Women’s Rights

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In the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned, we see several states legislating near-total bans on abortion. Many not even leaving options in the case of rape or incest.

While many support that, most do not. A recent AP poll shows that 53% of US adults disapprove of the Supreme Court decision. And more, 60% think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-health-congress-government-and-politics-fc8c68d1c4dd29ef0a364050013b8cf4

Elsewhere, NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson, who had been accused by 20+ women of sexual assault and misconduct during massages when he was with the Houston Texans, received his arbitrated ruling yesterday. A former federal judge ruled the preponderance of evidence showed Watson had committed sexual assault. She described Watson’s behavior as “predatory” and “egregious.”

He was suspended for a paltry 6 games.

Largely due to comparisons with past NFL punishments and lack of notice to players.

Watson recently signed a fully guaranteed, 5-year, $230 million contract with the Cleveland Browns. Anticipating the suspension, most of his $46 million guaranteed money for this year was a signing bonus, with only ~$1 million as his game salary.

With a 6 game suspension, Watson will lose ~$345,000.

That’s 0.75% of his 5-year contract.

Absurd. Ridiculous. Offensive. Unjust. Wrong. Those are words that come to mind. Both for the Watson suspension and the abortion bans.

That US society devalues women and their rights and bodies is nothing new. It’s disgusting how much it’s still happening, though.

I can only imagine the restraint women show every day to not just burn down the whole system.

Wake Up!

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Lots of people have been wondering when Merrick Garland would wake up and start looking into the January 6th insurrection and the roles key Trump administration members played that day and the plot to decertify the election.

Finally there are more signals that the Department of Justice is looking into it.

Not sure what will come of it. But it’s about time DOJ woke up to the alarm bells going off.

187 Minutes

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187 minutes. Over three hours. Trump watched on TV as the crowd he drew to DC, riled up, directed to the Capitol, and encouraged to stop the legitimate certification of the election stormed the Capitol building, violently attacked police, and chanted violent threats at the Vice President and Congress.

His aides tried to get him to say something to stop it. He tweeted about his disappointment in Pence. Pence’s security detail, meanwhile, was contacting their loved ones in case they didn’t make it out alive.

Congress people tried to get the President to stop the crowd. But many knew he wouldn’t disavow the rioters. And he wouldn’t. He said they were special. He wouldn’t even say the election was over the next day.

It was so bad that the acting Secretary of Defense was not getting orders from the President. He was getting orders from the Vice President, who’s not even in the chain of command. But they knew they couldn’t listen to the President at that time. He was dangerous and trying to subvert our democracy for his own power.

Trump just watched. For three hours. As our democracy hung by a thread. He wouldn’t act to stop it.

Even the Uvalde police didn’t wait that long to act.

It’s unfathomable to me that people can still support Trump.

Josh Hawley Running

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Tonight’s January 6th Committee hearings presented a cornucopia of damning evidence about the fragility of our democracy.

It also gave us some awesome social media fodder to mock several people who encouraged the Big Lie and the rioters. And I’m all here for that.

Josh Hawley deserves every ounce of mockery heading his way.

Secret Service Text Messages

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The Secret Service, too?? So now we are left to question the veracity of claims from the Secret Service. Text messages from the day of the January 6th insurrection are unavailable to the Congressional committee since they’ve been deleted. Allegedly during a phone migration.

Yet the Secret Service was told to retain those texts and records twice: once on January 16, again on January 25. Their phone migration started January 27.

Seems to be a pattern of lost information, whether it’s White House call logs from the day, confidential and top secret records that were taken to Mar a Lago, and now Secret Service communications.

No wonder the public continues to lose trust in the government.

Sensing a pattern

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sensing a pattern here. Yes, I can imagine it’s tough to be a police officer. Yet it seems that the more they are criticized for failures and lack of response, the more funding they wind up getting.

Even here in San Francisco (which is not as progressive as many people think) - we’ve had years now of reports where police just decline to investigate crimes. Or worse, reports in the newspaper of police turning their backs on a crime in progress (such as store break-ins) and doing nothing, even when citizens are yelling at them to act. And no, it doesn’t have to do with prosecutorial approach. Besides, that’s not their job to worry about with a crime in progress.

Yet even here, the mayor is increasing police funding. It’s like, the worse they do, the more funding they seem to get. Because crime stokes a primal fear in people and many are unwilling to see that more police, more tactical gear, more weapons, are not the answer.

Uvalde is a prime example. That city spends a huge portion of its budget on police. Didn’t help the kids.

And this isn’t even getting into the recurring issues of police brutality, racial discrimination, etc.

At some point we’ll have to face that more police and funding for ever more outrageous weapons are not the answers.

Truth and Truthiness

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The Big Lie about the election. 5G receivers in vaccines. Obama’s birth certificate. And now questions over a one-source viral story about a 10-year old rape victim seeking an abortion.

What these stories all have in common is a lot of people who believe them simply because they’ve heard it over and over again.

Years ago, Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” - things that sound true even if they aren’t.

In the age of social media, truthiness wins out over the truth, simply because it’s so easy to get things repeated. Whether they are not true or simply not corroborated doesn’t stop folks from hitting that share button.

So don’t think about whether this is true or not. Hit that Share button on this cartoon! Repost! Retweet!

I don’t think we feel secure

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Debates over the 2nd Amendment often hinge on phrases from the text, “shall not be infringed,” or “a well regulated militia.”

Maybe there’s something we’re missing in the part between those phrases? If this is about security and freedom, do we feel more secure and free today with the proliferation of guns? It seems the list of places we don’t feel secure just keeps growing with each mass shooting.

Yes, this is mostly a semantics point and has no real legal basis. But, perhaps to feel more secure we need to stop this idolatry of guns as the key to freedom. Because it doesn’t seem to be working.

Accountability

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned, following a huge swath of cabinet resignations expressing loss of faith in him.

Johnson has been a lightning rod conservative during his time in office, borrowing from Trump’s populist playbook. But he’s also been at the center of relentless scandals over illicit parties at Downing St, sexual misconduct of an ally Johnson promoted even after being aware of prior issues, manipulations of ethics rules and investigations, and more.

The conservatives lost confidence in Johnson and forced his hand to resign.

Imagine that. A scandal plagued conservative leader being held accountable by his own party? It seems downright un-American. Unfortunately.

Unintended Consequences

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Poorly designed laws that aren’t thought through produce chaos and unintended consequences.

In the rush to activate anti-abortion laws, several states have implemented bans starting at conception. Regardless of one’s beliefs about when life starts and what’s right, this is bound to produce chaos across multiple fronts in life. Unfortunately it’s likely to result in very invasive and intrusive questions and testing for many women.

Who knows, cops might start carrying pregnancy tests along with breathalyzer tests. Because who could imagine that resulting in any problems… 🙄

Gas Prices

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Yep, gas prices are crazy high. Lots of factors go into that- Russian oil bans due to their invasion of Ukraine has driven up oil prices. Decades without new US refinery construction has limited capacity. Further limited by shifting processing units to sustainable fuels and refineries closing as they became more expensive and troublesome to run.

Yes, oil companies are making huge profits but if it was driven just by their greed they would have raised prices a long time ago, so there’s more going on.

And Summer demand is high. Limited supply and high demand, price goes up.

But it’s not as simple as drilling for more oil. Without refining capacity (running near peak already), we can’t turn that crude oil into gasoline anyway. And that also works against the climate change goals we must prioritize.

Reduce demand and prices should go down.

It sucks, but maybe expensive gas is going to be around a while. And maybe the world needs that.

Freedom and Rights, but for Whom?

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As we start the Fourth of July weekend, I reflect on the promise of America and what we see happening today.

“All men are created equal.” That’s the promise. And we still struggle to live up to that, with more restrictions being pushed on LGBTQ people, promotion of Christian theocratic norms, women’s body autonomy vanishing overnight in many places, voting laws that discriminate based on systemic racial issues, immigrants made to feel like they’re not wanted, and more.

As a financially secure, straight, cisgender, white male, it’s not me that these discriminatory laws and practices and hatred are after- but lots of people I love.

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” America is set up to be majority role with rights of the minorities protected. But we’re losing both of those. The majority of Americans disagree with many recent rulings and laws. Yet the system has been rigged to ram through minority opinions. And the minority rights that are supposed to be protected are being eroded.

Minority rule without protecting rights- that’s fascism. A word thrown about so much lately that’s it’s lost its impact.

I truly love America. I love the promise of what it should be. That’s why we keep pushing to make it better.

So as you think about or celebrate America’s birthday this year, ponder: is America what it should be? If not, what am I going to do about it?