Politics, Motherhood, and Politics

  As the markets open this morning, I am fretting what that means for my husband and I, who were told in our 20s and 30s that we should be saving our 401Ks for a rainy day. We both are from poor/mid working-class families and both went to college (he served in the Army before I met him). We worked our way “up” to middle class with 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 guinea pigs, and one rabbit.  If you came to our neighborhood you would see a typical suburban setting of homes built in the early 2000s, and to my chagrin, all beige, except a few that went bold with dark grey, slate blue, and red.  This is our second home and we bought it on short sale in 2014. Our first home was in an older part of Joliet, an American Four-Square, all brick built in 1928. We bought that home in 2003 then in 2008, we saw our first home plummet in value over the next four years. Well, we were lucky in that we didn’t lose everything, we both had our jobs even though our 401ks took a hit. But where we really fel...

  What the Fuck WAS THIS? What the fuck was this? Are we not leaders of the free world anymore? No, no we are not.  This regime has dismantled our one diplomatic agency that helped keep allies. And yes, even people in Gaza for humanitarian aid.  But it's fucking gone.  Our hegemony died the first time that he was in office, and we re-elected this monster, this felon, this conman who falls asleep during a Cabinet meeting and let's the unelected Nazi lead the meeting? Fuck this.  The world is turning against us. This regime has been dismantling it all. All of this democracy is gone. Did your tiny cocks get hard when you saw him yelling? Did your dry little pussies get spit on them from his yelling at Zelensky? Do you all get turned on by this?  You love it when he banishes the free press.  You're sick. I fully am aware that many of you subscribe to this America First bullshit.  But all it is Nazism in disguise. This whole movement is to dismantle of...

  It's all over the news and the observations about the power structure that now exists in the White House has been made perfectly clear.  The press conference in the Oval Office with Donald Trump at the desk, silent and only speaking when it seemed when he had permission, while Elon Musk, with his small son picking his nose, did all the talking. It's really a depressing scene as one of the tech oligarchs actually thinks that HE won the election, as the shadow of a man, Trump, who was elected sits there confused. (Maybe Musk did win, as it seems that he bought it.) The scene can be described as one writer on Substack, Nadine Smith, stated it was reminiscent of a scene from  Lord of The Rings: Two Towers,  where the villain was speaking for the cursed King who was bewitched by the Wizard Saruman. (You can go to Nadine Smith's Substack to read more: https://1nadinesmith.substack.com/p/musks-oval-office-power-play) Nadine Smith describes both the fictional and...

When my first son was born, I knew immediately that this was the one human being that I would live, die and kill for in this world. The same feeling was multiplied when the second son was born.  When willingly pregnant with my first one, my oldest sister told me that there will be no one that I will ever love more, and she was right.  For when one chooses to become a mother through pregnancy, you already sacrifice so much.  But they are first who convinced me that some things are worth living, dying and killing for, but I never was much to sacrifice in the name of any ideology or for any entity. It's one of the reasons that I never joined the military, fighting in foreign lands in the name of imperialism or capitalism never interested me, unless you count the time that I considered it as a way to pay for college.   In my lifetime, I was born in 1971, I have grown up in a nation that celebrated the strength of and reproductive rights for women.  The opportun...

  All weekend, there were headlines: “Musk team given access to sensitive federal payment system - reports” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77rkg5dm3vo Or “Elon Musk says President Donald Trump has ‘Agreed’ USAID should be Shutdown.” https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-classified-information-usaid-security-35101dee28a766e0d9705e0d47958611 And the headlines went on and on, all weekend. (I get why the media wanted him to win again, Trump does make the headlines that generate more money for them.)  But this is far from a scripted “reality show." This is about our lives, our country, and the people in it. This morning I was asked by a family member as to why Musk and his DOGE wanted access to our social security numbers and our information through the Treasury Department. My only guess is that he, Peter Theil and their anti-diversity cronies want to destroy it all. For many years, many politicians and their billionaire masters, have referred to Social Security, Medicare,...

  So, the Trump Oligarchy is moving at record speed in signing Executive Orders.  In case some of you don’t know exactly what that means, Executive Orders are, as described by the American Bar Association: “An executive order is a signed, written, and published directive from the President of the United States that manages operations of the federal government.” What does that mean? Well, they are not instant laws, but Congress cannot simply overturn them either. One way to control an overzealous Executive Administration is the use of the checks and balances of power by creating legislation or using the Congressional “power of the purse”.  There are limitations of executive orders, particularly in the US Constitution.  And one particular recent Executive Order is trying to usurp the 14th Amendment, that is of birthright citizenship. This is the 14th Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens ...

  Hope. For every moment of despair, we will give hope, ten-fold. Hope is all that is left right now. Hope is the light in the darkness of despair. Over this lifetime, the halls of Congress, boardrooms, universities, law, and medical schools have become more diverse.  It seems that those of us who were disenfranchised, finally have a "seat at the table", and even at the head of the table.  We celebrated America’s first trans woman in the US House of Representatives. The story is that her campaign ran on jobs and the economy.  And that is hope. Hope that identity politics includes class and addresses the poor and working class in this country. In other words, the seats of power were becoming a level of diversity that we’d never experienced before these times.  And that in itself is hope, but what continues to be missing from the table is the voice of working-class and poor people.  There is a line from the song called, “Which Side Are You On?”, that reflects...