Watched Senator Bill Cassidy of LA On Sunday. This is a Republican with whom I disagree on many subjects but I found good reason for his opinions on many more. He’s pro-life but he understands that the Texas laws on abortion are ludicrous. It’s unfortunate that people like Kristen Soltis Anderson and Chris Christie don’t see this. Christie babbles about following the desires of our founders for whom abortion was never an issue. Of course it was, they didn’t have contraception but humans have always had desire. He wants each state to have their own laws on abortion, which would create a chaotic nation in which people would be running to different states to get their abortions and would drag the nation back to the 1950’s and the deadly, illegal abortion trade.
Let’s face it, anti-abortion laws are the result of America’s Judeo/Christian religious history which has always sought to control women and their abilities to act for their own benefit. I do not understand women like Kristin Soltis Anderson who are seemingly intelligent but who are willing to act in opposition to their own best interests just to mollify the leaders of a political party. Is her job more important than some young girl bleeding to death after an illegal operation?
*****
With the Afghan withdrawal turning out to have very weak legs and the GOP’s desperate attempt to make it look like Biden rather than Trump is the villain of the COVID war, the big noise this week is all about the search for power on the political scene. Biden’s numbers are down, mostly due to the mess that was the first few days of the Afghan withdrawal and the obstinacy of many Americans about not getting vaccines, thereby driving infection numbers way up and slowing both health and economic recovery. But that’s not going to last any longer than uproar over the first two days of the withdrawal did. The GOP sees this just as clearly as everyone else so they are making their big power grab in the worst area they can find. They are actually trying to extend the plague and make it more deadly while trying to make us believe they are doing it for freedom’s sake. Really? Dead never looked that free to me.
*****
A lot of logical people find it shocking and demoralizing that the media has launched a full-scale attack on Joe Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan. Why? Well, the media has always been at the forefront of all our military misadventures. It’s the people by 70% not the media who support Biden’s pullout. War is always a great story. The media will tell us that the cost of the US occupation of Afghanistan has been light, but that’s only true if you are not one of the 2500 or so families that lost a son or a daughter. And by the way, it hasn’t been light for the Afghans who have lost over 200,000 during our failed experiment at nation building.
So it’s time for the NY Times and the Washington Post and especially the Wall Street Journal to cut the bullshit. War is never good for anybody except the ghouls who sell the guns. The last time we made the right move into a war was the day after Pearl Harbor. Since then it’s all been down hill.
*****
Okay, so we are at a point with the COVID virus that there is no longer any doubt how to stop it, treat it or protect against it, at least for those who still possess all their faculties and have not lost the ability to think logically. Sure, there’s a nut case presence out there that for whatever reason, refuses to accept that we are dealing with a deadly virus that has no political leanings and doesn’t care if you voted for Biden or Trump.
It’s fortunate that the majority of the people understand what we are dealing with and realize that there is no political component when you’re dealing with a disease; there is only the disease.
We have almost 250 years of laws in this country, the majority dedicated to protecting the health and safety of the citizenry. But when the president speaks of adding laws to protect the people of the nation, this minority of crazies goes off the deep end and starts babbling about mass protests, even as their elected officials issue mandates forbidding masks and vaccine to any in their state.
Right now the surge is being led by Greg Abbott, governor of Texas and current propagator of that silly state’s hallowed tradition of having the dumbest governor’s in the nation. We never thought we’d find one dumber than George Bush until Rick Perry left the governorship and became Trump’s Secretary of Energy without understanding that the job entailed control of our nuclear arsenal. I really thought that was going to hold the record for at least a century or so but now Greg has shown us what real stupidity looks like and all we can do is sit back and watch the Texas death toll shoot through the roof. Of course that will create a situation where there are many less dumb voters so it won’t be a complete negative.
*****
A county attorney in Minnesota has announced he will no longer prosecute traffic violations because of the recent murder of a black driver by a local police officer during a tail light stop. Yes, there is no question that this was a terrible occurrence but to stop enforcing the law because of it is really the illogical conclusion of a practicing idiot.
Ramsey County attorney John Choi has decided that the solution to the problem of police misconduct, if there was any in this case, is to encourage misconduct by citizens by not enforcing the law. I seem to remember doing a blog a while back on common sense. Mr. Choi obviously didn’t read it or if he did, it didn’t stick.
How about better training for the police, Mr. Choi? Choi’s reasoning runs like this. “I’m not going to do this anymore. I am not going to perpetuate these unjust practices that disproportionately impact my community.”
I wonder if Choi understands how his community will be impacted if we relax the laws that impact everyday behavior in our cities. All we have to do to understand the impact of such a process is to look at the American cities that have passed anti-bail legislation, which allows for felons who are candidates for bail to be released on their own recognizance. This is an example of the perfect piece of un-thought out legislation that we have produced this century. Our streets are now flush with repeat offenders that have been arrested 5, 10, even twenty times for the same offense who aren’t held and are freed to prey again and again on society. It’s different than Choi’s ideas of course but just as brain dead and dangerous. The easiest way to encourage crime and criminals is not to enforce the law. They are proving that right now in Portland.
******
Watching the tube on Sunday morning I was flooded by doctors and commentators responding to the nonsense of clowns like Governors Abbott of Texas and DeSantis of Florida, along with a plethora of other miscreants babbling about all the freedoms we are taking away from them by trying to keep them alive.
All the doctors, describing the situation, are very well mannered and respectful of the positions taken by a small company of denier idiots and I have not heard one refer to these fools as what they are, imbeciles. Maybe if we stop giving them respect and identify them as self-serving morons, we will somehow bring the conversation to the point of reality it needs to achieve to get to a result.
*****
Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin went at each other this Sunday and from where this guy is sitting it looked like Manchin made better points, especially when it came down to whether the bills should be attached or not. Bernie could not come up with a believable reason for tying the bills together. The fact that the President likes both or that Nancy Pelosi will find it easier to pass both together is not good enough.
The biggest point Manchin made was that we can pass the Reconciliation bill without the GOP but we must be smart about it. Right now it is set up to waste a lot of money. Maybe we can save some of that money if we take a short time to look at the bill a little closer. Maybe we should first find out how much money we can raise by fairly taxing corporations and the super rich, and then set up the Reconciliation bill to spend just that much money. It would be better than just putting together a bunch of programs, putting a price on each and then declaring that as the cost of the bill. It would certainly be smarter. Manchin can be a gross pain in the ass but he’s not stupid.
The fact that you can pass the infrastructure bill now if you shake the Reconciliation bill loose from it is, to my mind, more important. Get one in your pocket and then work on the other.