Crossroads...In More Ways Than One

This is a reality check. The blog I was writing just got pushed down a bit, but not to worry, I'll finish what I started

It seems that SCOTUS has "privately" voted to overturn Roe v Wade.

From the NY Times: Leaked Supreme Court Draft Would Overturn Roe v. Wade

I can't say this is much of a surprise. And while I haven't been commenting much since they changed their format, I did submit the following:

Red flag, red herring, call it what you will. This is a full frontal attack on women, modernity, and the belief that this nation is a meritocracy. Clearly, equality is no longer a priority for SCOTUS and possibly Congress as well.

We, the People, managed to elect Donald Trump and kept him in office despite his crimes against the nation. If Congress swings at the midterms, the United States, as we know it, will cease to exist. The nation will split along party lines. It will not be pretty.

The US is the longest lasting _continuous_ democracy in history. No democracy/republic has ever lasted as long as this one. All We, the People, can say is that it was nice while it lasted.

UPDATE: The NYT is now backpedaling. All the comments have disappeared, and now they are saying this is older than what Politico is saying. Regardless, if this document reflects the current court, it must be taken seriously. Not to take it seriously would be at our own peril. 

I cannot imagine why anyone would want to go back to pre-1900 America where epidemics killed millions, women had no civil rights, and People of Color had even fewer rights. How can citizens of this nation stand by and allow a primitive, uneducated, backward band of troglodytes shove approximately 334,000,000 people into the dark ages? Are we so shackled that we cannot even find a voting booth? 

While some are already saying this is a call to arms that must be heeded before November, I believe November will pass with a sigh and a red congress determined to change the insurrection hearings to a Hunter Biden attack campaign, another distraction from the reality that our nation is collapsing. 

That's not hyperbole. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

For the last few months, the number of hits on this blog has tanked. Now, I know Blogger stats have never been overly reliable, but the hits are almost non-existent, and that doesn't match what I know from email and other references. 

When the cookie wars started in Europe, people stopped allowing their personal hit information to be collected. I know I did. I reject almost all cookies. I have no desire for third parties to be tracking anything about me, so I limit it where I can. I ratchet down my own privacy settings accordingly, and encourage others to do the same. At the same time, I know that behavior means I have an even less accurate measure of how many people are reading this blog.

Add to that, I had a significant following in Ukraine because The WP was used in several English classes. I've written about that before, but now, even remaining hits from Ukraine and from Russia have stopped, as have the emails I used to get from readers in that part of the world. 

Were they all real or bots or spam collectors? Not a clue. But I never got much in the way of spam comments. The emails, however, have been great over the years and... except for the occasional death threat... I've answered every single one of them. I've made some interesting friends along the way, and I would not trade the last 11 years and 613 posts for anything.

Yeah. 613 posts, not including this one. And to be perfectly honest, I did not know that was the number until I went to grab the total for this episode.   

Unless you're Jewish and somewhat educated Jewishly, you might not catch the significance of that number. 613 is the number of positive commandments, or mitzvot, contained in the Torah. 248 of them are considered mandatory, while 365 are prohibitive. So 613 is one of those mystical numbers that populate Jewish tradition. 

Here we stand at 613 published episodes. 613 posts that began on July 19th, 2010 with Welcome To My World.  I thought I was writing about being a widow. That lasted a week. You know what they say: my blog, my rules ? But it was that very first tip what was the clue.

Hey! I never said I had any answers, but boy, do I have a lot of questions! And if I have questions, I'm thinking there are a lot of us asking the same thing.

No, I don't have a joke, but I have a tip o'the day:

Keep asking questions even when they tell you not to;

you never know when one will be the _right_ one.

The intent was to never monetize the blog, so I never really advertised it. I used to get a great deal of traffic from The New York Times when I could sign my comments with the blog address, but them days are gone. Those old comments opened the door to MPR, the NYTimes Google Hangouts, and some really cool correspondence with famous op ed writers. 

I am open to suggestions and opinions. Comments attached to the blog are particularly welcome this week, although commenting in general is almost non-existent these days. If you have something to say to me or about the blog, go for it. Or send me an email. You can send it to:

thewifelyperson@gmail.com

and I will answer you.

I have given myself until July 18th to decide what I'm gonna do about The Wifely Person Speaks. Honestly, I don't know. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Keep asking questions even when they tell you not to; 
you never know when one will be the _right_ one.

It's still a good tip almost 12 years later.

Vaccinations, Abortions, and Guns....Oh, My!

 Gentle Readers,

Tuesday, December 14th, is the 9th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Children's Massacre.  Just so you know.

I think we all know how I feel about the Supreme Court. That I believe they are the last bastion of sane governance in this country, and that I worry about the conservative tilt going on at the moment. It's also safe to say that I think Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett represent the very bottom of any barrel whether it contains pickles, wine, or jurists. Doesn't much matter. Both are fine examples of box o'rocks intelligence quotients.  But this week, there is a special place in intelligence hell for both of them.

On December 1st, 2021, during the hearings on the Mississippi abortion case, Justice Thomas questioned Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar:

JUSTICE THOMAS: General, would you specifically tell me -- specifically state what the right is? Is it specifically abortion? Is it liberty? Is it autonomy? Is it privacy? 

SOLICITOR GENERAL PRELOGAR: The right is grounded in the liberty component of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Thomas, but I think that it promotes interest in autonomy, bodily integrity, liberty, and equality. And I do think that it is specifically the right to abortion here, the right of a woman to be able to control, without the state forcing her to continue a pregnancy, whether to carry that baby to term.

 

JUSTICE THOMAS: I understand we're talking about abortion here, but what is confusing is that we -- if we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what we're talking about. If we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what we're talking about because it's written. It's there. What specifically is the right here that we're talking about?

 

SOLICITOR GENERAL PRELOGAR: Well, Justice Thomas, I think that the Court in those other contexts with respect to those other amendments has had to articulate what the text means in the bounds of the constitutional guarantees, and it's done so through a variety of different tests that implement First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, Fourth Amendment rights. So I don't think that there is anything unprecedented or anomalous about the right that the Court articulated in Roe and Casey and the way that it implemented that right by defining the scope of the liberty interest by reference to viability and providing that that is the moment when the balance of interests tips and when the state can act to prohibit a woman from -- from getting an abortion based on its interests in protecting the fetal life at that point.

 

JUSTICE THOMAS: So the right specifically is abortion?

 

SOLICITOR GENERAL PRELOGAR: It's the right of a woman prior to viability to control whether to continue with the pregnancy, yes.

Really? She had to explain this to him? Solicitor General Prelogar says it in a single sentence: 

It's the right of a woman prior to viability to control whether to continue with the pregnancy, yes.  

This is not rocket science, folks. This is about a fundamental right of a FEMALE person to control one's own bodily function. Why is that so hard for him to understand?  Oh, wait, this only applies to women! Penis Possessors are exempt from thinking about others.

Meanwhile, Justice Bunny Barrett is busy waving her personal ignoramus flag when it comes to Israel and Jews. During oral arguments for Carson v. Makin, yet another State of Maine case, this one dealing with access to public money for students going to private religious schools where public school is not readily available, Justice Barrett frames her question:

JUSTICE BARRETT: Thank you. And my question is as follows. It kind of goes back to Justice Thomas's questions about rough equivalent of a public school. So all schools, in making choices about curriculum and the formation of children, have to come from some belief system. And in public schools, the public school -- the school boards, the districts are making that choice, those choice of classes to be taught and the kind of values that they want to inculcate in the students. Is there any kind -- I mean, how would you even know if a -- if a school taught all religions are bigoted and biased or, you know, Catholics are bigoted or, you know -- or we take a position on the Jewish-Palestinian conflict because of our position on, you know, Jews, right? How would they even know? Because it's my understanding that in choosing whether a non-sectarian school can be funded or not, you're not engaging in that kind of oversight about what the belief systems are of the school. So long as they're not sectarian, it's a thumbs-up?  

Now, I get that she's trying to put this in the perspective of what a school might say. But the language is, dontcha think, a bit bizarre? Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for sure, but Jewish-Palestinian? That she even says "our position on, you know, Jews," telegraphs a whole raft of other kinds of inferences. Do We, the People, even have a position on, you know, Jews?

If you read the hearing transcript, you will notice the ones arguing for inclusion are basing part of the argument on behalf of Orthodox Jewish schools, as if there are a great preponderance of those in Maine to begin with. This is just one comment of several:

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, unless you can say that you would treat a Unitarian school the same as a Christian school or an Orthodox Jewish school or a Catholic school, then I think you've got a problem of discrimination among religious groups --

The only Jewish day school in Maine is Levey in Portland. Their mission statement reads:

Levey Day School provides a nurturing community and a challenging, personalized curriculum infused with Jewish values and Hebrew language. Students of all backgrounds become lifelong learners committed to tikkun olam (improving our world).

About COVID, they write in the statement of Guiding Principles:

                                                         .אין כל דבר עומד בפני פיקוח נפש 

Nothing takes priority over safeguarding life. (Talmud, Yoma 82a)

                                                                      .תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם

Study of Torah is the most fundamental obligation. (Talmud, Kiddushin 39b)

These teachings illustrate the profound importance that the Jewish tradition places on learning and on health. Levey Day School has always prioritized both of these principles, and we remain fully committed to providing an outstanding education in a safe learning environment. We look forward to offering in-person teaching this fall, and we are also prepared for the likelihood that some or all students and teachers will need to engage remotely at times. Here are the general principles that guide our plans for doing so, with links to the specific policies that put these principles into action.  

You might think these two cases are unrelated in the broader sense, but they are not. Both are dealing with the freedom of bodily self-determination, but one is a private, personal freedom while the other is one that impacts the general population. If I were told these cases had to be decided on the single issue of personal decision making, I would have to opt for the government has no say in what I do with my own body. 

This does not make me an anti-vaxxer by any stretch of any imagination. Instead, it recognizes that a person has the right to make a decision for oneself. That said, the purveyors of public space have the right to say, "No, you cannot come in here because you are a danger to public welfare." That means the unvaccinated can be turned away and should be. They who choose not to vaccinate do not have the right to infect others. 

There is no moral equivalency in the cases. Choices must be made by the individual in full cognizance of the ramifications. And acceptance of rules that come with that choice must be obeyed for the sake of general good and welfare of the community.

Schools, theaters, shopping malls, airports, airplanes, houses of worship, and any other place where people gather have the right to say, NO VACCINE, NO ENTRY. There comes a point where the science of infection is well established and must be acknowledged/respected. If you are a potential carrier, you cannot be with others whom you endanger.

Being pregnant is not the same thing. A woman has the legal, constitutional, and moral right to choose what to do with her own body. She can choose to carry a pregnancy to term, or she can choose to end it. The state has no standing in that conversation. If a faith-based agency wishes to refuse entry to a woman who has had an abortion, that's between that agency and the woman. The government has no standing in that conversation, either. 

But wait, there's more!

Friday, SCOTUS allowed the Texas abortion law to remain in effect for the moment. In a complicated decision, the court refused to block the law, instead, sending it back to the lower courts. As explained on NPR:

The complicated ruling, issued Friday morning by a vote of 8-1, allows the challenge brought by Whole Woman's Health to proceed in a lower court. In that sense, it is a victory for the provider.

 

But by another vote of 5-4, the justices ruled that Texas judges and court clerks — who had been named as defendants — must be removed from the lawsuit.

 

As a result, any future injunctions in the case won't block the law, attorneys said, because the only defendants who remain are officials who handle medical and pharmaceutical licenses. Any court orders against them would only affect their licensing powers, said Marc Hearron, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group whose attorneys are leading the litigation.

Slate viewed this as an attack on Constitutionally guaranteed rights: 

Gorsuch concluded, federal courts cannot “parlay” an injunction against an attorney general “into an injunction against any and all unnamed private persons who might seek to bring their own S.B. 8 suits.”

 

This part of Gorsuch’s ruling is a victory for providers—albeit an extremely limited one, for two reasons. First, it’s not clear that an injunction against licensing officials would stop bounty hunters from filing lawsuits under S.B. 8; it would only restrict the state’s ability to punish those clinics found liable under the law. Similarly, an injunction against licensing officials may not stop citizens from suing “abettors” who facilitate an abortion. Second, Texas and other states can easily work around Friday’s decision. Wary of that outcome, Chief Justice John Roberts—along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented from Gorsuch’s refusal to let providers sue state court clerks and the Texas attorney general. Roberts and Sotomayor wrote separate dissents, both focusing on Texas’ flagrant attempt to “nullify” rights protected by the federal Constitution.

Well, isn't that special. So special, in fact, Governor Gavin Newsom of California has decided to use that very model for a new law in his state...and it is brilliant:

The award for Best Use Of Ridiculous Legislation goes to Gov. Newsom. This is the perfect example of be-careful-of-what-you-wish-for kinda thinking. I have no idea if they can actually craft a law using the model, but it's just the kind of thinking We, the People, need to drive the ridiculousness of the anti-women party stance right out into the open. If they claim this violates the Second Amendment, well...goose...gander...shut up and sit down. 

The New York Times explained that thinking rather well:

As the Supreme Court has signaled that it might overturn Roe v. Wade, California political leaders have said they will work to make the state a refuge for women in parts of the country where abortion could be outlawed. Mr. Newsom’s response seemed to fulfill warnings that if the high court backed Texas’ legal strategy, liberal-leaning states might use the same tactic to limit rights dear to conservatives, such as gun rights.

 

The governor said that “if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”

In the end, this whole episode is about the ridiculousness that has become SCOTUS. The court, once a place where laws and legislation was discussed free of political gamesmanship, has evolved into something partisan and devoid of the protections it's supposed to offer. The court as it stands now would not hear R. B. Ginsburg's case on unfair taxation that hinged on gender discrimination. The court is precariously edging toward becoming a puppet court...the kind we mocked and belittled in totalitarian countries like the Philippines and  Venezuela. 

If SCOTUS upholds more end-runs around the Constitution and settled law, what's the point of either? They are nothing more than shams and illusions to shed a rosy glow over morally and ethically bankrupt policies. 

The Wifely Person's Consideration o'the Week

And on that note.....I am giving serious consideration to taking the week off

 between that other holiday in December and New Year's Day. 

Truth is, I'll be hanging out with 50 pounds of pure snuggle 

and I'm not sure I'm gonna wanna rouse myself off the couch 

to do much besides let her out into the back yard. I'll let you know

Pissed Off....For A Change

SCOTUS, which is acting more and more like SCROTUM, is hearing 2 challenges to the ridiculously unconstitutional Texas abortion law. The Washington Post distills the hearing this way:

The challengers say the court must intervene to stop an unconstitutional law designed to avoid judicial scrutiny. The Texas law is enforced by private citizens, who are empowered to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. 

The law has effectively halted access to abortion in the second largest state and sent Texas patients across state lines to terminate their pregnancies. 

The cases on Monday center on legal procedural questions. Next month, the justices will review a separate Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. In that case, abortion opponents are seeking to overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the right to abortion in 1992. 

A dozen states have passed laws similar to the six-week ban in Texas, which prohibits the procedure after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. Federal judges preemptively blocked state officials from enforcing the other laws.

There is a level of absurdity in these laws. They are supposed to STOP abortion, something they will never do. All they are going to do in send women back to illicit practitioners, coat hangers, and homemade poisons. This is not about protecting women, it is about killing them. 

Yes, I said killing women. 

Before Roe v. Wade, women died in back-alley abortions every day. They killed themselves with coat hangers and homemade supposed abortifacients. Others carried dead babies to term, or babies with such severe deformities that they could not live much past birth. Pre-teen victims of rape and incest were forced to carry those babies to term. Yes, and some women terminated pregnancies as a desperate move to not have a baby. 

These new attempts to control women are nothing more than attempts to turn back the clock to a time when women were chattel. And men controlled women. And our uteruses were not our own, but belonged to a husband. I used to think we were beyond this. We are not. 

The day I see those same righteous folks picked to control men's penises is the day I begin to think this is about saving children. When I see the same folks rallying for a safety net for mothers and children after birth, I'll begin to think they are pro-life. When I see those same righteous folk out there rallying for boys and men to keep their dicks in their pants, I'll consider the possibility that they are serious about preventing unwanted pregnancy.  And the day they put restrictions of Viagra as a recreational drug, I might believe they are serious about sex for procreation only.

Would that it really was all about uterus control. But wait...it's not.

On October 8th, Bill Maher described what is happening in our country as a slow-moving coup. How is it our crack journalists haven't been talking about this as directly as Maher was that night? Do yourself a favor: watch this all the way through. Even if you saw it the first time, watch it again. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cR4fXcsu9w)

I happen to think he is pretty close to spot on. The right-wing of the GOP is already is motion if you can judge the emails going out. 

Thankfully, not everyone is rolling over. After Maher's show,  Liz Cheney, daughter of the Dark Lord Dick, tweeted:

Millions of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen. Republicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true. Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic.

This is not news to me...nor should it be to you if you're a regular reader of this blog. I've been saying it for a long time. 

But here's the thing. The abortion hearings are a test case for setting up SCOTUS to allow the overturn of an election. If the conservative majority can revoke women's rights in the nominative form of access to health care, they can continue with permitting the restriction of voter rights, support of gerrymandering, and repeal of civil rights for the LGBTQ community. Don't say I'm being alarmist here; we know the cases are moving through the courts for those issues. And once the court begins to act on those cases, the election is not far off. As Bill Maher said in that monologue,

Here are the easiest 3 predictions in the world:

• Trump will run in 2024 

• He will get the Republican nomination 

•  And whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce he won.

It almost worked the first time. There were flaws in the plan. His team is working to fix those flaws as I type. If you need a reminder....click here: The Eastman Memorandums.

It's time to pay attention to the men behind the curtain.

Meanwhile...

Tomorrow is election day. Here in our little village, the only voting taking place is for the school board and the education referendum extension. And if you think that's a no brainer, guess again. Several of the candidates are anti-COVID protection measures of any kind, one sends his kids to private school and has no contact with our public schools, and one has put up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup look-a-like signs because his name is Reese. Judging by the debate, he has the intellect of a peanut butter cup. There are, however, enough sane candidates for which to vote and I will be voting for them and the extension.  

Educating our kids has to be a priority. I can only hope our school board believes our kids are worth educating in a way that teaches them the value of living in a democracy with justice for all. Yeah, I know. It's a stretch.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Vote. 

Whatever election you have going at the polls on Tuesday,

Vote.

It's your town, your state, your country. 

Vote.