I'm FINE.
We must be able to listen. To hear. To put ourselves in the shoes of others to better understand, to better cooperate. Life can be hard and life is always too short. Cooperation is friendly co-existence. No alternative is sustainable.
We do not need to destroy to be strong. There is more strength in the uplift than there is in the bunker bomb.
We see examples all the time in our country of people resisting immigrants coming here. It’s no different elsewhere when we are the immigrants. Great communities encompass both utilizing the strengths of both. There or here, we can grow as a team or we can yell and fight, hanging onto the notion that we can freeze time at a perfect frame that will never change. Which is absurd. Nobody birthed themselves, nobody made it on their own. Life is a cooperative venture and we can do this cooperation stuff better. Always better. Because communities do die from neglect and from hatred.
Who is pleased by that outcome?
Sometimes, there are impasses and it is just better to leave and find the community that will welcome you because you listen. You hear.
A football player in the NFL was accused of sexual assault by two dozen women. His team traded him to Cleveland. He denies the accusations. He has worked out civil settlements with each of them. A jury refused to convict him.
The NFL and the NFL Player’s Association have imposed a penalty. He will be suspended for 6 games. If he is guilty of those assaults, 6 games is hardly enough.
Upon hearing of the outcome, the Republicans feel he’s gonna make a great president in 2024. Or better yet, their king. Won’t you send them money to fulfill their childhood dream?
This also proves they’re not racists because the football player is a Black man. Who can throw a ball. King him.
If you had to stop and think ‘Is this satire? Is this true?’ Then that’s what’s wrong with today’s GOP. You thought it sounded like the way you expected Republicans to act.
It is not a family value to subjugate women. Again.
Theories about originalism miss the point. Before governments and courts existed human beings existed. All their biological functions are known. The psychology of how people act is understood. Sex will occur. Pregnancies may result.
You may not agree with each woman’s decision but if our tradition and laws uphold the concept of equal rights, then women - like men - get to control their own bodies. No state or federal body should have a superior right to deny anyone their body’s autonomy. Some rights exist that are above the intrusion of law. Should governments tell us we’re not permitted to poop anywhere ever?
Those who terrorize, who assault, who harass, who dominate or control women are those who sell you a belief in hell. The hell that they create is one we can eliminate and should.
Begin anew and pass the ERA!
I recall the lies that were told, that the ERA was not necessary, that women were equal because of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment.
They are not. They can be subjected to endure illness, risks to their life, incredible pain, raising the children of their rapists. Men have it easier, getting suspended for 6 games and getting elected as president.
PASS. THE. ERA.
My apologies for the delay in the first newsletter of the week. My landlord decided to throw yet another curve at me. We pay rent and utilities to him and now he decided we should put the cable bill in our name. This took 3 trips to the cable company Xcrappity, one on Friday and two yesterday. They downloaded a new app on my phone, which didn’t work, assured me everything switched over without a hiccup and would be exactly the same but we were without internet and TV for nearly 5 hours. And now that it’s working the entire display on the TV has drastically changed, requiring a trial-and-error new learning curve.
All this plus it represents an increase in rent of $40 to $60. I’m not sure of the final cost because Xcrappity has a tendency to always be wrong.
The app could not authenticate my identity by SS# or debit card or password which were all entered after the app was downloaded. And, oh wait……
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Xcrappity just called to do their post-partum survey while I was writing this. I had to ask them to repeat several of the questions because their accent caused a struggle for my eardrums and cerebrum.
When they heard my replies, they offered to mess with the TV from afar. I refused that, begged them to leave it alone till their service tech arrives on Friday. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Don’t touch me. I’M FINE.
Corporations and billionaires are lobbying hard to block the InflationReduction Act and its tax provisions and climate change relief. They target Senator Sinema who apparently is waiting to see who is the highest bidder for her vote.
Have you bought your Senator today? If not, what’s wrong with you? Are you some sort of UnAmerican hoarding your cookie jar money? Get with the program!
Rut-roh….
Via Business Insider:
As former Republican senator Rick Santorum addressed Republican lawmakers gathered in San Diego at the American Legislative Exchange Council policy summit, he detailed a plan to fundamentally remake the United States.
It would become a conservative nation.
And the transformation, Santorum said, culminates with an unprecedented event: a first-of-its-kind convention to rewrite the Constitution.
"You take this grenade and you pull the pin, you've got a live piece of ammo in your hands," Santorum, a two-time GOP presidential candidate and former CNN commentator, explained in audio of his remarks obtained by the left-leaning watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Insider. "34 states — if every Republican legislator votes for this, we have a constitutional convention."
Got that? They consider it a live grenade and are eager to deploy it. Great analogy, Rick. You do recall what grenades do, right? Destroy human lives.
A constitutional convention is possible. It is not desirable.
At the first and only one, a number of concessions were made to get slaveholding states to sign on. It was the only way to have a federal government at all.
When it looked like slavery was gonna be taken away, that same minority chose secession and we got our deadliest war. When slavery went away, we got the terrible blowback of disenfranchisement of the newly freed and decades of lynchings.
We don’t need more concessions to the conservative minority.
Since 1981, their policies have taken income inequality to extremes, multiplied homelessness, stole the presidential election of 2000, blocked desperately needed reforms to slow climate change, launched a series of unjustified wars in the Middle East, packed the judicial system with judges now damaging human rights and necessary business regulation (goodbye EPA!), and are STILL trying to steal the 2020 presidential election.
What the majority wants is what the conservative minority continually try to thwart. Governments can’t last that continually thwart majority rule. Do not give them a convention. Do not give them slavery back. That’s the grenade they want.
Don’t touch me. I’M FINE.
Because we can all use a moment to refresh our spirits.