lavendertook

My deepest sympathies to my UK peeps on what seems to be going down with elections. I share your fears. Why so many awful people would rather go down with their ships than share them on both sides of the Atlantic--I dunno. I just don't know. Rest. Then fight some more and play when you can, because that's what we do no matter how many things they break.

Being falsely accused of sexual assault has got to be, in part, infuriating, if indeed you think that's what is happening to you. But even if you are falsely accused (2 to maybe 10% of sexual assault accusations), it is still nothing compared to being sexually assaulted and having your personhood violently and intimately reduced to someone else's whims and assumption of greater personhood. Nothing. Nada.

False accusation when at a height of power, which is what the presumption of innocence here assumes, such a source of ultimate angst for the Republicans as Collins affirmed yesterday does not undermine your ability to survive and perform to your abilities like being assaulted and abused does--of course this is backed up by science and you have to actually embrace scientific method to believe this and many Republicans do not.

Being falsely accused could undermine the height of your aspirations, but not your ability to survive--there is a major difference there. Only the extreme privilege of being wealthy, connected, white, and male could make someone think otherwise.

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I'm going to write about Trump's dangerous cooption of a famous quote, the wonderfulness of Doug Jones, and a bad idea Jones stated that I hope he can correct.

Giving up Liberty for Prosperity

I'm not a Twitter user and found my peace of mind easier to maintain when I stay away from media reports on Trump's feed, and just note the topic on which he spoke; was it racist, sexist, islamiphobic, etc. rather than reading for the quote.

But I read the speech Trump released yesterday and am stuck on his theft of Benjamin Franklin's phrasing to state, "Any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both." This time, it's our liberty he's swindling from us with his paraphrase.

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Although I prefer DreamWidth because they operate with integrity, I will continue to crosspost to LJ since I still have friends on LJ who won't come here, and for other reasons personal and political I will elaborate below.

I don't understand all the legalize of the TOS change on LJ, but as I understand it, I don't think it compromises my USian privacy anymore than it did before. It's no worse and probably better than Facebook. And even Dreamwidth can't protect me from a skilled and determined hacker gunning for me, so when I post privately, I do it with the understanding that what I post under lock can at some time be revealed against my will, and write accordingly.

I don't like being treated rudely as LJ staff just did with the stupid sign-and-then-we'll-unlock-your-LJ trick, but that's nothing new with LJ--they just find new and creative ways to be rude all the time out of disregard for us English language users/assumed Westerners because we are a minuscule constituency of users for them compared to their Russian base, and I suspect they resent our influence and I can't blame them for that. Facebook does like crap without the Western hegemonic provocation issues. I'm not going to hold Russians accountable for being rude to English language users as English language users without knowing more about this bunch than I do right now and what relationship they have to the regime that helped install a big orange tool in the White House.

As far as solidarity with Russian resistors go, as far as I know, LJ staff may be doing all they can to keep the service alive for them under Putin's regime. All the new rules seem to apply to Russian LJ's that have over 3000 members. Maybe they have been forced to do that by Putin's regime to negate large sites for resistance. However, my understanding is that the TOS changes made clear these rules do not apply to LJ's with fewer members, and that gives resistors ways to still disseminate info and connect, especially with smaller linked local sites. Until I find evidence that they are a tool of Putin, I'm going to assume they are allowing what room for resistance they can. And as long as that is a possibility, then I want to support them. The Russian resistance may still be able to use LJ as an avenue for connection--the more dispersed avenues the better. So support for LJ from outside the Russian regime might be a minuscule help to them.

If LJ/SUP turns out to be a tool of Putin's regime, the help we as outsiders are giving them is pretty minuscule as well, so I don't see reason to abandon ship over this latest wave. I just can't presume to know what effect LJ has for Russians, their member states, and their unhappily occupied territories in functioning under the new TOS and what use it will be to them.

I welcome opposing arguments from anyone who knows more about LJ's situation and politics than I do and can teach me. Yes, I am deliberately having this discussion in public; What'SUP, if LJ staffers happen to notice me here. :-P

I was supposed to go into HQ today, but I came down with a bug last night, so fed the cats in the morning, called my supervisor, and slept until early afternoon. Then I teleworked for a few hours with my organic space heater Tuxie scrunched next to me on the couch, and Moo not far away. I've been getting sick a lot the last several weeks with weakness, aches, and runny nose, but this one comes with a low fever and chills, just to be extra-special. Being able to telework and kitties make it better, though. I cancelled my breast MRI appt for tomorrow and rescheduled it for next week--good plan since my fever has been inching up a little all day. I plan to sleep a little later tomorrow and then telework, depending on what the fever decides to do.

Everyday the news is filled with new horrors. The road to impeaching Buttercup is opening up, but what will come behind him isn't any better--it's whether you want your horrors chaotically broadcasted, or slower, quieter horrors.

There have been ICE raids in Highlandtown, Baltimore--the agents wear jackets saying police, which is so misleading--and there was a big protest on Sunday, but I wasn't up to going,and probably won't be up for the ones coming up. But as my friend P says, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so there will, unfortunately, be plenty more opportunities to help, and every week is a good week to call one's legislators (unless you live in DC and don't get any representation, so you are pretty screwed). My state is kind of awesome. Go Attorney General Frosh! Go Maryland!

Sorry I haven't been posting much--I want to post more pics, but most of what I have to say lately isn't uplifting. Except for my fluffy cats! Go cats!

Back from the Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) protest, and very tired and late for bed, but very glad I went and made my own sign this time. This was another high-spirited and peaceful protest of about 2000 people, with a nice split level effect, and shrubberies, too. I will post many more pics, along with the Annapolis rally from last week another day, hopefully; that's if Trump would just slow down wth the horridness a little so I'm not going to five more protests by next weekend . . .



And thank you to lbilover for the lovely icon.

Here are more pics from Saturday's Women's March in Annapolis.

Adults and kids in purple and pussy hats and doggies heading down to the gathering spot at the city docks:



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OK, that helped. It did.

Professor-In-Chief Obama just gave us his best commencement speech and is sending us graduates out into the cruel, cruel world.

Where was Sasha though?

Sooooo it's looking more likely than ever that Trump might be impeached sooner than later. Four years of putting up with Pence . . . will that be more bearable . . . maybe--I dunno. All the health in the world to RBG, please.

May it be 2 years of an obstructionist minority Democratic Congress followed in 2018 with an effective Democratic majority. Thursdays I can make my phone calls . . .

I need some new SNL skits.

Happy Thanksgiving Day! I hope all who celebrate are having a good one. And to those who don't, OK, you can have a good day too. I'm so grateful to have all my friends here--I'm not sure how you all fit yourselves into my tiny macbook air, but I'm glad you did. <3


Another October pic I took by the lake.

I had a yummy T-Day meal with zlabya and her DH and her BF. I made my signature salad, and she made a yummy chicken, sweet potato casserole, and apple crisp. Excellent company to hang out with.

Auditing the Vote

If you missed the news, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for US President started raising funds yesterday to audit and recount the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Best comment ever reported as seen on twitter by ambree40: lanyard @lanyardigan 8h8 hours ago: Please, God: like Gollum, let Jill Stein have a totally unforeseen and critical purpose. :-D

I contributed yesterday and watching it grow has been so exciting--they're up to $4.3 million and counting. Go here if you want to contribute or just watch the donations flood in.

A decade back I was following the voting integrity push, belonged to Common Cause, and presented a paper to Congresspeople involved in the movement. When I canvassed for John Kerry down in Florida on election weekend, I listened to poll workers who saw voting machines flip their votes from Kerry to Bush.

We've made great strides in creating a paper trail in many districts in this country to check these problems, but paper backup ballots don't do any good if you never audit and take a look at them. It's just a gigantic green flag to hackers, Russian gov't connected or from anywhere, if they know we're not verifying the optical scanners by checking some of the paper ballots. We should be auditing a sampling of ballots in every state before we announce the count, and we should get used to not having instant gratification and wait a week or 3 before announcing a winner, as grueling as it would have felt to do that this year.

So, without getting my hopes too high that they will find something that will overturn the horrid results of this election (but seeing that Trump has a pattern of doing the things he accuses others of and Bannon is involved with data-mining operations, how could we not check this out), the recount here is just a needed thing to ensure the integrity of the vote. As long as we're having elections close enough that one side wins the electors and the other side the popular vote, vote audits should be made an automatic procedure through legislation. We're doing a good thing here, whatever the outcome of the recount.

Fraudster Elect--Fraudster Elect--Fraudster Elect--Fraudster Elect--Fraudster Elect--Fraudster Elect

What the cast of Hamilton said to Pence last night was fabulous and well done and beautiful, and all over the front pages of all the news outlets, but why, oh why has mention of the fact that our President Elect just paid a settlement of $25 million for fraud and stealing millions from hopeful US victims already disappeared from the front page and headlines of the Washington Post?

PRESIDENT ELECT TRUMP COMMITTED FRAUD. FRAUDSTER ELECT TRUMP. His lawyer's spin that he would have won if he fought it is bogus--a settlement is acceptance that he is guilty as charged.

We must not allow the facts to be buried, and this one needs to be highlighted as his conflict of interests are investigated and he tries to take the US and the whole world for a ride.

From a great snarky op-ed in the Washington Post about Steve Bannon by Alexandra Petri:

I have no doubt that a real racist sexist chauvinist white supremacist will be easy to spot. “I am coming for minorities now,” he will say. “I am an actual racist. I am, literally, Hitler, or at the very least Goebbels.”

Read the whole piece here. It's fun and thinky. And no, no giving him a chance--he's made himself perfectly clear already where he stands and it's hateful and a danger to democracy.

I called my Congresspeople, Senator Barbara Mikulski and Rep Steny Hoyer today to ask them to protest the appointment of Steve Bannon, that he has every right to publish alt-right screeds, but I do not want him in my government and how frightened to the core his being there makes me. As lbilover said we cannot allow them to normalize what Trump is doing, let alone white supremacists and neo-nazis as viable representatives of our democracy.

If you are feeling as anxious as me, please call your Congresspeople:

http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

Thanks to rydra_wong for the quick links and she has many more good links on why it is better to call than email our Congresspeople or sign petitions, why it is better to call them at their state offices rather than the above linked DC offices, and script ideas in her post here. But just stick to calling the DC offices if doing the extra work to get the state offices will delay you or use up more spoons than you have.

Funding suggestions if you can spare it:

Good organizations to contribute to for protecting all of us and especially our most vulnerable and immediately threatened Dreamer kids and Muslim Americans are the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Anti-Defamation League.

And since I've been seeing sexist arguments on the left that it's too risky now to run a woman for president in the immediate future, block that noise and if you have more funds, contribute to Emily's List. Since Christian extremists have long been normalized in US government and are now in control, Planned Parenthood needs funds now more than ever.

Feel free to post other suggestions in comments.

Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/215038.html with comments

I'm really sad about the untimely passing of Gwen Ifill. Her voice was part of the soundtrack for my maturing political awareness. What a hard week to pass on, but probably a hastener for letting go. Safe passage and rest in peace.




Light Beyond the Gate. Yesterday's sunset by the lake before the moonrise.

I watched the President's press conference, and his looking like he was controlling himself from laughing at how unprepared Trump is was kind of heartening, his "just wait--he wont' know what hit him" look. I really hope infighting will render him and his cabinet ineffectual in a way that lessons the harm they will try to enact. Hope is all we have.

Just wrote a short ficlet about a meeting between Trump and his handlers November 9th and what the dynamic might be. It's pretty dark. Trigger warning for PG bondage imagery.

( Kingmaker )

If the stats are good in this article (and that's a big "if" until we see more discussion on and examination of this, and the results are still not all in), only 55% of eligible voters bothered to vote in this election--the lowest turnout in 20 years.

The good news is that only a quarter of eligible voters voted for Trump, so less than a quarter of the population. So 3/4 of the US did not approve Trump nor wanted him. Most USians just stood by in their not-my-problem-field and let it happen. Which is really the US I know. And it's oddly comforting.

At least I will be oddly comforted by the part that was not the result of voter suppression efforts that kept people of color from getting to the polls. And I really want to find out who is doing the best work to investigate all cases of voter suppression and donate--I suspect that would be the Southern Poverty Law Center, but maybe there's another organization working on this. Any ideas, flisties?

So keep in mind that most people will stand by and do nothing if the Trumpies come for us, but there are still more of us who are working to resist than there are Trumpies since Hillary did win the popular vote. Trump only represents 1/4 of our voting public, not nearly a half of the voters. I am really relieved that this could be the result of low turnout and apathy and not a surge of new voters coming out of the woodwork. The shadow is a passing thing. But only if we work to discourage more nonvoters to join his ranks.

Our best hope is that some of these nonvoters are surprised and horrified by Trump's win enough and all he and his minions do to horrify us all further that a few of them will come out and join us for midterm elections in 2018 and get rid of Trump and Pence in 2020.

Do not stop harping on the fact that Hillary won the popular vote every chance you get and a slim amount of voters could have changed the electoral vote. Every vote really does count. We only need a few of them to wake up out of their stupors to get our country back in 4 years. We need to keep ringing the alarms and help pull them out of bed.

There are so many horrible and deplorable white people and misogynists in this country and they won last night.

And let's not fall for the classist narrative that a lot of the press is upholding. Do not ignore that statistics show that the backbone of Trump's support is the same as Republicans have always had--wealthy people of varying education levels, mostly white men and the women who love and are related to them, and their only concern is to not pay taxes. They do not care who gets thrown under the bus as long as they keep all their stuff. They are supported by poor white people who hope to be them one day, but they are not the backbone--the wealthy and well off are and they are very quiet about what they are doing. They do not attend political rallies--they make phone calls and transfer money.

We have to go on and look out for each other and those more vulnerable than us. It's going to be harder still for a while. The fight continues.

Senator Hillary Clinton voted to create a law that closed a tax loophole that had allowed robber barons like Trump to steal money from the American people. Pass it on.

The NY Times published a decent article on Trump's taxes today--something the media has spent little enough investigative reporting on while they keep reporting on the faux email scandal, so it's time they did so. Where are the human interest stories of all the people who lost jobs and homes and health because Trump stiffed them and stole their labor by not paying them, the way he stiffed the American people by not paying his fair share of taxes? I call this theft on a massive scale.

But there's an important factoid buried in this article: it begins with Trump's claim that Clinton never did anything to stop people like him from being able to avoid paying these taxes. Guess what? It isn't until the end of the article that he is proved a liar in this allegation--Senator Clinton voted to close just that loophole. She did! Here's from the first and last paragraphs of the article:

Donald J. Trump proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire — loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate. “Why didn’t she ever try to change those laws so I couldn’t use them?” Mr. Trump asked during a campaign rally last month.

In any event, Mr. Trump can no longer benefit from the same maneuver. Just as Congress acted in 1993 to ban stock-for-debt swaps by corporations, it acted in 2004 to ban equity-for-debt swaps by partnerships.
Among the members of Congress who voted to finally close the loophole: Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.

I understand the writers delayed presenting Hillary's vote to close the loophole to the end of the article to create a compelling narrative frame and clinch line at the end, which is piss poor journalistic writing! Between the first and last paragraph is an exploration of arcane tax law and many readers may not get to the important fact at the end.

This fact needed to be up front. Trump's repeated claim that Clinton did nothing about this tax law is a complete lie. She voted to close it. While Trump was hoodwinking us and his workers, Clinton was working to make things better for all of us. She did a good job. We need to let her keep doing a good job. Pass it on.

Then take a break and look at these pretty leaves I saw down by the lake here:

Finally, a campaign slogan for my whole family!

I told baranduin I'd post the whole quote this came from, so here it is:

On 10/13/16, Marina Fang of the Huffington Post quoted Hillary Clinton:

“'It makes you want to turn off the news. It makes you want to unplug the internet or just look at cat GIFs,' Mrs. Clinton told donors in San Francisco on Thursday, making her first remarks on Mr. Trump’s treatment of women since several came forward to accuse him.

'I’ve watched a lot of cats do a lot of weird and interesting things,” she said, drawing a few laughs. “But we have a job to do. And it’ll be good for people and for cats.'”

I think "Good for People and For Cats" makes a great bumper sticker.

I'm a lot more hopeful these days that we'll get Hillary for president in 2 weeks, but I'm nasty like that. I'm with purrrr!!!



Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/209097.html with comments

The Guardian had an interesting spread today of a photographer's work on the flight path of birds through sequential photos. I'm paging lbilover on this one.

And if you're not following Nate Silver's site featuring election poll data, he wrote up a very interesting article on the differences in the electoral map if only men or only women were voting, with brief musings on science fictional scenarios for voting being restricted to women only. Well done, Nate, well done. Those maps say an awful lot.

FAB NEWS:

From the Fair And Balanced Newsroom:

Hillary Clinton Refuses to Release Pictures of Urinating in a Public Fountain

Hillary Clinton has been proven to be a human being, although statements of this fact have not yet been released by her campaign. Furthermore, they have failed to disclose that she is subject to disease and aging, eats daily, how many times a day she uses the toilet, and exactly how many sheets of toilet paper she uses per bathroom visit. "I think Hillary probably doesn't use toilet paper. I haven't seen her use any." Donald Trump announced at a rally earlier today. Many speculate what she may be hiding about her toilet paper use, or lack thereof.

It has been noted that, unlike Donald Trump, she has 2 X chromosomes and is therefore frail, lies, and isn't very fun to listen to. "Her voice reminds me of my mother, my mother-in-law, my ex-wife, and my sixth grade reading teacher. For some reason, Donald Trump's voice doesn't affect me that way." Kenny Mipainonly, a Trump supporter in Fort Wayne, Indiana explains. "I just want Muslims and Mexicans thrown out of the country and have a beer with David Duke, and it deeply offends me to be called mean names like "racist" and "xenophobic" by some b***** for stating my opinion."

Donald Trump stated that it is very unfortunate that Hillary Clinton has 2 X chromosomes and he will reveal audits of his Y chromosome very soon. Furthermore, he is known to be inhuman, and therefore not subject to aging. When asked if he is subject to oxidation and rust, he said this is an advantage and makes him stronger and a better leader, as anyone can plainly see.

Because Hillary Clinton has been revealed by an FBI commission to be human, there is much speculation as to whether she will be replaced as a candidate for the presidency by Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, or anyone else attached to a white penis, and therefore harboring the possibility of immortality, as well as the hope to surpass the arc of Vladimir Putin's urine trajectory in a public fountain.

There is much speculation about this and we will continue to report every speculation as the utmost newsworthy item to report. We will continue to demand pictures of Hillary Clinton's lack of urinating in public fountains on a daily, even hourly basis to best serve our deserving public until such demands are met.

First off, here's the green heron pic I promised lbilover. I took this pic at the swampy entry pond by the lake the other week. It's such a different looking bird when its neck is all tucked in.



It's way too hot this weekend to be walking around the lake, maybe too hot to go to the gym to swim. So I saw Ghostbusters yesterday--it was a fun piece of fluff.  Seeing a group of women working together in a zany way without being objectified was much more important than it felt to me while viewing it. The feeling was an "of course, no big deal that women are people."  The big deal was the hunger I felt all these years for the depictions that should have been there all along. Once it’s set right, it’s just normal and to be taken for granted. 

This is why it's hard for leftists, liberals, and progressives to generate enthusiasm.  It's hard to celebrate something that should be taken for granted because it is so obviously the right way things should go according to values based on the notion of equality. That is the challenge--it only becomes visceral in comparison to the past--it's a two step process to re-ignite the enthusiasm that got burned up getting to that point.  It involves reflection, not just immediate feeling.

Backlash is fueled by the visceral excitement of tearing down, while projecting the feeling of fighting back. It generates its own enthusiasm--we have our work cut out for us in pushing back against it.

I hope the Dem's can put on an inspiring convention this week. I hope it is made clear how much more progressive Sanders has made HRC’s platform—that isn’t lost with the choice of a more moderate VP—and one of the only choices whom removing from Congress would not lose a seat to the Republicans; Virginia has a Democratic governor who will designate a Democratic replacement. And it’s not lost by the revealing of the bullshit the party partisans plotting against Sanders had to say, as if we didn't know this already. Like Obama, the HRC/Kaine ticket is still to the left of where Bill Clinton and Gore stood—not a lot, but I’ll take it—it’s progress I am happy to get after years of Reagan and Bushes and in the scary face of what the Republicans are fielding now. Throwing into the mix the first woman president is not a consolation prize and not a Thatcher/May pyrrhic non-victory—HRC is far better than them and on the moderate left and will continue the hard won progress Obama achieved, more so if we can move the court and Congress left, which, unfortunately, would have been harder to achieve if she removed Warren from the senate to be her VP.

Untrustworthiness is a misogynist meme, maybe the most ancient woman hating meme, being used against HRC to dampen our enthusiasm for her. “Lock her up” shares the cadence of “Burn the witch.” It’s just as violent rhetoric, and as repellent and dishonest as appropriating Michelle Obama’s words and saying it is no big deal, while bashing everything she stands for. Notice the Republicans made sure women were responsible for that oh so unimportant lie they perpetuated--you can't accuse Melania or her speechwriter of plagiarizing, as they were set up to do, without furthering the "women lie" meme. I don't know if they were clever enough to stick them with it deliberately, but they are clever enough to make hay with its results.

The thing that HRC can’t say about the email issue is that we have a long way to go to making government email secure because no one can keep up with the hacking of the changing technology at this time and government systems are large and, therefore, harder to secure. Look at the big OPM breach of personal data this last year. In light of this, and with security on the internet being an ongoing problem for everyone everywhere piecing it together as best we can, the email issue is such a non-issue. And I would not be surprised if HRC’s private server was more secure than the government servers could be made at the time and kept vital information more secure. However, she can’t say this without giving the Republicans more fuel to put down government, the only imperfect instrument we have to defend us against corporations (such as arms manufacturers) through regulation and to put our money to use for services to benefit everyone, including those corporations, but only if we vote.

It's still up to each of us to inspire ourselves and push forward and believe we deserve a better government than the sad vision the Republicans presented last week. We must do this. Go Democrats for a great week!