That CRT/DEI Stuff Meant American History

 

The Air Force confirmed it has dropped a training video with the famed Tuskegee Airmen following Trump’s DEI crackdownhttps://t.co/bU3AoQ1LHG

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 25, 2025

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen doesn't take away from the story of America, it only challenges some of the myths of White America.  It stays a story about American greatness if we accept that they, like the Navajo code-takers, were a part of this nation's cherished diversity being a boon to us. Just like the story of Japanese-Americans who fought even while their families were interred by our government because of their patriotism. 

Pete Hegseth is far too young to know about "That's no lady, that's my WAF" jokes. The Trump Administration fired a Coast Guard Admiral and maybe the reason was because she was a woman.  Was she the problem? Or was the problem--the metrics she supposedly failed by--culture war ideology that detracts from the actual mission to protect the homeland?

Trump Sexual Abuse Verdict Upheld

 

A federal appeals court has issued a written opinion upholding Trump's defamation verdict which found him liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll:

"We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”

There is something about this case that fascinates me: the first defamation case found him liable with a $5 million dollar verdict. The second, at which he briefly testified, awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages. Something about Trump was very unsympathetic to a jury. 

Nancy Mace is not Okay

 

This picture is a screencap from Rep. Mace's own Twitter-feed (I'm still not calling it "X") and this is s few days in to her manic posting about bathrooms and there being a transwoman in Congress now, and this is not okay. I think (I hope) she Photoshopped this, because this is the cap I took from her own feed. What the hell is going on with these angles? 

This is pro-ana ideation, and I am worried about this woman. I get that attention whores and bullies try to do DARVO and present themselves as victims, and Rep. Mace's grown woman response to whether she is bullying soon to be Rep. McBride is very much to claim she is the victim here because she was a former victim of rape and assault. But she also is telling us she lost 30 pounds because of a traumatic event that triggered her PTSD, and I am not going to front that I know what's up with all that. 

She has claimed that she was threatened as a rape victim by even being asked why as a rape victim she supported Trump and other rapist candidates and political figures. And received threats, because I guess that is a thing. 

Nancy Mace and Her Personal Space

 

Nancy Mace would like to not share a bathroom with Sarah McBride, who is the first transgender member of Congress. I truly don't know how much time pick-me pygmy Mace spends in the bathroom at work, but because there are stalls in public bathrooms, McBride would never see Mace's ladybusiness in a shared bathroom and Mace would never satisfy her probable curiosity about trans bodies. 

I would prefer not to share public bathrooms with those weird people who, in a bathroom with several empty stalls, have to sit in the stall RIGHT NEXT to mine. I don't want to share a bathroom with those bitches who can't sit their ass down and pee on the seat. I hate those heifers who assume automatic flush is going to zhush all their mess away--and it does not when you are that messy! Hit the button, nasty!

Maybe We Will Just Protect Ourselves

 

I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket--just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn't have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.

I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don't really learn it. (You don't use your knee--it's inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it's really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters--most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It's a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.) 

Two Messages to Think About:

 

Trump Abortion Bans have had devastating consequences for women across America.

Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis. If elected, he will go even further to ban abortion nationwide and strip away reproductive freedom in all 50 states. pic.twitter.com/eglE7Smdrr

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2024

VS.

Sorry we want MALE only voting. The 19th might have to go. 👨🏼#JohnMcEntee #McEntee2028 pic.twitter.com/OJzXadROgo

— McEntee 2028 (@JohnMcEntee28) October 28, 2024

I don't know that it gets any starker than that--do I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or am I the appendage of male society?

If I was not already a Democrat, this stark comparison would be everything I really needed to know. And it is not a joke--it's a vintage concern in the age of Trump. 

I am not going back.  I don't want any woman to feel like she has to accept she has to go back to when we didn't have choices and we didn't have voices. 

 

Here's a Bit of History

 

If your spirits are down, lift them with this thought:

Jimmy Carter lived long enough to vote for Kamala Harris today. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/rODaa8Yzlp

— Steven Senski 🇺🇦 🌈 🥥🌴 (@StevenSenski) October 15, 2024

This is the first president whose inauguration I can remember. Now, if you know my age, you might think that is improbable, but 1976 was a big year in Philadelphia with the Bicentennial and all. And I guess I imbibed political sensibility a bit from my mom. In 1977 I had a turntable, a Kiss album alongside my Sesame Street records and was a fan of Happy Days and watched some documentary about the 25th anniversary of rock and roll on PBS about a dozen times, it felt like. 

I remember the 1970s. I was already me by the time I was a toddler cleaning up shot glasses after parties (the taste of blackberry brandy and the sound of Steppenwolf) and listening to the Midnight Special. when I definitely wasn't supposed to still be awake and turning on the sole tv in the house and was lifting cold pizza out of the fridge. Mom finding me zonked on the floor with the farm report or Chief Halftown on in the morning.

He reminded me of Mr. Rogers then, and that was all right by me. He still does, and I don't have a greater compliment. He cares, and he acts on his sense of caring. It's the best thing you can say anyone ever does. 

What Real Strength Looks Like

 

This moment from @BarackObama 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UbKo7g0sif

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 11, 2024

Former President Barack Obama gave a hell of a speech campaigning in Pennsylvania for Harris/Walz and Senator Bob Casey today. and there were some things that really struck me. For one thing, he did address that Trump's pretend wonderful economy was the one that Obama and Biden rescued from the collapse in 2008. 

 How would we say it? Oh, right. Trump didn't build that. He didn't build the wall, he didn't end "American Carnage" and his fumbling foreign policy he gave to "read 25 whole books" son-in-law Jared Kushner obviously didn't hold. And he certainly can't be considered some economic stable genius when he gave us double digit unemployment and deliberately made the stock market about himself. 

This man Tweeted to manipulate the market. I swear I am not making this up. That's crazypants, but it's some shit he did. He has also used his "bully pulpit" to try and antagonize corporations--especially media corporations, that have disagreed with him. 

You know, like his beef with CBS over his weird paranoic ideas about the 60 Minutes interview with VP Harris.. 

But more than Trump's basic and obvious incompetence, which his followers refuse to see, is his entire lack of character, which should be obvious to them, and they dismiss. In my mind, part of the dismissal of Trump's badness comes from the phrase "Orange Man Bad." It's dismissive of everything. You hate Trump because he wears bronzer and is a jerk, therefore, I don't care whether um--

He really is actually bad?  Because that is just stupid. It should matter to you whether the guy is basically competent (increasingly questionable every day) or has ever given a good goddamn for anyone but himself. Where, literally, WHERE! do you see him doing this? Where is his much-vaunted competence? Where is his supposed heaven-sent genius rescuing anyone's ass? 

TWGB: Resorting to Crimes

 

Former President Donald Trump "resorted to crimes" to attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, federal prosecutors allege in a newly unsealed court filing released Wednesday.

In the filing submitted by special counsel Jack Smith,… pic.twitter.com/lr2ut8tFn2

— PBS News (@NewsHour) October 2, 2024

You know, it seems like it was just yesterday that current Trump running mate JD Vance was trying to focus on the future instead of discussing whether Trump lost the 2020 election, and I love that for him. Corey Lewandowski was also stuck in the same groove when asked--unable to admit His Nibs lost in 2020. 

Judge Chutkan has done the world a favor by airing out Jack Smith's brief regarding how the Trump Team, with reckless disregard for the truth, democracy, the Constitution, public safety or any other damn thing, resorted to crimes in an attempt to defraud the American people regarding our presidential election. Trump and his people did everything they could to delay his reckoning regarding January 6th, but he can't actually delay people being forewarned and forearmed--he lied about one election, and he is just bound and determined to lie about this one. 

What Trump tried to do in 2020 was election interference. This right here right now, is letting you know what he does and plans to try again. Disenfranchising people in swing states, by fraudulently messing with our votes, is something I take very personally. He says bad things happen in Philadelphia, and I may be a bad thing happening in Philadelphia myself, but I am a very legitimate voter and you DON'T try to throw out my vote without me taking it very personally.  

My feminist foremamas didn't hit picket lines and get forcefed in prison for me to not get pissed when someone tried to first of all steal my vote and then use it to support anti-woman policies like banning abortion, birth control, or any other thing that liberates me and my sisters. And I fucking mean as a White lady to correct the past by supporting the right to vote and the right of having the votes counted of the Black and Brown people Trump (and the Republican party) want to exclude.

RFK, Jr. is a Complete Shit Individual

 I had to see a bit more of RFK, Jr.'s Twitter after seeing this whole spiritual savior moralizing fuckshit:

So, I wonder if RFK, Jr. is in constant contact with God when he's pretending that he did not solicit and share nudes from a much younger reporter and does stuff like support Donald Trump when he's "critical" of the EPA because they...acted on Trump's say-so to play-down the harmful effects of various chemicals. 

Another example of the corrupt influence of industry on our government. In this case, the EPA.https://t.co/8WzOQuGlks

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 22, 2024

Who did what to whom and when matters. I don't think the whole world of Olivia Nuzzi--she managed to go far, fast, because of her looks very probably and good for her, but you have to combine it with smarts.  And courting a "digital" romance with a subject in the name of access journalism isn't smart. Especially when she gave more than she got. 

The Deaths We Could Have Prevented

 

Vice President Harris: We now know that women have died because of Trump Abortion Bans. That includes a healthy 28-year-old woman in Georgia. Her name was Amber Nicole Thurman. She died of sepsis, and experts have determined that her death was preventable pic.twitter.com/loBJDsbY9Z

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 20, 2024

I have seen on social media how angry some "pro-lifers" are at the idea that abortion care saves lives. You can't EVER terminate a pregnancy--it's MURDER!  These stories that humanize and normalize the procedure that can save women's lives appalls them, because they can't accept that the God they profess to love and believe in would make babies ("before you were in the womb I knew you") with gross congenital defects, tumors, or other difficulties "incompatible with life".

Something else other than the lack of abortion care "must have" killed these women. They took abortion drugs. They were sin-minded. This had to be their own fault. 

It wasn't. 

Regrets, I've Had a Few...

 

Welker: You're calling it a sarcastic comment, women felt like it was a gut punch to them. Do you regret making that comment?

Vance: I have a lot of regrets but making a joke is not on the top ten list pic.twitter.com/hfMKG9lyGd

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2024

JD Vance doesn't regret the disparaging and dismissive turn of phrase he has for childless people (mostly women) ...yet. It's their fault, he says, they take what he refers to as a joke the wrong way. His wife earlier this month tried to clean up this comment as a "quip" that went to the deeper question of whether this nation supported families (which makes no sense in context at all). 

It isn't a quip, and it wasn't a one-off. And it speaks to an attitude about what women are for--and isn't there something weird about women who aren't child-focused or domestic? The attitude is "Why should I listen to you? I have kids and you don't. You are a second-class person who should pay more in taxes and have less of a vote." 

See how that stops being funny in context? Someone else (a male?) should make our decisions for childless women, because look at our childless selves. Didn't we choose poorly? Aren't we so unfulfilled? 

Pride and the Pettiness

 

Michael Eric Dyson and I had to correct Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at least 10 times last night for purposely mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name. “I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to,” Mace said.

This is what the Republican Party has become. 🤦🏾‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/RVmS8cbBFe

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 16, 2024

I can pronounce the Lowcountry US Representative's name any way I want to, but the question is, will I? "Nancy Mace" rolls off an English-speaking tongue beautifully. If I chose to mispronounce it--how would I without it seeming deliberate? What if I called her "Antsy Face" because her motor mouth has outrun her wind-up toy brain? 

See, that is deliberate. Just as calling Donald "Dump" is deliberate--as an English-speaker, there is no doubt what is intended. He is being personally derided as being either a trash pile or a piece of excrement--it is honest, and everyone knows what is intended. It is by no means racialized. 

Mispronouncing a three-syllable name that has been in the news a lot lately is not clever, but it says something about the person doing it.

The game Mace is playing here with her Mayflower mouth depends on everyone else being too big and generous to call her out on it. We should ignore her. She's ignorant. She's petty. She might be trying. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She wins if she gets to pretend this name is too "other" for her lily-white face to possibly enunciate. And whatever else about this interloper might be too "other" for us to accept? 

The part that was broken is she did get called on it. And she lost the game. She admitted her mispronunciation was purposeful. 

Postmenopausal Females and Normal Things

 

Unearthed audio: JD Vance says he agrees that “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren and that helping raise children is a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman” pic.twitter.com/yCyZss7kNY

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 14, 2024

You know, not having kids myself, I am pretty much free from the idea I'll be helping raise grandchildren after menopause. I was pretty much planning on working into my 60's same as I do now. I'll stay active regarding politics. Write a little poetry.

Maybe finally get that cat. They are cuter than most mousetraps.  

I'm pretty sure I will also care about regular things--groceries and the like. The sorts of things suburban women are supposed to care about, as opposed to being concerned about reproductive rights. 

Except that it is normal to be concerned about not wanting to bleed out in an ER parking lot because doctors are afraid to treat your miscarriage, having lawyers determine how close to death you need to be, or how maimed, before a dangerous pregnancy is ended. It is normal to be appalled at the drawn-out traumatic grieving process of a woman being forced to carry a dying child to term so that it can be born only to horribly suffer and die. It is very normal to not want women to carry their rapists' babies--especially not little girls. 

Madame VP Harris Has a Word

 

Vice President Harris: This is the most significant election of our lifetime. The United States Supreme Court just essentially told Donald Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, that he will be immune from the activity he has told us he is prepared to engage in if he gets… pic.twitter.com/E9Jee1Fpx9

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024

Donald Trump very recently tried to deny that he has anything to do with Project 2025, even though it has an awful lot to do with him. To use the analogy of a very intelligent person, Trump didn't just fall out of a coconut tree, and NEITHER DID YOU, so when he says things like that, in the context of all that has gone before, you know he's lying. 

This election isn't just about Trump being an awful person (he really, really is though) but what he, in all his awfulness, is planning to do. Consider this--the stories to tear down President Biden's running mate are about to take off--some subtle, and some very much not. 

It hardly seems fair for Republicans to beat up on the Democratic running mate when Trump doesn't have one yet, having tried to get the last one lynched. 

Meanwhile in Texas

 

Texas radio host @TheRyanHamilton is speaking out after his state’s extreme abortion ban left his wife in serious danger and distress during a miscarriage. Thank you, Ryan for your bravery in sharing your story and speaking up against this cruel ban on essential health care. pic.twitter.com/qqyqYhaBqh

— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) June 18, 2024

So, a few weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court denied a challenge to the oppressive anti-abortion law on the grounds that doctors who tell their patients they won't perform abortions because of the law are just being silly. Seriously. Which I take to mean that goddamn it, maybe the doctors who can perform this care should test the theory and see how bullshit it is. All they have to lose is their...livelihood and well-being. (See George Tiller, etc.) What does this mean for pregnant people in this state?

Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas to receive vital reproductive care: I'm actually pregnant. It's a very exciting time. But it's a hard feeling. There's so much happiness, but I'm scared at the same time. I live in a state with an extreme abortion ban. If I have an emergency with… pic.twitter.com/r4V1C3abhq

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 21, 2024

Concern that they will not receive life-saving care if needed, or that they will face the prospect of their life saved, but reproductively-impaired or maimed by sepsi sor other effects of a pregnancy gone wrong. This is not a pro-life stance at all--merely pro-abusing women for capricious reasons.

Kitchen Karen is Back With a Handmaiden Origin Story

 

Today, I’m proud to introduce the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act along with @SenMarcoRubio, @SenKevinCramer, and a group of @SenateGOP colleagues.

You can learn more here: https://t.co/L1mZmoYoQ5 pic.twitter.com/kAmX2Up7Yr

— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) May 9, 2024

Do you want the government to track your periods and judge you based on the length of time your uterus can hold a very sacred fetus? Would you like to be referred to a totally not-a-whole-bunch-of-doctors crisis group telling you how to just stay pregnant until you pop....something out, regardless of your whole ability to raise or care for a baby, and also deal with whatever the physical/emotional, and/or-financial state you are in when you do give forth your sprog?

If that is the incredibly weird and uncomfortable level of government/religious oversight of your very personal business you would deeply prefer not to have--please vote Democrat, thank you.

OK, I have more to say about this:

Texas Placing Bets on Whether a Woman Will Die

 

The Texas Supreme Court put a lower court's decision on hold regarding whether Karen Cox could receive what might be a life-saving abortion of an almost-certainly doomed fetus, following on AG Ken Paxton's claim that any doctor or hospital that performed that procedure would be prosecuted. This woman is the stake in a fucking card game. It seems to me that the elected zealots involved, like Justice John Devine:

John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and self-styled “Ten Commandments Judge,” will become one of Texas’s nine Supreme Court justices early next year, as the Democrats are not fielding a candidate for the seat in the November election.

....

Devine has long been a staunch anti-abortion activist. At a June rally in Fort Worth, Devine told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics in the 1980s, Smith reported. Though, in a more recent interview, “he said he had been arrested during peaceful protests several times in the 1980s but did not remember how many,” Smith reported. Despite this history of activism, Devine insisted he “is still able to interpret the law impartially.”

In 2008, Devine and his wife, Nubia, showed everyone just how committed they were to the pro-life position when her seventh pregnancy endangered her life and that of the baby. The Texas Observer‘s Emily DePrang wrote about a video his campaign put out called “Elizabeth’s story.”

Like that bet. 

So-called pro-life people love to say that a woman's life isn't really jeopardized by a pregnancy. They love to act like they did something special by allowing a fetus to be born if it survives even briefly. And they will claim victory of anything short of this young mother of two just dying right now. Trisomy-18 isn't always fatal: kids with Edwards syndrome can live--see former Senator Rick Santorum's youngest child, Bella, for a story of a child with a way better than expected outcome. But keep in mind this is a former senator with a shit-ton more access to the best care for his kid, and whose wife did not have Cox's unique set of pregnancy complications.

Dianne Feinstein Has Left the Senate

There is something jarring in considering that Sen. Feinstein was voting right until the end, giving her last vote really hours before her passing. It could speak to her drive and dedication to public life. It could also speak to the misperception of older politicians of their indispensability and their mortality alike. 

There's something of a "praising with faint damn" tack I want to tread softly with: she represented a more conservative Democratic Party than I prefer even while being a pioneering female senator. She still had her incredible moments, working on gun control, working to repeal DOMA, the release of the Senate report on torture, recently the reauthorization of VAWA.  It's easy for activists to criticize her moderation and willingness to reach out across the aisle--her job as a senator wasn't to be uncompromising but to find areas of areas of compromise for a purpose.

I don't know if there was any inkling of infirmity when she ran in 2018. I do know that the decline of her health in her final years and the speculation that she wasn't fully competent marred her final term. It gives one a terrible sense of pause: her eyes were those of a person whose body had been through the wars. Couldn't she have spent those final years at ease?

Could she have? Or did a sense of purpose make that seem impossible? And having forged on despite being condescended to in the Senate itself by such august personages (in their own minds) as Larry Craig and Ted Cruz, who tells her when to quit?  

That might just be a grain of thought elder statepersons will need to hold their own counsel about--to know not when to be told, but to realize when their age is telling on themselves.  But as for Senator Feinstein, she served until the very end. 

Abortion is Medical Care not a Fucking Spa Vacation

 

TOM COTTON: The military should not be paying for abortion tourism

SHANNON BREAM: So what should women who are in uniform in a place where they cannot access an abortion because they are there on orders, what should they do?

COTTON: They have 30 days of annual leave pic.twitter.com/18UHQnmWx6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2023

He's being disingenuous about how easy it is to just go ahead and get leave depending upon what your unit is up to, and seems to be oblivious to how time-sensitive the mission to get a pregnancy resolved truly is, but I guess what this dead-eyed putz is implying that really set me off is the idea that taking leave and making a trip to where safe, legal reproductive care can be obtained is a FUCKING VACATION! A FUCKING TOUR OF THE WONDERFUL AND LUXURIOUS WORLD OF NOT CARRYING A FETUS. A GODDAMN SIGHTSEEING EXTRAVAGANZA OF YOUR KNEES UP AND WHATNOT IF SURGICAL AND A PHARMACY IF MEDICAL! AND MAYBE YOU WILL WITNESS THE LOCAL ANTI-ABORTION TRIBES PERFORMING THEIR SLUT-SHAMING RITUALS! AND EVEN INVOLVE YOU IN THEM!

I don't know how Tom Cotton was raised, but I guess if it was in Arkansas, land of the Duggars, maybe his early rearing really was as backwards regarding sex ed as a very backwards thing can be. The thing where women who are raped are seen as having been traps for their rapists. The thing where having had sex taints and uses a woman up--makes her less worthy. (Describing the sexual female as "used gum" in Christian abstinence education haunts me. Vaginas, are elastic like gum and self-cleaning like ovens. What the whole fuck?) The thing where her life is nothing compared not only to a viable fetus, but even to a nonviable one. As if she was obliged to go down with the ship because someone else desperately believed in miracles.