Happy Independence Day. Now Half of you Surrender your Rights

Happy Fourth of July, or not. I’m not much in the mood to celebrate Independence Day this year. When half of the population is not allowed dominion over their own bodies, it ceases to be a free and independent country. Theocratic and independent would be more accurate. We are now in a cross between Iran and old South Africa where a minority of religious extremists dictate what happens to hundreds of millions who disagree with them.

I read yesterday that about 1 out of every 50 pregnancies are ectopic, where the embryo attaches in the fallopian tube rather than the uterus. This condition will kill or severely injure the woman unless it’s treated by what is technically an abortion, which has been made illegal in about half the country.

The math on that is alarming. In 2019, there were 3.75 million pregnancies. That translates to 75,000 ectopic pregnancies. If half of those are in states where abortion is illegal, severely restricted, or has the process unnecessarily prolonged (because time is of the essence here), that leaves 37,500 women who will be killed or injured by religious Republican ideologues. It would leave 37,500 widowers/boyfriends and an untold amount of motherless children.

While Red State governors measure their metaphorical dicks by seeing who can impose the most draconian anti-abortion laws, tens of thousands of citizens will be killed or wounded as a result. Ain’t that America?

It is now.

More on the Hearings

There have been a couple more January 6^th hearings since my last post, one regarding TFG trying to use the Justice Department to facilitate a coup by installing a hand-picked Yes Man as AG, and one on testimony from the aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

The Justice Dept. hearing seems so long ago now, so I won’t delve into much of it. Suffice to say that Jeffery Clark must feel like the biggest putz in the country. The guy was publicly reamed out in the Oval Office in front of the president and now the nation. There’s nothing like having a bunch of the most successful lawyers in the country call you an idiot. Not that I think they were wrong, it’s just so humiliating.

“You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill," said Deputy AG Richard Donahue. I think that’s one of the most effective put-downs in recent memory.

And according to the official phone log, TFG had already made the decision to fire the AG and install Clark.  Records show calls to Clark as being to the “Acting Attorney General.” That means the decision had been made and this conversation apparently made him change his mind. The thought of mass resignations throughout the upper echelons of Justice must have had an impact. He may have been able to put a toady in charge, but there would be no apparatus to get anything done in such a short window. And the story would cease to be about righting a “stolen” election and become about the president firing the Justice Dept. If I give TFG credit for anything, it would be for knowing how things will play in the media.

Tuesday’s surprise hearing came while I was on vacation, which Sweetpea and I spent in Ocean City MD. I meant to come up from the pool and watch the hearings but I figured I could always watch it when I got home via DVR. Unfortunately, the hearing was so hastily scheduled that the TV guide grid must not have been updated, so it was never recorded. But I did catch the recaps later and saw much of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.

It’s unfortunate that the items that people are talking about the most really matter the least. Like grabbing the steering wheel of his motorcade vehicle and trying to force the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol, rather than the West Wing, where they were heading.

It’s not something he will ever be charged for so it’s more like a sideshow; another look into his infantile self-absorption. Tell me, does it surprise you at all that he had a meltdown like this?

“I’m the effing President, take me up to the Capitol!” Is that not the ultimate “Do you know who I am?”  moment? It’s completely in character.

Right away, GOP apologists started disputing her testimony, but of course, they’re not under oath. She was. Under oath beats carping from the sidelines every time.

I heard others talking about how it would be too difficult for a president (especially this porky one) to maneuver close enough to the barrier in “The Beast” (the president’s famed armored limo) to reach the steering wheel. What they don’t consider is that this incident didn’t take place in The Beast, it was in smaller, alternate transport. He was shown on video leaving his 1/6 speech in the SUV, not The Beast, where there are no such impediments to reaching up to the driver. It totally could have happened.

Other people are calling it “hearsay.” But she never claimed to have been there, she was testifying to what she was directly told by someone who WAS there, in the presence of a second person who was there.

But like I said, all this is really nothing that matters in the grand scheme of things. Nor is the story about throwing his lunch at the wall. Big deal… he acts like a petulant child. Who didn’t know that already?

What I found chilling was that not only did he know the crowd assembling for the event was armed, he wanted the Secret Service to allow them into the Ellipse anyway.

“They’re not here to hurt ME,” he said.

Another completely in-character quote. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone else. Hell, he wanted to LEAD the armed resistance straight to the Capitol and demand the presidency at gunpoint. Of course, this puts to bed Republican BS about the crowd being Antifa. He knew it wasn’t Antifa or he wouldn’t have even been out there in the first place, let alone while letting them have guns.

They told him the crowd was chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and he said, “Mike deserves it.”

I also wonder why all these armed insurrectionists weren’t arrested on the spot? Rifles and ammo clips are illegal in DC. They could have arrested these people on the spot, rather than just turning them away from the speech area. You know if it were a BLM protest that came packin’, it would be a different story. I’d wager there would be arrests in record numbers.

But we already know that the underwhelming police presence was intentional, and those who WERE there were told not to use guns and not to get physical with the crowd. Because they were TFG’s people not just a mob of 3^rd class citizens.

The violence on 1/6 was not something that got out of hand, it was the intention all along. Again with the Republicans, it was a feature, not a bug. He knew it, his staff knew it, they wanted it, they created it, and it happened just as planned.

This is not what is supposed to happen in a free and democratic country. So this Independence Day, I find very little to celebrate. We have become just like the tin pot dictatorships we used to oppose. Happy birthday to us.

Vacation Observation

One of the best things about going on vacation is the freedom to be lazy. If I laid around the house reading a book all day, I’d feel like there was some kind of chore I should be doing instead. But on vacation, I have license to sit by a pool or on the beach and spend the day reading a book. I knocked out two books in two days without a single regret. (Cheap mystery fiction, if you’re curious.)

But whatever we were doing came to a halt around 8:00 PM so that we could fix some drinks, adjourn to the balcony, and watch the sunset over the bay. It’s a sweet reward for getting through what has personally been a very tough last year.