The US has had a border with Mexico for over 200 years. It’s the 9th longest land border in the world and it’s the most frequently crossed boundary in the world.
How is it that NOW we need a wall? Did something happen? Did Mexico declare war? Did they suddenly tank the US economy?
Or do we have a racist President?
I don’t have a whole lot to say about the mainstream media bending over backward to give Cheetolini airtime to lie for an hour or so. They aired Dubbya’s immigration address, but not Obama’s, and now they’re airing Trump’s, so you can draw your own conclusions. I personally think they’re more afraid of being called biased by racists than they are of upholding some standard of journalistic integrity by refusing to air outright lies.
But can somebody please ask all of those racists — foaming at the mouth to see what their Dear Leader has to say — why we need a wall NOW when the United States has been just fine without one for two hundred years? If anything, Mexico needed to protect THEMSELVES since the US is the country who actually crossed the border, invaded, and stole a third of their country to make Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California. Before the Spanish-American War, Mexico tried to close Texas off to immigrants from the US because they were outnumbering Spanish-speakers, but I doubt Rusty and Karen are afraid that history will reverse itself in kind, because they can’t even read.
Bottom line is, nothing has changed between the US and Mexico in my lifetime other than the fact that we have a racist toddler in the White House knitting his support base together through lies, xenophobia, and fear of the unknown…that we actually do know because Mexico has been our neighbor for centuries. So when Trump is lying tonight and y’all’s relatives are gassing up him all excited about a wall, ask them why we suddenly need to spend $5 billion on something we haven’t needed until Pumpkin Spice Putin realized he could win an election by promising it and then making no moves to get it done while his party controlled the entire government for two years.
Either Cardi B writes her own lyrics and they’re whack, or someone is writing for her and they’re good, but y’all need to pick one. You can’t say all her lyrics are trash AND she doesn’t write them, because who would be paying a ghostwriter to pen garbage?
I’m not writing any drafts of this — I’m just gonna ramble like a journal entry for a little while until I’m done.
My therapist says climbing out of depression isn’t always a steady ascent and you have setbacks even with the assistance of pharmaceutical aids, and right now I’m in a setback. I felt like things were clicking along at a pretty steady pace for most of the year, but this is my first holiday season since finding a medication that works for me, so it was the first real test I suppose since this time of year is the hardest for me. I hadn’t experienced the lowest of lows I usually would during holiday and I was proud of myself for making it the entire season without crying once, but then life steps in. “Oh you think you’re doing fine?”
I felt myself slipping on Thanksgiving. I needed to make something for a potluck and every recipe I pulled out of my box was in the handwriting of a woman in my family who had passed away. I was choosing between my mom’s yams and my sister’s chocolate cake and I started feeling this unease settle over me because I couldn’t call either of them if I had a question.
The season marches along and your friends tell you stories about their parents or their siblings, and they’re cute stories — I love hearing them — but there’s an empty space where you can participate in the conversation. You’re just listening or looking at pictures and saying “oh that’s so cute!”
By the time my mom’s birthday rolled around, December 12th, I had pretty much entered a space of constant suppression. I was just putting aside what I felt because I was working 70 hour weeks. I would leave my full time job and then go to my “part-time” job which was actually full-time hours because of the holiday. The distraction was great for the most part. I didn’t have to think about holidays or family dynamics because I was too busy working. My mom’s birthday is always the hardest day of the year for me because I still have a lot of irrational, lingering guilt over how we parted for good.
(For those who don’t know/remember, I stopped speaking to my mom on her birthday after I called her to ask what she wanted and she said the only gift she needed was for me to “give up those homosexual demons and come back to the Lord.” I decided after over a decade of being out of the closet and five or six years being self-sufficient in NYC, I didn’t have to take that abuse every time I spoke to her, so I stopped speaking to her. It turned out to be the last conversation we ever had because she died a few months later. After her funeral I found an email she had sent, to an inbox I haven’t checked since college, trying to make amends, so I still have this weight around this time of year that she died thinking I was ignoring her olive branch.)
I made it through. Made it through Christmas without breaking down. Not even a tear was shed this holiday season.
This past weekend, some friends and I went to Brooklyn to a club to see Shangela and Alyssa perform. We didn’t actually see anybody because we got tired of waiting on them, and I took an Uber to Jackson Heights to meet up with one of my friends visiting from Toronto. The bars closed at 4am and the train I needed to take back to the city was coming soon, so I jumped on it. I transferred to the D train to take me home, and I nodded off.
When I woke up, we were sitting at Columbus Circle and nothing was moving. The conductor said there was an issue with the brakes so we had to wait. In our car there were two young white couples sitting near each other, looked like friends; two Latinas in different parts of the car, not friends; a Black guy at my end of the train half asleep like I had been; and four Black guys at the other end of the train — arguing. Loudly. The longer we waited, the louder they got. Then, they started brawling. One of the Latina girls ran off the train and either told the conductor or a cop, but the next thing I know, all these cops come rushing onto the train and start dragging everybody off.
By everybody, I mean all the Black guys. I’m protesting my innocence and so is the other guy who had been sitting near me, but they ushered us all upstairs by the police station anyway and made us sit on the ground with our hands on our head.
I had been out all evening. I started drinking at 7 and now it was after 5 in the morning. I was already a little nauseated from the booze but now my nerves were on ten because I’d been held in this station before by an abusive cop (Officer Francavilla, I’ll never forget) and I needed to throw up. I told the cops and they didn’t answer me. I started to move so I could get up and throw up in a garbage can and they made me sit back down. They didn’t bring me anything to vomit in and I was too scared to move again, so I threw up on myself in the train station. And I had to stew in it for the next hour and a half until the cops finally decided that two of us played no part in the altercation and they let us go home.
So that was my emotional state leading into yesterday morning when I found out the State had drained my bank account to pay back taxes I didn’t know I owed. I’m like a raw nerve right now, still, because I’m caught in this place where I want to wallow in self pity while also trying to kick my ass out of this feeling where my issues could remotely compare to what other people go through. A friend of mine rushed home this weekend to be with his family because his mom has been sick and she’s almost at the end of the line. My mom died too, but she died over the course of two days; it was a surprise, and I didn’t have to watch her deteriorate. I’ve worked with disadvantaged kids for a whole decade now, kids who have a parent (or parents) on drugs, who’ve seen people they love murdered, who’ve been in and out of homelessness for years. I had a 9 year old girl years ago who came into the shelter with her mom after the mom caught the man she was dating trying to sexually assault her daughter. We got them back on their feet, helped them find a new place to live, helped the mom find a job, and we should’ve never seen her again. Three years later the girl showed up to the shelter alone because she’d been raped and she didn’t want to tell her mother because she said her mom was under enough pressure but she didn’t know where else to go, so she came to the shelter where she had felt safe. She asked for me specifically and one of the nuns called me at like 2am to come sit with her while they talked to the cops and her mom. That’s the kind of stuff that I’ve seen. Whenever I start whining about how terrible my life is, I feel so guilty because I have all of these blessings and a great support system, and I’ve seen kids who have none of that.
And then I feel terrible about feeling guilty because one thing therapy has taught me is that pain is relative. You feel the way you feel about things that have happened to you in relation to other things that have happened to you. A cut can feel like the end of the world for a toddler who has never been injured versus a boxer who’s broken their nose three times. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about bad things that happen to you because that’s your lived experience and you’re the only one who say how much it hurts.
I’m trying to put all that together. I’m trying to honor my feelings authentically and say “yes, XYZ in your life does suck, you’re allowed to feel the way you do” but also realize objectively that “it could be worse, you have seen a lot worse, and you have gotten through a lot worse yourself, so feel without falling apart.”
Honestly, I’m fine. I’m tired, because when I’m running on emotions, all I want to do is sleep, but I’m past the place where I was shaking my fist at the air asking “whyyyyyy” and feeling like everything is so unfair. There is no fair or unfair in life. Things just happen. Sometimes lots of good things happen to bad people and sometimes lots of bad things happen to good people and sometimes lots of random things happen to emotional people who need to take a breath, step back, and calmly assess the situation.
Everything is assessed. Some family recipes make me sad, but I have friends who love me. I have some lingering guilt, but I can talk about my mom and I can read her email without falling apart. Cops are trash but I didn’t go to jail. The state stealthily took my money but I have two jobs and an outpouring of support from people who either hate the government or really like me or some combination of both. I’m okay. Not GREAT but I’m fine.
CNBC: The budget breakdown of a 25-year-old who makes $100,000 a year and is excellent with money.
He 25 years old and makes $100,000 a year paying $825 rent.
When I was 25 I made $30,000 a year paying $900 rent.
I don't understand who these articles are for.
Gen X & Baby Boomer media is about making millennials feel shitty about not being exponentially more successful and more educated than they had to be at the same age to maintain the same standard of living. Y'all had my salary with a HS diploma working at Auto Zone. Go away.
Deftly blending high fashion, sex work, and -- yes -- breastfeeding, Cardi B's video for "Money" is the logical culmination of three decades of feminism in hip-hop. In this 20,000 word essay I will....
But seriously though I feel like I need to say it louder
BELCALIS GAVE Y'ALL BREASTFEEDING IN HIGH FASHION
Cardi B put breasts in their natural context alongside breasts as sexual objects.
I'm. SCREAMING. Give Cardi her flowers. That is so huge.
"Post-surgery, there was no evidence of any remaining disease," the Supreme Court said.
I promise you that orange criminal will have four justices on the Supreme Court before he finally leaves the White House.
Decide now if you want to live in a country where cases are decided by DONALD TRUMP'S SUPREME COURT for the next thirty years. If the answer is no, start planning your emigration strategy.
Outrage after a white ref made a black wrestler cut his dreadlocks.
As a Black man with long hair, I've been told on two job interviews that I'd have to cut my hair before an offer would be extended. Both times I decided to go work somewhere else.
I'm so hurt for this young man I can't even breathe. White people are framing this as an example of a team player, but every single white person in this room from his teammates to his coach to the spectators absolutely failed him.
This is America, where a white referee (who is on record calling a Black man the n-word), can force a Black student to cut his hair or forfeit a win for his team, and everybody applauds what a good sport he is instead of standing up for him.
A singing competition special like The Voice where all the light skinned white women of color compete for bragging rights and a fish plate. It'll be called The Cookout, hosted by Celine Dion, Mel C, and the ghost of Teena Marie.
Bury me in Michelle Obama’s $4000 thigh-high Balenciaga boots. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙏🏾
(Also, please don’t talk to me about how the Obamas or Beyonce or Oprah should spend their $. I’m woke on a lot of things but I take a snooze when it comes to rich Black ppl throwing around money I can only dream of. Live it up for the ancestors. Watching y'all is my reparations.)
Bury me in Michelle Obama's $4000 thigh-high Balenciaga boots. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙏🏾
(Also, please don't talk to me about how the Obamas or Beyonce or Oprah should spend their $. I'm woke on a lot of things but I take a snooze when it comes to rich Black ppl throwing around money I can only dream of. Live it up for the ancestors. Watching y'all is my reparations.)
A supporter of President Trump’s border wall proposal has started a GoFundMe to help pay for the project — and the fund skyrocketed to more than $2 million Wednesday night after being live fo…
Paying out of your own pocket for a wall your President said Mexico would pay for, then said Mexico would pay half for, then said taxes would pay for, then said the government will shut down if Congress doesn’t fund…wow y’all won. As a lib, I feel SO owned right now.
Please give the Trump administration a check for a billion dollars. Seriously. I really want y'all to give Trump a whole ass check for a billion dollars. He's SO good with money. He totally NEVER filed for bankruptcy multiple times even though his daddy gave him $400 million.
A black Ohio man said bank tellers refused to cash a paycheck from his new job, and then called 911 on him, because they were suspicious that he earned so much. Paul McCowns tried to cash his first paycheck from a job with an electric company Dec. 1 at Huntington Bank in the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn, reported WOIO-TV. The paycheck was for a little more than $1,000, and McCowns and tellers confirmed he showed …
I clicked this thinking the check would be for six figures.
They called the cops on a Black man trying to cash a check for $1,000. Like, do you want us all on food stamps or do you want us to earn a living? Pick one, Karen.
Will Smith looks like Sinbad.
That Jasmine costume looks like an actual Jasmine costume you could buy off Amazon.
They made Aladdin look like the weird guy at the bar who gives you his mom's cellphone number because his is off right now but the service will be back on next week.
Also:
Do y'all remember who they cast as Jafar?! Because I do!
And I'm supposed to root for that Disney version of a fedora bro in a Patagonia vest over a shirt that doesn't even fit?
Jasmine picking that over THIS means she's already the dumbest princess. Bye.
Dana Bash: Trump signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Rudy Giuliani: “It was a real estate project. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed.”
Chris Cuomo:
Trump's lawyers being caught in lies regularly is the result of a 50/50 split between everyone who works with Trump being complete slime and Trump being the kind of idiot who lies to his lawyers instead of telling them the whole truth so they can cover effectively.
