September 30, 2016

xposted from GD at the request of 1SBM.

1SBM pointed me out to this today; I figured it'd be salient information. And for the record, the aforementioned Democratic African-American Women's Caucus? Wasn't founded till this year. We're essentially looking at another Goodman-esque figure here.

~VP

"The other day someone posted an OP concerned that Black folks in Florida weren't getting behind HRC. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time; but, this morning NPR did an interview with Leslie Wimes, the President of the Democratic African-American Women’s Caucus, the group the OP was citing to.

Ms. Wimes was saying that HRC wasn't really during any work in the Black community to get Black votes, especially given her past rhetoric (and a bunch of other stuff that sounded ... well ... "familiar&quot . She was going on about how HRC's presence in the Black community was limited to TV.

I was like okay ... I disagree; but, okay. I'm not in Florida. Then she said the weirdest thing ... she said the HRC had, actually, reached out to her to work with her on door knocking!?!

I, literally, said "WTF! ... You criticize her campaign for not having a physical presence in the community, then acknowledge that her campaign sought to work with you ... and you (apparently)turned them down ... because her campaign didn't have a physical presence in the Black community!?!" Again, WTF! Isn't that more of an indictment of you and your organization? Well, guess what? Don't believe the F'ing hype!

I Googled "Leslie Wimes" and imagine my surprise at what the first hit was:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/44mlwe/leslie_wimes_the_president_of_the_democratic/

Just another BoBer, throwing a tantrum... working hard to elect Trump."

September 30, 2016

"Breathe Freely, Oh Those of Black Support in Florida Concern..."

1SBM pointed me out to this today; I figured it'd be salient information. And for the record, the aforementioned Democratic African-American Women's Caucus? Wasn't founded till this year. We're essentially looking at another Goodman-esque figure here.

"The other day someone posted an OP concerned that Black folks in Florida weren't getting behind HRC. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time; but, this morning NPR did an interview with Leslie Wimes, the President of the Democratic African-American Women’s Caucus, the group the OP was citing to.

Ms. Wimes was saying that HRC wasn't really during any work in the Black community to get Black votes, especially given her past rhetoric (and a bunch of other stuff that sounded ... well ... "familiar&quot . She was going on about how HRC's presence in the Black community was limited to TV.

I was like okay ... I disagree; but, okay. I'm not in Florida. Then she said the weirdest thing ... she said the HRC had, actually, reached out to her to work with her on door knocking!?!

I, literally, said "WTF! ... You criticize her campaign for not having a physical presence in the community, then acknowledge that her campaign sought to work with you ... and you (apparently)turned them down ... because her campaign didn't have a physical presence in the Black community!?!" Again, WTF! Isn't that more of an indictment of you and your organization? Well, guess what? Don't believe the F'ing hype!

I Googled "Leslie Wimes" and imagine my surprise at what the first hit was:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/44mlwe/leslie_wimes_the_president_of_the_democratic/

Just another BoBer, throwing a tantrum... working hard to elect Trump."

August 11, 2016

Apothecary Ingredients!

I find myself needing to restock my herbs and oils after movers weren't careful with a box I marked fragile, causing my oils to shatter and tear into bags of loose leaf herbs-- making an aromatic, if absolutely unusable mess.

So what would the viewers of this forum, if any, suggest for rebuilding stock from scratch?

August 5, 2016

An apology.

This probably... Will wind up unseen by a much larger contingent than the first time I posted this. And yeah, I accept and own up to that. I've gone straight down to the bone trying to collate and wrap up and prettify all of the reasons I couldn't countenance the idea of pulling the lever for Clinton if it came down to it; and to be fair, I deserve my amount of flak for it. And looking back at old messages between myself and someone I used to viciously butt heads with, looking back at the people I'd considered allies only to have been MASSIVELY wrong after seeing the kind of things they'd post without direct DU oversight, I know exactly what's spurring this.

Trump is a bloody nightmare. I was willing to flay skin and muscle from bone to fight the primaries down to the very last second-- and then I had to start paying attention to Trump. A less qualified man has never been fielded in politics before; and as much as I get abrasive, as much as I get out and out hostile with people, I can't countenance letting him get into office. It was re-reading a candid talk with a poster who has once again been FFR'd-- altogether sure he'll come back and keep doing his thing regardless-- that brought me back to this topic, and another poster that said "I might have wanted to wait till after the convention to post this thread".

He was right. My timing was off, and I took that to believe the people I'd considered ideological enemies were more willing to dig a trench and shoot us in front of it rather than work across any kind of aisle that wasn't filled with concertina wire. I'll freely admit, my hostility, my abrasiveness, it drove me to a point of mania. Because no, I couldn't believe in Clinton, not until rereading old messages with people that I still have respect for.

"Though imperfect". In all the time I'd spent angry, absolutely incensed by both the numbers of Hillary's supporters who couldn't restrain being smarmy and condescending; and Bernie's supporters who stamped their feet, hurled blatantly sexist invective, and really comported themselves no better than the outrageously offensive fundamentalists I've spent years deriding where the other site's concerned, those two words never occurred to me. Wouldn't have occurred to me. "Though imperfect". That has a lot to do with how I was raised, but that doesn't matter right now; what matters is that we're not going to be able to get perfect. Would it be nice? You bet your ass. But we have have to make do at the end of the day.

So far, both sides have looked nasty at one point or another. I'm certain that for every insufferable Clinton supporter, there's an absolutely infuriating Sanders supporter, and vice versa. And I'm even more certain that a vast number here would call me an absolutely infuriating Sanders supporter. You'd have been right. I was a jackass. But once again, I find myself coming back to that poster's words; albeit mangled through my own language: it's about survival, dumbasses. Survive to be dealt into the next hand, and hope to bluff our way to the pot.

I don't think the election will be as simple as the pools will paint it. Sure, Trump is in single percentage point odds right now; but I don't think it'll be that easy. As such... I'd like to wholeheartedly apologize for the things I've said up till now, and the misinformation that I'd believed in that propped up a flawed image of our candidate. Let's get down to business, and get these recalcitrant fucktrumpets out of office already.

June 7, 2016

Last one out, hit the lights.

I'm fuckin' tired. Just... Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. What's worse is my little brother is going airborne infantry... She's going to get him killed. And I have to fake like I'm cool with it.

June 6, 2016

Clinton fans, I get your elation over getting to kick us while we're down a little more.

But we've been getting told by the Clinton campaign for the past three months what we can go do, where we can go do it, and what we can go do it with. What the actual, everliving fuck makes y'all think we'd come out for them other than the weaker willed who are easily swayed by fear? Her and her kind have been saying they'll win without us, okay, I have no problems taking them at their word. She won't get a dime, or a second in campaigning from me, and she'll be LUCKY if I can bring myself to vote for her. Because if I do, the blood of my brothers and sisters in arms-- a loyalty I hold over loyalty to this political jackass and pony show-- will be on my hands when she gets them killed.

If I vote for her, the ailed thanks to run-off tainted water from fracking, which has been presented as a "greener" alternative to coal, will wind up rising. Which will do next to nothing for our planet, which I distinctly remember our last president talking about funding green solutions. I see no windmills, I see no solar panels, I see no goddamn water wheels-- we're right where we were in 2008, except a little worse off. It snowed in El Paso this past winter. Snow, in Texas-- in South-West Texas, no less. What next, are Democrats gonna start saying climate change doesn't exist too?

If I vote for her, more jobs in a sector I planned to make a career in will get practically auctioned off to H-1B visa holders. Oh, and even better, skilled American workers in these fields will be made to train their replacements before getting laid off-- so said H-1B visa holders can be hired on for less than what the American worker was being paid. In a world where more and more things are getting automated, we're just going to say "we know you spent an arm and a leg on a STEM degree, but there are people who can be hired for cheaper than you"? And you wonder why people were pushing for 15 an hour-- cause you've got people with comp sci and software engineering degrees working a goddamn McDonald's.

If I vote for her, I get to watch a new era of political correctness for opposing Clinton march into the world. Just like calling for Obama to be primaried in 2012 was seen as "undermining the first AA president"-- funny, that, opposing him on ANYTHING was seen as "undermining the first AA president"-- opposing Clinton in any way, or calling for her to be primaried in 2020(which I will be doing) will be seen as "undermining the first female president". And before the hordes of Clintonistas rise up out of the brackish seas of their own making to furiously protest, "no, how could you think so little of us", I remember saying something to my mother a couple years back(full disclosure, she's where the black half of me comes from) about regretting the fact that I'd voted for Obama again because any attempts to get anything done were falling through, and I couldn't help but think that if we'd had someone more forceful on our side, maybe we wouldn't have watched a sequester hit, maybe the government wouldn't have shut down twice, maybe my paycheck wouldn't have been in jeopardy twice-- and the look she gave me suggested that I'd just kicked the family dog and shat all over the carpet.

If I vote for her, I am giving my tacit approval to lauding the Reagans as crusaders for an AIDS cure(big fuckin laugh there am I right), tacit approval to removing the only thing keeping a nation prosperous(Gaddafi was a dictator, yes, but under him, Libya was prosperous, and y'know, not a terrorist ridden hellhole of our own creation), tacit approval to the concept of universal health care being an impossibility(we all know that's bullshit), tacit approval to mass surveillance("Manhattan Project against encryption", fuckin' really? Good for me, not for thee horseshit again?), tacit approval to the Inner Party, Orwellian math that somehow zero minus zero is equal to one(I guess to them, two plus two can be three or five dependent on what they need it to be to suit their argument?), there's just-- so much wrong that if I listed it all off, I'd need another twenty to twenty-five paragraphs just to write it all out.

And the whole time, I'm here thinking-- this is effectively an election between an Oligarch and a Fascist. And the only thing that comes to mind is the famous quote from Star Wars, which I've never seen as more apt in my life.

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."
--Padmé Amidala

May 26, 2016

Show of hands, how many people has Bernie made into white, middle class men?

Seriously, that shit keeps happening to me, and I don't understand why.

May 26, 2016

I keep noticing the same people reaching and trying to divide on behalf of Hillary.

What was that phrase, "Disqualify, Destroy, Unite Later"? Something like that? I don't remember, I tend to mentally purge the idiocy I read nowadays but-- with this latest spate of dredging up imagined sexism, A LOT of people tilting at windmills(when Clinton denied Bernie's request to debate, what the hell was he supposed to do, sit there, stay silent, and subsequently lose California? Wait, I'm talking to plutocratic corporatists, he's supposed to live beneath the boot of the oligarchs) where all that exists to threaten them are clouds.

Good luck uniting the party. You'll need it.

May 26, 2016

Caught Across

Split between my sides,
Between the bottle and the gun
Caught across horizons,
And I'm racing with the sun
I'm supposed to let it be,
But how am I supposed to let it go?
You're speaking from the bottom,
But immoral is the status quo

You speak in sheer hypocrisy
The same shit you deride
While some might understand it
I can't bear to let it slide
Frankly, it disgusts me
And I've seen you for your spots
I know you'll never change them
So I'll connect the dots

Split between my sides,
My identity's slowly tearing
Catching condescension
And I've long since lost my bearing
Splitting on the needle,
And I'm broke across the rack
Caught across horizons,
Kept the sun upon my back.