I’ve been quite discombobulated since our return; routines off schedule, hanging an art show, preparing new songs for two shows this month, repairing an accordion, dental crown and filling operation (open wide, this won’t hurt a bit), taking care of an ailing feline, taking care of our ailing bodies… With the whirlwind of activity, and not operating even close to 100%, here are my last minute offerings for this Friday’s Dispatch.
1.
If there are any Republicans accidentally reading my blog, please consider changing your vote to blue just this once. PLEASE. At the very least for this:
(Here is where I had a cartoon titled Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling, a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, an American cartoonist, that illustrated the hypocrisy of the abortion debate. Taken down for FEAR of copyright reprisal.)
2.
Last February I wrote about Rick Scott introducing his eleven point plan to fuck with other people’s lives. I included this: Yes, folks, brought to you by the guy who, as the CEO of a health insurance company that was caught illegally gouging the public on billing, had to plead the Fifth Amendment a staggering 75 times to help himself avoid prosecution, as the company, HCA, was smacked with the largest fine in a fraud settlement case (https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-col-rick-scott-medicare-fraud-20181002-story.html) in United States history. Poor guy…he only left with $300 million in stock, a $5.1 million severance and a $950,000-per-year consulting contract for five years. And, as all ultra-wealthy Republicans like to say, if Americans got any more Covid-19 stimulus money it might make them lazy.
Scott was back in the news on Wednesday where he’s still proposing to subjecting nearly all federal spending programs to a renewal vote every year, which would make Medicare and Social Security more vulnerable to budget cuts, all part of his eleven, no, now twelve, point plan to RESCUE AMERICA.
Yes, Senator Rick Scott, who in his grifting career has almost out-Trumped Trump, decided as governor of Florida to outsource prison medical care to Corizon Health for $1.2 billion had additional fees which resulted in over 660 malpractice lawsuits from shoddy care it provided Florida inmates that left as many as 30 people dying a month. And he wants to RESCUE AMERICA.
3.
And demonstrating there is some justice in the world, Milwaukee Election Commission's deputy director Kimberly Zapata has been fired after she admitted to illegally requesting military ballots and sending them to the home of State Rep. Janel Brantdjen (R-Menomonee Falls). She claims she was trying to show a vulnerability in the elections system and prove that there is election fraud so the GOP can claim that elections are stolen. In other words, she committed election fraud to prove election fraud. It’s the Republican way.
4.
I’ve been reading Michael Moore’s highly optimistic posts about the midterms. He calls them Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #__. So far there have been 35 of them. I particularly like his take, in number 34, of the power elite’s underestimation of fucking with women, once again.
He first says that the media (pundits) are saying “The female fury over the Supreme Court Roe decision in June has subsided. Women were initially angry and upset, but then they calmed down and collected themselves, realizing that the cost of a dozen eggs (chicken eggs) and the price of a gallon of gas was far more important than having their own absolute legal control over their reproductive organs — and that being ordered to carry a pregnancy to term against their will was really no biggie.”
Hi “truth” is: The men who own and run the media have NO clue just how outraged the vast, vast majority of women remain over having it shoved in their face once again that they are second class citizens who are never going to hold real power (74% of Congress is still held by men and 426 of the Fortune 500 companies are still run by men), that women will never be paid the same as men, and that 56% of those forced to live in poverty and 64% of those who work the lowest paid jobs are and will always be women as long as the patriarchy says so — or until the patriarchy is smashed.
And these men who’ve been telling you (lying to you) every day during this election that women don’t really worry their “pretty little heads” over this stuff — which is the literal man’s boot placed squarely on their necks, as RBG used to say — are also telling us that women have been able to put their “emotions” aside and now wake up every morning obsessed with the price of gas (as of today, a whopping 21 cents over a year ago!). Of course women would gladly give up their basic human rights for a gallon of gas! The men who think this way are either just stupid, or they know all too well that they must depress the Democratic vote next week by getting just enough of you to believe that women are now voting for Republicans.
Well, these men are about to find out just how powerful women are and that, in fact, they haven’t forgotten for a friggin’ second how the Catholic mullahs of the Supreme Court shat all over them on June 24th — and they will, one week from today, show the Party of Male Dominance what real Justice and justifiable vengeance looks like. I can’t wait to be a witness.
Let us all hope that, by gawd, women come out in droves to vote blue.
5.
My next post will be more images of Silves, Portugal. Here’s a preview of some sunning Ibis.
And now…