WHEN THE MACHINE BREAKS DOWN, WE BREAK DOWN.
A small rant on Pelosi, plus Rep. Kay Granger’s surprising discovery, and some possibly helpful advice on LGBTQ marriage
Apologies to anybody who wondered where yesterday’s Substack was!! Got a few wires crossed, had a few technical difficulties, and also forgot to post that this is going to be a bit of a lighter week on Substack for me. You’re seeing today’s post on Christmas Eve, but as a general heads up, there will be no post on Thursday.
We’ll be back and ready to rage on Monday, December 30, with a very special super-sized article about… 2024. Yep, we’re going there, folks. It’s about time somebody decided to hold 2024 accountable for its SINS. It’s time to CANCEL 2024.
Just kidding. I’m just gonna reflect on how 2024 was one of THE years of all years that are… uh… years.
For today, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about something Sami and I are talking about on this week’s American Fever Dream podcast: the concept of the Messy Political Christmas.
On this episode, Sami and I talked a bit about everything from General Ulysses S. Grant carrying out THE worst act of anti-Jewish discrimination by the US government… to the World War I Christmas ceasefire… to even the first Hanukkah celebration at the White House (for the record, it was in 1989… the menorah wasn’t even lit until CLINTON was in office, though).
It’s a great companion piece to this Substack, I think. Where Sami and I talk a lot about HISTORICALLY messy holidays because of the government, I’m here to tell you a bit about HISTORICALLY messy holidays… happening RIGHT NOW. You might know what I’m talking about here, since we just talked about it a little bit last week: while the rest of us are celebrating the holidays, the government decides to be THAT bitch and do something a little sussy. Maybe you got a copy of Grey Gardens on blu-ray for Christmas, or maybe you’re normal and got like an iPhone or something; but the government, she got you a bedridden Nancy Pelosi doll - now available in a hospital bed, with pain pill accessories!
Forgive me if I’m still a little peeved about this. As a reminder for anybody who missed it, political rockstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was well on her way to becoming the ranking Democrat in the House Oversight Committee when a bedridden Nancy Pelosi lifted up the cryptkeeper finger of justice, wagged it with a quick “nuh AHHHH,” then used it to dial a few friends and get enough support to tip the scales of support in favor of the young political up and comer… Gerry Connolly. A 74-year-old with throat cancer and an interesting mustache.
I wrote at length about this last week, but something I thought of shortly after I hit the old “Publish” button was the idea that this was something Nancy Pelosi likely did while not only working from bed… but working from bed on painkillers. This… is important government business being conducted from a hospital room, no matter if “the iron fist in a Gucci glove” was simply making a few calls.
This might be a cliche, but it really is best to think about the United States government (and honestly, any government) as a machine.
Each representative or Senator is a gear in that machine, and sometimes, when the machine starts to shake with age, the parts need to be replaced. Think of any House leadership role as one of the primary gears in a machine, with the rest of the House being the pinions (which, fun fact, are what smaller gears are called. The more you know!).
But sometimes, it becomes clear that there were gears being used AS pinions when they should have been primary gears all along; and when those gears are put in their appropriate places, that’s when the appropriate representatives become leaders in the House.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is, and always has been, a big gear stuck on a pinion spindle. What Nancy Pelosi did was make sure she was tied to that spindle for another revolution. To put it another way, despite Nancy Pelosi not being able to currently handle heavy machinery, she decided to keep building the damn machine. And in the process, she ALSO drove a plow through the seeds of progress that AOC has planted. Merry Christmas.
Yet if we want to examine the failings of the machine, of important gears being placed in incorrect places, we also need to look at some of the rusty, and in some cases missing gears.
Do you know what the average age of an American citizen is, as of 2024? Around 38 years old.
You wanna know what the average age in Congress is? 58. And in the Senate, it’s 65.
Lotta rusty gears in the Congressional machine.
And nobody seems to personify the rusty gear metaphor better than Rep. Kay Granger out of Texas.
If you’ve never heard of Kay Granger, that’s okay: she’s a Texas congresswoman serving TX-12, and has been in office since 1997. Statistically speaking, she’s been in office longer than many of you have been alive. She’s the former chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, and had a relatively uneventful time in her nearly thirty years in Congress, aside from the fact that she used to be a pro-choice Republican, until an anti-choice organization known as The WISH List helped get her elected in 1997. Funny how that works.
Earlier this year, Granger announced that she would not be seeking re-election, and would be stepping down from House Appropriations. But after July, Granger just sorta… vanished. According to VoteSmart’s Congressional voting record, Granger voted “No” on July 24, 2024, to the “Amendment in the House …to reduce the salary of Ya-Wei (Jake) Li, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs, to $1.” And then… she stopped voting in the House. She re-appeared ONCE in November for the unveiling of a portrait of her, but otherwise, nobody seemed to know where she was.
Until now.
Carlos Turcios at the Dallas Express broke the story first that the reason Granger has been missing from Congress is because she’s been living in an assisted living home that specializes in memory care to help her treat her dementia. As Turcios put it, this was after she was “found wandering, lost, and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.”
This should be the top news story in every mainstream media publication or from any TikTok or YouTube commentator. Although it’s good that Granger is receiving the proper care for her condition, this is further proof that the U.S. Congress is a broken machine. Kay Granger, like most U.S. Representatives, has an annual salary of $174,000 paid for by taxpayers. The facility she’s staying in costs $4,000 per month, according to 360 West. She has not voted in exactly five months, as of today, and according to Legistorm, she paid her staff around $360,000 between July and September alone.
Between Nancy Pelosi dictating House leadership from a hospital bed, Kay Granger pulling a salary for a job she essentially abandoned, and even Joe Biden staying in a presidential race far longer than he was cognitively equipped for, we’re looking at the almost-comical limits of what the Gerontocracy is capable of. I know that the Christmas mythos revolves around an old man pulling the strings of whether the general (child) populace gets Christmas presents or coal, but this shouldn’t be a country run by MULTIPLE Santas only giving us coal and a tray of butterscotch toffees.
All I wanted for Christmas this year was a little damn progress. All I got was a bunch of old folks telling me it’s not our time.
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In typical Under the Desk fashion, though, I can’t leave it all out there on a note of doom and gloom - especially not on Christmas, and especially not before the first day of Hanukkah! I wanted to end this week off with an essential talk about LGBTQ+ marriage - and how to protect it.
First, let’s start off with a good amount of essential viewing, courtesy of gaylawyer (aka Angela Giampolo) on TikTok. In the first video (because yes, we’ve got a couple), she addresses the topic of whether your LGBTQ+ marriage can be overturned.
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“It’s not the right question,” she states. “What you wanna be asking is whether or not the right INHERENT in my marriage can be taken away from me.”
Gaylawyer then goes on to detail the importance of marriage, and has 1,138 state and federal rights tied to that institution. She states that although the president cannot directly overturn the ruling in Obergefell or easily repeal the Respect for Marriage Act… Congress can, and may, try to nullify your rights. One possible example she cites is through religious exemption, which she claims will lead to RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) laws, which would enable people or institutions to “not recognize” LGBTQ+ marriages on the grounds of religious objection.
Now, this in and of itself is a scary, but unfortunately possible, path forward for the Trump administration, as spelled out plain as day in the language of Project 2025. However, I wanna draw your attention over to another video gaylawyer posted.
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In this second video, she goes over some of the most important documents any LGBTQ+ person or couple needs to be protected in the United States. Specifically, why it’s important to have the Revocable Living Trust, the Last Will & Testament, Healthcare Power of Attorney, Durable Power of Attorney, the Living Will, two forms of Hospital Visitation Authorization Form (“one for your partner and one for your Chosen Family”), the Agent for Disposition of Remains, the Pet Care Directive, and the Tangible Personal Property Memorandum.
The Revocable Living Trust is an arrangement, via legal document, that gives somebody the power to make decisions about your money or property that is being held within the trust. “If your relationship is a castle,” gaylawyer writes, “Consider this a moat around your castle - protecting you from government and family hostility. It is also a confidential document that is not given to the Register of Wills and acts as [a] probate avoidance tool, which is extremely helpful to avoid government oversight after you’re gone and further ensure that your wishes are protected.”
Durable Powers of Attorney is when you give somebody else the legal authority to act on your behalf, even if your mental capacity is compromised. Then, the healthcare documents are important to further make sure any of your wishes/desires are protected. As gaylawyer puts it, “even if you are married, you are only considered married in 37 countries out of 195 that fly a flag – so a Hospital Visitation Authorization Form (HVA) is essential to travel with. Together, a Health Care Power of Attorney along with a Hospital Visitation Authorization Form will protect you.”
Each of the other documents are relatively self-explanatory, but gaylawyer breaks everything down in painstaking detail why each is essential for upholding your queer marriage. I feel like it shouldn’t come as a surprise as a lesbian in a lesbian marriage that I would care about ways to protect my own lesbian marriage. It might not come as a surprise, either, that if you’re a lesbian in a lesbian marriage, or ANYONE in an ANYTHING marriage, I care about you being able to protect yourself. I’d imagine gaylawyer feels the same!
As she writes in her description, “I became passionate about estate planning after the Terri Schiavo disaster; a married, straight woman and yet her husband’s wishes about her end-of-life care were not respected because the family disagreed with him and wanted her kept alive artificially. At that moment, I realized the full importance of LGBTQ+ individuals to put their wishes in writing.”
Now, in case any of this sounds overwhelming - she actually offers this on a website known as Pride Plans. No, this isn’t a sponsored ad. This is a genuine endorsement of a service I believe in deeply, where it’s possible to get your marriage shored up for in the absolute cheapest imaginable way. This is basically all nine documents, at cost.
Even if you look at the plans and decide this is outside of your price range, or this doesn’t seem important to you, give it a look whenever you get a chance. Consider the idea that there are rough roads ahead, and although Angela’s service might not be the one for you, her advice comes from a good place and seems to be a way for her to give back to folks who may not know the importance of making queer love airtight legally.
Our laws are being decided by the ever turning rusty gears and pinions of an old and outdated machine, and it may spin the wheels back to a point in time where the machine did not work for all Americans. But at the very least, options exist outside of this machine that can serve to make the world a better place.
Piper Laurie was a good actress. I agree, she could have played Kay, easily. Actually, if Hollywood exhumed her, she could probably STILL play Kay.