Category Archives: Texas

controversies, law, poor judgment, rants, religion, Texas

Now libraries are a threat, and must be destroyed!

Every time I think things can’t get any more ridiculous or absurd, someone or something proves me wrong. I never thought I’d watch my country move backwards so fast as I have since Donald Trump was unleashed to wreak havoc on our democracy. It’s bad enough that judges and politicians with no medical training whatsoever see fit to try to eliminate abortion access, as they also refuse to expand social safety nets and access to affordable healthcare and childcare. Now, we have people contemplating shutting down libraries!

A couple of days ago, I read a horrifying story about a rural county in Texas where people were contemplating shutting down the local library. Why? Because in April 2022, seven residents of Llano County, Texas dared to sue county officials, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when 17 books were taken off the shelves because they were deemed “inappropriate”.

Some people in the community and local officials didn’t like the subject matter of the books, so access to them was either restricted, or they were removed from the library altogether. These folks no doubt felt they were “protecting the community” from books about race, gender, or sexuality. Obviously, being exposed to that information would only give people “ideas”, causing them to fall into “sin”. In case you missed my sarcasm, obviously, I believe that’s ludicrous. If that’s really how they feel, they probably ought to consider banning the Bible, too.

Some “thinking people” realized that it wasn’t right for certain conservative groups to decide for everyone else what subject matter was appropriate for their public library system. So they sued, and the judge saw things their way. On March 30, 2023, US District Judge Robert Pitman ordered the Llano County Library System to return the books to the shelves within 24 hours. According to CNN:

Books ordered to return to shelves include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

The judge also ordered that the books be listed as available in the library’s catalog. The books are not allowed to be removed for any reason while the case is ongoing. Pitman said, “Although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination.”

Fair enough, right? The case went to court, and the judge decided. You’d think that would settle things for now, but no…

Rather than just complying with the judge’s orders, the defendants, who had argued that the books were removed as part of a regular “weeding process”, decided it would be better to just shut down the libraries for everyone.

They were pretty sneaky about it, too. They didn’t come out and say they were shutting the library down out of spite. They raised the idea on a recent agenda without naming a specific reason for closing the library. Instead, they described it as a discussion “regarding the continued employment and/or status of the Llano County Library System employees and the feasibility of the use of the library premises by the public.”

The Llano County commissioners and members of the Library Board have appealed the judge’s ruling. They don’t trust people in their community to decide for themselves what they should read, or what books their children should have access to reading. Interestingly enough, I’m certain the people who are for book banning and censorship would identify themselves as “freedom loving Americans.” And yet, they want to dictate to everyone else what should be available to be read in a taxpayer supported community library.

One of the complaints is that the library isn’t a “safe space” for kids. If you’re really afraid of a book being “unsafe” for your kids, I wish you luck when they finally grow up and move away… Geez! God forbid you might supervise what your children are reading, too.

Fortunately, good sense has prevailed in Llano County, and for now, the library will stay open. Yesterday, the Commissioner’s Court unanimously voted to “shelve” discussion of defunding the library, at least for the time being. According to CNN:

“The library will remain open. We will try this in the courts, not through social media or the news media,” Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham said Thursday.

That is a sensible comment, indeed, although the commissioners vowed to continue to fight the lawsuit demanding the permanent return of the books. They are obviously terrified that by reading about race issues, LGBTQ topics, or other “controversial” subject matter, the innocent youth of Llano County will veer from the straight and narrow path of respectability. What a bunch of embarrassingly ignorant bullshit that is! As if people willingly choose to be completely different from their peers, so they’ll be mocked, persecuted, or even physically assaulted or killed for simply living their lives!

According to CNN:

In the public comment section of the meeting prior to the vote, 15 residents were allowed to give their opinions about closing the library. Eleven of them were in favor of keeping the library open. Another four said they wanted to temporarily close the library until a wide variety of books were removed from the system – substantially more than the 17 books at question in the lawsuit.

Still, Cunningham insists that the books were removed due to a regular “weeding” process, not because of their controversial subject matter. And to that, I say again… BULLSHIT. 😉 I don’t believe that those books– every one of which had controversial subject matter– all just happened to come up for “weeding” at that specific point in time.

Cunningham also stated in the CNN article that the idea of closing the library came up because of the cost of litigation.

“A public library simply cannot function if its librarians, county judge, commissioners and even the volunteers who serve out of the goodness of their heart, can be sued every time a library patron disagrees with a librarian’s weeding decisions,” he said.

Cunningham said the lawsuit has cost the county more than $100,000 and the total library budget is $450,000.

Well then… if county officials want to avoid litigation, they shouldn’t try to weed out books that all have to do with certain “taboo” topics. People sue when they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. Treat everyone fairly, and with consideration for their rights, and most of the time, you won’t be on the receiving end of a lawsuit. It costs money to sue people, and it takes time. Most people don’t sue others just because it’s “fun”.

Personally, I’m grateful to Americans who aren’t taking the insane extremist actions of political conservatives lying down. Republicans have gone way too far in the era of Trump. Their ideas are not what the majority of Americans want for the country. I see and hear them bandying about the importance of the Constitution (especially the Second Amendment), but they don’t seem to realize that the Constitution is for every American. It’s not just for straight, White, conservative leaning males who have money.

I don’t use libraries much myself these days. I prefer to just buy whatever I want to read. However, there were many times in my life when having access to a library was a Godsend. Libraries should be safe, sacred places for people to expand their minds and access the information they want and need.

No group on either side of the political spectrum should have ANY right to dictate what is, or what is not, appropriate reading material for everyone else. And yes, that goes for the extreme leftists, too, who feel like they need to edit and censor classic books to suit our more “modern thinking”. That’s not cool, either.

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blog news, book reviews, Military, music, Texas, YouTube

I never thought I’d be quoted in a scholarly book…

Last night, I was practically bored out of my mind and listlessly searching the Internet, when I decided to Google my Internet nickname. Sure enough, I found a list of places I’ve been on the Internet. But then I noticed an unusual hit– it was to Google Books. That was when I discovered that a fellow former Epinions reviewer and I were both quoted in what appears to be a scholarly book about the Middle East.

Silke Schmidt quoted me by my Internet “handle” in this book…

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself quoted or linked somewhere interesting. For instance, some years ago, I found that someone had cited me in what appeared to be a college paper about Alyssa Milano’s charitable efforts. The person who wrote the paper had made some rather unflattering comments about me that I don’t think are really based in truth. However, having been a college student myself– albeit before there was Google– I can kind of understand what they did. They probably never thought I’d read what they wrote about me.

I don’t like to Google myself for that reason. I don’t want to know what strangers on the Internet think of me. I figure no good can come out of my looking for their opinions. I happened to find the Alyssa Milano paper by accident.

As for last night’s discovery, it was also purely by the accident of boredom. I was watching more Audit the Audit videos on YouTube, and noticed a thread on Facebook about obscure phrases people don’t use anymore. I mentioned the term “knothead”, which is what my parents used to call me. Just for fun, I looked it up online, and before I knew it, found myself adding the “usc” I’ve used as my Internet handle since around 1999 or so.

The book reference, made by someone named Silke Schmidt, PD Ph.D., was based on an old book review I wrote for the now defunct review site, Epinions.com. I was a “Top Reviewer” for books, music, and hotels & travel on Epinions, so I was a pretty prolific poster on the site. In those days, I reviewed all kinds of things, but mostly those things in my “hatted” categories– the ones where I had special designations and, therefore, made more money. And because I was a Top Reviewer for books, I read a lot of books– some of which I probably wouldn’t read today.

It seems that Dr. Schmidt found my Epinions review of a book called Howling in Mesopotamia by Haider Ala Hamoudi, which was about an American-Iraqi and the Iraq War. Ordinarily, I probably wouldn’t choose to read such a book, especially at the time at which I read that one. Google tells me I bought a physical copy of it in May 2008, which means I probably reviewed it soon afterward. We lived in Germany at the time, and I specifically remember reviewing it in our very first German house.

I don’t know anything about Silke Schmidt, and it appears that (she?) doesn’t know anything about me, as she refers to me with male pronouns in her book. I see she also quotes my Epinions colleague, Bryan Carey, who was a legend on Epinions because of the vast number of “very helpful” reviews he wrote on the site, and the money he made there. Schmidt misspells his name, which is natural enough, given that she doesn’t know him. In two footnotes, Schmidt explains:

Right… because Epinions was a review site. We were writing reviews, not scholarly articles.

If I recall correctly, I read Howling in Mesopotamia for a number of reasons, the first of which had to do with my Soldier husband spending time in Iraq. In 2008, Bill was still on active duty, and had been in Iraq the previous year. I also used to live in Armenia, which isn’t very far from Iraq. My time living in that region piqued my interest about the Middle East, although Armenia is a Christian nation that used to be part of the Soviet Union. It borders Iran and Turkey, and while Iraq isn’t a direct neighbor, it’s not far away at all.

In 2008, I was a lot more politically conservative than I am today, although I haven’t gone totally liberal. Today, I’m not sure I would have made the same comments about my impressions of Howling in Mesopotamia that I made in 2008. I also never dreamed my comments would be immortalized in a book. I’m not upset about it, though. It doesn’t look like that many people have read the book, anyway.

I guess if I were going to characterize how I feel about finding myself quoted by my Internet handle in a book about the Middle East, it would be “bemused”, “perplexed”, “surprised”… And I wonder why Schmidt didn’t leave a comment or send me an email asking for clarification before quoting my review. When I was on Epinions, it was easy to reach me by email, as it was listed right there on my member page. But then… I know that writers often work under deadlines, and academics are forever reading.

I see that Dr. Schmidt was born in 1983 and teaches at the University of Marburg. Schmidt’s book was written in 2014… and since Epinions died in February of that year and the vast majority of the reviews disappeared soon afterwards, it’s a lucky thing that Schmidt could even find the reviews quoted in the book. Most of them are now long gone from the Internet by now.

Well, color me amused that my review of a long forgotten book captured the attention of a German scholar, especially since I now live in the scholar’s homeland. I guess it just goes to show how everything a person does can affect someone else. You just never know who you’ll touch, or where you’ll touch them… 😉 I don’t remember my review of Howling in Mesopotamia as being one of my more successful reviews, in terms of views or Epinions income share earned (Epinions reviews sometimes generated real money for reviewers– although typically not a lot of money, especially in the categories for which I usually wrote). It’s nice to know I did at least help out an academic by writing my opinion of the book.

I was thinking I might write about some of the totally batshit Republican proposed policies I’ve seen bandied about today, all of which I’ve read about since waking up this morning at about 4:00. But, I think I will save that topic for another post, on another day. No sense getting riled up today, as I watch it snow and rain and contemplate taking Arran in for yet another vet appointment this evening.

The weather is depressing enough without another commentary about completely wacko right wing religious nutjobs (Bryan Slaton) in Texas trying to secede from the Union and proposing to give traditional Christian families with at least four children tax breaks. Or Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ potentially signing a bill that would remove the need for work permits for children in Arkansas… so that children can be put to work instead of sent to school. I’m so sick of these crazy extremists in the United States… they make me want to stay away, even though I am still a Texas resident. I just want things to be more moderate again. Is that too much to ask? Arggggh!!!!

Oh… and I did manage to make new music videos yesterday. Indeed, they are posted under the same handle Silke Schmidt found on Epinions.com. I think when Bill goes away, I get inspired to sing sexy songs.

People encouraged me to sing on camera. Well, here I am…
He does… one of the few and proud who does, actually. But he’s not a Marine.

I think I’ll end this post now, practice guitar, and consider a visit to the local Rewe for some beer… It’s too shitty outside right now to walk the dogs, and I have a cold sore.

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music, politicians, politics, social media, Texas, weather

“At least I’m not in Texas…” Did I actually have the cojones to say that out loud?

The featured photo comes from Wikipedia and references a popular slogan that tough talking Texans like to bandy around about their (or should I say *my* state)… but Bill tells me it was actually an 80s era slogan they used to discourage littering. This post is full of cussing, so if you don’t like that, you know what to do and where to go… preferably not to Texas.

Yesterday, there was an article in The New York Times about Europe’s current heat wave, which I’m sadly enduring here in Germany. A woman went to the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, and offered tips on how she stayed cool during her trip. I decided to leave a comment. I will admit, I knew on some level that my comment would probably attract trolls and other assholes, because most comments somehow do… but I decided to leave it anyway, because why not?

Thank God for that! I am a proud native Virginian… which is also where the most famous Texan, Sam Houston, was born. In fact, he was from Rockbridge County, which is where most of my people come from… once they left the British Isles and Ireland. I love Lyle Lovett, anyway… even if he IS from Texas.

My comment was that I live in Germany and I’m so tired of the heat and the drought conditions here. But, “at least I’m not in Texas.” That was ALL I posted. I made no mention of politics. I didn’t bring up the lack of abortion rights in Texas, or any of the other anti-woman or racist policies and attitudes that are so prevalent there. I didn’t post about the crappy power grid and how it failed many Texans during the winter of 2021, causing people to die earlier than they should have. I had no words about the religious fanatics who want to impose their ways of life on the whole population and control everybody. And I wrote nary a word about all the ammosexuals in Texas. All I wrote is “at least I’m not in Texas.”

At this writing, my comment has well over 125 likes, which is unusual for me. It’s also attracted comments from jerks. Or, so I assume, anyway. I only bothered to read one comment, from a guy calling himself “Jay Smith” and claiming to be living in Istanbul, Turkey. He basically made some crack about how Texas isn’t my problem, and I should just enjoy Germany. There was more to it than that, but I’m not going to quote it verbatim, because I don’t want to read it again or see anyone else’s rude responses. The main idea is that I should STFU.

I bet “Jay Smith” of Istanbul talks like this in Texas.

So I responded that while I live in Germany, I am, in fact, a Texas resident, and I still vote there. So Texas actually IS my problem… and I can comment on Texas if I want to (which I’d be allowed to do regardless, as a *still free* person). Then I advised him to fuck off, which I normally wouldn’t do on a Facebook page for a newspaper. What can I say? The heat is making me CRANKY. My house is warm all the time, even when I use the portable air conditioners– which are helpful, but only cool individual rooms. The grass in the backyard is brown and crispy. I sweat all the time. I know that very soon the weather will change, and it will be glorious… but for now, it’s pretty yucky here.

I wonder what made that guy decide to leave me that comment. It genuinely fascinates me. My guess is that he’s probably some right wing turd in a red state– perhaps Texas itself– and he can’t abide anyone making the slightest negative crack about the beloved Lone Star State. Especially when it’s an apparently “liberal” (horrors!) woman who lives in another country. But there’s actually a lot to dislike about Texas, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t necessarily hate Texas when I lived there for a year, but it’s gotten really weird and dystopian since I left. There were some things I didn’t like about it when I did live there, but I didn’t see it as weird-o-rama as I do now. Ever since Greg Abbott became governor, it’s gone down a very dark and climate challenged road. I sure as hell don’t want to move back, especially if Beto doesn’t win the governor’s seat from Greg Abbott.

But, like I said, I didn’t actually write anything bad about Texas. I just posted that at least I’m not in Texas. For all Jay Smith knows, I was simply posting about the weather there in August. And, in fact, that’s literally what I had in mind when I made my comment. I well remember what August is like in San Antonio. We had a pool in our backyard, but in August, the water was as warm as bathwater. Central air conditioning was an absolute must for a good portion of the year.

We had two air conditioners for the house we were renting, but they hadn’t been serviced in a long while, and the filters were absolutely DISGUSTING. I actually have pictures of how coated in gunk they were when we moved in and changed them. It had probably been years since anyone had done that. Energy prices were insane, too. Just to be comfortable, we had to pay out the ass. And, as my old friend Weird Wilbur sings in his song, “Down in Texas”, it’s always “summertime” down in Texas. I know that’s not actually true. I do remember some chilly days when we lived there. But it’s usually hot and uncomfortable, and not a place where I’d particularly want to endure the onset of menopause, especially when I start having hot flashes (which haven’t happened yet).

My spelling challenged pal, Weird Wilbur’s funny song about Texas… or one of them, anyway. I don’t talk to Wilbur much anymore, because as funny as he is, he’s also a right wing crackpot. I used to have much more tolerance for them, before the days of Trump. Wilbur’s song “Fuck You, Texas”, is the very best, and my absolute favorite Texas song…

All day, I kept getting tagged in more responses. Some of them might have been kind responses, but my guess is that most were probably more like Jay Smith’s, the obvious troll. So I haven’t read any of them. I keep asking Facebook to turn off notifications, but as usual, Facebook doesn’t care about my preferences. So here I sit, deleting notifications, and fruitlessly asking Facebook to stop sending me comments from right wing Trump supporting jerks.

I’m probably a little crankier about this than I ought to be. I guess it’s because sitting over here in Europe, watching how oppressive and dystopian the United States is right now, gives me a weird sense of survivor’s guilt. It’s so much more NORMAL in Europe, all things considered– even with this relatively oppressive heat and lack of cooling systems due to the fact that Germany doesn’t often get this hot. I don’t routinely see people walking around downtown with huge firearms slung over their shoulders, like I often did in San Antonio. I don’t hear or read about people being shot up, or trying to attack the police for doing their jobs. Leaders here actually seem to care about people, and their jobs… or, at least they put on a convincing show of it.

There’s a much better video of this song, but I can’t share it here. If you search for it by using the properly spelled word, “fuck”, you can find it.

But… for all of my grousing about the Lone Star State, I can see why some people like it. It’s huge, and its populace has a certain bravado. My husband went to high school in Texas… but then that’s also where he met his ex wife, and we know how that turned out. Bill’s mom still lives there, as do some of my relatives. I guess it’s a good place if you like BBQ beef brisket, rodeos, margaritas, and Tex Mex. We have a bunch of friends who live in Texas, and none of them are batshit crazy. There’s even some pretty good wine in Texas Hill Country. But… unlike Tanya Tucker, I hope I won’t be in Texas when I die…

Nein, danke… Germany would suit me. So would Virginia. I’m loving Virginia more these days, although I’m not quite ready to move back there. It is a truly beautiful state, though… and decidedly purple, which I never thought I’d see.

Even if Texas was the most progressive, “woke”, politically correct place on earth, I’d still rather be here than there. For one thing, I’m not that excited about woke or politically correct places. I just want to live in a “NORMAL” place, where all people get basic human rights and I don’t have to worry about being shot. But for the main thing– and the most obvious reason– Texas in August is FUCKING HOT AS FOUR HELLS… and I don’t like that kind of heat, or paying for the energy required to have basic comfort in it. So, for that reason, I am glad that “at least I’m not in Texas.” And I should be able to write that in a comment section without having to deal with stupid trolls who try to tell me to shut up. I’ll thank you to fuck off, because I will never be your ass monkey, mmm’kay? Texas is uniformly HOT and unpleasant in August. For that reason alone, Germany is naturally a preferable location for me, especially at this time of year. It’s perfectly logical and acceptable to state that, and I should be able to do it without crap from Jay Smith and his right wing buddies.

In other news…

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fucking moron. Sorry, it’s not a nice thing to state, nor is it particularly constructive, but she is embarrassingly stupid. And way too many similarly stupid people follow her. There, I said it. Blame it on the heat and my aging reproductive system, which thankfully will NEVER be forced to birth. Yesterday, I became aware of her recent diatribe about the evils of solar panels, wind turbines, and other “green” energy solutions that might help stave off climate change. She made some outright wrong statements, confidently speaking as if she was a comedian delivering an hilarious routine. And it WAS hilarious, but not for the right reasons. Sadly, her audience was into it, and laughed with her, while the more informed of us were laughing AT her.

I’m not going to go too far into this, because a lot of people are already posting about it… but, I live in a place where lots of people have and use solar panels. And there are wind turbines aplenty. We can’t take a trip on the Autobahn and not eventually pass a wind farm. You know what? We very rarely have power outages in Germany. When we do have them, they are usually fixed within an hour. I did not have that experience in several areas of the United States. Moreover, Marjorie’s district actually hosts the largest fucking solar panel plant in the United States! So… she’s out of touch with her community and reality, and she’s leading more people down the dark rabbit hole of ignorance and stupidity. As her hero Trump would say, “Sad…” But at least she’s not in Texas. They’ve got enough problems.

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healthcare, law, politicians, politics, Texas, Trump

More money where my mouth is…

On July 1, I wrote a post called “Putting my money where my mouth is.” In that post, I wrote about my decision to donate money to pro-choice causes, namely NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood. It was something I had never done before, but I felt compelled to make donations to those causes, because I am so absolutely appalled by how women’s rights are being rolled back 50 years.

Last night, I read an article about Beto O’Rourke’s run for governor in Texas. I am a Texas voter, and I absolutely despise what Greg Abbott has done since he became governor. Much of the anti-choice bullshit that has come up recently had origins in Texas. So I commented that I can’t wait to vote straight blue in Texas. Many people liked the comment, but I got a few rude comments from MAGA assholes. To the last one who commented, I wrote, “Thanks for reminding me to donate to Beto’s campaign.” Then I went to Beto’s page, and donated $250. He might lose the election, but I have to do what I can to see that he has a chance against Greg Abbott. It’s the least I can do for younger women. I also noticed that after I made that comment, no one else took me on. The MAGA jerks don’t like it when you match their snarky comments with money for the opposition.

I’m for Beto.

Maybe it’s just my stubborn, oppositional personality, but the more people on the right “laugh” at and ridicule my outrage, the more left I find myself leaning. I’m really not that liberal leaning, if you want to know the truth. There’s a lot about the liberal side that I don’t like. But at this point, the Democrats are the only party that can win against the Republican Party, and I will not vote for people who want to pass laws that marginalize everyone except white Christian males. Some things are more important than money, which is really the only reason I can see to vote for Republicans. The right to privacy and access to comprehensive healthcare is of paramount importance to all people. So I have to do what I can to preserve that. I hope that by writing this piece, I’ll inspire others to do what they can, too.

Yesterday, a woman named “Becky” decided to come at me with anti-abortion rhetoric. I looked at Becky’s page. She’s clearly beyond her childbearing years, and based on her comments to me, she’s not a very happy or pleasant person. One of her responses to me was, “If you don’t want to be pregnant, use birth control.”

My retort to Becky was, “Should the ten year old rape victim have been on birth control?” She never responded to that. Do people like Becky really think it’s right to compel children to give birth? Can they not see why sometimes abortion is the right choice? Why do they think that poor child should have to justify having an abortion?

I just read an op-ed in the Washington Post by Jennifer Rubin about how Jewish women are making the argument that there should be a religious exemption to abortion bans. After all, Christians have pushed for allowing medical professionals to opt out of providing certain medical procedures and not prescribing certain medications due to their religious beliefs. Jewish people, in general, don’t have an objection to abortion, as they don’t believe that life begins at conception. So why shouldn’t they be allowed to get abortions based on their religious beliefs? A lawsuit has been filed in Florida. I thought the op-ed was excellent. Unfortunately, I ran out of articles to gift this month, so I can’t unlock it for readers. But the Washington Post is fairly inexpensive for a newspaper. Maybe it’s worth a subscription. I did pause when I read this article in the comment section in the paper.

Never a conscience exemption. Not ever!

Any woman looking for an abortion would claim it. 

Nor one for mental health of the mother. Physical after a three member physician panel with no prior knowledge of her makes a decision.

Does this person not realize that sometimes women find themselves in life threatening medical situations that wouldn’t allow time for three doctors to come together for a “conference”? And how does it impact this person that “any woman looking for an abortion would claim it”? Why does it even matter to them? How would that affect an uninvolved person in the slightest? I am so tired of the cruelty and hypocrisy… this person must hate women! They obviously don’t trust them to take care of their own health or make their own decisions! It’s so scary to me that in 2022, there are people out there who think women shouldn’t have their own autonomy.

I am so tired of writing about this… but every day, something else outrages me anew. And this is how I process it. However, I also know that abortion is really a distraction from an even bigger, scarier picture. Yesterday, I watched a video by George Conway about Donald Trump’s sinister plans, should he be re-elected. Folks… it would be a true disaster. He wants to be a dictator. He would like to completely gut the government and put in sycophants who are loyal to him. It would destroy the country.

Holy shit!

I am glad I sought out the above clip, if only because I found this joke there…

An assistant to Donald Trump told him she had a fantastic dream last night. There was a huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue celebrating him. Millions lined the parade route, cheering when the President went past. Bands were playing; children were throwing confetti into the air, there were balloons everywhere. It was the biggest celebration Washington had ever seen. Trump was very impressed and said, “That’s really great! By the way, how did I look in your dream? Was my hair okay?”

His assistant said, “I couldn’t tell, the coffin was closed.

One can only dream… I hope people wake up soon. And I hope that anyone else who is as disgusted and horrified as I am about the state of things right now will put their money where their mouths are, too. I don’t know about other people, but in my case, it was something I felt compelled to do. Otherwise, I feel completely helpless, watching democracy being whittled away by a malignant narcissist.

In other news… I feel markedly better today, although I did have a coughing fit that made me lose breakfast. But overall, I have more energy, am coughing less, and have less gunk. So I think I might be improving. However, I have learned about dashed hopes, so I’ll just be cautiously optimistic that I’m getting well.

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law, mental health, politicians, politics, racism, Texas, true crime

Enough pro-life platitudes! Texas Has Its Priorities Completely Screwed Up!

Early this morning, I woke up to the horrible news about Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. It’s another school shooting, this time perpetrated by a lonely, bullied, obviously mentally ill young man named Salvador Rolando Ramos. Days after his 18th birthday, Mr. Ramos legally purchased the weapons he would use to shoot and critically wound his grandmother, and then go on a shooting rampage at the elementary school. Mr. Ramos, who wore body armor and carried a rifle during his deadly rampage, was fatally shot, apparently by police.

At this writing, at least nineteen children were murdered, along with two adults. Both adults who died were teachers; one was Irma Garcia, a teacher with 23 years of experience at Robb Elementary, while the other, Eva Mireles, had taught for 17 years, and had a daughter in college. Many other people have been physically injured, and will forevermore carry the emotional and physical scars from yesterday’s shooting spree. The rest of us– the decent ones, anyway, are injured by yet another senseless school shooting in a country that professes to be “the land of the free”. And this time, the shooting happened in a state that professes to be so “pro-life” that many of its citizens will do almost anything to force women to stay pregnant.

The “right to life” crew, many of whom are men, claim that a developing fetus’s right to be born is more important than anything. The claim that abortion is cruel and inhumane. But at least a developing embryo is completely unaware of its being aborted. Children sitting in classrooms– some of whom were probably conceived with help from modern scientific reproductive methods– were no doubt absolutely terrified when Ramos opened fire on them. For those kids, Texas Republicans offer “thoughts and prayers”, and ridiculous suggestions about arming teachers and “good guys with guns”.

I am technically a Texas resident, although I haven’t lived there since 2014. Every year, when I cast an absentee ballot with my votes, the ballot goes to Texas, which is where Bill and I happened to be living when he finished his service with the Army. I didn’t hate Texas when I left there. I thought it was too hot, and there were way too many religious wingnuts. I didn’t like the extremely right wing politics of people in Texas, nor did I enjoy all the gun toting wackos I saw in downtown San Antonio. But I kind of respected Texas’s free-spirited culture. I enjoyed most of the people I met there, the music, the food, and having temporary access to members of my family, and Bill’s mom and aunt. When we left in 2014, I thought maybe we could move back at some point. Now I know that I don’t want to live there again. In fact, I’m not sure I really want to live in the United States again.

In the almost eight years since we left Texas, I have come to really dislike a lot of things about it. I despise the politics of Governor Greg Abbott and his relentless attack on women, as he also champions gun lovers. I can’t wait to cast a vote against Mr. Abbott. I don’t really care too much about who runs against him, either, which is a pretty terrible place to be. I would like to care about and even like the politics of the people who run for public office. But lately, the people who are running are so incredibly lacking in sense that I find myself voting AGAINST people, instead of for them.

According to the Washington Post, Salvador Ramos was severely bullied by his peers for having a strong lisp and a stutter. He had friends when he was younger, but then started doing self-destructive things, like cutting up his face with a knife “for fun”. Still, his friends said he was a very nice kid– shy, but nice. He’d be bullied for being different, but he had a few friends who stuck by him. Things seemed to go really downhill for Ramos when he shared a picture of himself wearing black eyeliner. For that, he was bullied by his peers and called a derogatory term for a homosexual male. Then, one of the friends who would try to stand up for Ramos, left the area when his mother’s job was transferred. At that point, Ramos began to dress all in black, grow out his hair, and wear military style boots. He quit going to school. At night, he and a friend would drive around and shoot at people with BB guns. He’d also egg people’s cars. He told one new friend that he wanted to join the Marines so he could “kill people”. The new friend became an ex friend after that.

Ramos’s mother eventually tried to kick him out of their home, and Ramos posted about it on Instagram. The incident showed Ramos calling his mom a “bitch”, as police intervened to break up the fight.

Ramos had a wish list of automatic weapons he wanted. A few days ago, he posted a picture of himself with a couple of rifles. There were some people who tried to help him, in spite of his odd proclivity for guns, but Ramos’s home life was terrible. According to a neighbor, Ramos’s mother used drugs. He eventually moved in with his grandmother, who owned the house where Ramos lived with his mom. A few days ago, the neighbor saw the grandmother, who mentioned that she was in the process of evicting Ramos’s mother, because she was abusing drugs.

I read all of this stuff, and I wonder how much help Ramos got from people who could do something for him. Did he ever speak to counselors? Was he encouraged to address his mental health and educational issues? At this point, I don’t know. I don’t want to blame educators, because I know they’ve got enough to deal with every day. And while it would be easy to blame people who bullied Ramos at school, being bullied is not a reason for someone to go on a shooting spree. I wonder what life situations led to Salvador Ramos’ fatal decisions yesterday.

I think these kinds of stress related meltdowns will only get worse, as guns are promoted as a solution to ending violence and maintaining “freedom”, and desperate women are being compelled to be pregnant when they aren’t ready to have babies. How many troubled women will be forced to give birth, thanks to the idiotic bans on abortions? I believe that people like Salvador Ramos evolve because they have very fucked up home lives, and not enough is done to help them make things better. There are too many children being born into situations where there’s substance abuse, sexual abuse, violence, racism, and poverty.

I haven’t even touched on the horrific gun fueled rampage that happened at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York on May 14th. That incident, which occurred at the hands of Peyton S. Gendron, a disgruntled 18 year old racist White guy with a gun, resulted in the premature deaths of ten people and the wounding of three. Eleven of Gendron’s victims were Black. Gendron survived his rampage, and is now in protective custody and on suicide watch. If the police hadn’t stopped him when they had, Gendron says that he would have shot more people. He’d had plans to visit churches and an elementary school. As awful as Gendron’s attack was, at least his victims were all adults. But that doesn’t make it much better, does it?

I’m so tired of violent, thuggish, Republican bullies with guns and big mouths. I’m so angry at people who champion narcissistic cretins like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the usual gang of idiots in the Republican National Committee. No, I don’t think Democrats are perfect, by any stretch. I don’t like extreme left wing politics, snooty attitudes, and lack of common sense some Democrats have. But at least Democrats have something to offer besides thoughts, prayers, more guns, and restrictions on abortion. This news just makes me sick… and it makes me feel an odd mixture of relief that, for now, I live outside of my country, and guilt, that I’m so far away, watching from a distance as the United States I’ve always known turns into a weird dystopia.

It’s hard to believe that a lot of us were looking forward to today, as Josh Duggar finds out his fate. I was also looking forward to finding out more about Tariq Witherspoon, the man who ran over and killed my friend, Matt, last year. He supposed to go to court in New York today. Those were two cases of callous, lawless men facing their crimes. But I sit here and think of how many people have died in the last two years… from COVID-19, cancer, murder, manslaughter and recklessness, and suicide. And we want to bring more babies into this mess? When we don’t even have enough formula to feed them? We can’t offer citizens decent, affordable healthcare, housing, or an infrastructure that doesn’t collapse as the climate becomes less hospitable to humans! Why in the hell would we want more innocent babies born into this hellish reality on Earth?

In a matter of days, Bill’s third grandson will be born. He will join his four year old brother and two year old sister. I worry about those kids, who are going to be growing up in a country that continues to grow more troubled by the year. I know how much their parents love them, and have wanted them to come into the world. I only hope that by the time they’re ready for school, more has been done to repair the serious issues that are causing little kids like them to die when all they’re trying to do is go to school, attend church, shop for food, or just be children, exploring the world.

I’m so glad I never had children. This world is completely fucked. Below is an “oldie but goodie” Facebook post that was making the rounds six years ago, and is sadly still very relevant.

Yeah. I am for shutting down the gun stores.
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