An Open Letter to Kevin Spacey

Dear Kevin Spacey,

I, and most of the world, when you were sued by several young men for sexual misconduct allegations back in 2017, which led to you being fired from major projects and shunned by the film industry. Well, what I remember most is that, after years and years of rumors that you were gay, and after years and years of him vehemently denying it, you finally came as a way of seemingly explaining why you tried to assault Anthony Rapp when he was just 14:

"I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear this story. I honestly do not remember the encounter ... But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. As those closest to me know, I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man."

So much to unpack; you said, “if I did behave … as he describes,” which takes zero accountability for your actions with a child, but then you blame it on being drunk, and finally say it was because you were a closeted gay man.

I was insulted from the jump because you, as a gay man, played into that trope that closeted gay men, hell, most gay men, sexually assault young boys because we are all pedophiles. Not so, Kevin; you assaulted young men because you’re a predator who used you power and fame and influence and reputation as a well-respected actor to lure young men into hotel rooms to assault them.

You didn’t molest anyone because you were gay, you did it because you’re a predator, whether drunk or not. I lost whatever respect I had for you at the time and now you step into the light, again, to say you’re homeless because the scandal ruined your career:

“I’m living in hotels, I’m living in Airbnbs, I’m going where the work is. I literally have no home, that’s what I’m attempting to explain.”

Oh I am heartbroken. You live in hotels and Airbnbs? And that’s homelessness? I imagine a great many unhoused people would love to have the funds to live in a nice hotel—because we all know you’re not staying at Motel 6 down by the highway—or at an Airbnb:

“I’ve had very little coming in and everything going out … Everything is in storage, and I hope at some point, if things continue to improve, that I’ll be able to decide where I want to settle down again.”

So, you have lots of things in storage that I’m sure you pay for and live in hotels as you travel the world for work and you want, what, sympathy? Sorry, Kevin, not sorry. This is a mess of your making and you have yet to fess up to what you’ve done and fully apologize for it, and you have continued to play the victim.

The booze made you assault young men and boys.

Being gay made you do it.

And now you want us to believe you’re homeless?

Not happening. You’re responsible for this and any time you try to play the victim card you are negating the lives of all those men and boys that you assaulted.

An Open Letter to the GOP by Bruce Lindner

Dear Republicans;

We get it. You all saw what he did to Liz Cheney, and you don’t want that to happen to you. Short of outright political banishment, if you displease him in the slightest, he might even mean-tweet you from his golf cart in Florida. You all tremble at the mere thought of that.

And he knows it, which is why he does it; to control you. To get you to confirm the most unqualified Cabinet secretaries in American history. If the gravity of that situation wasn’t so solemn, it would be comical.

But what’s done is done. You didn’t want to suffer the indignity of being mean-tweeted, so you seated a drunk who paid a woman $50,000 to buy her silence to become America’s Secretary of Defense, an anti-science conspiracy theorist for Health and Human Services and a man who openly hates the FBI to run it.

You’ve watched in silence as his hatchet man—or should I say his chainsaw man—has wiped out the careers of untold thousands of Americans, the cascading effects of which will no doubt threaten the very existence of poverty-stricken communities who rely on America’s bounty and generosity.

You fidgeted in your seats a bit when he shook his fist at Mexico, Canada, Panama and Denmark. But no outright condemnation from any of you, because again, you can’t: the spirit of Liz Cheney might haunt you.

You’re in a unique position. Hard as it is to believe, you’re the gatekeepers. Once upon a time, in a magical epoch known as pre-Trump, Congress was a coequal branch of government. That means YOU had it within your power to keep lawlessness and tyranny in check.

But that was then and this is now. You’ve ceded your authority because; say it with me: Liz Cheney.

In the hierarchy of things that matter to you, in order from most to least, are:

• Me

• My personal safety

• Not getting mean-tweeted

• Getting re-elected

• People who won’t vote for me

• People in shithole countries

• The nation

At the far end of the courage spectrum from you and at the far side of the planet, there’s a guy named Volodimr Zelenskyy. He must look like an alien species to you, because his priorities are diametrically opposed to yours. When offered a chance to be airlifted out of his embattled nation, he turned it down and confronted the threat pouring over his nation’s borders. He then addressed his people from a darkened corner somewhere in Kyiv, reassuring them that he and his government will stand and fight on their behalf.

But now he and his 38 million fellow Ukrainians face a new threat: Blatant betrayal by the President of the United States. If Trump follows through with it, Zelenskyy himself, perhaps the most iconic example of raw courage in the world today, will be hunted. And if captured, meted out Navalny justice.

But that can only happen if you let it.

Yes, I know, you murmur amongst yourselves over martinis how you had to swallow hard to vote for Tulsi Gabbard, or to stay silent when he gutted the USAID and the national parks. But unless you take a hard stand, and say HELL NO, I’m drawing the line right HERE… you’re as complicit as he is.

This quote has never been more relevant: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke

This is your moment. History will document your names right alongside his. I’m looking at you, Lindsey the Lionhearted. Ted the Turd. Joni, Queen of Castraters. Rise up. Fear not the mean-tweet.

Liz Cheney knowingly sacrificed her career, as did Adam Kinzinger, because they made the calculus: Who am I and what are my core values? And they deduced that there are bigger things in this world than themselves.

Thus far, not a single Republican in this picture has come to a similar conclusion.

Cowards, all. And if you allow Ukraine to fall by your inaction, you’ll be accomplices in mass murder, as well as the beginning of the end for NATO.

Written by Bruce Lindner and found on Facebook

Marc Elias: An Open Letter to Elon Musk

Elon Musk attacked democracy defender and superstar court lawyer Marc Elias as “undermining civilization,” taunting him by asking if he suffered “generational trauma” and Elias’s response was brilliant and worth amplifying:

Mr. Musk,

You recently criticized me and another prominent lawyer fighting for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. I am used to being attacked for my work, particularly on the platform you own and dominate.

I used to be a regular on Twitter, where I amassed over 900,000 followers—all organic except for the right-wing bots who seemed to grow in number. Like many others, I stopped regularly posting on the site because, under your stewardship, it became a hellscape of hate and misinformation.

I also used to buy your cars—first a Model X and then a Model S—back when you spoke optimistically about solving the climate crisis. My family no longer owns any of your cars and never will.

But this is not the reason I am writing. You don’t know me. You have no idea whether I have suffered trauma and if I have, how it has manifested. And it’s none of your business.

However, I will address your last point about generational trauma. I am Jewish, though many on your site simply call me “a jew.” Honestly, it’s often worse than that, but I’m sure you get the point. There was a time when Twitter would remove antisemitic posts, but under your leadership, tolerating the world’s oldest hatred now seems to be a permissible part of your “free speech” agenda.

Like many Jewish families, mine came to America because of trauma. They were fleeing persecution in the Pale of Settlement—the only area in the Russian Empire where Jews were legally allowed to reside. Even there, life was difficult—often traumatic. My family, like others, lived in a shtetl and was poor. Worse, pogroms were common—violent riots in which Jews were beaten, killed and expelled from their villages.

By the time my family fled, life in the Pale had become all but impossible for Jews. Tsar Nicholas II’s government spread anti-Jewish propaganda that encouraged Russians to attack and steal from Jews in their communities. My great-grandfather was fortunate to leave when he did. Those who stayed faced even worse circumstances when Hitler’s army later invaded.

That is the generational trauma I carry. The trauma of being treated as “other” by countrymen you once thought were your friends. The trauma of being scapegoated by authoritarian leaders. The trauma of fleeing while millions of others were systematically murdered. The trauma of watching powerful men treat it all as a joke—or worse.

As an immigrant yourself, you can no doubt sympathize with what it means to leave behind your country, extended family, friends and neighbors to come to the United States. Of course, you probably had more than 86 rubles in your pocket. You probably didn’t ride for nine days in the bottom of a ship or have your surname changed by immigration officials.

As new immigrants, life wasn’t easy. My family lived in cramped housing without hot water. They worked menial jobs—the kind immigrants still perform today.

Some may look down on those immigrants—the ones without fancy degrees—but my family was proud to work and grateful that the United States took them in. They found support within their Jewish community and a political home in the Democratic Party.

I became a lawyer to give back to the country that gave my family a chance. I specialize in representing Democratic campaigns because I believe in the party. I litigate voting rights cases because the right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. I speak out about free and fair elections because they are under threat.

Now let me address the real crux of your post.

You are very rich and very powerful. You have thrown in with [The Felon]. Whether it is because you think you can control him or because you share his authoritarian vision, I do not know. I do not care.

Together, you and he are dismantling our government, undermining the rule of law and harming the most vulnerable in our society. I am just a lawyer. I do not have your wealth or your platform. I do not control the vast power of the federal government, nor do I have millions of adherents at my disposal to harass and intimidate my opponents. I may even carry generational trauma.

But you need to know this about me. I am the great-grandson of a man who led his family out of the shtetl to a strange land in search of a better life. I am the grandson of the three-year-old boy on that journey. As you know, my English name is Marc, but my Hebrew name is Elhanan (אֶלְחָנָן)—after the great warrior in David’s army who slew a powerful giant.

I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from [The Felon]. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath.

I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey.

Defiantly,

Marc Elias

Stand with Marc. RESIST!

An Open Letter to JD Vance

Dear JD Vance ...

I can’t figure you out. It’s not the mascara because there are boys who like their eyes to pop! And it’s not really the couch-fucking, though I won’t be sitting on any furniture in your house should I come to visit. And it’s not the fact that you can’t order a donut.

And it’s not even the way you went from calling The Felon and "idiot" and said he was "reprehensible" and compared him to Hitler just eight years ago and now you’re Mike Pence 2.0.

It’s your stance on children and parenting. I mean, you denigrate anyone who doesn’t have children, calling them less than, though I should remind you that Kamala DOES have kids and so does Pete Buttigieg even though you called them childless. And then you suggest that people who have children should be able to vote for their children because they are valuable to this country.

And now, in the wake of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia that left four people dead—the 45th school shooting in the United States of Guns so far this year—and you say we should just get used to it, that our children being slaughtered in schools is a “fact of life.”

How do you justify that with your stance on children being an asset to protect, on children being the most important part of a marriage, but when children are left dead, and parents are left childless, we should just get used to it?

You also said schools need more security because, after decades and decades of mass shootings, the problem isn’t more guns at all, it’s that we don’t have armed security at school. But there was security at Apalachee High School and still a gun was brought into school because America loves guns more than children, more than Americans.

You also called school shootings a reality and said “we don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

We have to deal with Sandy Hook, and Apalachee High School and Uvalde and Buell Elementary and Lake Worth Middle School and the University of Washington Medical Center and the University of Arkansas and Carter G. Woodson Middle School and Junipero Serra High School and Osborn High School and Santana High School and Bishop Neumann High School and Granite Hills high School and Lew Wallace High School and Pacific Lutheran University and on and on and on …

Deal with it. It’s a fact of life.

It’s a fact of death, but only in  this country because people like JD Vance and those on the right are beholden to the gun lobby and will do anything from thoughts to prayers, but no real action, on the issue of guns in  this country.

Well, guess what JD?

We’re tired of dealing with it. We’re tired of your thoughts and prayers and your “now is not the time to discuss gun legislation” as the schools wash the blood off their playground and hallways and classrooms.

Now is not the time? Fact of life? Deal with it?

Fred Guttenberg, a gun control activist whose daughter was killed in a 2018 Parkland school shooting:

"School shootings are a fact of life? My daughter Jaime's murder was a fact of life? I can't wait to make your exit from having any say in our public safety a fact of life. I can't wait to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.’

And that’s what we need to do; do not vote for the guy who basically said “whatever” to school shootings, or for his partner in gun death, The Felon, who in January told supporters after an Iowa school shooting that “we have to get over it.”

Neither of these two men have announced official policies on gun control, though his campaign manager Chris LaCivita says The Felon would continue to oppose gun control efforts.

The fact is children are dying in this country and we’re tired of being told by the hypocritical party of family values to deal with it and get over it. We’re being told on one hand that children make a family, and family is the most important thing, but that if your child is gun down in school … oh well.

If you’re so serious in your position to let children die, JD, then go to Apalachee and tell those parents who no longer have children to deal with it; tell them to their faces to get over it, it’s a fact of life.

And then fuck all the way off.

PS As much as you repulse me in most every area of life, and as much as I despise you and everything you stand for, I hope that you never have to go through what any parent in this country has gone through, sending their child off to school to be slaughtered by an idiot with a gun.

An Open Letter to America

Dear America,

Don’t do it. Don’t.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t give up on Joe Biden because of one bad night, one awful night. He stumbled, he mumbled, his voice was hoarse, so is that the reason to give up on him and just had the presidency to a convicted felon, sexual predator and con artist?

I say No, and you should say it, too.

Think on some things … the 81-year-old Catholic is fighting for women to have the right to make their own health care decisions, while the 78-year-old felon appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who … overturned Roe v Wade—for which The Felon said, out loud, “I did that”—… who decided that bribing government officials is really just a gratuity but being homeless is a crime … who voted to allow judges, not scientists or environmental experts decide about climate change and polluting our air and water … who can decide on drug safety … banking regulations … aviation safety …. and if you’re an LGBTQ+ American and think that the right won’t come for equality and marriage, think again.

Do you really want Clarence Thomas, well, actually his wife, and Sam Alito making those choices for you?

Do you want to elect a guy who has said, out loud, that he would be a dictator on Day One; who has said all he really wants to do is punish his enemies; who has told big Oil he will give them tax breaks if they support him. Does that sound like a man who cares about We The People?

I’ll stand with the old guy who took on a pandemic and saw us through it; who gave America its lowest unemployment rate in fifty years … who lowered inflation more than  any other country in the G7 and added more than 16 million jobs. He’s working for us, and he may be a bit tired and old, but he isn’t doing the job alone; a vote for Joe is a vote for his administration that will see to it that his efforts go on.

I will vote for that man and his team.

I will not vote for the man who promised to build a wall at the southern border and have Mexico pay for it, and then didn’t. I will not vote for a man who promised to overturn Obamacare and give us all the greatest healthcare system ever, and then didn’t; I will not vote for the man who touted his fabulous infrastructure bill and then did nothing. I will not vote for the man who claimed he won the election in 2020, and filed nearly 70 lawsuits to overturn that election, and lost every single time; I will not vote for the man who claimed that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act; I will not vote for the man who swore and that he and his campaign did not collude or cooperate with Russia, even though Robert Mueller found cooperation and explained that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination".

I will not vote for a rapist; I will not vote for a racist who called Nazis in Charlottesville “good people.” I will not vote for a man who sexually abused and then defamed E. Jean Carroll; I will not vote for a man who p[aid off a porn start for a sexual encounter in order to win an election. I will not vote for a con artist who stole money from people at a university he named after himself.

I will not vote for the man who told us to drink bleach during COVID; who didn’t tell us a flashlight could kill the virus; who told us it would be over by Spring, but by Spring we were piling up dead American bodies in refrigerator trucks outside hospitals.

I will vote for Joe Biden, a decent human being who has worked harder than any president, given the mess he inherited from The Felon, to make life better for all of us. I will vote for the man who lowered prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices;  who signed gun safety legislation into law ; who oversaw more Americans getting healthcare. I will vote for the man who passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that helped us fund basic necessities like rent and groceries during the pandemic; I will vote for the man who also extended a $300 a week federal unemployment benefit for some 9.7 million people out of work during the pandemic; a man who temporarily expanded the child tax credit program, who allotted $7.25 billion for small business loans and $128 billion in grants for state educational agencies.

I will vote for the man who teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention —with scientists and doctors not GOP political hacks—to administer and track COVID-19 vaccinations across the country. I will vote for the man who passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law to repair the nation's roads, bridges and railways, bring high-speed internet to rural communities and more.

I will vote for the man who passed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and allocated $53 billion in federal funding to manufacture semiconductor chips in the U.S. instead of relying on China to produce them.

I will vote for the man who passed the Build Back Better Act, a massive social spending bill that included major health care reform, universal pre-kindergarten and paid family leave, $550 billion dedicated to combatting climate change and more, paid for in part by increased taxes for corporations and the uber rich; not from the taxes on We The people, but from the wealthiest of Americas and corporations who, under that lest president, received massive tax breaks.

I will vote for the man whose Inflation Reduction Act tackled inflation by reducing the federal deficit, promoting production of certain goods and limiting the cost of some prescription drugs; the package also included $369 billion for a climate initiative to reduce greenhouse emissions and promote lean energy technologies; $300 billion in new revenue through a corporate tax increase; $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire new agents, modernize its technology, audit the wealthy and more.

I will vote for the man who has stood up for Ukraine in its quest to be free from Russian autocracy while the GOP and the former president stand by bloodthirsty Vladimir Putin.

I will vote for the old guy who had a bad night at a debate, but who spoke from the heart and promised to keep fighting for us. And if that old guy decides he wants to step aside, I will still support him and the party that wants to work for us and not for The Felon.

And I hope America will follow suit.

Bobservations

This is less about Carlos and more about where my head, and where my oh so vivid imagination goes when I don’t know where he is.

Yesterday Carlos was interpretations for DHEC in Sumter; one at 1:30 and one at 3:30. I kinda forgot about them, as the office was picking him up and bringing him home so I didn’t have to drive him, and when I came home from work about 4PM, he wasn’t there. But I didn’t worry because I then remembered the appointments, so I fed the cat,s let the dog out into the yard and went to check Blogville, and then it was 5:15PM. Where was he? I didn’t think it would drag on this late, but who knows.

5:30. No Carlos. I text:

“I’m home … ?”

No response. I call, and it goes straight to voicemail, so I leave a message:

“Just kinda wondering where you are, and if you can give me a call if you have a minute so I know what’s up.”

No response; I text again:

“Hey, can you take a second an just let me know when to expect you?”

Now, what I’m not saying is that between the first text and the voicemail, I thought the man driving Carlos had gotten into an accident and my mind then leaps to: Carlos is dead. And after the second text my mind goes right to: the man who drove Carlos to Sumter is obsessed with him  and has him chained in a cabin in the woods, or else he’s murdered my husband. I am thinking …. Do I call DHEC? They’re probably closed. The police? They might tell me to wait and if I wait my mind goes even darker.

6:00 PM. I am headed out the door to get into the car and drive to Sumter since there’s really only one way to get there from our house, and I will look for bodies in the road and wreckage in the trees and … Carlos is home.

“Hi honey.”

Gosh that sounded good.

Seriously, this is what passes for a rally in the GOP? Not a mention of what you want to for Arizona, just talk of Big Dicks. Well, to be fair, DeSantis and Thing 45 are two of the biggest dicks in politics these days.

Thomas Kennedy, a Miami man paid to fly a banner reading “ha ha ha” over former Mar-a-Lago as Thing 45 supporters stood outside the gates to protest the recent FBI. He says it was the best $`1800 he ever spent.

That’s all.

In a new video, Dr. Oz, AKA Doctah Quackers, is walking through the produce section of Redner’s grocery store—he seemed lost and called the store Wegner’s, a cross between Wegman’s and Redner’s—because his wife wanted him to bring something home for crudité and he blames Joe Biden for the high cost of veggies.

John Fetterman Tweeted out that in Pennsylvania, people call  what Oz was buying a “veggie platter,” and you can get the whole thing for $7 … and then Fetterman proceeded to rake $500,000 in campaign donations.

It’s the new Crudité Effect for entitled one-percenters like Mehmet Marie Antoinette Oz.

Last week GOP lawmakers stripped a $35 price cap on the cost of insulin from the legislative package Democrats were moving through Congress. Republicans left the portion that applies to Medicare patients untouched but stripped the insulin cap for other patients.

Keep in mind, they voted against lowering the cost of insulin, they cheered the end of Roe v Wade, they suggest that marriage equality be overturned, they refused to honor the DC Metropolitan Police and the Capitol Police who protected them during the January 6 riots, they voted against healthcare for veterans, and are now anti-FBI because of the raid.

CAST A GODDAMNED BLUE VOTE.

The other day I was standing in line at the grocery store and said, perhaps a little too loudly:

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

The woman in front of me snapped her back and said:

“Watch your language, I have a ten-year-old with me.”

I replied:

“That’s who I was talking to.”

Could’a happened.

Dear Liz,

I don’t like your politics, and don’t like a single thing you campaign on, but I have been standing by you, and will continue to stand by you because you are in that elite group of a handful of Republicans who have put country over party in the wake of the Thing 45 incited insurrection.

I thank you for your service to your country and look forward to what you do with the J6 committee in the last five months of your term.

Onward, Patriot, let’s finish him.

Carlos and I wanted to try a new little French bistro in town, so I put together a little outfit, but the restaurant refused to let me in.

Something about no pants??? Goddess, this town is so provincial.

In Kentucky, four police officers—Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Hanna Goodlett, Brett Hankison and Kyle Meany—have been arrested and charged over the fatal shooting murder of Breonna Taylor after plainclothes police executing a "no-knock" search warrant entered her home in  the middle of the night in March 2020.

It’s about fucking time.

Travis  Van Winkle is a 39-year-old American actor, best known for starring in the feature films Transformers, Friday the 13^th and the third season of the Netflix  series You. All well and good, but Would You Hit It?

An Open Letter To Clarence Thomas

Dear Clarence,

I saw the good news from SCOTUS … that the Court decided the lawsuit against anti-marriage equality Kentucky Kounty Klerk, Kim Davis, who was jailed in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, to continue. Davis had argued that a legal doctrine called qualified immunity protected her from being sued for damages by couples David Ermold and David Moore as well as James Yates and Will Smith, but SCOTUS said ‘No, ma’am.’

Good news, no?

Maybe not, because then you wrote, for yourself and Justice Alito, that while agreeing with the decision not to hear the case, it was a "stark reminder of the consequences" of the court's 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage case. You wrote:

“Those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul [of that SCOTUS ruling] and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws.”

And then you said:

"Davis may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last. … Since Obergefell, parties have continually attempted to label people of good will as bigots merely for refusing to alter their religious beliefs in the wake of prevailing orthodoxy."

I have two words for you, Clarence … fuck off. Wait, I have two more … fucking hypocrite.

You see, Clarence, you, a Black man, married Virginia, a white woman, in 1987 … a mere twenty years after the Supreme Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. At that time peopled argued that interracial marriage was against “God’s law” and should therefore remain illegal.

So, you see, Clarence, but for a 1967 SCOTUS ruling, you could not have married your wife because people believed God wanted the races to be separate. And now, you want to make same-sex marriage illegal because people believe that God wants marriage to be only between one man and one woman.

And don’t get me started on which religions rules we’ll follow, Clarence, though it’s clear you only listen to the bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ faiths, while ignoring those religions that have come to accept and embrace same-sex marriage, as well as those who are non-religious and think faith should have no place in our laws. And that leads us to that whole idea that this country was founded on a Separation of Church and State, which clearly means that religion has no place in making law in this country.

So, Clarence, kindly fuck off, Clarence. What might you say when a group of religious bigots decide they want to roll back the legality of interracial marriage, and who knows, that may well happen when you let faith dictate law, I hope you won’t mind giving up your wife.

I, however, will not give up my husband, nor will I give up the right for members of my community to marry the person they love.

So, again, Clarence, kindly fuck all the way off.

An Open Letter from Jack Mackenroth to _____

Jack Mackenroth is an American swimmer, model, gay pornographic film actor, fashion designer, AIDS activist who has something to say to the current President:

Dear Mr. [_____],

I would like to thank you.

Thank you for making the United States the most unhealthy, 1st world country in the world by cutting healthcare, letting Covid-19 go unchecked which MASSIVELY contributed to the mental health issues of this nation. We are more anxious, scared and depressed than ever.

Thank you for traumatizing a whole generation of children who are old enough to understand that they have to wear masks to go near other people but don’t comprehend the big picture. It has changed my loving 3-year-old nephew forever.

Thank you for destroying New York and the performing arts.

Thank you for allowing a situation where we all wear masks and we can no longer see people smile.

Thank you for taking no responsibility for ANYTHING (except successful things which you actually didn’t do) and calling journalists “stupid” when you don’t like their questions.

Thank you for being the figure head for a new pervasive culture of bullying where people now think it’s the norm. That’s your only trickle-down theory that has worked.

Thank you for destroying the economy for probably the next decade. It doesn’t take an economist to know that just because the Dow that doesn’t mean that the general economy isn’t collapsing.

Thank you for making lying the new truth and anything that contradicts you, labeled as “fake news”.

Thank you for blaming democratic states for Covid-19 and dividing this country more than anyone thought possible.

Thank you for interfering with the post office and mail-in voting.

Thank you for thinking you are friends and allies with Putin and Kim Jong-un when advisors asked you not to and you are so stupid that you don’t realize that they are manipulating you.

Thank you for using tax dollars to hire your unqualified relatives for government jobs that they were not elected for.

Thank you for mocking a journalist with a disability on national TV.

Thank you for telling us to drink bleach to clean our insides.

Thank you for perpetuating a culture of fear to win re-election.

Thank you for golfing more than you governed.

Thank you for calling Mexicans “rapists” and separating children from their families and putting them in cages.

Thank you for claiming to be “the least racist man in the world” but then banning Mexicans and Muslims and dismantling immigration.

Thank you for trapping us all here in the US because we can’t cross borders.

Thank you for forcing kids to go back to school and threatening to take away federal funds from states that did not comply.

Thank you for your great job on the needless wall on the Mexico border.

Thank you for treating women as objects, free for “pussy grabbing” 24/7.

Thank you for your massive support for the LGBTQ community. Specifically, for removing trans folks from the military when experts advised against it.

Thank you for pandering to your “base” by doing a fake photo op with an upside down bible and pretending to be a man of faith when all you care about is the God of money and everyone knows you are not religious.

Thank you for attacking women’s healthcare and abortion. They must have the baby but thank you for taking away all the social programs they need once they have the baby. It’s ok if they die after they are born. Just not before, when they are not actually a human yet.

Thank you for being an amazing role model in so many ways – notably having adulterous sex with porn stars and paying them hush money. Any Democrat president would have been impeached and removed for .1% of the things you’ve done.

Thanks for kissing your daughter inappropriately on TV and speaking about how “hot” she was.

Thank you for using your own businesses in government events and contracts to personally profit from our tax dollars.

Thank you for your quick and compassionate, life-saving actions during natural disasters in Puerto Rico and Texas and California.

Thank you for sending in National guard troops to keep the peace when you were specifically asked not to and allowing excessive force against peaceful protestors.

Thank you for deregulating the internet so rich people and companies benefit.

Thank you for your amazing Twitter presidency and spending hours a day watching TV instead of working.

Thank you for being the main contributor to 200,000 Covid-19 deaths in America. Their blood is on your tiny, shaky hands.

There is soooo much more you did for this country, but my hand is numb from referencing about 2% of the atrocities.

This is your legacy. You will be remembered as the WORST president in history. If you ram through a new Supreme Court Justice it will amplify just how black-hearted you are.

Readers! Please share and add other heinous crimes against humanity in the comments.

#bidenharris2020 #RGB

Means Happy 

An Open Letter To America

I’ve heard it said that when times get tough, people tend to show their true colors and, America, if these are your true colors, I’m afraid; very afraid.

In the age of the pandemic we’re staying home, and we don’t like it, I get it. But, staying home keeps us all safe from the virus, safe from dying. But we’re so spoiled, so pampered, so used to getting our way, or our haircuts, or hamburgers, or church services, that a lot of us have lost our minds.

And I’m not just talking about the one storming the state capitols with guns and Nazi flags and their 2nd Amendment cries, because they are a special breed of ignorance. That is not a protest, that is terrorism and when someone gets shot, we’ll understand it as terrorism. But then there’s the ignorance of the people who buy into the rightwingnut rhetoric about this being China’s fault. And, because they believe, without knowing, reading, educating themselves, they attack the Chinese restaurant, or the Japanese store, or the Asian market because “those people”—who, by the way, are most likely Americans—are responsible for the virus.

Yes, America, some of us are that dumb.

Since January 2020, there has been a rise in the number of reports of Asian people being threatened and harassed on the street … being told to “Go back to China” … being blamed for “bringing the virus” to America … being called horrific names, spat on, or even physically assaulted. And it doesn’t help that the leaders of this country—who let’s be really clear, are the ones responsible for this mess—do nothing to stop this racial outrage but instead fan the flames by calling it the Chins Virus or say that it was invented in a lab and spread around the world even though they have no proof of that.

And so, this is America in 2020 …

Last month, in Albuquerque a Chinese American man, shopping at a supermarket, was told to “stay away”  while in Brooklyn, an Asian woman was verbally assaulted and called a “Fucking freak.” In Houston, a woman verbally harassed employees of a Vietnamese restaurant, telling them, “Get out of our country.”

In America; to Americans; by Americans.

In the Bronx, three teenage girls harassed and used an umbrella to attack an Asian woman, saying, “You caused coronavirus, bitch.” In Martinsville, Indiana, a man of Korean descent was denied entry into a gas station and told to “never come back.” The gas station attendants reportedly told police that "anyone of Chinese descent was not allowed in the store.”  In Woodbury, Minnesota a woman returned home to find this flier posted on her door: “We’re watching you fucking chinks take the chinese virus back to china. We don’t want you hear [sic] infecting us with your diseases!!!!!!!”

Freedumbers.

In Davie, Florida an Asian woman who works as a musician received harassing and racist text messages saying that she would not be hired anymore until she surrendered her Chinese passport and renounced her Chinese citizenship. In Midland, Texas a Burmese man and his two children were attacked and stabbed at a Sam’s Club by a 19-year-old man, who admitted to targeting the family because he believed they were Chinese and infecting people with coronavirus.

And this week, in Flint, Michigan, after Family Dollar store security guard, Calvin Munerlyn, told Sharmel Lashe Teague, that her child needed to wear a mask inside the store, Teague spit on the man and drove away. Twenty minutes later Teague’s husband and son, Larry Edward Teague and Ramonyea Travon Bishop, came into the store, found Calvin Munnerlyn and Bishop shot him.

In America. We’re shooting people who are trying to enforce standards to keep us all healthy. We’re spitting on people, harassing people, terrorizing people, killing people because we want to go outside and so if we need to push or shove or shoot our way outside, we’ll do it.

I get that we’re scared; none of us have ever been through any thing like this before. But why turn your fear into hate; why attack people … kill people … because you’re afraid. Listen to the doctors, the medical professionals, those people on the front lines trying to save lives, and turn off the politicians who preach that 80,000 dead Americans is a success; turn off the pundits who feed you lies about blame, lie about protection, about bleach.

Educate yourself or succumb to your freedumb.

The freedumb to impose your rights over those of others all the while saying they cannot do the same to you; the freedumb to murder a man for doing his job, following his boss’s orders, as well as state orders; the freedumb to target and terrorize others because they look different.

That’s not America; that’s not the America we all learned about in school; but clearly, as we watch the news and see the hate and the violence rise because people want to go to the beach or the park—and you may notice, very few say they want to go back to work—think their rights to walk around in a pandemic are more important than the rights of others to stay safe and healthy and alive.

If you want to believe this is a hoax, or no worse than the flu, instead of heading out to the playground, why not head to work, and don’t wear a mask. Pray you won’t get infected and bring the virus into your home where you might pass it along to your parents or your kids, or your friends.

Is that the freedumb you want? The freedumb to die? The freedumb to infect and possibly kill others? The freedumb to spit in the face of police officers who are simply doing their jobs?

Grow up, America, people are dying at the rate of nearly one person every minute, and if those new models are right, one American will be dying every forty-five seconds this summer.

Free?

Dumb.

I Love Lucie ... Arnaz' Husband, Laurence Luckinbill

Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, shared this on Facebook:

“My husband, the very fine actor, Laurence Luckinbill, and one of the best writers of honest thought I have known, handed me this today and I felt it should be shared with all of you. It’s not short (but, hey, where are you runnin’?) Feel free to share, too, if it hits a chord.”

And so here it is:

Dear Mr. President:

Folks talk about the president being in a bubble–that every president loses a sense of reality because of the enormity of the task, and so you are surrounded by aides and politicians who believe their job is to shield their boss from undue pressures. The boss can’t afford to make mistakes because he (or she) is the paramount leader, and the final protector of the principle of government,

‘Of the people, by the people and for the people.’

So I am wondering if you know any of the people. I am wondering how it came to be that you don’t seem to feel anything that normal people feel. Perhaps your father or mother beat you? Maybe not with an electric cord, but with words and demands which may have shamed you so deeply and driven you so far back into your small Ego chamber or your dark Id cave that you have never been able to find your way to escape into the light that ordinary people see. You must have tried often, and failed every time. I wonder if that’s why you can now only envision yourself as a monster like Grendel, Godzilla, Nosferatu, Josef Stalin, a rapist or a drug-dealer pushing the untested drug for the new virus that you have invested in which you push in your television ad show for yourself. Could this be true? That you can only see yourself as one of the ‘bad people’ that you now project outward onto us, the real people. 

I am sorry for you. I sympathize. Your life is awful. Very sad. You are a little boy playing at being a big villain. But it doesn’t seem to help you feel better. You are the most unhappy man I’ve ever seen. 

I’m curious–did you have the natural feelings of empathy that the rest of us have, beaten out of you, so now you must inflict punishment on everyone else–especially those you can dominate in your mind–the ones who have little recourse against your fury? Do you realize that you are a bully? Do you know that bullies are basically cowards who dominate those who will allow it? We people out here see a huge number of your victims–the entire Republican Party has fallen beneath your heel–and you seem to really like that. It is very sad.

Do you ever dream? Do your dreams consist of a desire to have everyone on earth bow down to you–to kneel and kiss your hand like the old mob bosses and the tyrants of old? Have you ever felt anything but the raging urge to hurt and dominate? Your poor son Baron looks so deeply sad and disassociated when you bring him out in one of your shows. Your wife seems to be either beaten down to her round heels or to be planning a great revenge on you. Is this possible?

I write sincerely to ask these questions because I feel for you. I have empathy and I know its value to humanity. A person with empathy for others sees how deeply miserable you are–even as you try endlessly to divert yourself by dominating others. You cannot win this sad battle against your own ‘Better Nature,’ as Abraham Lincoln described the force for good that will re-unite this country after you are gone. I hope the people don’t arise and hang you upside down like Mussolini–he too, believed himself to be invincible. All tyrants end the same way—in misery. That is your destiny, Mr. President.

The people see all that you are doing to destroy the country that belongs to us. There are so many, many, many things you and your captive minions have done and are doing to change the people into your servants, slaves, even. The people can only tolerate the theft of their freedom for so long–but finally, as in our original Revolution, they will gather en masse to remove you and every one of your party from any position of power ever again. 

This is the Easter season, The Passover season. Both celebrate escape from tyranny–from death itself. We, the people. are marking time from this date till the peaceful New American Revolution says a final goodbye to you. It will be such a grand relief to get rid of you. I write in sorrow that you have not learned humanity–you haven’t learned Faith, Hope or Charity–which is Love. I know that if you had ever had any, you would know what those words mean.

Perhaps after you see how happy America will be without you, you will understand. I hope so. No one should have to live in your dark lonely soul ever again. 

With love,

Laurence Luckinbill

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