Category Archives: Texas

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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poor judgment, Texas

Texas school official says teachers should offer books that have an “opposing view” of the Holocaust…

It’s a rainy morning in Germany, which means that my dogs will be waiting for their walk again. Since there will be a delay, I have time to write another blog post. This one is about the continuing descent of Texas into a straight up dystopian land. It’s not enough that Governor Abbott has signed anti-abortion legislation that deprives women of the right to make personal decisions about their own reproduction. It’s not enough that Texas politicians have called for women who have abortions to be executed, or that hospitals have forced a pregnant woman in a coma to stay on life support, even as she basically decomposes. Now, the dystopia is spreading to the schools.

Yesterday, I read about how a top administrator in the Southlake district had controversial comments about what kinds of books teachers would have in their classroom libraries. Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, was secretly recorded during a training session last week. According to NBC news:

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

WHAT? That was, I think, a brain dead comment if there ever was one. How do you share an opposing view of the Holocaust? I’d like to think Peddy simply misspoke, as we all sometimes do. I would hope she had a brain fart, perhaps brought on by the state of things in Texas today. It was certainly a thoughtless comment, though, and it doesn’t make me think too highly of the quality of education in Texas. Is it any wonder that so many teachers are leaving the profession when they not only have to deal with the whole COVID-19 situation, but they also have to contend with these kinds of intrusions on their teaching methods?

I read that this whole thing began when a fourth grade student brought home a book called “This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell. The girl’s mother objected to the book’s content and complained to her daughter’s teacher. When the teacher did not respond in a way that satisfied the parent, the battle over what kinds of books are appropriate intensified. Local officials investigated the mother’s complaints about the teacher and declined to intervene, but the Carroll school board overturned the decision and voted 3-2 to formally reprimand the teacher. That decision, of course, made other teachers feel threatened, since they figured the board would side against them if other parents decided to complain about books in their classroom libraries.

Evidently, there’s a huge controversy about what is being taught in Texas schools. Some Southlake parents have been fighting against new inclusion and diversity programs at Carroll for over a year. They are opposed to lessons about racism, history (that paints white people in a negative light), or LGBTQ issues. Some of the parents have incorrectly identified the “progressive” lessons as promoting “critical race theory”. That’s how the new law, Texas House Bill number 3979, came to fruition.

Texas House Bill number 3979 is supposed to encourage teachers to present multiple viewpoints of controversial topics. I’m sure the law was intended to address the concern that some people have that their children will be fed a political agenda that doesn’t align with their preferred views… or that white children will somehow be made to feel guilty for the fact that they’re white. Personally, I can understand why some parents worry about that. I happen to agree that no one should feel ashamed of who they are, particularly when it comes to things they can’t change. That includes so-called “privileged” people.

However… there are some subjects that are sacred. The Holocaust is one of those topics where there is no “other view”. There have been people who have denied that the Holocaust happened, or they try to present it in a way that is sympathetic to the Nazi movement. Make no mistake about it. The Holocaust was absolutely horrifying; it’s real; and it didn’t happen all that long ago. Now, more than ever, we must be aware of the danger that can come from turning a blind eye to what happened in Europe during the 1930s and 40s. It was less than 100 years ago… and frankly, whenever I see Donald Trump rally a crowd, I’m reminded a lot of how Hitler came to power.

When a teacher asked Gina Peddy how one might oppose the Holocaust, Peddy’s response was “Believe me. That’s come up.” Wow… REALLY?

There was a time when I considered becoming a school teacher. I went to a college that is very well known for producing outstanding teachers. Many of my friends are teachers. But honestly, after reading about some of the crazy stuff teachers have to deal with nowadays, I am kind of glad that notion went by the wayside. It seems like back in my day, parents trusted and respected teachers more than they do now. I have seen what goes in to making teachers, and what they have to do to be qualified to teach. They don’t get paid a lot in many places, even though their value is immeasurable and they are vital to human development.

I am pretty appalled that someone in the education system in Texas suggested that teachers should present opposing views to the Holocaust, even if that comment was made due to a massive brain fart. It really is embarrassing. And I can see why teachers are so concerned. One elementary school teacher said:

“Teachers are literally afraid that we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes. There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposing perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposing perspective’ of slavery. Are we supposed to get rid of all of the books on those subjects?”

Imagine having to grade masses of papers, answer dozens of irate emails and phone calls, AND be concerned that the books you’ve chosen for your classroom library might be deemed controversial, even when the validity of the subject matter is not in dispute. Teachers definitely have a tough job, and this kind of situation only makes it tougher…

And once again, it makes me glad I don’t have to deal with this problem myself. I think if I had children, I would want them to be free to read almost everything. I grew up with parents who mostly let me read what I wanted. All it did was open my mind and make me love reading. I really think this new law is misguided, even if it was well-intentioned. This situation ought to be fixed as soon as possible, before more excellent teachers decide to change careers.

The district did apologize…

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politicians, Texas

Texas mulls over the death penalty for women who have abortions…

On January 25, 2017, back on my old blog, I wrote a post about Tony Tinderholt, a creepy Texas politician who likens abortion of all kinds to murder.  That post was about Tinderholt’s introduction of the Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act, a bill that would make abortion a criminal offense.  Mr. Tinderholt, who is two years older than I am and has been married five times, albeit once to the same woman, explained the bill thusly:

“Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion.’ Now, we both know that consenting adults don’t always think smartly sometimes. But consenting adults need to also consider the repercussions of the sexual relationship that they’re gonna have, which is a child.”

I can see by that post that I was quite disgusted by and outraged over Mr. Tinderholt’s comments.  Tinderholt claims that he believes that all abortions are criminal and would not make exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s health or life.  Personally, I think he’s just a creep who wants to control women and force them to give birth.  But I did eventually forget about him as other issues arose.

Two years later, Tinderholt is back in the news.  Today, I read that he wants Texas lawmakers to consider the death penalty for any woman who has an abortion.  He continues to insist that a developing fetus should have the same rights to personhood as any born person has.  He’s introduced House Bill 896, which would criminalize abortion and classify it as homicide.  Given that Texas is the biggest death penalty state in the United States, it would mean that women who had abortions could eventually be executed.

Surprisingly enough, there was enough passionate discussion about this bill to keep legislators up until 3:00am, arguing. State Representative Victoria Neave, a Democrat from Dallas, asked “How essentially one is okay with subjecting a woman to the death penalty for the exact… to do to her the exact same thing that one is alleging that she is doing to a child?”

Mr. Tinderholt replied, “I think it’s important to remember that if a drunk driver kills a pregnant woman, they get charged twice. If you murder a pregnant woman, you get charged twice. So I’m not specifically criminalizing women. What I’m doing is equalizing the law.”

Um… no.  Biological males cannot get pregnant; therefore, they cannot have abortions.  They cannot have miscarriages or health problems caused by pregnancy that might threaten their lives.  And while they can be raped and victimized by incest, that abuse directed toward males does not end in pregnancy.  A woman, however, can kill a pregnant woman.  Of course, statistics show that men are much more likely to commit violent acts than women are.

Pregnant women aren’t just at risk of health issues.  Studies show that pregnant women are also more likely to be victims of violence than other people are.  So no, I don’t agree with Tinderholt that this law he proposes is “equalizing” anything.  If anything, it just makes it harder to be a woman.

I don’t disagree that many unintended pregnancies are due to irresponsible behavior.  People do get careless.  However, women don’t get pregnant without a man’s help.  Moreover, while pregnant women are being referred to as “hosts” by some legislators, these male legislators reducing women to “host” status fail to see that if women are hosts, then their fetuses can be viewed as parasites.  I don’t agree with either designation.  I’m simply pointing out that there’s a disconnect in logic.  When a human being or animal is infested with parasites– which usually threaten the “host’s” life or health– there’s often an attempt to rid the host of the parasite.  If a woman becomes extremely ill due to her pregnancy or is pregnant, but unconscious, such as in the tragic case of Marlise Munoz, who was futilely artificially kept alive for weeks because she was pregnant, there should be a safe and legal remedy for her.

I do agree with Mr. Tinderholt that a fetus can’t help the circumstances that caused its conception.  A fetus conceived in rape is just as “innocent” as a wanted fetus is.  However, unless the fetus can survive outside the womb, it’s a part of the mother.  She should have every right to control what happens to her body until the point at which the fetus is able to survive on its own and can safely be born.  When Tinderholt can get pregnant and would be subjected to this law, I might take his views more seriously.

I shared the news about this on my Facebook page and wondered rhetorically how it is that so many stupid and/or crazy people end up in politics.  Several friends replied that stupid people vote them in.  I disagree.  I think the best and the brightest don’t run for office, and that’s how we end up with fucking morons like Tony Tinderholt in office.

Here’s another article about Tinderholt’s latest idea that will make life for women in Texas just a little bit harder… and not in the fun way.  By the way… the death penalty is extremely unfair and barbaric… and it’s about as anti-life as a punishment can get.  Although I am officially a Texas resident, I sure am glad I don’t live there.

Edited to add:  The bill failed, thank God!

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