The Abortion Debate, Part 2, "Do Better"- 5/5/2022

I broke my network news fast last night. I decided with all this commotion about the Supreme Court overturning Roe V. Wade, that I wanted to see what some news people were saying. I heard one network person say the leaked draft has "sparked a national discussion", and another that "it has generated a national dialogue about abortion rights".

I watched some news last night. It won't become a habit.

 

Who are these people kidding? There is no dialogue. There is no discussion. Abortion advocates and everyday women are saying, "My body, my choice" and "Unless you have a uterus. you have no say in this matter." Basically, the argument is simply that it's none of our business. Others I saw on video clipped from Tik Tok on the Tucker Carlson Show, Fox News, threatened violence. Samuel Alito canceled an appearance this week, clearly because of the threat of violence, and I saw him mocked as a coward for doing so. In Los Angeles, California, I saw rioters busting a police car's windows. Amazingly, of all the states in the Union, California is probably the least likely to make abortions illegal of the fifty. I even saw that there's a California Senate Resolution under consideration that would use a combination of taxpayer and private funds to pay for abortions for women from other states where they may become illegal. But, hey, violence and insurrection are okay sometimes, it just depends what it's about.

Meanwhile, there would seem to be very little dialogue or discussion about where it is in the U.S. Constitution that the right to an abortion is protected, and very little discussion about the Roe V. Wade decision's merits, and no discussion, either, about the Mississippi case the court is deciding on. No, very little is an exaggeration, because there was no discussion about any of those three things. None. Not that I saw last night.

I know you don't want to hear it, but here it is. Whether abortion is legal or not, whichever way you lean, it is either in the U.S. Constitution, or it's not. Spoiler: I don't see it in there, not anywhere. The logic SCOTUS used in 1973 in rendering the Roe V. Wade decision was at best strained. Even Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg (RIP) was quoted with words to the effect that Roe V. Wade was flawed.

The Supreme Court's primary function is to be the final arbiter of constitutionality. Period. The state of Mississippi has passed a law that challenges the Roe V. Wade precedent, its authors drafting it knowing like I am telling you the Constitution doesn't say a thing about abortions. Not a thing. So here we are. Our founders established a Federal Government with limited powers. The U.S. Constitution outlines those powers and also imposes some restrictions on both State and Federal authority. When a specific authority is NOT granted the Federal Government, and where that specific authority isn't specifically granted to or denied to the various State governments, those issues are left up to the states. That's the lens SCOTUS is looking at this issue, contentious as it is, through.

I know a lot of people don't like it. Sorry. That's how I see it. In my own humble opinion, the reason I'm hearing that it's 'none of my business' and that 'if it's overturned there will be violence' and NOT hearing about 'the constitutionality of abortion rights' is that we all know it isn't in there. It just isn't.

If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the extremists, the ones who drew me and my opposition to unlimited abortion rights out of the shadows. They pushed and pushed and pushed until I became so uncomfortable with my own silence and indifference that this became an issue on my voting radar. If you want to change my mind, then be vocal about placing reasonable limits on abortion rights. Help move the issue to something that would truly be "safe, legal, and rare". It's not that. Only this week I learned that the 600,000 - 700,000 number of annual abortions in the USA (that ain't rare, people) doesn't include all 50 states, notable California's numbers aren't part of that as they're not reported. The real number is 900,000+. We're getting near 1,000,000 abortions a year.

Look, friends. I still tend to believe that if you decide to have an abortion it's between you and your doctor and God. I do. But when we are talking 900,000 in the USA alone annually, whether you like it or not, I'm going to take an interest. That number is astounding and I find it nothing short of bone chilling. You can tell me it's none of my business till you're blue in the face. It's perhaps the weakest argument I have ever heard. Roe V. Wade is a flawed ruling. The fact that it suits your preference doesn't make it a constitutionally correct ruling. And if abortion ISN'T protected by the U.S. Constitution, it is a state's issue. If you want it to be a Constitutionally protected right, then start lobbying for an Amendment to protect it. When you do, just some advice you don't want: telling me it's none of my business because I don't have a uterus won't stop me from voting against it. You need to do better. Unlimited abortion rights into the third trimester and up till birth for no reason other than 'choice' won't stop me from voting against it. And I promise you, violence against SCOTUS, or against cops in Los Angeles, California, won't stop me from exercising my right at the polls. See, not having a uterus or having one is no longer a determinant of the right to vote. I didn't lose it because I'm a guy. You want my vote? Do better than telling me to shut up and mind my business or threatening violence. Do better.

Women's Rights - 5/4/2022

I'm going to try to be as succinct as possible here. I know many of you reading this are unhappy that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) looks ready to toss Roe V. Wade as being a flawed decision. What follows is NOT an argument against abortion. Read that again . This blog post is NOT an argument against abortion. It is simply my thoughts on the ruling and why this is happening, and if you support a national referendum protecting abortion as a legal right, what has to happen next.

The Constitution simply doesn't protect abortion rights. It's not in there. It never was, Roe V. Wade didn't put it in there. It's not in there now. In 1973 SCOTUS ruled that abortion was constitutionally protected, but clearly, having read the US Constitution many times myself, I don't see it in there anywhere. I get it that you like the ruling and do not want it overturned, but if you read the text of the Constitution and the flimsy and flawed logic in the Roe V. Wade decision that was used to extrapolate abortion as a right, the only honest analysis will tell you the ruling was flawed. Abortion was never protected as a right in the nation by our founders, nor via any Constitutional Amendment subsequent to passage of the original U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade we're going to go to Washington and shut down the court, shut down the Capital, and we will force them to do the right thing." I hope you look good in orange.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade, we should pack the court and reverse the ruling that overturned it." Well, not for nothing, but unless and until you find a right to abortions in the U.S. Constitution (spoiler: you won't as it's written now), abortion rights will still only be protected by a flawed ruling. In order to protect abortion rights, the law of the land needs to be changed, not interpreted differently.

"If SCOTUS overturns Roe V. Wade, Congress and the Senate must pass a law making abortion legal and a protected woman's right and the President must sign it!" Wrong again. That new law wouldn't be constitutional. It would be challenged in the courts, and would wind up before the Supreme Court, very likely to be tossed out.

"We need to protect abortion rights in this country forever by passing a new Constitutional Amendment that does exactly that." Right there it is, my friends. That's the ticket. If you want abortion rights protected nationally, the right way to do it is to pass an Amendment that specifically does so. Yes, that is a long, hard road. So hard, in fact, it's really unlikely to ever pass. You've got to find two-thirds of the state assemblies to pass it. Good luck finding thirty-four states to pass it.

You've got to be shitting me.

One bit of advice if you want to move forward with an Amendment protecting abortion rights: if you're going to get it passed in the "swing states", you need to shut the extremists and the absolutists up. They are the reason I no longer stay on the sidelines. Just yesterday I saw a picture of a woman wearing a shirt that says, "I have had 21 abortions." My first thought? "What a disgusting, evil bitch!" My next thought was, "That can't be legal!" The prolific aborters, the absolutist aborters, the super late termers, and the 'let them die immediately at birth if they're unwanted' people won't help you to get it passed. I have no idea how you're going to get it all neatly back into a box labeled "Safe, Legal, and Rare", but if you're going to succeed, that's what you need to do.

The Abortion "Debate" - 5/3/2022

 

"What we have here is a failure to communicate"

I don't know when a fetus/baby in the womb is a person. My religious beliefs tell my it's at conception. That being the case, abortion is tantamount to, if not literal murder. But since I believe this is based on my religious beliefs, I have been loathe to impose the belief on other people. Oddly, though, aren't most of our laws predicated at some basic level upon religious beliefs? Lying, stealing, and murder. Aren't those based on religious law? At least originally? I think so.

But hey. We can't talk about that. The uproar and furor from abortion advocates this morning is about women's rights, specifically, a woman's right to choose. The arguments are parallel and never intersect. Only if you agree to both, one way or the other, is there harmony. If one does NOT believe abortion is murder, then one can with a good conscience agree that a woman has a right to choose whether to abort "it" or not. And if one DOES believe abortion is murder, then one can only agree a woman does NOT have a right to choose. This is what I'll call a "nary the twain shall meet" situation.

Back in the day, not all that long ago, there was a viability discussion. At least this put down a marker that one could argue that before viability it's NOT murder, and afterward, then it IS murder. But abortion activists have pushed and pushed and pushed, and now we're talking abortions all the way to term. I've even seen some advocating unwanted children should be allowed to perish AFTER birth. That's evil, I don't care what you believe. On the other side of the coin, medical science continues to advance, and babies in the womb further and further from full term can be kept alive. This has created a continuous shortening of the length of time a woman would have to choose before the point of viability is reached.

As long as we stay on 'nary the twain shall meet streets', this issue will never be resolved to the satisfaction of one side or the other. It becomes win-lose or lose-win ONLY. When is the baby a person? At conception: it's hard to argue that this belief is predicated on something other than religious morality. Full term: there is no argument for full term/late term abortion that can be justified as NOT murder. So why did they walk away from viability? I don't know. I really don't. I guess it is simply that enough is never enough. Once the idea that it is a woman's right to choose is fully embraced and worn as a protective shield, then consideration for the rights of the baby becomes a non-subject. The lines don't intersect.

I will be very interested to read the Supreme Court ruling, whatever it is in the end. Will the decision reside solely on one street, or strictly on the other, or will the court have found an intersection that I can't see or foresee?

Parting note: Leaking a draft Supreme Court ruling as a means of influencing or swaying the ruling is unprecedented and at odds with the process. Saying it is acceptable because Merrick Garland was not seated by the Republican led Senate is NO DIFFERENT than justifying interference with the Electoral College on Jan 6, 2021 was acceptable because Donald Trump was cheated in the election of 2020. There is no difference and if you say one is OK but the other is not you're acting as a partisan. In that regard I do mean either. They're either both OK or both NOT OK. There's no in between.

Canceling Student Loan Debt (quick hitter) - 5/1/2022

Newsflash: They (Democrats) don't care if Conservatives and Republicans oppose canceling student debt. We are irrelevant. Absolutely and totally. So complain all you want. They don't care. We aren't going to vote for them and their election prospects in November are weak.

This is pure political calculus and the votes they're looking to sway were never, aren't, and never will be ours. This is to sway mostly younger voters with student debts and to mollify the progressive far left, who are unhappy that President Biden's (The Endless Weekend at Bernie's President) agenda hasn't been bold enough.

They're buying votes with our money. That's the bottom line. They know we know that's what they're doing and they don't care, because they hold the power levers and they're desperate.

End of quick hitter.

Have I Moved Further to the Right? - 4/30/2022

Elon Musk tweeted a meme showing the shifting sand of the political spectrum moving to the left, and while he doesn't feel he himself has changed, how not only has he gone from center-left to center-right, but he also shows the far left now mocking him as a bigot.

Elon's meme

The meme has been responded to by the left with many, many claiming that the right has moved further to the right. I have also seen excuses made for the left's lurch, claiming that the left hasn't really moved at all, it is just hostage to the far left wing of the party, and have been hijacked leftward. Listen up, dumbasses. Hijacked left and held hostage there is still moved left. You can't be over there and say it's not your fault. That don't cut it with me. Be honest or shut the f*** up.

This is really what they think. I say, no. Hell no.

The meme did make me think, and left me analyzing my own self. Have I moved to the right? I think the answer is that in some ways, yes, and ion others, no. Let me give you a couple of examples.

First, abortion. I have always been 100% personally opposed to abortion. But I believed that my opposition was based on my religious beliefs, and if someone else made that choice, in my opinion it was between that person and God. It was legal and basically none of my business. I never liked it, nor supported it. I objected any and every time tax dollars would be used for abortions. I have always been uncomfortable that the bullshit phrase, safe, legal, and rare was used while 600,000 - 700,000 babies were being aborted annually in the US alone. Abortion has become a form of birth control and in that regard I despised it, but left it between those having the abortion and God and kept my mouth shut.

Michelle Wolf's "salute to Abortion" infuriated me to my core.

Then along came Michelle Wolf, who prior to this was unknown to me. She did a song and dance routine which was essentially a Fourth of July style parade celebrating the joys of abortion. It rocked my sould and my conscience. I was furious and angry, mostly at myself for my tolerance of killing babies. This wasn't the important personal decision, something safe, legal, and rare that I had been tolerating. This was disgusting anf totally unacceptable. My sensibilities were offended. Deeply. Permanently.

The New York Senate passed, then disgustingly cheered passing a law that legalized abortions all the way up till 9 months.

On Jan 22, 2019, the NY Senate passed a late term abortion bill that allowed abortions in NY up till the baby came to term. That was bad enough. Then the savage baby-killers stood and cheered. At that moment I no longer supported a woman's bullshit right to choose. The baby-killers had moved so far out to the fringe, treated killing babies so callously and so casually, even celebrating it, not just in entertainment like the disgusting Michelle Wolf, but in what should be a dignified setting, the New York Senate. They lit the Empire State Building up in pink, just for good measure. Disgusting.

Did I move to the right? I guess I did. But why? Because the left lurched so far and so appallingly left that I became absolutely and totally uncomfortable to be their accomplice any longer.

I support building a wall AND I am pro-immigration. I'm pro LEGAL immigration and anti-illegal immigration. It's not that complicated and they're not conflicting positions.

Another issue that is telling about my perceived move to the right has everything to do with Trump's famous and infamous "Build the wall" stuff. Immigration is and always has been an important hallmark of the United States of America as a nation and as an idea. I support immigration. However, I detest illegal immigration, and I blame politicians from both sides of the aisle in Congress for not reforming immigration law. We need immigrants for our work force. Period. What we also need, however, is vetting of immigrants. This illegal shit, where within the millions coming over illegally are criminals, drugs and human traffickers, is totally unacceptable. It had to and has to stop. I figured if Trump got his wall, then the onus would be squarely on the back of Congress to do it's job and put reformed immigration laws on the books that would end, or at least nearly end the illegal flow by making a legal entry possible. 

So, while my support for the wall was described as racist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and all the other phobes, the truth is it was simply a pragmatic decision on my part to support the wall as hopefully a means toward immigration reform. Fat chance. Trump and all his supporters like me have been vilified and characterized as racists and bigots and pointed out as extremists. Well, call me names all you want, I'm not. I want immigration reform and I am and have been disgusted and unhappy with Congress for not reforming US immigration law. The wall was and is, in my opinion, a last resort because our elected officials refuse to do their jobs. They seem to find benefit in the division and refrain from addressing it. They'd rather incite the base by arguing the issue than to do their job and fix it. That doesn't make me a bigot and it didn't move me to the right at all.

The First Amendment - 4/29/2022

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." - The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment is at risk here.

The Biden Administration is establishing a “Board of Disinformation Governance” under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a Federal law enforcement and security agency. "Federal" as in FUNDED BY THE US CONGRESS.

The DHS protects us from bad guys. Now that will include people who stray from leftist government narratives.

Just when I thought I couldn't possibly despise the left any more, they come at us with a totalitarian speech police force, which under communist and other dictatorships would be more accurately named the "Ministry of Truth" or "Ministry of Propaganda". I'm thinking Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Hussein, and all the other despots and evil villains of the last century are now being mimicked my our own government, a government which owes its existence to the premise that Freedom of Speech is a God given and inalienable right, and which, in its aforementioned Constitution, established our government as guarantor and protector of speech and other rights.

This all came about because the left had been using Facebook, Google, and Twitter to control discourse in our country. Those platforms became the modern town square, but since they weren't owned and operated by the U.S. Government (supposedly and or ostensibly), could do the dirty work of denying political opponents of the left an equal voice. All of these tech giants tilt way left, way, way left. I have read and heard some lying lefties claim they tilt right, but those saying that are lying or delusional. I personally think they're liars, but that's me.

I, along with many thousands of others, including the President of the United States, was kicked off Twitter on Jan 8, 2021, the day of the big purge. The small number of you who have followed this blog will I hope remember that I disagreed with and objected to the Jan 6th protests in Washington which supposedly were the catalysts for the big Jan 8 Twitter purge in which I was cancelled. I was not given even a hearing of any sort, not told what rule I had violated. I was neither given a warning, nor an opportunity to delete any offending tweet(s). I was purged with Trump. Period. The left was happy. They had a speech police in place in the form of big tech.

Twitter, Facebook, and Google, each in slightly different ways, but each in concert with the others, helped shape political discourse in our country in several ways. They banned and blocked voices that spoke up in opposition or disagreement with their own homogeneous political perspective. They tamped down the reach of voices with which they disagree using algorithms that reduce the number of interactions those voices have with their friends and followers. They use those same algorithms to increase the exposure of and the number of interactions with voices which did/do align with their political views. They make content rise to the top or sink deep down below in searches to either increase or decrease exposure to them, respectively. And lastly, they use extremely biased "fact checkers" to post warnings on information with which they disagree.

Elon Musk bought Twitter and, OMG, is going to make it a free speech platform!

Then Elon Musk bought Twitter and had the audacity to commit to Free Speech. One leg of their big tech three-legged stool of discourse control, Twitter, might no longer help control narratives. People with whom the left disagrees might soon be allowed to speak our minds. This cannot be! It must not be allowed! It must be stopped! Before I go further, let me state unequivocally, what Facebook, Google, and Twitter were doing was NOT a First Amendment violation. At least not unless we find out that they were doing it at the behest of or as agents for the U.S. Government. But even if not a violation of the First Amendment, it was NOT free speech, and it WAS/IS a form of censorship. That's why I would have First Amendment concerns if the U.S. Government or U.S. Government officials are found to have been sponsors of or participants in  it.e

So, Musk bought Twitter and vowed to return it to being a free speech platform. The meltdown on the left has been mind boggling, and is really proof that they knew all along that the public square free discourse deck was stacked heavily in their favor. They deserve the ugliest of meltdowns, exposing themselves and the sham in all its disgusting glory. I was thinking, good for them, rotten bastards that they are. Cry, babies. Cry your goddamned eyes out. Bastards!

President Biden's new Minister of Truth is a propagandist. Period.

Almost immediately the Biden Administration announced its Board of Disinformation Governance, and to make matters worse, President Biden named Nina Jankowicz, someone who, for example, denied the Hunter Biden laptop story, which we now know was 100% true, as being disinformation. She is a professional liar and highly partisan actor. The last thing our country needs is such a partisan with law enforcement authority controlling dialogue and making her partisan determinations what speech is acceptable and which will be countered by the US Government law enforcement Department of Homeland Security.

We all need to make our voices heard. This new government entity is unacceptable and totally unconstitutional. Democrats ought to be as outraged as Republicans over this development, and add in as embarrassed as hell over it, to boot. Call and write to your Congressman or Congresswoman. Call or write to your Senator. Call the White House switchboard. Write to your local newspaper. Talk about it and keep talking about it and if they try to stop us from talking about it, all the more reason for us to talk about it more, and louder still.

This new Board of Disinformation Governance is an ugly stain on US history. It is an affront to our Freedom of Speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If the Biden Administration continues forward with this, it needs to go through the courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, and to be tossed out into the street on its ear.

Gas Prices - 3/4/2022

 

At Thorntons at Hurstbourne and I-64 in Louisville, yesterday. it was $4.29.9 for the cheap stuff.

A funny thing about gas prices and blaming or excusing President Biden's Administration's impact on gas prices. There is no doubt that geo-political events affect fuel prices. I never said they don't. And yes, supply and demand impacts prices. I never said either of those things didn't impact prices.

Joe Biden and his Administration came straight out of the gate shutting down pipelines, closing public lands to drilling, squeezing frackers, and in general putting a lid on US production. This didn't necessarily decrease supply, it simply shifted the same demand to places overseas, in particular to Russia. And now, whilst the left wants to blame Trump for our troubles with Russia and the problem in Ukraine, despite the fact that Russia annexed Crimea while Obama-Biden were in power, and waited until Biden-Harris were in power to invade Ukraine, somehow you contend that this geo-political mess is Trump's fault. Oh, brother!

Sorry, excuse makers. By letting Green Dealers drive his policies President Biden had a hand in U.S. production decreases AND his perceived weakness was surely a factor in the messy world situation at hand, either directly or indirectly. He owns a big chunk of this. He's your guy, you support his energy policies even as we're NOT ready for electric or super efficient gas vehicles on the grand scale that our transportation needs demand? Own it.