The Biggest Loser

Blow Your House Down

Have you ever been in an argument with someone about one thing — and suddenly this person is bringing up another issue they’ve never mentioned before? Something you said or did five years ago that upset them, that they’ve (apparently) filed away so they can pull it out of a drawer and light it on fire when you least expect it?

If you’re nodding, you know how disconcerting it is. Sometimes it happens when the argument doesn’t seem like a big deal, and then you’re at a serious disadvantage. The first time you’re on the receiving end of that play, it’s like finding each foot on a different tectonic plate, even if you’re in the middle of your living room. If you take the bait and follow their lead, you’ll lose your footing altogether.

“Wait. When did this happen? What did I say?” you might ask, confused. Rookie move. Here comes the list of things you said or didn’t say that day, according to them, and there are going to be other things, from other days. You’re going to find out this person has a card catalogue of your mistakes through the years, through their eyes. Some may be valid, some may not, but since you weren’t given the chance to communicate at the time, who’s to say? Now you’re in a conversation they’re choosing, fighting the battle they want to fight.

Photo by Ilya Semenov on Unsplash

You’re hurtling through space with a person who has the upper hand. They’ve decided where you’re going, what the ride is about, and what sights you’ll be seeing along the way. To the left, please note the time you didn’t laugh at a joke I made at that dinner party in East Hampton in front of all my friends. To the right, you’ll see the day we were at my brother’s house, and you didn’t tell my family about my new business endeavor because you never think about how I feel. We’ll be getting off the train here so you can walk around and buy a postcard.

Good luck getting back to the original issue.

Maybe all you wanted was to feel heard and understood. That’s usually all people want when they’re in an argument with someone they care about. Maybe the original problem wasn’t even a huge one, you simply wanted to communicate and know this person saw you and cherished you.

How about when you’re in an argument and realize you’re the one who’s in the wrong? Haha, that’s always fun. You misunderstood, or maybe you realize you could have extended more benefit of the doubt, or expressed yourself with less heat. Maybe you let the past, color the present. Then your option is to own it, or dig your heels in further. Healthy people in a healthy relationship will own it and give a full-chested apology. Some people can’t or won’t do that. My mother could never admit she was wrong, and it led to so much pain and suffering — for her and for me.

My dad was worse. He misheard me once when we were walking up Columbus Avenue on a sunny afternoon. He thought I said something disrespectful, and he hit me upside my head so hard my ear was ringing for half an hour. Tears sprung to my eyes instantly. I was shocked because we’d been having a lighthearted conversation, and I asked him why he’d done it. He repeated what he thought I’d said, and I told him what I’d actually said, and he harumphed. That’s the best way I can describe it. He got a pained look on his face and made a noise in his throat and kept walking.

I assumed he must feel horrendous, I imagined how terrible I would feel if I’d done that to someone I purportedly loved, so I swallowed my own feelings and took care of his. I acted like I was okay. I continued our conversation as if I wasn’t in pain and my ear wasn’t ringing and I didn’t have a horrible pit, low in my belly, because my dad had lashed out at me violently and publicly for no reason at all.

When I got older and tried to talk to him about my childhood, tried to see if we could have some real conversations, he’d say, “Your childhood feels like another lifetime. I don’t even remember what happened.” Very satisfying.

People who refuse to acknowledge they’re human will disappoint you at best. At worst, they’ll behave like cornered, wild animals. If they’re really unwell, they’ll start lying to cover their mistakes, even if the lies are preposterous.

These days the word narcissist has lost its meaning because we use it for every thoughtless interaction we have. The person who doesn’t say thank you when we hold a door open. The person who doesn’t let us merge on the freeway. The person who asks for too many samples at the ice cream parlor while we wait on line.

If you have someone in your life who cannot tolerate criticism, who is never wrong, who cannot say they’re sorry, who has grandiose ideas about their own importance — but also deep underlying doubts about their worth — who needs admiration and external validation, and talks constantly about their perceived successes, who thinks the rules don’t apply to them, and who seems to struggle to put themselves in your shoes or extend empathy when you’re hurting…that’s a little closer to the DSM criteria. It isn’t easy to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and it isn’t easy to love people who are on the spectrum. There is a spectrum.

If you live in the states, you have someone like that in your life. You probably think about him more than you’d like, because he’s the president. Which is kinda weird, because normally a person ought to be able to go days without thinking about the president, and if a person is thinking about him, it isn’t thoughts like, Please tell me he didn’t really post something that is so horrifically racist, even for him.

One of the parts that is most exhausting for me is when we end up in the wrong conversation. There are so many days when we should be talking about one thing, but he does or says something so outrageous, depressing, diminishing, debasing, or objectively nuts — it takes over the news cycle. That’s no accident. Even journalists I respect can get caught up in the madness.

I watched Anderson Cooper interviewing Adam Kovac from Scientific American about the Reflecting Pool debacle, and much as I respect and like Anderson Cooper, the interview was annoying and disappointing. Though it focused on various potential causes of the peeling paint, including the most likely — failure to properly apply the coating/shoddy work — and other contributing factors that no scientist would have recommended, such as the presidential motorcade sliding up before it had a chance to cure, the rushed deadline for a project like this, and the massive amount of hydrogen peroxide dumped in by Parks Department workers as they waged war on blue-green algae (at the administration’s behest, no shade to the Parks Department workers) — it also included a question about potential vandalism, when we all know there hasn’t been any vandalism. There has not been any vandalism. I’m writing it twice for good measure. There are cameras pointed at the Reflecting Pool 24/7.

I’m so tired of the lies.

When you give a man like the president the mic, and allow him to say blatantly ludicrous things, when the push-back is far too mild because he’ll yell, “Quiet, Piggy!” or “Fake News!” if anyone holds his feet to the flame — and then respected journalists include a question about whether the peeling paint could be from vandalism — you’re in the wrong conversation. You’re giving credence to a claim with no merit.

If we’re going to continue to talk about the Reflecting Pool, let’s talk about it in terms of incompetence and corruption. Let’s talk about the no-bid government contract, the company that got the job to paint the pool, and a guy named JJ Cafaro. It is worth clicking on the link if you haven’t seen JJ, because he traveled here to 2026 from a 1930s gangster film. I’m at a freaking loss, y’all.

By the way, the company that was contracted is called Green Water Services, and is also known as “Green Water Solutions”, so the jokes write themselves, but they aren’t funny enough to justify the $16 million in taxpayer dollars, and obviously the project will need to be redone. Unless we just leave the swamp as is and let the next person fix this mess, along with all the others he’s leaving behind.

What we should be talking about today is the housing bill. We need to be talking about this, because it is everything that is wrong with this president, and it needs to be a story his supporters understand. I do not care whether they admit to you or me that they understand, I only care that they realize what just happened.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Breno Assis on Unsplash

For the first time in as long as I can remember, Congress passed a huge bipartisan housing bill in an effort to address the housing crisis here in America. It is the most holistic housing package signed into law in decades, and this legislation was spearheaded by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Tim Scott (SC), along with Reps. Maxine Waters (CA) and French Hill (AK) in the House. It would boost the U.S. housing supply in the longterm, and lower costs for millions of Americans who pay rent or own their homes. It would not be a cure-all — no one bill will be — but it would be a significant step in the right direction.

It includes provisions to lower housing costs, make it easier to get new builds approved, and shift control over housing to the local level. It would give Americans feeling the most financial pressure some much-needed relief right now.

Sharon Wilson Géno, the president of the National Multifamily Housing Council, says that the bill’s impacts on affordability will first be felt by lower-income Americans.

“Our housing-affordability challenges are the greatest, and significantly much more so at that very low income end of the spectrum,” she says, adding that “the federal government actually has most control and most opportunity at that part of the housing market.”

The House passed the bill in a 358-32 vote on Tuesday and the Senate passed it 85-5 on Monday. That level of support is what’s colloquially called a “veto-proof majority.” Meaning it has so much support, it would be crazy for any president not to sign it and take the win. Republicans would really like some kind of a win. They are worried AF about the midterms, as they should be. They want to have something to turn attention away from the astronomical gas prices, grocery prices, and failed war with Iran no one wanted.

It went to the president’s desk to be signed into law on Wednesday. The signing ceremony was going to be televised, and was being set up live. He canceled his plans to sign the bill in a social media post.

Do we need a Schoolhouse Rock reminder about how a Bill becomes a law? If he’d signed it, it would have become a law right then. If he lets it sit on his desk for 10 days (not including Sundays) without signing it while Congress is in session, it becomes law. If he vetoes it, the bill goes back to the House and Senate, where they can vote to override his veto. They would need ⅔ majority in the House and Senate, respectively. Normally, I would say it would die there, because Republican senators never want to displease their mighty overlord, but given the shocking bipartisan support and the initial votes? I think it would survive. They are all thinking about self-preservation.

What has this petty little man done? He said, “If you want your housing bill, I want the SAVE America Act, aka The Disenfranchise Marginalized Voters Act, The Poll Tax Act, The Gilead Act, The Tradwives Don’t Care if Their Husbands or Dads Do the Voting Act, The Let’s Pretend We Don’t Have Free and Fair Elections Act.”

There is no support for the SAVE Act in the Senate amongst Dems (and four Republicans), because again, non-citizens do not vote in our elections and we do not have a problem with election fraud. The president wants to disenfranchise voters who he knows will not be voting for him. It would not be the worst week to call your reps and remind them how much you hate the SAVE Act.

Maybe there are some nineteen-year-old tradwives and a few of their MAGA/MAHA moms who don’t care about giving up their right to vote, but most women, liberal and conservative alike, are not going to support that plan, no matter how much Pete Hegseth’s pastor might long for that day. By the way MAHA moms, the Supreme Court made it harder to sue Monsanto today, so glad you got Red Dye 40 out of those M&Ms, but now we have AI data centers everywhere, and this decision. Plus, y’know, all the racism and bigotry and forced birth for children in states with restrictive abortion bans. You realize you could have just gone organic in your own homes, right? Or protested/boycotted Mars, Inc.

The reason the president wants the SAVE Act so badly is he doesn’t want liberal women like me to vote. He doesn’t want the marginalized groups he’s been waging war against to vote, because he knows we are awake and furious and not going to vote Republican.

He’s got the USPS involved now and it looks like David Steiner is corrupt, too. “Happy to go along with whatever Dear Leader says. You want to demand voter rolls before we deliver mail-in ballots even though that violates the Constitution? No problem, sir, happy to kiss your ass!”

Anyway, the president has taken a bill that is good for Americans, that would give the people struggling the most some sorely-needed help, and he is holding it hostage to get what he wants. He says the bill is “of little importance” and housing is all about interest rates, and no one knows more about housing than him. Okay, if it’s all about interest rates, remember when he said he was going to get banks to lower their interest rates and put a 10% cap on credit cards for a year by January 20th? Elizabeth Warren does! Please enjoy this very satisfying clip where she mops the floor with Ms. Lindsey Johnson, and manages to do it with a smile on her face.

You know who isn’t worrying about the cost of groceries or credit card debt or how to take care of his family or healthcare costs or housing? I bet you do! The president. He’s building like crazy all over the world and increasing his wealth every single day. Emoluments be damned.

You wanna know what, though? I’m glad he’s doing this, much as I worry for people barely making it, or not making it at all. I’m hoping we can all hold onto each other a little more tightly for a little while longer. It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to spin this any way except right side up. We will show up in full force in November, however we have to do it. We’ll show up early, in person, whatever. We will organize and we will get there. The courts are on our side. Not the Supreme Court, maybe, but the federal judges have not lost their minds or their morals, not all of them.

I want you to hold onto this reality when you feel hopeless or scared, because it’s the thing they don’t want us to see. It’s the conversation they don’t want us to have:

If we didn’t have any power — if voting in November didn’t matter — they wouldn’t be trying this hard to stop us.

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