25- the SAVE Act

Well, this is a piece of neo-mansophere trash.

If this vote passes the Senate and is signed into law as written, voting by women will be changed.

On the surface, this bill is about voting. Okay, fine. Not a demonstrable problem, no matter what some republicans think.

However, if you read the summary, voting will be permitted only if you are able to prove that you are a United States citizen. How to prove that? The easiest way is to provide your birth certificate. Your certified birth certificate.

Good on the surface, right?

Why did this not pass last year when it was first introduced?

Because it is a huge waste of time and resources. You already cannot register to vote unless you prove you are a US citizen. Usually by driver’s license or passport.

There is already a REAL ID that will be used by airlines starting in May. The SAVE Act is a belt to that suspenders. I got my REAL ID by showing my passport to the DMV. The same passport that I had to use my driver’s license and birth certificate to obtain.

I will note that I have a certified copy of my birth certificate. Obtained from the state where I was born. But what about the people out there whose birth certificates cannot be certified. What if they were born at home? What if they were born in a time before all of this nonsense?

To obtain a passport, you already have to show proof of residency. To get mine I had to have my driver’s license and my marriage license proving that the name change was legit. Same for the social security card.

Because this act shows their hand. 80% of woman who are married in this country take their husband’s name. I did. Does this bill mean that I would no longer be eligible to vote because my birth certificate and my driver’s license do not match?

I am afraid that this is the intention. In all the reading I have done these last 3 months I have come across a phrase in a couple of places that I thought was straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. “Family voting”, wherein the man, whose name does match his birth certificate, votes for the entire house.

The real question is what exactly is this bill saving? Nothing. It would cost A LOT of money to implement. Imagine the lawsuits. Imagine the outrage the first time a woman goes to vote and is denied because she took her husband’s name.

For something we didn’t even need. Unless that was the entire point. To more than halve the number of women who are eligible to vote.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Are you frightened yet?

More importantly, are you paying attention yet?

Tuesday Top of Mind 1/7/25-of course babies are being thrown away in TX

SIX babies have been found abandoned in dumpsters in this last year in Houston, TX, alone. According to reporting by Fox News 26 in Houston, this is a 500 increase since 2022. In that year ONE baby was abandoned.

What else happened in 2022? The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, dooming more than half of their constituents to fear and the possibility of death if pregnancy doesn’t go 100% right.

This sounds like the natural consequences to their actions. To be clear, the government and the legislature are not the ones facing the consequences or death.

The worst part of this story is that 2 of the babies were found dead.

The other worst part of this story is that it is not just Houston.

The other other worst part of this story is that sometimes it is a ditch.

Reminder, Texas has one of the strictest abortion laws in the US.

And they are surprised? No, of course not, this is just expected fallout of their control issues. Acceptable casualties such as these have probably already been calculated and their concern level has not been breached.

There is another way. There are safe haven laws on the books in Texas. It just comes with an eensy, teensy catch. The mothers (it is always the only the mothers, have you noticed?) might not even know about them as the powers that be in TX certainly don’t advertise the laws. To do so would burst their happy little bubble that this is fine, everything’s on fire, but it is fine.

Dead women if you do (abysmal women’s maternal mortality rate, worst in the nation according to the state rankings), dead infants if you don’t (allow abortion rights, fund women’s healthcare, give a damn about your constituents, allow ).

And the women who have the money and the support to go out of state to seek their very much needed healthcare? Texas and Indiana and possibly Idaho would very much like to know where women go when they flee the state for needed healthcare.

A law called HIPAA prevents them. But that doesn’t stop them from trying. From battering down the walls that are protecting women from creeps like them.

Are you paying attention yet?

Or are you pleased this is happening and the dead children and dead women are acceptable losses?

Tuesday Top of Mind 12/31/24- criminalizing miscarriages

I am sure I have written about this before. When it happened in South Carolina, when it happened in Ohio. In fact, there have been at least 7 states that have prosecuted women for failing to seek medical care. Well, what they considered prompt medical care.

But what is happening in South Carolina is another swing at the apple of declaring that life begins at conception. Whatever your creed or not creed when life begins has very different answers. According to Genesis 2, life begins at first breath.

Reminder, the bible is not necessarily truth. It is a truth that was written by men. And I use the term truth loosely. It has been translated many, many, many times and we all know what happens when you play telephone.

By declaring that life begins at conception this opens the door to naming miscarriages and abortion as murder. Since South Carolina is a death penalty state, this potentially means the death penalty for women who suffer a miscarriage. That’s 25% of all pregnancies, straight off the top. This leads me to wonder “Can they math?”

And here, I thought they were concerned with the declining birthrate and, by extension, the declining population numbers that do not match what is required to take care of the elders.

The thing is, South Carolina tried this before in March of 2023. In a bill that went nowhere. In fact, the reason it went nowhere is that several republicans pulled their support of the bill. Perhaps when it started getting a lot of publicity.

I am sure that some of this stems from a genuine concern for the unborn by a small amount of people. But not most of it. The rest are concerned with the federal money. Missouri told us that.

At heart, and I have definitely written this before, it is about controlling women.

Full stop.

But I don’t think it sends the message they want to send.

If a woman fears the death penalty for getting pregnant, she can take birth control. And not get pregnant.

Do you see where this is a foolish idea?

Good job scaring a lot of women, South Carolina. I hope you DON’T get what you are after.

Don’t worry, criminalizing birth control is next on their pretend outrage docket.

After they finish dumping crappy bills into December when no one is paying attention.

Tuesday Top of Mind 11/5/24- your vote is private

Over the last two weeks, I have heard many, many, many, many, many attacks on women. Men are interested in how learning a woman, any woman, THEIR woman voted.

Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t owe anyone an answer to this.

It is none of their business HOW you voted.

It is none of their business IF you voted. Although, I wish you would.

Some men even equated not voting in lockstep with their vote to cheating. Cough, cough, jesse watters.

Um.

Take several steps back, sir.

In fact, check yourself. I realize that you think having an outie sex organ entitles you to all the things. But it doesn’t.

A woman in her EIGHTIES voted for the first time because her husband, who had decreed that it is not important that she vote, died last year.

There are so many stories about men and others but mostly men, putting pressure on women to vote the way that the man does. Or even stopping women from voting. Where do you think you live, sir? Iran or Afghanistan. The woman’s right to vote is enshrined in the 19th Amendment and we will not be denied.

Of course, there is a lot of chatter “joking” that the 19th Amendment has to be repealed. Yeah, I’ve seen your jokes. There is always a kernel or even a whole ear of corn of truth.

You and what army?

There are stories of breakups over a woman not telling a man who they voted for. Of men looming over their partners in the voting area in an intimidating manner. BTW, this is not allowed. Men who gave their wives the silent treatment because the wives dared to 1) vote and 2) not to tell them how they voted.

If I was confronted and someone demanded I tell them how I voted, I would tell the truth. I voted straight blue ticket. Yes, all of them, even the ballots that don’t have party affiliations on them. I can research and read up on the people I am voting for before I go to the early voting site.

But not all women are like me. And that’s okay.

This is your permission slip to lie. This isn’t something I would do, but you have to live your life.

No one has the right to know who you voted for.

Tuesday Top of Mind 10/22/24-the pregnant woman “owes” the state her progeny because they will be taxpayers someday-WTAF

The truth comes with a complaint in TX before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Court (of course). This is yet another attack on mifepristone by mail. Reminder, of the varying bans that politicians and states have placed on women’s bodies and their access to healthcare. Okay, it is really the abortion bans that have been ramrodded through state legislatures. And 63% of all abortions in the US are self-administered through medication such as mifepristone and misoprostol. Even before the Dobbs decision, the rule from the FDA allowed these medications to be distributed by mail.

Some people don’t appreciate that and they are throwing anything and everything at the rule and the FDA to stop it.

We have been living this for 2 years. They utilized much of the same constant approaches against Roe v Wade and we all know that sometimes shit sticks.

This last filing is a doozy and apparently pregnant teenagers are the “property of the state”. This is from the state of Texas. And the state of Missouri, as a second complainant, thinks it is the duty of a pregnant woman in Missouri to have the baby. You know, to make more taxpayers.

As I’ve been writing about it is about money and control.

But from the complaint itself being able to obtain abortion drugs “has caused abortions for women in the Plaintiff Stats and decreased births in Plaintiff States. This is a sovereign injury to the state itself… a loss of potential population causes further injuries as well: the States’ subsequent “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds” such as potentially “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are” reduced or their increase diminished.”

What the actual fuck!

They’ve tipped their hand.

This is it; the entire reason for this bullshit. For the stripping of bodily rights from the women.

Men see women as nothing more than possessions. This includes the output of our uteruses. To their mind, they OWN us and any output our uteri might supply. And how dare we have a sense of our own and thoughts and aspirations of our own! To think that we are people.

After all, the ENTIRE reason for being a woman is to make a man’s job/life easier.

Or, so they think.

I saw this mentioned in an Esquire article and confirmed it with a CNN article and I am appalled. And disgusted. And unsurprised

Everyone needs to know about this.

Women need to know about this.

As a reminder, Missouri has a state constitutional amendment about the Right to Reproductive Freedom on the ballot in 15 days.

Just saying.

School Me Saturday- Poll me once?

In today’s special edition of school me Saturday I want to talk about polls.

Not poll numbers.

But poll questions.

Last semester one of my classes was about measurement. How to take it, and, more importantly, how to make sure the tools and questions were of quality.

Because there are such things as validity and reliability.

For this school me Saturday we are going to take validity: does the question really ask what you think it is asking.

The loose definition of validity is how well the question reflects a true finding among those asked. They use this to correlate with those outside of the poll.

The loose definition of reliability is how well the poll question reflects what can be replicated with another person taking the poll.

What prompted this topic was the ONE time I participated in a poll about this 2024 general election and how poorly written the questions were.

They asked me general questions about who I anticipated voting for and my general feeling about the election.

And then, after they found out I was not playing about voting straight party Democrat ticket, they threw some BS information out about the Democratic candidate and asked if I was still going to vote for them. When I said that I would rather vote for the Democrat, they pushed me, hard. I stated that bodily autonomy was so important to me that I didn’t care what crap they bought up about the candidate.

And they hung up on me.

Frankly, the entire encounter left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I’ve declined all calls since.

It has been a LONG time since I was in journalism class but even I can spot when they are leading the interviewee the answer in the way that they wanted me to answer.

Obviously, they don’t know me.

The takeaway is that if you do answer the phone and talk to a pollster be honest. But also pay attention to their questions and how they are given.

And make sure that you get the name of the company taking the poll. A lot can be figured out by a quick Google.

If you do the quick Google, consider if you even want to talk to the pollster.

If you do talk to them pay very close attention to the questions and how they make you feel.

Before you ask, I do believe in polling.

Just not in answering my phone.

Tuesday Top of Mind 10/8/24- explicative deleted the supreme court

Me again.

Back on abortion news that is so hot it would burn if I had any fingertips left.

Yesterday, the supreme court declined to hear a case from the BIDEN administration about the draconian abortion law in Texas. The state was using that law to say, nah bro, even if a patient is on the verge of dying, emergency rooms don’t have to do an abortion. And they send the woman HOME.

In other words, in starker words, let the woman die instead of performing an abortion, which is the evidence-based standard of care for miscarriage. The problem is that the fetus isn’t dead YET, or at least their cardiac poles are working, and the woman isn’t sick enough YET.

Let the woman die.

Because the output of her uterus has a stronger case in front of the current supreme court than her right to life.

You know, the right to life is in the constitution’s preamble.

But, sure, why not deny a woman her rights?

After all, she is a lesser being than the clump of cells in her uterus.

They had punted a similar EMTALA case in June of this year. Do you remember?

EMTALA is a federal law that means everyone who presents to the emergency room gets the treatment they need. No matter what it is.

Ringing a bell now?

The thing is the Biden administration was asking to send the fifth circuit appeals court ruling on EMTALA and Texas back to a lower court to be retried.

The supreme court said nah.

I am not sure who is paying attention if anyone. There are a lot of other things commanding our attention: the 2024 general election, the devastating loss of life and property over 6 states after Hurricane Helene, the category 5 Hurricane Milton that is bearing down on almost the exact spot where Hurrican Helene hit Florida, the Russian bots that are trolling the news sites and giving out lies. I won’t even talk about their most current lie about FEMA money but it is certainly a lie.

Misdirection is the standard for all magic tricks.

I wonder what else they are doing when we aren’t paying attention.

To be clear, the they isn’t just the supreme court, but news media, and the aforementioned troll bots that are desperate to make you believe lies.

I am tired of being told that my life doesn’t matter, that what I want doesn’t matter by these clowns.

I am definitely tired of being reminded over and over and over and over and over again that because I am a woman my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness matter less than the potential output of my uterus.

Don’t get me started on the fact that my husband and I do not have children. Which also makes us lesser.

Tuesday Top of Mind 7/30/24- childless cat lady here, reporting from the front line

There is a furor of JD Vance denouncing the country as being run by childless cat ladies. There is a lot to unpack here and is my Tuesday top of mind.

It goes beyond the regret that he says that the U.S. is being run “by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Point number 1- I feel this is a call back to the spinster horror from the Victorian era and before where a woman needed a man. Otherwise, they would be “on the shelf” and unmarriageable by 23. She was forced to care for her parents until their deaths and after they died forced to live in misery, unwanted. (frowny face here) This is definitely the underpinning of this idea. It is a well-known trope that it was best to be widowed because the widowed woman was thought to be independent and beholden to no man.

Point number 2- I feel this is a projection of the miserableness of those who have children. They see those of us who do not have children as selfish and having all the fun they can’t have themselves. You know, because of the kids. I think this is especially poignant because some people with children want to make the world as miserable as them, mainly when it comes to book bans and drag queen bans. I get it, when you have children they are vulnerable and everything looks like a threat. But is it, though? Or is the threat coming, as it often does, from inside the house?

Point number 3- Who says those of us who don’t have children are miserable? Kind of goes back to point number 2. Projection much?

Point number 4- This lumps all women and men who don’t have kids into the bucket of not having kids because we don’t want them. This might or might not be far from the truth. What about those of us who couldn’t have kids? We are apparently the same as those who don’t want them. One of these things is not like the other.

Point number 5- I think this is about transphobia as well. Trans women do not have the plumbing to create or carry a child. This is through no fault of their own. But why not twist the knife? It says nothing about their willingness to carry a child, if it was physically possible.

Point number 6- Men like this and others who embrace what he is saying are afraid. Afraid of the woman who is not under a man’s thumb. Afraid of a woman who doesn’t need a man. Afraid of a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it.

Much like the abortion bans and the book bans, it is all about control.

They can’t control us.

And they fear what they can’t control.

Therefore, we childless cat ladies, married or not, women who are unable to bear children or not, are to be squeezed into a teeny tiny box of their making. Because they fear what they can’t control.

Fuck that.

My cats and my uterus and my husband would like a word.

I have also seen the childless dog women coming to our defense and that of Kamala Harris, who the slur was originally against. And it is glorious.

You bet I bought that tee shirt.

Tuesday Top of Mind 7/9/24-their plan, yes, that awful, horrible, no good plan

I took yesterday completely off after doing all the research into Project 2025 and Agenda 47. I did not want to sully the day with this filth.

A couple of years ago, I heard rumblings about the “conservative game plan” for after the 2024 election. You know, the one that is November 5, 2024.Call it Project 2025, the 900-page conservative wishlist. Call it Agenda 47, which is what Trump wants to do if he is reelected. And he’s got a whole lot of hurt planned for those he perceives who have wronged him.

I call it bullshit.

All of their horrible, misogynistic, misanthropist, nightmare wishing, end of the rainbow, white christian nationalist ideas. All of it is bunk.

Call a spade a spade.

They wouldn’t because a spade is a black card.

This is how far they have slid down the white christian nationalist shit pile.

Did you see the masked, khaki pant wearing, beige baseball hat wearing, blue polo shirted assholes that came pouring out of rented U-haul trucks to stalk the streets of Nashville, waving their upside down flags, and their confederate flags, and their 13 starred flags? Yeah these are a what I can surmise is an offshoot of the Proud Boy movement that call themselves the Patriot Front. They look like all the brotastic podcast boys, put the women in their place wannabes. Riding in the back of the probably sweltering U-haul trucks in disregard to ANY safety laws.

Ugh. I need a shower after digging through that muck.

I’ve done a pretty deep dive into the mess. The 900 pages of the Project 2025, the hate speech of Agenda 47 which, again, calls patriots traitors for daring to stand up to the great one. I’ve listened to podcasts, and I’ve watched videos, and I’ve read article after article after article about it.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, believes that we are in the middle of another civil war and you know what side he is on. He also believes that this can be bloodless if the left allows it to be. Yeah, no. I don’t think so. Who gave him the covenant to declare that? Himself.

But I have a pretty good bead on what it all means.

There is a part of the introduction that says that they want to “live well”. Well, that’s up to interpretation. My well is to have dominion over my own body and voting rights for those who are citizens. To some of these people, living well is holding their feet/knees/weapon against the neck of others they deem less than themselves.

It all boils down to three things. All 900 pages of the vitriol. Of all the weaponizing of our own tools against us with the takeover of the DOJ and the firing of all the civil servants who are there as a constant. The Agenda 47 on 45’s own website.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I don’t like it because it is not like me, therefore no one should have it. Doesn’t matter what it is, gender affirming care (but Cialis and Viagra are still okay), rights of people to have dominion over their own body, rights of people to love who they love, regardless of gender, to be who they are at the core regardless of gender
We fear women

That’s it, that’s their entire platform.

Why would you believe a known liar? They are telegraphing who they are and straight out telling us who they are and then lying about it when they claim that they are not. Why should we believe the known liars? I will not pretty up their actions and words by calling it “Falsely accused without evidence.” It is lies.

Call them for what they are- liars and wanna be big men.

I call them creepy and gross who see bogeymen in the shadows that look and act a lot like their secret desires.

These are beyond scary times. This election isn’t about red v blue, Trump v Biden; it is about not allowing the very bones of Democracy be picked over by the corporate ghouls who want you to live as they DEEM you should. Personal freedom goes out with the bathwater. As I just wrote, money, fear of women, and fear of the unknown is at the root of it.

We should be alert but resolved.

I am.

Both as a woman and a patriot. Just not their definition of the word. Because of the whole woman thing.

I am going to take another shower now, just writing this. And set fire to my browsing history.

Dispatch July 4, 2024-not so happy here on the front lines

I know many other people, liberals and conservatives alike, who have a pit in their stomach like me when it comes to celebrating the fourth. One of my favorite authors who I KNOW is a Republican because she has talked about it and is also sounding the alarm.

Some of us are actively sitting out on celebrations.

Because we don’t feel so merry.

Some would call us out as non-patriotic.

The United States we are living in is and always has been a grand experiment. It always has been. It is meant to be a living, breathing thing, not mired in the past as some would have us be.

We are patriotic enough to be fearful of the overreach by the Supreme Court, egged on by the dark money and not-so-dark money that has been flowing their way. Easier now that they ruled that bribes can happen AFTER verdicts. Handy, that.

We are patriotic enough to embrace change.

We are patriotic enough to cheer on those who are scrabbling, desperate for that change.

What we have to ask those who cleave so hard to the past what they are afraid of?

Because this smacks of fear to me. Afraid of the not like us, afraid of the other religions, even though this country was founded on religious freedoms. Afraid of the different. Afraid of things they don’t understand.

What they don’t know is that we would teach them not to be afraid.

Because they are hurting us with every law declaring the president can basically rule as a king as long as he is acting within official presidential duties. And what are official duties? Whatever they tell us or the president regards them. No matter if it is to deny a free and fair election and try to subvert the will of the people. Apparently, insurrection is within official duties.

Walt Kelly and his comic strip “Pogo” said it best.

We have met the enemy and he is us. I know it was a strip about littering and pollution and I could write about that too.

Speak up when they are against you and making it harder for you to vote.

Call out instances of cheating and stacking the courts.

Call a lie a lie.

Call an insurrection an attempted coup.

Fight like hell against those who want to drag the country back, kicking and screaming to a time they deem to be original.

Original to who?

The white men who owned other people and called them slaves.

Or the white men who fought to free themselves from tyranny just to foist it on the slaves.

Or the white men who left the faraway country and came to America to escape religious persecution.

By their court, women have been stripped of dominion over their own bodies.

By their court, what is feared can be ruled and legislated against. Even if it is the torture of babies who are not meant to live outside the womb. Ask a parent who has had to watch the minutes-long “life” their child endured before nature took over. Was that a peaceful death? Or did it look tortuous? More to the point, did their child die in pain?

By their court, the president has the powers of a king.

Please vote.

I am a patriot. Not only because I signed and swore my oath as an Air Force Reserve cadet at age 18.

I believe in this country and its people.

Even if it is hard at this particular moment.

This has been a dispatch from the healthcare front,

Kate