My sister just called me to ask for a loan to pay for legal services to (maybe, if they get supremely lucky) prevent her brother-in-law and father-in-law from being deported to El Salvador. (Thankfully, I have the money to loan her right now.) The motherfucking racist-ass cops picked up her brother-in-law because someone else hit his car and he doesn’t have a Virginia driver’s license because it’s impossible to get a Virginia driver’s license if your immigration status isn’t totally kosher. The guy who motherfucking caused the motherfucking accident apparently didn’t have a Virginia license either, but his first language was French and guess what color his skin was. So he got to drive away, while the brother-in-law got taken in because the cops decided that his (totally valid) international driver’s license was fake. Then his father, who owns the car, came in to try and straighten things out and got taken in himself, even though he has a valid driver’s license for the state he lives in (because he’s been here for long enough that he was able to get one before the cesspool of xenophobia that is the U.S. of fucking A. reached its current level of putrefaction). The cops (who he overheard telling each other to “make something up” to hold him on) found a 15-year-old deportation order that he never even received because had already left the country by the time it was issued (he returned some time later, obviously, but never knew this thing was issued).
Neither of them has anything on their record worse than a speeding ticket or two. My sister’s brother-in-law is 21 years old and has been in the U.S. since he was 14. Her father-in-law has been here for over 10 years and has a wife and four children living in the U.S. One of his kids is a year and a half old, and was born here. His wife speaks almost no english, and the business he was in the process of starting up is now at a standstill because he’s in fucking prison because he was trying to help his son, so his wife has had to get food donations from her church in order to feed her kids. And his son, if he gets deported (as it sounds like he most likely will), is at high risk of being fucking murdered by members of a gang who are convinced that he informed police that they were involved in a murder (he did not, but they were).
Oh, and bonus: my sister is the only person in the family who can visit either of them, because she’s the only one who the cops aren’t likely to throw in jail the minute they see her, because she is white (and was also born here, though that’s not nearly as important).
These men are most likely going to have to leave their families, their homes, and their jobs. Both of them will lose so much — one of them may be fucking killed — because some motherfucker ran into their car, and the brother-in-law wasn’t experienced enough with law enforcement to know that even though he did absolutely nothing wrong he should still take off before the police arrived at the scene and saw the color of his skin.
think-progress:
Who’s sitting at the witness table at the GOP hearing right now on birth control for women.
Five men.
Spluttering over this:
Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.
BECAUSE WHAT COULD SHE POSSIBLY KNOW ABOUT THIS ISSUE.
I keep seeing ads on the side of the green line trains here in Boston for this place, often two of them per car. It looked suspicious to me, so I did some research, and unsurprisingly, they are a “Crisis Pregnancy Center” — i.e., an organization that claims to provide health care but in reality exists solely to coerce and/or trick people into not having abortions.
Their website includes this “FAQ” with questions like “Will abortion affect me spiritually?” And this page, which minimizes the usefulness of Plan B, claims that it can prevent implantation (which is not a scientific fact), refers to the failure of an embryo to implant as “an early abortion,” and then straight up comes out with this fucked up bullshit: “A number of years ago, some in the medical community arbitrarily decided to redefine the beginning of pregnancy as when implantation occurs. Clearly, this contradicts the known facts about when life itself begins, and that is at fertilization.” And now I’m going to stop looking at their website, because I need to sleep now, and rage-induced high blood pressure isn’t going to help with that.
The green line I ride goes past both Boston University and Boston College, and its riders are — based on my unscientific observations — about 75% college students at any given time, so this organization is specifically targeting young people with misleading ads that will prevent them from getting the unbiased assistance they need.
Also, Planned Parenthood is right on the green line, just a few blocks from Boston University. This is not a coincidence.
It looks like the person to contact about this is Scott Christensen, at a company called Titan 360, which apparently handles the MBTA’s vehicle and station advertising. Link to his email address is here if anyone else would like to join me in complaining about this.
Oh yes, and he’s also very clear about how he definitely, totally, absolutely didn’t commit a crime or anything.
After about three weeks of trying, I finally just worked up the gumption to call a pharmacy and ask whether they have one of my medications in stock. This medication is currently difficult to find, because of some big pharma bullshit, so most of the time none of the four pharmacies it’s relatively easy for me to get to have it in stock. Because of the shortage, last time I filled this prescription, they only had about half a month’s worth in stock, so I had to settle for that (and pay extra, since all they had was brand name). That plus the usual insurance fuckery combined with my depression-related inability to make a goddamn phone call to a pharmacy to find out if they have a different dosage in stock so I can fill a new prescription now (instead of two weeks from now) and get it covered by my insurance means that I’ve had to ration my supply for the last couple of weeks. But I have a doctor’s appointment today, and it’s been long enough that there shouldn’t be an insurance problem with me filling a new prescription, so at this point I really just need to know what pharmacy has it in stock, so I don’t have to waste an entire day busing around the city trying to find a place that does. So, to that end, I called a fucking pharmacy, which is kind of a big deal for me. But guess what?
They can’t tell people over the phone whether they have my drug in stock because it’s a controlled substance. And apparently causing some extra trouble for people trying to obtain it for unkosher purposes (although still with a prescription, mind you!) is worth causing all the people who need this drug for their mental health — including undoubtedly some of those people who would be seen as using it in an unkosher way — the extra frustration and time and bullshit fucking work of trudging around the city for a day or two trying to find a pharmacy that has it in stock, while they’re out of the drug that makes it possible for them to do that work.
I have so much rage right now at the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA and whoever else is responsible for this clusterfuck.
