When the discussion turns to abortion, the big thing on the GOP side is whether it’s a state or a federal issue. That’s what they’re all fighting about, now. But that’s a ridiculous argument. The Democrats, knowing it’s ridiculous, are rooting for the GOP legislators to continue with the fight. Abortion is a national problem regardless of your views on State’s Rights. Last time anyone looked, there were women in every state involved with unwanted pregnancies. Making this a state problem instead of a federal one only confuses the issue and enlarges an already massive problem of pregnant women crossing state lines to avoid unfriendly abortion legislation.
There is only one solution to this problem, and it lies in firm, national legislation. The polling on the subject tells us that all Americans, by a huge margin, favor some type of legal abortion. That’s true whether we are speaking about the wildest liberals or even most aspects of the religious right. There will always be people who believe firmly that there should be no abortion for any reason just like there will always be people who believe in witchcraft. That doesn’t mean we should adopt it as national policy.
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Quite possibly for the first time in history, the leading candidates for both parties, Biden and Trump are facing large segments of their respective parties that don’t want them to run. I know this is going to piss a lot of Democrats off but from here it looks like the anti-Trump Republicans are a lot smarter than the anti-Biden Democrats.
Sure, Joe is old and maybe he has slowed down a bit, but Trump is no spring chicken, and is a proven sociopath who severely damaged the country with his antics, criminal and otherwise, while in the White House.
I am speaking on the subject of age on familiar ground as I am already quite a bit older than Biden, so I know how much we lose as age overtakes us. I am sure Joe has slowed down, but he has already proven that even at his advanced age he has been able to accomplish a hell of a lot more than any president we have had in a long time in this country. Even if he slows down a little he will still be way ahead of anyone we have had in the White House in even distant memory.
Sure, there are still a lot of things that need fixing in this country, but we have had such a bunch of losers in office over the last couple of decades that this was inevitable. Joe has done more problem solving in less time than anyone since FDR, and that was a long time ago.
I understand the wants of a significant segment of the party for younger blood in the White House. But maybe they should wait for another four years so that Joe can forge ahead and get more stuff done. Even if he doesn’t, based on what he has done so far, he will be much better than anything we have seen in a long time.
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It didn’t make a lot of noise but two arrests of foreign spy operations in the last week were really interesting. The first was of a Chinese operation that masked itself as a Chinese police station situated in lower Manhattan, very close to City Hall. Yes, the Chinese have offices around the country run by Chinese Police that do business like renewing licenses and that kind of stuff, but this one was hustling Chinese nationals who live in this country to work for them collecting information on certain American businesses. It was basic industrial espionage and it’s done all over the world by almost every country but rarely from one of their official operations.
The second was in St. Petersburg, Florida where members of the St. Petersburg city council were arrested for spying and creating false information that would cause confusion about upcoming elections. This is typical Russian malpractice, and they are considered very good at it. The theory being that any chaos they create will help the Russian competition with the U.S. No, it doesn’t seem like much but it’s just another form of annoyance that we have to deal with, and since we do, we might as well make it as hard on the foreign elements as we can.
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Books.
Quite possibly the most important objects in the intellectual life of our population. Now a bunch of ignorant clowns have decided that they have the right to tell anyone what books are okay to read and more important, which ones aren’t. I don’t understand the premise. What makes anyone think they have the right, let alone the duty to decide what we read? Books influence and inform us. They expand our worlds to include that which we might never discover. Some books influence us negatively, others inspire.
Now, like huge, cancerous growths we have groups like, “Moms for Liberty.” Obviously not understanding the concept of “liberty,” out there right now, proving by their choices, that they also don’t understand the concept of “literature.”
I watched this Sunday morning as one of their members babbled about being “angry, organized, and knowing their rights.” It’s very obvious that they have no interest in anyone else’s rights, and it’s just as obvious that they have no intellectual basis for their choices, not when you see some of the titles they have banned.
They seem to be all about motherhood, maybe because it’s a shield, but not understanding that it’s also a responsibility.
The threat here is that they will raise their children to be as ignorant as they are. Look, nobody wants their young children to be reading porn or the speeches of Donald Trump but it’s not Mrs. “Moms for Liberty’s” job to
decide what is good or bad for my kid to read. That’s my job and from what I heard from this gaggle of hens; they wouldn’t know how to do it anyway.
One of the beauties of living in a society that promotes free speech is it keeps ignorant groups like these from having the power to ban books while allowing them the right to vent their opinions about them.
It seems, however, that in some
circumstances, these groups have s been able to control library groups and school councils and actually have succeeded in having certain books removed from libraries.
When their scurrilous reach extends to books like Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple and, Of Mice and Men, the time has arrived to cut these cultural magots down like rotting asparagus.’