Feb 28, 2025
*from an interweb persona/influencer named Patriann Tsaum, which is, I believe, an alias because ain’t no trace nowheres, y’all. But, she credits another FB user (users?) Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge, a very sharp and busy account dedicated to warning us of the illegal and insane acts You-Know-Woo. If you missed the exchange between Dumpty and the Governor of Maine, check it out. I also recommend this gem, out of the state of Wyoming; smart, principled women will save this planet, thereby saving us all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOUSa_p5pe0
Donald Trump spent the day throwing a tantrum at the Governor of Maine because she refused to kneel before his latest ridiculous executive order banning transgender women from playing in women’s sports. It was classic Trump—loud, petulant, and so obviously desperate to be seen as a tough guy that it had the opposite effect. He tried to wield federal funding like a bludgeon, warning Governor Janet Mills that her state would suffer if she didn’t comply. She met his threats with a casual, “We’ll see you in court,” a response so perfect, so effortlessly dismissive, that you could almost hear the air hissing out of Trump’s ego like a punctured parade balloon.
The man has built his entire persona on the idea that he is the world’s most dominant alpha male—an image that falls apart the moment he faces a challenge he can’t simply buy off or shout down. He is a bully, but more importantly, he is a coward. When he’s on the attack, he swaggers and postures like a professional wrestling villain, but when confronted by someone who won’t back down, he folds faster than a cheap lawn chair. His idea of masculinity is a bad 1980s action movie—loud, brash, and entirely built on illusion.
Trump isn’t angry because Mills disagrees with him; he’s angry because she isn’t afraid of him. That’s what really burns. He thrives on fear, on the illusion of unchecked power, and when that illusion is shattered—when someone like Mills stands toe-to-toe with him and refuses to budge—he doesn’t know what to do. So he sputters, he threatens, and he lashes out in every direction, hoping something will stick. It never does.
Meanwhile, JD Vance was weeping into a CPAC microphone about how America is turning men into “androgynous idiots.” “Our culture wants men to suppress every masculine urge,” he cried, no doubt wishing he was being cradled in the warm embrace of a father figure who actually loves him. It was a speech meant to conjure up the image of some glorious lost era of chest-thumping American manhood, but instead, it only reinforced what anyone with a functioning brain already knew: JD Vance has no idea what masculinity actually means.
These two buffoons love to cosplay as warriors, champions of testosterone in a world gone soft. But let’s take a look at what they’re actually doing. Trump, a man who dodged the draft because of imaginary bone spurs, is threatening to withhold federal funding from Maine because its governor won’t bow to his demands. And JD Vance, a man who once wrote an entire book about the dangers of sucking up to elites, is now licking Trump’s boots so hard you’d think they were made of chocolate.
Masculinity, real masculinity, is about strength, courage, and integrity. It’s about standing up for what’s right, even when it’s hard. It’s about protecting the vulnerable, not attacking them for political gain. It’s about facing adversity head-on, not throwing a fit when someone tells you “no.”
By that measure, Trump and JD Vance are about as masculine as a wet paper towel.
Trump can puff out his chest and scream at governors all he wants, but at the end of the day, he’s just a blustering coward who folds under the slightest pressure. JD can cry about the decline of masculinity, but no real man spends his days groveling at the feet of a guy who wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.
The irony is that the people they’re attacking—women who stand their ground, LGBTQ people fighting for equality—are showing more guts, more resilience, more true strength than either of these pathetic frauds could ever muster.
Trump and JD don’t represent masculinity. They represent the weak, whimpering, flailing desperation of men who know, deep down, that they are frauds. And nothing is more pathetic than a man who has to constantly remind you how strong he is.
Feb 27, 2025
*even if Orange A$$hole declares Black History month eradicated (at least, on the Federal level), I still celebrate, reading, watching and edu-ma-cating my privileged, lily white arse on the subject, a vital one, central to America History because it is American History. I recently read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – so, so, so, so good, a novel on origins and continuing legacy of the slave trade – and I search out info on activists like Fannie Lou Hamer – whose life was complex and triumphant, tragic and emblematic of the tortured history of Black Lives in the U.S. and of civil rights. Hamer died much too young; being treated like a second class citizen is hard on human beings, y’think? Still, she accomplished so much in her brief lifespan. Read more about her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer
“I don’t want you telling me to go back to Africa, unless you going back where you come from. I got a note one day telling me to go back to Africa and ever since that time—it’s been three times a week I say it when I am in a white audience—I say, ‘We’ll make a deal. After you send all the Koreans back to Korea, the Chinese back to China, the Jewish people back to Jerusalem and you give the Indians their land back and you get on the Mayflower from which you come’…We all here on borrowed land. We have to figure out how we’re going to make things right for all the people of this country.”
“I used to question this for years – what did our kids actually fight for? They would go in the service and go through all of that and come right out to be drowned in a river in Mississippi. I found this hypocrisy all over America.”
“One day, I know the struggle will change. There’s got to be a change – not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.”
“Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.”
“When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don’t speak out ain’t nobody going to speak out for you.”
“Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable.”
***AND, finally, excerpts of a speech Hamer gave at a rally with Malcolm X on December 20, 1964:
…It was the 31st of August of 1962, that eighteen of us traveled 26 miles to the county courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to try to register to become first-class citizens….
…After taking this literacy test, some of you have seen it, we have 21 questions and some is not questions. It began with: “Write the date of this application. What is your full name. By whom are you employed” — so we can be fired by the time we get back home — “Are you a citizen of the United States and an inhabitant of Mississippi. Have you ever been convicted of any of the following crimes.” — when, if the people would be convicted of the following crimes, the registrar wouldn’t be there. But after we go through this process of filling out this literacy form, we are asked to copy a section of the constitution of Mississippi and after we’ve copied this section of the constitution of Mississippi we are asked to give a reasonable interpretation to tell what it meant, what we just copied that we just seen for the first time…
After finishing this form, we started on this trip back to Ruleville, Mississippi, and we was stopped by the same city policeman that I had seen in IndianoIa and a state highway patrolman. We was ordered to get off the bus. After we got off the bus, we was ordered to get back on the bus and told to go back to Indianola. When we got back to Indianola the bus driver was charged with driving a bus the wrong color. That’s very true. This same bus had been used year after year to haul people to the cotton fields to pick cotton and to chop cotton. But, this day, for the first time that this bus had been used for voter registration it had the wrong color….
….What I’m trying to point out now is when you take a very close look at this American society, it’s time to question these things. We have made an appeal for the president of the United States and the attorney general to please protect us in Mississippi. And I can’t understand how it’s out of their power to protect people in Mississippi. They can’t do that, but when a white man is killed in the Congo, they send people there.
And you can always hear this long sob story: “You know it takes time.” For three hundred years, we’ve given them time. And I’ve been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want a change. We want a change in this society in America because, you see, we can no longer ignore the facts and getting our children to sing, “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed.” What do we have to hail here? The truth is the only thing going to free us. And you know this whole society is sick. And to prove just how sick it was when we was in Atlantic City challenging the National Convention, when I was testifying before the Credentials Committee, I was cut off because they hate to see what they been knowing all the time and that’s the truth.
Yes, a lot of people will roll their eyes at me today but I’m going to tell you just like it is, you see, it’s time — you see, this is what got all this like this, there’s so much hypocrisy in this society and if we want America to be a free society we have to stop telling lies, that’s all. Because we’re not free and you know we’re not free. You’re not free here in Harlem. I’ve gone to a lot of big cities and I’ve got my first city to go to where this man wasn’t standing with his feet on this black man’s neck.
And it’s time for you to wake up because, you see, a lot of people say, “Oh, they is afraid of integration.” But the white man is not afraid of integration, not with his kids. He’s afraid of his wife’s kids because he’s got them all over the place. Because some of his kids just might be my second cousin.
And the reason we’re here today, we’re asking for support if this Constitution is really going to be of any help in this American society, the 4th day of January is when we’ll find it out. This challenge that we’re challenging the five representatives from Mississippi; now how can a man be in Washington, elected by the people, when 95 percent of the people cannot vote in Mississippi? Just taking a chance on trying to register to vote, you can be fired. Not only fired, you can be killed. You know it’s true because you know what happened to Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. And any person that’s working down there to change the system can be counted just as another nigger.
But some of the things I’ve got to say today may be a little sickening. People have said year after year, “Those people in Mississippi can’t think.” But after we would work ten and eleven hours a day for three lousy dollars and couldn’t sleep we couldn’t do anything else but think. And we have been thinking a long time. And we are tired of what’s going on. And we want to see now, what this here will turn out for the 4th of January. We want to see is democracy real?
We want to see this because the challenge is based upon the violation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which hadn’t done anything for us yet. And the U.S. courts tied it to Section 201 and 226. Those people were illegally elected and they have been there — the man that I challenged, Jamie L. Whitten, has been in Washington thirteen years and he is not representing the people of Mississippi because not only do they discriminate against the poor Negroes, they discriminated up until the 3rd of November against the poor whites, but they let them vote because they wanted their votes. But it will run until the 1st of July and we need your support — morally, politically, and financially, too. We need your help.
And, people, you don’t know in Harlem the power that you got. But you just don’t try to use it. People never would have thought — the folks they said was just ignorant, common people out of Mississippi that would have tried to challenge the representatives from Mississippi. But you see the point is: we have been dying in Mississippi year after year for nothing. And I don’t know, I may be bumped off as soon as I go back to Mississippi but what we should realize, people have been bumped off for nothing.
It is my goal for the cause of giving those Negro children a decent education in the state of Mississippi and giving them something that they have never had. Then I know my life won’t be in vain. Because, not only do we need a change in the state of Mississippi, but we need a change here in Harlem. And it’s time for every American citizen to wake up because now the whole world is looking at this American society. I remember, during the time I was in West Africa — some of you may be here today because I don’t know what it’s all about, but I know I can tell you the truth, too — it was a lot of people there that was called the PIAA. “What are you doing over here? Who are you trying to please?”
I said, “All you criticize us when you at home and you’re worried to death when we try to find out about our own people.” I said, “If we had been treated as human beings in America, you wouldn’t be trailing us now to find out what we is trying to do over here.”
But this is something we going to have to learn to do and quit saying that we are free in America when I know we are not free. You are not free in Harlem. The people are not free in Chicago, because I’ve been there, too. They are not free in Philadelphia, because I’ve been there, too. And when you get it over with all the way around, some of the places is a Mississippi in disguise. And we want a change. And we hope you support us in this challenge that we’ll begin on the 4th of January. And give us what support that you can. Thank you.
Feb 26, 2025
It’s actually – by the time you read this – been about 15 months of Ev Life. Here’s how it’s going. The first few times I went on longer drives, I was definitely in a sweat, especially a trip I took in January of 2024, when the temp was around 9 degrees out, and windy. I had only 75 or 80 miles on the battery, and was planning on stopping to charge in a town and spot I had never visited before. All was well in the end, but it took about three months of regularly charging and getting to know how far the battery would take me, how long it took to charge, and where the charging stations were located, to fully relax.
Perks? I haven’t stopped at a gas station since, and – in total, in total – I’ve paid just under $50 smackeroons for charging my battery at various stations in my region. For the record, gas stations are among my least favorite places to visit on this good green, blue, and brown earth – especially since they added loud advertising screens to every pump – so this is, for me, a major perk.
The cost of charging has, I guess, added to my home electric bill, but not noticeably; there is a free charging station in my town, hooked up to solar panels, that I regularly use when I’m out and about. I’m hoping to see another just like it installed at our local recreation center, if not in ’26, the in ’27. Fingers crossed.
The car has all-wheel drive and heated seats and steering, which is all good, and has nothing to do with its being an EV. Using the a.c. runs the battery down toot suite, I’ve learned, but that seems about right to me, and is neither a pro nor a con. Most of my trips are less than 30 miles, so running out of power is not an issue, or hasn’t been, although that one cold AF day in January of 2024, yes, it was – or it felt – dicey.
Cons? Well, there are a few but they have nothing to do with the vehicle being an EV. I hate, hate, hate the way the windows operate, all four on a single pair of buttons with another spot to press to switch from front controls to back. There is so much room to simply put in two more control buttons; why do this? It sucks and I curse it regularly especially when driving at a higher speed limit when I have frequently mistakenly ‘rolled’ the front windows down and wide open – gaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! – all because the damned switch didn’t read my pressing finger-tips well enough. I do not like having to look down and search for a small light – is it on or off??!! – when I am moving at speed. Ick.
And I really, really hate the nanny state nature of the car – which (I’ve asked) is now standard in all cars, and which I am aware I could change if and only if I were willing to read the damned manual and alter the way in which the car is programmed. That. Is. Not. Going. To. Happen. Cars are tools for me to get from point A to point B, end of story – and when I am in one, I am focused on doing that; once at point B, I’m outtie, and have less than zero interest in knowing more, including sitting in it to makes those changes. I am also not interested in talking about, or reading anything having to do with my car or other cars, trucks, motorbikes, and all else mechanical. Nope.
But by nanny state I mean the alert(s) – front assist is not functioning!!! – that comes up when the front cameras (or whatever TF they are, sensors?) are covered with ice, snow, or mud. Hello. My eyes are my front sensors, and just because the car can’t ‘see’ ahead, I sure AF can, otherwise we’re in big trouble. And then there’s the way it brakes when I am backing onto the verge, because mini-pony and I are going for a walk. Hate that. It’s fucking high grass, you dumb-ass, not a concrete wall. Ditto the constant hectoring of an alert telling me I am not driving in the center of my lane. Here’s the thing, I get it, I live in rural America, and cars are made for the ‘burbs and ‘urbs. But in rural ‘Merica, there often ain’t no lanes, and especially when there is snow on the sides of the road, I am gonna hug that solid, mostly clear middle.
The worst thing about owning an EV? People who refuse to open their fucking minds to the inevitable ubiquity of battery-operated cars telling me I am a crunchy libtard. Whatever. Look at photos of LA, Maui, western North Carolina, and places all over the world that are struggling with obscene and destructive weather events – and tell me we don’t need to move, and move now, away from fossil fuels. Deep breaths.
Feb 25, 2025
* from 2012 – and, again, still feel and think the same way. thanks again for being here, and for reading…
I know there are those who say abortion is ‘unnatural’. I say that is nonsense. Nature is humanity using our natural human brains to find solutions to our natural problems and yes, an unwanted pregnancy is a problem. What is natural about penile implants or Viagra for ED? For if we follow the ‘natural’ argument, surely if you can’t get an erection, that means nature is telling you to suck it up and accept that you must stop having sex, right? But that would end a man’s reproductive life, ending his sex life, a huge part of who and what men are. And so I ask the same courtesy for women, that we be allowed the right to make whatever choice we need to make regarding our reproductive lives.
Am I freaked out by priests who chose celibacy? You bet I am; how can anybody chose to not have sex??!!! And every time I hear about yet another abuse case by a member of the Catholic clergy I think, how stupid the church is in this position, this policy, for that’s what it is, policy, nothing more, and moreover a policy that encourages sexually confused, frightened, shamed, and immature Catholic men to become priests. We need to respect our women and our children, in part by giving them, our kids, the information they need and more than that deserve about sex, sexuality and birth control.
Speaking of stupid there I was one year almost to the day after my first abortion when it happened again. I was puking my guts out 24/7, only this time I knew what was going on almost immediately – within 48 hours – after once again having unprotected sex. How could this happen!? Oh right, I had unprotected sex. What the what? I had been counseled about going on the pill by the very nice people at Planned Parenthood yet stupidly insisted that I would not ‘fall’ again. I would meet Prince Charming or at least I knew, I hoped, that I would meet a man who respected me enough to work with me as my partner on this, who would have a stake in being ‘safe’, in protecting both of us, even in this, circa 1985, innocent pre-AIDS era.
As I write this, my former naiveté both pains and amuses me. Men, in my experience, don’t feel particularly responsible for birth control; after all, they don’t get pregnant, they don’t go through morning sickness and they can’t at bottom relate to women’s sexual and reproductive experience in any way, shape or form. Similarly I can’t relate to the pain of erectile dysfunction, although I empathize: gosh, that must stink, not my problem though, and there’s a tank-load of meds the expense for which, unlike abortions, almost every single insurance company in these great United States will cover. So I feel for you but I can’t really, truly, feel your pain. How could I? I don’t have a penis and by the way, Mr. Freud, I don’t and never did want one either.
This inability to fully know what it means to be a man because I am not one is yet another reason why I wish men, all men, would shut the hell up about abortion. You cannot relate, you cannot know, boys, so shut up unless you will, without reservation, support education and rational thought on the subject of sexuality, abortion and birth control as in a one hundred and eighty degree switch from the policies of conservative America.
And so yes, it happened again. I became pregnant for a second time. I was young, arrogant, stupid, naïve and I continued to be in denial about who I was and what I hoped to be, which was still – even, unbelievably, post-abortion – a young woman who dreamt of being a virgin when she married. This defies logic, intelligence and reason, but we are unreasonable, insane even, when we cannot be who we are without shame. Ah, now there’s a word: shame. It is shaming to not know how to be who we are and to be completely ignorant about something as essential as our bodies, our sexuality, ourselves. It is shaming to have false, impossible ideals held up as the only way to be when our own nature calls us to another way.
My darling dad was a horny devil, an appreciator of women for his entire life and I am like him, a horny devil who cannot not appreciate a sexy man; I just cannot do it and I love, love, love, love, love sex. That’s a naturally occurring part of who I am. Now my dad was, as per my mom’s pronouncements, also a virgin when they married. Uh, nope. I found this out right after my mother died when talking to him about one of his grandchildren, a wonderful young woman then ‘living in sin’ with her fiancé. Living in sin was my mother’s characterization had she still been alive to say it and say it jokingly but in that way when our jokes reveal our innermost truest thoughts and beliefs. So there you have it, my dad had kept his silence again as prior to going overseas with the Army, he’d visited a few ‘ladies of the night’ in NYC and, as he so succinctly put it, ‘Thank God I did, otherwise no one would have known what to do on our wedding night!’
I loved my dad. I wish I had known this when I was twenty, it might have helped me feel less like crap about having sex before marriage, and for being so, so, so, so, so, so horny!! I wish all parents would see that being honest with your kids, educating them about realistic ideals and expectations and most of all about birth control and their bodies, is the only way to be. I had my second abortion and then avoided men and sex for about three long bitchy and frustrated as hell years. This was also not a solution for me. I learned how to take care of myself but will forever be grateful that a right, my right, to abortion saved me, saved me from being and becoming a mother at a time when I wasn’t able to yet take care of myself.
If you can’t take care of something as basic as birth control, as I couldn’t, please, please, please think twenty times – think a hundred and twenty times – before having a child. And let’s empower our young women to be aware of all of their options and try to get our young men to realize that the way they treat their girlfriends and wives is a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves, no matter the gender gap. Respect women and the choices they need to make, boys, because you don’t and can’t understand. And let’s keep abortion legal, safe and accessible to all women, regardless of income, because we all know rich women, middle class women with a doctor in the extended family, will always be able to get an abortion. Abortion is good and that’s the truth, as I see it.
Feb 24, 2025
*I wrote this in 2012, and my opinion has not changed one iota, not one. thanks for being here, and for reading…
As per usual the right and left are taking up positions on abortion rights; this time the right says it’s about funding and saving African American children, a tactic that stuns me but how can I really be surprised by the party of ‘trickle down’ and birthers. You rarely however, hear from anyone who has had one, had an abortion, and when you do it’s always ‘for medical reasons’ or an extremely difficult decision made after a huge inner struggle.
Here’s another view from someone – me – who has had two abortions and is not just pro-choice but pro-abortion – and by the way, I always will be, until the US Government and everyone else including the fetus lovers on the far right can promise me there will be no more child abuse or abandonment, child prostitution, trafficking, or pornography (although I suppose these are all forms of child abuse), or runaways or so-called ‘unadoptable’ children languishing in foster care or turfed out at eighteen. I shall also remain solidly and unshakably pro-abortion until we completely eradicate rape, incest and the subjugation of women, period. Can you hear me now?
I was raised, as unfortunately too many young people still are, in a household where sex, sexuality and birth control, in any form, were not ever discussed. My mother was a Catholic (I am not) who believed and often pronounced that the only way to enter marriage was as a virgin; that sex before marriage was wrong, bad and sinful. This is one point of view, a dangerous and stupid one, and I hold it responsible in large part for my own idiocy when it came to dealing with my sexuality as a young woman. Prior to college, I had the usual biology and health classes in high school, lessons that reiterated what my mother said: sex before marriage was bad, wrong and irresponsible. Again, this lesson was – and is – stupid, stupid, stupid. The health teacher in high school I had skimmed through the reproductive issues pages to get to what really mattered to her (she was a teetotaler), which were the evils of alcohol. Very stupid.
I went into my early twenties, right after college as a semi-virgin; I’d had sex but still considered myself sort of, mostly, a virgin. I was, as they say, living in a complete state of denial. I really, really, really wanted to live up to my mother’s example, my mother’s ideal, my culture’s ideal. I also had never, at the age of twenty-two, visited a gynecologist or spoken in depth with anyone about sex, birth control or abortion. I was smart, right, so no problem, right? I’d gone to college, graduating with honors; I’d figure it out, right? I’d fall in love and sex would magically be easy and fun, orgasm too! LOeffingL.
Figuring it out, unfortunately, in reality meant doing nothing, as I felt completely dis-empowered and in conflict when it came to dealing with my body and my sexuality. There is an inherent conflict created when we tell our children what they must do when it is – let’s face it – impossible to do, especially when we also don’t give them the information and means, as I was not given, to behave and act in a responsible manner. To refuse to accept and acknowledge that there is more than one way to be, as in having sex before marriage, as in being sexually active including all that choice entails, is the stupidest thing we can do and a huge disservice to our kids.
And so I got pregnant, puking my guts out for weeks on end at all hours of the day and night. I was so in denial, I thought I had a bug, a very bad bug that I couldn’t shake. And I could live in denial because I believed that only bad, unlucky, low-class or stupid girls got knocked up; I wasn’t any of those! This denial is what allows me to understand those teenaged girls who give birth in the school bathroom then go back to class as if nothing had happened; they can’t let the truth of their situation in because it is completely inconceivable to them.
I remember calling my parents about this endless ‘bug’ I’d caught and hearing a note in my father’s voice that nudged me toward the truth. He knew, he knew, my smart darling father knew what I’d really caught, which was a serious case of pregnancy.Darling man that he was, he also never said a word when my bug, just as suddenly as it came upon me, went away. Imagine – men especially, imagine – if you can (and you can’t) – puking your guts out for six or eight or ten weeks as I did. Imagine feeling nauseous twenty-four/seven. It’s horrible.
Imagine if you can the fear I felt when I finally figured out that I was pregnant, without health insurance and no husband or even boyfriend to help support me in anyway, no matter what choice I made. I had no relationship with the ‘sperm donor’, a guy I’d met while walking my dog in Central Park and screwed in the snow under a giant maple on Valentine’s Day, also in Central Park, a guy who, as it turned out, was married with other children, something he had lied about when we met. And I knew that in my life as it was then, there was no way, no way, that I was ready to have a baby. Ready – prepared – willing – happy, all of these the opposite of what I was, which was scared.
But, but – abortion is wrong. I promised myself I’d never do it. Oops. I confided in no one. I was completely alone with this, completely isolated, and in having an abortion I did the right thing. And I’m really proud of myself for that, for making the right choice for me, for taking care of myself although there was room, still, for a lot of improvement in that area. All children should be wanted, must, ideally, be wanted. I exercised – thank you Roe v. Wade, thank you, so much – my choice. After the abortion, nausea free for the first time in over eight long, looooong weeks, I literally skipped, danced, down Second Avenue. I had my body back and I was glad.
*what I had – along with a serious case of pregnancy, was hyperemisis gravidarum, which – in the days before the internet, I had no idea was ‘a thing’, or that such a condition in pregnant women even existed. ignorance is NOT bliss. here’s wiki once again explaining it all to you… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperemesis_gravidarum
