From the darkest, longest of days, step towards the light.

With every pro, there is a likely con. Both can be powerful.

Bottom line, no matter how enabling to dangerous ignorance and damaging incivility social media has been to our culture, it has also allowed us to communicate.

It has brought families and friends separated by miles, instantly reachable. It has given us the immeasurable ability to meet and develop personal communications with people we would never have met just by walking out of our doors. It has given us the open hallways to knowledge and advocacy and having our voices heard.

The problem and faults will always lie within the individual’s ability to act decently.

That obviously can be a huge problem. And very ugly.

But the potential and power of turning that behavior into or towards something more productive and beneficial to all must still be the defining factor.

Statewide gerrymandering, billionaire bros and co., etc., yeah , frighteningly, Robinson has a very valid point. And never forget, Russia.

When men without morals, men without decency, men without an ounce of human compassion and integrity have obscene money and power, the outlook can be devastating.

Before these men drenched and soaked bone-deep in treachery die out (so far they cannot buy immortality) and become fodder for worms, a whole helluva lot of suffering and fighting will happen. They are legally making it much easier to pass their infected brains, money and agendas on to younger generations of men before they quit breathing and rot away.

Our war against them is going to be ...well I can’t even think of the words...before humanity triumphs, or at least maims them enough to hold them down under the rocks they should live under.

We need more fierce leaders with the same defiant, steely determination of the scores of millions of everyday “resisters”, but with more immediate power. Backbone, loyalty....fucking support for processes we still have in place to get to the truth and strengthen our “decency” core to shield us from multitudes of diversions.

Many of those diversions are serious stand alone issues and essential battles with massive generation and gender impact (#MeToo). Some diversions involve defending the literal earth we walk on and air we breathe. Some threaten our children and the strong health we need to fight their battles as well as our own.

And then there is the purposeful enabling of The Stupid to contend with daily.

Nothing about this insidious war is going to be in the least bit easy. Screw ups will be exploited brutally.

Sadly, this week was not a notch in the win column for our “Force”. That really sucked. It was in the same life-disbelief-wtf column as election night though further down the hideous list.

It is nightmarish to have to wait while things outside of our daily control are going down behind the scenes. It is enough to give us all literal heart attacks realizing that these findings just may not be enough. Dumbfounding, but nothing so far about the abject indecency and moronic ignorance of the Cretin has made enough of a difference.

Yet.
Yet.
Herculean, yup.
Goddess strength, oh, hell, yeah.
But it hasn’t stopped us, yet.
The eventual success will be ten times as satisfying as the agony is debilitating.

RESIST REPLENISH REVOLT

I was asked by another DUer as well as a lurker friend to create this as a separate thread. Pardons to those who read this post elsewhere but today is a huge deal. We are in genuine trouble as a party.

****
Childhood lessons: When I was nine, my father died of a cancer that now, is quite
curable. I sadly remember very little about him, as he was on the road carving out a living during the week and only home on weekends...but one thing he would always say was “if you are going to kill someone, kill them with kindness.”
Good, high road words, right? I lived those words and raised my children on them.
I struggle with that now, to an extent. There are nuances. Serious nuances.

My mother used to say over and over, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Again, good, high road words. Until you realize that in some instances, by saying nothing enables disgusting lies and hideously foul behavior to flourish in people who have no morality or conscience. Again nuances.

Neither of these high road life lessons will work societally or mean enough unless you temper them with truth and accountability. Fairness Is the third lingering but essential factor.

Al Franken is facing a serious situation that, societally, MUST be addressed.

Long overdue and insidious, the gender-inbred disrespect of females is a real ongoing and deep seated societal problem. Sexual harassment of the vulnerable of any gender is a very serious problem. Exploitation and abuse of children is a heinous, monumental problem.

Don’t just address these problems with blanket high road morality. Find the truth behind the problem or actions. Take the time to investigate. When those truths come to light, demand accountability using those TRUTHS. And do so with fairness.

There IS a difference between someone who recognizes there is an unacceptable behavior they may have performed, seeks an open examination of that behavior, takes accountability when truth is discovered in a fair and level investigation and someone who defiantly ignores said behavior, denies any accountability and blames/vilifies the rest of the world with arrogance or ignorance.

People will lie. For all kinds of reasons. Perpetrators most certainly and even some victims. People will practice vile behavior or stupid behavior for all kinds of reasons. People will get away with anything and too much in the process while too little is done for the weaker or less powerful. Crappy people could succeed and stagnate and never improve. Better people will learn and grow. There is a difference.

Nothing about this very real and painful process will be easy or quick for any of us.

Until truth, accountability and fairness are parts of the solution- bad, even criminal behavior will flourish. High road mentality must be tempered with a demand for truth, accountability and fairness or it is just a stance without substance or solution.

In this specific instance, Al Franken has immediately requested and will co-operate with an ethics investigation seeking the truth. He has indicated he will take accountability for those discovered truths. Give that stance the fairness it deserves.

Or, in the process of demanding the high road without truth, accountability and fairness, the ignorant, hideous and arrogant WILL flourish.

http://verifiedpolitics.com/sally-yates-just-issued-chilling-warning-trump-rare-tweet/

By Colin Taylor

“Deeply disturbed by the visible erosion of faith in the mainstream media and the refusal of a growing portion of the American people to accept empirical fact as an undeniable truth former Acting Attorney General turned Trump resistance hero Sally Yates to issue one of her rare tweets.

**************************************
Sally Yates
@SallyQYates
We can’t let POTUS’s complete indifference to truth become ours. Constant barrage may be exhausting, but normalizing it is too dangerous.
9:37 AM · Oct 24, 2017
**************************************

The combination of the way that President Trump stumbles from petty feud to announcing yet another appalling policy with all the grace of a drunken lumberjack combined the with numbing resignation induced by a ravenous 24/7 infotainment media machine that barely stops to tut-tut the President’s impropriety before hungrily seizing on Trump’s latest barbs has indeed exhausted our reserves of outrage and fed a growing sense of normalizing resignation among many.“


As bone weary, disgusted and disheartened as I have become in this never ending citizens’ WAR we canNOT become resigned or beaten down.

Beyond the ogre mentality and buffoon oafishness of the Cretin, is the hourly shredding of all that is decent and hopeful about America. Besides being a billious, walking billboard of the worst of twisted, pathologically lying, narcissistic humanity, he is being used by an infected party of soulless greed and hate as the cloddish frontman to the destruction of our nation.

We Must continue to RESIST. I kick myself a dozen times daily to remain in the fight. I’m tired, I’m Not getting any younger, I’m ironically battling back a growing, personal form of intolerant abhorrence for his “people” who make it their life’s agenda to hate.

But by all that is or isn’t holy to any of us...we cannot stop.

One colossally ignorant, morally bereft, pathologically lying, mentally incompetent, twisted vengeful narcissist racist Cretin who has enabled the absolute worst, hateful humans in America is being aided and abetted by a Republican party composed of the most soulless, anti-humanity, Democracy destroying, greed driven vermin to shred everything good that our country has strived to do to make us a nation of decency, integrity and compassion; the majority of America is in the fight of its life against homegrown White male domestic terrorists who walk smugly and freely in the halls of the White House and the Capital and streets while hundreds of thousands of hard working, decent humans are being threatened and stalked to be thrown out of the only country they have ever known and loved and millions more live in stressful anxiety that their access to affordable or any healthcare will be callously yanked away at any turn of a vote in Congress because the bilious Cretin has a burr up his tight ass about a bi-racial man of immense integrity and audacious hope who was an intelligent, compassionate, caring leader and who poked fun at him at a media sponsored "roast"; Mother Nature has had e-f'n-nough and is showing her easily omnipotent wrath: Houston is decimated in the wake of her fury in part because of man-created climate change and hideously inept, ecological disrespecting, corporate city planning; parts of Florida will soon be a swimming pool after Irma takes out thousands of homes and lives in The Caribbean; the NorthWest is burning up in lung choking flames and the imbeciles in the capital are working hard ~at using everything and everyone as a political tool to get their heartless, greed soak agendas realized...and that is just a fraction of what we wake up to EVERY single day of this nightmare.

This is not about any God or claimed saviors..though that is the prime excuse used over and over and over by the pseudo Christian Right.
This is about the plotted, gleeful evil of certain, temporarily powerful men... and one even more powerful "woman" who apparently is very very pissed off about what is happening to her earthly home.

I needed to get that out or my head would have explode all over the Internet.

It just doesn't happen anymore with anything generated out of the White House or Congress since the Cretin has been involved.

It is crappy news, new disgusting behavior, new depressing fodder for more RESISTANCE and fighting the pond scum. When good people are involved in the news, it is always showcasing them fighting off the newest monstrosities of this incompetent, twisted vulgarian creep inhabiting our presidential home.

There is never anything witty or humorous or even mildly pleasant to make sarcastic fun/puns. Because none of it is funny. In any way! There is no break, no respite. No freaking humanity involved.

Every single gawd blessed day, it is waking up to hideous news or crap-assed behavior from an imbalanced thug. What now? What threats? What abject stupidity? What treasonous acts?

Wrapping one's brain around the fact that this nightmare has even been allowed to happen is bad enough. Knowing that every single day new domestic attacks are being perpetrated by the Republican morons destroying things is hideous enough. But every damned news feed, social media feed, political website is littered with the visual stench of this crass idiots face in various forms of ugliness. Smug shit, scowling shit, growling shit, pouting shit, grumpy old fart shit, imperial shit, bully shit, mean assed shit, roaring shit, ORANGE shit. Never anything remotely pleasant or hopeful, visually either.

The toll is getting too, too high.

I refuse not to be informed. I refuse to play the ostrich routine.

I'm just so fucking weary of this putrid creature and his billious ilk. All of them.

End of rant.
Shaking my head.
Shit.

Nope. It is not a health issue.

It started in the pit of my stomach and has been gnawing at my life for months. Since there actually were/are multiple health issue viruses running rampant in my community and I work closely with a wide swatch of the public, I figured I was always just fighting off the latest batch. But it wasn't like any other "virus" I'd dealt with. Very different and worrisome.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. This, I now realize, is something much different and it is indeed scaring me.

It's a tight ball of hate like I have never felt before. Every single day of this cretin's position of power, new, fuckingunbelievable atrocities are started, suggested, threatened, put in place that continually destroy decency, compassion, humanity, the country, the earth. Every single morning noon and night he and the wretched ilk of soulless arrogant goons called the Republican Party are plotting planning and executing treacherous foulness against the people of this nation and systematically destroying the air water land of this earth.

Every waking moment.

And I recognize now that it isn't an airborne virus that makes all my food taste terrible, all my steps harder to take and all my breaths catching in my throat. It's hate.

I actually hate these men. I. hate. Them.
I've never experienced this. Ever.
Scary as hell. Numbing. Debilitating. Anger laced. Yet I, along with millions of others, keep plodding along. I can't console or nurture anyone anymore because I have no words of comfort available now. I have nothing. My nurturing nature has been silenced. It's such a vacuum of existence. So foreign and painful with no visible wounds.

And it hasn't been two months. Not two months of this monstrous, nauseating, vile agenda.

I can only grasp at straws of hope that some who haven't been infected in the same way...some who have the security of funds and some semblace of real power and not just stubborn advocacy can and will actually do something to stop this foul virus.
(Goddess, Jesus, Buddha, God, Mother Mary, Dr. Who What When Where and How...anything!!!!!)

No, it isn't a health issue.
It is a hate issue.

Wear red. Don't buy anything. If you can't take a day off work, it is totally understandable. And commendable. Mothers cannot stop. Teachers cannot stop. Nurturers cannot stop. Women DO and because of their nature, always WILL keep the world turning while other forces strive to disrupt it and them.

If you CAN make the statement, do it.

"Harm to none" has always been a driving force of the natural psyche of females. And that stance has always been used to knock us down and delegitimize our worth...to control us. Our nature is used against us in hideous ways. "They" count on it.

To make the point we must show in realistic ways just how essential we are. We must somehow make it known that we are powerful. Economically and spiritually. It's a very tough task. The balance is immensely difficult.

We have to keep the mothering, teaching and nurturing uninterrupted and secure while forcibly making the economic and business world take serious note of our value.

Frustrating gig.

Both aspects of the resistance are at force today. Both commentaries are essential. And it is women who must make the difference.

Wear red at work, make your presence visible, bring attention to your vitality and importance.

See us...or see our absence. Both must happen!!

https://www.thedodo.com/us-house-alaska-bear-wolf-2268102226.html

People Want To Shoot Hibernating Bear Families — And The Government Just Voted To Let Them

"What the House did today should shock the conscience of every animal lover in America."
SARAH V SCHWEIG

FEB 17, 2017
Mother bears hibernating with their cubs and wolves raising pups in their dens may no longer be protected from a hunter's rifle.

The lives of countless bear and wolf families are hanging in the balance today because the U.S. House of Representatives just voted to overturn a ban on cruel hunting tactics that previously protected animals on some of the most treasured wildlife refuges in America.

On 76 million acres of federal refuges in Alaska, hunters will be permitted to enter dens where vulnerable bear families are hibernating and kill them if the resolution becomes law. They will also be able to shoot entire wolf families raising young pups if the Senate and President agree with the vote.

"What the House did today should shock the conscience of every animal lover in America," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), said on Thursday. "If the Senate and President concur, we'll see wolf families killed in their dens, bears chased down by planes or suffering for hours in barbaric steel-jawed traps or snares."

(More revolting info at link.)