…it’s nice to have something to celebrate…& I know it’s not thanksgiving but I’m continually grateful that this place…is…& has been…& with any luck will continue to be…so…err…well done…&…ta muchly

…there might even be a few things that hove into view that…speak to that part…so to speak…but…while we’re at it…& on the off-chance that when I was muttering about empathising with alan moore reflecting that having gotten drunk & said he’d be a wizard he kind of had to do that, now…it wasn’t clear what I was on about…this place came to be…& we pretty much all came to be here…on account of places that ceased to be…so it was a bit more than five years ago…though not much…when I thought I did something else entirely…to wit…I made a burner account on kinja & tried to compile a set of handles to follow that would give me approximately the feed the sites had effectively just stripped out of my downtime

…quite how I thought I’d get away with that being a passive action under the circumstances…I don’t honestly know…I know I picked the name & left a thing or two on the “user” page that I hoped would tend to make said list of folks look favorably on their new follower & not assume I was an opportunistic troll the way a lot of accounts you hadn’t heard of that just got created & started following you had a way of turning out to be…or a spam bot…or any of the other occupational hazards we get to live without these days in our little pocket reality here…but…what can I say…sometimes we just don’t see what’s right in front of us…so…it only took…actually I don’t know how long it took…I was…busy for a while there…& it was fun…& time flies…but also sort of stretches when peered back at down memory lane…could have only been hours…might have been a whole day…but at some point it struck me that I might have been thinking solely of myself when I started compiling my lurkers cheat-sheet to comments that didn’t feel like time wasted…but there wasn’t anything necessarily preventing it from taking advantage of a bunch of the less-often-travelled aspects of the platform & being a place as much as an account…so…in a bunch of ways…this was my “Oh dear – I’m going to have to do that now, aren’t I?” moment

Restless In Perpetuity

…so…anyway…until spider turns up to practice attack journalism

Until Jerusalem…

…I’d like it on the record that it’s literally everyone involved that isn’t me that deserves the credit for any & all of this…I’d most likely still be winding up trolls in the greys of what’s left of kinja at this point had I been left to my own devices…or gone back to lurking…which quite frankly is my natural online state pretty much everywhere else…that wasn’t meant to sound like “you have only yourselves to blame for putting up with this”…just for the record…but it would be fair to say that I do miss the times when there were so many people that weren’t me saying so many things that all my wittering didn’t really stand out…let alone loom in walls of text profuse enough to start thinking about using tsunamis as an allegory…so while I’m falling down this post like the keyboard is a pachinko machine…I know there remain a few…maybe more than a few but a few that I know of for sure…folks who frequent the joint but pipe up infrequently…& I don’t want to twist anybody’s arm…but every so often I like to remind you that when you do say stuff it reliably improves my day…so…in a not-altogether-altruistic way…I would not object to that happening more?

…you can blame it on misery-loves-company if you like…but…most people love company at least some of the time…& these are crazy times…how the hell else do you explain jill stein still fucking with the odds…under the circumstances?

I just want to take a moment with this particular question, because there is so much that gets lost in the conversation about women’s reproductive rights. I want the men in the arena to bear with me on this. Because there’s more at stake than just protecting a woman’s choice to give birth.
[…]
See, fellas, most of us women, we suck up our pain and deal with it alone. We don’t share our experiences with anyone, not with our partners, our friends or even our doctors.

Look, a woman’s body is complicated business, y’all. Yes, it brings life, and that’s a beautiful thing, but even when we are not bearing children, there is so much that can go wrong at any moment.
Every woman here knows what I’m talking about: an unexpected lump, an abnormal pap smear or mammogram, an infection, a blockage, all of which could be early signs of a variety of life-threatening cancers.

In those terrifying moments when something goes wrong, y’all, which will happen at some point to the vast majority of women in this country, let me tell you, it feels like the floor falls out from under us.

In those moments, all we have to rely on is our medical system. In those dark moments, all we have to rely on is our faith in a higher power and the experience of doctors to get us the care we need in a timely manner.

Look, I don’t expect any man to fully grasp how vulnerable this makes us feel, to understand the complexities of our reproductive health experiences. In all honesty, most of us as women don’t fully understand the breadth and depth of our own reproductive lives.

That’s because our experiences are often neglected by science. There’s a huge disparity in research funding for women’s health. If you happen to look like me and report pain, you’re more likely to be ignored, even by your own doctors, studies show.

So let me take a minute to help folks, especially the men in our lives, get a better sense of what could happen if we keep dismantling parts of our reproductive care system piece by piece, as I fear Donald Trump will do. I want folks to understand the chilling effect, not just on critical abortion care, but on the entirety of women’s health, all of it.

…see, now…michelle…I understand…ms stein…not so much?

Just imagine the profound effects for all of us if Donald Trump wins the election.

…be nice to get to stop doing that, frankly…feels like I’ve had no choice but to spend at least some of every day for a decade doing that…& I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy

Do you think Donald Trump is thinking about the consequences for the millions of women who will be living in medical deserts? Does anyone think he has the emotional maturity and foresight to come up with a plan to protect us?

Y’all, we are teetering on the edge.

…& that might be an understatement…israel won’t hear anything but its own apostate gospel about putting the infidel to the sword & just voted to outlaw UNRWA

Israeli parliament votes to ban Unrwa from Israel within 90 days [Guardian]

…& that’s just the tip of the shit-news iceberg we’re steaming towards without bothering to check if we’re on the titanic…so…speaking for myself…those fingernails by which I’m clinging to the crumbling edge of my grip on what passes for sanity…owe a disproportionate degree of their resilience to this place…& you lot…& it’s genuinely difficult to cram into characters this size quite how big a deal that is if you happen to be me…so…before I get back to pinching snatches of that speech of michelle’s…if any of you should happen to be feeling short of reasons to feel good about yourselves…feel free to try the idea that you play an ongoing part in me not going all the way crazy on for size…hopefully it’ll seem like a net positive…& hence something to feel good about

…if…conversely…or possibly peversely…you’d rather make me crazy…my advice is save yourself the effort…the sheer overwhelming extent of the array of stuff & people who are doing a better job of it than you could likely hope to surely ought to be enough to make it feel like a waste of everybody’s time…although…if that were enough to stop some people…let’s face it…we wouldn’t be here, now…would we?

So to the men who love us, let me just try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the wealthiest nation on Earth, keeps revoking basic care from its women, and how it will affect every single woman in your life.

Your girlfriend could be the one in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out-of-state or overseas, or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic closed up.

Your wife and mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care.

Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy.

Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away.

This will not just affect women. It will affect you and your sons. The devastating consequences of teen pregnancies won’t just be borne by young girls, but also by the young men who are the fathers. They, too, will have their dreams of going to college, their entire futures totally upended by an unwanted pregnancy.

If you and your partner are expecting a child, you’ll be right by her side at the checkups, terrified if her blood pressure is too high, or if there’s an issue with the placenta, or if the ultrasound shows that an embryo has implanted in the wrong place, and the doctors aren’t sure that they can intervene to keep her safe.

If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late. You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.

Then there is the tragic but very real possibility that in the worst-case scenario, you just might be the one holding flowers at the funeral. You might be the one left to raise your children alone.

See, these are just some of the ways women die during childbirth. I don’t want to be a downer, y’all, but in many cases, there is no warning, and things can go bad very quickly. When it happens, every second of hesitation or delay can lead to devastating outcomes.

I am asking you, from the core of my being, to take our lives seriously. Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men, who have no clue or do not care about what we as women are going through, who don’t fully grasp the broad-reaching health implications that their misguided policies will have on our health outcomes.

The only people who have standing to make these decisions are women with the advice of their doctors. We are the ones with the knowledge and experience to know what we need.

So please, please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown a deep contempt for us. Because a vote for him is a vote against us, against our health, against our worth.

Let me tell you all to think that the men that we love could be either unaware or indifferent to our plight is simply heartbreaking. It is a sad statement about our value as women in this world. It is both a setback in our quest for equity and a huge blow to our country’s standing as a world leader on issues of women’s health and gender equity.

So fellas, before you cast your vote, ask yourselves: What side of history do you want to be on?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/opinion/michelle-obama-abortion-trump-election.html

…speaking of history

I can tell you with confidence that the various and sundry racist, misogynist and sexist insults hurled at Ms. Harris must sting. They are a reminder of the disgraceful lengths that Republican senators took to shame me when I challenged Clarence Thomas’s fitness to be appointed to the Supreme Court. What helped me stay composed was knowing that I was not the first woman to have her sanity, truthfulness and virtue falsely impugned. Even now, when I am attacked, my mother’s firm but gentle admonition rings in my ears: “You know who you are and what you can do.” Lesson learned: Never let the people who despise you define you.
[…]
Truth be told, “dignity” and many similar words are loaded. We rarely talk about men’s grace, particularly in the political arena. We often save that conversation for women, perhaps because a man’s leadership worthiness is assumed, while a woman has to prove herself highly competent to lead. In today’s politics, hubris, dissembling, anger, fearmongering and personal grievances are brandished and accepted as proof of power, confidence and competence. Equanimity itself is preyed upon as a sign of weakness.

Take the combative interview — more like a public clash — conducted by Fox News’s Bret Baier with Ms. Harris, as more than seven million people watched. Ms. Harris was resolute. Yet Mr. Baier’s constant interruptions and his talking down to and over Ms. Harris was irritatingly familiar. I’ve heard countless stories of those who, because of their gender, sex, race, sexuality or ethnicity, routinely experience the same in our workplaces and other public forums.

Maintaining integrity in politics can be a hard needle to thread. Ms. Harris must defend herself against the assaults and also vigorously prosecute the case against Mr. Trump. In taking the approach she has, I think Ms. Harris is doing something notable: She is letting us know what she values by talking about the humanity of others. She has spoken movingly about the caregiving that she gave her mother during her treatment for cancer and how “it’s about dignity for that individual.” The story Ms. Harris tells about her high school friend Wanda is a story of dignity and agency, both Wanda’s and hers. Ms. Harris sought her mother’s permission for Wanda to live with the Harris family, because Wanda’s stepfather was molesting her. As I see the story, Wanda gained safety as well as a chance to restore authority over her own body. And Ms. Harris experienced the honor that comes from helping someone else and learned the importance of acting on her instincts about right and wrong.
[…]
Since the making of the U.S. Constitution, people in this country have voiced their yearning to enjoy the rights, privileges and immunities it offers. Their appeals make up a uniquely American songbook that each American president has inherited. It is filled with lyrics that reflect the sovereignty claims of Indigenous populations and the freedom petitions of those who arrived from other continents, some in chains. In time, the rights movements grew, led by those whose ancestors suffered the incomparable indignity of chattel slavery and those who were denied full citizenship and enfranchisement because of their race, gender, ethnicity, or gender or sexual identity. And today, those drawn to the American democracy to escape violence and political and economic death add to the appeals. As the poet Langston Hughes reminded us, they “too, sing America” and share a common theme of the recognition of human decency.

Anita Hill: The Smearing of Kamala Harris [NYT]

…the anita hills & christine blasey fords of history may or may not find the part where they tried to be a comfort…but thanks to them the rest of us get to…cold comfort though it may be some days

At a rally on Saturday night in Michigan, the former first lady reflected, with palpable disbelief and outrage, on the double standard she believes Ms. Harris faces.

“When you lay out the options, this choice isn’t even close,” Mrs. Obama told the crowd. “But whether it’s online or in the media or in our social circles, there are folks who say they’re not sure about Kamala. They accuse her of not providing enough policy detail. Some wonder: Do we really know her? Is she too aggressive? Is she not aggressive enough? There are folks sowing seeds of doubt about whether she’s who she appears to be.

“Voters have every right to ask hard questions of any candidate seeking office,” she continued, “but can someone tell me why we are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent?”

…people decry the use of passive terminology by the police…because attempting to rhetorically frame something into a probably-guilty-of-something-if-you-let-us-think-about-it of their own free will hurling themselves at terminal velocity into the path of innocent bullets just hanging in the air completely inert through nobody’s fault but god’s…when what you mean is “we shot someone we ought not to have pointed guns at”…is hard to swallow…but…like that last season of the wire…when the press is under the lens…it’s somehow a softer focus

The question suggested an impatience not just with this campaign, but with the entire political career of Donald J. Trump, and the perception that he has now twice competed against accomplished female politicians who faced scrutiny and doubts that Mr. Trump, time and again, is allowed to escape.

Mrs. Obama and other prominent Democrats are now, in the final stretch of the campaign, giving voice to a frustration that has animated many Harris supporters from the get-go. Some frame it explicitly as a matter of race and gender; others argue that the imbalance is ultimately a function of Mr. Trump, whose unfettered political style and erratic speechifying have defied conventions and confounded efforts to hold him responsible, accountability lost in a fog of euphemism.

…& I’m not trying to say that her being a her doesn’t play a leading role in her being treated different to him…but…just the other day I listened to a respected & long-serving (& male, white & not-young) correspondent critique her inability to make a persuasive case to demographics he wouldn’t even try to speak to while levelling the critique in a manner guaranteed to soothe the savage breast of a pontificating white dude who “just feels” like she should have done a better job of persuading him…but doesn’t think he should have to read the pages of policy specifics he’ll happily ding her for not spoonfeeding him in nice soundbites that oversimplify & misrepresent a complex reality…& sees it as giving credit where it’s due to talk about two idiots swapping idiocy for three hours as her opponent playing to his strengths in a way that makes “the race” a thing that’s going his way over hers…&…if looks could kill…being on the other end of a streaming broadcast signal wouldn’t have kept that dude from pushing up the dasies…& that can’t be entirely explained by incipient misogyny…so…in passing…speaking of the BBC…here’s a couple of things

A 2-part Jonathan Pie US election special [BBC Sounds]

…&…well

3 installments of a thing about whether or not we’d be able to tell if democracy took one to the back of the head [BBC Sounds]

The notion of a double standard was discussed on Sunday at a panel of Black Democratic women in a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala., where Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas expressed aggravation at the perceived imbalance. “We’ve got one candidate that’s allowed to be lawless while the other one has to be flawless,” she said, as the crowd of predominantly women murmured in agreement. (The CNN commentator Van Jones used similar phrasing last week.) “They’re not taking the same test. One has the remedial test. It has extra time and all of the extra things, whereas she’s taking the A.P. test.”

…you’d…think it would be hard to overstate…not to mention unnecessary

Tamika H. Reed, a lawyer and investment banker who is married to the mayor of Montgomery, framed her frustration explicitly in terms of race and gender. “We’re defending the competency of a woman who is phenomenal in and of itself, and who puts forth everything that any Black female would strive to be,” she said. “We are at the stage where we’re having to defend that against a convicted felon.”

…but…c’mon

Trump supporters, including some commentators who acknowledge his inarticulate free associations, say the real double standard at work is a liberal press that gives Ms. Harris a free pass while seizing on every utterance of Mr. Trump as evidence of a slipping mind, or fascist inclinations, or criminality.

…uh huh…why would they do that…it’s a fuckin’ mystery to – oh, wait

Vance says ‘we have to stop getting so offended’ when asked about racist jokes at Trump rally [NBC]

…mystifying, is what I meant…it is fucking mystifying how even a truly fucking dumb son of a bitch could possibly need any of this explaining rather than the mere hint of the actual state of current affairs being enough to fucking crush you with the overbearing weight of your consciousness of all the hows & whys & wherefores of what makes it…FUCKING OFFENSIVE YOU OFFENSIVE FUCKING ODIOUS OIK

…sorry

…this is due up…so I ought to STFU…but…some days?

…you know what I mean?

But when reporters note her weaknesses in interviews, or when voters say they need more information about her policy positions, Ms. Harris’s supporters throw up their hands. To them, Mr. Trump’s very candidacy, after he was impeached for inciting insurrection, seems unfathomable.

…well…sure…that’s one reason I find it unfathomable…but…I got plenty more where that came from…& each & every one of the motherfuckers is more than sufficient on their own to put the fact that he’s in the running in the running for proof that humanity has lost its god-damned mind…so maybe it’s unfair to take it out on the press seeming like they’re uniquely delusional in the psychological & linguistic gymnastics they perform to excuse themselves from the picture they’re canaballistically picking over like a carcass that should be dead but somehow isn’t

…but…eh…targets of opportunity, amirite?

Ms. Harris herself has taken pains to avoid discussing any disparity. In an interview on the hip-hop morning radio show “The Breakfast Club” this month, the host, Charlamagne Tha God, accused the news media of acting like Mr. Trump’s was “a normal candidacy,” and making false equivalencies. “What do you think of the double standard?” he asked Ms. Harris. “And is it frustrating for people to say you’re not fit for office, but he is?”

“I can’t let frustration get in the way of doing what I need to do right now,” Ms. Harris said.

Charlamagne has since made the argument to the news media itself, including in a testy exchange last week with the CNN host Anderson Cooper. “Whenever somebody like Colin Kaepernick takes a knee in this country, everybody talks about, ‘Oh, that’s so unpatriotic,’” he said, referring to the Black former N.F.L. quarterback who was castigated for kneeling during the national anthem. “But a guy can say he wants to terminate the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election, and nobody cares?” He returned to a question from Mr. Cooper about whether Ms. Harris would appear on a hostile podcast. “Even me bringing it up now, you brought it back to Kamala and Joe Rogan. Who gives a damn?”

“Nobody’s had an honest conversation about Donald Trump since 2016,” Charlamagne said, to a flustered Mr. Cooper. “There’s always a double standard with Trump.”

…hey, now…I resemble that remark…but I think I’ve been honest…I know you’d have a hard time finding a major publication willing to say the shit I have in their pages…but…I’m not alone…I know that much…still & all…much as I think calling yourself “tha god” is a tad hubristic…when maxi jazz did it he claimed it was an acronym for Grand Oral Disseminator…so…I’ll overlook it on account of the man makes a good point…well, at that

“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” Mrs. Obama said. “But for Trump, we expect nothing at all. No understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”

She opened up a biting critique of Mr. Trump, and of those who shrug him off as funny or harmless. “Too many people are willing to write off his childish, meanspirited antics by saying, ‘Well, Trump’s just being Trump,’ rather than question his horrible behavior,” she said.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/us/elections/michelle-obama-kamala-harris-double-standard.html

…there’s a possible world where she hands him his ass…& he continues to look pretty stupid tryin’ t’eat corn on the cob with NO FUCKING TEETH…but since she won’t get to make him parade through the streets while people fling shit at him & yell “SHAME” until he succumbs to the death of a thousand cuts…even the best case scenario clearly leaves a great deal to be desired…& it might very well be even more irresponsible to have gone about the whole thing like the only possible outcome in a rational deterministic universe was that with that orange cause the effect would be she’d win…but…it feels a bit like the part in a cliff-diving routine where we’re sort of bobbing on the balls of our feet & working up to the deep breath…so…how does it go?

…hail mary…pray for us sinners

…now

…we’ll worry about the hour of our death when it comes to it but for now I’ll be damned if I go before some of these motherfuckers?