It’s all been said already. The GOP bill, TrumpDoesn’tCare, sucks. And frankly, I am unable to find the funny in the fact that the current leaders just sold us down the River Styx, on our way to hell.
I feel it personally, deeply. I honestly fear for the future of myself and everybody like me with a preexisting condition. Everybody with a chronic condition that requires expensive medicine. Mine costs $26K every six weeks. Over the 5 years of the “pool” the GOP added to the AHCA, I’ll use $1 million just by myself. Because of poop problems.
Folks keep telling me that I’m over-reacting, that this bill will never pass the Senate. And that’s true. But I have no faith that the Senate version will be much better, only different. After all, it is run by the folks who literally stole a supreme court seat. Does anybody really believe that these guys will do the right thing?
So clearly there is only one response that I have to Donald Trump and the House GOP.
If you hear about somebody doing this at the White House or on Capitol Hill, just pretend you don’t know me.
Today is Duncan’s birthday — his 3rd! He is a wonderful dog. Sweet, relatively obedient, and incredibly lovable.
The Birthday Boy!
But I went a bit overboard with doggie treats for this good boy this year. So I figured I’d share them with his friends at the park. In a way that would be good for the earth. In a way that positively shouts “DOG!” I made doggie goodie bags!
OK, in the stupidest way possible. I used biodegradable dog poop bags, and filled them full of delicious brown dog treats. That way, if I missed any of the morning friends Duncan and I usually walk with, I could leave one on their car.
A dog poop bag filled with brown stuff, left on a car. What could possibly go wrong?
Luckily for me, we saw his friends, and they and their parents were delighted by the goodie bags. They didn’t think me weird for
Making doggie goodie bags,
Using poop bags for party bags; or
Expecting that if they found one of these on their car that they would open it up and feed it to their dog.
Earth Day. The Science March (which I sadly can’t attend until Science gets around to curing my damn Crohn’s Disease). My late sister Judy’s birthday. So I’m reposting this. Hey – Jude believed firmly in recycling!
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She’s been gone now for 17 years, Jude. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t wanted to talk with her, laugh with her, or, alternatively because she was my sister, smack her. There really isn’t a relationship like you have with a sister. Even long after they are gone.
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Today, April 22, is Earth Day! It’s the Anniversary of the very first Earth Day. Here is Walter Cronkite’s report on the first Earth Day, 1970:
It would also be my late sister Judy’s 65th birthday.
Whoever made the decision to turn Judy’s birthday into Earth Day chose wisely. Judy was a born environmentalist and recycler.
On the first Earth Day, Judy was a new, very young mother who believed in saving the planet. She was the first “environmentalist” I ever knew personally, and well, I thought she was nuts. There was a recycling bin in her kitchen for as long as I can remember. And this was back when recycling took effort. She believed in gardens, not garbage, and she made life bloom wherever she was.
“I’ve got kids,” she’d say. “It’s their planet too!”
But years later, Judy took recycling to a whole different level when she helped people recycle themselves. In the 1990s, Jude, who was then living in Florida, began working with the Homeless, assisting at shelters. Then she actively began trying to help homeless vets food, shelter and work — to enable them to jump-start their lives.
When she died in early 2000, the American Legion awarded her honorary membership for her services to homeless vets. A homeless shelter was named in her honor. So she’s still doing good works, my sister is. That would make her wildly happy.
Jude also gave me the Beatles. So it is very appropriate that they wrote a song for her.
You see, the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, it was MY turn to choose what we were going to watch. And we were going to watch the second part of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan on the Wonderful Wide World of Disney. My four (all older and MUCH cooler) siblings were furious with me. But I was quite insistent. You might even say that I threw a Class I temper tantrum over it, but I wouldn’t admit to that. Hey, I was seven. And it was my turn to choose. Fair is fair, especially in a big family with only one TV.
Somehow, Judy talked me out of my turn. She was always very persuasive. Thanks Jude.
Tired of calling your senators and congressman/woman? Maybe what you need to do instead is go to town. Town Halls, that is.
Yup. Here’s another way to raise some hell.
The Town Hall Project 2018 is a website that posts public forums for senators and members of congress. Meetings where you can go and listen to and talk with the people who claim to represent you.
If you have questions, problems concerns with what is happening in our government, in our world, go to town.
If you think that keeping Obamacare is important to you, go to town.
If you think that maintaining Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as you’ve expected them to be when it was time for you to collect on what you’ve paid out for decades, go to town.
If you think that protecting the environment is important to you, go to town.
If you think that Trump’s Executive Order banning Muslims should be revoked, go to town.
If you have other opinions that I haven’t listed and that you feel your representatives in Congress need to hear about, go to town. And bring friends. Bring lots and lots of friends.
The Town Hall Project 2018 has promised to update its website regularly. So bookmark it, and show up.
American Democracy is no longer a spectator sport. Get it in gear.
If you were a news junkie during the George W. Bush era, you’re already experiencing deja vu. That sinking feeling already makes your eyes roll automatically when Putin’s President appears. It settled into the back of your neck from the whiplash as you shake your head and shout “no, no, no, no, no, no, no!” over the latest outrage or tweet. And it’s there in the pit of your stomach, when you try not to vomit whenever you see the color orange.
Yup, it’s started. The Deluge. The Flood. The Trump shit storm.
During the Bush years, I would just be ready to pounce on one issue, when another hit the fan and took the wind out of my sails. Resistance is hard if there is just so much to resist.
How, I worried in the days since November 8, will I survive Trump. I feared a heart attack. A stroke. Getting so scared I’d shit in my pants. Of course I worry about the last one sometimes during a scary movie.
Anyway, I’ve come up with a strategy for a hybrid Resister/Surviving Human. I’m going to become a political centaur!
Google Image. No shit will be given by this filly.
I’m going to take my mother’s marital and parental advice and apply it to my activism. She said:
Choose Your Battles!
Me, I’m going to try to focus on issues I know about and/or that are closest to my heart. The ones I write about here on FiftyFourAndAHalf.
But that won’t be all I do. I will look for and follow the lead of others who are knowledgeable about other issues, and I will try to help to the extent I can. It’s not hard, really, to make calls to Congress and the White House. Really, it just takes a minute. You or I can even just cut and paste and hit “send.”
But I will try my very best to keep my blood pressure — and my outrage to livable levels.
George W. Bush kept us all off balance because there were so many things to be outraged about, that we couldn’t keep it up. Different bad presidents need different tactics.
And Trump will make the Dubya years look like a walk in the park. And that park is in Baghdad.
FiftyFourandAHalf 