Whiskey in a Teacup

Politicians without empathy are identifying with billionaires over We The People.

So please understand that I am freaking out as much about the intentional corruption and dismantling of the US Postal Service as anyone. More, probably. 

And yet, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that what this tells you is that in a certain sense, the election has already happened. Everyone already knows how they’re voting. There are not a lot of undecided people in this country at this point. The one real unknown still hanging out there–Biden’s choice of running mate–has been decided. And it’s pretty clear that in terms of how people have already decided to vote, Buttercup has lost. Who wants another four fucking years of THIS?

So really, instead of a presidential campaign, what we’re going to see in the next few months is a fight over vote suppression. Biden is going to campaign and all, but what really matters is whether we can protect the system well enough to actually have a legitimate election accurately counted. If we can, then Buttercup loses. If we can’t, then he wins.

This post is brought to you by my visiting FiveThirtyEight and looking at their presidential election forecast and thinking, “You know what? This doesn’t tell me anything useful.”

Here’s the American Postal Workers’ Union page about how to save the post office. It has some suggestions.

The answer is NO.

The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

that meal from mcdonalds takes virtually no time to acquire AND is available almost anywhere.

the second meal? that “salad” is lettuce … with nothing else, not even dressing unless its just olive oil or some milk i guess? gross.

also thats the price of each serving, not an entire loaf of bread, a bottle of olive oil, etc. that stuff adds up which means you have to have a lot of money at one time to buy it all.

that meal probably took an hour and a half to make, which is a long fucking time when you work multiple jobs or are caring for a lot of people or dont have help! seriously, if you are a single parent of three who works, is spending an hour and a half every night preparing a meal a likely option?

same with beans and rice! also, you know whats a fucking bummer? eating beans and rice every night because you are poor. ask any person who has done it and they will tell you (you can start with me).

there is a “nutrition” argument here that lacks a follow up: poor people are more likely to be doing physical labor and need more than 571 calories per meal.

you know who is less likely to know how to bake or prepare a chicken? people without access to the internet, or libraries, or who werent taught how to by their parents because their parents worked all the time. access to healthy foods is a classist issue and classism is cyclical, you fucking morons.

seriously, these sorts of infographics make me want to fucking flip tables. do you know why people don’t eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? because fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, because they take a long time to prepare, because they dont live near a grocery store that has a decent produce section, because they dont have reliable transportation to get groceries to and from the grocery store, because they dont have the energy to plan all of the shit that is involved in making healthy, intentional, filling, balanced meals. basically: poor people get fucked, and then we get BLAMED for being lazy.

eating “healthy”, aka access to fresh fruits and vegetables, is a privilege, first, foremost, always. so fuck you new york times and your ignorant goddamn infographic.

In 2016, everyone was taking online personality quizzes to find out what superhero, Disney princess, or 90s sitcom character you were. I took one of these myself (I’m Batman, if you were wondering).

In 2017, the fad suddenly vanished. Then we found out Cambridge Analytica had been using online personality tests to secretly mine user data and create personality profiles to divide Democrats against each other, manipulate swing voters, and help elect Trump.

Now it’s 2020, and suddenly these quizzes are back. And I see even many of my most politically astute friends are taking them. If we’re not going to learn from the past, I guess we deserve whatever we get.

Then, one year at ComicCon, I bought a fake mustache, for a joke, and put it on OVER MY REAL MUSTACHE. In literally seconds, people stopped looking at me, and I vanished into the crowd.

Before I put on the fake mustache, I was getting stopped by people who recognized me from one thing or another about every fifty feet. Once I put on the fake mustache, I walked all the way across the vendor hall floor, out into the line area for Hall H, and all the way to the Bayfront, without a single person paying any attention to me, at all.