  Energy like that cannot just cease.

Depression - As if the collective anxiety and depression and unease we have all been physically laboring beneath were not enough, this was an emotional body blow.  On so many levels.  RBG was a heroine for me, and for so many.  She was a leader, a pantheon of strength and character.  Diminutive in stature, almost precious in her white lace collar, but woe betide anyone who took those traits to mean pushover.  She was the absolute best of what a woman is, can be, can achieve.  She embodied grace, wit, intellect, compassion, and a deep, DEEP love of country and our laws.  Yes, I feel heavy, depressed, so very sad.

Acceptance - That last stage of grieving is not going to come easy.  I am Irish, I am belligerent, I am hard headed, and I hate when something awful happens and cannot ever unhappen.  I have grown enough to finally know that screaming at the wall will never move the wall, but in my private moments, there are still walls that pay the price for things I cannot change in my life.

What I do accept is that our fight does not stop with her death, with her lying in repose in the Supreme Court this week, with her burial.  What I do accept is that we are living through unprecedented times, with unprecedented behavior by the opposing party.  What I do accept is that the words 'Merrick Garland' are meaningless to the corrupt, power hungry criminals in the majority.  What I do accept is that hypocrisy is the air they breathe.

What I do accept is that in a 3-6 country, we are about to have a 6-3 Supreme Court and everything that portends.  That does not mean I give up.  It means I accept the reality of the cretins we are up against and the actual power they currently, legally have to act.

I also accept that the Notorious RBG led the way, showed the strength, defined will and honor and hope. 

Her mother, whom Ruth called "the most intelligent person I had ever known" instilled in RBG a deep, abiding love of learning, of equality, of the need to find and use your voice.  That her gender did not make her less than a man.  Her mother, so smart, went to work at age 15 so that her family could put her brother through college.  Being a girl, Celia was viewed as being lesser, having no need to advance her education.

When RBG was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993, she ended her press remarks this way, “I have a last thank-you. It’s to my mother. My mother was the bravest, strongest person I have ever known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

I daresay she made her mother proud.  She blazed a trail through her schooling and when she was at Harvard Law - only 1 of 9 women, mind you, never forgot the dinner party at which the dean made the woman go around the table and each had to speak to justify why they were there taking the place of a man.  Ahh, 1956.  There were 552 men enrolled with her, but I guess that wasn't enough?  Because of her intellect, acumen, and unapologetic attendance in their ranks, she was nicknamed a "bitch" by the male classmates.  Her wry reply to finding that out?

"Better bitch than mouse."

DAMN.  QUEEN.

She persevered through the years juggling family, studies, and a university where women were not even allowed in the law library.  She was also one of the first women to serve on the Harvard Law Review journal.  She did not complete her years at Harvard, however, as she transferred to Columbia when her husband took a position in New York.  She would go on to be first in her class.

Which meant little as she struggled to find employment - again, we wimmin folk were still persona non grata in so many places.

She finally got her foot in the door with a low level clerk position and slowly began her climb.  Through the years she was a pioneer in gender equality issues - arguing before the Supreme Court six times, winning five. in 2011, Harvard awarded her an honorary degree, and in 2015 she received their Radcliffe Medal signifying she was someone who had transformed society.

I have long looked at her life, how she lived it, navigated demands, juggled family, career.  If we are each born an empty vessel, RBG filled hers to overflowing by the time she passed.  She learned, she taught, she parented two children, she was a dedicated spouse in a marriage where there was always equality.  She supported him, he supported her.  Shortly before his death, Marty, an accomplished lawyer in his own right, said, “I think the most important thing I have done is enable Ruth to do what she has done.”

That is a husband.

Just as forced sterilizations at an ICE facility have been making headlines, it is notable to remember how long this type of thing has been being perpetrated, and fought.  I wrote last week about how there were laws allowing it for decades - to thin the herd, strengthen the gene pool, and diminish a population based on race.  RBG, when she was the Director of the ACLU Women's Rights project, fought in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of a Black woman who had been operated on as a teenager through the eugenics program in North Carolina.  It allowed for forced sterilizations for "mentally defective" persons.  There is zero documentation to support the assertion that Nial Ruth Cox was mentally disabled in any way.  She had been found to be pregnant and as such her mother was told by the county her daughter was immoral, and unless she agreed to have her sterilized they would cut off benefits for the younger children.  They were told repeatedly the procedure was reversible and that Nial would be able to have children in the future.

She found out later in her life that was completely untrue.  Unable to have children, her fiance' left her, and as she was a single Black woman, she was denied adoption rights.  The ACLU took her case - that was in the 70s, that is how long this has been going on, that is how long RBG has been a fighter for women.

Once on the SC, she enjoyed working with Sandra Day O'Connor - very like minded women.  She has said that the period between O'Connor's retirement and the seating of Sonia Sotomayor were disconcerting. “The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman, sitting off to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.”

I especially loved her oft repeated reply when asked at what point there would be "enough women" on the Court. She always replied “when there are nine … [There’d] been nine men, and no one’s ever raised a question about that.” 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew what we could be.  She saw the potential not only in women, but in all of us, in this country.  She understood the towering role of jurisprudence in this nation and how it must be equally applied.  She never stopped working towards that.

Perhaps it is best to say, she never stopped working. 

The public has been privvy to her ins and outs from hospitals in the past year.  Each time Twitter erupted with those of us volunteering as tribute - "Take my lung!"  "You can have my pancreas!"  I don't need my life, you can have it, Ruth!"  We held our breath, said our prayers if we pray, sent good thoughts to the universe, and only exhaled when word came that she was home, resting comfortably, yet still firmly holding her spot on the Court.

In terms of this election and the gargantuan import it has, she has been likened to the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.  She has been standing, all 5'1" of her, between us and the complete downfall of this nation at the hands of the Trump cabal.  On the Court hers was a voice of strength and probity and measure, and equality for all.

Her last wish, transcripted for her by her grand daughter was, "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

Of course, it took only 24 hours for Adderall von Unindictedco-Conspirator to call it a lie.  That a Democrat wrote it.  Maybe Adam Schiff.  That is the power RBG had, still has.  Trump is a weak man, always has been.  He is shaken by any woman who is uncowed in his presence, unimpressed with his contour skills, and unimpeachable in her own dignity, self esteem, self worth.

He knows how much money Dems have raised in the hours since her passing - over $100 million in 48 hours.  He knows exactly how beloved she was/is.  He knows he is not man enough, human being enough, to wash her robe.

So he will do what he does to all who intimidate him, who refuse to bow to him, who are smarter than him - he will defile their memory, he will refuse them honor, decency, acknowledgment.  And in the case of RBG, he will move with all haste to nominate someone diametrically opposed to all she stood for, lived for, died for.  A powerful woman to be replaced by a subservient one.  A guardian of democracy by a doormat.

And the Republican majority in the Senate are in lockstep.  Pointing out their hypocrisy - Merrick Garland, anyone? - is meaningless.  They don't care how they appear, how their words from 2016 completely contradict their words now.  They are corrupt, power desperate despots who only care about installing another uber conservative judge who will tilt the court towards Handmaids Tale territory.

Political performance artists like Mitt Romney have acted their parts.  He marched with Black Lives Matter and now publicly promised his vote to Trump, a vote that will endanger the rights of all of us to gather, to protest.  In the final wash, all that matters to them is Roe v Wade.  Their obsession with the absolute intrusion into a woman's right to choose is what drives them.  They will then come for the Affordable Care Act in toto, decimating the lives of millions upon millions who will find themselves stripped of insurance, millions upon millions more who will be suddenly uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions.  Like COVID.

You do know that will be a pre-existing condition now, right?  If you have had it and come through fine, it is still going to haunt you forever.  Heart attack?  Lung cancer?  Brain tumor? Ass polyps?  All deniable because they can point at COVID.

These are lifetime appointments.  You die or you retire.  We are being set up for a lifetime of disorder in the court.  Equality will be shown the door.  LGBTQIA targeted in earnest and attacks backed by a court of religious zealots.  Immigrants will be denied everything.  A criminal president and all his equally criminal cronies will be guarded from harm or accountability.  All the protections promised by the words of this country's founding documents, by the amendments added since - gone.  All for the chance to crawl up the uteri of the nation while clinging to a Bible and a gun.

That's all that matters.  Not accountability.  Not criminality.  Not protecting and defending the weak.  Just another religious hack in a robe who thinks "God" is the answer to every question, and could not define "secular" if their life depended on it.

The sad thing is that our lives do depend on it.

We are still reeling from a pandemic, losing 1,000+ per day.  We are deep in the 4th largest mass casualty event this country has ever experienced, usurped only by the Civil War, WWII, and the 1918 flu.  We have a reality TV grifter flying all over the country holding rallies and talking about herd mentality - he is such buffet platter of ignorance, lard and venality. 

Herd IMMUNITY requires that over SIX MILLION of us die. You cool with that?  That number good?  Remind you of anything, like, say THE HOLOCAUST?  Or do they not teach you that in your Youtube Stupid as FuQ school?

We have no vaccine.  We have no clear information as the CDC has now validated it is completely corrupted by this administration.  205,000 people have died.  They have done nothing for this country beyond a one time stimulus of $1200 that many did not qualify for, and hand out billions in forgivable loans to their friends.  People are dying, being evicted, millions are still out of work, millions thrown off their insurance by losing their jobs to this pandemic, yet nothing.

But they can move like their asses are exploding trees on fire to nominate and install a new SC justice.  Want to explain that?

It is going to happen.  It does not matter how much we scream and shout, how much House and Senate Dems try to stall, obfuscate, point out the hypocrisy of their colleagues, the predictable unsuitability of whoever gets pulled from Under His Eye and nominated.  Republicans in the Senate have the votes they need to ignore every single one of us. In a 3-6 country, we are facing a 6-3 court - completely out of balance with the will of the people, the direction of the country.

They are out in force declaring they have a mandate from the people.  WTAF?  Their Sunkist succubus lost by three million votes.  Senate Dems got 18 million more votes than Senate Republicans in 2018. House Democrats won by the largest midterm margin of victory in history.  And Senate GOPers represent 15 million fewer constituents than Senate Dems.

Where's the mandate, other than in their heads, their wallets, and in the vapid, slackjawed craniums of the maskless dullards who flock to Trump's super spreader events?  There is no mandate.  There is only a powergrab.  And it is one that will fundamentally change this nation forever.

The CIA tells us that Russia is again hard at work inside our election system.  No one is blinking.  Our mail system was completely hijacked from within, and no matter what the courts are saying, all of the changes and destruction cannot be undone.  We are faced with unprecedented corruption from the Oval to the AG to the Senate Leader and every little minion in between.  It is sickening. It is unthinkable.  It is heartbreaking.

And all we have is our vote.

That is where my stage of Acceptance lies.  I accept that our ability to vote in dramatic numbers is what stands between us and the dike finally crumbling and washing us away.

RBG knew that.  She fought her entire life to give voice to the voiceless, strength to the powerless, hope to the hopeless.  She stood strong for us as long as she could.  But cancer had other plans.  No one is coming to save us.  We must save ourselves.

I know we are exhausted.  We are bereft.  We feel overwhelmed, which is how they want us to feel.  But we can do this.  We can channel a woman who fought colon cancer in 1999, surgery and all, and never missed a day on the bench.  We can be inspired by an 87 year old woman  who, for the last 20 years of her life, worked out with a trainer twice a week.  We can find strength in the thought of a woman who was denied access to her college's law library yet went on to kick the asses of all 582 men she schooled with.  We can draw courage from a woman who fought cancer three times (1999, 2009, 2019), defeated heart issues and an operation in 2014, and worked through 3 fractured ribs in 2018.

I often whisper the words my mother drummed into me as a child, when faced with something daunting, something that seems too big - "There's nothing to it, but to do it."  Ruth said something very similar.

“I spent no time fretting, and found a way to do what I thought important to get done.”

Let us not spend time fretting or fearing the work in front of us.  It is important, it is vital to our survival to get it done.  It is our turn to give voice to the voiceless, strength to the powerless, hope to the hopeless.  There's nothing to it, but to do it.

So do it in her honor, for Her Honor, the Notorious RBG.

Mailing It In

Gather 'round children.  It's time for school.

I try whenever I sit down at this keyboard to either enlighten, instruct, elucidate, or educate.  I research, I read, I fact check, I find more than one source, more than two sources.  And I do not begin tapping away until I know I have a grasp on the subject matter.

Today is a case in point, so I hope you will pay attention and come away understanding more the workings of a central piece of our country's operation.  And why you must be paying attention.

For months now, the United States Postal Service has been circling the spotlight.  Today it is under the bright, hot light.  And it matters to you, it matters to every single person in this country regardless of where you live - urban townhouse, a farm on the back 40, efficiency apartment, or a house in suburbia - this affects YOU.

Those of us who ingest the news as soon as it happens have been aware for some time now that the naked emperor in the oval was sowing the seeds of distrust in terms of the mail.  Specifically, he has been undermining the effective and proven safe process of being able to cast a vote by mail.  The reason is simple - the easier it is to vote, the more people who will vote, and the better chance his ass will be permanently cast out of power and out of our collective nightmare.

All the while his sycophants warmed to the theme that mail in ballots were unsafe, subject to fraud, not to be trusted, it took very shallow digging to reveal that he, his children, his Press Secretary, pretty much all those around him, have routinely voted by mail in past elections.

Hypocrites?  Of course.  But we know that.  It's their lifeblood.  Reason they have availed themselves of the process?  Because it is easy, safe, secure and allows you to participate in the election process when you cannot stand in line in person.  Whether you call it absentee voting or mail in voting - it is all the same process.  You receive your ballot, you fill it out, you mail it back in to be counted. 

Again, safe.  In fact, this is how our service members stationed overseas always vote.

Yet now, as poll after poll shows Trump eating the festering ass out of a dead rhino in terms of re-election, it is suddenly not to be relied upon.

Oops, they then realized their easily led base was listening to him as polls started to show MAGAts were not planning on voting by mail because the Fanta colored farce told them it was bad.  Cue the quiet campaign emails sent to them urging them to sign up to vote by mail.

Again, hypocrisy writ large.

So they gathered round the campfire again and found a way to fuck with the system from the inside.

Enter Trump big dollar donor ($2 million since 2016, $210,600 to the Trump Victory PAC this past February), Louis DeJoy, appointed to the job of Postmaster General.  Note - it has been DECADES - until DeJoy, that someone has been elevated to the post who has not also been a letter carrier and long time employee of the service.  But hey, who needs experience or understanding of the system when you have money to buy your way in?  And heavy investments in competing delivery services.

His appointment and holdings set off red lights and Senator Chuck Schumer wrote to the Postal Service board of governors, “His financial interests in companies that have business ties with the Postal Service, as well as his extensive campaign fundraising efforts, also raise concerns regarding whether and how legal prohibitions on his ethical conflicts of interest and partisan political activity as a federal employee will be addressed.” 

Also notable, DeJoy is the RNC finance chair.  Nothing like some good old conflicts of interest, not that they matter in this age of open corruption and graft.

DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the ambassador-nominee to Canada, have between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors.

Since being installed, his changes and efforts to hamstring the system have been fast and furious.  Perhaps you have begun to notice that your mail delivery has been anything but fast, and you are getting furious. 

Within the first month, he told letter carriers that they were not to return to pick up mail that had to be left on the factory floor. If they couldn’t make it all in one trip, they were just to leave it there. You make your one scheduled delivery and if stuff doesn’t fit on the truck, too bad, we get it the next day.  These changes have resulted in massive backlogs in mail that are undermining people’s faith in the Postal Service’s ability to do its basic job. - Jordan Weissman, Slate

Sorting machines have been stripped from facilities.  Overtime is banned.  23 executives resigned or were replaced.  And now ballots will be handled as third class mail instead of first class.  That means they have the same priority as your grocery store papers and junk mail.

In 34 states, you don’t just have to have your absentee ballot postmarked by Election Day, it must be received by Election Day.  So I'll just mail it really early, you think.  Good idea, but the problem is bigger than that.  The problem, as seen during the Michigan primary, is that you may not receive your ballot until a day before the election.

It's not like those in DC did not see this coming.  “His only qualification is that he will do whatever Trump wants,” Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) said back in May when DeJoy was first announced.

As DeJoy has worked to grind things to an almost halt inside the service - and it IS a service.  There is a reason is it not called a business.  It is a service, a service relied upon by every citizen - people across the country have begun to feel the effects.  Perhaps you notice your mailbox empty a couple days a week.  Maybe you have been tracking a package only to see it criss crossing the country in search of a central sorting facility.  Or you sent a birthday card to your grandchild a month ago, their birthday has come and gone - and he/she still has not received it.

Americans everywhere are being hit with late charges as payments they mail to pay bills are not getting there in time.  Small businesses that rely upon the USPS are taking a hit as their customers cannot rely on normally prompt delivery.  And medications needed to keep countless citizens alive and reasonably healthy are going lost, late, undelivered. 

That last one is deadly.  It is not bad enough that we are firmly in the grips of a pandemic in which over 1,000 people are still dying daily (yesterday we hit a number not seen since May - 1,499 people died).  People with compromised immune systems trying desperately to stay away from businesses and gatherings, are now finding they must venture out in the hopes that their doctors and pharmacists can help tide them over with "bridge" prescriptions till their mail arrives.  (And that is not easy.  Most insurance companies will not cover this, leaving people to come up with hundreds of dollars, and monthly prescriptions are only covered by them within a certain time frame so you cannot order or fill early.  Example - I have one that can only be refilled at the 21st day of the monthly cycle.)

Congress is being besieged with stories from desperate constituents who cannot obtain their prescriptions that typically arrive like clockwork via the USPS.  People rationing what meds they have left on hand, taking half, skipping doses.  Vets are especially being hit hard as the vast majority of VA prescriptions are delivered via the USPS.

From an interview at ConnectingVets.com: Veterans and their caregivers told Connecting Vets they've faced wait times that have doubled, tripled or worse. Some reported wait times as long as three weeks or more for prescriptions that previously took a few days. Others said medical equipment deliveries were also delayed. Many expressed concerns about going to VA in person to retrieve medications during the pandemic. 

Again, if this is how fast and loose Trump and his cabal are willing to play with the literal lives of our vets, do you actually think they give a shit about the timeliness of ballots?  That is the entire upshot of this disruption.  That life saving medications are being held up is just collateral damage and proof to them that what they are doing is working, and will work come election time.

Think I am over reacting?  Making shit up?  Think again.

Back in March, the fetid fuhrer literally let out the real reason he opposes expanded voting by mail in the 2020 election. Referring to provisions in the Democrats’ coronavirus stimulus bill to vastly increase funding for voting by mail, he said on Fox News that the bill had “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

That was March.

Fast forward to August.  The leather skinned loser said the quiet part out loud this morning when talking to FOX's Maria Bartiromo.

“Now they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”

And there is nothing Congress can do. 

I want to stress that part.  Congress is paying attention, they are.  But as Representative Ted Lieu explained this morning, "House does not have the power to stop voter suppression by the Post Office without the consent of the POTUS." 

So the very person who is suppressing the vote, has the power to do so unopposed.  Translation:  We are fucked.  Yes, they can drag his corpulent ass through impeachment proceedings again, but it won't make a difference with an election just over 80 days away and a Senate full of on-their-knees GOPers who live to teabag his saggy sac.

Rep. Lieu urged people to understand that given the current logistics it is imperative that all mail in ballots be in the system by October 22.  Even then, it is uncertain what will happen with them.  Those sorting machines that are being shut down / removed without any explanation?  Those are the very machines that will be vital in processing mail in ballots.

As for classification?  Postal officials advised the nation’s secretaries of state to use high-priority first-class postage, which costs 55 cents an item, on election mail rather than the third-class, or bulk, rate of 20 cents typically used.  (Yes, even though the postage has been 20 cents, postal employees have always treated ballots with the speed and care of first class mail.  As they should.)

You do the math.  They are doing everything possible from slowing it down, to raising the rates, to closing polling places, to pushing Kanye West onto the ballots in order to game the system for their wholly un-re-electable candidate.

We have a powerful ticket in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  There is experience, wisdom, true understanding of governance, empathy, equality, the desire to better this country for all.  I do not care if they were not your first choice, your ideal pairing.  Get over it.  Your purity tests, feet stomping and third party histrionics only serve you, and actively hurt others. 

We now have a chance to right this horrific wrong of the past three and a half years.  But it will take every single one of us.  We must be willing to stand in lines, to help others to the polls, to use drop boxes where available, to pressure our Congress and Senate to work for us, to protect us, and above all, to be mindful of giving ourselves WEEKS of leeway if using the USPS for a ballot. 

Anything less is just mailing it in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In COVID news, 5,377,008 cases, 169,433 deaths - a number that is estimated to actually be over 200,000 by experts.  1 person dying every 80 seconds, 512 of every million gone.

Can You Tell Me How To Get, How To Get To Sesame Beat?

It never should have been controversial.  It never should have been a debate much less a political football to be thrown about.  It never should have been tied to masculinity, associated with weakness.

But it was and it is.

Masks.

Aside from handwashing, it is literally the easiest way to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.  From your gaping maw to the next person's mouth or nose, a mask steps in and impedes the aerosolized droplets we humans spew each time we speak, sing, laugh, cough, and sneeze.

Simple, effective.  Test after test prove the point.  Yet here we are, 5 1/2 months, 5,278,963 cases, and 167,068 deaths in, still dealing with the literal mouthbreathers for whom donning a mask is just one step too far.  Their precious freedumbs - you know, the ones that tolerate required seatbelts, car insurance, shoe removal at TSA, insurance on their homes, school vaccinations, etc - are caught daily shitting themselves blind in stores, restaurants, and private businesses over mask ordinances and rules.

Enjoy this scene from Tucson of an unmasked son literally carrying his ranting and unmasked father out of a store before an asskicking could ensue.  

Anti-masker in Tucson, AZ throws a tantrum and has to be carried out by his own son pic.twitter.com/ggo4I968aL

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) August 11, 2020

Oy fucking vey.

Honestly, what in the seven hells do you people think you are accomplishing with these tantrums?  Every single one of you deserves the public outing and the subsequent job losses, humiliation that follow.  Is all that worth your bedwetting over being asked to simply wear a mask while you buy your case of Bud and bag of Cheetos?

Another scene out of Arizona happened yesterday at the Capitol.  They came in unmasked droves to demand schools be reopened.

I wrote yesterday about the increase in COVID cases among children during the last two weeks of July - 30%.  How schools that just reopened are shutting back down because of cases popping up in the past week.  In Georgia, there are almost 900 students and staffers quarantined because of this, because masks are not required. 

This morning comes the news that in the past four weeks, the increase has been 90%. (American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases and the Children's Hospital Association)

NINETY fucking PERCENT INCREASE.

In Florida, the case rate among children has increased 140% in the past month.

Yes, more children are being tested. But let that number sink in.  Children are NOT immune. 90 have died in the past few months from COVID. In an entire flu season, the average is 100 children.

Yet these dullards won't stop listening to Imbecile Von Tangskin.  A man who gets tested daily, who insists all those around him are tested daily, whose own son is not heading back for in-person learning.  By all means, listen to an imbecile who thinks WWII's end (1945) was hastened by the 1918 Spanish flu.

The ones bearing the brunt of these adult size toddlers are the hourly employees of our nation.  Waitstaff, hotel employees, grocery clerks and stockers, bank tellers, fast food workers, cashiers, and as they continue to reopen, amusement park staff.

They are tasked with trying to enforce their place of business's mask requirements, all of which are clearly posted at every entrance, yet clearly ignored by the willfully ignorant, the belligerently petulant.

This past Sunday, Sesame Place, an amusement park in Langhorne, Pennsylvania that had reopened this summer, was welcoming guests for a fun time.  Like other parks - Disney, Sea World, Universal - a strict mask requirement is in place.

Well, as we all know, the rules never apply to everyone.  Two such entitled adult brats were asked by a 17 year old worker to please wear a mask as the park required.  Their reaction would make Kermit change that tune to Why are there so many songs about a-holes?

They attacked the teenager, beating him to the ground, punching him so hard that he required surgery for his jaw and teeth.

"He was aggressively punched by both the female and the male," Middletown Township Police Lieutenant Stephen Forman said.

They then quickly exited the park.  Police have surveillance footage as well as license plate info and are working on finding them.

A teenager.  Making minimum wage for spending money, perhaps saving for school, maybe helping his family during this economic crisis - beaten by adults for simply asking them to mask their stupid, fucking faces.  Imagine if this were your son or daughter.  My heart breaks for this kid, for his parents who received the call to go to the hospital.

As for the wastes of flesh who did this?  They will be caught.  They will be charged.  But it won't be enough.  I swear it makes me wish we had public stockades again.  Tomatoes, sure, but let John Q Public also parade past spitting into their sorry ass faces.  Perhaps a little COVID-19 might make them rethink their complete and utter batshit idiocy.  Let them get beaten till their jaws hang sideways off their wretched faces and their teeth are collected from the ground.

And no, I am not sorry for thinking that, feeling that, or typing it "out loud."  These querulous crybabies need it brought home in no uncertain terms that their foot stomping, garment rending, and aggressive outbursts will not be tolerated.

Masks do not threaten your oxygen levels.  Masks do not cause COVID.  Masks do not emasculate you.  Masks do not infringe on your pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  In fact, the goddamned thing is to insure you have a better shot at continued life, liberty and the pursuit of.  And men?  You know what makes you look like a child?  Being carried out of a store by your child.  Acting like your diaper is as full of shit as your tirade.  Having a nurse wipe your ass in the ICU because you are in a coma on a ventilator.

If you don't want to wear a mask, stay at home.  It is that simple.  But if you go out into the public, into a private business - put the damned thing over your whiny gob.  And if your child's school is reopening and the admins are crying "We can't enforce a mask requirement!" all the while eyeballing the length of every girl's pair of shorts or the sight of a bra strap, call bullshit LOUD and CLEAR.

And mask your kid.  PLEASE.  90% increase.  167,349 dead people.  Be thankful your child is not inside that number, and do everything you can to insure they are not added as they endeavor to learn their A-B-Cs.

Sesame Street should not dead end at a graveyard.

24 Years and Counting (My Blessings)

For over 15 years now I have come to this space and shared stories from around the world, expounded on breaking news, raged against the machine of racial inequality, bigotry, phobias of all ilk.  I have used this piece of the internet to purge the horrors, frustrations, and fears that circle my own mind, hoping they help give voice to yours.  And for over 15 years I have opened a window into the life of my family. 

Sharing them with you has been about more than self indulgent prattle.  It has been about connection.  Opening up about the highs, and more importantly, the lows has helped spark dialogues, debates, and hopefully the feeling that you are not alone.  It has certainly helped me feel that way.

The family that has grown here at DGMS has literally watched my kids grow up.  You have celebrated sports wins, theater performances, homecomings and proms with them.  You have lent support during times of strife, struggle, and uncertainty.  You have cheered their victories and "held my hand" through their defeats.

And four years ago, when we stepped into the light and I shared our son's transition, the loving embrace of this blogmunity and beyond was breathtaking.  You did not skip a beat.  I had known for years and years that this space had attracted a collection of deeply decent, human, wondrous people, but in that moment and all the moments since, you have revealed an even more profound side for which I am eternally grateful.

I come here today to once again share.  Because today that son turns 24.  Because today I again sit here awed and grateful that the universe chose me to be his mother.  (And before anyone goes there - I am awed and grateful for each of my children - Culley and Kendall are, like Toby, the air I breathe, and I am never not struck by how lucky I am to be their mother - but today is about Toby.)

Toby was not planned.  We firmly thought we were done.  Two kids, beautiful, healthy, happy - we were set.  But as they say, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.  Another plus sign on a pregnancy test, and away we went.  Plans changed, we were to be a family of five.

I can tell you, from the moment he arrived, we knew each other.  My voice was the one that could make him stop crying.  My touch felt different to him and he would immediately settle down.  As he grew into a toddler, his sense of humor was so present, as was his affection for us all.  I know that is a trait shared by many youngest children - they love an audience - but he was an art form all his own.

Easy going, adaptable, but wrapped in an iron will - that was this child.  As he grew, I watched as he gravitated towards the underdogs.  He was a protector, a champion.  Even as a youngster, he had no time or patience for school hallway bullies or any of the cruelty that kids dispense so freely towards one another. 

In terms of his siblings?  Fierce.  He may fuck with them endlessly, mercilessly, but woe betide anyone else who tries.  That is simply a line you do not want to cross.  (And I can tell you, it works in reverse.  He has incredible champions in his sisters.  Incredible tormentors, too.)

Soccer came along and became the outlet for all the energy, drive, and athleticism that were looking for expression.  And he flourished.  He loved the sport and the sport loved him.  I had never met anyone in my life who poured themselves so fully and constantly into a pursuit.  And so I supported him every step of the way.  My only rule was, if I ever have to start pushing you out the door, I stop.

I never had to push.  Even when he was shouldering abusive coaches, jealous teammates, teammates' heinous parents, even injuries - he was determined to best them all.  And he did.  There was no secret to his success.  As much as those parents and players wanted to cry "favoritism" there was only one reason he excelled.  He busted his ass every single day and night.  Look at any athlete who makes it look easy.  What you are not seeing are the hours of blood, sweat, tears, and training off the field.

It was constantly humbling.

And then, in an embarrassment of riches way, the artwork started.  And like the soccer, he poured himself into his own betterment.  Something that has always existed is that he would draw something, blow us away, and then two weeks later he would hate it.  Literally, he would be embarrassed by it because in two weeks time he had gotten that much better.

It's why I still don't have a tattoo.  I want him to draw one for me, but he refuses because he will eventually hate it because there will come a point where he knows it could be better.

Throughout his middle school, high school, and college years, I have always written the words "people just want to be in his orbit."  He doesn't try to make it happen, it just happens.  Not because he is gregarious, he's not.  (Well, not with strangers - he's a hoot with those who get inside.)  But because he is constant, consistent, loyal, funny.  There is no bullshit, nor is there a tolerance for it.  There is no litmus test to be his friend other than "Are you an asshole?"  Assholes need not apply.  Ever.

He has always been an extraordinary human being.  It may sound funny for a parent to say they look up to their child, but I always have.

When both sisters were gone to college, T and I entered a three year period where it literally was just he and I.  It was a peaceful coexistence, a sports partnership, a friendship in which bad jokes, support, and love sustained us both.

When he left for college, the hole he left was felt deeply.  So I chased his soccer team where ever they went, cheering, clapping, living for the end of each game when I got to finally hug him for a minute before he was swept back into a locker room or onto a team bus.

I was ready to chase that team for four solid years.  But again, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.  And all those plans were about to go out the window.

I have parented my kids through heartbreaks, an abusive relationship, academic disappointments, and uncertainty.  But the day Toby told me, through tears and fears, that he was transgender was the moment every other moment of parenting had led me to.  The moment the rubber truly met the road and I knew who I was in this world, in their world. 

In that moment, his clarity was also mine.  Because in that moment I knew there was nothing, NOTHING in this world that could ever shake my love for him, for them.  There was nothing they could tell me that would make me step back from them or falter.  In that moment of seeing someone be so raw, so brave, I knew.

I was absolutely blessed to be this person's mother, protector, champion. 

The past four years have been a master class in the heart of a human being.  Watching Toby muddle through, figure things out, rise above, push himself, and emerge as who he fully is?  Humbling is not a big enough word.  It has been awe inspiring.  It has been breath taking. 

That doesn't mean it is done or over or that there are not struggles now and ahead.  We live in a society peopled with bigots, fearmongers, liars, and dangers for someone like Toby.  I know that.  He knows that. 

But he perseveres.

He has built a life for himself, carefully filling it with people who know him, accept him, and never think a thing about his letter in the great rainbow flag of the spectrum.  His artwork has garnered him an immense online following.  He does commission work that is so sought out that each month when he opens the link, he has to close it within 24 hours.  August 1 of this month?  It was closed within two hours of opening.  He can only draw so much in a month.

Online he makes no secret of his status as a transgender person.  And because of his candor, he helps others, especially younger people who reach out.  He knows at the deepest level what it means to have representation, to see yourself in the world.  Especially to see yourself succeeding despite the coalition of assholes who live to only hurt others.

He lifts, he inspires, and he is real.  Perhaps that has always been the secret.  He just is.  And that realness is safety to others.  Being yourself in this world is sometimes the biggest act of bravery.

And that I have always had a front row seat?  Blessed.   100%.

Today this incredible person turns 24 years old.  Please join me, as you have so often in the past, in wishing him a fabulous day and the best of wishes for what the year ahead has in store.

I love you, Toby.  You have always been everything I didn't know I still needed.  Happy birthday.

"It Is What It Is" - Life and Death Under President Dunning-Kruger

Dunning Kruger effect - In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

Essentially, when a person is too stupid to know how stupid they are.  See: Donald J is for JACKASS Trump.

In the field of everyday living, his illusory superiority and the subsequent fallout are the constant cost of having allowed a complete moron to be elevated to our nation's highest office.

While the world is watching the aftermath of a stunning explosion in Beirut, the aftermath of the now infamous Axios interview that aired in full last night is jaw dropping in its own gory way.

We are being led by a complete incompetent.  A man so convinced of his own greatness; a man so surrounded by sycophants and yes-men; a man so detached from reality that when presented with the horrific death toll of COVID-19, responded, "It is what it is."

What it is, is a death toll of 159,499 Americans.  No national testing strategy.  No national, cohesive messaging.  No science based approach.  Just, it is what it is.

For anyone who has not yet seen the clips - they are everywhere - or the interview in its entirety (if you can sit through it), you do not need HBO to catch it. 

The interview, while not a journalism masterclass by any means, is so much more than we have come to expect from those interviewing the dunce, and it does highlight what happens the moment someone pushes back against the constant flow of horseshit from Trump's gaping maw.  Kudos to Jonathan Swan for having the temerity to go in knowing facts, and then to challenge the lies attempted by the Tangerine Shitblimp in real time.

Exchanges like these are damning.  At least they are to anyone who understands the verbal gymnastics of a malignant narcissist.  They count on never being pressed.

Trump: "There are those that say you can test too much, you do know that."
Swan: "Who says that?"
Trump: "Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books."
Swan: "Manuals? What manuals?"
Trump: "Read the books. Read the books."
Swan: "What books?"
Trump: (Does not answer)

This one was succinct and brutal.  He tries to smear President Obama yet again.

Trump: "When I took over, we didn't even have a test."
Swan: "Why would you have a test?  The virus didn't exist."

Damn those pesky details.

When confronted with the numbers, the true flailing and obfuscation began.  Complete with bar graphs that looked like something a tween would put together the night before a report is due.  (Shout out to human Bratz doll, Kayleigh McInany.)

Swan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
Trump:  “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”

Here are the facts - We are #1 in cases - 4,883,818.  We are #1 in deaths - 159,499.  We are #1 in active cases - 2,269,174.  We are #2 in new cases and new deaths since midnight (GMT) - 21,644 / 571.  And we are #18 in tests per million - 184,818.

Experts all agree that because this administration has been an abject failure from the beginning, we truly will never know the actual number of dead due to COVID.  Most of them place the number 1.5 - 2 times higher than we know.

Yet there sits Donning Kruger saying, "It is what it is.  It's under control as much as you can control it."

No, just NO.

If it had been controlled in any meaningful, consistent, long term way, tens of thousands of citizens would still be alive.  Instead we watched as Doctor Do Little blew off mask wearing, mocked precautions, touted unproven drugs, conjectured on ingesting disinfectant and shoving light up our asses.  Only as the numbers blew past 100,000, then 125,000, then up and up, and as his poll numbers sank dramatically, did he suddenly appear with a mask declaring the wearing of one to be "patriotic."

Sorry, Lone Ranger, but the damage has been done.  Your equally Dunning Kruger coven won't wear them.  They shout in stores, shit themselves blind, and attack those who try to enforce mask ordinances.  Your MAGAty base have killed store clerks, ruined merchandise, coughed in a baby's face, and just this week, pulled an AK-47 on police after firing shots at a clerk in a cigar store who attempted to enforce the store's requirements.  He fired at the police who returned fire - he was shot in the leg and buttocks.  Fear not, he is white, so neither was life threatening and he was swaddled into custody.

All over mask wearing.  But hey, it is what it is, right?

Your Christian supplicants, like Scott Lively, took to video to preach that "Personally, I would rather die or be maimed from COVID-19—or be beheaded by a mob of anarchists and Islamists—than become a safe slave in a global totalitarian government."

Pastor Joel Tillis led this anti mask protest outside the Manatee County Florida courthouse yesterday.

THIS is what you fomented for months.  This toxic maskulinity in which your red hat wearers equate a mask with slavery, constitutional violations, oppression, and now preaching that beheading would be favorable to donning one.

Now, as your precious red states have begun getting corona-ed right up the dungaree dirt road, your campaign is trying to sneakily encourage mask wearing without being public about it.  One of your latest campaign emails reads:

"We are all in this together, and while I know there has been some confusion surrounding the usage of face masks, I think it's something we should all try to do when we are not able to be socially distanced from others."

Um, wait.  Wasn't that you mocking Joe Biden for wearing one just a month ago?

He continues to press for schools to throw their doors open and for you to throw your kids into the volcano of uncertainty that awaits them inside.  This was the scene inside a Paulding County Georgia high school yesterday morning.  Roughly 50 kids in this one area of hallway, 4 masks to be seen.  Start the clock, Donald.  Tik tok... 

His illusory superiority was on full display when the subject turned to voting by mail.  He has done it.  The majority of his staff have done it.  His campaign emails are, like mask wearing, sneakily encouraging his supporters to sign up to do it.  (They began to panic after they realized MAGAts were listening to him about the "dangers" of vote by mail and declaring they wanted no part of it.)  He began to hold court on how dangerous it would be.  Watch as he is contradicted by FACTS at every turn.

pic.twitter.com/oKbviWujfU

— ATorabi Test (@AtorabiTest) August 4, 2020

Lie.  Get fact checked.  Lie. Get fact checked.  LIELIELIE.  Have evidence held up to his face.  LIELIELIELIELIELIE.

Voting by mail is safe.  It is the same as absentee voting.  Same mechanism.  But he knows that if more people have an easier way to cast their ballots, he will lose in tsunami like conditions - literally swept away along with his GOPer enablers.

But it is what it is, right?  WRONG.  Check your registration.  And if you plan on voting by mail, submit it WEEKS in advance to avoid getting lost or delayed by the machinations already taking place in the USPS.

Daily we see how he is too stupid to know how stupid he is, and that he truly believes we all to be equally as dim.  He lies constantly, rarely gets held to account, goes on to lie some more.  He waxes crapsodic about everything - knowing nothing, but making shit up that he thinks sounds smart.  And that illusory superiority?  Jesus take the illusory wheel on this part...

Swan asked him about John Lewis, about how he thought history would remember him.

"I don't know John Lewis.  He chose not to come to my inauguration."

THAT.  That is what he distills a one-of-a-kind man, a giant of civil rights, a true leader, down to.

"He chose not to come to my inauguration."

Swan tried to give him a softball, asking if he found Lewis to be "impressive."

“I can’t say one way or another,” Trump said, before again bitching that Lewis had skipped his inauguration and his State of the Union speeches, adding, “Nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have. He should have come. I think he made a big mistake.”

The fucking hubris is galling.  That he believes his own bullshit?  Insane.  That he still fixates on his inauguration?  25th amendment, party of 1, your batshit is ready.

We are trapped for three more months.  Trapped by a conman who literally thinks he is in a Sopranos episode and that he deserves a slice of any Tik Tok sale that takes place.  Trapped by a cornered rat who doubled down on wishing Ghislaine Maxwell, well, even going so far as to respond to the child sex trafficking allegations she was arrested for with a firm, "I don't know that." 

We are trapped by a man who still has zero idea how the position of President functions in governance, and has no interest in learning.  Trapped by a narcissist whose every action, word, and deed is taken through the lens of how it benefits him.  We are trapped by a man who doesn't know what he doesn't know and what he doesn't know is EVERYTHING.  We are trapped and dying at a rate of 1,000 people a day because President Dunning Kruger believes he is doing a great job.

The writing was on the wall from the beginning.  This is not a smart man.  This has never been a smart man.  This is a dumb person's idea of a smart man.  This is a stubby fingered vulgarian who has gotten by on bullshit, on bombasticity, on ego, on threats, on playing fast and loose.  This is a man who spent the 80s and 90s as his own PR firm, calling up Page Six, People, NY Times and giving them scoops on what Donald Trump was doing, how he was winning at life, who he was dating.  This is a man who bankrupted everything he has touched - airline, steaks, casinos, water, "school."  A man for whom grifting is easier than breathing.  A man of stunning depravity.  A man whose intelligence can be measured in a teaspoon, his integrity being of the same depth.

I just hit refresh.  159,853 people dead.  Heading quickly towards another 1,000+ body count day.

But hey, it is what it is, right?