#we are anti myra in all forms in this house

[bleep-bleep-richie]

i know myra is canonically unattractive and that this fact is intentional to show that the *only* reason eddie married her was because her idea of loving him was an exact replica of how his mother treated him

but

ive considered the idea of conventionally attractive myra, like five foot eight bombshell myra, beating men off with a stick myra. a version of myra that's cold, calculating and smart. who is introduced through mutual friends to the well-off limo service CEO and uses every weapon in her arsenal to intrigue him so she can get his money. a myra who pursues eddie intentionally, using her attractiveness to lure him in without either of them realizing- at first- the actual reason why he allows himself to be lured. myra who mocks him when he can't perform in the bedroom on occasion. myra who zeroes in on every one of eddie's insecurities and plays on them like a fucking fiddle. eddie who for reasons he can't identify is absolutely desperate for her to stay and does anything he can to keep her. an eddie who thinks it's because he loves her, because love with a woman to eddie is always tinged with a little bit of fear, always feels a little bit like walking on eggshells. love that feels like a sacrifice of self, and not in a heroic way.

so when eddie lives (!!!!) but doesn't get divorced and the losers meet his hot wife, she sees the way the comedian eyeballs her with contempt and rage he doesn't even try to hide, sees eddie's eyes light up when richie tells a joke in a way they never do with her, and it all clicks.

those times he'd stopped her when she reached for him. how she always had to coax him into touching her, how all the physical contact that should be normal for a husband and wife was always forced and awkward on his end. she watches him laugh with this bug-eyed mess in a tacky orange polo with the collar turned up on one side, watches her husband reach over and adjust that collar, sees how neither of them even notice that he's done it. and, suddenly, she knows.

her husband, the queer.

she announces she's ready to leave, suddenly, the first thing she's said since they all sat down. raises an eyebrow at the way richie bristles and wraps a protective arm loosely around the back of eddie's chair. "eddie, darling," she purrs, "you can get the car."

eddie's already scrambling to obey. "yes, dear, of course."

she corners richie when he excuses himself because she just knows, somehow, that he's going to try to talk to eddie without her there.

he says, "im not going to say it was nice to meet you," before she even opens her mouth, and she's glad they can skip the niceties and get straight the point.

she hooks a hand on her hip, "so you have a crush on my husband." he towers over her even in her heels, but he feels, suddenly, like he's two feet tall.

"im in love with him, actually," richie admits, not at all surprised at how easy it is to do so.

her lips curl wickedly and richie wants to empty the contents of his stomach onto her shoes. "good." richie arches an eyebrow. "he'll need someone when i bleed him dry and take every. last. penny."

richie thinks about decking her, remembers they're in public, wonders if that's going to be enough to stop him. "you don't love him."

she snorts a laugh, quirks her head. "you don't miss a thing," she says, mocking. "i don't, i never have. but you know what i have done?" she leans closer, conspiringly, whispering next to his ear. "i fucked the queer right out of him." she knows, minutely, that it isn't true, but judging by the look on richie's face, he's not so sure.

eddie appears then, slips his suit jacket off and onto myra's shoulders. she throws another smile richie's direction, knows she's trained eddie well. loves how crestfallen richie looks, how hard it is for him to hide it.

eddie looks between them, "everyone getting along?"

"swimmingly," myra answers, daring richie with a bat of her eyelashes to contradict her.

"call me later," richie says belatedly, warily. he looks away from myra slowly, almost like he wants to keep an eye on her, the same way he never takes his eyes off a spider while he's getting a shoe to wack it with. eddie's blinking up at him and richie, for about the millionth time in his life, wonders what he's thinking.

"sure, rich," eddie agrees, voice soft, like it's a private thing.

"well," myra says after a charged moment, too loud in the small space, "i am ready to go, aren't you, eddie, dear?"

"yeah," eddie offers, peeling his eyes off richie and giving his wife a small smile, "i'm tired."

she says, "hopefully not too tired," and the blush that rises on eddie's cheeks makes richie's entire world tilt on its axis. she pecks a kiss right on top of that pinkness, and the red from her lipstick leaves a mark. "oops," she giggles but doesn't make a move to wipe it off. she shifts her gaze back to richie, grin wolfish.

he wishes her lipstick had smudged so he could tell himself she isn't beautiful. but it didn't and she is, and she knows it.

"don't forget to call," richie says, wanting eddie's eyes on his again.

"first thing tomorrow," myra says, tugging eddie out of the restaurant by the hand.

"bye, rich," eddie says.

"nice meeting you," myra calls over her shoulder. she loops her fingers with eddie's and waves to richie with her preoccupied hand, on purpose. something flashes through richie's eyes at the sight of it. anger definitely but something else too- determination, she thinks.

she knows he'll probably tell eddie exactly what she said, can sense that he's that type of friend. she also knows she can make certain eddie doesn't believe a word he says. a couple tears, a well placed declaration of love and loyalty- she's well aware of how to work him.

she wonders if richie will cause such a stir that she can, eventually, give eddie an ultimatum: her or his childhood pack of misfits. from the ease at which they fold into one another, she already knows it won't be easy to convince him.

but she's okay with that. she welcomes it, even. she always did love a challenge.

[indigoire]

It Read-through Chapter Three: “Six Phone Calls”

God. One hundred pages into IT and I only just got done with chapter three. This book can and will kill me. 

Warning for racism, suicide, blood, gore, abuse, assault, misogyny, and Bill Denbrough’s shitty opinions.

Intro Chapters One and Two

Silly me thought, oh, twenty-four chapters, one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight pages, that’s about fifty pages per chapter, I can crank that out no problem. I was reading full novels over the course of a day when I was in school. Easy peasy. 

Real whoppers like this chapter have me doubting myself. I’ll probably have days where I’ll break the chapter in half just so I’m not reading for three straight hours like I was tonight. 

Anyways, on to the chapter itself. It’s really more like six chapters crammed into one, all introducing us to an individual Loser with the exception of Mike. 

Let me sum up my reaction to these intros with my own tweet, having just finished Bev’s introduction:

And like, I’ve seen the movies, I’ve read the fanworks, I know a lot of the lore. I even read past chapter three as a kid, I remember Bill’s intro so clearly now. I feel like I have my own form of amnesia, but the shitty memories I’m uncovering are of reading this book. So believe me when I say I knew going in that the Losers would be an amalgamation of mommy and daddy issues or just plain issues, anti-Semitism, misogyny, repression, trauma, long-buried PTSD, abuse…like, there’s a reason they’re Losers. 

But King feels like he needs to beat us over the head with this information. 

For example, let’s start with Stanley. Good old Stanley. Hey, did you know Stan was Jewish??? A simple mention wouldn’t be enough though, let’s throw every anti-Semitic word at the wall, but it’s okay because it’s from the viewpoint of a Jewish character, his wife. The Jewish wife can call herself a kike all day long, why not, let’s just go ahead and do that. 

Like. Come on Stephen. My notes say “at SOME point this just feels fuckin’ racist, dude.” 

Stan himself is lovely. We get to see him from Patty’s point of view (and, point of order, I just realized that all of the Losers are introduced from the viewpoint of another character, with the exception of Richie and Eddie), and Stan is a level-headed, smart, steady man. He seems to be “preternaturally confident” about his life choices, whether that’s choosing where Patty should apply to for work or starting his own accounting firm, and he always seems to find success. 

Stan also finds out about Bill and his books, but before the telephone call from Mike, before the Derry memories are supposed to rush in. Stan is reading Bill’s new book when he gets the call in fact. 

He also makes an oblique reference to the Turtle around Patty, “the Turtle couldn’t help us”, and then seems to shake it off without going into it with her. 

So. Either Stan remembered more than he let on, or something happened that made him aware. More aware than the rest of the Losers. Like, the Losers all seem to find wild success, supernatural success really, but to them it all seems to happen suddenly, at random. Not so with Stan. When Patty and Stan try to have children but can’t conceive, Stan says he knows the problem lies with him, he just doesn’t know why exactly. He then goes on to say that he’s in the eye of some storm, the calm between something terrible in his past and something terrible in his future. 

Of course we soon learn what terrible something is lurking in Stan’s future. One evening he gets a call from Mike Hanlon, telling him to come back to Derry. Stan answers the call, responds to Mike’s questions, then tells Patty he’s going to take a bath. She ends up watching TV a little too long, then realizes something is Off. She finds him locked in the bathroom with slit wrists and the word IT written in his own blood on the wall. 

The neighbors call the cops she screams so loud. 

We then move from Stan to Richie, whose name I have never been more happy to see in my whole life. Finally, finally, one of my favorite characters. Richie answers Mike’s phone call with nary a hiccup. He puts on a Voice to answer, not something silly but a sort of adult “everything’s going to be okay” Voice. He then arranges things with his travel agent and somewhere along the way he has to go back to his normal voice. “Now he had to go back to being himself, and that was hard–it got harder to do that every year.” Richie is building walls around parts of himself with his Voices, avoiding the real him. 

He does a couple of voices for the travel agent, she laughs hysterically, and he arranges his trip to Derry, and calls out of work. After it’s all taken care of, the memories start to rush back, the people, and he thinks of Georgie, with his arm ripped off, and then and only then does Richie vomit. He makes it to the toilet at least, but he empties himself entirely. He then removes his contacts. 

A rather short intro, but to me a nice reprieve. 

Ben’s intro is a lot better than I remember it being. I think I conflated it with his intro in the miniseries, where he brings home a girl and tells her about him being fat before they have sex. Here, not a whisper of that. There’s actually a bit where a woman asks Ben’s local bartender if Mister Hanscom is gay. “Mister Hanscom ain’t no sissy.” Cool. Thanks, Stephen. 

Basically, Ben haunts this one tiny bar in Nebraska in this tiny podunk “town”, where he gets to know the bartender, a Ricky Lee, very well over the years. He comes every Friday and Saturday night, no matter where he is. When he’s working on the BBC Communications Tower in London he still flies back home every Saturday to get his drinks. He never takes anyone home from the bar and he consistently tips well. The bartender enjoys his company. 

The night of the phone call, we see Ben head into the bar and there’s a terrible desolation hung over him. He tells Ricky there’s been bad news from home, and Ricky is sympathetic. He goes into some of the memories, of Bowers carving the H into his stomach, and shows Ricky the scar. He then orders a STEIN of whiskey, which Ricky, somewhat foolishly, gives to him, on the house. 

Ben then, mentioning an anecdote about the natives in Peru, snorts straight lemon juice and then downs the whiskey like beer. He then gives Ricky Lee three pure silver dollars that his father gave to him before he died. He makes mention of a fourth one that he gave to Bill…and a mysterious reference that Bill or Bev somehow used that silver dollar to save his life at some point. Meanwhile, Ricky is horrified. He keeps thinking of a bar patron that once hung himself after coming to the bar, and how Ben has the same look about him. He’s suddenly struck that Ben is dead, a dead man walking. 

But Ben walks out of the bar all the same, drives off, even while the waitress scolds Ricky for letting Ben drive, saying “he’ll kill himself”. And Ricky, who had thought the same thing not five minutes before says no he won’t. 

It’s a common through-line, the Losers being dead men (and woman) walking, everyone comments how scared they seem to be, how overwhelmed by fear, with the exception of Richie, who has no one with him, but Richie notes that he’s a dead man walking all the same. 

We move on to Eddie. In my notebook I wrote “EDDIE!!!” and immediately felt a renewed zeal to read. 

Eddie is introduced not by physical description but by what we find in his medicine cabinet. I couldn’t tell you the purpose of half of the items listed, a lot of them no longer exist, and as much as I’ve been busting out google for this book I wasn’t keen on looking up an entire pharmacy. I did note that one, there’s a lot of products for, as the book puts it, “moving the mail” (I wrote down “get the feeling Eds gets constipated a lot, needs more fiber in his diet”), and then I noted that Eddie also has some serious painkillers, along with some uppers and serious downers. You know a book was written in the eighties when “Quaaludes” gets name-dropped. 

I also wrote “Eddie is balding :C”, just so you know where my priorities lie. 

Of course we wouldn’t be able to talk about Eddie without mentioning Myra. Right after Eddie basically empties his medicine cabinet into his bag, Myra comes thundering up the stairs. Oh yeah, chalk down some good ol’ fatphobia from King. Literally every shitty character is fat in this book. 

Myra gets a bit of an interjection, though Eddie remains the central viewpoint for most of the chapter, and in her interjection she notes that she somewhat wants to trap Eddie (in the closet, jesus, very subtle) until “this madness had passed”. 

Eddie presses Myra into taking over for him in his driving business, and she hasn’t driven in years so she’s terrified, all while half trapped in his memories. He remembers his mom laying into his gym teacher for making Eddie take Phys. Ed. with asthma, but the teacher notes there’s nothing physically wrong with him. All the same, Eddie goes for his aspirator, takes a deep puff of it. 

He reflects that he knows how fucked up his marriage is, he knows he married his mother. Before he’d taken the plunge he’d placed a photo of Myra on the mantle next to his mother. He noted then that the two of them could be sisters. But he’d been weak and fallen into old habits. The jabs he could take, the jokes about Jack Sprat from his coworkers, but he really does seem ashamed of himself for taking the easier path, the one familiar to him. 

He truly cares for Myra if nothing else. He doesn’t want to hurt her in any way. Even semi-harsh words make him feel guilty and remorseful. He contemplates telling her everything, but it would only make her anxiety and distress worse. 

Also, two things of note: Eddie mentions that Myra “was really very sweet and had had even less experience with men than he’d had with women.” 👀 This and his pet-name for her, that makes her giggle to hear it, is “Marty.” I feel like this is far more telling of Eddie than the “marrying his mother” thing. He has affection for this woman, to be sure, but far more because she is safe, she doesn’t know much about men, she reminds him of familiar routines, she keeps him medicated and stable. He affectionately calls her a man’s name. 

And she? She wants to lock him in a closet to keep him safe and docile to her. 

As he leaves he briefly sees her transform (only for him, only mentally) into someone older, his mother back from the grave, “old and fat and crazy”, and a memory of his mother terrifying him in a shoe shop comes to mind. He shakes it off and asks her for a kiss, while saying to himself “if we were in water she’d drown us both.”

And then he flees to his taxi, on his way to the station and Derry. 

The next introduction is terrible. It made me so mad to read, I remember it disgusting me when I was kid, but it just infuriates me now. 

King’s only female protagonist, the only female in the Losers Club, Bev Marsh, is a walking punching bag. 

This part is told from the viewpoint of Tom Rogan, Bev’s husband, and he talks about how he got her under his thumb, how he could sense her vulnerability. And one, it reads like how every man assumes female abuse victims work, secretly wanting the abuse and having the choice to leave at any time but unable to, and two, it is some highly toxic misogynistic shit. And obviously it’s told from the viewpoint of a highly misogynistic character, an abuser through and through (who, by the way, is also fat, so there’s that fatphobia popping up again). 

But Tom knows that in times of extreme stress Bev is able to find her inner strength and push through. She becomes manic to do what she needs to do, and in those times Tom knows that his abuse wouldn’t be able to touch her. 

I filled up a quarter of a page with the words “FUCK TOM >:C” just so you know where my head was at as I read about him “teaching Bev a lesson” and beating her until she “learned”. He even knows that when he beats her she regresses back to being a child. A *gag* sexy child at that. His disgusting words, not mine. 

Of course Tom has parental issues of his own, of course! Match made in heaven. His mom beat him with a belt and he intends to do the same to Bev, put her in her place, give her a “whuppin’” as it’s phrased in the book. But Bev isn’t having any of that tonight. As Tom attempts to beat her for smoking and packing and daring to defy him, she fights back. She throws glass bottles at him and, as he gets more crazed, eventually tips the vanity on him. That isn’t even close to enough to keep him down though, so she snags the belt and whips him, first across the face, and then across the balls. Then and only then does he go down. 

She flees, shoeless and penniless into the night, and laughs once she realizes she’s out and probably out for good. My notes read “Tom can and will rot in hell.” 

Then my notes segue smoothly into “oh boy it’s Bill :|” and honestly, that could be the mood for the whole segment on Bill. 

Bill…Bill is so obviously Stephen King. Any time there’s a writer in a Stephen King novel you can bet that the writer is a stand-in for Stephen King. This is why it was amusing to me to have his cameo in It: Chapter Two roast Bill, his self-insert. I also should note that in the last chapter Adrian is noted to have been working on a long-languishing novel, and being in Derry inspired him, and just reading that made me groan. Not because I have anything against writers, lord knows, but because I know King included that detail to tie Adrian to himself and to Bill. I know it will come up later. I know King has to make every character him before he can empathize with them. 

Anyways, Bill gets the call from Mike all the way in England, where he’s staying in a cottage with his wife Audra. Beautiful, statuesque, red-haired Audra. “Why can’t you be the woman I want you to be” indeed. Not a line Bill says in the book by the way. At least not yet. 

Audra wants to know why Bill is shaking and why he pours himself a stiff drink before breakfast, so Bill begins filling her in on the details. And as he does we’re treated to memories of Bill in college, in his creative writing class. 

Now. Here is where I begin to lose patience with Bill and with King. King is clearly writing from experience. I know he had issues with his own college creative writing class. 

Basically, the class is pretentious, concerned with inserting political opinions into everything they write, going on about how war is sold by sexist capitalists and so on and you can just TELL that King is projecting hard. Bill’s works, fun sci-fi stories and mysteries, are given fairly low scores by the professor.

Then one day in class, during a period when another student is talking about her work, filled to the brim with socio-political commentary, Bill stands up and basically says that he doesn’t get what they’re talking about and “can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”

Which like, dude, okay, I get it on some level, this shit sounds pretentious as hell. But it’s COLLEGE. If you can’t get a chance to be pretentious in college then when else can you be? Also, you know for a fact that King is twisting this story to make himself look favorable, because it is clearly a story from his own past. So obviously the students have to be talking about buzzwords that have no meaning, instead of, oh I don’t know, expressing their political beliefs? Everything has politics in it dude! Even your shitty ass story reflects the political landscape of America in the eighties for fuck’s sake!! It, the novel, would not be what it is if it weren’t mired in politics. It has a lot to say about race, gender, and class, and if the message is muddled and directionless it’s only because the author, Mister King, didn’t put any thought into what he was trying to say, but rather wrote a story that was meant to shock. 

Anyways, Bill says the story thing, and it’s just the sort of malarky you would expect to see on the front page of r/braincels, with the top comment being “and then everyone clapped” because it is ridiculous. The teacher reprimands Bill, and Bill slinks out of class.

But OH BOY, Bill shows him! Because he writes his first horror story shortly after, and the story damn near pours out of him, and he brings it to class. The professor gives it an F and calls it pure pulp. 

Bill sells it for two hundred bucks to a shitty magazine, drops the class, and with the drop out note, well. I’ll let King take over here:

“Bill Denbrough staples the drop card to the assistant fiction editor’s congratulatory note and tacks both to the bulletin board on the creative-writing instructor’s door. In the corner of the bulletin board he sees an anti-war cartoon. And suddenly, as if moving of its own accord, his fingers pluck his pen from his breast pocket and across the cartoon he writes this: If fiction and politics ever really do become interchangeable, I’m going to kill myself, because I won’t know what else to do. You see, politics always change. Stories never do.”

“Bill Denbrough,” my notes read, “kill yourself.” 

The rest of the section continues with Bill falling into the lap of success with his stories, meeting Audra while working on a screen adaptation of his novel, the shoot going unnaturally well according to Audra, and his following years of success. He slowly fills Audra in on the blanks. His brother’s murder. His scars, from the Losers’ vow, which have suddenly reappeared on his hand after the phone call. How Stan was the one that cut their hands, before turning the glass on himself. How Stan at first mimes slashing his wrists, as a supposed goof, but Bill almost stops him all the same. 

He then realizes he can’t tell Audra everything about what went down in Derry, but makes her promise not to come with him, to stay away from Derry. His stutter, which has slowly crept back in over the course of the conversation, scares her into promising

““And when do I see you again?” she asked softly. He put an arm around her and held her tightly, but he never answered her question.”

With that, thus ends chapter three. 

This chapter took it out of me. It was all so familiar and yet all so new and horrible at the same time. I honestly can’t say I’m having a good time, but I’m certainly interested in what I’m reading. It’s like reading about a parasitic wasp, what it does to the host. It’s gruesome and disgusting, but you keep reading because you want to see the end result. But the fun’s only just beginning.

Catch you all tomorrow, bye for now. 

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News What Pete Buttigieg gets wrong about free tuition - The Washington Post

News

The two Democratic presidential candidates who came out on high in the Iowa caucuses — outdated South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — had been butting heads over the query of how to pay for bigger education. All thru the Jan. 14 Democratic debate, Buttigieg sought to say aside himself from Sanders by drawing on the very language of sophistication that has transform the senator’s hallmark. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) maintain proposed to fight the big cost of faculty education in the US thru tuition-free public universities and forgiveness of pupil debt. Buttigieg rejected these proposals, announcing, “I don’t judge subsidizing the young other folks of millionaires and billionaires to pay completely zero in tuition at public colleges is the easiest use of these scarce taxpayer dollars.”

But whereas the moderate Buttigieg embraced the rhetoric of sophistication battle more generally related with Sanders or Select Wall Avenue, he is championing a coverage that has repeatedly — and maybe surprisingly — ruin working-class and heart-broken People for the reason that slack 19th century. Well-liked social programs corresponding to Social Security maintain created a security gather that one and all People are eligible to raise part in. Manner-examined programs, on the other hand — that are on hand only to a shrimp subset of the inhabitants, in conserving with earnings or other factors — had been poorly funded, attacked, marginalized and meagerly supported. This pattern is seemingly to repeat itself with college tuition advantages. While the scions of rich families might maybe well presumably merely not need executive aid, except they're integrated, efforts to address the costs drowning the less fortunate are doomed to fail.

The origins of anti-poverty coverage in the US in the first three a long time of the 20th century illustrate the dichotomy between current and formulation-examined social programs. Clear groups of reformers charted two very diverse visions for making a social security gather for People.

The major, which developed into Again to Households With Dependent Children (AFDC) — or what we now name welfare — started as an experiment in offering declare “mother’s pensions” to single moms. The reformers who created this program, a good deal of them feminine activists, supposed this system to be shrimp and diminutive by blueprint. They believed that the realm off of poverty among ladies folk changed into the absence of male breadwinners, a scenario exacerbated by the Depression, and as well they envisioned the AFDC as a stopgap measure to rescue heart-broken ladies folk whose plights had been non everlasting. As soon as a girl started incomes a current wage, or when she married a particular person anticipated to provide for her, advantages would dwell.

Alternatively, this system soon grew to rework embroiled in bitter debates about which ladies folk had been “deserving” of public enhance and an obsession with conserving welfare rolls low. Because “welfare” changed into understood to be a closing resort, its recipients had been eyed with suspicion in the event that they gave the impact to stay around too long. When financial stipulations improved, affluent People grew far more skeptical of the AFDC.

By the 1960s, Original Deal programs and strong federal spending on infrastructure, housing and education had created a burgeoning white middle class. Nonwhite People, particularly African People and Latinos, had been explicitly excluded from accessing a good deal of these advantages, exacerbating the racial wealth hole and creating the (unsuitable) impact which formulation-examined programs corresponding to AFDC served only nonwhites. The new white middle class changed into largely ineligible for formulation-examined programs corresponding to AFDC and furthermore changed into unable to snatch why others might maybe well presumably need it. AFDC grew to rework a political approved responsibility for liberals, who largely uncared for the underfunded program. As historian Linda Gordon explains, “The truth is that a tiny welfare system affords no one what they need and thus makes itself universally unpopular.”

Foundation in the 1970s, AFDC itself grew to rework related with disgrace and failure. When President Invoice Clinton pledged to “kill welfare as we perceive it” in the 1990s, he resolved to fabricate “welfare” officially non everlasting (altering the name from AFDC to TANF — Brief Assistance for Needy Households). Recipients had been held to diminutive aid phrases, strict morality policing and new laws stressful they meander to monumental lengths to safe paying jobs. As sociologist Myra Marx Ferree explained, welfare recipients’ “dependency and neediness had been the necessities of help, nonetheless furthermore the basis for marginalizing them.”

By distinction, Social Security, which emerged at the same time as AFDC, changed into crafted as an entitlement on hand to all People and has never persisted the same political assaults that AFDC has weathered. As a consequence of its purported universality, Social Security changed into not imagined as a program offering “lend a hand” nonetheless as a make of insurance, offering unemployment, illness and oldschool-age advantages as a straightforward moral of citizenship. But, whereas touted as benefiting all People, Social Security in the origin omitted the huge majority of African People and white ladies folk, who had been employed in occupations particularly excluded in the laws.

This actuality exposed the truth that AFDC and Social Security had been more related than they seemed. Each and each programs relied on assumptions about which forms of staff “deserved” a serving to hand and which of them had been “entitled” to security. But because most People had been eligible for Social Security and, crucially, since almost all white men had been eligible, this system grew to rework understood, in the phrases of Ferree, as “a moral of social citizenship.” While AFDC weathered a large substitute of political assaults by the purpose it changed into dismantled in the 1990s, even moral-cruise activists generally shield entitlement programs corresponding to Medicare.

This two-tiered system of “welfare” and “entitlements” has been particularly devastating for ladies folk, African People and Latinos. Cultural narratives connect African People and Latinos with welfare, despite the truth that bigger than half of of security-gather recipients are white. While distorting the scurry of recipients, these narratives furthermore attack their worthiness, presuming that they fight not thanks to inequality and structural impediments corresponding to the legacies of slavery, immigration coverage and redlining, nonetheless thanks to their very possess heart-broken choices. This perception that recipients are not well-known has resulted in stringent stipulations on advantages, and aid ranges which might maybe well presumably be inadequate to help preserve families out of poverty.

This historic previous teaches us that whereas it sounds shapely to help “millionaires and billionaires” from going to school freed from tuition, this rhetoric might maybe well presumably without considerations transform step one against making a reform that pleases no one. Manner-examined tuition advantages — worthy worship we now maintain got in the make of Pell Grants, that are meagerly funded — elevate administrative burdens whereas nice looking questions on whether or not grant recipients in point of truth “deserve” enhance. These which might maybe well presumably be ineligible surprise why recipients deserve advantages whereas they assemble not.

This logic is one reason Pell Grants are so shrimp and disbursed to this kind of shrimp substitute of faculty college students. Applying this same logic to a broader system of tuition enhance would lead to a program that affords inadequate aid to a shrimp pool of People, since non-recipients would maintain little passion in forking over more in taxes to fabricate bigger advantages. Buttigieg proposes a answer that is, genuinely, a lose-lose proposition.

Most importantly, strong public enhance for public universities would maintain one other aid, one that might maybe well presumably lessen the flexibility of the filthy rich. Over the last 10 years, states maintain diminished their spending on bigger education by $9 billion, leaving public universities in a budget crunch that has opened mountainous questions on who will be footing the bills. One byproduct has been the hike in tuition that college students pay, using a pupil debt disaster that limits young adults’ opportunities to pursue the careers they need, purchase homes and begin families.

One more, far-less-discussed consequence has been that public universities maintain had to undercover agent more and more to personal donors to balance the budget, which essentially formulation aligning with the priorities of the filthy rich. Federal enhance for public universities that fabricate them tuition-free to all college students attributable to this truth would fabricate them less beholden to the filthy rich and more accountable to all of us who depend on bigger education to help resolve the well-known considerations of the 21st century.

Correction: An earlier model of this share acknowledged that TANF stood for Brief Again to Needy Households. It's in point of truth Brief Assistance to Needy Households.

[rachelclewis]

What Would Myra Do?

So, I chose the wrong time to start The Handmaid’s Tale.  Jesus.

I wanted to hide from my phone.  I knew that Brett Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed over the weekend, and I wanted to think about other things.  I stayed in, I knitted, and I watched episodes of Handmaid.  I emerged from my basement on Monday morning unsure of what year it was.  Where am I, again? The black and white past? The red and white future?  Oh, no.  It’s just the dystopian present.  Goddamn.

I can’t stop thinking about the episode where all the women are sent home from work because a law has been passed making illegal for them to have jobs or bank accounts.  They decide to protest but discover it is too late; the moment to take a stand slipped by and they have been slowly “boiled to death in their bathtubs,” as June says.

It is so disturbing to think about. Where is all the progress that I thought women had made since 1991?  There another credibly accused creep on the SCOTUS and a majority of Republicans polled said they supported the nominee even if the allegations against him were proved true. And now I’m reading that proposed restrictions to demonstrations at the White House and places on the National Mall are being considered.  I don’t want to sound like an alarmist crazy person, but keep protesting while they let you.  Watch the Handmaid’s Tale to see why I’m feeling urgency.

Last week, before I realized that the FDA investigation was a complete fraud, I kept thinking about Myra Bradwell, and wondering what she would think about all of this nuttiness.  You’ve probably never heard of her, so here is a brief summary of her badass life.

Myra Colby was born in Vermont in 1831.  After she completed her formal education at the age of 24, she became a school teacher.  In 1852, Myra married a law student named James B. Bradwell.  In 1855, they moved to Illinois where was admitted to the Chicago Bar and became a successful lawyer and judge.  Myra was also interested in the law, but women were prohibited from attending law school.  Instead, she studied under her husband and apprenticed in his law practice.  She was quoted in the Chicago Tribune in 1889, saying:

"I acquired the idea [of studying law] from helping my husband in his office. I was always with him, helping in whatever way I could.… I believe that married people should share the same toil and the same interests and be separated in no way. It is the separation of interests and labor that develops people in opposite directions and makes them grow apart. If they worked side by side and thought side by side we would need no divorce courts."

Maybe it is because I have always had boring jobs, but that seems like a terrible idea to me.  If people don’t go off and do their own thing all day, then what do they talk about at night? “Oh, one of my co-workers made me so mad today…”

“I know.  It was me.”

“Oh yeah! That was you! Did anything happen to you when you got out of my sight today?”

“In the men’s room? Not really.”

Then the sad couple would just go back to eating their peas in silence, I imagine.  Until one of them would say, “I can’t stand it! I’m going for a walk.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and be chased by a bear. I’ll tell you about it when I get back…”

Anyway, Myra put her private studies on hold when the Civil War broke out. She went to work for charities that raised money for sick and wounded Union soldiers.  She eventually became the president of the Chicago Soldiers’ Aid Society. After the war she went back to her studies and in 1869 she passed the Illinois bar exam with high honors.  She applied for a law license, but the Illinois State Supreme Court denied her application because, as a married woman, she could not lawfully enter into any legal contracts, which would be necessary for a practicing lawyer.

Myra continued to fight her case and appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1873, but the lower court’s decision was upheld. It was the opinion of the highest court in the land that the 14th Amendment (equal protection) did not provide women with the right to practice a profession.

Furthermore, in the opinion of Associate Justice Joseph P. Bradley, “The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many occupations of civil life….The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign office of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”

So that was some bullshit, obviously.  Myra Bradwell made no more attempts to gain her law license after that, but managed to stay busy.  She helped to write the Illinois Married Women’s Property Act of 1861 and the Earnings Act of 1869, allowing married women gain control of their personal wealth. In 1968, she founded the Chicago Legal News.  (Actually, she had to get her husband’s help to persuade the Illinois legislature to pass a special law so that she could edit and manage her own newspaper.  They were really hung up on not letting married women work.)  In time, it became the most widely read legal newspaper in the United States.  The paper was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, but Myra rebuilt it and carried on.  

Myra Bradwell was also a well-known suffragette.  She helped (along with Lucy Stone and others) to form the American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869.  Myra insisted that equality for women was a non-partisan issue and  fought to help women in other states attempting to study law and become lawyers.

In 1879, an anti-discrimination bill to allow women to practice in federal courts was passed and signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes.  Though Myra Bradwell did not re-apply for her license, the Illinois State Supreme Court, acting on its own motion, approved the original application.  (Feel a little guilty, there, Illinois?) It was the year 1890, 21 years after she had applied and four years before Myra Bradwell died of cancer in 1894.  

Myra Colby Bradwell first popped into my head when Lindsey Graham histrionically asked, "What am I supposed to do, go ahead and ruin this guy's life based on an accusation?"

Really? I thought. Tell that to Myra! Not getting your dream job is only “ruinous” to privileged and entitled people who are used to getting what they want. Many people have been denied the opportunity to pursue careers and interests for countless unfair reasons.  And some people, like Myra Bradwell, still found ways to kick ass. One might even say, “she persisted.”

I wish I were writing this in a snarky way to “Judge Kavanagh,” after a failed vote left him off the highest court.  “Take heart, little bean sprout,” I might have said.  “Let Myra by your inspiration to rise above!”  

But it didn’t go that way.  Justice Kavanagh, to the manor born, has achieved his dreams despite all the credible accusations and his own disgraceful display in the final hearing. No snark for me.  Not this week.

Instead, I’m still focused on Myra Bradwell because she reminds me that things have been worse.  Yes, thing have not progressed as far as I wanted to believe.  And maybe we have done some backsliding.  But I don’t believe we have passed the point of no return.  We are not yet Marthas and Handmaids to the end of democracy.  Myra took her defeat, but then kept writing and working and pushing other women around her to achieve their own goals, and things got better.  Not on its own, but because of the work of the people like Myra Colby Bradwell.

Defeat sucks, but it isn’t final.  Justice Kavanagh may be on the court for forty years (God help us), but not forever.  Damage will be done.  Meanwhile, we will keep writing and working and encouraging one another.  Take heart, dear sprouts!  We will persist!

[takebackthedream]

Trump Won’t Say It, But We Will: White Terror in Charlottesville by Richard Eskow

Her name was Heather Heyer. She was marching for justice in Charlottesville when she was killed by a white racist. Say her name.

His name was Timothy Caughman. He was walking down the street in New York City when he was killed by a white racist. Say his name.

Their names were Ricky John Best and Taliesen Myrddin Namkai-Meche. They were riding a train in Portland when they saw a Muslim woman and her friend being threatened. They stepped forward to protect them and were killed by a white racist.

Their names were Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa C. Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Wharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson. They were studying the Bible in a Charleston church when they were killed by a white racist. Say their names.

And say the name of the real murderer, the one who sent agents out to kill: white nationalist terror.

It took real bravery for Heather Heyer to march that day. And it takes bravery just to be black or Muslim or Jewish or gay or trans in the United States, where the threat of violence hangs over every walk down the street, every ride on a train, even a Bible class in a great and historic church.

The Words Donald Trump Won’t Say

Last year, Donald Trump insisted that it was important to name your adversary. “Now, to solve a problem,” Trump said in an October 9, 2016 debate, “you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name. (Hillary Clinton) won’t say the name and President Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there. It’s radical Islamic terror.”

It’s your turn, Mr. President. Say the name: White nationalist terror.

There were nearly twice as many incidents of white nationalist terrorism as Islam-related terror in the United States between 2008 and the end of 2016, according to one analysis. But instead of standing up to the terrorists, Trump has refused to even name the threat. He refused again when he was asked about the violence in Charlottesville and the death of Heather Heyer, making this now-infamous comment instead:

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

Leaving aside the bizarre “many sides” construction – Trump somehow turned a two-sided confrontation into an ethical hypercube – the meaning of this comment was not lost on most observers: The President of the United States deliberately refused to make a distinction between actual Nazis and other self-proclaimed racists and the people who were opposing them because … well, because they were actual Nazis and self-proclaimed racists.

The Nazis were happy with Trump’s statement. The “Daily Stormer,” an amateurish neo-Nazi website – imagine a student newspaper published by the feral kids from William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies – wrote, “Trump’s comments were good… Nothing specific about us.”

Trump refused to acknowledge the violent death, at the hands of a white supremcist, of the 32-year-old woman who was peacefully exercising her rights of free speech and assembly. He has remained silent as we have learned more about the killer’s openly pro-Nazi statements and his attendance at a fascist rally in Charlottesville before he killed Heather Heyer.

The Nameless Ones

There is one name we will not say today: the killer’s. When you face a pack of wild dogs and one of them goes for your throat, does it really need a name?

The rally the killer attended was organized by a group called Vanguard America. The name, which is undoubtedly meant to be bold and intimidating, sounds more like a midsized insurance brokerage. Its members look like they work in one, too, except for the canine rage on their faces.

Vanguard America is openly fascist in nature and has been actively involved in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim efforts. Their putative complaint in Charlottesville was the renaming of a park that had been dedicated to Robert E. Lee, the military leader of an armed rebellion that was waged against the United States of America in order to protect and preserve the enslavement of human beings.

Lee’s statue is scheduled to be removed as part of that process. That’s as it should be. Robert E. Lee had no historical connection to Charlottesville, and his statue was not even built until nearly 60 years after the Civil War had ended.

“Historical value”? 35 new Confederate monuments have been built in North Carolina since 2000. That’s not history. It’s hate. These parks and statues aren’t relics of the past. They’re racist declarations in the present.

Names like Robert E. Lee should not be honored in the streets and parks of a free and democratic nation. They represent the violent suppression of an entire people.

They represent white terror.

Will the Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up?

The killer, like his fellow pups, wore a white shirt and carried a shield at the rally. Although they’re clearly trying to look fierce, this sorry-ass group of scrofulous child-men looks more like a gaggle of extras waiting to go onstage in an elementary school production about pirates.

But don’t let their nerdy, self-evident inadequacy fool you. It is that very inadequacy that makes them dangerous, as it has made generations of fascists before them dangerous. They have something to prove, which means they need someone to prove it on.

If their doughy, pasty bullying forms remind you of someone, that’s no surprise. They share those traits with the man who now sits in the Oval Office. Did Trump equivocate because he’s too cowardly to confront them? Did it seem like filial disloyalty to condemn the men who walk in his father’s KKK-friendly footsteps? Is he a secret sympathizer?

Trump wouldn’t say the words “white nationalist terror,” even after some of his fellow Republicans spoke out. “Nothing patriotic about #Nazis,the #KKK or #WhiteSupremacists,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio. “It’s the direct opposite of what #America seeks to be.”

“We should call evil by its name,” tweeted Sen. Orrin Hatch. “My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.” Sen. Ted Cruz described the racists as “repulsive and evil” and called on the Justice Department to investigate a “this grotesque act of domestic terrorism.”

When you’ve been owned on social justice by Ted Cruz, you’ve really been owned. But then, Donald Trump has been flirting with white nationalism for a long time. He said this in Poland, for example:

Our freedom, our civilization, and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory … Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.

Those “bonds of history, culture, and memory” are the ones that bind white Europeans to each other against the rest of the world. “The West” is white Europe. Everything he describes as “ours” is white and European, including the “civilization” that white supremacists is under attack from black, brown, and non-Christian hordes. It’s no surprise, then, that Trump’s election has caused elation among white racists.

If Not Us, Who?

The fascist Richard Spencer understands what the president is saying, and can say it a little more directly. “We will not be replaced from this park,” Spencer said last May. “We will not be replaced from this world. Whites have a future. We have a future of power, of beauty, of expression.”

Sorry, Dick. We’ve heard the “Horst Wessel Song” and it’s not that beautiful or expressive.

As for that “future of power,” it’s clear that the president has a rhetorical addiction to the language of violence. His apocalyptic words about North Korea came straight from the “Triumph of the Will” playbook. “Fire and Fury” – it sounds like a Leni Riefenstahl movie.  Violent language sets the stage for violent action.

So, how do we resist the fascist impulse? Lady Gaga started a hashtag, #ThisIsNotUS. That’s a nice thought and a way to start a conversation, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Yes, Heather Heyer is “us.” But so is Vanguard America, and so is Donald Trump. So are the Republicans who occupy all three branches of the federal government, along with most of our state houses and governorships. The same Republicans who have used openly racist imagery for more than fifty years, and have actively suppressed black and brown votes to preserve their power.

Mass incarceration is “us,” because most of us have stayed home when it’s protested. Wall Street is “us,” too. It has enjoyed the protection of both parties as it once again engages in racially-biased banking practices. District attorneys from both parties have looked the other way at systematic patterns of police violence against community of color. They’re “us,” because we elected them.

If racism is not “us,” then wet haven’t done enough to bring it down.

Racism is the curse of the majority, and only the majority can end it. It lives in our homes, our houses of worship, and our neighborhoods. The killer’s racism was invisible to his mother, who told a reporter that her son couldn’t be racist because he had a black friend. We need to ask ourselves: What is still invisible to us? What are we blind to: as white people, if we’re white; as straight people, if we’re straight; in all the many ways we are members of the dominant tribe and not the ‘other’?

That blindness creates the dark spaces where hatred grows.

But awareness is only the first step. We must resist it, too — by marching in the streets, by demanding change, by rejecting violent speech whenever we hear it, and by stepping in to defending people when they are under attack.

‘Many sides’? There are only two sides here: Right and wrong. Murderer and victim. Hatred and love. In the clutch, when it really mattered, the president of the United States refused to pick a side. But we can. We can lay down our lives, one by one if necessary, until we have won.

And the next time someone is murdered by white terror, we can say her name.

[evolutionproperties]

What can I do to stop the condensation and black mould around my windows?

I have lots of condensation around my windows and black mould has started to appear. 

What steps do I need to take? (MS)

Condensation occurs when warm moist air meets a cold surface, which means it often occurs around windows

MailOnline's property expert Myra Butterworth replies: Some properties suffer from condensation, with walls, ceilings and even floors damp and discoloured, often with mould growing on the surfaces.

We outline some of the steps that you can take to help ensure your home environment is as healthy - and as damp-free - as possible.

James Harrington, of chartered building surveyors Congreve Horner, explains: In simple terms, condensation occurs when warm moist air meets a cold surface. The risk of this happening depends on how moist the air is and how cold the surfaces of your rooms are.

Mould growth caused by condensation is a warning that your heating, insulation or ventilation may need improving

It is mostly an issue in winter when buildings become cold and windows are opened less, with moist air unable to escape.

Condensation occurs for short periods in bathrooms and kitchens because of the steamy atmosphere and quite frequently for long periods in unheated bedrooms, also sometimes in cupboards or corners of rooms where ventilation and movement of air are restricted.

It is important:

To prevent moist air spreading to other rooms from kitchens and bathrooms or from where clothes may be put to dry

To provide some ventilation to all rooms so that moist air can escape

To keep your property reasonably warm

How to reduce moisture to avoid condensation in the home 

Good ventilation of kitchens when washing or drying clothes or cooking is essential. If there is an extractor fan, use it when cooking or washing clothes, and particularly whenever the windows show any sign of misting. Leave the fan on until the misting has cleared.

If there is not an extractor fan, open the windows but keep the door closed as much as possible to prevent the moisture spreading to other rooms.

After bathing, keep the bathroom window open and shut the door for long enough to dry off the room.

A lot of ventilation occurs in old houses through fireplace flues and draughty windows. But it doesn't occur in modern flats and houses unless a window or ventilator is open for a reasonable time each day and for all the time a room is in use.

Too much ventilation in cold weather is uncomfortable and wastes heat, and so all that is needed is a slight opened window or ventilator. About a 10mm opening will usually be sufficient.

Avoid the use of portable paraffin or flue less gas heaters if possible as each litre of oil used produces the equivalent of about a litre of liquid water in the form of water vapour. If these heaters are used, make sure the rooms they are in are well ventilated.

If you already have black mould, it needs to be cleaned with bleach and anti-fungicide solution

If condensation occurs in a room with a gas, oil or solid fuel heating appliance with a flue the heating appliances need to be checked as the condensation may have appeared due to the appliance flue becoming blocked.

Do not use unventilated airing cupboards for drying clothes. And if washing is put out to dry inside, open a window or turn on the extractor fan enough to ventilate the room. Do not leave the door open as this will allow moist air to spread to other rooms.

Try to make sure all rooms are at least partially heated to ensure that surfaces are reasonably warm.

Houses and flats left unoccupied and unheated during the day get cold, and so whenever possible, it is best to keep the heating on - even if at a low level. Even in a well-insulated house and with reasonable ventilation it is likely to be necessary during cold weather to maintain all rooms at not less than 15 degrees centigrade to reduce the risk of condensation.

Any sign of mould growth is an indication of the presence of moisture and if caused by condensation provides a warning that heating, insulation or ventilation – or all three – may require improvement.

If you do have black mould already, this needs to be cleaned with bleach or an anti-fungicide solution. And if the window reveals are redecorated you may consider mixing in some anti-fungicide solution in with the paint before it is applied to the walls to prevent future mould growth.