Hoping For The Harbinger

13,000 people working for one of the largest grocery chains in New England went out on strike and began picketing a local store in Somerville MA on Friday.

Elizabeth Warren stopped in to see them - and brought some donuts and coffee.

“This is a company that made $2 billion in profits, that then got a fancy tax break in Washington from the Republicans and now wants to squeeze our workers right here in Massachusetts,” Warren told the workers. “Well, we’re not going to put up with it.”

Speaking to reporters, Warren reiterated the message that she has been campaigning on for years, that the wealthy are taking advantage of the working class. “This is the problem all across this country is that those at the top think that they can just keep sucking out every bit of profit and leave nothing for the working people, the people who actually get out there and make it happen every day,” Warren said.

“What people are asking for here is they’re just asking for fair wages, they’re asking for health care benefits and just as shot at a decent retirement,” she said.
Say whatever you want about Warren - maybe you feel the need to shit on her for being opportunistic and trying to make political points and blah blah blah.

First - she showed up. She talks about this kind of thing all the time - and she showed the fuck up.

Second - making political points is what politicians do. It's what we want them to do. It's what we pay them to do.

Third - where was that champion of the workin' guy POTUS? Anybody know? Oh yeah - golf. And why would we expect anything different from him? 

Shit - that fuckin' idiot probably can't even spell UFCW.

Today's Today

This year, April 2nd marks the day when American women start their Income Year - as compared with American men, who always start their Income Year on Jan 1st.

Privilege is not a system that makes your life easy. It's a system that doesn't put artificial obstacles in your path that make it harder for you to reach some proximate equality with people who're supposed to be your peers.

Sam On Tucker

Samantha Bee:

Republicans don't get to drive the Democrats' bus.

Mess with someone's friends and they'll fuck you up.

On Loving

WaPo's RetroPod:



The Daddy State is never far from power. And the stealthy resurgence of the TheoCons in the background of both state and federal politics is becoming more of a problem.

Once we're rid of Cult45, we'll still have a struggle on our hands because theocracy and fascism go together like pie and coffee.

A Lesson In Perception

An awful lot of what we see and hear, is what we're taught to see and hear.

We usually don't even know it's happening - we don't know we're being programmed to think a certain way.

This is not representative of the way we vote:

This is what is actually looks like:

Because it says "We the people", not "we the acreage".

The Dems' wins in the 2018 midterms should go a long way in fixing the gerrymandering problem on the House side. But we still have a very long haul to figure out what to do about the ratfuckery that can (and does) happen because of the way we do the Senate and the Electoral College.

Oh Those Youngsters

Cassandra Levesque (D-Strafford 04), a 19-year-old Girl Scout, won a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives last Tuesday - running on the strength of her successful push to raise the Minimum Age to Marry from 13 to 16.

The Concord Monitor:

Levesque said she hadn’t originally planned on running this year – she has a busy schedule with online political science courses from Southern New Hampshire University and her position as a girl scout leader in Barrington. She is also still in the process of getting her driver’s license, and was worried about the commute to Concord, she said.

- and -

In 2017, as a senior at Dover High School, Levesque began her push to raise the marriage age – 13 for girls and 14 for boys – as part of a Girl Scouts project that ultimately earned her the organization’s gold award. Both her grandmother and great-grandmother entered into child marriages in their teens to escape abuse at home.

Diversity, bitches. Without it, we get stagnant. 

We've allowed our governments to be practically nothing but older white men. To be clear, I'm an older white man, but this is not about ducking my responsibilities, and I'm not indulging in self-loathing - the point is that we have to stop pretending we can have a healthy equitable society when the power structure is so unfairly out of balance. 

That oughta seem simple and obvious, but if we know so much, then we should understand that  artificially slanting things in favor of that Old White Guy Status Quo, can only make it better for fewer and fewer people - which means things get worse for more and more people.

Anyway, congratulations to Ms Levesque for chipping away at the monolith, lowering the average age of the New Hampshire legislature and skewing the gender split - all of which btw, contribute to raising the standards for that body and for the rest of us too.

Way to go, Cassie. Stay after it.

On Fairness On Sunday

What exactly is it you live by, Christians?

Luke 21, 1-4:
Just then he looked up and saw the rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two pennies. He said, “The plain truth is that this widow has given by far the largest offering today. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford - she gave her all.”

Remember now, Jesus loves you -
everybody else thinks you're a dick

Git Some

A Repub like Joni Ernst is touted as one of the boys when she talks about castrating hogs - kinda funny how that slips right by all the rubes (and more than a few Dems) as they shit on Hillary for being "such a bitchy little ball-busting cunt" 

Ed Note: sorry not sorry - I've seen that posted as a comment on this very blog

Anyway, while Ernst enjoys her status as a GOP Lady-Token-du-Jour, Dems are out finding women who don't need to back-slap with the guys to demonstrate their bona fides.

These are women who can bring it.

Abigail Spanberger VA-07

Elaine Luria - VA-02

Chrissy Houlahan - PA-06

Gina Ortiz Jones TX-23

MJ Hegar - TX-31

Amy McGrath - KY-06

Mikie Sherrill - NJ-11

Elissa Slotkin - MI-08  

Telling us about how their service inspired them to run for office this year.

GOP Guiding Principles

Another tasty bit unearthed - never tho't I'd see the day when I had to tag C-SPAN as NSFW.

An Observation

First - why the fuck do we still have to worry about Catholic Clergy?

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." --Thomas Paine
I think if anybody gets around to declaring a Word Of The Year, we'll have to default to "Abuse".

White people abusing their power over Brown people.

Men abusing their power over Women.

45* abusing his power over the government.

"Conservatives" abusing their power in general - even now, when they're clearly in the minority.

"When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women." --Sally Kempton

It boils down to the same old bit that can be expressed a variety of ways:

Men fear Gender Equality because they're afraid women will treat them the same as they've treated women.

White people fear Minority Rights because they're afraid POC will treat them the same as they've always treated POC.

The Christian Majority claims persecution because they're afraid they'll be treated the same as they've always treated everybody.

Same goes with LGBTQ, and Unions, and Immigrants and and and.

It's not about Red vs Blue; it's not about Gay vs Straight; it's not about Men vs Women - it's not about any of that except as a means to serve the interest of someone looking to gain and/or maintain power.

Because it's always about the power first.

Today's Today

1975 - Reykjavik

Not to put it too terribly indelicately, ladies, but you own half of the wealth and all of the pussy, which puts you in a fairly powerful bargaining position.

Sometimes we push back really hard because whether we care to admit it or not, we're listening. And what many of us hear you saying sounds pretty scary.

But we're learning. Don't give up on us just yet.

1975 Icelandic women's strike:

On October 24, 1975, Icelandic women went on strike for the day to “demonstrate the indispensable work of women for Iceland’s economy and society”[1] and to “protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices.”[2] Ninety percent of Iceland’s female population, led by women’s organizations, did not go to their paid jobs and did not do any housework or child-rearing for the whole day.[1]

Earn It

I'm not crazy about the goddie stuff at the end, but it's definitely relevant to a reasonable expectation for The Christian Right to start behaving like Christians, and actually doing - you know - what's right.

More True History

Trying to square some people up with the truth seems futile.  But there's value in writing this shit down as I go - and the value may be mostly in pointing this out to myself from time to time, if nobody else.

The Atlantic, Adam Serwer - 2 months ago:

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.
- and -

Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free, he fought for the preservation of slavery, his army kidnapped free blacks at gunpoint and made them unfree—but all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for blacks. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass’s admonition that "between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference."

Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing “that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.”

In another letter, Lee wrote “You will never prosper with blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world—on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites.”

Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and “could not vote intelligently,” and that granting them suffrage would “excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.” Lee explained that “the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power.” To the extent that Lee believed in reconciliation, it was between white people, and only on the precondition that black people would be denied political power and therefore the ability to shape their own fate.

Mr Trudeau

Here's a picture of PM Justin Trudeau at a Pride Day event, wearing rainbow socks and a pink shirt, high-fiving a young girl dressed as a Wonder Woman ballerina.

Anyone else starting to get the feeling Canada's just kinda fuckin' with us now?

A Questionaire

Please answer each question as honestly as possible

• What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
• When did you decide you were heterosexual?
• Is it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase that you may grow out of?
• Do you flaunt your heterosexuality?
• Could you be happy just being what you are and keeping quiet about it?
• Do heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into that lifestyle?
• Have you considered therapy to help you change your heterosexual tendencies?

hat tip = @samkalidi

Today's Today

Things were pretty lousy way back then.

So much better now.

no justice - no peace

Know Justice - Know Peace

New Music

...about the same old shit too many people still hafta put up with.

Common:
  I Used To Love H.E.R.
  Letter To The Free
  The Day The Women Took Over
  Little Chicago Boy

Get out and vote

It never feels like it's enough, but it's what we've got

And eventually, if we keep doing it right, it works

What They Say

Repubs - the ones with most of the money and power - love to lead the bitch session about Dems and Libruls who're busy spending "Other People's Money".  What they always conveniently neglect to mention is that the reason it's "your money" is that they don't contribute much at all, and they're always busy pimping us into helping them pay even less while getting a bigger and bigger share of the benefits.

All the little grey areas and loopholes in our ridiculous Tax Code; an economy increasingly tilted in favor of wealthy people - none of this happens if we stop allowing guys like Donald Trump to play us for suckers.  

   

I Wonder

A while back, Donald Trump got some pretty good play by suggesting that if NATO allies don't pony up on their fair share, then maybe USAmerica Inc isn't required to come thru on its Article 5 commitments.

So, maybe someone should ask Mr Trump:  

• If American companies doing business overseas haven't paid their fair share of taxes in the US, shouldn't we make sure the US Military isn't used to protect their interests on foreign soil?
• Shouldn't they have to pay a tax for the maintenance and operations of the facilities at Ports Of Entry?
• Shouldn't they be considered unworthy of police and fire protection here at home?  
• Should they be allowed access to public roadways?
• How about Water and Sewer?
• Whenever they hire somebody, shouldn't they be required to pay a requisite amount to a school district to reimburse those schools for having educated those new employees for them?

If corporations are people (and if this isn't just one big Fuck-You-If-You-Ain't-Got-The-Juice proposition), then why do they get to play by a different set of rules?

It's a wonderment.

Today's Tweet

“With guns you can kill terrorists—with education you can kill terrorism.” @Malala Yousafzai@MalalaFund pic.twitter.com/rmzIEviIGJ

— Bryan Dawson (@BryanDawsonUSA) September 21, 2016