Monday, October 29, 2012

Remembering storms and Fig Newtons…

With news of another storm of the century tracking toward the East Coast, family, friends, and readers are in my thoughts.  I’ve watched coverage of Hurricane Sandy and…well, wow!


I sincerely hope this weather forecast to be full of shit, but it looks like it may be for real.  Bunker down, people!

This storm coverage reminds me of my first nor’easter.  I was in my second year at Brandeis and thought I’d seen the worst Massachusetts weather had to offer.  I remember waking up and going to campus only to find fellow students talking about a storm coming.  They kept calling it a nor’easter, as if that explained a damn thing to my midwestern ass, and I was too prideful to ask what the hell a nor’easter was. 

Note: this was before the age of smart phones, laptops, and widespread Googling.  I went to college with notebooks…the paper kind…and I used the computer lab.  Sigh. Those were the days!

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

It was surprisingly warm outside and all the Boston area folk didn’t seem to be freaking out, so I went about my day and returned to my dorm without stopping to pick up supplies. 

I woke up the next day to confront the wrath of God. 

It was cold as hell, the wind was screaming, and I couldn’t see a foot in front of me!  And that shit kept going and going…like it was taunting me for only having Fig Newtons to eat in my house!

Shit, I still can’t eat those damn cookies without thinking of that storm.

Anyhoo, I hope this storm-based drama is nothing like that freaky nor’easter!

Stay warm, safe, and bitchy, y’all!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Pondering friends…

I’ve had the worst week of sleep, y’all!


I suspect that this sleep drama is the result of the changing season and political campaign anxiety.  I always have this problem in the final 2 weeks of political frenzification…tis the worst!

Pause…yawn…continue.

Anyoo...shall we?

I’m beyond excited that a certain Brother Rob Thurman is coming to town for a visit!  Longtime readers know that Rob gave me this blog as a birthday present damn near 8 years ago…and that he is a treasured friend plus co-founder of the United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks.

I’m lucky to have a fantabulous chosen family of friends who are as dear to me as the family I was born into. 

But…well…clearly some folk are using a different definition of “friend” than I’m working with.

And the choir asked… “What do you mean?  Of whom do you speak?”

And a bitch replied… “Settle down and listen, damn it…patience!”

Cough.

I woke up to the news that John Sununu, being interviewed by Piers Morgan (ugh), responded to news of Colin Powell’s endorsement of President Obama with…
Sununu: "Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder if that's an endorsement based on issues, or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama?"

Morgan: "What reason would that be?"

Sununu: "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being President of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."
Wow. 

Oh, I know…I’ve heard it all…I get it that it is a lot easier to ignore the reason’s Powell gave for his endorsement than spit at his feet and pivot to some "black people have to support black politicians because it is required for renewal of our Race Card" bullshit.

I’m not surprised that Sununu went there.  He’s an ass. What struck me was that, when issuing the predictable “I didn’t mean it like that” statement, Sununu said he and Powell are friends.
Sununu: "Colin Powell is a friend and I respect the endorsement decision he made and I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the president’s policies. Piers Morgan’s question was whether Colin Powell should leave the party, and I don’t think he should.”
Um.

I call bullshit!

Race baiting isn’t respect.

Sununu made it clear when he race baited that he thinks Powell’s decision was motivated on some sort of race loyalty.

If Morgan was asking whether Powell should leave the GOP then Sununu’s answer was so fucking off topic he should have his hearing evaluated.

And friendship is based on respect…and that’s something Sununu clearly doesn’t have for Powell.

That brings me to the unfortunate reality this Sununu insult shines light on. 

Sununu is clearly a graduate of The School of Tolerance, where he learned to tolerate Powell’s blackness by focusing on his decades of loyalty to the GOP.

The problem is that The School of Tolerance enables bullshit.

The School of Tolerance is a weak foundation for relationships and it shits out people who can smile in your face, eat at your table, joke with you and golf with you and maybe even vacation with you…

…and, when pressed by a weak ass follow-up question that should have elicited the response Sununu came up with hours later for his “I didn’t mean it like that!” statement, shit all over you.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

I will, however, give Sununu points for demonstrating in one clumsy verbal malfunction why the GOP struggles to gain the support of minority voters.

Well done!

***slow hand clap***

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A few quick bites...

Sorry for the extended absence, y’all!


I’ve been busy practicing the fine art of bitchitude offline.

Let’s jump right on in!

First let me acknowledge a clear and absolute case of whoop ass.  

Congrats to the San Francisco Giants, who beat the Cardinals last night and closed the deal.  Impressive…they came back from being down 3 games to 1 and are now going to the World Series.  And congrats to the Cards for a fantastic run!

Pause…lick wounds…continue.

Shall we?

Last night was the final debate of the presidential campaign.  President Obama’s team can celebrate a decisive win…and we who do political ground work can move on to the shit that wins elections. 

Yep, I’m talking turnout!

If you’re in Missouri you’d best prepare yourself to be called, canvassed, and mailed to within an inch of your vote-based life.

Think of it as a display of our extreme admiration of your likely voter status!

Blink.

A quick note on the McCaskill v. Akin race here in Missouri.

Clearly Team Akin is dedicated to continuing their How To Alienate Women Voters clinic.

Before I could even fire off a post about Congressman Akin describing Senator McCaskill a dog on the campaign trail, his spokesman took to Twitter with this painful attempt at humor.

Yesterday, Rick Tyler tweeted "If Claire McCaskill were a dog, she'd be a 'Bullshitsu'."

Um.

Okay.

I’ve got to admit that I was more surprised at the public display of what Team Akin would call potty language from a campaign that bathes twice daily in the rhetoric of sanctified evangelical purification than I was by the lame ass attempt to deflect attention from Akin’s latest verbal malfunction.

I’m serious!

Akin is outing all kinds of previously private Republicanisms.


They publicly talk about how much they adore children with special needs…while privately pushing policies that allow religious institutions to refuse insurance coverage for children with autism and believing programs like Medicaid, which millions of disabled Americans (cause those special needs kids grow up to be adults with special needs) depend on, should be destroyed.

And they go on and on about their religious values while employing campaign staff who casually turn out tweets that have to be accompanied with a language disclaimer on local newscasts!

Nice.

Oh, catch that knee before you hurt some body!

Tis true that I adore cursing…a lot.

But I’m not the one tossing out bullshit critiques of “ladylike” behavior while running a campaign that puts schoolyard bullies to shame.

Blink.

Onward!

Monday, October 15, 2012

Pondering strange bedfellows…



Specifically, I noticed that reports of Bishop Paprocki’s homily read more like a stump speech from the campaign trail.

Paprocki has no fear of wading into electoral politics while wearing the religious robes…he’s best know ‘round these parts for calling the Democratic Platform “intrinsically evil”, which amused the shit out of me and prompted my pot-meet-kettle reflex.

Gotta love him.

What?

He’s all BURN THE WITCH!! and that shit gets me every damned time.

Anyhoo, Paprocki thinks that conservative politicians and judges pledging fealty through attendance at the Red Mass need to get their Thomas More on.

Yes, Thomas More!

Mmmhmm…the same Thomas More who was beheaded for committing treason after he sided with a corrupt power hungry Rome in resistance to the Protestant Reformation being pushed by his king.

That Paprocki sees a hero in Thomas More is telling but not surprising.

That he gave that advice to Todd Akin…and Akin received it without pause…strikes me as odd.

Cause Akin is a Protestant preacher by training and one would think he’d be as likely to adore Thomas More as a Catholic priest would be to embrace Martin Luther.

But politics continues to make strange bedfellows…

…and I’ll go ahead and apologize for that visual.

Blink.

Breaking News: HPV Vaccine Isn’t Slut Sauce!


Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

I just saw a story on the Good Morning America news crawl about how a new study has found that the HPV vaccine doesn’t make girls promiscuous.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

Lawd, there is so much in there that makes my Afro hurt that I don’t know where to begin.

First off, I’ve grown to hate the word “promiscuous” because it is usually connected with Evangelical bullshit that having an active sex life outside of man-on-woman sanctified marriage is a bad thing.  “Promiscuous” is code that makes it clear that sex in abundance can’t be good and I happen to think that’s bullshit.

Having said that…no shit followed by a loud ass “DUH!” regarding the HPV vaccine not turn young women into anything other than young women protected from HPV.

Are we really so damned puritanical that folk actually found comfort from the threat of CANCER potentially inhibiting young women’s sexual behavior?

That’s just sick.

Damn.

We’re one step away from the “orgasms are of the devil!” stage of the puritan revival.

Blink.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Hold please...

I'm on deadline, so bitchitude is delayed until later tonight!

Toodles for now...

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Post debate ponderfication – the good, the bad, and the reasons some of y’all need to calm the fuck down



Shall we?

The first presidential debate took place last night.

Romney did well.

Translation – he came across as human (not warm or anything but…well, human-ish like a newer version Cylon)…cough…twas aggressive in a “wildcat” kind of way, and he landed more punches than he took.

President Obama did not do well.

Translation – he came across like he was a 3,000 year old vampire who hadn’t feed in at least 1,500 years.

The good?

If you’re going to shit the bed, shit the hell out of it!  

Obama’s performance was just bad enough that he won’t be able to bullshit himself and that means he’s more likely to listen to advice and make adjustments.

Coping thought for the masses – Fritz Mondale won the first debate with Reagan in '84, but I seem to remember 4 more years of rule under the spawn of Satan that was The Gipper.

The bad?

Romney is gonna get some love after last night’s performance.

Catch the knee…catch it!

He is…and it’ll be amplified way out of proportion by a political press corps that clearly was bored to shit with his campaign and feared 30 more days of it. 

Prepare thyselves for several days of blah, blah, blah.  Tis the nature of the beast and you know damn well you’d be doing the exact same shit if Obama had come out there like a 3,000 year old vampire who just ripped off the Denver Blood Bank.

Coping thought for the masses – this is EXACTLY the kind of “oh shit, this campaign ain’t over!” kick in the ass that the liberal base needed!

Pause...sip apple juice...continue.

Flock o’ bitchitude, presidential debates are a lot like the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Lots of analysts make all kinds of predictions based on how each team looked going into Round One.

But in the end, only one team raises the Cup…

…while the line for humble pie wraps around the rink.

Up next - VP Joey B. v That Congressman Who Wants to Take Food Out of My Disabled Brother's Mouth...

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Pre Presidential Debate Preparedness…



Lawd, I almost forgot to make a debate preparedness list of needed things this year!

Gasp.

Better late than not at all, eh?

So...

Um, something smothered and yummy?

Check!

Vodka?

Check.

Computer for note-taking and snarkified tweets?

Check.

Knowledge of what’s at stake and why the hell I vote?

Oh, hell yes…check, check, CHECK!

Tell the truth, Sonya!  Tell it! 


Monday, October 01, 2012

Post Person Centered Plan meeting reflectitude…


A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I attended our older brother’s Person Centered Plan meeting. 

For the uninitiated, our brother is autistic and we are his co-guardians. A person centered plan (PCP) is a yearly plan developed in partnership with residential and day programs.  Bill’s PCP contains his life…diet, medical information, friends, goals, likes and dislikes, and key family facts and history. 

I’ve often said that a PCP is what a life should be…and then we turn to funding to determine what his life will be.

My brother is 42 years old.  Our parents spent the first 7 years of his life trying to find out what was behind his symptoms, the next 7 years trying to "cure" him, and then they confronted the reality that he was who he was in a world that wasn’t what it should be.

I don’t know anyone who plans to have a child with autism.  A lot has changed since my brother was born, but not that much.  Our parents had to pay out of pocket for a private school, therapy, and assessments.  Now, unless folks have a religious insurance plan, many states have mandated insurance coverage for autism. 

But still…still, very few people properly anticipate the lifelong cost or where funding comes from.

Autistic children grow up into adults with autism. 


The man actually connected Medicaid to people with disabilities! 

Unreal.

I’m pretty sure thousands if not millions of people were confused because they’ve been conditioned to equate Medicaid recipients with lazy government freeloaders who need tough love and kick in the butt.

I’m no fan of Bill Clinton.  That’ll also confuse those who think progressives are a monolith.  Nope, I have serious issues with Bubba…but he earned a fluff of the Afro for verbalizing the reality that cuts to social service programs will cause extreme harm to people with disabilities…and an additional fluff for specifically mentioning autism.

That takes me back to my brother’s PCP and what he should have versus what he will have.

Bill’s PCP is also my yearly plan as a co-guardian.

As a sister, I celebrate his achievements and acknowledge where he still have work to do.

As his co-guardian, I note that he may be able to get into a cool training program that would allow him to work.  Longtime readers know that my brother used to work…he got up at 4:30am to get dressed for a job that didn’t start until 10am.  He loved it, but he had to stop working because a reform in Missouri’s Medicaid qualification that made him vulnerable to losing coverage.  And trolls fixing to type some agreement to that should note that my brother worked 2 hours a week at a fast food joint…so he wasn’t bringing in serious cash.  What he was doing was participating in his community…meeting cool new people…enjoying the pride of a job well done…and scoring enough cash out of the deal to cover snacks. 

He hasn’t worked in years and it took several years to get him into a structured day program so he wasn’t just sitting around getting pissed off at the world.

I could go on and on, but this isn’t god for my blood pressure.

Sigh.

As a sister…oh, how I wish I could jump up and dance with joy that my brother could get job skill training and score a nice job!  The sister in me wants that so much it hurts.

But as a co-guardian I confront the reality President Clinton hinted at in his DNC speech…a reality where politicians who point to special needs children when it is serves a political purpose are the same people who would cut funding for programs serving people with special needs.

And let me be clear…

My brother will need food assistance for the rest of his life.

He will need health care coverage for the rest of his life.

He will need housing and supervision for the rest of his life.

And that means he will need the food assistance program funded…not slashed as proposed by Congressman Ryan and approved by a majority of the GOP.

He will need Medicaid and Medicare.

And he will need Social Security, so Todd Akin’s proposal to get rid of that program is a non-starter.

Pause...sip coffee…continue.

Some will say that the states should handle all of that shit.

And they would be ignoring this nation’s disturbing history of just how the states used to handle that shit.

Others will say that churches will tackle the need.

And they would be ignoring that fact that the states stepped in to fuck shit up after far too many church-based programs proved unfit.

I say that we need to cease bullshitting and get about the business of shoring up the very social programs that make our communities strong.

Another year, another PCP…

…and another reminder that I’ve got guardianship work to do if I ever want to be a sister dancing with joy because my brother has everything he needs.

Blink. 

The Gumdrop Stage of Grief ...

So many of you have shared condolences and support after the death of my beloved brother Bill from COVID-19. I wish I could thank you indiv...