Trump 2024: Abort!

As with so many things, Donald Trump tried to have it both ways on the abortion issue.

He put out a video statement expressing pride in being instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade and also advocating that whatever the people of the fifty states decide on abortion for their own jurisdictions should be the law in the respective states, refusing to endorse a national abortion ban. His attempt to please everyone pleased no one.  But his insistence that the federal government should let the people of each state decide - what Illinois senator Stephen Douglas once called "popular sovereignty" in defending the right of the people to decide whether their states should allow slavery - was a defensible position.

Until it wasn't.

Right after Trump made that statement, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an extremely restrictive  abortion law passed in the state in 1864 - when Arizona was still a territory and before women could vote - is enforceable.  As soon as the decision was handed down, Trump said that Arizona had gone too far and urged the state legislature to repeal it.  Which isn't possible, as Republicans in the Arizona legislature blocked an effort to do so.  So much for popular sovereignty.      

Trump had no problem with the right so the states to decide on abortion until Arizona made a decision he didn't like.  When Stephen Douglas said that the people in the territories had a right to decide whether to enter the Union as free states or slave states and Kansas voted to become a free state, did Douglas object to the decision?  No.  Even though he curried support from Southerners for his presidential ambitions and even though he and his Southern wife owned a plantation in Mississippi, he stood by Kansas' decision to enter the Union as a free state - and it cost him Southern support, support from President James Buchanan and, ultimately, the Presidency.  Say what you will about Stephen Douglas - racist, craven politician, bad senator - no one ever said he was inconsistent, which is what Donald Trump has been for all of his political life.

There's another difference between Trump and Douglas.  When there was an insurrection shortly after Abraham Lincoln became President, Douglas famously called for all patriotic Americans to "rally 'round the flag."  And Trump . . . you know the rest. 

Step It Up, Joe

The sudden disasters affecting Donald Trump, which I covered in my post before last, have certainly helped President Joe Biden in his efforts to win a second term and keep Trump out of the White House, but it's hardly going to be enough.  Biden faces headwinds within his own base, with young people, Muslims and Arab-Americans - who make up a large part of the Democratic electorate in the crucial state of Michigan - angry over his Israel-Gaza policy, as well as with blacks and Hispanics, and he may face more serious headwinds from progressives if he tries to add additional security to the southern border by executive order without the guarantee of a payoff in the form of getting Ukraine any aid.  And so many Democrats are getting dispirited with Biden even as Trump's base remains committed to their cult leader that the only wind at Biden's back, so far, is his own.

That stinks. 

David Ignatius of the Washington Post has a column out suggesting that President Biden take whatever action he can on Israel, Ukraine and the border - that is, respectively, stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu on his prosecution of the war against Hamas, find a way with House Democrats to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson and get aid to Ukraine, and issue executive orders to crack down on migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the Squad be damned.

Some of Ignatius's column must have gotten through to the White House.  CNN reports that the United States is promoting a new United Nations draft resolution to call for a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and is also planning to warn the Israelis against aground incursion into Rafah, where displaced Palestinians are now staying.  President Biden, still undecided as to what he can do, if anything, to shame Speaker Johnson into allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, is announcing tomorrow sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin for being responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.   Navalny (below) was the brightest hope for a permanently democratic Russia (as opposed to the temporarily democratic Russia that Boris Yeltsin led in the 1990s), and his death has caused that hope to fade rapidly.  Biden's proposed additional sanctions would be in concert with the condemnation of Navalny's murder that has come from every major world figure.

Except for Donald Trump, who compared Navalny's torture and murder to his own legal indictments.

There are other issues Ignatius overlooked.  Biden has to find another way to promote his domestic successes, like cheaper insulin, even as he has to stop promoting economic successes that not enough voters feel ("Bidenomics" is the worst one-word slogan conceived since "Fahrvergnügen").  He also needs to remind voters that he ended the COVID pandemic in this country with his wise, prudent approach to the disease.  He should also point out that he successfully pushed through legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.  And there are other issues I could mention as well, like, oh, I don't know, infrastructure projects?

One of the biggest issues working in his favor is abortion, yet Biden, the second Catholic U.S. President, is reportedly uncomfortable talking about it.  He'd better start getting comfortable about it.  More Roman Catholic voters actually favor Trump over Biden than the other way around, so even as Biden shouldn't be afraid of offending conservative Catholics whose votes he doesn't have a prayer - literally - of getting anyway (like all of the Catholics on the Supreme Court not named Sonia by their mothers), he, as a Catholic, should be able to espouse a pro-legal-abortion stance as a medical issue so no one gets the idea that all Catholics are, well, the bad guys.

And we'd hate for that to happen.

Look, Pope John Paul II found out the hard way that freeing Poland and Lithuania from communism wasn't going to convince everyone that he was a good guy, so Joe Biden, knowing that he can't please everyone, should just come out and declare his personal opposition to abortion while expressing point-blank his even greater opposition to imposing his personal beliefs on others.  Many Catholics won't like that.  Some pro-choice non-Catholics may be even more hostile to that message, as Catholic politicians who adhere to their faith in their personal lives even as they may contradict it in their political lives get no brownie points from the Vatican's critics outside the Church.  But the vast majority of voters would be pleased to find a Catholic President who is broadminded enough to accommodate other points of view on the topic of abortion, and it would go a long way toward defusing the growing anti-Catholicism I see in this country; I mean, how is it that some of the most vocal critics of Islamophobia have no problem dismissing Catholics offended by assaults on their own faith as a bunch of intolerant fools, when Islam is just as patriarchal and socially conservative as Catholicism, if not more so?

As for the need for Biden to get out and engage with the voters, I don't fear that he won't do so.  Remember, the only reason he didn't engage with the voters so much in 2020 was because of that crazy little thing called COVID.  But when he does get out, President Biden needs something he can engage voters with.  This blog, and David Ignatius's column, offer constructive suggestions on what Biden can bring to the campaign trail.  

By the Time She Makes Albuquerque . . .

 . . . she'll be a criminal in Texas.

Kate Cox is a woman in Texas who has sought a legal abortion there to preserve her uterine viability (I'm hoping I am saying that right) and so she doesn't have to bear a baby that will either be stillborn or die shortly after birth, given the baby's rare genetic condition.  Carrying the baby to term might render her infertile, and she wants more children in addition to the two she and her husband have.

That was good enough for a Texas court, but not good enough for Texas attorney general and all-around scumbag Ken Paxton, who threatened to prosecute her if she went ahead with the abortion, without regard to what the lower court said, and the state Supreme Court has also shown disregard for what what the lower court said, overturning that ruling last night and having the final say.  The joke's on them - Mrs. Cox has fled the state and gone for an abortion in a state where it's legal, though that means she can still be prosecuted as a legal resident of Texas under state law.  Now, I'm not certain about this, but I believe her husband and likely be charged as an accessory to a crime.

Given Mrs. Cox's condition, the most likely state she went to for the procedure is New Mexico, the only state that borders Texas in which abortion is still legal, but she could have easily gone to Kansas (which codified abortion as a right in its state constitution) or California.  Note that she has not made public her destination.  That of course, is to be expected, since states with strict abortion bans can be expected to deal with runaway patients most severely.  Abortion rights activists are going to have to start an underground highway to ferry patients to clinics in states where the procedure is legal.  But not an underground railroad - you know how Americans these days think passenger rail is a waste of time.

All right, I am showing my gallows humor there, but this is indeed serious.  Women are not only being told how to manage or care for their own bodies, they're being restricted, like slaves in the antebellum era, from going anywhere they please - when they are are pregnant and in need of medical care at that.  If state governments can place travel restrictions on pregnant women who decide on an abortion for health reasons, what's to stop the U.S. government under Trump 47 from doing the same - or, for that matter, what's to stop Trump as President from restricting travel outside the United States . . . because to allow anyone to leave and possibly not come back would only prove that he had not made America great again and he can't have that?  

Trump won't just build border walls to keep people out - he'll build them to keep people in.  Don't be surprised if, some time, in some future with another Trump administration, you reach the Canadian border on the 49th parallel on your way to freedom and confront something like this.

Remember the Berlin Wall?  Remember what happened to East Berliners who tried to scale it to escape the German "Democratic" Republic's "worker's paradise?"

America: The Nervous Breakdown Continues

The 2023 elections continued a winning streak for Democrats that began with Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory and continued with the midterm results of 2022.  Andy Beshear was re-elected governor of Kentucky, Democrats won both houses of Virginia's legislature and expanded their majorities in the houses of the New Jersey state legislature, and abortion rights were enshrined in the state constitution in Ohio.  Many people think the MAGA movement is in retreat at the polls.  Don't you believe it.

The Republicans still have the advantage going into 2024.  Forget the polls that show Trump ahead of Biden, and forget especially the greater number of polls that show Biden ahead of Trump, which Biden himself alluded in a testy exchange with a "reporter" from Fox "News."   Here are the basic reasons why 2024 is still in tap to be a Republican year:

• Democrats face strong headwinds to keep their Senate majority.
• U.S. House districts are still gerrymandered. 
• Many voter-suppression laws remain on the books.  
• Voter turnout in off-year elections is low and cannot be used as an effective barometer for midterm or presidential elections.
• The Electoral College can still negate the will of the people if they pick a Democratic President, as the 2016 election so clearly proved.
• Support for abortion rights in Republican states like Ohio do not automatically translate into support for Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

Change these conditions, and the Democratic Party's fortunes can improve.  But as such changes are not likely to happen, even the rosiest outlook on the economy might not save Biden this time.

And there's not just the threat of a third-party candidate playing the role of spoiler to help Trump.  There's the threat of four of them.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is now a leading choice among young voters, and his anti-Semitic and anti-vaccine comments haven't hurt him as an independent candidate.  His appeal among young people might actually hurt Biden.  Cornel West has quit as the Green Party presidential nominee and continued to run as an independent, while Jill Stein - yes, the same Jill Stein who was the Green Party presidential nominee in 2016 and failed to win a 5 percent minimum of the vote to qualify the Green Party for matching funds in the 2020 presidential election - is taking his place on the Green ticket.  And the No Labels movement, which has promised to run a bipartisan presidential/vice presidential ticket, might have a presidential nominee in waiting in the form of Joe Manchin.

The senior senator from West Virginia announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and plans to tour the country to listen to voters needs - an obvious precursor to a presidential run, and possible as the No Labels candidate.  To be fair, No Labels' director, former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, has said that No Labels will not field a presidential ticket if researching and polling show that such a ticket would help Trump, but there will still be at least three other presidential candidates on the ballot who could and probably will screw things up for Joe Biden.

At least.  There could be more candidates.  Some people are still talking about Oprah Winfrey for President, while others are talking about her as a vice presidential No Labels candidate.  And still, waiting in the wings, and being taken very seriously, even by esteemed newsmen such as CNN's Jake Tapper, is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Oh, honey, I think America is having a nervous breakdown like you wouldn't believe! 

Oh yeah, in Mississippi, Democrat Brandon Presley - a distant cousin of Elvis - lost his bid for the state's governorship to incumbent Republican Tate Reeves despite Reeves being tainted by scandal.  Brandon has just left the building.  Another Brandon is likely to leave the White House a year and change from now.

One?

Issue One, a referendum on the state constitution of Ohio that precedes a second referendum in November on whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, is up for a vote tomorrow.   The abortion referendum is expected to get 58 percent of the vote.

However, the referendum up for a vote tomorrow - in literally the middle of summer, when a lot of people aren't paying attention - would raise the minimum majority for a referendum to change the state constitution to pass to 60 percent.

Republicans who crafted this referendum for a dastardly end run around the will of the people in the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus - whose domeless rotunda, as seen above, looks incredibly weird - are counting on their base to come out strong tomorrow while running misleading ads pertaining to transsexual issues and education issues related to non-heterosexual perspectives to get independents to vote for Issue One.  I haven't seen any polls showing where the vote to raise the bar for popularly amending the Ohio state constitution stands, but Democrats have their work cut out for them to fend off this referendum.  Organizing Democrats is like herding cats, whereas Republicans organize themselves like a K-9 police unit organizes its German shepherds - with ruthless efficiency.

We are indeed living in scary times.  The people who dreamed up this idea will do anything to prevent their right-wing agenda from being thwarted, so they can continue to do nasty things like criminalize abortion, scale back voting rights, privatize public amenities, and burn more of the fossil fuels that cause climate change, which causes severe weather.

Speaking of which, my area in New Jersey is expected to get thunderstorms today.  Thanks, Big Oil. 

P.S.  Hey, Ohio Republicans: Focus more on immediate concerns, like getting a dome for your Statehouse!   

Latter Days

At the annual Nuremberg rally - er, Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Trump revealed the Coming of the Apocalypse by declaring to be the "warrior, justice and retribution" of all those patriots and defenders of the state who have been sinned and libeled against by the radical left.

Also, at the same underattended conference, 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, speaking to a bunch of empty chairs,  made a statement that was as well reported as the conference was attended.  She said that "wokeism" is a virus more deadly than a zoonotic virus of any pandemic.  This is going on while anti-abortion governors crack down on abortion pill distribution.  Walgreens has already decided not to offer abortion pills in at least twenty states. 

And though black women like April Ryan and Zerlina Maxwell say it's up to the sistas to save America, Fani Willis, the one sista who could actually do that by indicting Trump for illegal interference in the 2020 Georgia presidential electoral college vote, might not get that chance.  A bill quickly circulating through the Georgia state legislature will give the state government the authority to remove district attorneys like Willis for abuse of power, defined as "black women who investigate and obviously hate white men."  This racist bill will allow Trump to escape indictment in the one slam-dunk case against him, although he says he will continue running for President if he's indicted to fulfill his promise of destroying the bleeding-heart liberals who want to make us give up our American way of life.

This is happening as the Florida state legislature may consider a bill "canceling" the Florida Democratic Party for its support of racism . . . in the 1850s and 1860s - while Ron DeSantis continues to ban black history from being taught in schools . . . even in February. 

And in Tennessee, the governor has singed a bill outlawing drag shows, which will likely punish cable providers with fines and imprisonment for their corporate officers if they air "RuPaul's Drag Race" in the state.  (Yeah, and maybe they'll ban Hillary Clinton from visiting Tennessee for being a drag king - those pantsuits!)  The RuPaul program, a celebration of drag-queen culture, is a favorite of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who, to the Make America Great Again crowd, is an obvious obstruction to their agenda, and she is clearly un-American for her solidarity with transsexuals and for her environmentalist agenda, and of course every true-red MAGA Republican knows what a threat to the Republic AOC and Jennifer Lopez are as Puerto Rican women for their solidarity with undocumented immigrants as well as J-Lo's anti-American, pro-migrant, indecent 2020 Super Bowl halftime show performance, the likes of which are likely to be banned in Tennessee if the Super Bowl is ever held in the state. 

I just have one question . . .

When did this country suddenly become Utah?

The last days are here.  Blow your trumpet (or your harmonica), son. 

2022 Midterms - The Aftermath

There are many takeaways from the 2022 midterms, which surprised me by how they turned out - and did not turn out:

Red Puddle: The red wave I and many others feared didn't materialize.  Democrats have so far preserved most of their caucus in the House and may yet keep the majority, but Republicans are closer to grabbing it.

Roe, Roe Roe the Vote: Abortion turned out to be as big a deal as it was originally expected to be.  That's because the polls didn't take first-time voters into account, and they didn't factor into prognostications of the midterms because they hadn't voted before and therefore hadn't been part of past voting trends.  Abortion, however, wasn't strong enough to flip Republican seats in the Senate to the Democrats . . . except for one.   

Fettermania!  John Fetterman (below) defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz for returning Republican Senator Pat Toomey's U.S. Senate seat.  The same pundits who doubted Fetterman's strategy and his post-stroke viability and spoke embarrassingly of his debate performance now say the Fetterman ran a great campaign by speaking plainly and honestly on the issues, being comfortable in his own skin (and his own sweatpants), and connecting with working-class voters.  Fetterman is the first Democrat to win this Senate seat since 1962, when Richard Nixon held his famous "Last Press Conference" after being rejected in a gubernatorial election in California.  Fetterman did have to make one sacrifice; now that he's going to be a U.S. Senator, he needs a suit and a tailor.

Money Talks, But It Can't Sing and Dance: And it can't buy you love, either.  After all of the big bucks spent on the 2022 midterms - the most expensive misterm election campaign ever (at least until 2026, most likely) - the results have left Congress pretty much the same way as it was before.     

WOLVERINES!: The Democrats flipped the Michigan state legislature while holding on to the governorship, the Attorney General's office and the secretary of state's office.  Michigan turned so blue that when you see it on a political map, you won't know where the state ends and where the Great Lakes begin.

RIP Florida Democrats:  How does a state Democratic Party get as their opponents in the 2022 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections a pair of scumbags like Marco Rubio, who proposes repealing the prescription drug-price control law, and Ron DeSantis, who spends half of his time trying to censor teachers and deny the existence of gays - and then blow both elections? Six-letter word for Florida Democratic Party leadership, rhymes with "Cupid" . . .

Crist Crossed Out: The attempts of Democrats at winning back the governorship of Florida go like this - nominate a Democratic rising star, lose to the Republican candidate, blackball the former rising star; nominate Charlie Crist four years later, lose to the incumbent Republican; nominate another Democratic rising star, lose to the Republican candidate, blackball the former rising star; nominate Charlie Crist four years later, lose to the incumbent Republican . . . I have a feeling that the Democrats in Florida may change their strategy by forfeiting 2026 so they can lose the Florida governorship in 2030.  Just don't expect a third Charlie Crist Democratic gubernatorial candidacy - he lost to DeSantis by twenty points.  Even Florida Democrats aren't that crazy! It would be like repeatedly sending Debbie Wasserman Schultz back to the House after she screwed up the 2016 presidential election . . . 

Okay, bad example!

Democracy Is Safe . . .  For now, anyway.  The high voter turnout was inspiring at a time when many people thought Americans no longer cares about saving democracy, but some election deniers won their own elections - and Kari Lake may yet win the governorship of Arizona.

They'll be back.

And so will I, to focus on a couple of other elections and related issues more closely.              

What America Doesn't Care About

President Biden gave a speech yesterday on the right to abortion and the need to keep it legal at a time when James Carville and Bernie Sanders are saying that Democrats should be talking more about the economy.

In a New York Times / Siena poll released on Monday, the economy and inflation were the top concerns among people surveyed, 26 percent an 18 percent, respectively.  Abortion was a top concern of only 5 percent of voters.  And the Republicans have an edge on economic issues.

So Biden is talking about anything but the economy.  I get the impression that this is the reaction most Americans have to Biden's comments on anything not related to the economy:

Don't get me wrong, I think it sucks that women's rights are under assault.  I also think it sucks that contraception, gay marriage, and possibly interracial marriage could be revisited by the Supreme Court.  But when it comes down to the nitty-grity, even the left-of-center suburban women Biden was trying to rally will vote Republican.  Remember that white rap song from 1985 performed by Jim Belushi and Pamela Sue Martin on "Saturday Night Live?"  "I'm liberated, I joined NOW / I voted for Reagan anyhow / Because his tax and budget cuts / Will hurt other people - but not us!"

In the end, Americans by and large don't care about the assault on the rights of this . . . 

. . . or this . . . 

. . . or this.

Okay, maybe a lot of them do.  But the thing Americans will always care about the most is this:

 

That's why, in 2016 (and possibly once again in 2024), they chose (and may again choose) this.

See you 'round the clubs.

Saving Reproductive Rights - It's Up To WHOM?

The Democrats?

Excuse me? When, in the last four decades and change, have the Democrats been able to anything of any lasting value?  I mean, other than the Affordable Care Act?  Virtually everything Bill Clinton and Barack Obama accomplished in their respective presidential administrations got rolled back almost immediately by their Republican successors.   They were always hesitant to suggest defense cuts, increasing child-care spending, gas tax increases, or other ideas that would would make this country a better place to live.  And when it came to reproductive rights, it went like this: Make a mealy-mouthed statement in favor of reproductive rights, refer to abortion itself in equally pablum-like language, and change the subject.

I can't believe this is the same Democratic Party that, between 1932 and 1978, won eight out of twelve presidential elections and won control of 22 out of 24 Congresses.

I opined way back in 2004 on this blog about how the term "pro-choice" attempted to neutralize the mere thought of abortion, but the "right to choose" could easily refer to whether you choose a sedan or an SUV.  (That's another right that's disappearing, but that's a different issue.)  The "right to choose" could be choosing to go to Cape Cod or the Delmarva Peninsula for a weekend trip, or buying pants at Macy's or JC Penney.  President Biden, as the nation's second Catholic President, had avoided the issue until the conservative majority on the Supreme Court (comprised entirely of Catholics) left him with no choice to address it.  (That is, Biden lost his right to choose to remain silent on the issue.)  And as for the right to choose abortion, well, the Democrats thought the Republicans were just using abortion as aw edge issue.  Certainly they weren't serious about getting it overturned! 

That's because the Democrats ignored what conservative activists were doing for nearly fifty years. Which, again, is why they didn't even bother to codify the Roe decision when they had the chance.

Democrats hope to preserve their congressional majorities with strong support from "pro-choice" voters, but who's to say that abortion-rights voters will even show up at the polls when they can't trust the party of abortion rights to follow through on their promises?  As for the growing influence on the far right, they're already working to deprive us all of the right to choose.

They're working to rig the 2024 presidential election in favor of the Republican presidential nominee, who will likely find an excuse to declare martial law and outlaw opposition parties.  Then the midterms in our quarter-millennial year of independence will live up to the concept of one person, one vote.  Everyone will have one vote, but you'll only be able to cast it for one person per office.   

No Mo' Roe

Look. We all knew that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade because of the leaked opinion draft from Justice Samuel Alito from last month.  But certainly the final draft wasn't going to be nearly or even remotely as harshly worded, right? 

Well, the decision was just handed down officially, removing a constitutional right handed down nearly fifty years ago, and it turns out that the only changes from Alito's first draft were largely commas and conjunctions.

I'm just glad that Justice Alito no longer lives in his New Jersey hometown and doesn't commute to Washington on the air shuttle,  Because his hometown . . . is my hometown!

And who's to blame for this overruling?  Susan Sarandon.  Because she told us to vote for Jill Stein for President in 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton.  She also failed to codify Roe in 2009 when she had the power . . . oh, wait, that was the filibuster-proof Democratic-majority Senate of the 111th Congress!

Of course I was being facetious when I said Susan Sarandon was to blame.  Look, you stupid Twitter twits, Susan Sarandon is not a witch - she only played one in the movies!  (Now, Christine O'Donnell - she was a witch!)

So thirteen states automatically ban abortion as a result of this ruling, with another thirteen ready to do so.  And a federal abortion ban is not out of reach, lest any woman who lives in a illegal-abortion state like Iowa to go to neighboring Illinois, where abortion is legal.  And then women will either have to carry their babies to term - even if her child was fathered by a criminal or a family relative - will have to travel to Canada . . . and then the Supreme Court will decide there is no constitutional right for a woman to travel to another country to get an abortion. Then someone will decide that there is no constitutional right for anyone to travel to another country for anything . . . and the Canadian and Mexican borders become the new Iron Curtains under President-For-Life Ron DeSantis.   (It will be like the old Soviet Union; the only Americans who will be allowed to travel abroad are Olympic athletes and ballet dancers.)

Justice Alito said that this opinion should not be read as an attack on other rights rooted in privacy.  So Justice Clarence Thomas, who would not be sitting on the Court if a certain Colorado Democrat who shall remain nameless had not invited a comely blonde and future evangelical Trump supporter to his townhouse in 1987, wrote that decisions such as on contraception and gay marriage are definitely on the table.  And so folks opposed to such things will not stop at abortion.

President Biden urged pro-choice activists to come out and vote in November.  Right.  As long as inflation and gas prices remain big issues, this issue is not going to have a major impact on the 2022 midterms, least of all in the elections for the state legislatures that will now decide on abortion.  There's only one Democrat who even focuses on state legislative elections, and Martin O'Malley is only concerned with his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General this year.  

I wish well all of those who fight to get this overturning overturned.  But, as I indicated three months ago, I want to be counted out.  Besides, I expect to be busy . . . checking out Irish real estate.

Odor In the Court

I know a man . . . he came from my hometown . . .. These are the very words he uses for what's going down . . ..

"[Roe v. Wade] was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, [Roe v. Wade] and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey] have enflamed debate and deepened division . . ..  We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.  It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."

Thus spake Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of my hometown in New Jersey, in his draft opinion on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which will likely obliterate a woman's right to abortion on the basis of the lack of a constitutional right to privacy.  This was despite his assurances when he first joined the Court in 2006.  This decision even surpasses his deciding vote in the Citizens United decision of 2010 that recognized corporations as people and money as free speech.

When this opinion gets handed down, it will likely be toned down, but the effect will be no different.  Abortion will be legal in only a few states, not all of them, and a Republican Congress and a Republican President as early as 2025 will no doubt criminalize abortion nationwide, with no exceptions for rape or incest - after the filibuster is done away with. 

And how many other countries have completely outlawed abortion?  About a couple dozen - mostly in Africa and Latin America.  European countries? One - Andorra, a country between Spain and France, which is so small the Rhode Island state militia could invade and occupy it in an hour.

The draft opinion was leaked in a breach of protocol that keeps Supreme Court drafts private, even as the right to privacy is, ironically, in jeopardy.  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell interestingly pointed out that while Congress routinely puts out drafts of bills in progress, the Supreme Court - which apparently writes first drafts by painting them with broad brushes of dismissive language - refuses to be transparent. Chief Justice John Roberts, who loves the Court and his open to a ruling that preserves legalized abortion but allows for some restrictions - has demanded an investigation into the leak.  Too little, too late; this draft shows how reckless the justices can be in private and are.

And if the right to privacy is nullified through this ruling, what other rights could fall by the wayside?  Gay marriage? Interracial marriage?  If women in states where abortion is outlawed can't travel to states where it's legal to get one, the lack of the right to travel could be applied to anyone trying to leave the country once Trump comes back and establishes der Amerikanisches Reich.

The Democrats expect abortion to be a major issue that improves their chances in the 2022 midterms.  Uh, no, it won't be.  Yes, I still think it.  Inflation and the economy will remain the biggest issues going into November.  Abortion won't even make a distant third place - not as long as immigration and COVID remain potent issues.  The problem is that not enough Democrats and independents who are motivated by the overturning of Roe will tip the balance for Democratic candidates, and besides, the people most likely to vote on abortion are . . . pro-lifers.

Of course, if I had a black wife and we were having trouble making ends meet, we, knowing that our marriage could be nullified by a Supreme Court ruling, wouldn't likely base our electoral choices on the economy.

Desperately Blaming Susan

Susan Sarandon is the reason women are about to lose the right to an abortion.

Really.  She's responsible for all of those reactionary judges in the federal judiciary and those three Trump appointees to the Supreme Court.

How is that so?  Because she said during the 2016 presidential campaign that Hillary Clinton was more dangerous than Donald Trump and urged people to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Utterly ridiculous, but that's what clueless progressives are saying on Twitter.  They cite a quote from Sue about who was more of a threat - the Donald or the Hillary.  "I believe in a way she’s more dangerous, she said, "except they're both talking to Henry Kissinger apparently lately."  They also cited a quote from Sarandon about how Hillary was talking up the Supreme Court as a scare tactic to discourage disheartened Bernie Sanders supporters from voting for Dr. Stein or staying home on Election Day.

Hillbots will never listen to reason, so this post is not for them.  (Attention Hillary Clinton supporters: Scroll down and avert your eyes for a few paragraphs.)  Now, look.  Sarandon's quote about Hillary being more dangerous than Trump was a reference to foreign policy, not all policies, and though Trump did pull us out of a climate change accord and end American participation in the Iran nuclear deal, Hillary would likely have escalated the war in Afghanistan more than Trump did and would have likely killed more innocent people with drone strikes meant for terrorists - and when Sarandon said that she's be worse than Trump on foreign policy, she certainly didn't mean to say that Trump would be better.  Also, Hillary did use the Supreme Court as a scare tactic to get people to vote for her - but it didn't work because she probably would have pushed forward with the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court despite progressives finding him too centrist.  And finally, does anyone really think a Hollywood actress have so much control over the American people that she can determine the course of a presidential election?  I mean, apart from Nancy Reagan? 

Maybe Hillbots should consider the fundamental flaws of their own candidate and remember that Hillary was an uninspiring nominee who played the gender card to get the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination rather than offer bold new policies that would excite the Democratic base - something like, say, Joe Biden's Build Back Better program.  They might also recall that Hillary's opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination could and did come up with better ideas (Martin O'Malley) and more excitement (Bernie Sanders), as well as offer a friendly warning for Democrats to pay more attention to working-class voters (Jim Webb).  And, of course, they might recall that the Democratic establishment was all to happy to get behind Hillary because she was a Washington insider and a former President's wife and all . . . and that her nomination had nothing to so with her ability to inspire voters or win a national election.  Oh, right, they still blame a girl named Sue.

Katie Halper, wherever you are, thank you.

I'm not mad at Susan Sarandon for urging people to vote for Dr. Stein in the 2016 presidential election.  Heck, I did so myself, and I already made the case that if everyone who voted for Dr. Stein in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (I live in New Jersey) had voted for Hillary, she still would have lost to Trump because she would have only won the first two states and lost Pennsylvania when she needed all three to get an electoral majority. If I'm mad at Sarandon, a Catholic University of America graduate (Class of 1968), at all, it's because she didn't endorse her fellow CUA alum Martin O'Malley (Class of 1985) for President in 2016.  And one last thing:  Hillary Clinton may have used abortion and the Supreme Court as a scare tactic, but if the 111th Congress of 2009 and 2010, which had a Democratic House and a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, had codified the Roe v. Wade ruling into law, Hillbots wouldn't be having a hissy fit right now. And if they still want to blame a woman other than Hillary for Hillary's loss to Trump, why not blame her biggest enabler? 

(Okay, Hillary supporters, you can look now.)

I am troubled, though by one thing Sarandon said in 2016 that turned out to be very prophetic.  The onetime Bernie Sanders supporter said that the revolution she had been hoping for might finally happen should Trump win the White House.  "You know, some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately," she said. "If he gets in, then things will really explode."

Well, she was right about that.  But if she was hoping for a progressive revolution, it would appear that the wrong people showed up. 😮

Rule THIS!

The Mississippi challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court to Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to an abortion, is likely to succeed.  Especially when you have conservatives - including one from my hometown, which is so reflexively Republican it doesn't have a single Democrat on its town council and has a slew of anti-Biden and anti-COVID-restriction signs on its lawns - determined to overturn it.

But, that's not a given.  I'm sure Chief Justice John Roberts, who wants to preserve the Court's integrity, can get another conservative justice to join with him and the liberal justices to come up with a compromise ruling that can let Roe v. Wade stand and still uphold mild restrictions in more conservative states.

What if Roberts can't do that? 

Well, in that case, if you're a pro-choicer . . . you're toast.

Oh yeah, don't think you can get Republicans voted out of office in the midterms because the only people who vote on this issue are . . . Republicans.

The end.    

Hot Buttons

Okay, I'm going to be brief on the issues of abortion and immigration.  The Alabama abortion law (that's right, the governor of Alabama, a woman, signed it) that criminalizes all abortions except to save the mother's life is either the dumbest political move or the brightest one.   Republicans in other states are running away from this law, saying it's too extreme and doesn't offer exceptions for rape or incest (yeah, just like the 1984 Republican platform), but they must know full well that this could bring out the evangelical vote in 2020 and possibly consign the Democrats to Whig-like extinction with a GOP victory all over the political spectrum.  But it could also galvanize abortion-rights supporters into pushing back by coming out in droves to vote Democratic.  I have a feeling that the latter scenario won't happen.  (Remember the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision?)

And immigration?  Trump's new bill, conceived in large part by Jared Kushner, wants to bring more immigrants with skills at the expense of family reunification but does noting about the DACA immigrant children.  Republicans have dismissed this bill for letting in more legal immigrants while Democrats find the bill to be condescending toward unskilled laborers and families.  Since this plan satisfies no one, it's not going to help Trump soften his xenophobic image. Especially when he's telling migrants who are already here not to get to comfortable here.

Because of these two toxic issues, neither he nor House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can get too comfortable in their respective positions either.  For 2020, all bets are off.

From One Social Issue To Another

I would belatedly like to express my happiness over the September 20 repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that allowed gays to serve in the military so long as they stayed in the closet.  Keeping them from serving openly was an affront to human dignity, and the issue was completely irrelevant to whether someone should serve in the military on the basis of sexual orientation.  As Barry Goldwater once said, you don't have to be straight to serve in the military, you just have to shoot straight.  (This policy won't likely be repealed if a Republican becomes President, because it's already allowed gays in the military to come out of the closet so quickly.  Repealing it would be like repealing the Thirteenth Amendment.)

But  now the Republican party has one again focused on another social issue - abortion.  This time the House is taking up yet another bill to, among other things, curb insurance coverage for abortions and penalize health insurers that provide it.  The vote is today.  I don't know all the details, but I know this much - not only does it do us no good for House Republicans who ran on the economy to suddenly focus on issues that have nothing to do with the economy, their renewed focus on abortion in an age when most countries have settled the issue and moved on, once again, makes us look the ignoramouses we are to the rest of the world.  

Two Victories For American Women

I guess you have to take your victories where you can find them. The Republicans may be winning the war against the middle class - the current stage of this war is comparable to the siege at Petersburg in the final conflict of the Civil War that brought Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to its knees - but the far right had some serious setbacks in the war against women. After fighting increased protections for women in federal health care policy and after trying to defund Planned Parenthood, the right was dealt a blow when the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will adopt expert recommendations to require health insurers to cover contraception and several other women's preventive health services without charging anyone co-payments. So health care in these United States just became a little more humane - more healthy and caring, in fact.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, Planned Parenthood won a major victory - for now - when U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten blocked the state from denying funding to the state's Planned Parenthood chapter, dealing Republican lawmakers in the Sunflower State their second major legal setback to their recent moves against women's clinics associated with abortion. Planned Parenthood is suing to overturn the Kansas law that blocks funding to Planned Parenthood in order to prevent state funding of abortion services, even though only one Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas - a clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park - provides abortion services and does not use government funds for that purpose. The clinics in Wichita and the town of Hays use funding for health care services, nothing more.

The law, which requires federal family planning money granted to Kansas by the federal government to go first to public health departments and hospitals without any Planned Parenthood funding left over, is still on the books. But now two judges have blocked its implementation while the Planned Parenthood lawsuit against the legislature in Topeka works its way through the courts. This allows federal money to continue to reach the clinics for the time being. With the law on their side in the processing of the case, Planned Parenthood may have a leg up in the final ruling.

To be continued . . .

The Abortion Debate Is the "Pitts"

Here's the latest on the abortion legislation in the house that no one in the media cares enough to cover. (It's apparently one of those stories Rachel Maddow would say that no one is talking about!) Although the bill sponsored by U.S. Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) no longer redefines rape, its cessation of tax breaks for health plans that happen to include abortion coverage would essentially bar women who work for the government or serve in military to receive abortion coverage, and it would deny any access to such coverage for poor women as well. Even worse, by ending tax breaks for such plans, it would manage to prevent private employers from covering it as well.

If you think Smith is a horrible person, wait until you hear what Joseph Pitts, a House Republican from Pennsylvania, has in store. The Pitts bill, called the Protect Life Act, would bar insurance plans in the new system set up by the health care law from providing abortion coverage to anyone who receives government aid while permitting just about any hospital, clinic, or insurance company to refuse to provide, cover, or pay for abortions. They wouldn't even have to refer patients elsewhere for abortions. But here's the clincher - the so-called "Protect Life Act" would allow religiously affiliated hospitals to impose religious beliefs and refuse to provide emergency abortion care even in cases where it's necessary to save a woman's life.

Protect life? Whose life is it, anyway?

Of course, you can't blame Americans for being outraged if no one's informing them because the media are too busy covering President Obama's quixotic attempts to kiss and make up with big business.

And while all of this is going on, an anti-abortion group based in California is trying a sting operation comparable to the one that brought down ACORN not too long ago. Live Action, based in San Jose, sent men posing as pimps to Planned Parenthood offices to get information about abortions for prostitutes and sex workers, getting it on secret videotape. Planned Parenthood insists that the videos do not accurately portray their practices and they that they try to get underaged girls who ask about abortion themselves to talk to a social worker and that they screen these girls for abuse and neglect. They insist that they take the health and well-being of girls very seriously - and why wouldn't they? - and Live Action is trying to prove otherwise.

Let me just state my own beliefs on abortion, if I haven't already done so on this blog. I'm against it, except in cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening pregnancies. I oppose abortion for the same reason I oppose the death penalty - I do not condone the idea of human beings deciding who gets to live and who does not. But - while I am opposed to abortion, I am even more opposed to enforcing my own beliefs on those who think differently, and so I therefore believe the practice should remain legal. Smith and Pitts - and the people at Live Action - are entitled to speak out against abortion as I have just done. They are not entitled to force their opinions on others. Unfortunately, that's what these mendacious House bills would do.

Abortion and the Media

Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) was forced to reword his anti-abortion bill to avoid redefining rape. The bill as originally drafted would have limited taxpayer funding of abortions to cases of "forcible rape." That is, women impregnated in cases of statutory rape or women who are drugged into a state of mind that would render them unable to resist sexual contact would have been out of luck. Smith, in a rare show of moral ambiguity on this issue, backed down in response to public outcry.

This is a negligible upward blip in the fight for women's rights. This bill would still end tax breaks for health insurance plans that include coverage for abortions and abortion-related procedures, and it would ban women from using their health savings accounts for abortions. Of course, the bill has no chance of passing in the Senate, and the President would veto it anyway. But this ongoing attack on abortion rights - a sign that the misogynistic policies of the Reagan era, like the Reagan era itself, haven't really gone away - is enjoying new life thanks to a far-right Tea Party movement that was only supposed to be about taxes and spending. Well, this bill is called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," so maybe Smith thought he could make it sound fiscally relevant.

I couldn't help but notice, by the way, that this legislation is getting no coverage by the mainstream media. No coverage when I've checked, anyway. Perhaps the press thinks this bill is too insignificant to cover in light of the ongoing crisis in Egypt. Not to mention the Giffords shooting, although reporting on that story has diminished somewhat, lest you start calling for gun control. (Breaking news: Her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, is going to command the last Endeavour space shuttle flight.) The truth is, the mainstream media don't want to cover issues affecting people's daily lives. If they did, you'd start seeing Lafayette Square in Washington fill up with protesters just like Tahrir Square in Cairo. And that might actually lead to progressive change in this country that threatens the established order of which the mainstream press is part.

But it would be a great story to cover.

By the way, the United States remains the only industrialized country where abortion is still an issue; other industrialized nations have long since settled it, one way or the other. I may have said this once before, but when a Japanese official pointed this out on American television, he was laughing.

Republican Acts

I wonder how many independents who voted for Tea Party Republicans in the midterm elections thought they were merely voting for more jobs and less spending. I'm certain many of them weren't voting to limit access to abortion. They probably didn't mean to give control of the House of Representatives to social reactionaries. They did. And now that social reactionaries are in power in the House, they're pursuing a misogynistic agenda to limit a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. (Note that I didn't say "a woman's right to choose" - that's mealy-mouthed Washington jargon. A right to choose? Choose what? A dentist?)

The bill, sponsored by New Jersey House Republican Christopher Smith, would, among other things, ensure that every federal government agency and program is barred from from spending tax money to fund abortions. It also would shut down the private - yes, private - market for health insurance coverage that includes abortion, and bar some rape survivors, as well as women whose pregnancies endanger their lives, from getting such insurance coverage. Oh yeah, it also would prevent the District of Columbia from using public money to fund abortions. This amounts to rich white men telling a poor city dominated by racial minorities what to do on religious and health-related matters. D.C. congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has protested, but without a vote on the Committee on the Whole, there isn't much she can do about it. In fact, there's nothing she can do about it.

And Speaker Boehner? He calls this bill one of the his highest legislative priorities. This is the third bill out of the 112th House, and not one of them deals with jobs. (And not one of them will get through the Senate.)

The bill is called the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which is an obscene name for a few reasons. First, President Obama has already issued an executive order saying that no federal funds will go to abortion, a move abortion rights activists denounced back in March. So title is misleading. Secondly, it's an unwieldy, witless name for legislation that is as childish and dumbed-down as it is fraudulent - just like the title of H.R. 112-1, the Job-Destroying Health Care Law Repeal Act. Personally, I yearn for the days when legislation had boring names, like the Sherman Antitrust Act, which respected the intelligence of voters and expected them to know about the contents and the perpetrators of the bill. This abortion bill should be called the Smith Act, or the Smith Reproductive Rights Act, which would assign responsibility for it and encourage the intellectually curious citizen to find out what it says. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 wasn't called the "Denying Freedom For Unions to Assert the Workplace Rights Of Its Members and to Prevent Right-To-Work Shops That Undermine Employees and Aid Big Business Act," but that's what it did, and that's what people knew it did. And when it was passed by a Republican Congress over President Truman's veto, union members knew they could blame Ohio senator Robert Taft and New Jersey congressman Fred Hartley for it.

One last thing about the current Smith Act (as I'll call it). The Republicans claim that they're all about small government and less government control. Enough people were taken in by this rhetoric to give House Republicans a majority. But people are quickly learning what they're doing with the smaller government and lesser government control they maintain. "I think people who claim to be 'small government' conservatives are disingenuous," said one reader of the Washington Post. "I think they want a government small enough to fit into an individual's bedroom, but too large to fit into a corporate boardroom." Enough said.

Abort Tape

Recently unearthed tapes from the presidency of Richard Nixon showed the President making some surprising and shocking statements on Vietnam and abortion. (The Roe v. Wade decision was handed down by the Supreme Court two days after Nixon's second term began.) Most of the tapes refer to Vietnam. Some of the tapes depict Nixon on the phone with Bob Hope heralding the Vietnam cease-fire - announced a week into his second term - as the) as "peace with honor." In actuality, as he admits in other taped conversations, Nixon readily admits that South Vietnam would eventually fall to the Communists after the Americans were gone - which it did two years later.

On abortion, Nixon admitted to the practice being necessary in cases of rape. But get this. He also said it was necessary in cases of interracial pregnancies.

What?

Nixon made all of these comments thinking they would never be heard.