"90-Days" of Conflict

 Even with its current pervasiveness, I’ve never been a big watcher of reality TV. For 20 years, I only watched the Big Three: Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race, all of which I picked up in their respective first seasons. By 2024, I picked up a couple more, “Bar Rescue” and “Naked and Afraid,” which I may post about some other time. And there’s one other.

Now, my wife, Sweetpea, predominantly watches what she calls, “murder shows.” You know, the true crime series like First 48, Forensic Files, Dateline, and the like. I’m ok with them once in a while, but I prefer more escapist fare. Because we don’t have many shows that we both like, it’s hard to find things to watch together. Because she gets up insanely early and goes to work before I’m out of bed, she also goes to bed early, so we don’t have a lot of downtime together. After dinner, she’ll usually put on a murder show and promptly fall asleep. When she can’t find a murder show she hasn’t seen, she’ll opt for MTV’s Catfish or TLC’s 90-Day Fiancé.

I figured I could tolerate those so I began recording them with the DVR, so we can watch together at our leisure. Catfish is straightforward enough. It’s like a true crime show where the hosts investigate people who get into relationships with other people via dating sites but refuse to meet or ever be seen on camera.

But the 90-Day stuff? Wow. What a mess of humanity… that I can’t stop watching. It’s basically nationally televised voyeurism.

There are several 90-Days brands. The original is 90-Day Fiancé, which centers on couples who date internationally. One will bring the other to the US via a K-1 visa, and will then have 90 days to get married or the visitor has to go back. That’s always the focal question: Will they get married or will it all blow up?

Another variation is Before the 90-Days, which focuses on the lead-up to the travel to America, as they begin exploring an international relationship. There’s also 90-Days – Happily Ever After? which shows the lives of some of the couples after they’ve gotten married and are going about their lives. Then there’s the Bizarro World version, 90-Days – The Other Way, which is where an American goes abroad to marry and live in a vastly different culture.

And if all that isn’t enough, there’s a parasite series called Pillow Talk, which runs right after each of the other shows, featuring several pairs of former 90-Day participants who watch the show and provide commentary.

The whole organization is its own self-contained world, like an Earthbound Marvel Universe, whose occupants have staged adventures and bitch at each other.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I fully admit that this is crap TV and I’m probably dumber for having watched it. It’s just that you get sucked into these people’s lives. There are some you love but many more that you love to hate. And there are some real pieces of work on these shows.

The reason I’m bringing this whole thing up is that I find there are a lot of the same themes that flow through each of these series and most of the dating pairs. There are three main categories of conflict:

·         Money

·         Jealousy/Insecurity

·         Religion

Money? That’s obvious and applies universally. As British comic Spike Milligan once said,

Everyone wants/needs more money. Some lie about it, some cheat to get it, and some think it’s owed to them.

To me, the biggest thing keeping these couples apart is jealousy (and the insecurity that leads to jealousy). Women go ape-shit any time their man talks to, texts with, bumps into, or acknowledges the existence of another woman.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I’m not being sexist; it goes both ways. I just don’t care to bother with the verbal gymnastics of keeping all terms unisexual.

One woman doesn’t want her fitness instructor boyfriend to have women as clients, even though they make up over 90% of his business. Another guy is crucified for “cheating” by receiving sexy videos from women he’s never met. Men flip out any time they find themselves near their women’s previous boyfriends, with whom they are still friendly. One girl got upset because her guy went to church, and there were women there. She also didn’t want him to hang out with his sisters, because they might have friends around. And on it goes…

If I were on that show, my stories would be as dull as dishwater. Most of my friends are women. Anyone I was dating would have to understand that, and if they flip out about it, I’m out. It’s non-negotiable. I will be friends with women. And my mate is free to be friends with men. I’d never be a hypocrite about it. I’m fully trusting until I have a reason not to be. (And I’m quite fortunate that Sweetpea is fine with this.)

I think these “cast members” would ease a lot of their own misery if they just decided to trust their partner and assume the best rather than the worst. And if they do stray, for real, cut them the eff loose and move on. (Those who do bugger off invariably find a line-up of men (or women) who want to go out with them, after having seen them on TV.)

The last obstacle is religion and it’s almost always bout Middle-Eastern or African men wanting to control American women. They never seem to tell their prospective wives all the details of what their lives together might look like, or what she might look like after she’s covered head to toe. They know that if they let on they expect a life of obedience, servitude, and child-bearing at the outset, the American dating pool is likely to dry up

One Egyptian guy was coming to live with his American wife in California, and they had a fight that led to their breakup because she was wearing a dress that, while it went up to her neck, down past her knees, and had long sleeves, it bared a couple square inches of her back. He couldn’t live with such a tawdry display of wantonness. Because of religion.

There is a couple this season, where the 40ish American woman is going to Jordan to marry her 22–year–old guy on the very day she arrives because his religion won’t permit them to be alone together in a room. This story is just getting underway and she has no idea what he’s going to expect of her. This is basically a “boy” who told the cameras he wants her to obey his wishes at all times and not question him as the man of the house. And he needs her to cover up with loose clothing

I think she ought to spank his 22-year-old ass and send him to his room without dinner. These stories always seem to end up the same way, with the American women taking a powder either before or shortly after the wedding.

I don’t see how they didn’t research the culture the second they made contact with their foreign beaus. It would have saved them a lot of heartache and a pile of cash.

Or maybe they just reeeeeally wanted to be on TV.

But that’s the worst part. I can’t even comprehend allowing TV cameras to film every part of my life, every argument, every mistake, every emotional moment, and broadcast it nationwide. And when these fights happen, everything is in play, from bathroom habits to sexual inadequacies to masturbatory quirks. Nothing is off-limits.

And I make room for the fact that producers are egging them on or providing angles to assert to keep the fights going. You can see by their casting choices that they’re counting on the conflict, the louder and more warped the better.  That’s too bad because I’m sure there are viewers like Sweetpea and me who really enjoy seeing decent people overcome international obstacles and go on to live happily ever after. (These people tend to end up on the Pillow Talk series.)

At the end of every season, they stage a multi-episode “Tell All,” where all the cast members get together in New York to answer questions from a moderator and each other. They all get to know one another; some become real-life friends, others bitter enemies. This helps build the 90-Day ecosystem

It’s hard to watch sometimes because they poke and prod for every bit of controversy and conflict, even those that have already been resolved. They ought to call these episodes, “Pulling at Scabs.” It’s seldom pretty.

The bigger point is that we, as a people, are being conditioned to become our ugliest forms of ourselves. We’re guided to be vain, jealous, insecure, snarky, mean, over-reactive, and without empathy. Is this the public influencing the media or the media influencing the public?

Either way, we’re a mess and we don’t seem to be getting any better.

Maybe the next iteration ought to be “90 Days – Incel.” That’s where they take some anti-social, obnoxious misfit out of his parents’ basement, send him on a date with a real woman, and film the inevitable disaster. They just need to make sure the crew has tasers ready. They’ll need to be able to guarantee the woman’s safety.

So yeah, I’m up here on my soapbox, but I’ll still be watching Sunday nights. Damn it.

AI and the World of Disinformation

Last week I was watching TV and another story came on about artificial intelligence (AI) and it got me thinking. I said to my wife, “Congress is going to have to do something about this soon, or we’ll never be able to trust our eyes to ferret out the lies from the truth.”*

*It probably didn't sound as eloquent at the time, more like a series of meaningful grunts and gestures. But she knew what I meant.

I told her I ought to do a post about it this week and entered some notes into my phone, to avoid that dreaded blog post amnesia I always get…

“What the hell was I going to write about today?”

But in rolling through the news the next day, I saw that there was already a bill in progress. Naturally, the story was about how Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to kill it.

I don’t know what’s in the bill, but I know what it should be. There’s a pretty simple metric to make it clear whether a creation should be illegal or not.

My law would include the following:

·        It is illegal to use AI to create a photograph or video of someone doing something they didn’t do and claim that it is an accurate depiction of the event.

·        It is illegal to use AI to manipulate audio to produce the sound of someone saying something they never said.

·        Any such media created for legitimate artistic or satiric purposes would be required to include a permanent watermark or indication showing that it is a fictional creation and not an actual event.

·        In addition to criminal penalties/jail time for the creators and original distributors, the person illegally portrayed would have the right to sue for damages commensurate with the seriousness of the infraction. The penalty has to have teeth, or else the rich pricks bankrolling these disinformation campaigns will just pay the fine as the “cost of doing business” and continue on their merry way. So a conviction has to hurt or else it’s worthless.

In all fairness, these things should be illegal no matter how they’re created, but I’m focusing on the AI end of it, because AI makes it so much more realistic, with minimal effort.

It’s important to be able to distinguish such things because we know that bad actors will use this tech to pursue their own nefarious ends. (Hi Russia!) If we can no longer differentiate real from fake, we are at the mercy of those who would create damaging truths out of thin air and use them to pull the public’s puppet strings.

What’s worse, when we DO see something real, the culprit will immediately scream, “But that wasn’t me, it was AI!” With such a law, if they claim it was AI and didn’t pursue damages, we’d know the claim is hollow. And of course, if someone does sue and it’s found to be baseless, similar penalties should apply. (We can call that the DJT Clause.)

Without such a law, we’ll end up living in a fantasy world, provided by whomever is the most persuasive in their AI-generated fabrications. Subjective truth will be nearly impossible to confirm.

There is probably a movie to be made about how future AI becomes self-aware, but can only look at the world through what AI has created, which could bear zero resemblance to the real world. It could either be a horror movie or flight of fantasy, depending on who’s making the movie.

So like I mentioned, the Republicans are against any such legislation. They know that their only hope for acquiring and maintaining power is a massive campaign of disinformation because their basic positions are horrific to anyone who’s not filthy rich, a religious zealot, or a raving racist/ sexist/ homophobe/general hate-monger. They have nothing they can point to as something they accomplished for the average American, other than giving them permission to hate people unlike themselves.

Mitch is wrapping himself in the blanket of the First Amendment, which he’s always FOR when Republicans are “speaking,” preferably with their wallets. Lord knows he doesn’t want any impediment to creating the fanciful lies they’ve concocted over the recent years. Mitch doesn’t care about right or wrong, or freedom of speech, he cares about power and money. With power comes money. That’s the Republican platform. And if the rest of us have to live in a dystopian future where no one knows fact from fiction, it’s all the better for him.

 

When Up is Down and Down is Up

The MAGAs are still out there pretending that the economy is Biden’s Achilles’ Heel. I harvested this meme from the weekend:

I saw a similar one, which I unfortunately neglected to capture, that wanted everyone to go grocery shopping and fill up the tank before they go to vote.

That one had to be old… I agree with it 100%. I think by November, unless Republicans do something to tank the economy in the name of maintaining another avenue for campaign attack ads, the economy will be just fine. Gas prices are always a question mark because so many things can send them shooting up. Production issues, transport issues, war, terrorism, and just plain greed can spike gas prices. And as it’s often said, gas prices go up like a rocket and come back down like a feather.

I think Democrats need to do a better job at highlighting how the prior inflation rise was primarily due to corporate price gouging rather than the after-effects of the federal COVID stimulus. We need some charts circulating that show how when the inflation was at its peak, so were corporate profits. If the cost of supplies was really the culprit in high prices, profits wouldn’t have been smashing records.

Granted, such presentations are likely to put those who most need to hear them to sleep.

It continues to rankle how Republicans keep trying to compare current gas prices to when COVID had cratered them. All it took for gas to fall under $2.00 was a mishandled pandemic that made people stay home, dried up demand for gas, and caused the deaths of over a million Americans. Although I’m sure they’d take the deal in a second if the dead were solely made up of brown people, gays, and non-Christians.

All the metrics are looking good right now. Wages are up, joblessness is down, and inflation is as low as it was before the pandemic. Polls say people feel they are personally doing well, but still think the overall economy is a disaster. This is 100% the media’s doing, especially the Right Wing Echo Chamber, which pushes the bad news regardless of actual statistics to the contrary. When a Democrat is in power, it’s all bad news, all the time. And mainstream media doesn’t broadcast economic successes nearly as forcefully as they do the preceding failures.

***

In other news, Republicans could not look worse on The Border than they do right now, what with the Senate taking orders from TFG to tank a bipartisan bill to address the southern border so that he (and the rest of the party) can run on the immigration chaos for this year’s elections. They refuse to take any action that might look like a “win” for President Biden.

Last I’ve seen, they’re pretending that this bill is so terrible, even though their teammates were in on its creation. But in actuality, it’s like I’ve been saying about abortion, election security, and other issues: Republicans don’t really want to address the problem if they can campaign on it. They prevent solutions so they can stoke fear over Democrats’ inaction. That’s page one in the GOP playbook. Democrats need to highlight this practice at every opportunity.

***

Lastly, congratulations to E. Jean Carroll, for becoming filthy rich at the expense of TFG. Although I wouldn’t make any big plans, just yet, for how to spend all that dough. It will be a long time before she sees a dime if TFG can do anything about it. I’m sure he’ll pull every delaying tactic available to get avoid paying out, from endless appeals to limited bankruptcy. And when it eventually does come time to pay, I have no doubt he’ll try to draw the money from other people via “loans” he never pays back, or fundraising from his sheep.

E. Jean should also avoid going up in any tall buildings, lest she become another victim of faulty Russian staircase design, wherein that first step is a real killer.

Finding New Speakers

We still don’t have a Speaker of the House, which is a mixed blessing. Given the majority makeup of The House, at least they can’t do any more damage or hold necessary legislation hostage.

Steve Scalise was the initial candidate put forth by the Republicans, but after two days of “negotiating,” he learned that he had no shot at 217 votes, so he dropped out. I heard some withheld support because he’s fighting a blood cancer diagnosis. It’s apparently treatable, but the GOP treats their own people just as disgustingly as they do their opponents.

That left Gym Jordan to pick up the mantel. Sigh… Gym freakin’ Jordan. As I mentioned last week, I just can’t stand the guy. He inherits the same problem Scalise had; a portion of his party that wants no part of him. And with the slimness of their majority in The House, a portion of any size is one they can’t omit.

So in keeping with his character, Jordan and his allies in Congress and on Fox “News” began a campaign of browbeating and threatening fellow Republicans who are withholding their votes from him. Jordan is one of those guys, as the saying goes, whose only weapon is a hammer, so he sees every obstacle as a nail.

Luckily, there seem to be people who don’t play that shit, so who knows what’s going to happen to his Speakership opportunity.

Maybe, and that’s with a big M, some moderate Republicans can work something out with the Democrats and install some kind of sanity to House leadership. It’s such a low bar when you’re really just looking for someone who isn’t batshit crazy. I’m not sure if there are many out there, who are impervious to the MAGA forces.

Republicans and Democrats are so far apart on basic issues right now, that I don’t see how they’re going to find common ground on anything. But I’m glad they’re trying because I am NOT looking forward to another year of clown shoes investigations and circus acts. Anybody would be better than Jordan.

***

I probably ought to say something about the Israel/Hamas situation. But I really don’t want to. Other people are far more astute regarding the history and the details than I am. I don’t claim to know any more than any other schlub sitting at the bar.

Things are bad and they’re about to get much worse. I hope Israel’s ground invasion can obliterate Hamas forces and free any hostages left alive, but I also hope they do so with minimal damage to civilian lives. I do realize that’s basically impossible… Hamas embeds themselves among civilians as a deterrent to such retaliation.

But when you take on one of the most militarily capable countries on the planet, blow a hole in their border wall, rape, kill, torture, and kidnap their civilians, there will be repercussions. They’re not just going to let that go. A world of hurt is about to rain on some truly evil people, as well as people whose primary concern is to put food on the table. They probably should have thought some more about it before voting to put monsters in charge of their region.

So… I hope it’s over soon. I’m not counting on it, but I hope nevertheless.

That’s all I’ve got, M'kay.

The Week Republicans Showed Their Cards

Last week may well go down in history as the exact time US Republicans showed themselves as the party of anti-democracy autocratic dictatorship. All over the map, we saw Republicans doing their best to thwart the will of the people in deference to a small, vocal, band of racist and religious wingnuts, and toadies of the billionaire class.

Last week, we found out:

Justice Clarence Thomas received millions of dollars worth of gift trips and resort accommodations over many years, from a known billionaire conservative political donor, without including them on the mandatory financial disclosures. His defense was that he was an old and dear friend of the family who had no business before the court. Which is quite ludicrous, considering the amount of dough he spreads around to other Congressmen. And it’s even more telling that he also donated to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Do you think his donations may have had an effect on the way both senators continue to thwart any major Democratic initiatives? Or is that all just one big coincidence?

And the idea of this guy not having business before the court? How about Citizens United, which gave this guy the very right to buy off those two senators and whoever else could help him. Every decision SCOTUS made, from trashing the Voting Rights Act to upholding gerrymandering, to assaulting abortion benefits Republicans and therefore benefits this guy.

***

We had a woman run for state senator in North Carolina as a Democrat and then switch to Republican, just a few months into the job.

Is this the new tactic from the Right? Instead of running against an opponent from a hard Blue district, just run an imposter who can switch teams. This is one of the most depraved things I’ve ever heard of. It shows the lengths these people will go to subvert the democratic process.

Her seat is important because it gives Republicans a veto-proof Senate, so they can override the Governor at will. There’s nothing you can tell me to convince me this move wasn’t planned ahead of time because, at this time, political differences are so stark, there is little cross-over. A Venn diagram would show the parties in two unbroken circles, several feet apart. Nevertheless, this was her defense:

Seriously? What was cast aside was the will of a majority of voters who thought they were voting for a pro-choice, pro-health care, pro-Make the Rich Pay Taxes, pro-Social Security Democrat,.

Look, you can’t advertise steak and then serve chicken. Or in this case, a bowl of rocks. This one reeks of pre-planning, especially since North Carolina doesn’t have a provision for recall elections.

It looks like NC Democratic leaders are going to have to do a much more thorough job of vetting future candidates.

***

A federal judge in Texas banned the abortion drug, mifepristone, which is the safest of the two available and has been used safely for over 20 years. He basically banned it on a technicality, that the FDA didn’t test it properly. This is an area over which no court has ever asserted authority. The judge overlooked the long history showing the drug to be safer than Tylenol and accepted the many dubious, unproven, and just plain false claims presented by the plaintiff, who sought this exact judge because he was already well-known for being anti-choice. Hey, the Supreme Court is now ruling based on personal beliefs rather than legal precedent or validity, why wouldn’t it filter down to the rest of the court system?

Then as the fallout began to mount, Republicans doubled down on the condescension:

Yes, women have to deal with white men making rules about what they can do with their own bodies. And if men could give birth, they’d know how big a deal bodily autonomy is. Look how they pissed and moaned about goddamn vaccines, orating at length about the sanctity of one's own body and the absence of the government’s right to touch it. Except for women. Women are property to be owned and directed; that’s the Republican position. Might as well just put it on the Trump 2024 bumper stickers.

Republicans are asserting that these blobs have more rights than the woman, I mean “Incubator” that’s carrying them. As I’ve said before, endowing these collections of cells with human rights is a religious argument and religion has no place in US law. At least that’s the way it used to be before the theocrats took over.

Not to be outdone, Iowa’s attorney general has put a hold on offering Plan B contraception and abortions to victims of rape and sexual assault. It doesn’t matter how badly a woman is traumatized, Republicans are more worried about an un-sentient blob. But it’s totally not about controlling women, right? “You’ll have that baby and like it.”

***

Just to show that Republicans aren’t all about putting the screws on women.

An Oklahoma state representative got a change made to state law that would allow his wife to become a vehicle tag agent. He was arrested for it but that didn’t last long… the AG dropped the charges. Just professional courtesy from one white guy to another, I’m sure. What’s the point of getting elected to anything if you can’t do favors for your family and friends? For a moment there, it was almost like Oklahoma was showing a bit of integrity. Things are back to normal now.

***

 And then there was the Big One of the week, wherein the Tennessee state legislature expelled two Black representatives for taking part in a peaceful protest. They voted on a third legislator, a White woman, but she was not expelled. It’s a total mystery why the two Black guys had to go but the White lady could stay.  

The reason for the expulsion wasn’t that these guys broke the law; they were taking advantage of their First Amendment rights. They were expelled for “breaking decorum.”

Seriously.

Folks, it’s breaking decorum to fart in church. Sure people don’t like it, but you’re not excommunicated. Maybe, if someone crashed Easter Mass at the Vatican, pushed the pope out of the pulpit, dropped trou, and farted into the microphone, then maybe they might get excommunicated.

In reality, Tennessee Republicans engaged in the time-honored tradition of sticking it to an uppity Black man, just to show him who’s boss. And it also shows who’s a sniveling little bureaucrat that’s afraid of losing privilege. And as usual, when the shit blows up, Republicans double down.

This is no longer about teaching some punks a lesson, this is the blatant disregard for the citizens that voted these guys into office. They’re carrying out the citizen's business and the Powers That Be don’t like it. And rather than have a battle of ideals, they kick their opponents out of the game. AND, they try to cancel all future games.

It’s all over the country now… there is no bottom to which Republicans won’t sink, in pursuit of consolidating and maintaining their power. They’ll rig the game, cheat on the rules, sucker-punch their opponents, and buy off the refs. It’s zero-sum politics at its most pungent and they will never stop until they’re thrown out on their collective asses. IF, that is, we can survive the resulting riots, as they claim any election they lose must have been stolen.

Democrats need to take the gloves off because these guys will not play nice, or even honorably. That ship sailed a long time ago.

***

On a lighter (or just weirder) note, as I was pondering the charges against TFG and wondering how it was going to play out, I asked myself, “If TFG goes to prison, does he get Secret Service protection?” The very idea of it amused me. At first, I thought about how it would be quite the shit detail for the poor Secret Service guy, who probably thought he’d have a much cushier gig guarding the Second Coming of Julius Caesar. But then I remembered how he seemed to have no problem in surrounding himself with Secret Service Sycophants, who would delete their incriminating January 6^th text messages on his behalf. He no doubt has fans in the Service, so they’d probably have no trouble finding volunteers.

But my question is really moot, for two reasons. First, I saw this over the weekend:

So there you have it. He’d have someone to listen to his bullshit while he’s doing time. That’s one way to make sure you have visitors. I don’t think he’d be seeing much of Melania.

But the main reason it doesn’t matter is that I don’t think he’s ever going to see the inside of a jail cell. They just don’t put rich white-collar guys like him in jail. Certainly not at his level (being an ex-president.) They’ll find some other way to impose “punishment,” in a way befitting a privileged, wealthy, White male. They won’t even put him in one of those Camp Creampuff white-collar jails either. And they’ll find some kind of “cover” for it too… the fear of riots, the unwillingness to cause social upheaval, protection of Democracy… whatever.

But boy, would I ever love to be wrong on this one…

The Cruelty is Still the Point

Now that the Law of the Land is expected to be lacking Roe v Wade, the race is on to see who can dance on its grave the hardest. The Governors of both Nebraska (Pete Ricketts) and Oklahoma (Kevin Stitt) have just been quoted as insisting there will be no exception for victims of rape or incest.

I’m dying for an interviewer, one day, to reply, “How in the hell are these “babies?” They’re not babies, they’re thumb-tip-size blobs of cellular material that you’re giving more rights than the sentient being who’s carrying it in her body, all because your personal strain of magical thinking says so. Why do your values take precedent over those of the people involved?”

That’s really the nut of the question. “Why is your moral stance more important than that of the woman carrying the baby?” And if they try to answer about the sanctity of innocent life, then ask “Then why do you reject every program established to help this sacred life once it passes through the birth canal?  

Governor Stitt is making similar claims like it’s a race to see who the biggest unborn baby-lover is and who can put the cruelest vise around the Libs?

“That is a human being inside the womb. And we’re going to do everything we can to protect life and love both the mother and the child. And we don’t think that killing one to protect another is the right thing to do either.”

There it is. A grownup woman will be sacrificed before being allowed to have a simple medical procedure, to protect the potential of human life. And it’s because of the morals of a bunch of strangers in elected office and not the person to which this is happening. This is a message to women across the country and the world: “You are nothing but a bunch of cattle to us, cows who are only here to be incubators.  My friends and I can tell you what to do with your body and there’s nothing you can do about it. But we’ll tell you what, you don’t have to be immunized. You’re free to infect whoever you want with a serious virus.”

Both of these practiced politicians are doing that thing I mentioned in last week’s post, assuming facts not in evidence. They just breeze on about “babies” as if it’s a foregone conclusion that these intersecting cells count as sentient human beings. It’s that imagery that they want everyone to have in their head, to help sell their point. Like in this headline I saw this morning:

See? The Slaughter of Babies! Those commie liberals want to slaughter cute little, chubby-cheeked, toe-grabbing babies. They want their opponents to seem barbaric, like the kind of people who support slaughtering babies and bathing in their blood in the basement of pizza shops across the country. And they skip right by the part where 98.5% of abortions happen long before the fetus resembles anything close to an actual baby.

That 1.5%, that’s where they want to live, which is even more grotesque because the poor souls who are having those late-term abortions desperately want to have the baby, but can’t due to medical problems beyond their control. It’s a tragedy, now with the added insult and injury of the state demanding they have the baby anyway, even if the baby can’t survive. Even if the baby is already dead. Even if the delivery or continued pregnancy kills the mother. How can this be tolerated in a "free" country?

What kind of ghouls are we in this country to allow this to happen? How is this forced application of a religious stance not in violation of the First Amendment? Republicans are racing to see who can turn the United States into an Evangelical Christian version of Iran, only with less of a warm and fuzzy image.

There’s only one realistic way to change any of this. The Court is not going to change, not without a filibuster-proof Senate in place. While that may be possible, it will take quite a while. At best, a simple majority will keep the Republicans from enacting a federal abortion ban. Meanwhile, SCOTUS is kicking it all back to the states, and that’s where the action will have to happen.

We need to elect people to state governments who will not support designating women as second-class citizens. We need Governors, state Senators, Assemblymen, Representatives, (or whatever is applicable to your state) who support the right to self-autonomy, period. Republicans have made themselves one-issue voters over abortion, I say we do so too. Because abortion is only the first domino.

This isn’t “slippery slope” bullshit here. Various Republicans have already been quoted as wanting to go after gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and contraception. If we are to have any illusions that we’re a “free country,” we must ensure that we have the individual freedom of bodily autonomy, and absolute privacy regarding what goes on in the bedroom, or any other room of our own houses.*

*As long as no one is getting hurt, obviously.

We have to be louder than they are. We have to outnumber them at the polls. We have to impose the will of the many over that of the few. And before anyone says, “Isn’t imposing one group's will on another group what you're fighting right now?” no, the liberal proposal is that we do what is morally right for ourselves, rather than forcing a particular action on other people. That’s the big difference. That’s why we’re right and they’re wrong.

They get to act in whatever way they're guided. But they can’t implement their bizarre fetus-worship on unwilling participants. This has life and death consequences, for real, loving, feeling, fearing, people. Or in other words, broodmares, as far as Republicans are concerned.

This controversy highlights the hypocrisy of the conservative “Freedom’ bullshit. To Republicans, we’re free to have as many guns as we want, but not to control the fate of our own bodies. We’re free to eschew proven (and free) medical care so we may infect others as we go about our daily business. The government can force women to face death over an ectopic pregnancy, but can’t force someone to wear a paper mask in public.

America the free? Hah. Republicans have made it clear that they want a country where we’re only free to be Republican. Anyone who objects to that is clearly sub-human, so who cares what they think anyway?

We have to vote these motherfuckers out of office, from town to state to Washington DC. Because if we don’t, this once-great nation continues the spiral right down the tubes, straight into a more powerful emulation of the countries we currently oppose.

It won’t be Sharia Law… maybe Uteria Law. 

 

The End of Roe

Kind of a big news week last week, huh? And don’t you know, the big story about the abortion decision leak drops right after I publish my weekly post. I had thoughts about dropping an interim post but it probably wouldn’t have been anything more than a bunch of incoherent howling and guttural sounds. Yes, I was viscerally upset.

I’ve been flipping through Facebook all week, looking for something on the subject from my conservative friends, some of whom attend Right to Life marches. I was dying to start tearing some shit up. But there was not a mention to be found. All week long, up through today, I haven’t seen a single GOP friend post anything on the subject; just usual wildlife mpegs, food shots, and other trivia. I wonder if they’re shocked that they finally got what they wanted, or they’re afraid of the massive blowback (that those like me were itching to unleash.)

I’ve written about abortion rights a number of times since I began this blog, the first of which being back when I was just trying to entertain a small group of Pittsburgh bloggers. I look at it now and think, “Damn, that guy has no idea how bad it’s going to get.”

The ramifications of this probable decision are vast and abhorrent. More rights given to a rapist father and his family than to the prospective child-bearer? No exceptions for the health of the mother? (Haven’t these assholes ever heard of an ectopic pregnancy?) Any random schmo from Texas being able to sue the Uber driver who takes a woman to a clinic? It’s madness. It’s a festival of unspeakable cruelty. And that, of course, is a highlight, to the Right to Life crowd.

There are so many angles to this story, I barely know where to begin. So to me, let’s start with the big nut.

A Point With No Foundation

This should have been a slam-dunk reading of the law and it would have been if we didn’t have six religious ideologues on the bench, ones who rather than call the balls and strikes, go out and look for reasons and rationales to support the position at which they want to end up, as strained as they may be.

The whole issue comes down to the question of when “human life” begins. And that happens to be one of the great moral and philosophical questions of the ages. Basically, it’s a religious question.

Did the Founding Fathers set up the Constitution to follow religion? No. Ahem, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Making everyone follow the tenets of any specific religion is forbidden by the Constitution. So how can it be that a small percentage of the country (but a high percentage of justices) are allowed to enforce this religious belief on the rest of the country, to the extent that 51% of the population lose deciding rights to their own bodies? It’s ludicrous.

As far as I’m concerned, two cells intersecting is a science project, not a human being. And it stays a science project until the point of viability, or in some cases, until after college. Maybe longer if there’s a gap year involved.

If we don’t have dominion over our own bodies, how can we even pretend that we’re a free country? Isn’t that the bare minimum, as far as freedoms go? Look how upset the MAGAs got over being forced to get a shot or wear a mask. And then look at how enthusiastically they cheer the prospect of forced births. That’s because they subscribe to no principle other than “I’m allowed to do whatever I want, and YOU have to do whatever I want.”

Legal Myopia

The author of the leaked decision, Justice Alito, hung a lot of his decision on the fact that abortion is not protected (or even mentioned) in the Constitution. He should know better than to use this angle because he knows full well that the 9^th and 14^th amendments state that rights cannot be removed based on their non-appearance in the Constitution. But like I said, these five radical justices came up with the conclusion first and worked to back-fill the reasons later. That’s not how the law is supposed to work.

Media

Fox “News” is having a field day with this, filling hour after hour with outrage. No, not about the decision, about the leak. That’s the real problem, according to the GOP. And I don’t really think they care about it either, but it’s a great way to redirect the heat.

Republicans are deft at this maneuver, that when you can’t or don’t want to defend a point or position, then come up with a different point to defend. But it’s funny how they just presume the leak came from a Democrat. We’ll be able to tell in the future. If the big “investigation” yields nothing, we’ll know it was a Republican. It’ll be all over the news if it’s a Democrat.

The Argument

One of the stories about Fox’s coverage got my shorts in a twist because it’s classic conservative rhetoric. Per Greg Gutfeld: “If you ask somebody why they’re pro-life, they will say, because abortion takes a life and we believe life is sacred. You can disagree with that. But the problem with the pro-choicers is that they don’t have the balls to state their case plainly.”

Here’s why he’s full of shit.

The pro-life argument, again, comes down to the definition of life, which I talked about at the top of the post. It’s a highly personal and moral judgment. And if they really believed life was sacred, why are they against every rational safeguard to life, except guns? (I’m sure they miss the irony there.) Where’s the support for pre and post-natal care, medicines, food assistance, housing, and every other human need that comes into play outside the womb? What about the life of the mother? Why isn’t her body sacred?

The second part is eye-bogglingly misdirected. Can’t state our case plainly? Is he out of his fucking mind?

Maybe he is only going by what passes for liberals on Fox, who are directed on what they can or cannot say on these shows. If you look at my Facebook feed, you’ll see the massive balls of the men and women who are stating their pro-choice cases loudly and clearly. It’s not difficult to find out what pro-choice people really think, he just has to look outside the Fox Bubble.

And clearly, they have no interest in presenting the real arguments from the other side. Then they’d have to answer questions about why a couple of microscopic cells have more rights than a grown-up, sentient, woman. There’s no way they come out of that looking rational, hence the misdirection.

The Mind Games

Republicans excel at the art of “talking past the sale.” That’s a sales term that can be applied to a persuasion technique. Like when a car salesman, long before you close the deal, starts telling you about all the things you can do in your new car, and how to take care of it, how much your friends will like it. He’s talking as if you’ve already agreed to buy the car, in the hopes of bypassing the point of decision-making to get to where it’s already a done deal.

Republicans do this by making statements that assume contentious points have already been decided. Like when they make the abortion issue all about “babies.” It’s “babies” this and “babies” that. They want to implant the image in the mind that everyone thinks of when they hear the term “baby.” They want to make it seem like that if weren’t for the abortion, the “baby” would be laying in a crib somewhere, playing with his toes or waving at a red, white, and black mobile.

This is part of what gets people so riled up… no one wants bad things happening to little babies. But they’re breezing right past is that 90% of abortions are done on a mass about the size of a grape. And the ones that come later are invariably due to severe deformities with the fetus, or pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother. Women aren’t having late-term abortions because they never got around to having one earlier.

Gutfeld was “talking past the sale” when he said, “abortion takes a life.” Whether it’s real human life is debatable, (again, because of the religious thing), but he’s already assuming facts not in evidence. There’s no question it has potential for life. But when pitting potential versus an actual human being, the rights of the human have to come first.

I’m Shocked, Shocked to Find Out They Overturned Roe

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are now scrambling to deflect bearing responsibility for the justices they approved going on to overturn Roe. AOC called them out on their bullshit right away.

 “Murkowski voted for Amy Coney Barrett when Trump himself proclaimed that he was appointing justices specifically to overturn Roe,” she tweeted.

“She and Collins betrayed the nation’s reproductive rights when they were singularly capable of stopping the slide. They don’t get to play victim now.”

How is it that every other Republican knew these guys were there to overturn Roe, but not these two? The mere fact that they were on the Federalist Society’s list is verifiable proof that they were enemies of reproductive freedom. That’s why TFG nominated them… that, and to get him out of whatever legal or electoral trouble he conjured for himself. The jury’s still out on the latter part.

The fact that this issue is still in play is an affront to half the country’s population. And with the way the various states are going about curtailing the right to abortion, it’s going to unleash a torrent of unintended tragedy. Or maybe it’s completely intended. It’s beyond debatable that these laws are meant to control women, to bring them completely under the dominion of men. If it weren’t, there would be more concern for the well-being of post-birth children or the very life of the mother.

But then that’s the new GOP, isn’t it? The cruelty is the point.

A Lot of Hot Air About Gas

With Russian social media trolls occupied elsewhere, I wonder if meme creation on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is being outsourced back to the US, because they seem to be even dumber than usual of late. For example:

The only thing the Russian oil pipeline and the Keystone XR pipeline have in common are the use of pipes. It’s funny that to conservatives, if only we hadn’t killed work on the Keystone XL pipeline, we’d all be bathing in oil right now. Gas would be 15-cents a gallon and plastic would be free.

But in reality, the “Russian Oil Pipeline” refers to the EU and other allies refusing to buy Russian oil, due their invasion of Ukraine. That’s a huge hit to the Russian economy, because while they may be flush with oil, they can’t eat it. It’s a massive exertion of pressure on Putin and his oil oligarchies.

The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to bring Canadian shale oil from there to our gulf ports, for refining and export. There’s already a separate branch of the pipeline that comes in for our own use.

Furthermore, this Canadian oil is low quality and not meant to be turned into gasoline. So the whole issue of our energy independence suffering for lack of this pipeline is ludicrous. It makes zero difference to the price of gas or our oil reserves. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to Republicans bitch about it. Their ignorance on the subject is either willful, or simply the regular kind. Maybe if they had some Democratic friends, they might learn something and wouldn’t need to ask such stupid questions.

The fossil fuel industry is scared shitless over the progress being made with electric cars. You can tell by the lengths they’re going to, to stifle growth and badmouth the technology. Like here:

This is using a basic “strawman fallacy” argument, by taking an opposing position, stretching it far past the limits of reality, and then attacking it as if that’s the actual position. I don’t think anyone is seriously pushing electric cars as a method to eliminate 100% of oil usage. I mean, that will have to happen, but it’s going to take decades, especially with the unified pushback from the oil companies, who won’t let their cash cow be sacrificed until they’ve wrung out every last dollar.

The basic rebuttal to this position is that traditional cars also have to have their components mined or shipped via oil/gas-driven machines. So that part is a wash. But then the electric cars go on to use far less (or no) oil than the traditional cars, thus eliminating x-amount of cars’ worth of emissions.

The real problem here is this position that unless any given solution is 100% oil-less, emission-less, and foolproof, it’s a waste of time and money. It’s not. Every little bit helps and when enough little bits start piling up, it will make a much larger difference.

Climate change is a real thing and is happening regardless of fancy rhetoric and supposed “gotcha” memes. There will be big changes afoot. We can either take it seriously as a country, or be destroyed by our inaction. It may not be my generation, but the ones to come will have to pay the price for oil industry’s insistence on profit over survival.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all that one of the reasons the price of gas is so high is to throw shade on the current administration. They know the Republicans will do their bidding in doing things like continuing subsidies, stalling on electric car infrastructure, lowering minimum MPG requirements, etc. So if they can rake in the cash hand over fist and blame it all on the Democrats, it’s kind of a no-brainer for them. And I think that’s the real reason why we keep seeing easily disprovable memes like these.

It’s Only Rock & Roll

I don’t know why but there’s a part of me that still cares about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I guess it’s just the old record store clerk in me, but I want to see credit where credit is due. And I want to see credit go to the purveyors of actual rock & roll. For example, take this year’s list of those being considered:

To me, the name that jumps out is Pat Benatar. It’s a crime that she hasn’t been inducted already. As far as I’m concerned, she should have went in in 2004, 25 years after her debut album. (Artists first become eligible 25 years after their debut album.) But there were a lot of female artists who have had to wait an overlong period of time before being duly recognized. Joan Jett and Heart come to mind.

Back when I was in college, my girlfriend and I used to hang out with a lot of her friend, many of whom were softball players. Pat was practically their patron saint. They all worshiped at the altar of Pat Benatar. I find it unbelievable that Madonna is in the Hall and Pat is not.

Looking over this list, she ought to be a shoo-in. Hell, aside from her, only 11 of the remaining 16 should even be considered “rock & roll.”  And that’s where I have a problem with what the R&RHOF has become. Call me a dinosaur but I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should be for Rock and Roll artists. I know they’re trying to be a big tent, but at this point, the tent is so big it’s not even a tent anymore, it’s the ozone layer. It’s a hard distinction to make, I fully agree. I mean, the early founders like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and other blues artists paved the way for the creation of rock and roll, so they should go in.

But Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, and Dionne Warwick? Not rock & roll. If there were a Pop Music Hall of Fame, they go right in. Dolly Parton? She’s already in the Country Music Hall of Fame and should be in the prospective Pop Hall as well.

Note: Dolly Parton actually withdrew her name from consideration today because she didn’t consider herself worthy. It’s ironic that to me; in making that statement, she just made herself worthy.

To me, artists like Beck, Kate Bush, Devo, Duran Duran, and Eurythmics are “new wave” rather than Rock & Roll, but I understand the argument for inclusion. It’s another hard line to draw. Personally, I think Weird Al Yankovic is more deserving than any of those acts.

Eminem? Forget it. He should be in the R&RHOF right after they put AC/DC in a Rap Hall of Fame.

I’d put Benatar, Judas Priest (also long overdue for inclusion), New York Dolls, and MC5 in the Hall. The rest should be celebrated elsewhere because they’re taking up space that should go to living, breathing rock & rollers. Artists like George Thorogood, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The J Geils Band, Meat Loaf, Bad Company, Sammy Hagar, Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet, The Outlaws, The Scorpions, Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Jeff Healey, Albert Collins, Lonnie Mack, Roy Buchanan, Johnny Winter, Joe Satriani, Melissa Etheridge, Kiss, and Warren Zevon should all be in the Hall already (although I admit a couple of those are no longer living or breathing.)

Once the Hall is filled up with actual rock and rollers, THEN loosen the parameters and look at some other sub-genres.

I know, it’s all a pointless argument, but I imagine that’s what the Rock Hall wants… people to talk about them. I love talking music. Music inspires passions! And I probably get overly wrapped up in some stupid honorarium, especially in wanting to see it reflect my own musical tastes.

I always try to catch the induction broadcast, usually by DVRing it. That way I can speed by the artists I don’t care for, although sometimes they surprise me. But however it goes this year, I’ll still be playing my music in the car as loud as I can stand it. When I’m at a red light, I always want anyone walking by to look over and think, “Man, that old fucker is rockin’ it.”

Although in reality, they’re probably thinking, “I wish that asshole would turn that shit down”

Fake Patriots

I hope you’re having a great holiday weekend! The good old Fourth of Jue-Lie! That’s the day when social media pages are flush with “easy patriotism,” the kind of token symbolism that passes for true dedication to one’s country. I’m not impressed by sticking flag images everywhere. You want to be patriotic? Support the right to vote without barriers. Support the right to assemble in protest. Support the right chuck religious mythology and support peoples’ right expect scientifically sound solutions to real problems. Any yutz can wave a flag. Supporting democracy is a big ask.

That’s especially true when your team loses. Patriots don’t whine about phantom fraud that’s somehow responsible for their guy losing. Patriots pass the torch with class and double down on voter outreach the next time. Or maybe develop some ideas that garner wider support. Do something substantial, rather than merely trying to convince poor people that poorer people are to blame for their lot in life and rigging the game for the next election. Patriots accept blame for their own actions, they don’t point fingers at others who had no role in their downfall.

You know, if you’re going to storm a government building in hopes of interrupting the implementation of a free election, for Pete’s sake, just own it. Pointing fingers at Antifa or BLM, who had zero involvement with the whole ordeal, is as pathetic as it is embarrassing. No one believes you. Just accept that you’re an instrument of, or support insurrection. Don’t piss on my boot and tell me it’s raining.

Now onto today’s main topic.

I know I’ve mentioned my thoughts on this issue before but seeing such misinformation appearing in print chaps my ass like wet blue jeans.

There are several points of contention regarding this line of thinking.

First, the entire thing is based on the misperception that burger-flippers are the primary (if not only) earners of minimum wage. They’re not, by a long shot, and that upends the very basis of this guy’s opinion. They love to call them “burger-flippers,” but often, the term “Essential” is more apt. You remember the heroes we were celebrating last year, those who risked their lives to put food on shelves or stock drug stores? I bet a significant number of them are working for minimum wage, especially once the “battle-pay” provisions elapsed. Where would we have been without them?

Sure, the military is essential, but how essential is child care when you have to go to work? Lots of child care professionals work for minimum wage.

Another point: Wages for the military and the rest of the public are not related, in that they come from different systems and employers. We can raise pay for military members without having any effect on private sector wages. Republicans can ask for a pay-raise for GIs anytime they want. All they’d have to do is cut back on spending with defense contractors, or maybe kill some of the weapons programs that military leaders say they don’t want or need. (But have to accept because said weapons are being built in an influential congressman’s state.) We spend more on the military than the next 12 countries combined. Don’t tell me there’s no room in the budget for better-paid troops. Lobby your congressmen for that and I’ll be right there with you. But don’t pretend what private employers are paying for minimum wage is a factor.

As I frequently point out, the right loves to target programs that help the lower and middle classes by pointing out that there’s some other more favorable group that’s being overlooked. But when they have the ability to do something about these “favored” groups themselves, it never happens. They’re only interested in military pay or homeless veterans when they’re trying to kill some other program. Otherwise, they don’t do a damned thing about it themselves.

In this case, they want military members paid more than service workers. But the solution should be to improve the pay of the military rather than to suppress the pay of everyone else. If they want to talk about earning gaps, how about figuring out why CEOs are billions of dollars more important than the people who defend this country. That’s the real disparity. It’s the zillionaires who are overpaid and overvalued. You want to sprinkle some dough around that comes from the CEO class? You could pay a hell of a lot of privates and sergeants from a 1% tax on the top 1% earners. Funny, I don’t hear any Republicans asking for that to happen. But they come out full force against “essential service” workers being able to make a living on a 40-hour week.

They can’t support this illusion in any factual way. That’s why they have to base their campaign strategies around preventing those particular people from voting.

Another point of contention is the lack of recognition that these minimum wage jobs are taken by choice. The author seems to think that it’s their fault for being roped into these low-paying jobs because they lack ambition or education.

But tell me, how are they supposed to get this education if they can barely get by on their wages? How can they possibly pay for school without going balls-deep in debt? The price of college has skyrocketed since I went to school.

I paid my way through college by working service jobs (grocery store, gas station attendant, record store clerk). The minimum wage was only 3-4 bucks an hour, but a semester at my state college was less than $1000. But now, it’s pretty much impossible to pay for one’s own degree just by working service jobs.

And I should mention that every single time the topic of raising the minimum wage was broached, the owner-class predicted price spikes and massive job losses, which never, EVER, came to pass when the wage was raised. The argument hasn’t changed since then and it’s still just as wrong.

Republican opposition to a higher minimum wage is 100% based on protecting profit margin. Business owners want wages low and production high. As was then and ever shall be. But that’s not a popular public argument, so they have to rely on stereotypes and distortions like the author above does. We just have to see it for what it is: a desperate attempt to keep the money in the upper class.

***

On the home front, we’ve had some excitement around these parts, as a family of robins made a nest in the holly bush right by our front door.  I’m sure they felt safe there because holly leaves are full of pickers that will tear you up when you try to handle them.

We’ve been monitoring the progress every day. Then when we came home from out of town last Tuesday, we found they’d hatched. Out of the four eggs, we could see at least 2 babies. So we got used to being yelled at by mama and papa robin anytime we dared use our own front door.

Sadly, our guests came to an unfortunate end.

Late Friday night, in the wee hours, the dog erupted in a barking fit. Sweetpea went out to see what the matter was, and found the dog on the couch, but staring at the front door. Not finding anything worrisome, we went back to bed.

But the next morning, she found that the babies were missing. They were nowhere near ready to leave on their own yet, so we figured that it was a cat or a fox the dog heard, having a midnight snack. Eventually, we found some, well, “parts” lying on the porch, which confirmed our fears.

The circle of life can be a real bitch sometimes.

And speaking of, I never understood all that stuff in the Lion King, with all the jungle animals celebrating the birth of a new creature that was predisposed to killing and eating them. If I was a zebra, I’d be like, “What are you all doing? Let’s stampede that thing out of here before another one of us gets killed! Remember? Last week they got Stan, and Bernie the week before! These things aren’t our friends!”

Maybe they just hung around because the songs were so snappy.

Voting Early and Often

Last week I participated in the first of several 2020 elections. This one was the primary for the empty Elijah Cummings seat in the 7^th Congressional District. It was odd because it was the only race on the ballot (what with being a special election to fill the rest of his vacant term).

In April, we’ll vote again for the general election for that seat, as well as the primary for the same seat and other races of interest, like the one for president. The final vote will be the usual one in November.

Sweetpea and I ran right out at 7:00 AM to go vote and it was easily the fastest voting experience I ever had. Sure, only having one race on the ballot speeds things through. But at least at our voting place, they seemed to have their act together.

I was glad I knew who I was voting for when I walked in because if I hadn’t, it might have taken me another five minutes just to read the list of candidates. There were 24 of them, all running for that one seat. (And that didn’t include the seven Republicans running.)

I recognized four of them: one person whose family name is all over Baltimore politics, another was Cummings’ widow, another had spent a buttload of money on Facebook ads, and finally the one for whom I voted, Kweisi Mfume.

I knew he was a former president of the NAACP but I voted for him because he had occupied that same Congressional seat back in the 90s. I preferred to vote for someone who already knew how things worked in Congress, and wouldn’t need a lot of time and orientation. The dude has big shoes to fill. (I grant that someone may need to brief him on the cultural differences in the House between the 90s and now.)

What really got my attention about this voting experience was that they had on-the-spot voter registration. You can walk in there for the first time, register, and then go vote.

And that’s how it should be in every voting precinct in the country. It can’t be that hard… if the staggeringly bureaucracy that is Maryland state and local government can pull it off, how complicated can it really be?

But you won’t see this where Republicans are in charge because the last thing they want is for more people to vote. That’s why they don’t allow on-site registration, they curtail early voting, understaff and under-equip voting sites (especially in urban areas), and systematically purge the voter rolls (especially in urban jurisdictions), all under the guise of “preventing fraud.”

As anyone who’s bothered to look it up knows, on-site voter fraud is a statistically negligible event, even less than the margin of error. All the studies show it, including the one from the Bush Administration, who set out to prove that voter fraud was a serious problem and was being perpetrated by Democrats. The study found two things, Jack and Shit. The few fraudulent votes they found were for Republicans. They had to bury the whole thing because it didn’t accomplish its original goal, to pin voter fraud on the Dems and justify their voter suppression efforts.

A separate 14-year Loyola study found 31 instances of documented on-site voter fraud, out of over a billion votes. And almost all of them were garden-variety mistakes or bureaucratic errors rather than a plan to influence the election.

Yet, every time you ask a Republican about making it easier to vote, they act like there is an army of zombies and derelicts out there just waiting to vote under false pretenses. They love to point to dead people on the voter rolls as evidence of fraud. If anything, it’s evidence of shoddy bookkeeping, which should be tightened up. Wake me up when votes start to appear under those names. It just isn’t happening.

And what’s the Republican fix to dead people still being on voter rolls? Do they run a compare from death notices to the voter list? Hell no. They delete addresses of anyone who hadn’t voted recently or responded to a postcard. The other (accurate) way has no up-side for them.

On-site voter fraud would be the least effective way of election tampering, yet that’s the area where the GOP wants to concentrate their efforts, by requiring official IDs, which are selected specifically to make it easier for their people to vote rather than the enemy. Student IDs… out. NRA membership cards… in.

If you look into voter fraud at all, you’ll see that the most frequent and effective method of voter fraud involves absentee ballots. But nothing they have ever proposed to ferret out voter fraud has touched absentee ballots. I suspect that’s because the military uses them for all deployed soldiers. I suppose even those on-base use them too if they’re still registered in their home towns.

The only way to change any of this situation is to vote out those who created it. Obviously, that’s easier said than done, because of all the chicanery going on. 

Republicans know deep down that there are more prospective and registered Democrats than there are of them, so the only way to stay in power is to rig the system. Hence all the barriers, hence ignoring the Russians, hence the gerrymandering, hence the perverting of democracy while wrapping themselves in the flag.