Chuggnutt!

Tag: Government

  • What can be done

    The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court is disheartening, nauseating, disturbing; an act of sexual violence against women writ large, simultaneously a symbolic sexual assault of every woman in America and a stripping away of privacy and rights to healthcare and bodily autonomy. Women now have less rights in America than a gun; according to the GOP, women are less than human.

    What can be done about it? What can we do? This is my brain dump of answers to those questions.

    What can we do?

    • Men, check in with the women in your lives, and in particular, let them know they are supported.
    • Donate to Planned Parenthood, and similar organizations.
    • Volunteer with Planned Parenthood, and similar organizations.
    • Speak up. Call and write your Congressional representatives and senators, your state and local government officials, to let them know you support a woman’s right to choose.
    • Join a protest. March.
    • Offer safe haven, if you can, for any woman needing an abortion. Offer transportation and other support. Without judgment. Please go through proper channels for this, though (start with PP and go from there).
    • Engage in your local government—attend city council meetings, school board meetings, and so on, providing a counterbalance to any conservative, Republican, extremist, anti-choice shitbags that attend.
    • Support progressive candidates for office, no centrists, and ask any and every candidate what their views on abortion and women’s health and reproductive rights are.
    • Convince anyone you know (or even don’t know) to vote in the next election, no matter how minor it might be.
    • Boycott any businesses owned by Republicans and/or conservative Christians, that express anti-choice sentiments, that believe abortion should be illegal.
    • Similarly, don’t work for or do business with any company or organization owned by Republicans, or are anti-choice, and so on.

    What can Democrats in government do?

    Right now I’m unbelievably angry, not just at Republicans but also Democrats in government. Why? Because for years we’ve been hammered with the message to VOTE, get out and VOTE, VOTE like your life depends on it—and you know what? We have, and we do.

    What do we have to show for it? We’ve put Democrats into office, put Democrats in control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, and for what? We keep waiting for them to do something, to take action against the Republican agenda that somehow, somehow, keeps getting pushed through, even though Republicans have a minority.

    And instead of taking action, every time something bad happens, Democrats in power tell us once again, VOTE to make change, and donate more money to “help them fight.”

    Bullshit. We’ve been doing that and they aren’t doing what we put them in office for. Yet there are things they can be doing right now. Forget playing nice, forget being fair, or statesmanlike; Republicans certainly aren’t interesting in any of that. Are they scared of retribution? Of what the Republicans will do if they gain power again? Guess what, Republicans have already said they will do that, and they will. There’s nothing to lose here.

    Off the top of my head:

    • Eliminate the filibuster.
    • Initiate impeachment proceedings against four illegitimate Supreme Court Justices: Clarence the Harasser Thomas for participating in the January 6 insurrection with his wife; and Neil Gorsuch, Brett the Rapist Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings. These latter two, in particular, are completely unqualified to be judges in general. Then go after the other conservative justices who lied under oath.
    • Expand the Supreme Court to 11 or 13 members. Or more.
    • File charges and/or impeach every Republican member of Congress who were involved with the January 6 insurrection and trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
    • Remove every ones of these same Republicans from any committees and active roles in making legislation.
    • Remove Senator Joe Manchin from any role and committee and position of power and responsibility in the senate; he’s all but a Republican and has handed the GOP success after success. Sideline him.
    • Stall every bill, every piece of legislation that comes from Republicans. Every one. Gridlock them into limbo, nothing gets debated on, considered, or passed.
    • Remove every Trump-era government official and replace them with someone competent and trustworthy.
    • Act. Just fucking act on something, do something, don’t sing songs outside of the building, don’t read poetry, don’t tell the rest of us to vote and do your job for you. Do your goddamn job.

    This Twitter thread by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also lays a blueprint for what Democrats in office can actually do right now.

    Yes, to be clear, we need to continue to vote, and vote like our lives depend on it—because they do. But we really, really need to see some results from our voting. Otherwise this shit will keep happening.

  • No.

    With the inauguration making it official, and “real,” I had to write something.

    Right now we are in the midst of the strangest, most ridiculous moments in United States history that I’ve experienced in my lifetime—and, some say, maybe ever. I don’t know about “ever” but it certainly feels unprecedented. Perhaps people living through the Harding administration of the 1920s, or Nixon in the early ’70s, or hell even Prohibition experienced this same feeling of unreality, unease, and vaguely impending doom that we (the sane ones, anyway) are experiencing now. I don’t know.

    What I do know is, somehow we now have a “president” that I don’t believe can or should be considered legitimate. He’s a serial liar, a failed businessman, a misogynist, not terribly intelligent, (probably) a sexual predator, a racist, an Islamophobe, and generally a fascist, with the thin skin of a temperamental four year old desperately craving attention and lashing out when spurned. On top of all of that, he is very likely compromised by a foreign agency.

    He has refused to divest himself of his business interests, particularly as they relate to other countries, which raises numerous conflicts of interest and violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He has not nor never will release his tax returns.

    He lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history, three million votes, and only squeaked into the office by the loophole provided by the electoral voting system. He now takes the oath of that office as the most unpopular incoming president in history. And now day one has been marked with a flagrant lie about the size of the inauguration crowds, quivering in the shadow cast by the Women’s March, exposing the “president’s” shambling insecurity.

    His cabinet is full of crony millionaires and billionaires, racists, extremists, and neo-Nazis with little to no real world knowledge of the jobs they have been selected for, or an active interest in tearing them down. He himself has no grasp of the magnitude of the role nor the knowledge and skills necessary to be the president, and his blundering ignorance and corruption will likely get many people killed.

    There is nothing legitimate about this presidency, the campaign of which was run on a platform of racism and lies. The interference from Russia in the process alone should have been enough to overturn the entire election, and the strong possibility of Trump being compromised and under the influence of Russia and Putin should have disqualified him completely and brought him under intense investigation. If there were enough Republicans left with any kind of a spine who weren’t desperate sycophants for power, that might have been the outcome.

    Which is why this is so surreal. It was surreal when he announced he would run, but I have to admit I enjoyed watching the Republican party tear itself apart in paroxysms of hypocrisy and degradation as he stood among them, and won. But who would have thought he would actually advance all the way to the general election and have a chance at winning? Well, the racists and the Nazis, I guess.

    But had anyone tried to pitch this entire election and outcome as a fictional plot—for a movie or a book or a TV series—it would have been instantly rejected as too implausible, too outlandish, too ridiculous to be believable. But wait! There’s a twist! There are many twists! There’s an endorsement by the KKK! The Nazis are back! The main character is stupid enough to admit to sexual assault while wearing his own wire! Wait, wait, you’re gonna love this one—it’s the Russians and they’ve successfully planted their agent in the White House with the help of hackers and—what? Too contrived?

    Except apparently it’s not, and it’s happening now. If you voted for Trump, then you’re complicit in all of this. If you didn’t vote at all, you’re complicit in all of this.

    There is no “making America great again” under Trump because he is completely out of touch with the America he is supposed to lead. His “great America” is one where the rich get huge tax cuts while the poor shoulder their burden and die for lack of healthcare. One where the rights of women and minorities are rolled back so that affluent white men won’t feel threatened. This fantasy by the way, one apparently shared largely by the Republican party, is the desperate fever dream of a scared minority of aging rich white men seemingly unable to grasp that the world is moving on without them.

    (Alternatively, the desperate fever dream of insular, under-educated whites scared to death of diversity and obsolescence.)

    I mean, listen to the rhetoric—“We’re taking America back!” Back from what? From whom? From progress? Prosperity? Oh I know—not back from, but back to… to the dark ages. Anyone who seriously thinks that things were better 50 years ago should immediately lose their computer, their phone, access to the internet, their medicine, their big screen TV and video games and everything else they take for granted that didn’t exist 50 years ago.

    And really, I’m worried that Trump will say something crazy on Twitter (again) that will have catastrophic results—or worse, his account will be hacked (again) and someone else will do that. I’m worried about the lack of concern and outright lies about a massive security breach and intrusion by Russia. I’m worried that the country as we know it—this entire grand American experiment—may well be at an end. It’s certainly not the same as it was even a year ago.

    So no, I can’t look upon this new administration with any sense of legitimacy. No, I will not look past the flagrant lies. No, I will not accept nor respect the authority of the office that respects neither the people nor the office itself. No, I will not accept the hypocrisy of people who for eight years degraded and disrespected President Obama and now demand respect and civility for their spray-tanned elderly reality TV star.

    I recognize the divide in this country, it’s very real, and divisive. But it was also heavily exploited during this election with lies and manufactured hysteria, and now the bill is coming due.

    No, I don’t want to be that America. We can do better.

  • Going mainstream

    National Security AgencyShould it bother me that the National Security Agency has a website? Or even stranger, that it has a special website just for kids?

    I mean, we’re talking about a government agency that was once so secretive that “NSA” was supposed to stand for “No Such Agency.” Weird.

    Hmmmm… even weirder, I just noticed that the NSA website is running—of all things—Cold Fusion, and according to Netcraft, it’s actually sitting on Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0. What the hell? One of the premier spook agencies of the United States and they’re running Cold Fusion on Windows???

    To further enhance the cognitive dissonance experience, check out question number 16 from the FAQ:

    I’ve seen NSA/CSS in movies and on TV. Do you assassinate people? Do you secretly perform experiments on us?

    Because we work with highly sensitive information, we are frequently the subject of speculation – and highly imaginative and creative fictitious pieces in the media. However, it is important to distinguish fact from fiction. The fact is that the Executive Order 12333 (EO 12333) strictly prohibits any intelligence agency from conducting these unethical activities, and we strictly abide by that Order.