Tag: Howard Dean

The Space Between

Friday and I have a meeting this morning, so it is not, after all, a work-at-home Friday completely; I am ust going in for the meeting before I come home to do some work. Sparky also has to go to the vet this afternoon, so he can’t eat this morning, which isn’t going very well. (It’ll be worse when I get home from the office. “What do you MEAN no breakfast? What do you mean you left and came back and it’s not dinner time?” Sigh. He’s whimpering under my desk right now, and I get it totally; I hate not being able to eat something when I am hungry and it’s my usual time to eat. Sigh.

I’m still basking in the afterglow from Tuesday, just waiting for the Democrats to officially win Mississippi and Alaska now, and even if the fascists hold those two seats, it won’t matter1. Soon, the Republicans and Fox are going to pretend they were never MAGA and will try to distance themselves from this entire anti-American movement, and this cannot happen this time. We allowed them to move on from January 6th, which should have ended the entire thing. There’s also no doubt that the Democrats, particularly if led by Schumer and Jeffries, can easily fumble this opportunity. But all the right-wingers who might run in 2028 are uncharismatic and not very well-liked across the board; they’d be better off getting a governor from a red state that no one has ever heard of–much like the Democrats brought in an outsider after Watergate, which is how we got Jimmy Carter. But…they never really do the smart thing, do they? Either side? I’ll never forgive the DNC for not helping Louisiana, Florida or Mississippi flip; which all three could have done easily. Both Louisiana and Florida were a point or less from understanding the assignment.

Howard Dean should have never been let go from party leadership after the massive blue shift in 2008. The way the national party has abandoned the South since then has been positively shameful; is it any wonder there’s voter apathy down here when the national party has basically said, “oh, well, you’re on your own, we can’t win there.” Scott Colom’s winning campaign, as well as the close ones Angie Nixon and Jamie Davis ran, beg to differ. This absolute failure of party leadership should end with every leader stepping aside for fresh blood; the people do not want the same-old, same-old. I don’t trust either Schumer or Jeffries, in all honesty. I’d love to be proved wrong, but…I sincerely doubt that will happen.

Bliss.

I am planning on enjoying this through the weekend, for the record; Monday I’ll come down from my cloud and face the world again. But, for now, I’m going to enjoy knowing that Russell Brand is going to jail; the Tate Brothers will never see freedom again, and the country is bouncing back. This is what I’ve been waiting for ever since the golden escalator, and it is beyond time for it to have happened. The cybertruck is also dead, this morning, and and the AI bubble is bursting.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Friday be as marvelous as you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning.

The Byzantine horses, stolen from Constantinople by the Venetians during the 4th Crusade, when they sacked the capital of the last vertige of the Roman Empire.

  1. There are so many delightful karma stories, too–Cindy Hyde-Smith, aka as a Scooby Doo villain, had blocked Scott Colom’s appointment as an appellate court justice, so now he is taking her seat in the Senate. Now she can focus on attending lynchings and cross-burnings while brewing up some ‘shine back in her rancid holler. ↩︎

It’s Raining Again

Wednesday and it’s Pay-the-Bills Day again, hurray.

Last night’s sleep wasn’t as good as previous nights, but I do feel awake and rested this morning so that’s a good thing. I am also incredibly excited about my wagon, which i know is weird. I had a straight male co-worker look at it*, and sure enough, he was able to get the wheels attached properly. I stopped on my way home from the office to get the mail and thought, hey I had packages and my hands will be full, so let me use the wagon and it was marvelous. Clearly, I should have bought a wagon a long time ago–and it’s the right size to fit along the narrow walkway alongside the house. It’s actually going to make life so much easier for me now it’s almost scary, and it makes the most sense to actually keep it in the car–it’s out of the way, will always be there when I need it, and if I need it for anything else, well, the car is parked usually out in front of the house so it would be easy to get to. I am most pleased with the wagon, I have to say.

I’m also trying–not always successfully–to stay in control over my anxiety. I have all my pre-surgery appointments on Monday, so that’s when I am going to find out what the recovery is going to look like. I am taking unpaid leave from work (I don’t have near enough sick or vacation time to cover the time I need to be out, so here we are) which is going to be an issue I will deal with when it rolls around; but I do have the process started and I can get the documentation I need for Admin from those visits and turn everything in the following day when I go back to the office.

I wasn’t tired when I got home yesterday, but Tug was feeling lonely and needy, so I had to go give him a lap to sleep in for a while, and after watching another episode of Moonlighting and a documentary about Greek fire and the Byzantine Imperial Navy, I’d lost all motivation and was feeling tired and sleepy. I did nothing for the rest of the evening–nothing. I did go to bed around nine-thirty, and of course woke up just before five again this morning, but I think the body is beginning to adjust somewhat to the time change.

I got an unexpected royalty check (small, but I’ll take it gladly) in the mail yesterday along with my copy of David Valdes’ new Finding My Elf, which looks absolutely adorable, and I can’t wait to give it a read after the surgery. I am two books behind on my Donna Andrews reading, I need to read the new Lou Berney and Angie Kim novels, and there are any number of others I want to get to. I am assuming after the drugged haze of painkillers and so forth dies down afterwards, I’ll have lots of down time to read. I am going to have a rigid cast to keep the arm immobile for at least three weeks, and I am assuming that means limited options for doing things other than reading. I imagine typing one-handed is going to be incredibly frustrating, but it can be done. And during the drug fogs of those early post-surgery days, I can just reread things–like histories or true crime favorites or some Stephen King favorites (it’s been a hot minute since I reread Firestarter, for one, and ‘salem’s Lot and The Stand are always fun to revisit), or some of the other great favorites lying around the house.

I was also very happy to see that Ohio added abortion rights protections to the state Constitution as well as legalizing recreational marijuana–well done, Ohio!–and that Kentucky reelected their Democratic governor. There were some right-wing wins, but the great Blue Wave momentum from 2020 has continued, as well as the reaction to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe–congratulations, Federalist Society, your hand-picked Supreme Court majority has effectively destroyed the conservative movement’s electability for a generation. The Democrats needs to hit hard on abortion and the illegitimate Supreme Court–Mitch McConnell’s legacy, by the way, have fun being hated for the rest of American history, douchebag–going forward, and frankly, they need to put Howard Dean–who engineered the historic gains of the 2008 election cycle–back in fucking charge of the DNC.

I always said that abortion rights should be put on the ballot. This is the wedge issue that trumps (couldn’t resist) the Right’s religious zealotry and transphobia and racism.

But of course, they won’t learn the lesson that they’re unpopular and so are their policies and values–they’ll just see this in a paternal way: “clearly the voting public can’t be trusted, so we need to install authoritarianism for their own good.“

Yes, this is the same party that thinks they’ve successfully branded themselves as “true American patriots.” Fucking garbage is what they are.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back to check on you with more blatant self-promotion later.

*ah, stereotypes. Alas, we have a lack of butch lesbians in the department now, so had to make do with a straight guy. C’est la vie.