Mood Forever

These Hoes Ain’t Loyal

As the curtain closes on the Trump show, he has fired his defense secretary, top Pentagon aides, the second-in-command at the U.S. Agency for International Development, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist, and the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons. The Washington Post did an article on the guy behind the guy, the person actually delivering the axe is Johnny McEntee. Two years ago, McEntee was escorted out of the White House after a security clearance check turned up a habit for online gambling and financial crimes, such as mishandling taxes. Wonder if he went to rehab in the last two years or is he betting on who gets fired next?

Either way, 30-year-old, McEntee came back in February 2020 as personnel director for the government. Yes, the entire U.S. Government. McEntee has been warning federal employees not to cooperate with the Biden transition and threatening to fire people who show “disloyalty” by job hunting. Seriously, the things that the Trump administration gets away with threatening people with is pathetic. If you are going to blackmail me, I promise you need more than, “I will fire you,” when I’m about to get fired.  But overall, it’s the degenerate gambler with no experience with blind loyalty to Trump, for me. 

Dishonorable Boy Scouts

The Boy Scouts of America was expected to get over 80,000 sexual abuse cases filed on Monday. Yea, I know. It’s disgusting.  In February, the Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections from lawsuits. They sought protections in an effort to stall the hundreds of lawsuits that were currently in the court and set a deadline for the others. They also wanted to have a mediation instead of having all their 261 councils face jury trials. Bankruptcy also prevented further legal discovery into the council. This was also a tactic used by the Catholic Church, although the Boy Scouts have raised them one, in the sheer number of complaints. 

The local councils hold the bulk of the Boy Scout’s money, roughly $3.3 billion. But because they are “separate entities” from the parent, their assets are safe from these suits. The parent organization has $1.4 billion in assets, which is what the victims through bankruptcy will have to go for. Not enough in my opinion.

The idea that an organization that turned a blind eye to thousands and thousands of incidents of harm to children since their inception, would try to protect money and property is outrageous. The fact that there is still a Boy Scouts of America is absurd to me. Can someone explain to me why? And why would you EVER send your son there anymore? And no, I don’t care how many eagle scouts are out there with good stores ; that will never outweigh the harm. The Boy Scouts should be a memory. 

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Meet Olivia Pearson and hear her story: She is a Black city commissioner and voting rights activist in Douglas, Georgia who has been arrested twice for voting violations. 

In 2012, she was charged with felony voter fraud for showing a first-time Black voter how to use a voting machine. She is one of very few people to ever be prosecuted for voter fraud. She faced up to five years in prison. The trial ended in a mistrial in April 2017. Believe it or not, the prosecutor, a white man named Ian Sansot, is the same man who decided not to charge Ahmaud Arbery’s killers, re-filed the case. But Pearson was acquitted in her second trial, a year later. She told Slate, “I still have days when that wears on me.”

But that ordeal did not stop her from getting out the vote and helping turn Georgia blue. October 27, 2020, she was doing her thing: calling friends and neighbors to see if they had voted. If they hadn’t, she offered them rides to the county elections office. Pearson took a former student to the polls and caught the attention of Misty Martin, the elections supervisor for Coffee County. Pearson and Martin have had previous run-ins. Pearson says she signed the form that allowed her to assist her former student “because I know she is illiterate and can’t read.” Despite this, Misty Martin rushed in to “shoo” Pearson away. Then in true “Karen” fashion, she called the police. So, when Pearson returned after picking up another former student, she was met by three police vehicles and presented with a criminal trespass warning. Pearson asked why she had to leave and the two women had a back and forth that of course ended with Pearson being arrested, AGAIN.

But that didn’t stop her, she continued to take voters to the polls the week after her arrest. She parked across the street from the elections office and let people out. Her court date is December 21. Overall she’s looking ahead to the January runoffs saying, “I was just thinking today, you’ve got to push, push, push on trying to get the voters back.”  I admire her. She keeps fighting despite these setbacks and she does it in a county with a rich racist history that apparently continues. She is definitely part of the reason we are even having a run-off in January. Thanks Olivia!

 I Am Woman, Hear me Roar

Oxford University Press has been tweaking the definition of woman after online petitions called the entries sexist. They examined dictionary and thesaurus entries and usage examples for the word “woman,” “man” and related terms. Here’s what they changed:

• Last year  “wench,” “piece,” and other terms  were listed as synonyms for “woman,” Some of these terms have been removed while others are now labeled “offensive, derogatory, or dated.” 
• Altered a definition to acknowledge that a woman can be “a person’s wife, girlfriend, or female lover,” not only a man’s. 
• Added “equivalent” phrases such as “woman of the moment” were included to match phrases like “man of the moment.”
• Expanded the dictionary coverage of ‘woman’ with more examples which depict women in a positive and active manner.
• Ensured offensive synonyms are clearly labelled as such.
• References to gender were removed from the examples for words “typically associated with women” including housework and high-maintenance.

This was all started by a Change.org petition that received more than 34,000 signatures. Oxford University Press said, “our dictionaries reflect, rather than dictate, how language is used.” Whew! I can sleep a little easier with these changes. Now, only if we can get people to stop THINKING of women in these ways, I would be forever grateful. At any rate, the review is an ongoing they are now examining the language on race, diversity, and use of the pronoun “they” for nonbinary people.