Our nation's exceptionalism is piled as high as a glutton's thanksgiving plate, constantly shedding innocents from the edges - sometimes one or two at a time, sometimes in large groups.
And our leaders stand by idly—stupidly—offering only inert 'thoughts and prayers' to the grieving, as they gorge on desserts proffered by the guilty weapon mongers.
Some politicians who want to vilify opponents who support women's reproductive rights, have begun breathlessly accusing them of supporting "Abortion, right up to the moment of birth!"
The national Republican Party has focus-group tested, and rolled out this hideous phrase nationwide—including in Washington's Third Congressional District—for use against candidates who hope to codify the protections formerly provided by Roe v. Wade, until the Supreme Court recently overturned it.
Decisions around terminating a pregnancy are profoundly personal at any stage - vastly more so in the final months. Women don't carry a pregnancy that far, then just change their minds. This catch-phrase, that Republicans toss around like a political football, cruelly targets and distorts those who had hoped to become parents, but now face this tragic choice deep into a pregnancy.
Roe v. Wade never allowed so-called 'abortion on demand' in the latter stages of pregnancy. These are invariably situations where a termination is deemed medically necessary by the woman, and her medical care-giver ... the ONLY people rightfully involved in the decision.
The people promulgating this phrase, and the dehumanizing frivolousness it implies, don't care any more about the unborn than they do about the heartbroken expectant mother; they just know how to manipulate the fearful, to achieve their partisan ends. They are worthy only of our scorn and disgust for employing such cruelty.
—
Decisions around an unplanned pregnancy are incredibly personal. They should be left to the woman, her doctor, her minister, other interested parties in her church, her employer, state, local, and national politicians, and other interested parties - including scout troops, altar societies, or others who might benefit from a legal bounty paid by some states for turning her and her healthcare provider in - if they make the 'wrong' decision.
Unfortunately, if Democrats solidify their control of government, many of these people will be left out of these key decisions, leaving the poor, fallen woman to make this decision all on her own.
Please, for her sake, vote Republican! Because an unplanned pregnancy is everybody's business!
With Labor Day Weekend drawing to a close, and a presidential election underway, it’s a good time to consider the dynamics of our society. No gains are permanently locked in – not in the dignity of labor; equal rights—even voting rights—for racial, ethnic, or religious minorities; or a woman’s control over her own body. Gains are always ephemeral; we relax and enjoy them at the risk of losing them. Every gain in dignity formerly denied to some, is seen as a loss of prerogative to those who formerly held the reins – a loss they will immediately work to regain.
So I hope you enjoyed your Labor Day weekend, and took a few moments to remember those who struggled, sometimes died, and continue to struggle, to win you a three-day weekend, and eight-hour workday, a decent minimum wage, and the right to vote for leaders who will protect those rights.
Freedom isn’t free, and it is never secure to the complacent.
The recent Supreme Court ruling enshrines into law what has already been the reality in many states, which have used restrictive laws to restrict access to women's reproductive services.
Women with the time and the resources will continue to be able to simply decamp to a state which more fully respects women's privacy and autonomy, receive an abortion, then return home.
Women who don't enjoy the time and monetary resources to either go elsewhere, or to endure the intentionally difficult obstacles set up in her home state, were forced to bring their unplanned pregnancies to term.
It's not a party-line issue, but in effect it is a socio-economic class issue. We need lawmakers who will level the playing field for American women, regardless of state of residence.
When a scandal comes to light that implicates somebody we admire, there is a tendency to resist believing it at first. But as the evidence accumulates, and the window of plausible deniability closes, we cease that resistance, and our esteem for the one we admire is diminished.
Within a cult, it's different. The attachment to the leader is not mere admiration so much as it is adoration, or even identification. Any implication of wrongdoing by the cult leader is perceived as a direct personal attack against us. As more evidence accumulates—rather than causing followers to separate themselves from the leader—the cult tends to cleave more closely; the more credible, and the greater the accumulation of evidence, the more tightly the followers cling to the leader, and lash out at the accusers. The siege mentality they share can result in unpredictable, desperate behaviors.
This identification with the leader makes deprogramming difficult under the best of circumstances - much more so if the member can't be isolated from the influence of the cult. This is made even more difficult when the cult controls a vast communication infrastructure. In some nations, (e.g. China, Putin's Russia, Victor Orban's Hungary), the ruling party simply doesn't allow contradictory information to be broadcast. In other cases, the cult is simply trained to pay attention only to approved communication, by portraying all outside sources as 'fake news', or otherwise not credible. Unless this obstacle is overcome, there is little hope of breaking the hold of the cult on its members.
As with other times in our history, when calamities have arisen, kind people all over our country are offering to provide shelter to women seeking abortions, but who cannot obtain them, safely and legally, in their own state.
One thing that is desperately needed to make this mission of mercy work are organizations to connect women needing to find lodging in a state that allows this vital service, with those who will open their homes during her visit.
Oregon Cove was founded just last Friday, in Portland, Oregon. If you, or somebody you know is from elsewhere, and have come to Oregon seeking abortion services, please contact them. If you have an extra room in your home, and in your heart to host a traveler in need, please contact them. oregoncove@gmail.com
This is just one piece of the puzzle … a very short, early length of the Underground Railroad that must be built. It is one of the first steps that begins the journey of a thousand miles.
At times like this, it is natural to want to hug our children, with a mixture of pure love, and apprehension that they might be taken from us.
But for some, there is an unnatural desire to hug their guns, and hold them close, with the same mixture of love, and paranoia that they will be taken from them.
I attended my first Clark County Council meeting Wednesday – and came away with admiration for Councilor Temple Lenz, as well as new-found scorn for Medvigy.
Medvigy used his time to scold Councilor Lenz for 'giggling like a schoolgirl'. His comments directed toward Councilor Lenz were an unacceptable breach of protocol in any governing body. Worse - he used demeaning sexist language, in an attempt to diminish her status - but only succeeded in diminishing himself. This kind of scolding, sexist language is not only inappropriate for a public governing body, it is unbecoming an adult male—or even a well-behaved teenage boy—in the Twenty-First Century.
Worse still was the chair’s behavior. Rather than admonishing Medvigy for his attack, to regain some measure of decorum in the meeting, she remained silent until Councilor Lenz objected, then responded as an enabler of Medvigy’s bullying, by suggesting that Councilor Lenz had provoked him with her facial expression.
Councilor Lenz did the adult thing, apologizing for a facial expression that may have set off Medvigy. But Medvigy, whose transgression was much worse, said nothing.
There was only one adult in that three-way interaction. Councilor Lenz’s composure and dignity will be sorely missed when she leaves at the end of her term.
I don't think I know anybody who is 'pro-abortion'.
Roe v. Wade was not about being pro-abortion. It was about being pro-privacy - the right of a woman facing possibly the most heart-rending difficult choice of her life, to follow the dictates of her heart and conscience, without some jackass shoving the long arm of the law up her uterus to decide for her.
This fundamental right has been settled law for nearly fifty years. It is ironic that most of the opposition to this right comes from within a political party which gives lip service to individual rights, and privacy. The leadership of that party asserts that there is 'no constitutional right to privacy' for women, as they make lifelong reproductive decisions. Then, without any visible awareness of the irony, claim there is a right of privacy for wealthy members of the plutocracy to conceal their identities as they buy our elections.
As is so often the case with so-called 'conservative' policy, those driving the change will be the least affected by it. If a wealthy woman, who happens to live in a repressive state, finds herself pregnant, she can simply travel for a few days to a state where individual rights are still respected, have her abortion, then return at her leisure. She will still have to endure the personal conflict of the choice to terminate her pregnancy, and of the procedure itself. But she will still have the privacy, and freedom of choice that is the foundation of Roe v. Wade.
Those who will be most devastated by this are poor women—single mothers and the working poor—for whom taking time away from her responsibilities, financing the travel to a more advanced state may be out of reach. She will be left without choice from which her wealthier counterpart still benefits.
The campaign behind this repeal is complex, and of long standing. The Republican Party—once the drapes are pulled—doesn't give a damn about unborn children, any more than they do about kids after they are born.
Knights of Columbus, jack-booted thugs intimidating those seeking care, or using bounty-hunting spies to clinics
Tucker Carlson took a brief break from cheerleading Putin's invasion of Ukraine Friday to comment on President Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson - claiming Biden chose her solely on her appearance (dog whistle alert - she's black).
Judge Jackson is one of the most qualified Supreme Court nominees in a generation. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, then graduated Harvard Law School cum laude (Note to Carlson's audience - those are GOOD things). She clerked for the Supreme Court, served as a public defender, vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commisssion, and has been a Federal district court judge, and most recently as a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes the nation's capital, and is considered the most important of the circuit courts.
Let's take a look at Mr. Carlson's resume. He was sent away to a boarding school in Switzerland when his father married an heiress to the Swanson frozen food empire ... but was kicked out. After an undistinguished college career, he tried to join the CIA, but was rejected. He has since had an undistinguished career at a Faux News network, spouting nonsense.
When he says Biden chose Judge Jackson solely because of her appearance, he is projecting. What he means is that he hates her for that ... as do many in his audience.
https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-says-joe-biden-chose-scotus-pick-basis-appearance-1682937
It is not the abject, obsequious followership expressed by the former occupant of the White House that is most dangerous; it is that fully one-third of Americans witness this lick-spittle kissing Putin’s ass, yet somehow still imagine him to be a leader.
If Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had possessed the strength of our Putin protégé, the Iron curtain would have ended up somewhere in the Atlantic.
Trump’s hold on his cult is strong; if he endorses this invasion, the members of that cult will just drag their knuckles and nod affirmatively. And Putin’s hold on Trump is strong; as long as Trump toes the line, Putin’s oligarchs won’t call in those hundreds of millions of dollars of bad loans - and may even help him assume office again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/trump-putin-russia-ukraine.html
NEVER FORGET!!
One year ago today, our nation's Capitol was violently invaded and occupied for the first time since the British army marched in and set it on fire in 1814.
This time it wasn't a foreign military force, but an insurrectionist mob; attempting a palace coup in support of a sitting president, who—for the first time in our nation's history—refused to yield power in a peaceful, dignified manner, after being decidedly beaten at the polls.
The mob had been whipped to a seething froth by the lie—repeated constantly, but without proof—that the election had been somehow 'stolen'. This lie persisted, despite the fact that the elections in many of the disputed states were managed by Republicans, and that no evidence whatsoever—then or now—has supported this fiction. But evidence means nothing in this case. This belief has more in common with cult ideology than with any rational position.
The British were chased out of the country soon after burning the Capitol in 1814, and the crisis passed. But last year's invaders—along with a large cohort throughout the country that was with them that day in every way but physically—still dwell among us. The lie that angered that mob continues to be promulgated, and believed. For Republican politicians, it has become a loyalty test to affirm this ludicrous claim. Loyalty to Donald Trump, and to this lie, has now replaced alignment on any principle, any issue ― or to reality. Any elected Republican who strays from this paranoid fantasy, risks alienating a core party constituency, dashing any hope of re-election. Few have been willing to risk it.
No, the danger is far from passed, and could well get far worse before it gets better. The faithful believe now as strongly as ever - even more so, as they see it ridiculed and systematically discredited. Cognitive dissonance leads true believers to cling ever more tightly to fantasy, as the grip of contradictory reality is tightened.
Voltaire wrote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." The seeds of danger are sown, germinated, and are thriving. How it will manifest is not entirely clear ... except that it will.
Coups d'état are no longer something that only happens elsewhere, in nations that lack strong institutions to prevent them. It clearly CAN HAPPEN HERE! It did, a year ago. We ignore this at our peril.
