Category Archives: Personal stories

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Goodbye, American democracy. You had a good run

Please note: This appeared on Addicting Info on January 20, 2018. That site is no longer working but thanks to the wonderful people at The Way Back Machine, I found it.

n 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the Young Men’s Lyceum. In it, he warned that the United States’ fall would not come from abroad, as many feared, but from within. He said,

“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

The actions this week, taken by President Trump, Congressman Devon Nunes (R-CA), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and others may be just the latest indication of how right Lincoln was and how close we are to the end of the American experiment.

People often conflate politics, government, and campaigning. That is understandable. The differences seem to become more without distinction every day. Here’s the thing: the agencies in the Executive Branch exist to promote the policy agenda of whatever administration is in power. Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has different policy objectives than Obama’s. For example, the federal government’s thoughts on legalized pot have changed completely.

These agencies are not there to promote candidates or the political objectives of any administrations, as they seem to expected to do now. Trump has openly asked, why “the Trump DOJ” can’t do what he wants in terms of the investigation into any Russia connection. The reason is that they have a job to protect the Constitution and the rule of law, not Donald J. Trump.

This last year has seen unprecedented attacks on the American rule of law. So many times have people had to use “unprecedented” that its meaning has all been lost. By firing James Comey, forcing out Andrew McCabe and launching an endless attack on the FBI and DOJ, our president is effectively dismantling one of the things that is so special about our country. Our belief in the rule of law.Subscribe to our Youtube Channel

Now it appears, the Legislative Branch has become complicit. In years past, the Intelligence Committees in the U.S. House and Senate were considered to be “bastions of bipartisanship.” In both, no investigations were to be started without both sides weighing in. Nunes, who had recused himself from the Russian investigation last spring, ended that fine tradition by starting an investigation into how the FBI handled their Russian investigation without consulting Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Once again, that move was unprecedented, but does that mean anything today?

Apparently not because Ryan has said he is “letting the process play out.” No, this is not doing that at all. Now, Nunes’ committee will release a memo, he wrote about the Russian investigation (you know, the one he “recused” himself from) without putting out the other side of the story. PS. It is worth noting that Russian bots have been pushing for the Nunes’ memo to be released. It is also worth noting that changing the rules for how the committee conducts investigations without input from the minority should get Nunes booted from his chairmanship. Ryan is abdicating his main responsibilities as Speaker of the House.

Many believe that the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, will be the next to go (he was hired by Trump but ok’d the extension of the Carson Page FISA warrant). His replacement may either fire Robert Mueller or just make it impossible for him to do his job.

When we start destroying the foundations of our government (the DOJ is not alone, the State Department is also being decimated from within), we are participating in a kind of cannibalism. When our government acts only to get one side ahead of the other politically and we live in a time when each side lives by a different reality, how can anything positive come from that?

For decades, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to weaken, if not destroy, the United States. Lincoln was right. They should have saved their money. We are going to do it for them.

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I stand with Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka

Tennis superstar Naomi Osaka shocked the world when she dropped out of the French Open. She should be applauded, not torn down.

Yesterday, I wrote this piece for Medium about Osaka and her decision. Would love it if you checked that out.

It is long past time that we started treating mental illness with the same seriousness that we treat physical illness. No one would ever say, “You have Diabetes? Just get your pancreas to work harder! That should do it!” That would be ridiculous. “Oh, sorry about your cancer! Can’t you just will it away?” No, no you cannot.

But, it is not unusual to tell someone suffering from depression or anxiety to just “cheer up!” I have people in my life who say things like, “I don’t understand how people get addicted to drugs, I mean, just go for a walk. There is so much beauty in the world.” Then they take a drag from their cigarette. Right, how’s that working out for you?

My experience in this area has done a lot to my life

For most of my life, I have suffered from depression and anxiety. It is impossible to overstate the impact this has had on my life. A lot of that has been because of where I put self-care on my “to-do” list. If it made it on the list, it was at the very bottom. So much to do!

Now, I take it all more seriously. I make more of an effort to listen to my body and to how I am feeling, eat better, try to exercise (it’s progress, not perfection!). I also lean on my support network more. This has made a huge difference for me.

We all should thank someone as high-profile as Osaka and remember, mental illness is a physical illness. There is no and/or here.

PS. If you are on Long Island and want something to make you feel better and laugh, come to Coasters in East Meadow on Saturday. You’ll thank me later.

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Some thoughts about June Osborne

June Osborne

June Osborne is my hero

I am obsessed with The Handmaid’s Tale and its angry protagonist, June Osborne. This is one show I would happily binge but the meanies over at Hulu are only releasing one episode a week so I have to wait. I seriously hate that.

If you have not watched the show, read the book, or seen the original film, and have lived in a cave under a rock, you may not have heard the story. It takes place after a second civil war where the nation of the United States is mostly taken over by right-wing nut job Christians. Fertile women are made into handmaids and sent to live with high-ranking commanders and their wives. They have no freedom and are raped once a month by the commander with the wife taking part. It’s just all sorts of messed up. When a handmaid gets pregnant (praise be!) they have to give up the child to the mistress of the household.

Meanwhile, June, now a handmaid, saw her daughter, Hannah, taken from her, and Hannah is then sent to new parents (a commander and his wife). June is also placed into the home of Fred and Serena Joy Waterford. In the “before” Serena Joy was an architect of what would become the new, religious state of Gilead. She’s not just another wife hell-bent on having a child through her handmaid, she’s a big driving force in the creation of this dystopian hell.

If you have watched that, I am sorry for wasting your time.

I love June. I love that she makes mistakes and is human. I love how far she is willing to go to save Hannah. Most of all, I love her anger. It is so rare for female characters to express fury. They can be sad, hurt, disappointed, depressed, etc. but they never seem to be truly angry. June Osborne is nothing if not furious. And she has every right.

Spoiler alert. Don’t read any more if you have not seen Season Four episodes 6 and 7.

Having said that, June can also be infuriating. Watching her fight with Moira about getting on a boat to Canada made me want to throw something at the TV. We get it. She feels guilty about Hannah but she was going to be tortured and killed by Aunt Lydia if she stays in Gilead. She’s no help to Hannah dead.

Serious question for other fans of this show… Is Janine dead? Please leave your answer in the comments or email me.

For no reason other than it helps with SEO, I am putting a link to reasons you should avoid squirrels.

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Q?

So, I watched “Q: Into the Storm“

My experience with Q is far from unique. I first learned about the whole thing from someone I know on Long Island. When my father died, I was in Florida and could not move back to New York right away. Someone I know from high school moved into my dad’s house to keep an eye on things.

Now, high school was a long time ago and I am not sure, we’ll call this person “Matt,” if he was into conspiracies then. I knew Matt was big-time into them now. He had told me about his views as a “truther.” That’s someone who thinks 9/11 was an inside job. Just watch the video, he would say. I tried to tell him that I can make videos that look like a kitten destroyed the Twin Towers but that meant nothing. One year, I put out an image of David Duchovny with my cat on his lap. Never mind that in his photo, he was outside in the woods, but several people asked, “How did you get a photo of David Duchovny with your cat?”

Fast forward to 2019. I moved back to Stony Brook. Matt was full-on into conspiracies. First, he was a vegetarian because “you don’t get life from death.” (Actually, that IS the cycle of life.) Then he thought vegetarians were part of a satanic cabal and anyone who is vegetarian is evil. He tried, and tried and failed to get me to try MMS. If you don’t know what that is, it is chlorine dioxide. Promoted by charlatan Jim Humble, MMS is sold as sodium chlorite, which people may confuse with sodium chloride (table salt) and said to be a wonder substance that can cure AIDS, malaria, Autism and just about everything else. When taken with an acid, which he sells (never mind that your stomach is full of acid) it turns into chlorine dioxide AKA industrial bleach.

So, Matt was drinking that every day and that is when he told me about something else. A cabal of lizard creatures from outer-space who worshipped Satan and were both pedophiles AND cannibals who ate children controlled the media, the government and big business (when we talked about the government and large corporations, Matt said, “They’re the same to me.”) It was all going to be brought down by someone named “Q.”

Matt didn’t go down to the rally on January 6th but I think that is just because he thought it was a waste of time, not because he didn’t support the rioters.

The HBO documentary seemed to indicate Q is one person, Ron Watkins. I find all of this fascinating but think Q is more than one person. I am sure Watkins is one of them. I do wonder why these theories are so appealing. Why do people want to think that Bill Gates is using the Covid vaccine to track us? Why do people think “pizza” is a code word for “sex with kids”?

If you know, please let me know.

Interested in what I’ve been doing? Check this out.