Democrats hope to pass the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package by the middle of March and plan to forge ahead without Republicans.
The House is on track to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package by the end of this week as Congress sprints to deliver aid to millions of Americans reeling from the pandemic and facing a jobless benefits cliff in mid-March.
But House Democrats aren't expecting to get a single GOP vote for their aid package, which they're taking up with the procedural maneuver known as reconciliation in order to win Senate passage without the threat of a filibuster. The House Budget Committee will meet Monday afternoon to tee up the legislation for floor passage on Friday or Saturday, with Senate action as soon as the following week.
Monday's markup is one of the last major House steps in the reconciliation process, but the final aid package sent to the president’s desk will likely change from the House-passed bill. That's because Senate consideration will be laden with political minefields, and major provisions in the bill — such as its minimum wage hike or paid sick leave expansion — could be stripped out or rejiggered as Democrats in the upper chamber muddle through budget restrictions during floor debate.
In short, there's plenty of uncertainty to come before the House and Senate must ultimately resolve any differences and agree on any amendments before the measure is sent to Biden’s desk.
“We’re working as quickly and expeditiously as we possibly can,” said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “We’ll send it over to the Senate and see what happens.”
The Budget Committee will kick off Monday’s markup with a vote to send the package to the House floor, followed by several more hours in which lawmakers can offer largely symbolic motions, air their grievances or express support for Biden’s plan.
No substantial changes to the text are expected since the Budget panel’s members can’t offer regular amendments. The panel’s meeting to assemble Biden’s plan comes after nine House committees marked up their own portions of the massive measure.
Republicans are almost certain to complain about the proposal to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 and $350 billion for state and local aid, among other parts of the package. House GOP leaders circulated a whip notice Friday urging their members to vote against the bill, arguing that it provides “a bailout" for blue states and pays “people not to work.”
“We’re definitely going to expose how this is the wrong plan, at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons,” said Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, who predicted the panel’s markup could last up to six hours. “We’re going to point out all the different items in this legislation that are bad for the working class.”
In the Senate, committees have started meeting with an official adviser known as the parliamentarian, who will decide whether certain pieces of Biden’s plan run afoul of the so-called Byrd Rule. That rule requires policies passed through the budget reconciliation process to have a significant effect on federal spending, revenues and the debt and bars policies that would lead to debt increases beyond the next decade.
One of the biggest outstanding questions is whether Biden’s push to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time since 2009 — a proposal championed by progressives — will survive the budget restrictions.
Democratic leaders and the White House have indicated that they will make a final decision on how to proceed after the Senate parliamentarian rules on the proposal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been tight-lipped, even with senior members of her leadership team, about the status of talks on the most contentious issues.
But Biden has signaled privately to governors that the wage hike likely isn’t happening as part of his first Covid aid measure. Progressives, like Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have insisted that the provision will survive, citing recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office as evidence.
Democrats could barrel ahead by overruling the parliamentarian if the minimum wage increase doesn’t pass muster, but Biden is leaning heavily against the idea, POLITICO reported earlier this month.
Still, the wage hike remains a top progressive demand, and liberal leaders insist the pandemic relief package is the most viable legislative vehicle this year to get it done.
“It is really important to us that it happens in this package because we think it is directly related to Covid relief,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Given the makeup of the Senate, this is our best opportunity and the right moment in the midst of this pandemic.”
The parliamentarian aside, however, the strategy has run into resistance from moderates in the Senate, with both Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) declaring their opposition to including the wage hike in Biden’s final package.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have criticized Democrats for pursuing a process that excludes their input after Congress passed five coronavirus relief bills last year, totaling nearly $4 trillion, with bipartisan support.
In a letter sent earlier this month to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the ranking Republicans from a variety of Senate committees requested that the relief package go through their panels before reaching the floor. But Democrats aren’t expected to comply with that request.
Schumer said in a letter Friday that House and Senate committees are coordinating so lawmakers can quickly move the package to Biden’s desk before unemployment benefits expire on March 14.
“If Republicans are ready to work with Democrats on constructive amendments that will improve the bill, we are ready to work,” Schumer wrote. “However, we must not allow Republican obstructionism to deter us from our mission of delivering help to Americans who desperately need this relief.”
Even if Congress passes the package before unemployment benefits expire on March 14, the relief won’t be immediate. Administrative and bureaucratic snags will delay delivery of major elements of the aid for weeks or even months.
At the state level, officials say it can’t come soon enough.
“We need the help to help our citizens get vaccinated,” Iowa State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald said Thursday during a call hosted by the advocacy group Invest in America Action.
“We’re 46th in the country when it comes to helping people get vaccinated. There’s no excuse for that,” Fitzgerald said. “We need help. We need help right now.”
Heather Caygle and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy seems ready to move on from his vote to convict former President Donald Trump in the latest impeachment trial, but Trump supporters in the state are angry, loud and not interested in letting Cassidy forget about it.
The Republican senator ...
When the history books are written about the Donald Trump era, a lot of people on the right are in for a lot of well-deserved scorn. The religious right, in all likelihood, will come under particular scrutiny. These self-appointed moral guardians tried to get the nation to bow to Trump, knowing full well that he was manifestly unfit and unqualified. These so-called leaders were willing to support a guy who plastered a news anchor’s personal cell number on social media, mocked the disabled, condoned violence at his rallies and against the media, reveled in degrading women, blew blatantly racist dog whistles, mishandled the worst peacetime crisis in our nation’s history, and on, and on, and on.
Oh no, the religious right told their followers when they dared to flinch at the idea of supporting Trump. None of that matters. What mattered, they insisted, was that Trump opposed abortion and wanted to end Roe v. Wade; that he supported the definition of marriage as one man and one woman, and would appoint line-drawing conservatives to our courts.
For people who cut their political teeth during the Bill Clinton years, as I did, seeing the religious right go all-in for Trump was particularly bewildering. Despite Christian conservatives slamming Clinton over his character issues during the 1990s, they were willing to look the other way for Trump, even though they knew full well that he was a reprobate and a thug, so long that he checked the right boxes on social issues.
Not long after the Access Hollywood tape came to light, former Christian Coalition chairman Ralph Reed told NPR’s Scott Simon that hearing Trump boasting about forcing himself on women wasn’t nearly as important to “conservative people of faith” as a president who would oppose abortion, strengthen the economy, and scrap a nuclear deal with Iran that he and his compatriots considered “an existential threat to Israel.” Along similar lines, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told BuzzFeed that the religious right’s support for Trump wasn’t based on “shared values,” but “shared concerns” about the country going off the rails. Franklin Graham claimed—with a straight face—that as bad as Trump’s comments were, the Supreme Court mattered more.
It is not possible to overstate what Reed, Perkins, Graham, and other purported moral guardians were doing at this moment. They effectively told their followers, and the nation at large, that they would look past behavior that no decent person would ever tolerate—all for the sake of a few policy wins and the prospect of putting a distinctly conservative stamp on the federal judiciary.
I was reminded of this just days before Election Day 2020, when one of my more conservative friends laid into me for citing Trump’s degrading comments to women. She told me that trashing women was nothing compared to “murdering babies.”
Worse, the religious right is not just willing to condone Trump’s outrages, but willing to bully those who exposed them. During Trump’s first impeachment, a number of pro-Trump pastors went as far as to frame the impeachment effort as an attack on their values. That was pretty mild stuff, compared to what we heard from other prominent pro-Trump pastors. Perry Stone called Trump’s foes in Congress “demonic,” and threatened to ask God to smite them if they didn’t leave Trump alone. Hank and Brenda Kunneman tried to spiritually “shush” the evil forces that were supposedly driving the impeachment effort.
Several prominent members of the religious right signed onto Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election, long after it was clear he had lost to Joe Biden. Some of the worst offenders were the Kenneth Copeland clan. Just 24 hours after the major networks declared Biden president-elect, Copeland’s daughter, Terri Pearsons, led her flock in praising God for giving Trump “legal strategies” to expose the (nonexistent) fraud that supposedly denied him victory. She even called for a new election, if necessary.
A day later, Pearsons and her husband, George, led Copeland ministry staffers in an effort to cover Trump’s efforts in prayer. Terri told the audience that she’d organized the meeting after the Trump campaign asked for prayer as it sought to throw out ballots in Pennsylvania, supposedly cast after Election Day.
At that same meeting, George Pearsons issued a “heavenly cease-and-desist order” against the supposed scheme to deny Trump another term. Two weeks later, George told his flock that he’d had a vision of Jesus walking up and down a roomful of tables where ballots were being counted in Philadelphia and flipping them over. The symbolism was obvious: George was likening this scene to Jesus’ flipping over of tables in the Temple after he saw it had been turned into a marketplace.
Here’s Terri Pearson in early December, perpetuating election fraud in six states.
Even hearing Trump attempting to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into trying to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s lead there wasn’t enough. Less than 24 hours after The Washington Post’s story about the shakedown went live, Al Perrotta, managing editor of The Stream, a Christian conservative web magazine, demanded that Biden agree to Sen. Ted Cruz’s call for a 10-day audit of the election results, despite the hard proof that Trump was the one trying to steal the election.
One would have thought that the Jan. 6 riots would have knocked some of the scales off the eyes of these pro-Trump “men and women of God.” Far from it. Mark Taylor, the “firefighter prophet” who claims God told him in 2011 that Trump would be president, promised that God was going to perform a miracle that would allow Trump to stay in office—even as Trump was recording a video acknowledging that he was going to leave the White House. Considering that Taylor rose to fame by retconning his original claim that Trump would unseat Barack Obama, it’s just more evidence that his vision was just a little clouded.
But even that pales in comparison to Graham claiming that the 10 Republicans who supported impeaching Trump had forgotten “all he has done for our country.” Even worse, Graham claimed they had been induced into doing so for “30 pieces of silver,” suggesting that the Republicans who voted to impeach betrayed Trump in the same manner that Judas betrayed Jesus.
Seeing the religious right sweep Trump’s depravities under the rug—and use Scripture to praise him—has been especially sickening to me, as I’ve been down this road before. Back in college, I saw firsthand what is possible when a right-wing Christian group is willing to embrace some of the most outrageous tactics—all in the name of supposedly doing God’s work.
It’s no secret to my regular readers that I had a very up close and personal experience in the belly of the (religious right) beast. During my freshman year at the University of North Carolina, I joined WayMaker, which I thought was a campus fellowship group. It was actually a hyper-charismatic outfit whose parent church, King’s Park International Church (KPIC) in Durham, subscribed to some of the mind-bending stuff that, then as now, is standard fare on TBN and other Christian TV networks.
I got a hunch that something was way off about them, but couldn’t put my finger on it until my “brothers” and “sisters” tried to guilt trip me into doing a total philosophical 180—from a liberal Democrat to a Christian Coalition Republican. I was told that I had no business being pro-choice, and that I had to junk my liberal leanings without another thought. The realization that I could not and would not reorder my mind on such simplistic terms was, I believe, a big reason why I was able to avoid being sucked in. Even so, it took months before I finally walked away for good.
Looking back almost a quarter-century later, that experience feels eerily reminiscent of how the religious right outright bullied evangelicals into supporting him. A mere month after Trump’s upset win, Jim Bakker warned that any county that voted for Hillary needed to brace for the wrath of God. Later, not long after Trump took office, he claimed that anyone who opposed Trump was probably possessed by a demon. Along similar lines, when Pat Robertson joined the religious-right chorus warning against opposing Trump in the early stages of 2017, he explained that doing so was tantamount to opposing God’s plan for this country. Rick Joyner let it be known that the devil himself was behind the opposition to Trump, and warned anyone who dared oppose Trump is at risk for being “smacked” by God himself.
According to 2020 exit polls, 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. This marks a significant drop from the 81% of white evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016. How could it still be even that high, even in the face of Trump’s endless outrages? Well, for the better part of five years, the religious right subjected its devotees to a steady diet of warnings against opposing Trump. If you opposed Trump, at best, you opposed God, and at worst, you needed a demon cast out of you. These rabidly pro-Trump pastors and evangelists preach to a choir that mostly lives in a bubble. Their children are homeschooled or attend Christian schools. The entire family consumes a news diet of Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, and Christian talk radio. In other words, they’re hearing this pro-Trump drumbeat day in, day out, and with little to counter it.
Combine that with some four decades of being told—sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly—that merely voting for a Democrat puts one’s salvation at risk. Suddenly, it makes sense why so many white evangelicals were still willing to vote for Trump, even though it was amply demonstrated that he was a gangster and a thug. Considering the environment in which most of Trump’s most diehard evangelical supporters live, it’s natural for anyone who had even mild reservations about Trump to keep their heads down—especially if they lived in one of the few areas where Trump’s approval ratings were still in the stratosphere.
In hindsight, it also explains why it took so long for me to walk out on WayMaker, even when I knew in my gut that they were feeding me baloney. When you spend six months being told that your doubts might be demonic in nature, it’s natural for even the most resilient person to wonder, “What if they’re right?”
That’s why I can’t begrudge most of my more conservative Christian friends for still backing Trump. The real scorn should go to what passes for leadership on the religious right, who are still all in for Trump, despite knowing exactly who he is. Like Tony Perkins, who told Politico that he and his religious right compatriots were giving Trump a “mulligan” for his sins, such as having an affair with Stormy Daniels. And like Shane Idleman, who claimed that Trump’s 280-character tirades didn’t matter as much as the fact he was “fighting for biblical values” in a climate where Trump’s foes were coming after “you, me and our Christian values.”
Uh-huh. So the 26 women (at least) who claim Trump sexually assaulted them didn’t matter to Perkins because Trump, and not Hillary, was making conservative appointments to the courts? And when Trump praised “both sides” in Charlottesville, it didn’t matter because he opposes abortion? As noted above, the list goes on, and on, and on. As a Christian, I consider supporting Trump to be grossly hypocritical—even before noting that many religious right luminaries hammered Bill Clinton for far less while being willing to bow and pray to a neon—or rather, orange—god they helped make.
It takes me back to my sophomore year at Carolina, when I discovered by accident that KPIC, the parent church of the group I’d left, had once been part of Maranatha Campus Ministries, one of the more notorious “campus cults” of the 1970s and 1980s. Maranatha had come under well-deserved heat in those days for abusive and controlling practices; it was denounced as a Christianized version of the Moonies or Hare Krishnas.
I’d stumbled across a list of “friends and former members” of Maranatha while trying to get in touch with others who’d been burned by KPIC’s campus ministries at my campus and others in North Carolina. KPIC’s address and website were listed there, along with the name of its longtime pastor, Ron Lewis. I was dumbfounded. It was now obvious to me that Lewis was hiding his Maranatha past to avoid getting the hairy eyeball from school officials who still remembered the abuses that had won Maranatha infamy a decade earlier. Further research confirmed that I’d narrowly escaped a watered-down version of Maranatha.
But when I told my former “brothers” and “sisters” about this, their collective response was, in so many words, “So what?” They had no problem with Lewis’ deceit because people were being saved through his church and ministry. The fact that Lewis was blatantly lying about his past with a denounced, dangerous ministry didn’t matter. I think they might have overlooked nearly anything once they were part of an effort to “bring the good news of Jesus to UNC!”
I’ve found myself thinking back a lot to that time ever since I realized how many religious right pastors and evangelists pushed their followers to vote for Trump simply because he made the right clucking noises about key social issues. Forcing people to give birth was so important, they could look past over 30,500 false or misleading statements Trump made in four years and believe he deserved another term. More conservative judges were so important that devout evangelicals were told to look past Trump’s choice to knowingly “play down” the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and vote for his reelection. I realize now that I saw a prelude to this cherry-picking mentality when my former friends in WayMaker were more than willing to stay loyal to a pastor who they knew had lied to them about some serious stuff.
The religious right’s support for Trump has exposed the movement, once and for all, as utterly morally bankrupt. I saw the beginnings of that moral bankruptcy during my college days, and it is this moral bankruptcy that has contributed to the poisoning of our political discourse. If we are to prevent a next time for this, we must call it out when we see it … and we must do so loudly.
BRISTOL, R.I. (AP) - U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline are scheduled to share their insiders' take on the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
The Rhode Island Democrats will appear at an online program hosted by Roger Williams University School of Law on Tuesday ...
We Rescue Rangers know the Community has broad interests, but you surprised me this week by going big for two rescued stories covering subjects not remotely associated with current news and politics. Previously, I’d exclaimed that Community stories can offer “refuge from politics,” but that referenced nature, more commonly considered a haven away from troubling news. This week, however, the Community found an atypical refuge in … classical literature!
With another impeachment behind us, leaving a residue of widespread dissatisfaction, governance still holds our attention, as do climate change and COVID-19. In addition to this week’s focus on Beowulf and Shakespeare, the Daily Kos Community has turned back to more enduring concerns, including the need to hold legislators accountable and to empower voters. One of my volunteer projects does both and takes an hour of my online work per week.
I’ll tell you more about this project next Saturday, because this week, I’d like to hear about your volunteer involvement. Has the pandemic changed how your project operates? Did you work on candidate campaigns in the last election and, once those wrapped up, shift to new ventures? Are you still writing postcards to voters? I’m interested in hearing about all kinds of volunteer efforts, not just the political ones. The pandemic has expanded the need for ongoing efforts, like food banks and created new needs, such as testing and vaccine clinics. The Daily Kos Community comprises varied talents and expertise, so I’m sure some members are involved in projects new to many of us. Expand our world by sharing your enthusiasm in the comments, and, if your project needs more helpers, add a volunteer sign up link.
Half of the 16 stories we featured this week are first time rescues, including two writers who joined and wrote their first stories the same day. One such story, about Shakespeare, had 22 Recs Wed. at 8 p.m. and, 24 hours later, had 188 recs and 439 comments. As an illustration of our Community’s diversity of knowledge, another new member joined the next day and wrote their first story describing the municipal water delivery infrastructure, and how system flaws result in devastating problems, such as the debacle in Texas. The week’s most recommended rescued story, with over 200 recs, is a deeply personal essay describing the author’s realization that their husband is a narcissist.
Community Spotlight’s Rescue Rangers read every story published by Community writers. When we discover awesome work that isn’t receiving the attention it deserves, we rescue it to our group blog and publish a weekly collection—like this one—each Saturday. Rescue priorities and actions were explained in a previous edition: Community Spotlight: Rescuing your excellent stories for over 14 years. You also can find a link in Meteor Blades’ “Night Owls” series, which publishes daily between 10-11PM EST.
In Myth of the middle—Jeep Super Bowl, Grey Panther explores the high-profile Bruce Springsteen Super Bowl ad for Jeep that, the author claims, perpetrates a false stereotype of the average American as a “wandering soul searching for a middle ground, a geographic middle.” Grey Panther demolishes this myth using their personal experiences of “middle America,” then promotes their view of what constitutes the average American. “I have found a little bit to worship in every place and person I’ve encountered. I have loved the preserved sites of the First Peoples, the Civil War, and natural habitats. There are too few of them. I slide through America on my solo journeys, becoming more in touch with my humanity.” Grey Panther joined in 2008 and has written 89 stories, with 12 rescued.
The circus comes to town by ViewFromSpace re-examines the first two weeks after Trump’s 2017 inauguration to evaluate if his actions were as awful as we anticipated. Not a spoiler—they were worse. “The term ‘outrage fatigue’ predated the Trump administration, but seemed custom designed to describe it. Trump packed more scandal into his first two weeks than most presidents achieve in eight years. Nothing about the Trump presidency was normal and it’s important that we reflect on just how abnormal it really was.” ViewFromSpace joined in 2020 and has written three stories. This is their first rescue.
DrMarmot traces the processes climate change kicked into action and the traits of bat biology that, together, could result in the emergence of a novel pathogen such as COVID-19 in Bats, bushmeat and viruses: How climate disruption helped create COVID-19. Ecosystem disruptions reverberate through nature, affecting species distributions and migration, until infected animals connect with humans in wildlife markets. “The study found that this climate-induced chain reaction of floral change driving faunal change driving viral biodiversity ‘may have played a key role in the evolution or transmission of the two SARS CoVs’...Though bats are the source for many coronaviruses, they are not responsible for the pandemic. People are.” DrMarmot joined in 2017 and has written 10 stories, with four rescued—two of them this week.
The search for truth part 2 by Casual Observer 2 asks “(H)ow does a normal human being separate wheat from chaff, sheep from goats? This question gets at the heart of what I think is the key crisis in our country (if not the world) right now: ’What information do I believe is reliable and why do I believe that it is reliable?’” They compare a few approaches to finding the truth, one over 2,500 years old, noting differences and similarities. Casual Observer 2 joined in 2016 and has written two stories. This is their first rescue.
Winifred3 started quilting six years ago, after many years of embroidery, and she has learned that embroidery is an "integral aspect" of quilting. She now adds blocks of embroidery to her quilts, as shown in her beautiful illustrations in DK Quilt Guild: quilt blocks with embroidery. Winifred3 joined in 2010 and has written 124 stories. We also rescued her photo story showing Christmas quilts last month.
Bet you’ve never heard of the 1954 film Salt of the Earth. Random82 tells us about this hidden, entertaining gem in Labor film of the week. It was financed by a union, and used only a handful of professional actors, while the rest were played by local union members and their families. The film, available on YouTube, gives an uncompromising view of the Empire Zinc Miners Strike in New Mexico. Random82 has been a member since Sept. 2020 and has written seven diaries. This is their first rescue.
As the climate crisis worsened during his tenure, Trump went out of his way to help. Not to help the climate, of course, but to help his industry-connected friends, donors and supporters. One of his most egregious decisions was the appointment of Scott Pruitt to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. Like so many of Trump’s cabinet appointments, Pruitt decided that instead of shutting down the agency, there was more money to be made by reversing its mission. In Trump considered abolishing the EPA, DrMarmot takes us back to the Pruitt era and the mountain of challenges that he left for President Biden. This is the author’s second rescue this week.
Daverhagen reminisces about memories and what elements combine to create them in Losing touch during COVID-19 hibernation. Staged events, like Woodstock, “birth a myth...notable for creating a community of strangers. A community of the moment. Other events are only personally memorable but hold consequence for us.” The author contemplates what we are missing during the pandemic’s forced isolation from friends, family, and society. “(W)hat happens to love in a world where people’s touch is imprisoned by fears? The embrace of one’s extended family, the fraternal as well as the familial, speaks a language beyond the limitation of our words. It may not be recognized as such, but touch is a language universal.” Daverhagen joined in 2019 and has written six stories, with three rescued.
Using references my English teacher snubbed, DrLori makes Beowulf pleasurable by taking readers deeper into the poem inflicted on us in high school. In The Language of the Night: Beowulf after Tolkien, she examines scholarship “around Beowulf, the Ur-Daddy of English Literature” beginning with “J.R.R. Tolkien’s all-important essay, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, which, in addition to showcasing Prof. Tolkien’s dry brand of snark, turned the study of Old English in general, and Beowulf in particular, on its head.” DrLori joined in 2010, and has written 220 stories, with 111 rescued.
In A look at the school re-opening plan set forth by the Biden CDC, bilboteach analyzes the administration’s efforts to get kids, teachers, and staff back into classrooms by the end of April. The pod approach, masking, and funding are the most critical and detailed plan sections. Less robust areas of the CDC plan include minimal suggestions on proper classroom ventilation and no requirement that all staff is vaccinated. “The good news is if pods are done correctly, and the system is in place correctly, a LOT of the concerns I raised six weeks ago are alleviated.” Bilboteach joined in December 2020 and has written 15 diaries, with five rescued.
Fragmented fairytale: Waking up to my life with a narcissistic husband is BootsyVixx’s personal manifesto of freedom from an abusive narcissist. The author describes her growing realization that the person who should be there to support her above all else is actually the one who has been holding her back. “Maybe it was the new environment, or maybe we were thrown together everyday but I started to see … how weak he really is. Huge ego. Self-absorbed. Chronically angry and impossible to please. Blames others for situations he creates. Takes care of his own needs. Just … totally … unilateral in vision.” BootsyVixx joined in 2020 and has written 13 stories. This is their first rescue.
The TRUTH about Shakespeare by new member spadeandarcher takes us out of our worries about COVID-19 and snowstorms into a lively discussion of their passion for Shakespeare. What makes Shakespeare so great, the author asserts, isn't whether he was or wasn't the person we think he was, or that he wrote about kings, queens and princes, but that he takes those characters and makes them come alive in a way that embeds them in our hearts and souls. Thus the author’s truth: Shakespeare is no more or less than "the birthright of every human being on this planet, he is for all mankind for all time." Spadeandarcher joined and published their first story on Feb. 17.
Shackman333, another new member, takes readers on a journey into the “exciting” world of city infrastructure. Burst pipes, pipe bursting, and the American water crisis: Part one explains water main breaks, water loss rate, and cycle time. The reason you probably haven’t ever heard about the health of a municipal water system, except perhaps for Flint, Michigan, is that the infrastructure is out of sight, out of mind (underground) until a problem forces us to look. Shackman333 provides an accessible look at municipal water issues and maintenance choices that drive failure in systems with inadequate repair budgets. “Many cities East of the Mississippi still have wood pipe in service. Wood. Wood water pipe. New wood pipe hasn’t been installed since the late 1800s. Do you think that pipe leaks?” Shackman333 joined and wrote their first story on Feb. 18.
Bill in Waco Texas asks, “Did you ever have an experience that didn’t really register with you as being influential until years or perhaps even decades later?” In Music wins! A personal Black History Month story, the author shares recollections from high school that answer this question. A talented musician, Bill built a friendship with an African American fellow student bused in to their previously all-white school. They shared musical stylings and taught each other about their different approaches. “Today I realize that we both shared something that would last a lot longer than our jam sessions or trading ‘licks’, and that was the fact that music brought us together in a way that was both completely unexpected and totally predictable!” Bill in Waco Texas joined in 2018 and has written nine stories, with two rescued.
Author AAAMCWB and his husband have been together for decades, formalizing their agreement through marriage multiple times. In Til death do us part, he reflects on how amazing it is to have the legal right to marry and that, even though an emotional bond is powerful, the legal bond adds an important layer. “For years I had said that in our hearts, Timo and I were married, regardless of what some state law may say. While a Supreme Court decision was important, it wouldn’t make a difference to our marriage. I honestly believed those words when I said them. I had no idea how wrong I was.” AAAMCWB joined in 2020 and has written nine stories. This is his first rescue.
Since Mitch D is a big baseball fan, it is natural to describe Trump with a baseball game metaphor. In His deplorable base, the author takes the elder George Bush’s famous quote about being born on third base and applies it to Donald Trump. "Oh, it’s true Trump was born on third base but far from being pleased he’d hit a triple, he was disappointed. He thought, right out of the ‘Lucky Sperm Club’ birthing tube, he should have hit a home run." Mitch D joined in 2018 and has written three stories. This is their first rescue.
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COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT is dedicated to finding great writing by community members that isn’t getting the visibility it deserves.
An edition of our rescue roundup publishes every Saturday at 1 PM ET (10AM PT) to the Recent Community Stories section and to the front page at 6:30PM ET (3:30PM PT). |