August 26, 2017

About my husband and the gun

We were just about to leave to visit a sick friend. I was sitting here reading DU, and he announced--after we'd been talking about the possible repercussions from the pardon of Arpaio--that he thought we ought to get an automatic weapon, maybe an AK-47. I posted in shock--my husband is totally anti-gun--and then had to leave. I should have held that thought and posted more fully when we got back.

I'm really not a drama queen, and I'm sorry I behaved like one.

I am worried sick, but not because I'm afraid of my husband.

August 26, 2017

My husband is so concerned about the Arpaio pardon

that he wants to buy a gun, and I'm scared shitless. We live in a neighborhood with several vocal Trump supporters, and we're worried.

I edited this post because my original post, sent in haste, has given folks the wrong idea about my situation. I'm sorry for the confusion.

August 16, 2017

I saw a lout on CNN talking about

not being a racist but only wanting to "preserve my white heritage." I'd like to know what the hell his "heritage" is. My family fought for the confederacy (Edgar's Battalion, Virginia) and they owned slaves. I know they owned slaves because I have wills bequeathing living human beings to my predecessors. I am ashamed of my heritage and wish it could be obliterated from the earth.

I have a suspicion that the "white heritage" this guy wants to preserve is more my heritage than his own, and I want him to know I don't want his help in this matter.

August 16, 2017

My father was a college student

when he saw Nazis marching on the newsreels at the movies, and he knew what he had to do. He didn't get a permit; he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and dropped bombs from his B-17 on those fuckers in Berlin, in Peenemunde, in Dresden. He saw and did things no 19-year-old should have to see or do, but he did them because he recognized the Nazis for what they were and knew they had to be stopped.

The college students (and college-age young people) who marched with their tiki torches, who beat defenseless people almost to death, who murdered a young woman for no reason other than she was there--when I compare them to what my father was at their age, I weep.

August 9, 2017

"Fire and fury" is from the failing New York Times

back in April, writing about the missile attack on Syria:

Nothing drowns out scandal like the fire and fury of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/the-riddle-of-trumps-syria-attack.html?_r=0

His addition of "power" is prefaced by the words "and frankly" which is what he says when he goes off-script--a verbal tell, if you will.

August 5, 2017

"Abortion rights" are not about abortions, and "Freedom of Choice" isn't about choosing

What many on the right do not understand is that *no one* makes the decision to end a pregnancy joyfully. Fighting against a woman's right to make this decision implies that women are not smart enough, or thoughtful enough, or sensitive enough to understand the moral weight of what they are doing, and that is insupportable.

It maddens me when anyone doesn't understand that being "pro-choice" isn't about abortions; it's about respecting the fact that women are adults as capable of understanding what they are doing as men are, whether it's having an abortion or buying a gun.

The RW bangs its head against the wall of "It's murder! It's murder" as if women don't understand what they are doing.

And don't tell me you are "personally" opposed to abortion--well, who the hell isn't? For Glob's sake, who would want to go through an abortion *unless* there was a fucking overwhelmingly good reason to do so? "Pro-lifers" deny that women are capable of deciding what reason is sufficient--again, whether it's to have an abortion or to get a divorce.

If you are "personally opposed" to abortion--good for you, join the rest of the world. Nobody wants to be in a position to decide whether or not to have an abortion, and your announcing your own "personal" moral superiority doesn't mean shit. I don't care how you feel in your heart about abortion; either you are for accepting that women are adult human beings or you are not.

That's what makes abortion rights the most important--and clearest--litmus test I can think of.

"Pro-lifers" employ all kinds of smokescreens to hide the real motivation behind their efforts to infantilize women--forcing them to watch videos of fetuses because women of course don't understand that there is the beginnings of a baby in there; "protecting" women by imposing impossible conditions on abortion clinics to have facilities comparable to a full-service hospital; making it as hard as possible to get to an abortion provider; insisting on humiliating, invasive "testing" before an abortion can be approved; propagandizing out the wazoo--the list goes on. Common to all of them is the underlying belief that women just don't know any better.

Well, fuck that.