"This game is for keeps. All prizes are final.”

*** “They put dad next to mom, and they put mom’s hand on top of dad’s, and my sister and I and her three children and my daughter were in there. We may have not seen each other every day, but we talked every day, and now… there’s nothing. I mean, nothing whatsoever.” --Nikki Jensen, daughter, on burying both parents on the same day. Joe and Evelyn Chaisson died together on August 27 in Sulphur, Louisiana, leaving behind Nikki and her sister to cherish their memory. Joe and Evelyn were not vaccinated. 

 *** Martin Daniel, 53, and his wife Trina, 49, died together on July 6 in Savannah, Georgia, orphaning two teenage children. Martin and Trina were not vaccinated. 

*** Barbara Finch died on September 10 in Bangor, Maine. Her husband Robert died two days later on September 12. Barbara and Robert orphaned three children. Barbara and Robert were not vaccinated. 

*** Davy Macias, 37, died on August 26 in Yucaipa, California. Her husband Daniel, 38, died two weeks later on September 9. Davy and Daniel orphaned five children, ages 7, 5, 3, 2, and a baby born while Davy was intubated. Davy and Daniel were not vaccinated. 

*** Charletta Green, 44, died on Labor Day while in Florida on vacation. Her husband Troy, also 44, still in Detroit planning to join her later, on the beach, instead, joined her in Heaven eight hours later. Charletta and Troy orphaned seven young children. Charletta and Troy were not vaccinated. 

 *** Lydia Rodriguez, 42, died on August 2 in Galveston, Texas. Her husband Lawrence, 49, died two weeks later on August 16. Lydia and Lawrence orphaned four children. Lydia and Lawrence were not vaccinated because they “didn’t believe in vaccines.” 

*** Tris Graham, 45, died on August 25 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her husband Dusty, 45, died three weeks later on September 16. Tris and Dusty orphaned their two children, Windsor and Gabe. Tris and Dusty were not vaccinated because “the U.S. Constitution is my passport.” 

*** Brenda Smalls, 38, died on September 6 in Aiken, South Carolina. Her husband Marcus, 44, died a week later on September 13. Brenda and Marcus orphaned seven small children. Brenda and Marcus were not vaccinated because Brenda felt it sufficient to rebuke Covid in prayer: “I curse the coronavirus at its roots and command it to shrivel up and die, in the name of Jesus.” 

*** Shannon Berardis, 50, died on August 22 in Statesboro, Georgia. Her husband Billy, 50, died sometime before September 16. Shannon and Billy orphaned their five-year-old son, Elijah. Shannon and Billy were not vaccinated because Shannon "would not let the government tell me I need to be vaccinated against their bullshit.” 

*** Carla Smith, 62, died in Piedmont Newnan hospital on August 21. Her husband Clint, 62, died two days later on August 23 in Wellstar Lagrange hospital. The different hospitals kept the nurses from “putting dad next to mom, and putting mom’s hand on top of dad’s.” Carla and Clint were not vaccinated because the Pentecostal couple believed the vaccines contained the Mark of the Beast. Their orphaned daughter, who had begged her parents to get vaccinated, expressed her exasperation in their joint obituary she wrote for McKoon Funeral Home in Newnan, Georgia: “Clint and Carla loved Jesus. Clint and Carla were gone far too soon. The family believes their deaths were preventable, if they had gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. Their daughter Elana would particularly like to encourage friends, family, and anyone reading this to get vaccinated so that your sons and daughters never have to feel this kind of pain.” 

*** Jeffery Hager, 46, died on September 10 in Huntersville, North Carolina. His wife Amee died eight days later on September 18. Jeffery and Amee orphaned four children, Garrett 14, Addison 13, Jackson 7, Emmery 6. Jeffery and Amee were not vaccinated. On their final CaringBridge entry, Amee's parents pleaded with parents to get vaccinated: "If you are not vaccinated…..please go and get it. You cannot be replaced! Don't leave your families behind to deal with this kind of pain and grief!" 

*** Derrick Wallace, 46, died on August 9 in Liberty, Texas. His wife Jessica, 40, died ten days later on August 19. Derrick and Jessica orphaned their teen daughter, Madison. The Pentecostal couple were not vaccinated. With extreme poise and commendable composure, Madison stood behind her parents’ open caskets at The Anchor Pentecostal Church in Beaumont and thanked them for their love, expressed by her father in “traditional ways” and [awkward giggle] “making fun of me” and “buying five boxes of the Pop-Tarts he knew I liked.” 

Twelve couples dead. Thirty-nine children orphaned. Lives cut short in their prime. Lives left behind shattered. For what? For nothing. I mean nothing whatsoever. There is no worthy sacrifice; there is no honorable cause. None of these people rushed into a burning building to save children; none drowned trying to pull a stranger from the ocean; none were on the front lines in hospitals before a vaccine was available. 

There will be no hospital wings named after them; no bridges carrying their names over troubled waters; no ships christened in their honor. They died for nothing. I mean nothing whatsoever. They threw away their own lives and forever wrecked the lives of those left behind in the wake of their prideful, selfish obstinance. 

The virtually-risk-free highly-effective vaccine was free of charge and freely-available to all twelve couples as of April. All have died since July. Their deaths were entirely and easily preventable. 

My anger at ignorance is checked by the heartbreak of those needlessly orphaned. Pop-Tarts. The innocence. The shocked inability to grasp the permanency. Madison chose Calum Scott’s “You Are The Reason” to play on loop as church members filed by the two open coffins, pausing to hug her. It’s a song of a person left behind; a person desperately struggling under the guilt and weight of knowing he drove away the love of his life; a shattered person begging for a return of life as it was. 

“There goes my heart beating/ 'Cause you are the reason I'm losing my sleep/ Please come back now /“And there goes my mind racing /And you are the reason/ That I'm still breathing/ I'm hopeless now/ “I'd climb every mountain/ And swim every ocean/ Just to be with you/ And fix what I've broken/ Oh, 'cause I need you to see/ That you are the reason.” 

Evangelicals, preoccupied with the afterlife, don’t seem to grasp the finality of earthly death. These people are not coming back from the grave when they finish 'owning the libs' by proving they have the 'medical freedom' to refuse life-saving treatment. There will be no third-day resurrection for those whose 'own research' contained a fatal error. 

This game is for keeps. 

 All prizes are final.” --Cree Hardegree

That call Gen. Milley had with his counterpart in China...

 

All the top advisors in the Trump administration knew about the call; Gen. Milley had coordinated the call with them:

Milley Says China Calls Were Coordinated With Trump Aides 

 General Mark Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two calls he made to his Chinese counterparts in the final weeks of the Trump administration were a normal part of his job and were coordinated with the acting secretary of defense and other top officials. 

 “I know, I am certain, President Trump did not intend on attacking the Chinese, and it is my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent,” Milley told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday, referring to a call he made on Oct. 30. Eight people sat in on the October call and 11 people sat in on the January call. 

The calls were coordinated by Trump Secretaries of Defense at the time, Esper and Miller.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Frank McKenzie, the U.S. Central Command chief, testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that he made the first call on Oct. 30 at the direction of then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and that eight people were on the call with him. 

 Milley also informed the senators on the Armed Services Committee that the Chinese requested the second call, doing so on Dec. 31. That call took place on Jan. 8, and 11 people were in on that call. He also explained that he "personally" told then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while later briefing then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

"...Meadows, whose knowledge of the call was previously unknown, said on social media: "General Milley needs to answer questions immediately — under oath — about whether he subverted a sitting President of the United States and colluded with an adversary. Not tomorrow. Not eventually. Immediately. If it’s true, firings and resignations should be just the start."

***************************

Do you see what happened there? Meadows knew exactly and under what circumstances the call was made. He knew the truth, and yet that didn't stop him from implying in his statement that Gen. Milley did something wrong. The revelations about the phone call sparked outrage among some Republicans, including Trump, who suggested that Gen. Milley had committed a crime by going behind the then-president’s back to communicate U.S. policy to foreign adversaries.

None of that was true, since Trump's closest advisors knew about it.

Like Trump, Meadows is a grandstanding liar, interested only in scoring points and dividing this country further than it already is.

More grandstanding Trumpublican idiots shooting off their mouths without knowing the details and truth.

Idiots! All of them.

Marjorie Taylor Green: "Court-martial Mark Milley." 

Republicans call Gen. Mark Milley 'traitor,' and say he should be fired or court-martialed for a report that he secretly intervened to avoid war with China

COULDN'T RESIST THIS MEME

 

This is how millions of Americans imagine The Former Guy:

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

The Thatcher Effect

The Thatcher Effect. This illusion highlights a flaw in how our brains work - we can't process an upside-down face because we are programmed to recognise faces the right way up. We create a mental map by recognising the face in pieces - eyes, mouth, and nose. So when we're presented with an upside-down, Thatcherised image, it's not processed properly. 

We know it's upside down, but because we so rarely encounter upside-down faces, we haven't evolved to interpret the expressions on them. The facial features look fine, so our brains assume the rest of the face is as well. That's why we don't see anything out of the ordinary until we turn the face the ‘right way’ up.

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE DANCE SKETCHES:

 

 

"One of the darkest moments in U.S. history."

 

CNN reports:

"Just this week, it's been revealed that: 

Trump had blueprints that the Republicans tried to use to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's clear and genuine victory, in the form of a memo that laid out a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to thwart Biden's Electoral College triumph. 

The memo was reported in the new book "Peril," by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, and was later obtained by CNN. 

Trump's own campaign staff knew that outlandish claims of fraud made by the then-President's lawyers were utterly false, according to a report in The New York Times. But they did nothing to stop his dangerous allegations. 

Trump sent a letter full of false information to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to start the process of decertifying the 2020 election. "Peril" also contains a passage that shows Trump cared little for truth, what voters decided in November or bedrock constitutional values -- but agonized about his reputation and mused that accepting defeat would brand him as one of history's losers. 

This growing paper trail, which is likely to be of intense interest to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, appears to prove Trump's intent to stay in power illegally. The record is beginning to add up to an extraordinary indictment of the ex-President's abuses of power and one of the darkest moments in US history."

*****************************

None of this seems to matter to Trump's cultists. A brief look at the pro-Trump news sites and blogs shows that none of his cultists are reporting on these horrifying revelations.

This is the real danger to our republic: Trump's cultists who continue to swallow his lies and fantasies and his attempts to illegally install himself for a second term.

The CNN report is a good reminder of what January 6 was -- a widespread, concerted attempt by the GOP, acting not as a few rogues but as a single entity, to overthrow the United States' government in service to their mad king. Yet not a damn single one of them has ever been charged with sedition.

At least a third of Americans believe that Trump was cheated out of being re-elected despite there being absolutely no proof those misguided believers can produce that shows a massive level of voter fraud. 

Even sixty plus lawsuits (most of which were simply thrown out), as well as the fact that the SCOTUS agreed that there was no voter fraud has dissuaded Trump's cultists from the lie that the election was stolen. Yet the idea that Trump is still the actual president persists in his and their minds. 

The Trumpublican Party has done little to nothing to push back against these fantasies, and even today it continues to support the Big Lie that Trump was cheated. 

 Democracy in the United States is doomed!

Pence and Trump's Treachery

 

Read this by Charlie Pierce and weep for our Republic. 

The Trumpublicans really, really, really wanted to overthrow our government and install Trump for an illegitimate second term. 

They failed -- Thank you, Dan Quayle, but the anti-American, anti-Constitution Trumpers have not given up: 

Charlie Pierce, Esquire:

"It Shouldn't Be This Easy to Overthrow the American Republic 

CNN got hold of a Trump lawyer's memo that describes a precise six-point plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump lawyer, John Eastman’s plan has an evil logic to it that cuts through any institutional safeguards in place through the simple expedient of believing that Pence was both a team player and a coward.  

Here's what the plan was: 

Point #2: When he [Pence] gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

Point #3: At the end, he [Pence] announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected. 

Ultimately, the whole plan is summarized by Point No. 6, which is fairly summarized as, “We’re lawless. So fcking what?” 

 Point #6:  The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind."

******************************

No one really believed that Pence somehow grew a spine back on January 6, because he was such a toady to Trump for four years. 

Suddenly he changed? Hah!

So now we know the truth about Mike Pence, failed VP and failed governor of Indiana. Not a profile in courage. In other words, he sought to find a way to obey Trump and launch a coup. 

He came up empty. 

Pence was and is a coward.

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

Fox News contributor and former GOP congressman Sean Duffy falsely claimed that the US must rely on fossil fuel sources because renewable technology isn't reliable in bad weather. 

"Windmills don't work when it's freezing and solar panels don't work when it's really cloudy, snowy out, or cold. We need fossil fuels," Duffy told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. 

Wind turbines are perfectly capable of generating power in freezing temperatures if they're properly weatherized.

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

Saturday Night Fever:

20 Rules Italians Never Break

 

Having grown up in an Italian family (both parents were born in Italy), I already knew most of these rules. 

The dress codes? Not so much.

Divertiti!

"Marshal" Law and MTG

 

The woman who tweeted this out for all the world to see is a member of Congress. She a U.S. Representative for Georgia's 14th Congressional district.

And she's an idiot. 

But, hey! Even idiots deserve representation, and her district certainly is well represented by her.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Court Marshal Mark Milley."*

*Greene has since corrected the above tweet after someone told her to correct it.

Here are some other things this functioning illiterate has tweeted about:

• The QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Donald Trump is secretly fighting a worldwide child-sex-slavery ring that was supposed to culminate in the mass arrest of his political opposition, is “worth listening to.” 

 • Muslims don’t belong in government. 

 • 9/11 was an inside job. 

 • Shootings at Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas were staged. 

 • “Zionist supremacists” are secretly masterminding Muslim immigration to Europe in a scheme to outbreed white people.

And this gem in which she shows off her galloping ignorance:

. Jewish space lasers caused the California forest fires.

And it's not just the unfortunate people from her district in Georgia who admire this numbskull enough to send her to the U.S. Congress to make a fool of herself. No. She has admirers in the blogging community who believe she's all that.

Here's an example:

"JG says:

September 15, 2021 at 5:37 am

Hearing of the DC coup against Trump. It was more than Milley and Joint Chiefs as NSA had to know, and as such CIA, DIA, FBI, and others in Congress. This shows treason by all and they are tied to China. We must vote out all existing in Congress except the few that are outcasts, like Republican Marjorie Green of GA. None have been arrested and will be. If they are not voted out it will likely be due to vote fraud and then the next step is CW2."

Those same people believe Donald J. Trump was the greatest president America ever voted into office and that the only reason he lost the election is because the "libs" got a bunch of aliens to fly their laser-spewing space ships to Earth so they could mail in millions of fake ballots for Joe Biden. They know this is true because those fake ballots had fibers inbedded in them that have been traced to Alpha Centuri. FRAUD! FAKE! ALIENS!

Those "patriots" wanted Trumpy to declare "Marshal Law." Maybe they think Eminem will then "reinstate" Trumpy by October?

WELL DONE, GOVERNOR NEWSOME

 

I have a special interest in California politics, because my daughter and her family live there.

"CHILDREN OF THE SAME FOUL SPIRIT" -- G.W. Bush

 

Foreign terrorists:

Domestic terrorists:

Thank you President Bush for speaking the truth about the current Republican party and drawing the connection between the 9/11 and the 1/6 terrorists. 

 And thank you Jennifer Rubin for making the connection even clearer: 

 "The Capitol, of course, was the suspected target of Flight 93; the heroes on board that plane spared the lawmakers and others who worked there from the fate of occupants of the twin towers and the Pentagon. 

The 1/6 terrorists breached the building the 9/11 terrorists could not. Both the 9/11 terrorists and the domestic 1/6 terrorists sought to destroy our democracy in service to a crazed ideology of intolerance."

Have you ever seen the rain?

 

Twenty years ago it was a clear blue day.

September 11, 2021

 

In Memory of Kevin M. McCarthy and All Who Were Lost on September 11, 2001

KEVIN M. McCARTHY 

Kevin M. McCarthy

World Trade Center 

AN UNABASHED CONFIDENCE 

 First think of him and Cape Cod. For Kevin M. McCarthy, the man with the catching smile who never encountered a conversational pause he couldn't fill, the salty air, sand dunes and lapping waves of Cape Cod constituted paradise. He found serenity there as a boy, and it was where he took his own family for vacations. Then think of his facility with his hands and his knack for MacGyver-like solutions. "You gave him a string and he could create a universe," said his wife, Debra. 

Then consider his unabashed confidence in himself. Risks didn't register. The proof was 98 stitches. Like the hockey stitches. The stitches from his service days when the antenna of an Army tank sliced off his eyebrow. And the box spring stitches. Unable to maneuver a box spring up three flights of stairs, he cut it in half, meanwhile sawing the inside of his hand. That was 23 stitches. 

Mr. McCarthy, 42, who lived in Fairfield, Conn., with his wife and three children, Chelsea, 12, and Andrew and Stephanie, 5, was also the master of reinvention. He ran a personal service business, then became a stay-at-home father when the twins were born, and then emerged as a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. On the night of Sept. 10, just before they went to sleep, he told his wife, "This is just too good to be true." 

 Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 31, 2001. 

Kevin M., age 42, of Fairfield, CT. is one of the missing victims of the attack of the World Trade Center Twin Towers. He was a Bond Broker For Cantor Fitzgerald. Born in Chelsea and raised in Reading, MA. he was the son of Charles and Marie (Fantasia) McCarthy of Orleans, MA. He was a graduate of Reading High School and attended college in Boston. 

He belonged to the National Guard for a number of years. In addition to his parents, he leaves his beloved wife, Debra Menich McCarthy; three children; Chelsea 11, and twins Andrew and Stephanie, 5, of Fairfield, CT. He is also survived by four sisters; Kathleen Sullivan and her husband, Richard of Concord, MA; Karen Toomey and her husband, Kevin, of Wellesley, MA; Maureen Baumgartel and her husband, Scott, of Sudbury, MA; Mary Ellen Rice and her husband, Tim, of Westport, CT; one brother, Charles Jr. and his wife, Deborah, of Back Bay Boston; and 9 nieces and nephews. 

A Celebration of Life will be conducted Wednesday, October 3, 2001 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Bernard's Church, Monument Square, Concord, MA. A Memorial Fund has been established, McCarthy Family Fund, c/o Charles Abercrombie, Esq., 251 Penfield St., Fairfield, CT. 06430 

R. E. Lee Comes Down From His Pedestal

Finally, the statue of the general who betrayed his country and symbolizes "The Lost Cause" comes down.

But not everyone is happy. And that's because they refuse to read history and instead believe in myths. 

Is anyone surprised then that these same folks continue to support Donald J. Trump, a man who hasn't a decent molecule in his body and who has managed to fool his followers into believing he's some sort of messiah come to make America great, when reality shows he's done the opposite?

 What they believe:

ROBERT E LEE power-sawed off its base from Richmond, Virginia.

Such a significant part of our history… And I think we all know Lee did not like slavery but knew it would be hard to overcome in that day…..and that God would put things to right in the future when it was more possible.

I SO wish these people who demand the destruction of our history at least knew it 

“Lee in his well-known analysis of slavery from an 1856 letter (see below) called it a moral and political evil. While both Robert and his wife Mary Lee were disgusted with slavery, they also defended it against abolitionist demands for immediate emancipation for all enslaved.[69]”

Reality from historians:

Lee was a slave owner—his own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that is often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as “a moral & political evil,” but goes on to explain that: 

 "I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. "

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most important, better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee. 

Lee’s cruelty as a slave master was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” 

The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.” [skip] Lee’s heavy hand on the Arlington, Virginia, plantation, Pryor writes, nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them. 

 When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to “lay it on well.” Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”

Yesterday was a good day!

 

Yesterday our President announced tangible no-BS policy to thwart those undermining efforts to beat the pandemic. 

Our AG filed suit vs Texas over an absurd, illegal abortion law. 

And we learned our FBI has pursued Seditious Conspiracy charges vs Oath Keepers. 

 It was a good day.

Me today: 

And what’s on the agenda for today Joe?!

STATEMENT FROM ATTORNEY GENERAL MERRICK B. GARLAND, SEPT. 6, 2021

 

Labor Day, September 6, 2021

 

My father was a union man.

Thank you, Possumlady, for this reminder:

 

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

While I find this a tragic statistic (if completely factual), it helps explain why the GQP are so desperate to enact draconian voter suppression laws.

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

The Gipsy Kings, Bamboleo:

A friend posted this on Facebook

BREAKING NEWS:Texas judge grants restraining order against anti-abortion group, temporarily preventing lawsuits  

I'm not pro-murdering babies.

I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.

I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.

I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.

I'm pro-little Cathy who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she should have been able to trust and her 11-year-old body isn't mature enough to bear the consequence of that betrayal.

I'm pro-Melissa who's working two jobs just to make ends meet and has to choose between bringing another child into poverty or feeding the children she already has because her spouse walked out on her.

I'm pro-Brittany who realizes that she is in no way financially, emotionally, or physically able to raise a child.

I'm pro-Emily who went through IVF, ending up with SIX viable implanted eggs requiring selective reduction to ensure the safety of her and a SAFE number of fetuses.

I'm pro-Jessica who is FINALLY getting the strength to get away from her physically abusive spouse only to find out that she is carrying the monster's child.

I'm pro-Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat.

I'm pro-Lindsay who lost her virginity in her sophomore year with a broken condom and now has to choose whether to be a teenage mom or just a teenager.

I'm pro-Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding.

You can argue and say that I'm pro-choice all you want, but the truth is:

I'm pro-life.

Their lives.

Women's lives.

You don't get to pick and choose which scenarios should be accepted.

It's not about which stories you don't agree with. It's about fighting for the women in the stories that you do agree with and the CHOICE that was made.

Women's rights are meant to protect ALL women, regardless of their situation!

Karma, karma, karma, karma ...

 

Candace Owens, a darling of the Trumpublicans and anti-vaxxer anarchists, experienced some well-deserved karma this week:

Source: The Daily Beast 

The owner of a private COVID testing clinic turned right-wing provocateur Candace Owens away for spreading COVID misinformation and discouraging mask use, according to a screenshot of an email posted online by Owens. 

 “We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations,” the owner wrote. 

 “My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you.” 

 According to previous media reports, the owner, Suzanna Lee, runs a private lab in the ski resort town of Aspen, Colorado. She directed Owens to the only other testing site in the city, but said it had inconsistent wait times for results.

BEST TWEET OF THE WEEK:

GrasshopperWoman @GrasshopperWom1 

Texas: where a virus has reproductive rights and a woman does not😵‍💫 12:05 PM · Sep 1, 2021