Tag Archives: Supreme Court

healthcare, law, politics, poor judgment

Roe v. Wade may soon be a thing of the past…

It may come as a surprise to a lot of people who take the time to read my blog posts, but in the wake of the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade, I find myself strangely numb. I’ve been writing about my thoughts and opinions about the importance of abortion rights for ages, and some of my posts on the subject have been pretty impassioned. I don’t have much to add to my opinions on abortion at this point. All I can do now is offer some observations.

Even though I’ve been on vacation, and we’re headed home today, I have been paying attention to comments made on overturning Roe v. Wade. I think many of the pro-life crowd are shortsighted, at best. Many of them are appallingly ill informed about women’s reproductive systems. Too many people are fixated on the financial aspects of child raising. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of people commenting about how much fairer it will be when women aren’t allowed to choose abortion. One woman poster wrote about how “unfair” it is that a woman can either choose to continue a pregnancy and force men to pay child support, or have an abortion, and deny the man a chance to be a father. Once again, all I can do is shake my head at the idiocy… Does this woman really think that pregnancy is a 50/50 deal?

And I’ve seen a lot of comments from men about “beautiful babies” being slaughtered by irresponsible women who “let themselves get pregnant”. As if they had NOTHING to do with her condition, whatsoever! And so many of them seem to think that women, alone, should be dealing with contraception. I don’t know about other women, but it’s been my observation that more often than not, men are the ones who want to have sex. Many women enjoy sex, but some of them merely tolerate it. And some people, myself included, would be fine with never having sex again.

It would really serve some of these “rights denying” men right if women decided to have a sex strike. I mean, those of us who don’t care about having sex that much. Why not just stop obliging the men? They are so concerned about the sanctity of life, the fairness of child support, the plight of developing fetuses, no matter the condition of the already born mother whose body has been taken up residence in… Why not do the responsible thing and just stop having sex with them? It would serve some of these assholes right, in my opinion.

But it will probably never happen…

I am so grateful that the women before me fought for my right to choose. I have never been pregnant myself, and I doubt I would have chosen to have an abortion if I had gotten pregnant. However, I can’t say that for sure. I’m glad that women before me were brave enough to push for my right to have an abortion if it suited me. And now that it looks like Roe v. Wade could soon be history… I will do what I can for the women coming after my generation. At the same time, I am very relieved that I never had children of my own, even though I always wanted them. The world is becoming too fucked up to believe. And I am glad that I will be 50 in a few weeks, which means that I won’t be caught in the crossfire of this horrendous decision that will likely be made by our Supreme Court this summer.

I keep seeing comments, mostly from men, about the “brutality” of abortion. Funny how they have so little to say when I bring up how very unprepared for pregnancy and motherhood a 12 or 13 year old girl is, after she’s been raped or molested. Funny how they are silent when I tell them I’m a lot more concerned about the already born six year olds whose bodies are torn apart by bullets as they sit in classrooms and churches. Yes, abortion is brutal, but at least developing embryos never know what hit them. They aren’t spending their last seconds of life in terror as some gun toting nut blows them away when all they’re trying to do is learn the alphabet.

Now… with that being said, I guess it’s time to pack up and head back to Germany. We’ve had a great vacation, and I’m ready to write about it… and maybe that will give someone a distraction from the scary news that generates daily. I know a lot of ignorant people think that banning abortion is a great thing. But this decision will cause a lot of people to die. Women will get abortions if they want or need them. All banning abortion does is make the procedure less safe and, maybe, fill up our prison system even more.

But arguing about it, crying over it, or worrying seems to be pointless, now. There’s nothing much more I can do, other than continue to write my opinions… and my opinions seem to match those of most of the American population… the ones who aren’t hamstrung by backwards religious beliefs and power-hungry and racist political ideals that are more about control and money grabbing than anything else.

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condescending twatbags, politics, rants, religion, wingnuts

The Transformed Wife is worried sick about Biden’s Supreme Court pick…

As a rule, I don’t follow The Transformed Wife, aka Lori Alexander, working woman turned 50s era evangelical housewife guru. I find her views short-sighted, offensive, incredibly stupid, and infuriating. However, someone in the Duggar Family News group shared news of her most recent post, and that led me to take a look at it myself. The poster in the Duggar group had taken someone following Lori’s page to task over misinterpreting an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Since I am, myself, a fan of Little House, I took notice of that post, which was really about how worried Lori is about Joe Biden’s choice of a replacement justice for the Supreme Court when Justice Stephen Breyer retires this summer. Below is a screenshot of Lori’s post:

Christ, she’s dumb!

I wish Lori and her ilk had more concern for people who have already been born. However, I understand that the unborn make for a convenient cause, since they can’t be disloyal. And, on the surface of it, who supports “murder”? People like Lori use loaded legal terms like “murder” to describe abortion, but they don’t seem to have the same concern for children who have already been born and don’t have the basic necessities of life. They preach about Democrats being “socialists” who don’t care about unborn babies, but then they vote in selfish, incompetent, narcissistic asshats like Donald Trump, who do everything they can to penalize people for being poor, which makes it much harder for babies and children to thrive.

I look at the world today, and all of the many problems we have… the many people who suffer because they don’t have what they need, and have no means of getting what they need. Why do we need more people in the world, competing for scarce resources? Why should we encourage people who aren’t ready or don’t want to be parents to reproduce? Why should we shame people who can’t or won’t have children? According to Lori, my whole life has been wrong, since I don’t have any babies to nurture. It’s not because I didn’t want them. That’s just how life worked out for me.

Then I look at Lori’s followers, many of whom are just nuts. Below is the screenshot of the discussion about Little House on the Prairie— seriously? Does the world need more people who think like this?

Good God.
God forbid some women would rather not spend their lives on their backs with their legs spread for guys like Nathan…

I was feeling crappy and unfulfilled yesterday, but felt better when I woke up this morning. Then I saw Lori’s proclamation that my life should have been spent pumping out babies who would grow up coping with COVID-19 and climate change, among many other depressing issues to deal with in life. I used to want to have children, but now I’m glad I didn’t have them, because things just keep getting more and more extreme and weird, with people like Lori promoting their anti-woman platforms to the masses.

Before anyone points this out to me, I realize that by writing about this, I’m helping to expand Lori’s platform. But, as I mentioned above, I don’t follow Lori at all, except for when people who do follow her point out her more egregiously ridiculous statements on life. And then I see that there are people out there who take her seriously. She has thousands of followers, and most of them aren’t there to snark on her nonsense.

Do we really need to add to the collective idiocy of this group by having more babies?

And on and on it goes… and this is just ONE of her posts.

Actually, sometimes people have abortions for reasons besides “fornication”, that are no one else’s business but theirs. I don’t see a lot of these conservative and religious types clamoring for more affordable healthcare and facilities for the elderly and disabled that provide safe, competent, and humane treatment for those deemed a “drain on the system”.

The stupid hurts. It really does. Gosh, she’s just so dumb.

A Black woman wrote the first post. She seems concerned that Biden will likely choose someone like her to take Breyer’s spot. Then she writes about how Planned Parenthood is a “racist organization” that commits murder.

No matter who Joe Biden chooses, the Republicans will do what they can to delay the new Supreme Court Justice from being confirmed until midterm elections. It doesn’t matter that Trump pushed two wholly terrifying and inappropriate people into the Supreme Court so that Roe v Wade might be quashed. It doesn’t matter that Amy Coney Barrett took a seat just weeks before the 2020 presidential election and was an actual “handmaid” before she was a judge. God forbid progressive people have a voice in the Supreme Court instead of people who want to pull us back to the 15th century. It doesn’t matter that Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault and heavy drinking during his youth. Seems to me that the Supreme Court should be made up of people who are above reproach, and with the number of Americans who have law degrees, there ought to be qualified people who fit the bill better than Trump’s choices. Joe Biden better have the chance to find someone to balance out Trump’s disastrous picks.

I wonder how long it will take before the poster who praised Kamala Harris gets deleted and banned… That’s what Lori does when people post things that go against her warped, backwards views.

In spite of my complaints, I’m glad Lori has the right to speak her mind, even if I think her mind is completely fucked and her opinions are frightening. But it disturbs me that so many people, male and female, seem to agree with her. Am I really an outlier? Did our mothers and grandmothers really fight all those years for freedom, just so Lori and her followers can demand that women get back into the kitchen and on their backs with their legs spread for impregnation? It just boggles the mind. She really should read up on Romania in the 70s, 80s, and 90s… you want to talk about sad? That’s pretty sad… and that was a “socialist” state run by a madman who wanted women to have babies instead of living fulfilling lives.

Not everyone wants to be a mother (or father). Not everyone should be a mother (or a father). And many of us would rather not live in a culture dominated by religion. It seems to me that if that’s what Lori wants, there are places around the world where she can go that route. I’ve written about some of the cults that promote her views. Why doesn’t she join one of them and shut up? After all, she’s a woman, and women don’t have the right to work, have an opinion, or express themselves. They were put on the earth to breed. /sarcasm

What I really need is an educational Facebook post, like this one… I think I learned more from the squirrel than Lori Alexander’s feed.

Meh… after yesterday’s angry post, I can barely summon the ire to write about The Transformed Wife today. I’m feeling kind of apathetic and over it all. It didn’t help that Howard Hesseman, aka Dr. Johnny Fever of WKRP in Cincinnati died a couple of days ago. I loved that show when I was a kid. It was genuinely funny, and had great music, and was so well-written that it stands up even forty years since its last episode aired. Granted, Howard Hesseman was 81 years old, so he had a good run. We all have to die someday. But still, I genuinely liked him, so it sucks that he’s gone. I liked him in Police Academy 2, and on Head of the Class, too. May he rest in eternal peace.

Bill will be gone in a few hours, and hopefully I’ll see him Friday. Maybe I’ll do something worthwhile this week. Maybe the sun will even come out long enough to dry out the backyard and I can work on destroying the rest of the tree that fell over a few weeks ago before it kills the grass. I’m ready for spring. If I make it to spring…

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healthcare, law, politics

Texas is turning into Gilead…

Every day, I read another distressing headline about the craziness going on in the United States. At the top of today’s crazy headlines is the new law that went into effect in Texas yesterday. In their neverending quest to deny women the right to determine whether or not they want to be pregnant, lawmakers in Texas crafted a law that seems to have come straight out of East Germany in the 1970s.

At this writing, it is now illegal for a woman to get an abortion in Texas if she is more than six weeks pregnant. Most people don’t even know if they are pregnant at that point. This law basically outlaws abortion, since most abortions are done after six weeks gestation. What makes this new law even more sinister, though, is that it encourages neighbors to inform on each other. The Supreme Court, stacked with Trump era justices, has declined to intervene on this barbaric new law. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the liberal justices.

The law is unique, in that it puts enforcement on the population and is difficult to challenge in court. According to The New York Times:

Usually, a lawsuit seeking to block a law because it is unconstitutional would name state officials as defendants. However, the Texas law, which makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or “aids and abets” it.

So basically, if your right wing nutjob neighbor Bubba gets wind that you’re pregnant and you get an abortion, Bubba can sue your doctor, the facility that performed the abortion, and anyone else who “aided and abetted” your abortion. I guess that means if you took an Uber or your mom gave you money for an airline ticket, your driver and your mom could be sued for “aiding and abetting” your abortion. Maybe Bubba could sue the airline that transported you to a distant city for the procedure… even if it was in another state.

Interestingly enough, Bubba can’t sue you for having a procedure. He can only sue anyone involved in your getting the procedure. However, Bubba can sue, even if the procedure isn’t done in Texas, as long as the person having the abortion is a Texas resident. So, Texas ladies, you’d better keep your personal life private.

Again from the article:

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, and even an Uber driver taking a patient to an abortion clinic are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs, who do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, are entitled to $10,000 and their legal fees recovered if they win. Prevailing defendants are not entitled to legal fees.

Naturally, a lot of people are pissed off about this new legislation. I am pretty pissed off about it myself, although it’s not going to affect me personally. As I have mentioned many times in this blog, I am 100% pro-choice. It’s not because I cheer for people having abortions. I personally find abortion sickening. It’s because it’s simply no one else’s business what kind of medical care someone else gets.

There are times when an abortion is indicated for medical reasons. I don’t think anyone– especially someone not personally involved in the pregnancy– has ANY right to insert themselves in someone else’s private medical business. Moreover, given that we don’t do fuck all to help people who might choose abortion, nor do we do much once those babies are born, I think this law is especially wrong-headed and cruel.

I am still a Texas voter, even though I live in Germany. This shit just makes me more determined to vote straight blue from now on… not that it will do any good. Makes me wonder, though, if people will get desperate enough to get violent about having abortions.

Texas is a famously gun friendly state, especially now that Texans can openly carry weapons without a permit or any training. What if Bubba decides to sue someone because of their choice to have an abortion and gets shot in the head for meddling in someone’s private medical affairs? I’d like to think that’s an unlikely scenario, but given how absolutely crazy things are in the United States right now, I could actually see it happening. People are unhinged, and this kind of interference can lead to desperate and tragic consequences.

I worry about the developing fetuses that may suffer needless pain because there’s something congenitally wrong with them that would make being born cruel. I am concerned about twelve year old girls who have barely reached puberty being forced to give birth. I am concerned about 49 year old women who have chronic diseases having to continue pregnancies that put them at risk. I worry about the teenager who got pregnant by her brother or her uncle or her father… or her abusive boyfriend. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Edited to add, Rachel Maddow points out why this new law is so chilling and disgusting on so many levels!

I know some people think abortion is always wrong. To those people, I say “don’t have an abortion” if you think they’re morally wrong. You have no right to dictate another person’s medical care, especially if you’re not going to be around to help deal with the consequences.

What especially pisses me off, though, is that I haven’t heard of any legislation that makes medical care less expensive and more accessible for all of these women. I haven’t heard of any legislation that makes the men who got the women pregnant in these situations more accountable for their parts in the unintended pregnancies. Where are the laws that support the pregnant people who are going to be forced to give birth? Haven’t seen any, yet… but I have seen a lot of people slut shaming and putting it entirely on women to be sure they are doing everything to prevent unintended pregnancies.

Once again, the Trump era has delivered another disaster to the United States in the form of forced birthing and neighbors reporting on each other, as they might if they were in East Germany and under the watchful eyes of the Stasi. It’s creepy and sickening, and it makes me glad I don’t have a daughter who might be affected by this intrusion. But the people who are going to suffer the most are the poor, who won’t be able to simply move out of Texas and take care of this private business on their own. Hmmm… one can only hope those souls, who will be born into poverty or other difficult situations, will grow up and vote for Democrats.

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politics, poor judgment, stupid people, true crime, Trump

A leisurely drunken drive through the neighborhood in a stolen backhoe…

I suppose I could rant about how Amy Coney Barrett was just rammed into the Supreme Court by the hypocritical Republican Party. God knows, she’s an inappropriate choice for the Supreme Court, just as Brett Kavanaugh was. But I don’t really feel like writing about how the newest Justice was a literal handmaid in the Christian group, People of Praise. According to The Washington Post:

A 2010 People of Praise directory states that she held the title of “handmaid,” a leadership position for women in the community, according to a directoryexcerpt obtained by The Washington Post.

Also, while in law school, Barrett lived at the South Bend home of People of Praise’s influential co-founder Kevin Ranaghan and his wife, Dorothy, who together helped establish the group’s male-dominated hierarchy and view of gender roles. The group was one of many to grow out of the charismatic Christian movement, which sought a more intense and communal religious experience by embracing such practices as shared living, faith healing and speaking in tongues.

Nah… enough has been written about that fuckery and how it’s liable to blur the line between religion and state. I’ll leave that alone. Instead, I’d like to write about the latest fuckery done by a Trump supporter.

Some readers may recall a post I wrote in 2019 about two Trump supporters who got drunk and shot each other while wearing a bulletproof vest. Well… they weren’t named as Trump supporters in the news article about the incident, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out who they backed for the White House by their idiotic and self-destructive actions. When I read about what they did, I knew they were Trumpers. And then I visited their pages on Facebook and my hunch was immediately confirmed.

I wrote about that case and some Trump loving guy who happened to see that a mutual friend left me a comment, read it and chewed me out for bashing Trump supporters. So I wrote a follow up post defending my “leaps of logic”, as the commenter put it, concluding that these two dumbass guys were Trump supporters. I really think it’s something when all I have to do is read about some dumb thing someone did and nine times out of ten, it will turn out the person supports Donald Trump. He loves the uneducated. He’s said so. But he would never give them the time of day.

He loves them… BUT– his old pal, Howard Stern said he is “disgusted” by MAGA voters…
Yup… and Trump supporters are mostly too dumb to see this and continue to idolize the orange menace.

So… on with today’s topic, which concerns a 26 year old Trump supporter named James Blight. Mr. Blight decided to get “blotto” on whiskey last Saturday. Then, demonstrating the predictably poor judgment of people who prefer to vote for a rapist/conman for POTUS, Blight stole a backhoe, which he did not know how to drive, and proceeded to rampage through a central Florida neighborhood. Bear in mind that Blight was also drunk at the time, and now claims that he doesn’t remember most of the day.

Blight drove the backhoe through Haines City, Florida and destroyed several front yards and a fence, picking off Biden-Harris campaign signs as well as a city-owned speed limit sign. He claims that he could not help but hit the signs while driving the heavy construction equipment that he did not know how to operate… while he was drunk and cussing out people. I think this quote from Haines City Police Chief Jim Elensky sums it up quite nicely:

“It’s absurd that a grown man could think he had the right to destroy someone else’s property based on a difference in political opinion. The fact that he was driving this heavy equipment, that he did not know how to operate, down busy roads could have been disastrous. We’re thankful that no one was hurt in this matter…”

And now, Mr. Blight, the emboldened Trump supporter who claims he was drunk and has no memory of his actions in a predominantly Black neighborhood, is cooling his heels on grand theft auto and trespassing charges. Meanwhile, one family whose Biden-Harris signs were destroyed by Blight has responded by putting up twenty more of them.

I’ve been reading a lot of stories about people taking it upon themselves to vandalize signs and steal them from people’s yards. And lest anyone think I’m picking only on Trump supporters, I will admit that I’ve read stories of Biden supporters stealing Trump signs, too. Personally, I have never understood why a person needs to put a sign in their yard indicating support for political candidates. I doubt most people are swayed by those signs, although they do show spirit, I guess. In any case, a person has the right to put what they want on their private property… unless, of course, they live in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association that forbids it. I hope when we finally do buy a house of our own, it won’t be in a place with those kinds of rules. We’ll do our best to avoid HOAs. See? That’s my conservative side coming out to play.

But if you live in a place where you’re not bound by city ordinances or HOAs, you should have the right to post a sign, if you want to, on your own property. You should expect that no one will steal it or vandalize it without repercussions. And you certainly should not have to worry about a drunken Trump supporter driving a stolen backhoe through your neighborhood, cussing people out and destroying your private property. I’m not sure what Mr. Blight thought this would accomplish. I guess he’s terrified that people will vote to take back the country from the orange narcissist in charge and try to reverse the terrible damage he’s done to our reputation worldwide.

To be clear… until Trump, I really didn’t have a problem with Republicans. I didn’t hate George W. Bush the way many of my liberal friends did. I didn’t have much of an opinion about most conservative politicians, even if I didn’t agree with a lot of their views. Donald Trump has changed my opinions about the Republican Party. I still think people should vote for the person they wish to vote for, but I think if you’re aligning yourself with people like James Blight, or those two morons who got drunk and shot each other while wearing a bulletproof vest, it’s not the best look. These men are definitely not “thinkers”.

And as I read about Trump’s plan to force civil servants to be loyal to him or lose their jobs, I am especially fearful about the future if he wins another term. It makes me very grateful that Bill decided to be a contractor instead of a government employee. I wish Trump supporting people would wake up and see that they’ve been had. Here’s a quote from Ronald Sanders, a Trump appointee who recently resigned over Trump’s order regarding civil servants:

The order, which could affect tens of thousands or more career positions involved in making or carrying out policy, “is nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process,” Ronald Sanders wrote in his letter of resignation Sunday from the Federal Salary Council.

“I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks . . . to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career Federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law . . . not to be loyal to a particular President or Administration,” he wrote.

Wake up, Trump supporting America. Quit drinking the whiskey and driving the backhoe over everyone else’s rights. Donald Trump is not a “fit leader” in any sense of the term. He must be voted out before the country gets backhoed by his stupid, cruel, and un-American policies. Believe me, he doesn’t care about you at all. Howard Stern should know better than anyone.

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