Preserve Women’s Rights; Fuck the Filibuster!

Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the two ‘Democratic’ senators who have done everything within their power to undermine the Biden administration’s agenda and the will of the majority of the American people, are once again telling us we can all go fuck ourselves.

Instead of doing everything they can to uphold a woman’s right to abortion, they again choose to uphold the filibuster, the means by which the Southern segregationists could prevent any type of civil rights legislation from passing. Isn’t it ironic that this most unusual circumstance of taking away a right will disproportionately affect women of color and those without the means to travel to the states who actually care about the health and wellbeing of their residents with uteri?

I don’t know who is paying Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema to repeatedly refuse to do the right thing for the American people. I hope that whatever they are being paid for this abandonment of their duties to represent their constituents’ best interests is worth it.

Joe Manchin in particular has spent his entire time in the Senate as a giant conflict of interest. His coal company makes his refusal to enact any reasonable climate legislation blatantly self-serving, while the citizens of West Virginia, listed as the 47th out of the 50 states in terms of health care, 45th in education, 48th in the economy and dead last in infrastructure, are denied the benefits that Manchin doesn’t feel they are deserving enough of to vote for them. He instead thinks that his constituents are all drug addicts, spending their child tax credits to get high. He holds his fellow West Virginians in very low regard.

In fact, Manchin and Sinema’s refusal to eliminate the filibuster for Biden’s Build Back Better agenda further shows both their distain for the value of women and the things that women need for their lives. Much of the BBB included the biggest investment in the care industry in history, most of which would have benefitted the women in the country to whom these care activities inevitably fall. Child care, elder care, universal pre-school and the child tax credits helped raise millions of children and their families out of poverty, yet neither of these senators could find it within themselves to eliminate the filibuster in order to let the majority, voted in by the people, do what they people want them to.

Arizona is poised, upon the overturning of Roe, to ban most abortions after 15 weeks without any exceptions for rape or incest only to save the woman’s life; providers could face up to five years in prison. Kirsten Sinema thinks that this is just fine for Arizona’s women.

West Virginia recently passed a law outlawing abortion because the fetus may develop a disability, meaning that anyone who has abnormal genetic testing results would be forced to carry that pregnancy to term. The state is going to make abortion providers ask women if they are having an abortion because the fetus might be disabled, then turn in those women who say that they are. Providers who do not do so could be subject to losing their licenses to practice medicine. Joe Manchin wants his constituents to be forced to give birth to babies with disabilities in a state that is at the very bottom of the rankings for healthcare, education and infrastructure, all things that a disabled child and their family needs in abundance. But sure, Joe, uphold the filibuster at the expense of the women and their forced children.

We are at an inflection point that I never thought I’d see again in my lifetime. The Republicans have gerrymandered and schemed successfully to allow them to wield minority tyranny over the majority who voted against them. They have fully given themselves over to the Evangelical White Nationalists they courted for decades, finally allowing them to let their freak flags fly. There is only one thing left for us to do.

Vote like our lives depend upon the results, because, for half the population of our country, they really do. Vote in every election, because it is the state governments who are enacting these state-by-state abortion restrictions. Vote on every election, because they are not going to stop here. They are already attacking marginalized groups, including trans kids who in any one state can be no more than a couple of dozen kids at most. They’ve been doing this because we’ve let them get away with it. No more.

I am a straight White woman, a mother, grandmother, and former nurse. I will not sit idly by while a minority of mostly White, mostly male religious zealots try to force their beliefs on the rest of us.

You cannot sit idly by, either. Because one day they’re going to come for you, too.

Better believe it.

How Dare They?!?

In an earlier post, I’ve shared my abortion story.

Without Roe v. Wade, I would not be where I am now, with my two grown children and new grandson Luke.

I would have become a single mother at the age of 16, without a high school diploma or the assistance of the father. He was my boyfriend for months before I became pregnant, but, like most males, deemed the pregnancy and it’s outcome as not his problem or his responsibility.

It is of course obvious that the extremists who have been pushed onto the court by Republicans over the last several decades, especially the last 3, have now reached the critical mass that will allow them to force their theocratic views onto the majority of Americans who DO NOT AGREE WITH THEM.

For years, the Supreme Court (which is neither supreme, nor a court. Discuss.) has gradually pushed this platform to the front. With the Masterpiece Cake case, the Roberts’ court decided that it wasn’t discrimination to refuse to provide your service to a same-sex couple because your magical sky god says its a ‘sin’ versus being none of your fucking business. Apparently, the Roberts’ court has no recollection of the churches that used to say black and whites intermarrying was also a sin.

This is the same “Supreme Court” that is also poised to tell a school district to reinstate a coach who was encouraging his players to join him in prayer on the 50 yard line, although his case claims he was just praying silently alone. That isn’t what it looked like when he brought in the media and local politicians to join him, but maybe it’s just me.

It’s been clear to those of us not under the thrall of right-wing media that there is one fundamental issue that should be driving all of us to the polls, and that is this:

Republicans will not stop until they have rolled back all of it. Contraception, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and any other rights that have been explicitly or implicitly enjoyed by all of us until now are under threat by a radicalized, extremist, theocratic Republican party bent on holding and swinging their minority power to squash all dissent & maintain their illegitimate grip on power.

A vote for any Republican is a vote against the rights of women, LGBTQ people and frankly anyone who does not agree with their draconian proposals. If anyone who reads this cares about someone who has or used to have a uterus, you have no excuse for continuing to cast your vote for “low taxes” or “small government” for any candidate with an “R” after their name.

I do not want to live in a country where a small, radicalized and extremist group of unelected, lifetime-appointed ‘judges’ can chose to take away rights that they don’t like because of their religious beliefs. These ‘originalists’ claim their reasoning is based on the fact that the word ‘abortion’ isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, which exposes once again their rank hypocrisy. Automatic weapons aren’t mentioned in their hallowed document, either, but the court said that they were legal anyway.

This is blatant religious misogynism, a dystopian Handmaiden’s Tale of a future where any male can decide to impregnate any female with impunity, forcing rape and incest victims to carry their rapist’s baby to term. They are forcing all people with uteri to suffer the consequences to their bodies that pregnancy causes against their will. Those of us who chose to terminate a pregnancy also chose to avoid those consequences; this outrageous decision by these religious zealots says that their religious dogma holds more sway than the freedom to chose what happens inside our bodies. Ironic, given their refusal to uphold vaccine or mask mandates to protect everyone from a deadly pandemic.

Those of us who can become pregnant should all have the individual liberty to decide when, or even if, we want to be or remain pregnant. This is one of the most important decisions anyone makes for themselves; for these extremist, Catholic judges to impose their religious belief about when they think that life or “personhood” begins is not the American way. We are a country founded on the belief that there is a separation between church and state. With the extremist super-majority placed on the court by Republicans, that separation isn’t just erased, it’s reversed.

Freedom of religion is not the goal for Republicans; their ultimate dream is to force their Christian White nationalism on all of us. While the population as a whole has grown less religious, with the majority choosing “None” when asked their religion, the Christian White nationalist part of the Republican party continues to shove their beliefs down the throats of the rest of us.

We need to fight back for freedom from religion. It is imperative that we do whatever we must to put into office people who are professed to be atheists or agnostics, without any religious affiliation at all. It is too easy for those who profess to be religious to use that religiosity as a shield they can later claim prove that the liberties they’re trying to claw back from millions of Americans are just ‘moral issues’ or ‘not mentioned in the Constitution”. What they are, to be honest, is full of shit.

Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett should be impeached and removed from the court for lying during their confirmation hearings about ‘stare decisis’ and ‘Supreme Court Precedent’ as something that they respected and would abide by. Thomas should be impeached for refusing to recuse himself from January 6 cases that he knew his wife could be entangled with. And Alito is another example of why there needs to be term limits in the Supreme Court.

All of us who acknowledge that the overturning of Roe is an absolutist stance against the bodily autonomy and liberty of every person with a uteri and those who love them to decide their future. Therefore, it’s mandatory to remind everyone we know who plans to vote for a Republican that their vote supports the destruction of our democracy and the subjugation of women into forced pregnancy and motherhood.

George Carlin, whose death I still mourn a little, had a bit back in the day about the “preborn”, and how the religious right was so very worried about the lives of the preborn right up until they take their first breath. After that, “you’re on your own”. That’s still the case – no Republican will vote for anything to help support these babies or their mothers – not child care, SNAP benefits, or anything else that could help those without the means to raise their children.

They prefer to force them to have the children, then watch them all suffer. Apparently, the cruelty really is the point.

If your birth control fails, that’s your problem. If you’re a teen without the maturity, financial support or life skills to successfully raise a child, well, maybe you should have thought about that before you opened your legs. If you’re a single mom who’s barely able to provide for your already born children, well, I guess you should have considered that before your new boyfriend ‘stealthed’ you against your wishes and without your consent, impregnating you against your will. If you went to a party and had too much to drink, then discovered after the fact that you were raped, well, get used to the fact that you’re going to have a baby.

We have so much to do to fix this, and it’s going to take way more time than people are often willing to invest; we didn’t get here overnight. In order to bring our government and the Supreme Court to heel, we have to vote all Republicans in all elections out of office. Their party has become an extremist organization determined to impose their White Christian nationalism on the entire country, and the only option we have left is to eliminate them from politics and power.

Only after there is no longer any ability for the minority to continue to force their beliefs onto the majority of Americans can we hope to move our society forward in a way that benefits all of us, not just the few at the top who cling to power corruptly. Then, we may have the opportunity to right all that is wrong to move forward with a ‘more perfect union’.

If not, we will descend into something we will not recognize, with a resulting anarchy not seen in our lifetimes. This must not stand.

Manchin, Sinema Prefer NOT to Defend Our Democracy

It is impossible to comprehend why Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema believe that keeping the filibuster, designed specifically to prevent Black Americans from being treated equally, is more important than preserving our democracy itself.

Their claims that the filibuster somehow fosters bipartisanship are based on fantasies, or distant memories of what once was but is no more. Since 2008, the Republican Party (while providing almost no legislation that benefits the many rather than the few) has made it nearly impossible for Democrats elected by the majority to follow through on the mandates that those elections had given them to do the peoples’ work. Moscow Mitch has said repeatedly in public that his “Number one goal is to block the Democrats’ agenda”.

Joe’s and Kyrsten’s continued insistence that bipartisanship is made better by keeping the filibuster makes me wonder if they’re on drugs – or maybe they’re both suffering from some type of dementia or delirium – because the Republicans have made it clear they no longer have any interest in preserving our democracy as we have always known it to be, and have no intention of doing anything that will reflect well on the Biden administration.

Not only have Republicans lost all interest in actually governing or legislating for the good of the country or the people within, they are now hellbent on returning to power BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, including by extreme gerrymandering and passing laws giving them the ability to overrule the voters if they lose. Republicans in 43 states are passing voter suppression laws specifically targeting voters of color and those in areas known to vote Democratic.

Despite Biden winning the election, most elected Republicans continue to spread lies about the 2020 election results in order to undermine our entire election system and enable states led by Republicans to steal future elections. Those few willing to speak the truth are being pushed out of the party (although many like Liz Cheney continue to insist they still support the Republican Party and “election integrity”), and the new ones coming in to take the place of those leaving the party are more extreme and even less likely than McConnell to “reach across the aisle”. People of the caliber of Marjorie Taylor Green or Lauren Boebert have no interest in anything other than spreading their conspiracy theories and increasing their visibility on social media.

Joe Manchin has capitulated to the Kochs, insisting that preventing Republican-led legislatures from passing voter suppression laws and election rigging is “partisan” because there are no Senate Republicans who will vote for it. To call this circular reasoning gives circles a bad name; NO bill will get Republican support if it is in any way going to derail their states’ plans to prevent “urban” voters from having their voices heard. Kyrsten Sinema, with her misplaced belief in allowing the minority to obstruct everything seems, frankly, clueless, and needs simply to be voted out of office and replaced by someone with some common sense and a realistic view of what is actually going on in this country.

These two are providing cover for other Democratic Senators who aren’t ready to do the right thing and eliminate (or at least reform) the filibuster to allow the things that they were elected into office for in the first place; because Sinema and Manchin are so loud and proud in their refusal, the others can hide their acquiescence to that view. They also allow the Republicans, who have no worries that Manchin might in fact be willing to consider something more drastic, to just stonewall everything the Democrats try to do. Then the Republicans can use the lack of progress under the Democrats in their attack ads, benefiting at the ballot box from their complete and utter abdication of their role as representatives of the people.

Joe Manchin Promises to Bring TEN Republicans to Our Side!

A review of Joe Manchin’s voting record reveals an old, white man who is against many of the things that Democrats stand for – Medicare for all, background checks for gun purchases, funding for SNAP/food stamps, sanctuary cities. He has voted for Brent Kavanaugh & Neil Gorsuch, Mike Pompeo, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions & Rex Tiillerson.

Joe Manchin wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post declaring his unrelenting support for the filibuster. A holdover from Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the filibuster has been used by the Republicans not as a means of fostering debate but rather to obstruct almost all the legislation that the Obama administration hoped to enact to help the American people. The Senate, no longer ‘the world’s most deliberative body’, has instead become an example of how the minority can hold the majority hostage.

Debate requires people actually speaking about a subject. The filibuster as it now exists does not require anyone to do anything that remotely resembles debating. Instead, they threaten to filibuster and then demand that the majority find ten of them to end the no-debate debate. What a joke!

If Joe Manchin believes that the filibuster is beneficial to the Senate, and the population as a whole, then he needs to explain how it benefits the majority at all. Even when the Democrats don’t have a single vote majority in the senate, those senators who were elected to represent Democratically led states represent millions more citizens than those senators elected from states like North and South Dakota (there shouldn’t be two Dakotas), the Carolinas (ditto), the Virginias (same), Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa and all the other states with low population density.

It is now obvious that the Senate is no longer able to function as a governing body while the filibuster is available to give the minority an oversized ability to block and obstruct legislation that is favored by a majority of the population. It is no longer realistic to expect that Republicans in the Senate have any desire or intention to do that which benefits the populace because most of these things are in direct opposition to the desires of the donors who support the Republicans.

Audio tape from a phone call from an operative from Koch Industries has been leaked revealing how desperately they’re trying to find some way to make HR1, the bill introduced in the House to strengthen our election system and eliminate dark money from politics, unpalatable to the citizens, and they can’t find anything. The bill is intended to keep the wealthy from influencing the outcome of elections, allowing all of us to donate small dollar amounts that are then matched 6 to 1 by the government with funds obtained by fees assessed against the criminal and civil fines and penalties or settlements with banks and corporations who break the law. Koch Industries doesn’t understand why everyone agrees that keeping dark money out of politics and having campaigns financed by the people is a better way of doing things than what we have now.

If Joe Manchin really believes that the filibuster needs to stay as it is, then maybe it’s time for him to consider going into another line of work. Given his support for the Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil-fuel industry behemoths, maybe he can get a job working for them. At least then, no one would expect he would do what’s best for the rest of us.

Not everyone wants to live in a state with the lowest minimum wage. If Mr. Manchin thinks that $15 an hour is too high an hourly wage, he should explain to us how he expects those making the lowest wages to survive and feed themselves and their families. Joe doesn’t want student loans to have lowered interest rates. He’s voted to take away funding from nonprofits offering family planning, reproductive healthcare and abortions, to decrease funding for food stamps, and to defund Planned Parenthood.

Manchin voted against: allowing the Social Security Administration to implement restrictions of gun purchases for Social Security recipients who have been deemed incompetent to manage their finances; sanctuary cities; amending the system for background checks for gun purchases; increased funding of fresh fruits and vegetables for elementary students; and importing FDA-approved drugs from Canada.

It is time for the Senate to change. Senators are being paid $175,000 per year, and Joe Manchin’s net worth as of 2021 is somewhere between $3.4 – $11.8 million. He, and his Senate colleagues, are doing almost nothing to earn the money they’re being paid, given the gridlock that the right started under Newt Gingrich and perfected under Moscow Mitch. If the Senate as currently constructed cannot be changed to make it function for the people, then maybe it’s time to do something differently. What that would be is above my pay grade, but it’s clear to most of us that what we have now is broken.

Joe Manchin – if you want those of us on the outside to believe that those of you in the Senate give two shits about our lives and our children’s futures, then DO SOMETHING!!!!

Bring ten Republicans over to vote with the Democrats for things that there is overwhelming support for all over the country. Get them to vote for Biden’s infrastructure bill, instead of quibbling about the definition of infrastructure (which, per the OED, is the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise). Republicans have for decades underfunded or ignored crumbling infrastructure all over the country in order to give their donors tax cuts.

Republicans are morally and philosophically incapable of putting the good of the country ahead of their own craven partisan needs – Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to name but a few – and clearly do not give a damn about the country as a whole. What they do care about is their own petty grievances and their perceived victimhood. They refuse to acknowledge that their white supremacist worldview is wrong, and will continue to make out those of us who are pushing for change as the ‘other’ in order to fire up the worst of their base. They are culpable for the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and all need to be held accountable for their behavior.

Are these the people that Joe Manchin believes should have the power to force lengthy debates? Those who are content spreading the Big Lie and using it to support sweeping voter suppression laws all over the country? The same ones who spout Russian disinformation in Senate committee hearings? Those who voted to overturn our election?

This is what Joe Manchin says he wants – allow the minority to prevent the majority from passing legislation poll after poll has shown is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of the people. That is just not acceptable. Someone needs to tell Joe Manchin that what HE wants doesn’t matter. It’s what WE THE PEOPLE WANT that needs to be honored. And WE THE PEOPLE want our government to work for all of us, not just for the privileged or the well-connected.

We all know there are exactly zero Senate Republicans with the guts to do what’s best for the country. Joe Manchin has got an uphill climb drawing ten of them out from the dark side. I wish him luck, but I won’t hold my breath.

SNAP Benefits Shouldn’t Be Limited to Food

In 1990, I was 31 years old and had been married for 11 years to my high school sweetheart (my first attempt at trying to get a man to meet his own potential despite his lack of interest in the whole project!). We lived in a large single home in the suburbs across the river from Philadelphia in South Jersey, with two kids and two dogs. By that year, I realized that the man I married was NOT someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and I told him to leave in March. He finally did so that June, and I got my friend’s sister and her toddler to move in as my roommate. She worked days, I worked nights, so perfect, right? Not so much.

Anyway, one thing led to another and I found myself in the unacceptable position of needing to apply for public benefits – food stamps, welfare and Medicaid – for myself and my children. My father took me there to fill out the application (no internet in 1990, sadly) despite my distaste of the whole idea (I had my own prejudices about ‘assistance’), because I was entitled to it. He was right – I wasn’t able to work because I was recuperating from surgery and my estranged husband (in rehab after a drunk-driving accident that caused him some serious frontal lobe damage) wasn’t working either, leaving us with no actual income.

I was way more fortunate than the majority of women in similar circumstances – single parents without financial support from the noncustodial parent – because my parents were fairly well-off. In addition, due to a legal settlement, and a bargain ‘fixer-upper’ of a house, I had no mortgage payment. Unfortunately, this did not mean I lived there for free – real estate taxes, utilities, cable and such put my monthly expenses conservatively around $1,500 before food. Adding groceries to that total for just myself and two young kids (7 and 10) brought that total to around $2,000.

When I was approved by the state for assistance, I was granted Medicaid for myself and my children (limited to those providers who agreed to accept the meager fees paid for their services) along with cash assistance/welfare and food stamps. The monthly cash payment I received was $475, and in food stamps, $256, about 30% of my monthly bills and about half of my grocery expenses. Of course, those grocery expenses include more than just food.

The non-edible things purchased at the grocery store are (in large part) also necessities and should be included in the benefits. Who among us can manage without laundry products, paper products, feminine hygiene products, health and beauty aids and cleaning products? How much of the average American’s grocery budget includes non-edibles like toilet paper, tissues, etc.?

When I pointed this out to the welfare worker I was assigned to, I was told that this was the purpose of the cash benefit. How I was supposed to pay my bills after I used my cash benefit for my non-edible groceries was not her problem. The only reason I wasn’t forced to sell my home in order to live off the proceeds was because of my parents’ financial support.

It is long over due for the food assistance system to be updated to reflect that actual needs of real families, including the fact that the least expensive food items are also those least healthy for us to eat. Fresh fruits, vegetables and proteins are significantly more expensive than the non-nutritious prepared foods available in the middle aisles of most grocery stores, and produce is almost nonexistent in food deserts where the only ‘grocery’ store is a dollar store.

Once again, we have to ask ourselves – if people who work 40 hours or more every week for a minimum wage job require government assistance for food, housing, healthcare and other necessities, why aren’t their employers required to raise their pay to a living wage?

Taxpayers shouldn’t be required to supplement poverty-level wages, to make workers whole; employers should be forced to provide a minimum living wage that is above the poverty level. Put the burden for this disparity where it belongs; on the companies that pay too little. Republicans (along with Sinema and Manchin) who refuse to address this do not deserve their place in power. Period.

This is Who the Republicans Are

My Republican friends have to explain to me why they aren’t outraged by the hundreds of voter suppression laws being passed by Republican legislatures in 43 states across the country. They must convince me that their silence about this isn’t a sign of their own complicity in this “Jim Crow in new clothes”, to quote Senator Raphael Warnock (D, Ga).

Over the short history of this country, it has been understood that political parties attract voters by virtue of their platforms, which were usually designed to show how much the party plans to do to help their voters when they are elected to office. When a political party loses an election, those in charge of said party have historically reviewed their platform and met with their voters to ascertain what changes could be made to attract more people to vote for them in the next election. Until now.

In 2021, Republicans have concluded that they cannot maintain their minority hold on government if all those eligible to vote are permitted to do so. They instead believe that making it as hard as possible for those they believe will be voting against them to cast a ballot is their only means of remaining in power, and have wasted no time in putting every roadblock they can in front of their own citizens, particularly those with Black and Brown skin.

Those in the Senate who purport to be liberals have to stand up for what is right, and that means immediately doing whatever is necessary to bring SR1 to the floor for a vote. Because Republicans have chosen voter suppression to platform modification, they will do what has worked for them since 2008 – invoke the word ‘filibuster’ followed by a demand for a 60-vote majority to pass any legislation. There is really no other way to go – the filibuster must be not simply changed,, but eliminated. Claims that the filibuster permits the minority to obstruct legislation they do not like and therefore “be careful what you wish for” is proof that the filibuster is designed as a means of obstruction.

A functioning democracy is always at risk of having a reversal of the party in power; that’s pretty much the point, right? In the United States, the minority has been given way too much power to stand in the way of majority rule, which is supposed to be the way our democracy works. While it is reasonable to allow those in the minority to express their opinion about legislation they disagree with, it is ridiculous to allow the party that lost all three branches of government in the last election to decide which legislation is going to pass and which is going to die because they don’t like it.

In fact, Republicans have used this ability to prevent Democratic administrations from enacting anything that the Democrats were elected into to office to initiate. Why is the losing party able to hold the winning team hostage by denying them the mandate they won in an election simply by stamping their feet and plugging their ears while repeating “La, la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you….”? The Senate, formerly considered ‘the world’s most deliberative body’ has been transformed into a two-headed monster; the one on the left has the only functioning brain, while the one on the right is a whiny little bitch.

The citizens of this country spoke loud and clear last November. We voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to lead us out of the mess that Trump and decades of Republican obstructionism brought us to. The Republicans need to get over the fact that they lost and deal with the mandate the American People gave to the Biden Administration. If they cannot do that, they should be drummed out of existence as a political force for decades to come, if not forever.

Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) need to put on their grown-up pants and stop acting as though the Republicans have a shit left to give about anything other than their donors and their stock portfolios. If Senators Manchin and Sinema give a damn about the American people, they’ll stop pretending that the filibuster is anything other than a holdover from Reconstruction used to stymie any attempt at civil rights. Why do they and most on the right find it unacceptable to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour? Have any of them tried today to live on $290 per week (at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr for a 40 hour work week)? That income may allow a high school student to put some funds aside towards college, but there is no independently living adult who can survive on under $1,200 per month in total income. Of course, those who are only making $7.25 per hour have the opportunity to apply for government subsidies for food, rent, heat (in the Northeast) and cash assistance, but why are the taxpayers forced to lift these folks out of poverty instead of requiring their employer to pay them a living wage?

The social safety net programs have been in the sights of Republicans for as long as I can remember, and it’s particularly galling since many of the working poor who need these programs to survive would be lifted out of poverty if they were simply paid a wage that met their cost of living. Why do so many in the Senate refuse to acknowledge that the below-poverty-level federal minimum wage is directly responsible for every dollar of social safety net funds needed to bring those families to a livable income?

No one working a full forty hour week should need government assistance to survive. Allowing businesses to pay so little to their employees benefits the business owners at the expense of their workers. Requiring all businesses to pay their employees a real, living wage lifts everyone up, freeing up trillions of tax dollars to fund infrastructure, climate remediation, green energy, healthcare and so much more. We all do better when we all do better.

Of course, many smaller businesses working with a smaller profit margin may be required to raise prices, and those who are the least profitable may end up closing, but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Not all businesses are destined for success, and holding down workers’ pay for the exclusive benefit of the business owners perpetuates disparities that have effectively transferred massive wealth from the many to the few. The fact is, none of the people currently taking up seats in the Senate have any relevant experience within their own lives that compares with trying to survive on too little income week after week, month after month, year after year, without any reasonable expectation of a change until you die or retire, often on too little Social Security income. Apparently, Republican Senators (along with the two Democrats noted above) no longer have any capacity to empathize with those less fortunate than themselves. They lack any real ability to fathom what it’s like to live in a world that doesn’t include a huge inheritance or the good fortune of having your way paved by your predecessors without any input or talent on your part. These character flaws make them the wrong people to represent the vast majority of their own electorate. Their ivory towers have blinded them to what it’s like for the rest of us down her on the ground.

In order to lift the folks at the bottom of the income ladder up, those at the other end of the scale have to pay their fair share in taxes. Trillions of dollars in tax revenue are lost to loopholes, tax shelters and both legal and illegal tax avoidance by the top 0.1%. It is no longer tenable that the majority of IRS tax audits focuses on those claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Why not focus all that energy on those filers most likely to bring in the most in taxes, fees and penalties? Surely auditing one fraudulently filed 1040 by someone with billions in income would be more financially beneficial to the IRS than auditing thousands of low-income filers who did their own taxes and made an honest mistake?

Republicans have used their obstructionism in the Senate as proof that the Democrats can’t do anything when they’re in charge, convincing the slimmest of ‘majorities’ with the help of the tilted electoral college and Senate to put them back in charge. Once there, they prove again that they lack the intellectual and moral authority to actually govern, preferring instead to use rhetoric to keep their base engaged while doing nothing to benefit the citizens of the country. Power for the sake of power, as a means of maintaining power without regard for the will of the people, or majority rule. Republicans have gone all in on the Big Lie, and they’re using it to do everything possible to prevent anyone they deem undeserving from casting a ballot, especially people of color. They have to obstruct because they know that the people will keep Democrats in charge because Democrats get things done.

This is who the Republicans are. Racist to the core. Interested only in themselves. Those who chose to remain within their ranks need to acknowledge that this is their underlying reason for being there; taxes, abortion and guns notwithstanding.

Lies Are NOT “Unsubstantiated Claims”

I have been a Kindle subscriber to The Washington Post since 2016, and I read it nearly every day, often checking back later, to keep up with the dumpster fire that has been the last 4 years. Over that time, the media has tried to call Trump’s lies what they are, but it’s still not happening consistently. Today, I started to read Jose A. Del Real’s article The turbocharged battle over truth is just beginning and was struck immediately by:

“President Trumps stands as a singular figure in American history for his willingness to entertain conspiracy theories from the Oval Office, and none has been more damaging or far reaching than his unsubstantiated claim (boldness added) that the 2020 election was rigged against him.”

Jose, please call a spade a damn shovel. What Trump is doing is not an “unsubstantiated claim”, it’s an outright lie told to gin up support among his base supporters. It’s how he keeps all of us tuning in again tomorrow to see what happens next. His psycopathy is the best combination of all the worst traits whose reality TV exposure and experience provided a deadly combination that has led to where we are now.

Please, mainstream media – words really do matter. Couching Trump’s lies euphemistically as anything other than a falsehood gives them cover. Do not legitimize an illegitimate act; call a spade a damn shovel already.

Remember as well – Trumpism and the Republican Party are one and the same.

My Outrage Hiatus Has Ended

My blood pressure began rising during the 2015-2016 Presidential primaries, and I was put on my first antihypertensive medication in 2016. I was confident when it first started to go up that it was related to Trump and the election, and nothing that has happened between then and now has changed my opinion. This has been made more worrisome as my doctor first increased that first medication dose and frequency, then added two additional blood pressure meds before convincing me last month that I also needed to add a diuretic to my daily regimen.

Doc had tried on two prior occasions to add the diuretic, and I balked at the idea because, well, I’m 62 and gave vaginal birth twice, with the bigger baby weighing 8 lbs, 11.5 oz., and women who have carried pregnancies and birthed babies have much greater likelihood of developing some type of urinary incontinence when they are older, particularly if they no longer have a partner (because it really is true if you don’t use it, you lose it!). I have been dealing with what is euphemistically referred to as “stress incontinence” (sneezing, laughing, coughing can all cause some urine leakage) or “urge incontinence” (you lose the ability to hold your urine once you’re aware of the urge to urinate), and I wasn’t at all willing to make it even harder to deal with, however, at the urging of my PCP I finally agreed to start a low-dose diuretic in help lower by my blood pressure.

So now that Biden and Harris won the election, has my blood pressure dropped? Sure, a bit, but I don’t think it’s due to the election. After all, Trump and the Republicans continue to spew their conspiracy theories to the right-wing media bubble, and it all becomes this big circle jerk. It’s hard to believe that Ben Sasse, (R), Nebraska, is one of the reality-based Republican Senators, but his open letter to his constituents tells the stark truth – that all these Republicans know that Trump lost the election to Biden, but in order to attract Trump’s cult base to their future campaigns, they’re willing to destroy the democracy. For their own political benefit, they are all in on the undermining of our electoral process.

I know that what we think we all want more than anything is a return to what we had before Covid-19 spread, but certainly all of us know that what we had before was decades past what we think of as “normal”. The wealth inequity has grown exponentially worse since the 1960’s, racism has not gone away, and right-wing extremism has been normalized. With these as the new normal, how can we possibly want to go back to that?

We got to where we are because of multiple Republican administrations that legislated the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in our lifetimes while simultaneously shredding the social safety net to disproportionately harm minorities and people of color. They have specifically legislated to ban more than half of the population from deciding for themselves what they want to do with their bodies, denying reproductive and gender equity whenever and where ever they could. In 2020, they supported and lied for the most corrupt president and administration in the history of the country, refusing to respond to a worldwide pandemic on behalf of the public health and public good, spreading baldfaced lies and denying the science on mitigation efforts while many of them watched their own stock portfolios increase in value. They refused for months to consider additional financial stimulus for the millions of our fellow Americans who, through no fault of their own (largely due to Trump’s callous indifference and inability to perform any of the essential duties of the presidency) lost their jobs in industries that cannot come back until enough of us are vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. The Republicans under McConnell instead tied their possible vote for another stimulus to a blanket corporate liability waiver for not just covid-related problems, but actually any kind of lawsuit from employees or customers, which of course hurts all of us while protecting the rich and corporations from the consequences of their own behavior.

While we wait for the results of the Georgia Senate runoff elections, I have to keep hoping that we will win both seats. I hope that everyone who has internet access has listened to the tape that the Washington Post obtained of Trump spending an hour of his time on Saturday trying to extort the Georgia Secretary of State to commit election fraud in order to give Trump a fraudulent win of the state’s electoral votes. There is only one explanation for that entire call if Trump wants to avoid being criminally charged, and that is to have himself declared mentally incompetent and removed from office using the 25th Amendment. If he refuses to acquiesce to this, insisting that he doesn’t lack capacity and knew that what he was doing was wrong, then his intention cannot be denied and he therefore meets the legal threshold for, at the minimum, grand jury indictment.

Every one of Trump’s enablers, including Senators, Representatives and all of those who have participated in his administration without telling the truth about what was going on until their books were published, must be held to account. These people are right-wing extremists and as such should have no place in a democratic government. Their obvious refusal to stand up against all the things that this administration has done over these longest four years of our lives deems them one and all ineligible to hold any elected office anywhere. Period, full stop. These are the elected officials whose loyalty to Trump plainly matters so much more than any oath they took to uphold the Constitution.

Senators vowing to attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters, including some of their own:

Tommy Tuberville (AL), Kelly Loeffler (GA), Mike Braun (IN), Roger Marshall (KS), John Neely Kennedy (LA), Josh Hawley (MO), Steve Daines (MT), James Lankford (OK), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Bill Haggerty (TN), Ted Cruz (TX), Ron Johnson (WI) and Cynthia Lummis (WY)

House Representatives (by state)

Alabama – Mo Brooks, Jerry Carl, Mike Rogers, Barry Moore, Robert Aderholt

Arizona – Andy Biggs, Paul Gosa

California – Mike Garcia, Kevin McCarthy

Colorado – Lauren Boebert, Doug Lamborn

Florida – Matt Gaetz, Byron Donalds, John Rutherford, Bill Posey, Brian Mast, Scott Franklin

Georgia – Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jody Hice, Andrew Clyde, Barry Loudermilk

Idaho – Russ Fulcher

Indiana – Mike Braun, Jim Banks, Jackie Walorski

Kansas – Roger Marshall, Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Lake LaTurner

Louisiana – Clay HIggins

Maryland – Andy Harris

Michigan – Lisa McClain, Jack Bergman, Tim Walberg

Mississippi – Steven Palazzo

Missouri – Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Billy Long, Jason Smith

Montana – Steve Daines

Nebraska – Adrian Smith

New Jersey – Jeff Van Drew

New Mexico – Yvette Herrell

New York – Elise Stefanik ***Note that this idiot is the only Democrat to sign on to this coup attempt.

North Carolina – Madison Cawthorn, Ted Budd, David Rouzer, Richard Hudson, Greg Murphy

Ohio – Jim Jordan, Bob Gibbs, Warren Davidson, Bill Johnson

Oklahoma – Markwayne Mullin

Oregon – Cliff Bentz

Pennsylvania – John Joyce, Dan Meuser, Glenn “GT” Thompson, Mike Kelly, Lloyd Smucker, Guy Reschenthaler, Fred Keller, Scott Perry

South Carolina – Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Joe Wilson, William Timmons

Tennessee – Bill Hagerty, Chuck Fleishmann, Mark Green, Diana Harshbarger, Scott DesJarlais

Texas – Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Louie Gohmert, Brian Babin, Randy Weber, Pete Sessions, August Pfluger, Jodey Arrington

Utah – Burgess Owens, Chris Steward

Virginia – Bob Good, Rob Wittman

All of them should be shunned for the remainder of their public lives, removed from office and denied any ability to seek office forever.

Remember their names.

Bittersweet

For only the second time in my life, today I was reduced to actual sobbing after it was announced that Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States. Unlike 2016, however, today my tears were those of relief that the era of Trump as president is almost over, that soon I will no longer be under a constant level of anxiety and stress worrying about what awful thing the president was going to do to the country and the planet in order to enrich himself. I actually felt lighter after I heard the news, as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

My tears were tinged with a not insignificant amount of sadness because more than 70 million of my fellow citizens (7 million more than voted for him in 2016!), despite the unending disaster that has been the Trump administration, were still fully supportive of him and the Republican enablers down ballot. There will be many in the media who will tap dance around the reasons for that support, especially given the votes of Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan-Americans in Miami Dade County, but there are two underlying conditions that provide all the proof I need to know that a combination of misogyny and racism is what draws them to him like moths to a flame.

The Republican Party (which many insist on referring to as ‘Trumpism’) long ago gave up any pretext that it was interested in the legislating or debating of anything beyond the appointment of right-wing judges, deregulating their donors’ industries, and maintaining their hold on power by any means necessary. Right now, the future of the Senate remains in flux pending the results of two run-off elections in the state of Georgia for the seats currently occupied by David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Trump toadies who have no business in government.

My 38 year old daughter, who with her boyfriend recently moved 1,500 miles away to Florida and just announced that they’re pregnant with my first grandbaby to replace the theoretical one whose future I’ve been so freaked out over. The texts, postcards and letters I sent to people all over the country were written with all the grandchildren in mind, the ones whose future the Republicans have continued to trash in their wanton destruction of anything that remotely resembles the democracy as we were told it was designed. We are now at a place where we cannot afford to sit back and savor the Biden/Harris victory because we have another election that is nearly as important as the one we have just won.

Georgia was in the unique position of having both Senatorial seats on the ballot this year, and both of those elections are now going to a run-off in January. With Trump off the ticket and no longer there to boost the base, both Democratic candidates, John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have a higher likelihood of success on January 5, 2021. Our volunteer and financial efforts should be focused on these two races between now and then in order to gain the majority in the Senate (with the addition of the Vice-President’s vote) and castrate Moscow Mitch. When the only strategy the Republicans have is to obstruct every piece of legislation the Democrats create, there is only one party that benefits, and that’s the Republican and its donor class. The rest of us – all Americans, and all equally deserving of a government that puts the needs of the people over and above their own – must step up and do whatever we can to ensure that the Democrats take Senate in January and bring the awful era of McConnell as the arbiter of legislation comes to an end.

I’m going to enjoy this win today; tomorrow is the first day of the fight for the Senate. After that, we have to address the right-wing media bubble, because that’s where those 70 million who still support Trump get all their information. It’s not ever going to be possible to have any kind of discussion if only one side of the argument uses facts while the other side spews disinformation and conspiracy theories. Republicans and their media conflate freedom of speech and of the press with saying whatever you want on media platforms regardless of the facts.

We all know one or more of those 70 million people; my nephew is one of them. I love him, but I don’t know if there’s anything we have in common anymore except our surname. What I find most disturbing is that I never would have expected my nephew, with a huge circle of diverse friends, would be so easily sucked in by the Trump cult. It makes me sad for the future of his children.

My family is fractured, something that started long before Trump ran for office in 2015. When my dad was on hospice before he died in 2008, my brother and sister-in-law brought him to live with them in their house for the last two months of his life. During that time, I made sure to go over there every week, and always took him to any appointments if they were scheduled on my days off. Never during those months did either my brother or his wife ever tell me that they needed me to do more, so it was a shock to me when I found out after my dad’s death (when I couldn’t do anything to change things) how they felt. Before Dad died, the whole family spent Thanksgiving at my house and Easter at my brother’s. Since then, we spend no holidays together and it’s unusual if we even speak to each other on holidays now. My brother will tell me how important it is for us to stay in touch since our family is so small, but I don’t feel like he means it anymore. I suppose anything is possible as long as we’re all still here.

Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

Only Two More Days

I’ve always been the person who walks into the room and then forgets why I went there in the first place, sometimes requiring a trip back to where I came from to jog my memory. Recently, it has gotten so much worse that I was actually starting to worry that I might have early-onset dementia. I was getting myself set to bring up my concerns during my next visit with my PCP when I read an article in The Washington Post about election stress disorder, something that wasn’t even a thing until Trump.

A therapist based in Washington, DC coined the term during the 2016 election, describing those with the disorder as having “continual worry and obsession with the election that spills over into all areas of your life.” Based on that, I suspect that there are millions of us in the US who have been suffering from the disorder continuously since Trump won the 2016 election.

Two days before the end of voting, record numbers of votes have already been cast all over the country, and it is reasonable to believe that many of these early votes are for Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket. The Republicans, who have based their electoral strategy since the Nixon administration on voter suppression and disenfranchisement, continue to file lawsuits in battleground states in order to stop the counting of legitimately cast ballots because they believe those votes will be for their opponent. Within those states with Republican legislatures and governors, it is not inconceivable that they could fraudulently interfere with the counting of ballots and appoint electors based on their own personal preference rather than on the will of the people of their states.

What is wrong with the Republicans as fellow Americans? How is it acceptable to them that the leader of their party has been using the bully pulpit of the presidency to spread disinformation about the security of our elections with his claims about vote rigging if he loses? The answer to that question, as has been the case for most such questions over the last four years, is that they don’t care how much damage they do to the foundations of our democracy if the end result is their continued hold on the reins of power. Not only have they placed their party over the country, they have placed themselves as a minority over us all as sole arbiter of how our country should run for decades to come, regardless of the will of the majority.

The Republicans have taken core principles of our democracy and twisted them into a means of oppressing those with whom they disagree. Freedom of religion does not mean you can use your religious belief to discriminate against someone who doesn’t follow those beliefs, it means we are each free to choose whether or not to have a religious belief at all. Your freedom of religion ends where it begins to infringe on my freedom to not follow any religion.

Religion, specificially christianity, has gotten entirely too enmeshed within our government, and we have under Trump (likely the most godless hypocrite to hold the office) watched helplessly as his appointees have boldly admitted that their faith is a huge factor in their policy and decision making. Mike Pompeo and William Barr proudly profess their catholic faith as if the bible doesn’t instruct them to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ and to be a good samaritan and help those in need. They, like many who profess to be devout are actually using their supposed ‘faith’ as a way of diverting the attention from their naked desire for power, not the most ‘christian’ way to lead.

Not in my lifetime had I ever been forced to worry every day about what awful thing the president and his administration was going to do, until this incompetent, malignant narcissist was inaugurated in January, 2017. I don’t want to have to waste any more of my life freaked out over something over which I have absolutely no control on my own, because all it does is create a constant level of anxiety 24/7 which gets elevated every time Trump does something no other president would have ever considered doing.

When is the last time a president used his the power of the presidency to spread lies about mail in ballots? What president in modern history has promoted conspiracy theories that have led some to take up weapons in defense of fabricated children? What other president has refused to denounce white supremacists? Which of the previous 44 claimed that all media is ‘fake news’? How many others have used their presidency to line the pockets of their personal company with millions of dollars in taxpayer funds? Who are the others who tried to extort an ally in need for disinformation against his political opponent by withholding military assistance? Which of the former White House residents have used the pardon power to reward their friends and to keep them silent? And find me another president who did done nothing while more than a quarter million Americans died over eight months from any cause.

Donald Trump is the absolute worst person ever to hold the office of the president in the history of our country, period. While some of the ones early on were just terrible, they had much less power and were therefore able to hurt a smaller number of humans overall. Trump has had much more of an opportunity to spread his awfulness all over the world. Millions fleeing wars, famines, climate degradation and despots have been further tortured by this administration’s clamping shut the gates to the country. Not only is this in and of itself unamerican (given that we non-indigenous Americans are the result of our ancestors coming from somewhere else), it is cruel, short-sighted and xenophobic. Now with this pandemic, instead of the United States working with the world to find a vaccine and treatment, he’s decided to go it alone out of his selfish world-view that it’s all about him. His inability to understand that the United States isn’t the same as a sole proprietorship company and therefore cannot be treated as if it is his personal fiefdom.

I’ve mailed postcards and letters to voters in Florida, hoping to encourage them to vote, only to find out that my daughter’s boyfriend hasn’t even bothered to register to vote in Florida! I’m tired of hearing young people complain about the government they have while they refuse to participate and vote in order to change things. Don’t leave the voting to old people and then complain about what the old people voted for. The only way for us to get a more progressive government is to vote more progressive people into office, and you cannot count on old people to do that (full disclosure – I am 62 and have voted Democratic my entire life). Young people, who have more to lose, need to quit complaining and start doing something – find others who feel like you and get them to run for something. It’s past time for you to act like adults and do the hard work – get us old folks out of office and show us what we should have done years ago.

I know Joe Biden isn’t the one you wanted to vote for in 2020, but you have only two choices this election. You can vote for democracy and choose the Democratic ticket, or you can choose authoritarianism and vote for Trump. The two-party system sucks, but it is what it is; wasting your vote on a third-party candidate only benefits Trump. There is no excuse for anyone who truly believes that we can do better as a society and as a country to do anything other than vote for Joe Biden for President.