Today is the 47th anniversary of Roe v, Wade and you probably think I am going to talk about abortion access. Ha! Fooled you! Not because I don’t want to talk about abortion access or because I don’t have plenty to say about it. I’m not talking about abortion access because there are other voices sounding the call today and I’m happy to let them do the talking.

Instead, I want to talk about heating assistance.

I don’t know what the weather is like where you live but it’s pretty damn cold where I am. That means that people who are struggling to pay bills are living in danger of losing their indoor heating service if money gets tight.

There is a federal programs that provides heating assistance for those who qualify. It’s called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and it’s an emergency program for people who make very little. It’s tax payer funded and it’s actually pretty non-controversial so Congress doesn’t use it as a political football when discussing spending cuts. if you or anyone you know needs help paying heating assistance, the link is right here.

But if LIHEAP doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, there are other options for getting assistance with paying for heat. A lot of utilities offer something known as rate-payer funds where customers pay into an assistance fund for those in need. There are also state or regional non-profit fuel funds that can help out. Here is a good fact sheet on some of these programs.

My natural gas company offers me the option of adding a fuel fund donation to my bill payment every month and I always do it. It’s an easy way for me to do something for people in my community. I consider it just as important as my contributions to food banks in my area. Food and heat are elemental.

There is really no reason on earth that people should be without heat in America. We have the resources to do even more than we do already at a state and federal level. If you have the ability to something at the individual level, I highly encourage you to do so. Everyone deserves a warm home.

If you read only one non-fiction book this year, this should be the book you choose. I read a lot of books but I have never read anything like this before.

Kendi is a noted scholar in the field of history and anti-racism. This book is the result of years of his own study and life experience but it’s also a demolition of everything I thought I understood about race and racism. And I mean that in the best way, not the white-lady-having-a-twee-epiphany way.

I simply cannot explain what this book actually says because it is such an intricate remaking of what is possible when looking at race that the only way to understand it is to read the book itself.

I know. That’s the most annoying thing anyone can write about a book and yet here I am. Writing it.

The section that I keep coming back to is his chapter on race and spaces. The quick and dirty synopsis of his thinking is that integration does not “improve” people of color. Instead, it implicitly devalues Black spaces by suggesting that the existing white spaces are better and everyone would be better off in them.

This made sense to me at a gut level because I know how I feel about the value of being in spaces with only other women. I take something from those spaces that is meaningful and that I don’t get in integrated spaces. The culture of women-only spaces is important and not worse than spaces men occupy as well.

But this is a dangerous thing to say because it immediately opens the door to a snarky “Oh, so separate but equal?” retorts. To which all I can do is howl wordlessly before admitting that I’m saying it wrong and you just need to go read this book because Kendi explains it in a way that makes perfect sense.

Really, read this book, Don’t rush it, I spent over a month reading it in pieces. It’s a lot to digest but it’s mind-blowing. Every page or so, I wanted to take a photo of a paragraph and share it with everyone I know because it is just that good.

In 2008, shortly after the Democratic nominating convention where Hillary Clinton unflinchingly allocated her delegates to the nominee Barack Obama, John McCain held a press conference to announce his pick for running mate. That day, Sarah Palin swaggered up to the mic and said something to the effect of “The women of America aren’t done yet!”

I remember sitting there, thinking quite clearly “Is John McCain trying to insult my intelligence?”

I had been a Hillary supporter in 2008, not because she was a woman but because I know excellence when I see it. She was excellence embodied. Sarah Palin was…not. There was never a chance I was going to go running across the aisle to vote for someone as vapid and lightweight as Sarah Palin just for the sake of gender equity.

It’s been a long time since I felt that condescended to during an election process but the New York Times pulled it off last night when they tried to split the pandering-to-feminists-baby by endorsing Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar at the same time.

There has been a big field for Dems to choose from and of the candidates who have tried to gain the nomination, there have been very few who I considered a hard pass. Most of them are qualified, experienced (some some degree) and sincere in their principles and approach. I have been delighted to pick through the ideas and proposals coming out of all the campaigns. It’s an embarrassment of riches, really. Klobuchar and Warren are both the cream of the Senate crop and either one of them would be an outstanding leader for America.

But when my primary day arrives, I will choose only one candidate to give my vote to. That’s the way this work. One person, one candidate, one vote.

The New York Times missed that memo and instead has tried to lift up Simba (if Simba were a girl) and Nala at the same time and sing about the circle of life.

Look, I get it. The New York Times shit the bed in 2016 and they, as much as any media source, have to own culpability for handing us Fuckface Von Clownstick. We know it, they know it. They owe it to America to do better in their coverage this time around. But endorsing TWO LADIES is not the way to do it.

(I really hope at least some of you imagined Joel Grey in Cabaret just then.)

This split endorsement smacks of the Times editorial board not wanting to upset women who have been (rightfully) mad at them since the day after the 2016 election. It doesn’t feel like the kind of thoughtful large-tent approach of something like a Nobel Prize, which will be awarded to people working parallel to one another in their fields. This feels like pandering, plain and simple.

It’s an insult to my intelligence. And I don’t like it.

I’ve been thirstily consuming all the spilled tea coming from Lev Parnas this week. It’s been truly delightful to listen to that guy as he throws every high profile Republican under the bus as he makes his way to prison for illegal campaign contributions. He’s clearly a total dirtbag with no innate loyalties to anyone in Republican politics. He will light everything on fire now that he’s going down.

He’s the only one, though.

The establishment within the Republican party is all just continuing with this group charade that they don’t know him, that they had no idea Giuliani was traipsing around doing underground foreign policy deals, that the President isn’t a third-rate mobster wannabe. They have agreed to ignore all of that because they are all getting exactly what they – the whole Republican party – wants.

With Trump in the White House and McConnell helming the Senate, they can deregulate businesses, install pro-business judges in all the federal courts, and build on changes to the tax laws to benefit businesses. That’s it. That’s they whole goal. Make the rich, richer.

“But, Rebekah,” you’re saying. “What about the intersectional feminist concerns about the actions at the border? The dismantling of Obamacare? Taking a hacksaw to reproductive rights?”

More gifts to big businesses! Warehousing immigrants in concentration camps is a boom industry, folks! Wanna know who’s running those baby-cage facilities? Corrections Corporation of America. Fat government contracts to prisons for profit!

Who wants insurance deregulated? Insurance companies! Who wants to cherry-pick who can have insurance like in the good old pre-ACA days? Insurance companies! Who doesn’t want to pay for employee benefits? Big businesses! They don’t care if you live or die and neither does anyone in the GOP! Wheeeee!

Big business doesn’t win much through forced-birth policies but that’s the one social issues that guys like Pence care about. They’ve been promising to protect fetuses for 47 years and now they’re in a position to deliver. That’s the core of Republican domestic policy. If you have the temerity to fuck for fun, you better believe you will have to suffer like Eve herself in childbirth later.

Do some of the old guard wish Trump were more polite and a little better at covering his criminal tracks? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. While he distracts the media with his Twitter account, Congressional leaders are making sure the NRA is still happy, carbon emitters are emitting freely, and the education system remains just as unequal as it ever was.

Honestly, I think they kind of like the status quo.

So, don’t expect these latest revelations about what kind of a slimeball Trump is to change anything. The Republican Party knows and they don’t care.

He’s a slimeball, but he’s their slimeball and they’re going to keep him.

It is 16 days into 2020 and if you’re reading this, you are doing great!

Seriously, everything feels loaded with portent because it’s an election year and the internet is setting brains on fire and everyone we’ve met is half-corked on existential dread and that one Trumper we all know just won’t. shut. up.

You don’t have to deal with it if you don’t want to.

Seriously. Take a break.

You don’t need to do any twee “self-care” stuff where you plan the perfect evening of rest and relaxation where you light a candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina and take time for mindfulness. That just sounds like work.

You’d probably be better off texting this vagina candle meme to some friends and snickering about it for the next twenty minutes.

You laughed, right?

Spend more time doing stuff like sharing weird memes and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Or spend time petting dogs. Reading gossip websites. Join a facebook group about cookie recipes. Go find a little joy in this life and revel in it.

We take ourselves so seriously that we can’t even chill out without it being a thing. It isn’t always introvert time or recharging or whatever. Sometimes it’s just being a little frivolous for a while because being frivolous is okay. It’s fun! Try it! Be frivolous!

Think about the scene in The Hate You Give where the teens are all running through the riots in Starr’s neighborhood, looking for a place to be safe from the fires. They’re actually in mortal danger but int he middle of it all, they start cracking up over something Starr’s boyfriend said about mac’n’cheese.

It’s ok to laugh even when the world burns.

Delegate Tom Fast, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored a bill in 2018 that restored work requirements for food stamps statewide, said he considered the policy a success. “The information I have is that there’s been significant savings over all,” he said, coupling that with a low unemployment rate as evidence that the policy was working.

“If a person just chooses not to work, which those are the people that were targeted, they’re not going to get a free ride,” he said. Of people who are facing concrete obstacles to steady work, like a lack of transportation, he added: “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“What Happened When a State Made Food Stamps Harder to Get”, Campbell Robertson writing for The New York Times, 1/14/2020

Remember grasshoppers in On The Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder? If you don’t, it’s ok. I do and I’ll tell you about them.

In On The Banks of Plum Creek, Wilder describes how, in several successive growing seasons in Minnesota, swarms of locusts arrived and ate all the plants. Literally, every plant in a farmer’s field would be eaten by these bugs They were everywhere. Wilder described a grasshopper infested hellscape where the insects would eat the clothing off a person’s body if that’s where they landed.

What Wilder didn’t know at the time was that mutli-year infestation of Rocky Mountain locusts was one of the worst insect disasters in the history of humanity. It was an unparalleled – and unavoidable – disaster that affected the entirety of the Great Plains.

Now, if you will turn your attention to the photo posted above, you can see a record of how the governor of Minnesota responded to the fact that the rural areas of his state were both destitute and starving. Yes, that’t right. He offered thoughts and prayers. And the pundit class of the day wrote that farmers were just being lazy and didn’t deserve help.

Gosh. Where have we heard that one before?

Oh! I know! In today’s New York Times! There was a long article about how imposing work requirements for food stamps has reduced the rolls of food-stamp eligible people without resulting in greater levels of employment for them. So they’re still out of work and now they’re also starving!

But don’t worry. A Republican lawmaker from West Virginia says they’ll all figure it out. “If there’s a will, there’s a way,” he opines.

Here is my etremelty complicated and nuanced feminist take on this. Ready? Ahem. Here goes.

FOOD SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT.

Did that make sense?

I do not give one single fuck why a person is hungry. Recently fired? Buried under other bills? Disability? Poverty? Laziness? They’re not actually in need at all but trying to game a system? WHO THE FUCK CARES? JUST FUCKING FEED PEOPLE!

Don’t come whinging at me saying feeding everyone who wants food is expensive. Blowing up Iran will also be expensive but no one is worried about that. Hell, Trump just reallocated $7 billion in other military funds to building a wall that won’t work. It would cost a lot less to, say, implement universal school lunches for all public school students.

There is no criteria for “deserving” food. If you are a human, you need to eat. For our leaders to suggest differently is immoral.

Meanwhile, until we get moral leadership, we all need to support food banks. They exist in every part of America and all of them would gratefully accept any contribution you can give. Money, food, or time is all helpful. Give what you can.

What this new Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans voters has done is confirm that my Aunt Gloria has her finger on the pulse of black America. At the family barbecue, I asked her why she thought Biden was the person to take on Trump. Her answer left me slack-jawed and remains the best explanation for Biden’s continued strength. “The way the system is set up now, there is so much racism that it’s going to have to be an old white person to go after an old white person,” Aunt Gloria said. “Old-school against old-school.”

Jonathan Capehart writing for The Washington Post

I don’t want to vote for another man.

I have voted for a lot of men, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve also been fortunate enough to live in places where I was afforded the opportunity to joyfully vote for women who reflect my values. Women who were forces of nature. Louise Slaughter in New York. Dianne Feinstein in California. Eleanor Holmes Norton in DC. Barbara Mikulski in Maryland. Hillary Clinton for President.

So, no I don’t want to vote for more men if I don’t have to. I have seen what women can do in politics and I support the leadership of women.

But I’m probably going to vote for Joe Biden in the Democratic primary.

My first choice in this race was Kirsten Gillibrand because of her record of centering women. Tied for second for me were Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Gillibrand was the candidate of my heart, Warren speaks to my mind, Kamala to my my spirit. I would have had a hell of a choice to make if all three had made it to the Maryland primary in April. As it stands now, Warren is the last of my top three, the only woman I could feasibly support in this race (Gabbard is not my cup of tea.)

Then there’s Joe Biden. In a race with no women – no people who look and sound like me – Joe Biden would be not just a good option but really a great option. He has a long record, imperfect, yes, but responsive to the times. I believe it is not the job of a Senator to tell the people their will, but to serve the will of the people. He has done that reflecting the moment of history he was in and using the best information he had at hand.

For all his errors along the way, I have never doubted his intentions. He is smart, he is experienced, and he is also willing to learn. Not only that, he is liked and respected by leaders at home and abroad.

But that’s not why I am (probably) going to vote for him. I am going to vote for him because I agree with Jonathan Capehart’s Aunt Gloria quoted above. The system is built for white men and the only way to win inside the system we have is to vote for the best white man for the job.

That’s Joe Biden. It just is.

As Capehart reveals in his article from this weekend, the polling about what African American voters think about this primary is fairly unambiguous. As a voting bloc, they are favoring Joe Biden. It’s a cold and pragmatic choice, perhaps, but it also may be a clear-eyed and intelligent choice. It is a choice that white feminists should consider making out of deference to the political instincts of black voters. After all, 95% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton. 53% of white women voted for Trump. If I’m choosing teams here, I know who I think has better judgement.

As I said earlier, Biden’s mistakes are mistakes only with the benefit of hindsight. The Iraq War vote did not equal consent for all the mistakes the Bush administration made once they were given authorization to act. The Crime Bill from the 90s reflected the thinking of the day. Anita Hill…well, she herself says she would vote for Biden if he were the nominee.

As for whether Biden can be the Pied Piper we long for in politics, remember watching Biden at the convention in 2016 and getting chills. I felt a twinge of regret that he wasn’t getting a day in the sun.

My husband was at the convention that night, seated behind the stage and enough above it that he could see the teleprompter. When I told him how impressed I was with Biden he told me there were long sections of that speech where the prompter didn’t scroll; it was Biden talking from the heart. And what a heart he has.

So I will probably vote for Joe Biden in the primary. I will regret deeply one more lost opportunity to put a woman in the Oval Office but I will not regret putting Joe Biden there.

Anyway, here is his 2016 convention speech. At minute 13:20 he talks about the state of the world and hold the stadium in his hands. It’s worth a listen.

Woowee. is that headline an understatement. Childcare should be affordable. That’s not a radical idea but somehow, it really is.

The NPR affiliate here in DC did a piece today about the cost of childcare for people living in the greater metro area. The big takeaway is that is averages $24,000 per year for families to arrange infant care here. For reference, thats about what I spend on my mortgage payments every year.

Let that soak in. Childcare is an expense on par with housing.

There are a bunch of conservative responses to any story about the cost of childcare and they never actually address the problem in any meaningful way. There’s always that obnoxious jerk who says “Why can’t you stay home and raise your own kids, huh, huh, huh, why aren’t you June Cleaver? Be a better mom instead of a money-hungry career bitch!”

Never mind the stagnation of wages in the face of increasing costs of living mean that millions of families can’t survive on a single income. The real problem is women liking their jobs.

The other response is always to move someplace less expensive.

To that I say listen up and listen good: geography should not dictate a family’s ability to care for their children. Got it? Good.

See here’s the thing about being a parent:  People with kids cannot effectively do anything unless they have secure plans for the kids. From the moment a child is born, ensuring the safety and security of that child is a 24/7 proposition. If you are a parent you know how this goes. You want to make plans to do literally anything and your first thought is “What can the kids do while I do X.” That’s true even if X is something as simple as going to a doctor appointment for yourself or picking up an extra shift at work. Unless you can arrange care for your kids, you can’t go. Period.

There are a lot of ways to skin the cat of childcare. We could subsidize the cost of care. Make care fully tax deductible. Implement universal pre-k so parents only need care from the ages of 1-3. We could extend the school year and fund after-school initiatives to cover the gaps that public school leaves. We could mandate paid parental leave that lasts more than 12 weeks and reduce the need for infant care.

Or we could raise fuckin’ wages to make life easier for everyone.

Americans don’t seem motivated to do any of these things. Instead, we moralize at each other about the best way to be a parent instead of supporting one another as we all try to raise our families. And all of that is why I continue to insist that America is not a family friendly country, no matter what we try to say.

Jillian Michaels spent much of yesterday fat-shaming Lizzo trying to sell you her brand of fitness stuff.

What’s that? You thought she was really talking about Lizzo? I gues she kinda was but mostly Lizzo was a stand-in for you and me and all of our insecurities.

I’m not sure how Michaels got on her “Lizzo isn’t the right body shape” tear but she was really committed to the idea that we should be mad at Lizzo for being both an awesome musician and having a body. Not just a body. A body that is refusing to buy what Michaels is selling.

Lizzo is out there making her music, doing her shows, thrilling her fans, and not spending a penny on the fitness-industrial complex that provides Michaels with her paycheck every week. And that scares Michaels because if Lizzo won’t spend money on fitness? Maybe you won’t either. And if no one buys her stuff, what will she do for a living?

Can’t have Jillian Michaels going out of business, now, can we?

Your body belongs to you. It’s all yours. What you do with it is up to you. How you feel about it is up to you.

If it definitely not up to Jillian Michaels, whose entire livelihood rests on you feeling bad about your body. She’s just one of myriad people and industries who depend on the insecurity of millions of people, particularly women. The day we all take back control of our feelings about our bodies is the day Michaels and every other celebrity trainer with a line of protein shakes to sell goes broke.

I know that learning to feel good in your own skin requires years of unlearning everything we have been taught about ourselves and our bodies – and it’s not like I’m really doing a great job of it myself – but maybe the first step is realizing that a lot of the people telling us our bodies are wrong are also people who will directly profit from us trying to change those self same bodies.

When it comes to fat-shaming kerfuffles like what Jillian Michaels did yesterday to get herself back in the public consciousness, there’s really only one way to respond: put in your headphones, turn up some Lizzo, and continue on with your day.

No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. 

Muhammed Ali

All week we have been teetering on the brink of a war with Iran. Or maybe we’re not. No, wait we are. Actually, no. But maybe.

Honestly, I can’t make heads or tails of the Trump foreign policy and I’m not even going to try.

Here’s what I do know: war seldom benefits those who fight it.

Here’s what else I know: those that fight wars are the poor, the undereducated, the non-white, and others who need opportunity more than they need a safe line of work.

If we end up in a war with Iran, it won’t be a war that makes life better for the troops who will be fighting it. They won’t come home richer, more appreciated, more employable, or healthier. They won’t have a red carpet of opportunity rolled out before them. Their futures won’t be any brighter than they were the day they shipped out. In fact, depending on how injured they are, their futures might be downright dismal.

And do we even need to talk about futures of civilians living on the actual battleground? No. We do not. Because we all saw Good Morning Vietnam so we have at least a made-for-Hollywood sense of how shitty it will get.

My feminism does not tolerate wars that serve only to batter the marginalized – of any nation – while enriching and further empowering the existing leaders.

I support American troops. I do. They’re one of the big reasons I don’t bitch about taxes. If you’re putting food on the table for a military family with my money, I consider that money well spent. I want my money going to the VA and military pensions. The GI Bill? I wanna pay for that.

What I don’t want is to send out troops into yet another quagmire where they lose blood and treasure in order to fight for some vague principle handed down from on high by people who won’t lose a thing in a war.

The day that a tribunal of actual stakeholders in the war effort – the troops, their families, the medical personnel who will treat their wounds, the people in the land where the war will take place – the day they tell me it’s all worth it is the day I will agree with a war with Iran.

But for now, all I see are white men standing in front of cameras trying to tell me what America and Iran both need. That’s not good enough. I’m thinking about what Americans and Iranians need.

They’re the ones who matter.