On the news last night, following the $700 billion dollar bailout talk, it was mentioned that 25% of Americans are struggling to pay their bills every month.

Let me raise my hand and say hello, I am one of those Americans, and my actual debt is a miniscule fraction of this bailout… but it is a real, day to day, emotionally and psychologically draining financial struggle.

I think that a huge part of the frustration and anger on the part of so many Americans at the entire notion of a bailout is that we're being told that the government has to do this to "protect us", to protect the U.S. as well as the now deeply interconnected global markets from failing... they have to do this so that we can stillget credit. That is, so the banks will still loan us money, give us mortgages, give us credit cards at 8-25% interest (what a bargain!). Leaving aside the fact that the government doesn't even actually have this money and is just raising the debt ceiling on our national debt to cover these bad investments -- the kicker, the part of this bitter pill that is so goddamn hard to swallow is that we the American people are so desperate for bailout ourselves.

I'm gonna lay it out here, my friends. This is where I am at.--read more >>

With all the media and political talking heads yakking about teen, unwed, or single mothers these days, I have a wake up call for everybody...

I have been a teen mother. I have lived with a man just to keep my baby. I graduated from a high school for teen mothers. I have been a single mother for eight years. I know a bit about this issue. Most of these politicos and talking heads have never lived my life, never had an inkling of what it's REALLY like to have a baby at sixteen and another at nineteen, and I cannot be silent about this subject that has, for the last few days, replaced the MISSING WHITE WOMAN headlines or CELEBRATY O.D.s on 24 hour "news." This does not happen often. Maybe in the last year, teen moms have been on the radar, in the form of US Magazine or whatever trash people are reading these days, because of what? Britney Spears, our tabloid queen, with more covers than Princess Diana, her little sister got pregnant at sixteen, sold her story to a trashy magazine for a million dollars, and suddenly teen pregnancy is a hot topic again--that and the fact that it has, for the first time in decades, increased. If the topic of teen/single moms can only be brought up because of some chick I've never heard of, in a National Enquirer-type magazine, which sadly is more widely read than newspapers.....Well, I quote Thomas Jefferson: "I tremble for the fate of my country."

I am not Jamie Spears. I am not a millionaire fake celeb. I am not Bristol Palin. Do you think either of these girls will walk into their local welfare office and wait hours, just for that extra $100 a month in foodstamps? Will they ever spend week after week on the phone with operators hired by a privatized Medicaid system, trying to find a doctor who will actually see their asthmatic child? Will they spend years fighting the Attorney General's office for child support, waiting a year just to get to court? Will they ever try to pay for their generic can of beans with WIC coupons and be treated like a leper? Have someone roll their eyes as they buy food with food stamps after they just got off an eight-hour shift standing on thier feet, cutting nasty hair? --read more >>

I'd always get pissed off when, on IRC in a punk chat room, people would just assume I was white. Even when I gave them my pics, they'd think of every ethnicity but black to guess as my race.

When I would tell them, "Well, I'm half black and half white," they'd be shocked.

"You're black???" would invariably be the reply. "Wow, I've never met a black punk." --read more >>