Atticus
Atticus's JournalI feel deep and genuine sympathy for the numerous media fact-checkers who have made a
valiant effort to separate fact from fiction whenever Trump has spoken or tweeted.
I have a suggestion that could drastically reduce both their stress level and their work-load: just point out his true statements. Most days, your list will be empty.
In "The Scarlet Letter", Hester Prynne was required to wear a scarlet "A" to let the world
know she was an adulteress.
In "Inglorious Basterds", Lt. Aldo Raine used his Bowie knife to carve swastikas into the foreheads of captured Nazis so they could never escape their shame.
Where should Trumpies have to wear their "T"s?
"I may be the first to bleed, but I'll be the last to quit." A childhood friend of mine, gone for
several years now, told a high school bully that as he made it clear he didn't want to fight, but, by God, he would.
We, the people, are bleeding.
Don't quit.
(The bully retreated )
A question follows. California GOP placed unauthorized ballot drop boxes all over the state. They
admit this.
California authorities notify them this is ILLEGAL. They refuse to remove the bogus drop boxes.
California serves GOP leaders with a "cease and desist" order. GOP ignores it. The bogus boxes are still receiving voters' ballots.
My question: WHY were the California Republican Party leaders not arrested and the illegal drop boxes confiscated DAYS AGO?
"Poor People Just Die", originally posted in 2009.
In view of the GOP's determination to scuttle the ACA, this might be informative for some of the newer folks here. (THANKS to DUer "Cirque du-so what" for finding it)
"Poor people just die"
Originally appeared 7-12-09
I was five when "Pap" died. Pap was my grandmother's next door neighbor and, like most who lived in our neiolghborhood, he was a working man, a laborer. One of my grandfathers died the year after I was born and the other I saw maybe twice a year. Pap filled in for them on an almost daily basis. He let me "help" in his garden and let me pet his beagles whenever I wanted.
I came home from school one afternoon that fall of my first grade year and my grandmother told me to sit down at the kitchen table. Both my parents worked and we stayed with "Nanny" after school. She said she had some real sad news and that I needed to be a "big boy". "Pap died today. His heart was sick and it quit working. The ambulance came, but it was too late", she explained, speaking softly and earnestly.
I cried. Eventually, I asked what is always asked: "Why? Why did he have to die? Why couldn't the doctors make him well? Why couldn't they save him?"
Nanny explained that doctors and hospitals and medicine cost a lot of money and Pap didn't have a lot of money. Rich people bought medicine and had surgery and went to hospitals. "Poor people just die", she said, as gently as possible and held me while I sobbed into her apron.
In the fifties, I overheard several hushed conversations between my parents and other adults that featured the word "cancer". I didn't understand what it was, but I knew it was bad, very bad. Only later did I understand that even "routine" cancers were usually a death sentence for those without insurance or wealth or both. Family members maintained gruesome vigils while the tumors spread throughout their loved ones body and sometimes the stench of necrotic tissue required those attending to the dying to smear Vicks under their nose to keep from retching.
Are we to return to those days? Are we to once again allow money to be the real medicine in our nation? Will we be too busy to march on Washington? Too busy to hound our senators and congressmen to vote for AT LEAST a public option for health care insurance?
I can accept wealth allowing some to drive a Mercedes or a Porsche while others drive Chevys or ride the bus.
I cannot accept wealth allowing some to live while others "just die".
Is it possible to find a post of mine from several years ago---during the Obama administration?
The title was "Poor People Just Die" and several DUers asked to use it.
In view of VP Biden's emphasis on what losing Obamacare would be like, I think my old OP would be informative.
Several months ago, during the first peak of the pandemic in the US, TV showed us bodies stacked
in hospital hallways, nurses wearing garbage bags in place of gowns and refrigerator trucks used to prevent the flood of corpses from decomposing.
Graphic? You damn betcha, but damn!---if was honest. It pushed reality under our noses for a few days. And, then, the numbers started to slide down.
There was so much else for the media to cover that the smaller---but still outrageous---numbers of covid deaths were allowed to become faceless statistics. And, the viewers who had once sat up in their recliners and muttered "Whoa!" when the prospect of a lonely gruesome death was displayed on their flickering screens relaxed and commented "Whew! We dodged the bullet!"
And, encouraged by the Mad King and his butt-kissers, they "went back to normal". They "opened up" and they began to loudly criticize anyone who was so mindless and cowardly as to STILL wear those silly masks and insist on social distancing. And, to no reasonable person's surprise, now the numbers are spiking everywhere.
Maybe when forklifts are again stacking bodies in reefers and Americans are dying in tents and parking lots, we can get back to "Whoa!" and listen to scientists instead of sycophants. Meanwhile, we will remain in our self-quarantine and visit our beloved children and grandchildren by phone on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump.
Now, I know that there are no indications of this and it goes against everything we think
we know, but WHAT IF a meteorite the size of a school bus was to slam into Joe's plane at 28,000 feet?
What would we do? Would Kamala take his place? Would she pick a new VP? Would the votes already cast for Joe count for Kamala?!!!!!!!!!
OMG, this could be TERRIBLE!!! Talk me down somebody!!!
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Could we just take a deep breath, keep our heads down and continue working our asses off? Votes count. Op-EDs don't.
To: Chuck Todd, Political Director, NBC News From: most US citizens---
Your options seem to involve EITHER a bucket and squeegee OR learning to pleasantly ask "Would you like fries with that?" fifty times a shift.
Either is OK with us.
So, I pretty much emptied what was left of our garden today. Picked the last few peppers
and green tomatoes, snipped off the parsley and picked a last bouquet of zinnias. The forecast calls for 29 degrees tonight here in southern Illiinois and that will end our growing season. Dug the sweet potatoes and pulled up the turnips a few days ago and they are stored in the basement.
I wrapped the green tomatoes in newspaper and layered them into a basket on the basement floor. A few will "go bad" but most will ripen over the next few weeks.
The front that blew through a few days ago took down a lot of the leaves so much of the autumn color is gone. The starlings have gathered into sometimes massive flocks and our hummers have fled south. Wedges of geese will soon fill our sky.
At 71, I am in my own personal "October" and some of what i see makes me smile while some also brings a quiet tear.
I wonder if I will be here when our hummers return in April.
Will I ever taste another ripe tomato just picked from my garden?
Will I be able to cut and split firewood next fall?
Such thoughts bring memories of parents I still miss daily and I wonder if I will be remembered with such love and fondness.
I do not own tomorrow, but I do, so far, have today. I choose to spend it being grateful and content and loving.
If the above sounds pretentious or maudlin, I hope you will forgive me.
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Member since: 2002Number of posts: 15,124
