I really think everyone needs to calm down. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a plane. He’s just taking a plane from some new friends as a gift. Air Force One is old and unimpressive, and Qatar offered him this swanky, golden luxuriator with wings. What do you want him to do? Do you want him to pay for something they want to give him for free?
Sometimes a country just wants to give you a 400 million dollar plane. Also, Qatar is helping him with Boeing in a bigly way, so the plane is just the cherry on top, and Qatar is getting a luxury golf resort in exchange. There’s a whole thing going on you probably are not understanding.
Yes, there’s the emoluments clause and not taking gifts from foreign governments and worrying about what they’re going to want in return, but that’s just your paranoid thinking. Look at Putin. They’ve had a bromance going for years, and you can see there’s no problem. People get so worried, they’re all ooooh don’t let our president get cozy with a dictator like Vlad, because then Russia might start interfering in our elections or something. But not this president, he doesn’t operate like that.
For example, he was super close with Bibi, and now he’s accepting planes from the same people who back Hamas! He’s happy to accept planes from anyone, see? Just offer him something gold and shiny and he’ll be your friend, too. He’s an equal opportunity grifter, for sale to the highest bidder. There is nothing to worry about.
Anyway, I was stressed for a while, I really was. You probably remember, but I’m starting to realize we’re all going to have heart attacks and strokes if we aren’t careful, and there isn’t going to be any healthcare soon, just supplements. They’re about to gut Medicaid and Planned Parenthood, and the POTUS’ nominee for Surgeon General is a wellness influencer named Casey Means who might offer us discount codes on her glucose monitors as long as we don’t “disrespect life” by using birth control. We need to calm down so we don’t die.
The other day I saw this 60 Minutes interview with Bryan A. Vorndran, head of cybersecurity at the FBI. He was saying that due to Musk, DOGE, Big Balls-and-crew, every American’s Social Security number is now available on the dark web for $2 a piece - and I was like omg, what??! But then this guy in the comments @realamericandick123 said our information has been available on the internet for 20 years and all the morons in the thread should stop whining and get a clue. I looked at his account and he’s only got 42 followers, but he sounded very sure about this.
So, I stopped whining and drove to Trader Joe’s - where I walked by the bagged lettuce even though it’s organic and triple-washed, because we don’t buy bagged lettuce anymore. Because of the whole FDA not testing lettuce, or milk, or worrying about salmonella now. Casey Means loves raw milk by the way, and also Full Moon Ceremonies.
See, I like that kind of thing in small doses from some of my witchy friends who like midnight hikes. If one of my girlfriends called and said hey, I’m going to this ceremony with a bunch of pissed off fifty-something women and their teenage daughters, and we’re going to strip down naked, howl at the moon, curse the patriarchy and skinny dip in the ocean after, I’d probably be like, hell yeah, I’m in, let me grab my daughter. (But also, are we sure there are no men around who are going to ruin this, attack us on the beach, and turn this into a thing that ends up on the nightly news?) Point is, I don’t want witchy from the Surgeon General, I’d like that person to be a little more…what is the word? Science-y.
Anyway, this is the stuff I was thinking about as I walked by the bagged lettuce. I was shaking my head a little, though, because RFK, Jr literally took his little grandkids swimming in Shit’s Creek on Mother’s Day. It’s called Rock Creek, not Shit’s Creek, but same, same. Washington, D.C. has a longstanding ban on swimming or wading in Rock Creek, for both humans and pets, due to “high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens” because sewage ends up there. Pretty sure their mom was watching this go down, so I don’t know what to say. It’s basically Feces Falls. They did the backstroke in E. Coli Canal, and there I was worrying about bagged lettuce.
It got me to thinking about libraries though, and that may seem like a weird segue, but the thing is, this is what you get when people don’t read. You have a bunch of people in power and they don’t read, they never did. Maybe they read the Cliff’s Notes in school or paid people to do their homework, or cheated off someone else’s paper, but RFK, Jr and Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt - and the POTUS, obviously - were not sitting around at the library on a Saturday afternoon devouring The Bluest Eye or In Cold Blood or Gideon’s Trumpet, I can promise you that.
If Karoline Leavitt spent more time at the library growing up, she would know the difference between a lending library and the Library of Congress, and then she would know they are not the same thing. She made it clear she is confused when she defended her boss’s decision to fire Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden because she was putting out “inappropriate books for children” that focused too much on DEI. It’s not that kind of library, honey. People don’t bring their children there to take out books.
By the way, do you know when you sit down in the aisle at Trader Joe’s and hold your head and start laughing these days, people stop to ask if you’re okay?
Carla Hayden isn’t the only one who got fired from the Library of Congress last week, Shira Perlmutter was also fired. She was, until Saturday, the director of the U.S. Copyright Office, appointed by Carla Hayden in 2020. She was fired abruptly, right after she released a report stating that AI companies sometimes violate copyright laws to train their models - a fact any author, screenwriter, or person who writes on the internet could have told you. All our books have been stolen to train AI, but saying that out loud can get you fired, I guess.
Maybe she wasn’t supposed to say that out loud because the POTUS doesn’t want to hear that kind of thing, and neither do his friends. They want AI everywhere with no restrictions, and they’re so serious about it, they just tried to sneak a provision into the big, beautiful, budget bill. They don’t want states to pass any new laws that prevent or restrict AI development in any area - even AI-decision making tech - for the next ten years. That seems like a really long time, and a really bad idea. So odd from the party that’s all about “leaving it to the states” when it comes to women, but I guess not for AI or guns. So basically, they legislate the things they care about. Got it.
Where have we heard about AI decision-making recently?
Oh, I remember. In the United Healthcare case with the CEO and Luigi Mangione. Remember how Brian Thompson had started using AI decision-making tech to deny the claims of really sick people, even though he knew it was denying claims at a rate way too high to be legit - and that it was, therefore, killing people? 90% of the claims denied were reversed when people appealed them, if they lived long enough.
All the president’s men love AI, it’s the Billionaire Boys Club’s favorite tech. Curtis Yarvin is a huge fan, so is Peter Thiel, JD Vance, Zuck, Bezos, and Musk, of course. Only thing - it seems like some people in Memphis are struggling with xAI, Musk’s company, because community members can’t breathe - a thing most people like to be able to do. Apparently, if the turbines you put up for your AI fortress are temporary, then it’s okay to violate EPA regulations, and you don’t need to get permits! Woot!
The other people really interested in AI, aside from every billionaire everywhere doing billionaire things, is the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia. We are apparently great friends now, try to keep up. It makes the plane thing make more sense because Qatar is buying planes from Boeing and everything is for sale. Democracy, decency, common sense, national parks, our data. I’m sure it’s going to be fine.
It seems like the plan is to disappear Brown people without due process, invite white “refugees” from South Africa to the U.S. with open arms, and potentially suspend habeas corpus for reasons that are beyond belief - since that has only ever happened four times, always during blatant, irrefutable, dire emergencies: the Civil War under Abraham Lincoln, in South Carolina during Reconstruction to fight against the Ku Klux Klan, in two provinces in the Philippines in 1905 during an insurrection, and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Someone explain to me how it makes sense now, I’ll be sitting in the frozen section of Trader Joe’s. I may be crying by the time you find me.
I am starting to feel like there are things happening outside our awareness. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I see a bunch of billionaires standing behind the POTUS at the inauguration, and now in Saudi Arabia (Musk was there, yup, you betcha), I see Bezos and Zuck doing what they’re told, I see environmental protections going up in flames - and realize these people don’t care about earth, or us, or our children, or their futures, or the oceans, or wildlife, or resources, or anything at all - except whatever it is they have their eyes on that we don’t know about. We are ants and NPCs in a game they’re playing. They don’t care if we die.
I know they want white babies and acquiescing women at home. Whatever happens in this country, they want control, and they seem to like Gilead. They’ve attracted very strange bedfellows, but I wonder if it’s just a fetish after they’re done destroying and dominating things for the day. Eyes on Mars and AI, rocket launches and a fire sale of all our governments, and whatever resources are valuable. Then they get on the couch, scotch in hand, and we’re like an OnlyFans account - they scroll and see us suffering, and that’s fun for them.
They’re gonna need factory workers on earth for their AI world domination. Mars is where the haves will live, earth is where the have nots will live. I don’t want to think about it much beyond that, but I would bet their vision for Mars is a pretty homogeneous demographic. They probably imagine golden homes with golden toilets and robots to do their bidding. The Jetsons, with AI-powered companions they can train to be exactly the way they want them to be, while the mothers of their human white children live somewhere else - because real women are so annoying and messy with all their needs and feelings. Maybe they’ll leave the women on earth, it wouldn’t surprise me. Dolls - I guarantee you they’re going to make dolls - are so much more compliant, and I bet they’ll get to have more than two.
I don’t think the majority of people want that Westworld dystopian nightmare to become a reality, so that isn’t my fear. My fear is these guys have so much money and power and such disdain for women, and Black, Brown, LGBTQ people. They have contempt for thoughtful, sensitive, poetic people. Anywhere there’s a person who belongs to more than one marginalized group, you find a person who is exponentially as afraid, and this is no way to live.
Where is our 900-page document, though? It’s not good enough to say what you don’t want, or to sit in shock and horror as awful people dismantle something that needed an overhaul. I’m talking about our government. It did need an overhaul, it must have, or there’s no way we’d be waking up to this reality.
This is not the kind of thing that happens overnight, it’s the kind of thing that starts happening when a Hollywood actor becomes president and convinces people wealth will trickle down - and it never does. When he refuses to say the word “AIDS” as an entire community of people you care about suffers, and too many young men die alone because people are afraid to touch them. All the while despicable people like Jerry Falwell say they’re being punished for “sexual immorality.”
That was the last time we had a president who talked about “leaving it to the states” and then he cut funding for the people who needed it the most. It’s taken 45 years to get here, but that’s when this current version of our “great experiment” began, and those of us who were kids at the time are not confused because we watched it happen. We were old enough to know something wasn’t right, and we are still young enough to remember the only thing that did trickle down - the callousness.
Certainly, repealing Carter’s The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was a crushing blow with far-reaching consequences. This was a bill that First Lady Rosalynn Carter had championed, and a cause she had worked on back in Georgia when her husband Jimmy was governor. One of Reagan’s first moves was to repeal this law, and by the fall of 1981, I can tell you myself, the effects were evident on the streets of New York City. There were suddenly people living on the streets, sleeping on subway grates, trying to find some warmth, huddled in alleyways and on park benches. Most of them needed mental health support.
I remember as a ten-year-old kid, not being able to understand why or how we could allow people to sleep on subway grates. Why or how we could accept that there were people with no one to take care of them. It doesn’t make sense to a ten-year old because it doesn’t make sense.
Politicians were always supposed to be public servants, but somewhere along the way everything got screwed up here, maybe everywhere, but definitely here in America. I am not against capitalism. I don’t have a vision where we all live in the same size houses with the same amount of money and the same provisions allotted for groceries, or whatever it is people fear when you start to talk about wanting things to be equitable.
We’ve just gone off the rails, and the disparity between people who have, and people who do not have enough to get by has grown so wide there is no other way to perceive it but as a moral and ethical failure. If your country has people sleeping on the street, you can’t brag. If children are going hungry, you are failing. If some kids are safer than others, you’re failing badly. If children are being shot at school as a regular thing, year after year, and no one is making it stop - I barely have words for how unfathomable that is, no matter how much some people act like there’s nothing that can be done.
Since we don’t have a 900-page document, I can tell you some basic things for me - a country is a success if everyone has healthcare. By that I mean healthcare and no medical debt. I don’t know how Canada does it or the UK, this is not my area of expertise, and I know their systems are not perfect - but I also know you do not go bankrupt in those countries if a family member gets cancer or ALS, or is in an accident and needs full-time care. At this point, health insurance in this country is bankruptcy insurance, and not everyone can afford it.
In my view a successful country means everyone has access to a quality education in the public school system all the way through college, and there is separation of church and state. Zero indoctrination. The government does not tell school superintendents what is in the curriculum. No commandments on the walls. No one is pledging allegiance to a flag, either, or “one God” because not every kid in the room is going to be Christian. We need schools where teachers are paid more than a living wage. We need to invest more in education and paying our teachers so we attract the best people for the most important jobs.
Infrastructure - everyone has access to good schools, roads, job opportunities, clean air, drinkable water, and excellent public transportation. Let’s invest in a high-speed rail network so we can see our loved ones more easily and more often. Let’s hire back and attract more Air Traffic Controllers. Let’s update our equipment. Let’s not hire Elon Musk for any of it.
Agriculture - shit, I have no idea. I grew up in New York City. I can grow succulents. I love fruit and vegetables. I don’t know Shinola about what farmers need, but they do, so let’s talk to them. Let’s definitely get Jess Piper in the conversation, and Gus, too. He’s a mule, but he’s very handsome and I’m sure he has good ideas.
Freedom - everyone gets to live and love however the fuck they want to live and love, the end. That’s it. People of every color, shape, size, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion (or lack of) get to live however they like with all the protections granted to every other person. Marriage is between any two people crazy enough to go for it.
Women and girls - abortion and reproductive rights are in the Constitution. They are protected for all time forward in every state. Let’s get Jessica Valenti to lead the charge here. Doctors can go back to red states, and infant and mortality rates in those states will decline again.
No more pay gap. There is never again a single question about whether women are equal or have equal protection under the law in any way. Not with reproductive rights or voting rights (screw your SAVE Act) or parental rights or any other rights. Let’s ratify the ERA while we’re at it. And this should go without saying, but I mean ALL women - Black, Brown, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, white, all of us. The transgender community does not have to worry. Your pronouns are your pronouns. You live your one wild and precious life any way you like. Let’s get Jessica Craven in on this.
Women and girls again, because things haven’t been going too well for us in case you haven’t noticed. If you are over eighteen and you sexually assault a woman or girl and there is proof of this assault, you are chemically castrated. That’s it, that’s where I’m at. Implant in the arm, and if you miss your appointment when it’s time for your next implant, your face, name, number, and address are blasted everywhere until you show up. Bet that shit stops right quick. If you rape your stepdaughter? Yes, you. Grab a girl or woman in a stairwell and rub your hard-on against her? Expose your dick on a public bus? Yup, you, too. We need to be safe in the world, it’s the most basic thing there is.
Quality of life for people with kids: Paid time off, affordable childcare, extended child tax credit, paid sick leave, free school lunches, a livable wage, raising the minimum wage, Social Security benefits (already said universal healthcare). Lyz Lenz probably has other good ideas.
Quality of life for people without kids: Paid time off, paid sick leave, raising the minimum wage, and you tell me more things. Forgive me, I don’t know, I have kids. Better people to answer those questions, but I bet it’s a lot of the stuff covered like healthcare, Social Security benefits, a livable wage - just basic things so we aren’t worrying all the time and can maybe enjoy life.
SANE GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION. Okay, so, I have raised two children in this mess, they are 15 and 18, and I have to tell you, it is brutal to kiss your children goodbye as they walk out the door, and silently pray that they will come home to you. It is horrific to get texts from your kids during lockdowns when they are scared, and feel powerless and terrified in a way that is impossible to explain. Here goes:
Universal background checks. Some kind of buyback program for these AR-15s that no civilian needs, buyback programs for any gun, a full-on, non-stop campaign about gun-safety for gun owners. Locking guns every single time there are kids in your house. Closing all loopholes. If you want to buy a gun it has to be a lot harder than getting a drivers’ license and it needs to take longer. You need to pass a test, talk to a therapist, give three references.
Something, I am open. Let’s get Shannon Watts in on this. Let’s get Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence to come up with some ideas. The weapons that mow down twenty little kids in two minutes? Yes, I want those gone. Also, I thought the point of all these guns was to be able to fight your government if there was ever a fascist takeover, and now I see that’s bullshit, too. They just kill people, usually innocent people, and way too often, children.
Environmental protections - we’re way behind the eight-ball here and it’s probably going to be a lot worse in four years because of all the rocket launches, so let’s have a serious conversation with people who know what we need to do. This can go under infrastructure. Also housing because we need to talk about that. Also cars. Just all of it. Whatever we can do, we need to do it, fast.
Voting - The Voting Rights Act took a huge blow just hours ago. Things get worse every day, so how about we get busy right now, today? This would be such a good moment to be able to hand people a plan and get them excited about a new way forward. How about we get rid of the Electoral College, popular vote only? Let’s put Stacey Abrams in charge of this.
Anyway, that’s like one page, maybe we don’t need 900, but we need a vision and we need to get it out there. We need a lot of people involved and some kind of document we can start working on together. No one is an expert on everything. We need Pete Buttigieg and AOC and Jasmine Crockett and David Hogg and Eric Swalwell - and you tell me who else you like. This is incomplete. You don’t have to like my ideas, offer some of your own. This is off the cuff, but we need to get started. Yesterday.
If you want to motivate people and excite them, you have to be able to articulate what it is you want to do, and how it is you plan to do it. They had 920 pages, and they are enacting their plan. It’s a terrible plan and a vision I think we’re only beginning to really understand, but they had a plan.
Where is ours?
But Ally….Barack wore a TAN SUIT and his wife dared to show her well toned arms in a sleeveless getup. Have they no dignity? You can see how these sartorial blunders led to where we’re at now, right?
So far your plan is the most comprehensive one I’ve seen in writing. Greatly appreciated. Can I send a Trader Joe’s gift certificate for a bag of peanut butter pretzels and a bottle of wine? I think they probably have a bell ringing code for “nice democrat lady in crisis” by now….
First half: FACE PALM! Second half: ALLY FOR PRESIDENT!