jebbypal

Seriously. It has been a slog.
the complete nightmare that 2015 campaign season and election loss in the US.
The entirety of the Trump administration.
The brief high in mid-November when the election was called from Biden.
The continuous messaging, court lawsuits, and accompanying lawyer ineptitude (\0/ we like inept would be despots)
The final certification being sent in December
The white supremacist insurrection on January 6. [particularly ironic and stressful given the continual right wing messaging about BLM and anti-fascists "burning down cities"]
The final certification in the whee hours of January 7.
Seeing our capital turn into a militarized zone while hearing news of all the things NOT picked up or planned for that could have prevented January 6.
The "personal liberty" representatives who refuse to walk through metal detectors in the hours/days after the insurrection.

And then, finally January 20.
Coherent speeches. With compassion, empathy, and a true vision beyond "I'm a white male boomer who is threatened by the fact that you've changed society such that I'm not automatically assumed to be superior"

Poetry. Music. Inspiration.

And now, 3 days into the the presidency, and the entire tenor and mood in the white house and government has changed
Press secretaries being polite with journalists. And answering questions with facts. And correcting themselves when soemthing was said in error.
Tony Fauci resplendent and looking younger than he has in a year, and almost giddy.
My imagination of how the halls of the NIH, CDC, and EPA must feel now.
A PLAN FOR THE PANDEMIC.

Just so we know we are in reality, of course, McConnel and the insurrectionist GOP members do continue to bleat and cry and talk about how we must abase ourselves to them in the name of unity. So we know we haven't died and gone to the Good Place just yet.

But I'm fine here in the Medium Place after 4 years in the Bad place.

Now, with momentum, compassion, strength, and vision, let's work to making this the Good Place.

Yes, 2017.

Frelling hells. Gorramit.

When I came to the east coast, the difference in palpable racism was amazing. Now, I'm not saying that it didn't exist, but the level compared to growing up in the south was amazing.

And then, against my expectations (but not my support), Obama was elected. People I thought would never vote for him did, including members of my family. It was 8 years of "wow, maybe the world really has grown up".

And then November 2016 happened, and it's been like everything I remember about my childhood, though spoken of mostly quietly then, has come out in 3D, dolby surround sound.

Sunday and Monday's remarks by Not My President (NMP) were bad enough. Then came Tuesday. How any decent person in his administration can remain after that, I don't know. I mean yes, there can be an argument made about how they need to stay to protect the country and the world from him, but at the same time, they are allowing him to function.

And the GOP in Congress. I hope they realize that words and statements are not enough.

On top of this, stray remarks by me keep drawing people in to political discussions. My respect for many of my coworkers as a result has plummeted. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most of them are white, older men.

Yesterday kind of took the cherry on this. I was complaining to a colleague that my vacation was less than restful due to the news and then a few attempts to explain the whole situation to a few curious Canadians. Somehow, got involved in discussion with older freelancer -- in which I was purposely trying to not really get into politics -- that he basically set it up as a criticism of the media and lectured me on how I had to realize that majority of news sources were biased, and that they had to take NMP's words out of context for their business model to succeed - but don't get him wrong, Fox News was just as bad on the other side, and basically all the political divisions in our country were the fault of journalists.

Just WTF??? Yes, dude, I learned at the age of 12 that everything news based has a biased and there's rarely a medium through which you can get just the facts. But seriously, nothing in the last 4 days requires much of bias to report it.

I would say that I'm done with humanity, but always at the darkest times there are those around us that step up and lead the way. From the counterprotestors protecting each others, the veteran who stood guard at the Chartlosville synagogue, those pulling down statues, and communities pulling together to make sure Heather Heyer's memorial occurs unmolested, the evil messages of the right are being called out.

[this is a post I made to facebook...sharing here under cut]

If anything, I hope that the confirmation votes of Devos and Sessions have made something abundantly clear to those who were ambivalent about 45's administration or supported him.

45, and the majority of the GOP, are not governing for you. ( Read more... )</cut

And yet I'm exhausted.

I have a feeling that I will either be leaving facebook, or simply unfollowing everyone that isn't Dan Rather, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood.

Between being horrified by finding out who is likely a Trump-ite or exhausted by my paranoid friends extolling the need for apocalyptic prepping (which, you know, I get, but yeah, I just don't have the energy to deal), I'm finding reading the DailyKos more relaxing. Well, at least as long as they stay off the topic of Hillary since Kos and co have never given Hillary a fair shake for one reason or the other.

*shakes head* Oh well, all things that make me flee my happy place that are likely to wake my muse up, right??

ION, I realize now part of the reason why this administration will be so much worse than the Bush era:

the lack of:
1) daily Jon Stewart sanity check on a semiregular basis depending on the High Holiday schedule
2) the death of cuteoverload. Do you know how much time I spent on cuteoverload during the Bush administration?

Oh well, at least I'm not in grad school this time around. I'm not sure I could have survived the grad school years and this cluster at the same time.

In the theme of happy place
--I watched the finale of The Good Place. I only intermittently watched it, but it ended really well. Hope we get more
--Sneaky Pete? Is anyone else watching this?? I watched I think 8 episodes yesterday. It is soo awesome. It's like Burn Notice crossed with Justified with a sprinkle of Leverage spice. It's on Amazon Prime, so go watch if you have time. I'm pretty sure they already green lit season 2.

In no particular order...(and wow, i may have posted more this month than I did all year)

1) NJ rubberneckers need a swift slap upside the head. 20 minute backup on a 3-4 mile stretch of road because...all 3 lanes were open but they had construction trucks blocking lanes on opposite lanes. *head desk*

2) Realization that why the GOP and Trump suddenly love Russia is (a) it is no longer hostile to christianity in the post-communist era, (b) it is now basically an ode to Ayn Rand since (c) a person or a business can do pretty much anything they want as long as they know which person to pay homage to without regard to petty things like regulations (I presume. if the russian epa is strict, then my bad). this has somewhat helped my cognizant whiplash from the days when republicans branded all liberal democrats as red commie socialists.

3) I felt less bad about my impulse buy of a new laptop when I realized that my current desktop is 6+ years old which probably explains a lot about its creakiness. I'm not getting rid of it, but I feel like half my writers block is (a) dislike of typing on ipad and getting frustrated every time one of its wireless keyboards I like breaks and (b) not wanting to type on desktop in dead of winter since it's in the coldest room in the house.

4) Coworkers in the medical department at work (healthcare advertising firm) made me realize once again how much I dislike many healthcare professionals approach to their jobs and why i'm thankful i got the phd instead of the MD otherwise I'd be the female version of House. In complaining about winter or something, somehow SADD came up and the almost decade my junior pharmacist female coworker said how she never believed in SADD and felt like it was a cop out for people to be lazy in the winter. At which point our decade older than me male boss who is a former ER physician concurred. *head desk* Lovely how with your lack of actual psychology training you've decided to basically poo poo a diagnosable medical condition as "all in their head". This is why people who actually have health issues hate doctors. *head desk*

Enough ranting. need to go do some work since I will be meetings during day tomorrow before a piece we have is due to client with comments incorported.

So let's see,

1. I have a mega post brewing in my head about the whole Jonathan Martin events and the huge ass patriarchy induced bitching of commenters that there is no way that a football locker room could be held to a standard of decent speech etc. no offense, but everyone else in the world makes the transition from thoughtless and demeaning language one might use with friends to non-harassment levels of speech when they enter the work force or we shortly find ourselves unemployed. As one mail I. To mmqb pointed out, the language revealed in the investigation would not be allowed in the military under any half decent command.

Further, the whole issue also brings out the sexism and patriarchy privilege both with the commenters and with the locker room. Several folks have been spot on that beyond e race and homophobic language used. The whole incident reveals troubling attitudes pervasive in that locker room against women. And the language of incognito defenders does the same since Martin is called in the same breath pussy, bitch, whiny, and snitch.

Further from that, this incident is bullying on many levels -- and yet events that would be roundly renounced if they happened in grade school (I hope) are defended because it's adult men. Bullying is not okay no matter the age. Full stop.

2. And thanks to my month long procrastination delay, we've hit the busy period at work. Sigh. And some other stuff that needs to be discussed under lock (not bad).

3. My mom has fully entered the tea party nut phase of life. My dad's old employer is discontinuing health insurance for retires. In my moms world this is obamas fault and failure because he said they could keep their insurance. Sigh. I'm not convinced this wouldn't have happened regardless since AT&T has long history since my dad retired of taking away retiree benefits, especially of the retiree was nonunion management.

Arizona congress pushing through a bill that would allow employers to fire employees for unapproved use of contraception

So basically, what I'm getting from the current teaparty controlled state congresses is that it should be easier to purchase a gun than obtain contraception, and there's more right to privacy about wanting to purchase or carry concealed weapons than women should have in their own freaking medical choices.

I'm so glad the republicans felt the need to go to war against the taliban while adopting their philosophies regarding women's rights. Pretty soon, they'll come up with the bright idea that maybe I should need my dad/husband/employer's permission to even go to the doctor. Because clearly the only reason I'd want to go is I'm a slut and not because I have any health issues. We all know those only occur in women's minds...

Komen cancels hundreds of thousands of dollars of grants for cancer screenings with Planned Parenthood

Key points:
1) they hide it behind the fact that their policy is not to do business with any entity under congressional investigation (which has been instigated by anti-choice activist republican congressman)

2) Komen's senior vice president Karen Handel is a former republican gubernatorial candidate in georgia

3) Seriously, WTF?? You're a cancer survivor advocacy group and you decide to end grants to the number one provider of free/subsidized health care in the nation??? Exactly where the fuck do you think you will send those dollars to get the same sort of coverage nation wide? What, send it to random churches so they can have monthly drawings for who gets the free mammogram???

Once again, politicians and conservatives have absolutely no interesting in making sure that anyone in this world has a right to life except the rich and fetuses.

Maine state Republicans are now targeting worker's compensation

Even though I've been trying to detune from the politics somewhat for mental health, this stuff still keeps putting my jaw on the floor.

Republicans at every level aren't even trying to hide who their true constituents are anymore thanks to the Robert's supreme court ruling that "corporations are people too". It's just mind boggling.

Class warfare doesn't even really come close to truly describing it. More like complete elimination of the middle class so that the majority of americans will be happy with any job they can get allowing corporations to return to the new 3rd world america for cheap labor (who needs immigrants when you've eliminated most educational opportunities for the poor, blocked access to family planning, and removed all social safety nets???) Add to that the renewed attacks on net neutrality, and soon the Repbulicans won't have to worry about communists or jihaadists anymore because they'll have remade the country into their long ago industrial age oligarchy.

Seriously, the Democratic campaign commercials make themselves. All that's left is for them to actually be able to raise enough money to air them.

Seriously, this election, I am sick of it. Even before the primaries started, I was sick of MSM and all that it spewed. But now, geez.

This feeling has culminated upon speaking to my mother who is still in the barren wastelands of OK where cable and dsl won't come to her house because she lives three miles outside of the town limits. So she just get the major networks and subscribes to the two papers - one from the big city and one for the local town. Not that it matters in this era of media consolidation really.

After some nattering about CERN causing the end of the world (ooh, please? Seriously, if we can't warp forward to November, why not!), she asked who I was voting for now. After I said Obama, she was like, "really, even with the lipstick on a pig comment?"

*face palm*

I tried to say that that was not what it had been made out to be, but as I haven't followed it, I didn't have specific arguments (not that it would have really mattered). This was followed by, "Oh, but McCain has always gone against the Republican party anyways. He's pro-choice!" I pointed out that he's voted with Bush exactly for the last four years or so, bowed to the Republican base, and appointed Palin - a creationist with a wacko husband that almost makes Falwell look sane. Not to mention all her corruption issues. And McCain's age. Which is when we got down to the real meat of the topic -

"Well, I'm just scared to vote for Obama because I don't want to lose the war."

*head bang into wall* Pointing out that we're losing Afghanistan doesn't matter because she says its just because Bush refuses to add any more troops anywhere in order to not give Obama any fodder against McCain. And she just so doesn't want to see us abandon Iraq.

I admit it, I gave up. Anything I argue will not be heeded anyways because all my "facts" come from liberal websites.

I'll be interested to hear if my dad has changed his vote. I know he's been so disgusted with McCain that he said in June he'd vote for Obama - and this is despite the race issue. (I acknowledge my parents' failings and have done what small things I can to change them, but well...)