The micro picture sucks but not to worry, the macro picture could kill us all
A few minutes before I publish this newsletter comes the breaking news: NYC DA Alvin Bragg has filed charges against Jim Jordan for his repeated efforts to interfere with and obstruct New York’s justice system.
I’ll leave it to the legal analysts to provide the particulars, but to a layperson, it seems like Bragg’s goal is to gain a court injuction to stop the political intrusion of multiple subpoenas filed by jordan and other GOP committee chairs planning similar actions against him and other prosecutors to play stupid propaganda games.
Yesterday from Rachel Maddow: “Until now, if a woman, God forbid, was raped in the state of Iowa, she came forward to the police to report that she had been raped, the law enforcement process would kick in, and she would be provided a medical examination without cost to her and care for her injuries, and care for other potential consequences of her sexual assault, including...emergency contraception to prevent any pregnancy occurring as a result of the rape. Until recently, that was the standard.”
”Well Iowa now has a NEW AG [@AGIowa] and under Republican rule in Iowa,the state has decided they will NO LONGER give you emergency contraception in this circumstance because as far as Republicans are concerned in Iowa,it's apparently their PREFERENCE that you be FORCED to bear the RAPIST'S BABY."
My conclusion: The GOP governors and members of Congress and state legislatures still don’t get it. Or they do understand and remain hellbent on denying the right of full personhood to women because they truly believe that women are inferiors, mere babymaking machines available for use by any man, especially violent ones.
The morning after pill can not be construed as abortion inducing. It can prevent conception like a condom can. It can induce a mini miscarriage of what? 3 or 4 cells?
To grant that kind of personhood to a brainless pinpoint cluster while stealing the personhood of the raped women is an affront to all of humanity. It convicts the innocent victim of violence and sentences them to at least 9 months of torture before they can legally get away from the 24/7 reminder of the sexual offender who assaulted them.
This is why the majority of adult US citizens, who have not supported this kind of punitive torture of the innocent for the past 50+ years, is going to provide a historic win against numerous incumbent Republicans 17 months from now. GOP incumbents will even win less support from their own Republican voters.
In Tennessee, the state legislature committee chairs do the voting for everyone. They pretend to let the other committee members vote because doing things that violate state laws is how Tennessee Republicans roll.
Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee House Speaker, for example, doesn’t live in his district (one crime) and hasn’t paid his property taxes for two years (two more crimes).
Most politicians can’t see beyond the next year or four; it’s something I’ve observed after 50+ years of actively watching and analyzing constantly shifting political winds. Those looking further ahead often get called ‘kooks’. If their assessments prove visionary a decade later, it’s pretty rare that media analysts apologize for their error.
I do recall the late Mike Royko admitting his mistake in dubbing Jerry Brown ‘Governor Moonbeam’. Before he died he acknowledged that Brown was right way more times than not. Now at 85, Brown was interviewed by Jonathan Martin for Politico:
However, what worries Brown the most about tomorrow, in America and across the planet, is we won’t have very many of them if we stumble into a nuclear-tipped conflict with China.
“I’m very worried,” Brown told me. “And I don’t think the people in Washington are worried enough.”
Why not?
“That’s the big question: why are they not worried when nuclear powers are becoming so hostile to each other and there’s so little attempt at dialogue or reaching some modus vivendi, some way of co-existing.”
It’s easy to dismiss Brown as an alarmist.
China is the other economic juggernaut currently competing with the US. Their population (and consumer base) is more than 7 times the size the US has. Instead of working to ease tensions, American politicians keep finding ways to piss off Chinese leaders.
There’s room for both of us in the world of commerce but driving them into the arms of openly hostile enemies endangers all of us.
Did anyone notice that Saudi Arabia is now making nice with Iran, bridging the Sunni Shia divide that was just as bad as the Arab/Israeli divide for centuries? Their oil interests converged. Just as Russia’s did because of the economic sanctions imposed on them by NATO countries.
So yeah, let’s drive China into that mix. What could possibly go wrong?
Trump began it but it’s still ongoing because of key members of Congress. Not all of them Republican.
And all our competitors and enemies openly hostile to us are well aware of the political divide roiling us. And can heighten that divide via social media, if it furthers their economic interests.
Jerry Brown knows well how easily antagonistic nuclear powers can make one bad decision catastrophic to us all.
It’s not Governor Moonbeam talking. We all need more sober adults to stop driving wedges into the country. I certainly hope the billionaires and mega millionaires badly mismanaging the show recognize how vulnerable they’re making us all.
At least I won’t have to worry about the Arms Race or the race to be the country’s greatest asshole after Trump is incarcerated. I’m a white male which gives me an invisible cloak that wards off nuclear missiles and rando misfits armed with bazookas and grievances against women and drag queens that refused to have sex with them.
Meanwhile, back in Hateville, the Transparent Gnatzee Propaganda KKKween, Stephen Miller, has been toiling late into the night in his belfry, inventing the same old conspiracy theory: Sleepy Joe Biden is masterfully orchestrating all the actions of DAs and AGs across the land, to GET Donald Trump, that poor innocent waif.
Jim Jordan, Tucker Carlson and Fox News will amplify that same old lie and run it past you on your teevee, radio and smart toaster oven streamingly. SEND THEM ALL YOUR MONEY or the Entitled Angry Orangey White Pre-Boomer Rapist Racist Second Fattest Guy who ever lived in the White House is going to sell yo mama to Vladimir.
Everybody knows he would as fast as he can sign the bill of sale.
This bit of music is for adults capable of rational thought. And seems perfect for this point in time.